#cultures represented here n there just like a creator would try to do for someone who’s japanese or french … more interest and seeing that

[tragicbackstoryenjoyer]

Happy STS!

Amazon or Netflix want to adapt Blood of Gods. Assuming you have complete creative control what would your requirements be in order to make it a product that is up to your ideal standards?

Ooh, what an interesting question! Here are 11 things that come to mind, in no particular order:

Really good costumes and sets, but especially costumes. They don't need to look exactly like how I describe them in the book, but they do need to be beautifully made to represent the different cultures, classes, and religions of the setting, as well as the general opulence that it should bring to the story. Since Blood of Gods is a very "grounded" fantasy, a good background in historical fashion would be good.

On that note: the creators should have a respectable knowledge of the history surrounding the real-life events that Blood of Gods takes inspiration from. (Namely, the Crusades and the treatment of Jews in medieval/renaissance Europe in general.) I wouldn't want the cultural inspirations to be wiped away.

Do not woobify Lucius! YES he has a tragic backstory YES he's canonically handsome YES he is capable of great unselfish love for someone and YES I know that I've probably set up the perfect environment for villain stans. That's fine, I just wouldn't want any adaptation to be colored by that. All of his many atrocities should be depicted as what they are. Ashala shouldn't be made to look unnecessarily petty for hating him.

I think Blood of Gods would work best as either a live-action movie or limited mini-series. It's a standalone book, so there's really only so much story there to be adapted unless the story was extended beyond its ending in the book, which I really wouldn't want.

Oh yeah, on that note: DON'T FUCKING WITH THE ENDING. If you even LOOK at the ending I'm going to stomp you to death with my hooves. This is probably the most important point on this list. Some of my first draft betas didn't like my ending. That's fine! It's not what I'd expect to be popular. But I'm very firm on the fact that the ending I have (in all its glorious uncertainty) is the ending that is right for the story, and I'm not changing it.

The showrunner/director would probably have to be a woman. Sorry! Obviously exceptions could be made based on the individual, but I'd just trust a woman to handle the heavily female main cast and the large sapphic element much better.

Speaking of: keep all the gay stuff in! And don't try to make it PG-13! Ashala FUCKS and that's that on that!

Generally actors should at least somewhat resemble their characters. You know the drill. They should not be casting some bombshell to play Ashala and they should not be casting a twig to play Vesta.

All the actors need to be good, but Vesta's actress needs SERIOUS range. Not only because Vesta is a very complex character who goes through probably the heaviest amount of character development over the course of the story, but because ideally she'd also play Amata in flashbacks. Amata is a very, very different character, and it would be easy for a lesser actress to ignore her depth.

Do NOT make Ashala any more physically "badass" than she is in the book. She is LAME! She's a LOSER! A younger modern AU Ashala definitely walked the mile in gym class, okay? Yes she's technically a knight but she didn't earn that position through meritocratic means. Plus, long-term lack of access to sufficient food has probably done some irreparable damage to her body. I know that it's hard for Hollywood to wrap its head around, but it is possible to have a powerful female character who isn't necessarily powerful physically.

I've seen a couple others mention chemistry tests for actors, and I'll second that for any Blood of Gods adaptation. As I've said in other posts, a major theme of the story is forbidden love. If the audience cannot believe that certain characters are in love, then a huge part of the story falls apart

Aaaand that's all I can think of off the top of my head. In all honesty, I'd never expect BOG to be adapted, even if I can get it published. Sapphic stuff just doesn't seem to draw a large crowd when it comes to Hollywood, and as I said before I doubt my ending is going to be overwhelmingly popular. I doubt it would be as expensive as some other fantasy adaptations (magic plays a very minimal on-page/screen role) but due to the exotic setting, it still would probably need a decent budget that I don't think Hollywood would ever throw at something like this.

Whatever. Enough moping. This was fun to think about.

#ask #wip: blood of gods

[schleierkauz]

Q&A Highlights

Ok so bad news first: My questions were ignored. Cornelia did not clarify any of our death-related theories. Maybe next time.

There was A Lot of other stuff, though so... Enjoy!

- The stream starts with everyone wishing us a happy women’s day! Usually women in Erfurt (where the bookstore people are) get flowers but not today because... you know. Cornelia says America is starting to go back to normal, meanwhile Germany... :| Anyway. Don’t look over here.

- Cornelia says she probably won’t get the vaccine anytime soon because she’s just chilling on her farm anyway and people who have to be out in public/are vulnerable should get it first

- Question: When will Cornelia visit Germany again? In response to this, she gives us some exclusive news, not official yet, heard it here first: She’s gonna move to Italy! Apparently she bought an olive farm there which is cheaper, better for the environment (her current farm will be sold to some people who want to turn it into an organic farm) and obviously closer to Germany so she’ll be here more often. :)

- The 4th Reckless book will be released in English at some point this autumn

- There’s no definite release date for TCoR because she’s busy with Dragonrider but she hopes she’ll have finished writing it by the end of this year

- If she’s still alive after all that to work on Reckless 5, it’ll be the last book of the series... probably. She’s also working on a bunch of smaller projects with her artists in residence

- Question: What are Cornelia’s favorite stories by Jane Austen, the Brontë sister and Shakespeare? She’s not a huge fan of Austen or Brontë because she finds all those repressed emotions too exhausting to read about. With Shakespeare on the other hand she struggles to name a favorite because there’s so much greatness to choose from (she does name MacBeth and Romeo and Juliet though)

- The Black Prince’s legacy in the Reckless timeline may play a role in the next Reckless book or it might evolve into a whole other story. Either way, she’s thinking about it  👀

- Someone asks about Reckless characters and Cornelia says that Kami’en and the Dark Fairy felt very familiar to her from the start in that she always knew who they were as people. She’s not sure why that is. She thinks the Dark Fairy represents many aspects of womanhood, like the ancient forgotten Goddess. Same with Fox, who embodies different sides of that.

- If Cornelia had to date a man from the Mirrorworld, Kami’en would interest her

- Rainer Strecker randomly joins the chat to say hi and everyone is delighted

- Cornelia’s favorite book series is still Lord of the Rings

- Question: Why has the Black Prince never found his true love? Cornelia says she’s not sure that’s true - maybe he did found true love at some point and then lost it again? ‘...and they lived happily ever after’ isn’t a guaranteed outcome after all. Since he’s such a passionate man, she’s pretty sure he’s had at least one big lovestory at this point. She hasn’t asked him about that yet but hopes she’ll find out when she continues writing his story.

- Jumping off that question, Cornelia says she respects her characters’ privacy and lets them keep their secrets until the time comes to ask about them, just as she would with real people.

- Someone asks if Cornelia has ever written herself into a story and she says a part of her is in all her characters. Except the villains because she hates them. She feels closest to Fox because she also always wished she could shapeshift

- The bookstore lady jumps in and asks about Meggie, is she similar to how Cornelia was as a child? Cornelia says yes, especially because she also had a very close relationship with her father and they would bond over books. However, she always envisioned Meggie with dark hair and as a different kind of girl than she was. (Ok sidenote from me on that, I wonder what she means by ‘dark hair’? Because Meggie is explicitly blond, so like... dark blond? Or did we just unlock brunette Meggie in 2021? Cornelia-)

- Continuing the conversation, Cornelia says she doesn’t consider herself the creator of any of the characters in her stories, she feels like she met them and wrote about him but she would never say something like ‘I invented Dustfinger’ because that’s absurd. How would that even work. That’s disrespectful. No.

- Some characters pretty much demand to be written about and are very impatient (like Jacob), others are more shy and elusive and take effort to understand (like Will or Dustfinger)

- There probably won’t be another book like The Labyrinth of the Faun because it was created under such unbelievable circumstances. Cornelia does enjoy writing film scripts, though, like she did for the Wild Chicks recently

- Question: How does Cornelia come up with character names? She has a bunch of encyclopedias and when she knows where a story takes place she checks if there are any artists from there whose names she can steal. She always wants names to have meaning and to paint a picture of whatever character it belongs to. However, she says that sometimes the vibe of a name is a tricky thing: When she wrote The Thief Lord (which takes place in Italy), she thought ‘Mosca’ was the perfect name for a big strong boy. However when the time came to translate the story into Italian, the Italians told her that ‘Mosca’ sounds like the name of a tiny little fly. Oh well.

- Cornelia says a lot of readers have written to her about The Thief Lord because at one point Victor (the detective) calls Mosca (who is black) a “Mohrenkopf”. Context: ‘Mohrenkopf’ is a German slur towards black people and also an outdated name for this goddamn marshmallow cookie:

Fuck this cookie.

- Cornelia says yeah, Victor is being racist in that moment but that doesn’t mean that she, the author, is racist. Similarly, she used the term ‘Indians’ in Reckless and a lot of readers were upset which she did not anticipate. To her it’s a positive word since she admires ‘Indians’ so deeply and finds terms like ‘Native/Indigenous Americans’ very complicated. She wonders how much longer she’ll be allowed to say ‘Black Prince’

- She thinks it’s right to be vigilant about bigotry but simply searching for problematic words is dangerous because context matters

- Bookstore lady brings up Pippi Longstocking and how the N-word has been removed from modern copies (think Pippi’s father). She think’s it’s wrong because the original text is part of the cultural heritage and shouldn’t be hidden from children but instead explained. 

- Cornelia says that in America she sees the hurt that’s connected to that word but she doesn’t think it’s right to simply remove the slur and expect everything to be fine. After all, the text in which it was used is still the same so any harmful ideas would still be in there and that needs to be discussed. Simply whitewashing things doesn’t make them any less racist.

- Cornelia brings up a visual example: The Asterix comics. She always liked them but the fact that the only black character is drawn as a racist caricature is harmful and wrong. It’s time to listen when black people express how hurtful depictions like that can be. Many white people never noticed racism growing up because it never affected them and that’s why it’s important to learn

- The ‘from rags to riches’ American dream was usually reserved for white people and Cornelia thinks a lot of (white) people are waking up to that fact. The way black people are still being criminalized and the way prisons use inmates for cheap labor is horrible and like a modern kind of slavery

- The bookstore people try to say something but Cornelia is not done: We Europeans are not off the hook either because the sins and wounds of colonialism are still felt around the world, not to mention the way other countries are still exploited today. Our wealth rests on the shoulders of poorer nations. Many doors are opening and it’s difficult to step through but we have to do it and admit to the things we may have been blind to due to privilege.

- The three of them agree on that and go back to reading questions

- Question: What are Cornelia’s tips for young authors? She advises to never start writing a story on a computer, always get a notebook and collect ideas & pictures for your story. Don’t rush things. If you have more than one story, give each story its own book and feed whichever one is hungry. It’s important to follow the idea where it leads, if you use cliches your readers will recognize them. And then it just takes time and passion. And trust in your own unique voice. She paraphrases a quote by Robert Louis Stevenson who once said no one cares about stories or characters or whatever, people read books to see the world through the goggles the author puts on them. I’m sure he said it prettier, I’m paraphrasing the paraphrase.

- That said, Cornelia thinks authors who say things like “I’m writing to express my innermost turbulences” are kinda dumb. She thinks it’s important to write about the things that happen everywhere else and around yourself and to try to find voices for others, not just yourself. Just like how carpenters build furniture for everyone else, a writer should use words to build things for others, whether it’s a window or door or a hiding place.

- Speaking of notebooks, as most of us probably know Cornelia has a lot of those and occasionally publishes them on her website. She says she’d love to let people look through them in person, maybe at the new farm in Germany (Cornelia sure does love farms)

- Speaking of writing things on paper, all three of them stress that everyone should write more letters because one day they’ll be old letters and curious people will want to read them, just as we like to read old documents now.

- Last question: How come both the Inkworld and the Mirrorworld feature a character called Bastard? Cornelia thinks that’s a good question and she should probably think about that. (Am I stupid? Are they talking about Basta? I’m confused)

...And with that, the livestream ends. They’ll get back together to do this again two months from now, until then: I’m going tf to sleep

#its 4am fuck me this took SO LONG- #cornelia funke #info #reckless #inkheart #man this was a long one #a lot to unpack here #thanks cornelia i have more questions now hdfhkjghd #i googled way more slurs than i had planned for today ngl #i really really hope i managed to accurately translate especially that part of the conversation #honestly i cringed a bit hearing them talk about it #but it is an important discussion i suppose #also @ the people who actually read my tags: #thank you for the good luck wishes for my interview today!! it went really well! #i was vibrating the entire time bc its been so long since i talked to a stranger #but i got the job :) so all is well

[kendrixtermina]

I’ve found the interview! Or parts of it

Other fun points beyond Claude’s real name.

A lot of my headcanons have been confirmed!

Silver Snow was the first route written (maybe that’s why it’s the weakest? It took them a while to find their Mojo)

El wasn’t just a driving figure in the plot but also in the writing process, ie, the other lords were then developed as contrasts.

Dimitri’s eyepatch was also improv apparently one person just randomly suggested it halfway through, the original model was then used for CF. It was intended to show that he had a hard life in the last 5 years

They say they took some influence from “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”

CF was indeed intended as a “secret” hidden route holding a distinct place - it was originally supposed to be harder to unlock - they also underestimated how many players would always go explore on the first day (apparently the option is only open in the first day - which makes sense, later she’s already departed)

Edelgard is indeed Byleth’s foil/ counterpart / rival / contrast as someone with roughly equal power

So developement wise you might draw some parallels to Elsa (the developers gradually realized this character had more potential as a hero than a villain/ was actually pretty sympathetic - part of why they made joining her easier) and also Rika from Digimon Tamers (they realized the figurines of the girl characters didn’t sell, so they made the primary girl the ‘rival character’ which always sells. Rika was indeed hugely popular, probably because your average anime ‘rival character’ tends to be complex, cool,  and one of the most powerful chars in the setting)

Lysithea was indeed just a prototype, Edelgard had a much more advanced procedure done on her (hence why she generally seems a lot more “super”)

They originally planned for her to be able to stop/interfere with divine pulse but that didn’t end up making it into the final game

You have to consider that a game is not a book or a movie - something might be a cool concept on its own but if its implementation is annoying to the player it’s worthless

However I will take this as confirmation to my headcanon that she has some mild timewarping going on, and that this is what happens when she can attack multiple times (as per ‘raging storm’ or in her Hegemon form)

That really IS Sothis on the mural

An aspect that I didn’t personally consider but adds to my observations of how Rhea is a really interesting take on the concept of a demigod: They stress that to her Sothis doesn’t just represent her mother but also the creator/ her god. She very much does worship her and has goals beyong just wanting back a family member

(Indeed she does tell Byleth that she can’t wait until “Our creator rules this wayward land once more”)

And here’s yet another account of the war of heroes. In this i must admit defeat because others called this and I didn’t:

The Nabateans were in fact ruling over humans, and people were in fact resisting/standing up to that

The Agarthans having their own sinister motives,  invented the methods to make crests/ relics

At this point you DO get greed and powerlust involved - people like Nemesis started trying to kill dragons to gain their power left and right and the balance of power shifted

Rhea didn’t so much “make” the Elites into heroes - The (human) people really did see them as liberators and that was too big to change, so Seiros kept the broad strokes manipulating the details so that all tied back to the goddess.

So they replaced an aristocracy of Nabateans by an aristocracy of people with Nabatean-like powers. There’s an interesting dynamic here

So Edelgard was almost completely right.

I’m sorry I doubted you El!

That said I still get the impression that Nemesis was definitely in it for the power and still massacred civilians.  He’s like the Ten Elites’ secretly evil teammate.

So on the one hand, Rhea didn’t do this unscrupulous act of making people she hates into heroes just for control, on the other hand the war of Heroes was alot more muddy

On the other hand this makes Silver Snow a bad end in my book. “Happiness in Slavery”.

I did talk about how SS didn’t have Byleth growing out of their character flaws the ways the other routes, but now... wow they were a tool until the end

I still can’t believe that Sothis, Seteth or Flayn are evil though, Sothis seems compassionate and disliked Rhea’s methods - but was she even around then, actually? Because she was asleep for a long time after the war with the Agarthans. So the Nabateans, perhaps already under Rhea’s leadership, were already semi-corrupt.

(That obviously doesn’t justify slaughtering them all down to the last child - Zanado was the civilian population)

Seteth might have been as much of a tool now as then. Though I still hold to my opinion that he’s the last one to hold to Sothis’ “real” mission - which was guard not rule

Of course Rhea believed almost to the last that guarding was precisely what she was doing

Heavens this has so many layers and complexities I love it I want to make a full drawn out novel based on a similar premise

That said they specify very clearly that Seiros and co really did just want to keep the peace. They are benevolent/ paternalistic overlords basically

Almyra seems to have an “Ottoman Harem” situation going on where the King has multiple wives and the heir is whoever is worthiest/strongest rather than the eldest. So from the beginning Claude had many rivals as if the bullying he experienced wasn’t bad enough

So Claude/Khalid is different from Dimitri who was always the rightful crown prince, and Edelgard who never expected to inherit and suddenly found herself catapulted up the line of succession. For him it was always a “maybe”.  

This is an interesting contrast to Edelgard. Her father also had many concubines but it seems she had a good relationship with her siblings regardless.

“He won’t hesitate to plea for his life and considers survival as the ultimate victory. That’s also why Claude is the character who survives in every route. “

The original plan was to slip up and have Nader call him the wrong name. i see why they cut it, it would make everyone involved look like they don’t take the situation seriously

The moment in non-GD routes where he couldn’t predict that Hilda and Judith would sacrifice themselves is ascribed to him “having different values than the people in fodlan”. Ouch. So good at reading people but the cultural difference still bit him in the ass at the worst possible moment.

If you see the Church as Seiros as an analogue to a corrupt medieval church, this certainly fits with the common observation by ppl of different backgrounds that christian countries tend to have an undercurrent of glorifying suffering and self-sacrifice in ways that seem masochistic to ppl from other backgrounds or even local non-believers

The beard was supposed to make him look “adventurous”

“He’s a very good guy” - I mean, yeah.  

The timeskip designs were supposed to “radiate their life style over the last five years” - I certainly see that with, say, Dimitri or Bernadetta

#fe3h #three houses #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses #Khalid #claude von riegan #edelgard von hresvelg #edelgard

[kae-karo]

pls post your mine hcs!!! i would love to hear them b

hi b! for context (x) okay i should clarify, i shouldn’t have called them hcs as i think people take that with a lot of connotation to mean ‘i actually think this happened/would happen’ when really it’s more like...

okay. if i were to write a fic with dnp as characters who exist exactly as we see them (as in, we know everything abt their personalities, which irl we absolutely do not) then this is how i imagine the character of dan would see most of the songs on ‘a brief inquiry into online relationships’ and why he would say that he feels ‘personally attacked by literally every song on this album’ - to be clear, i don’t think this is actually what dan thinks! please treat this as fiction!

bear with me bc i wanna talk abt some of the others first (i also wanted to include the links to the genius interviews where matt talks abt some of the meanings behind the songs, but it doesn’t have all of them so check out the lyrics as well)

give yourself a try (x) - i mean obviously this is the one dan felt he related to most/felt most safe posting about how he related to it/was personally attacked by it, but the whole thing is like. being yourself, and like? embracing yourself? as a person? as whoever you truly are? and they keep coming back to the idea of authenticity with this whole album, and i think that’s part of why dan would be so ‘attacked’ by this album bc he’s in the throes of his own search for authenticity

love it if we made it (x) - this one’s fun bc it’s basically all about how fucked up society is and like. all the things that’ve gone wrong, how society is just so beyond messed up, and it’s like. yes. all of this is so wrong, messed up, but there’s hope? like we can be self-aware, we can make differences, and i would imagine dan listening to this and feeling like. maybe torn? because there are some things where he’s trying to make a difference but some where he would want to but not know how? so y’know personal attack on him in the sense that it’s a personal attack on everyone - we’re all complicit, in a way, and part of it is just because we know all this is happening but how much do any of us try to enact change? i imagine that’s something that keeps dan up at night, tbh. i mean the man spent an hour picking up snails off a sidewalk so they wouldn’t get squished

be my mistake (x) - this one is interesting bc the artist explains it’s really just about guilt, on a deeper level, and about not knowing what you want? ultimately even tho it’s about like a hookup with someone you don’t know that you really want, i think dan would take this more at the deep level of like. having no idea what he wants in life (something he’s said before, multiple times) and? perhaps in a sense, going back to things that he knows don’t actually represent what he wants (ie, that don’t feel authentic) but knowing the outcome and maybe just feeling safe or at least feeling something significant from them, maybe like he’s fulfilling what other people want of him by doing these things even if they don’t quite feel like him

sincerity is scary (x,x) - i think this is one of the ones dan would feel calls him out the most - it’s all about a person’s relationship with social media, authenticity, and self-perception over external perception? so like. the entire first verse is all about hiding behind a mask of irony and like. i think for dan that’s a hard-hitting callout? and i don’t just mean his whole brand of how everything was done/said ‘ironically’, more that even now he hides his fears behind jokes and such, bc that’s a culturally relevant way to do things (’you try and mask your pain in the most post-modern way’). the whole idea is like. if you’re being ironic, if you’re masking everything behind jokes and insincerity, you can’t actually be judged the way you can if you’re authentic and sincere? so like. there’s dan’s fear of judgment plastered all over this song, his fear of people looking at him for who he is and disliking it or perceiving it in a way he doesn’t like (’and why would you believe you could control how you’re perceived when at your best you’re intermediately versed in your own feelings’) it’s like. and he’s said this a couple times now, but he doesn’t always know why he does/thinks certain things, there’s not always a reasoning behind it, and i think that for him, that contributes to his struggles with authenticity. i think this is really doubly intriguing when ttlmt is taken into account as well? bc he specifically says that for ‘some people’ (aka him i mean this is known at this point) unless they’re being honest with themselves, they won’t feel free. and i think that’s like. dan’s internal struggle right now/this past year: how to balance his evident need for authentic and honest self-expression with his deep-rooted fear of judgment of his authentic self. i mean read the damn title of the song, sincerity is scary

i like america & america likes me (x) - i’m sure there’s a deeper meaning to how dan would interpret it (aside from the obvious and intentional callout about guns in america) but all i can think about is talking about being on fire, being a liar, ‘is that designer?’ etc, and the death of dinof. but also y’know about calling out things that are Wrong 

the man who married a robot / love theme (x) - i think this one is maybe one that dan felt absolutely viscerally attacked by, this is a direct callout on his relationship with the internet and his audience. it’s presented as a relationship, a friendship, a love, but like if you step back and go ‘this is about a person and an audience’ it’s so so much more heartbreaking. i mean the internet saying ‘i love you very very much...i never ever want us to be apart ever again ever’ like that’s us that’s literally us we want constant content from them? and i think for a time, dan did feel like he would want that. because that’s fame, right? ‘and he would always always agree with him. this was the man’s favorite’ i know this is a commentary on like generally the culture of the internet but i have a feeling this is something dan would feel p hard. but i would imagine ‘i feel like i can tell you anything’ is the part that would be the most gutting, bc he put so so much of himself out here for us. and i would also wonder how hard the abruptness of the ending would hit - the sudden ‘and then he died’ after ‘man does not live by bread alone’, the acknowledgement that dan couldn’t just survive on his audience (and, more extensively, the internet), and how 1. he could still die lonely, had that been how he felt (i don’t think he does, but diversifying oneself and one’s relationships is emphasized here) and 2. the almost insignificance of an online presence, in objective terms, like. all that’s left of this lonely person is his facebook. i think that ties in really strongly with dan’s desire to leave something physical behind, like tabinof and dapgo and the ii dvd, something as physical evidence they existed and made an impact

inside your mind (x) - so concept is just...seeing inside your partner’s head? and like i feel like that’s something dan would want, or care a lot about, in some sense. a bit violent, lyrically, but i wouldn’t doubt that he cares (or, perhaps at a time in his past, cared) about it quite a lot some days. i think he just really cares about what other people think about him, probably especially phil, but also like the deep desire to understand someone? esp someone you love

it’s not living (if it’s not with you) (x) - okay this one’s very straight up about heroin addiction but i would definitely wonder if dan felt it like. in connection to phil in some ways? and i know the easy connection would be that dan wouldn’t be able to stop thinking abt phil and uwu it’s not living if it’s not with phil but the lyrics are actually quite dark? i would actually guess it had more to do with like. he couldn’t stop thinking about phil and wanting to like. be openly with phil (heyyy that authenticity yo) but also like. the repercussions of openly being in a mlm relationship on his life and his career at the time, and even now, ‘if i choose, then i lose’ like if he picks being open, there may be consequences in his career (although, more and more lately i wonder if he doesn’t care so much anymore), but ofc if he picks his career, he’s suffering from this lack of authenticity that’s haunted him for a while

i couldn’t be more in love (x) - so the whole song is more about a relationship with an audience/fanbase, and like what would happen if people just stopped caring and how like. putting so much time and effort into their relationship w. an audience and like, what about the creator’s feelings? i think dan would take that really seriously, like, we’re all really nice most of the time but what if we stopped caring? and like how would that affect him, after having given us nine+ years of himself? the other thing it touches on is the idea of just relying on ‘all the things that i did right’ ie depending on the things that made him popular, and i could see dan looking at that and wondering if he’s relied on that in the past, maybe this past year has been his attempt to move forward, or maybe his year of less activity (in the form of dinof vids) has been him relying on the things that got him where he is in order to keep his fanbase - so then, does that let him expand more, do more of the things he wants instead of, oh, idk, giving the people what they want? or does he feel obligated to do more of what the people want, since that’s what got him where he is?

i always wanna die (sometimes) (x) - it’s a meme but generally like. existence is exhausting? and that’s the whole idea? like god sometimes just doing stuff day to day is so so tiring, and i think that’s something that resonates with dan? and there’s a lot of other meaning about like death n stuff, and like. some days suck but you have to keep going? bc your life doesn’t just affect you it affects everyone and maybe that’s motivation for you maybe it isn’t but you have to realize that giving up is also something that affects everyone. maybe that’s something dan would see in relation to his depression and phil, and how resigning himself can really harm those around him as well

kay now the fun one

mine (x) - this whole fucking thing is a testament to dnp i can’t even fucking type correctly rn bc i’m so passionate abt this okay. literally the opening and closing lines are ‘there comes a time in a young man's life / he should settle down and find himself a wife / but i'm just fine cause i know that you are mine’ like if you try to tell me for a single fucking second that’s not dnp i will come to your house and make you listen to it on repeat until u understand okay. but like. that’s their whole thing right? they’re each other’s and that’s what matters? god i’m gonna literally do this (almost) line by line: ‘i fight crime online sometimes’ = dan’s desire to be this positive force on the internet. ‘and write rhymes i hide behind’ = oh dan’s diss track hmmm (but more generally, he makes jokes that he hides his fear and other things behind). ‘i’m fine if you are fine’ = oh u cannot tell me that’s not how dan feels? about phil? that he finds happiness in knowing phil’s happy? and then of fucking course ‘looking back on 2009 / when people said that it was raining all the time / i see sunshine cause i know you are mine’ oof that hits hard right in the feels okay dan definitely heard this and smiled his fucking face off cause u know in spite of whatever bullshit he had going on in 2009 he definitely still saw it as a bright spot in his life bc he met phil that’s just the truth. what i’m really interested in is the third verse ‘for some reason i just can’t say ‘i do’’ like. would dan possibly feel that way? i have no idea. but at the very least, it’s definitely something that dan would feel in some way, bc they’re not open abt their relationship and a marriage would obviously make it Very open. ugh sorry this one just hits hard and like. just knowing dnp have each other in whatever sense that actually means it’s like. physically painful in a good way. bless them

#dnp #dan and phil #phan #dip and pip #a brief inquiry into online relationships #anon #ask #kt

[flyingforhealing]

R E L I G I O N

As long as we were spending time in the Lands, I started to understand that Ngaanyatjarra people don’t care about what you have, they care about your feelings, your beliefs, how kind you are. That made me  notice that the reason why they keep their culture alive is that they don’t need anything else, they just need to stay together, as if they had only one soul.

I spent many years trying to realize why I couldn’t believe in God, or if you prefer, a supreme being… Now, I get the answer, I never had a religious experience, a significant moment that could have changed my life… I’m glad it happened in Australia. The beauty of the dreamtime stories helped me to understand that no it’s not important who you believe in, it’s important that you have the opportunity to believe. 

In this post, I would like to talk about Australian Aboriginal  beliefs. Here we find the Tjukurrpa or dreamtime/dreaming and other mythology that explain the begin of everything.

In the case of mythology, it’s said that Aboriginal groups widely distributed different myth telling across the Australian territory, but, at the same time, they more or less try to explain the creation of the world. The first myth that we had the opportunity to hear was about The Rainbow Serpent, which is one of the most popular not only in Australia but also worldwide. The Rainbow Serpent  is often seen as a creator God, and it is known by different names in the Aboriginal culture. It is viewed as a giver of life through its association with water, but can be a destructive force if it gets angry. (In the second picture you can find an example of the Rainbow Serpent by Andrew Highfold Tjupurrula)

There is another aboriginal myth occurring across Australia and I couldn’t hear the story, but Ale did and she wrote this for all of us: “Captain Cook. The Aboriginal Captain Cook myths tell us about the encounters with Lieutenant James Cook, who is seen as the British character who arrives from across the oceans sometime after the Aboriginal world was formed and the original social order founded, but his arrival is not celebrated,  he is talked about as a villain.” When Ale explained me the story, I completely understood why James Cook took the place of a villain, I cannot even imagine myself in the situation of aboriginal people at those times… One day a foreigner arrives and decides that the Lands didn’t belong to aboriginal people, they belonged to someone else. I honestly think it was a tragedy. (In the third picture you can find the Captain Cook’s statue in Sidney)

On the other hand,  The Dreamtime or Dreaming, is used to represent Aboriginal concepts of Everywhen/Everything during which the Lands were inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities. These figures were often distinct from gods as they did not control the material world and were not worshipped, but only revered. What I remember the most, are the nights we spent listening to the Elder telling us the Dreamtime stories and how concerned they were (and still are, of course) about mantaining the tradition of the Dreamtime. They are doing their best to teach the young ones to preserve the legacy of their culture. 

Have you ever had a religious experience that reinforced your beliefs? As always, let me know in the comments! 

LOVE, CATA XOXO.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreaming

https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-library/aboriginal-dreamtime/

#religion

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Andy N.

is a writer, performer, podcaster, creative writing workshop tutor and sometimes experimental musician from Manchester who also is currently co running Stretford’s always welcoming spoken word night ‘Speak easy’

He has been published in numerous books and magazines and has been performing in some form or the other since 2006 and regularly since 2008 and was also vocalist and keyboardist in the spoken word collective ‘A Means to an End’ (Can be found on facebook).

He is also the editor and chief of Spoken Label, a new spoken word based interview podcast label featuring podcasts with all kinds of writers and artists (https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/) and is also the co creator of ‘Reading in Bed’, a literature review podcast he does with his partner (http://readinginbed.bandcamp.com)

His official website is onewriterandhispc.blogspot.co.uk/ and he is always interested in under-taking performing / new projects. His email address is [email protected]

List of Publications:

(http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.co.uk/p/publications.html)

on Facebook (Official page)

https://www.facebook.com/andynstorytellerpoet/

on Bandcamp

https://andyn.bandcamp.com/

Ocean in a Bottle (ambient music)

on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/Ocean-in-a-bottle-802773986422467/

on bandcamp

https://oceaninabottle.bandcamp.com/

Spoken Label (spoken word podcasts)

on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1640184132900821/

on bandcamp

https://spokenlabel.bandcamp.com/

Speak Easy (Stretford’s always welcoming Spoken Word Open Mic night)

https://www.facebook.com/speakeasymanchester/

Reading in Bed (Book Review Podcast with Amanda)

on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/readinginbed/

on bandcamp

https://readinginbed.bandcamp.com/

Comics Unity Podcast Series (Comics related and culture podcast with Michael)

on facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1366264170126341/

  The Interview

1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I actually started writing poetry when i was 10. It was terrible i seem to recall. My teacher encouraged to keep on it at it

. Little did she know

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

Good question. It was my teacher Miss Fenton. She always thought i had a good eye for images even back then

.

2.1. What poetry did she introduce you to?

She introduced me into Hilaire Belloc at the time. My major inspirations Hugo Williams and Paul Celan / Wilfred Owen came during college and at degree level years ago.

2.2. How did they influence you?

In Williams case it was the human touch the sheer love of life. Cealan and owen the misery

3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

Not really if I am honest until I got into my mid 20s when I went back to evening classes. I had left school with quite poor qualifications (long story) and next to no interest in writing by the time I got to 18 or 19 and although I touched on poetry while studying English A Level (where I studied Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne etc), it wasn’t until I got to university in 1999 as a mature student (I was 27) when I really began to see the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary and slowly began to find my own voice.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I actually have a day job (I wish I was a full time artist) so that covers me during the day so it usually means just the evening when I get home. I’m quite deep into the world of Podcasting at the moment which can means that does take some time up when I am at home, and I also do ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle but if I am not writing everyday I am always reading and usually have either a book in my bag or a new poetry book on my kindle. Bookwise, that’s Robert Cochrane’s ‘A Memory of Keys’ and I have a pre-order of a book by a South African writer called Alta Martin which is out later in the year I think.

5. What motivates you to write?

What motivates my writing? That’s a good question really. When I first started writing right up to when I went to university, I never really had any plans with it atall,  perhaps I thought it was something more interesting to do than just watch Television. The older I got, it changed and now I love telling my own stories in poems rather than been told stories (for example on Television) if they makes sense and this has now developed further so on my laptop I have various folders on there on sequences I want to tell. Currently this includes Science Fiction poems (A mystery called Robot Noir) or poems about an imaginary couple I am writing about who visit all kinds of cities and have adventures in them. Both of them motivate me as I want to work out where they end both of these stories end up next.

6. Why do you like writing mysteries?

Just what I am writing really at the moment, Paul and is not a reflection of my first three full length poetry collections. The first book ‘Return to Kemptown’ was a compilation of what I regarded as my best material as of 2010 (I have been performing poetry on a fairly regular basis since 2007). The second and third books ‘The End of Summer’ ‘and ‘The Birth of Spring’ are seasonal books really with each book designed to represent the seasons with poems about Summer and Autumn mixed with longer narrative poems which contain the elements of those seasons also.

I do have a third seasonal book in mind ‘In the Midst of Winter’ which is looking good but I also have two other full length books on the go which are certainly more mystery based. The first one ‘Changing carriages at Birmingham New Street’ which is about my imaginary couple actually made a brief appearance in The Birth of Autumn and I enjoyed reading about them, it kind of made sense to try and write a full length collection covering their time together. Robot Noir, my Science Fiction poetry book is quite different but still carries the same emotional strengths that people like about my poetry but is getting wrote hand in hand next to it covering before, during and after a Robot uprising in Poetry which threatens the existence of mankind itself. Both books here are mysteries as they do not operate like most full length poetry collections, but tell a story like in novels but rather in poetry which pieces stand alone but also work well in a long sequence and I hope will prove emotional satisfying for readers as well as me when they are completed.

7. How do the writers/musicians you read/heard when you were young influence you today?

I had a bit of a unusual taste in music growing up in the early 80s when my father got me into folk music and country and western music, of which if I am honest I haven’t heard in years. When I got into my mid teens in the late 80s, I started listening to some discoveries of my own, some of which are very difficult to listen to nowadays. One band I love listening to even now and saw live twice back at that point were a Scottish band called The Blue Nile who have had a rare ability to convey the ordinariness of life itself which still hits me hard even now over thirty years later and has proved a influence on my writing certainly.

Reading wise, I’ve just re-read a few books by Fred Hoyle which are very pure Science Fiction indeed and I think are difficult to read now (How I read them at 11 or 12 with great ease I have no idea) and I also remember reading a lot of Harry Harrison’s work as the Stainless Steel Rat which I struggle with nowadays also because of the sexism towards women which is pretty bad in the first book or two. I think it depends really, my father got me reading the Western works by American writer Louis L’Amour in my early teens and his later books like Comstack Lode are great novels and while a little preachy are full of what I try to convey in my poems now (as much as any work by Plath and Larkin, both of which I was familiar with in my early 20s and am still now).. I let the characters tell their own stories whether in a few lines or 40 lines

8. Who of today’s writers/musicians/ do you admire the most and why?

Ooh. I am taking my time reading Ocean Vuong’s ‘Night Sky with Exit Wounds’ at the moment. I also recommend Spiderseed by David Hartley, a young writer from Stretford (near where I was born) whose debut book is twenty illustrated flash fictions, all of which has a defo Gorey feel to them. Comic wise, as I am still reading them, I love the work by Ed Brukaber (who is known on the TV front for being the show runner for Season 1 of West World and Too die to this young). Comic wise, his work with Sean Philips is always worth reading, and their current series Criminal which is a series of interlinked stories involving Criminal has magnificient character work

9. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I started as a child as I said before and also studied writing at university, but if I am honest although I learned stuff from starting from so young and also studying it, I learnt going to a writing group certainly helped me the most as it made me listen to people who tried to give me advice. So listen really

And also perhaps join websites likes Writeoutloud.net and blog your poems on there, as people will give you feedback on them sometimes.

10. Tell me about writing projects you’re involved in at the moment.

Current writing projects are the following:

1) The Streets were all we could see – my 4th full length poetry book which is a series of mini poems (All under 10 lines each). Book is now complete and will be out before the end of Winter.

2) Buried alive under the Wall – this is my second fantasy book, a sequel to a book released in 2018 called Enemy of the Wall. Currently on the last draft.

Other projects on the go is Europa 4, my 4th book of anti war poetry with my pal Nick Armbrister and I am thinking about what I am can do for NaPoWriMo this year which I think will be 30 poems wrote daily in April called Fragments of David.

Also will be carrying on with my constant podcasting and ambient music.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Andy N. Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[olmopress]

The end.

week 13: Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, “Remediation”

Maghada Kingdom, Northern India. Somewhere around 2500 years ago:

I feel you Sha’

All beautiful things must end, and so also my smart-ass blogposts have to.

SAD

But I don’t know maybe you can pool some kind of financial resources and grant me a salary to write you reviews on stuff. It’d be cool, and I’d be constantly on strike to try and negotiate a better wage because

But anyways.

Before we start this last ride about digital media, I have a kind message addressed to my dear friends Bolter & Grusin

No for real guys. Don’t get me wrong here, your paper is great and you sound like chill dudes, but

DUDE

your points are SIMPLE, and we’re all grown ups with an education. You DO NOT have to state and re-state the obvious and make multiple and equally obvious examples

LIKE, WE GET IT

Instead NO, it takes these two little bitches something like

THIRTY PAGES

to get to the main point of the essay.

But oi, maybe I get it. Maybe you were writing for some whiny-ass professor/boss who gave you a nasty word count, or maybe editorial draconian policies by the journal forced you to do this. Boh. I don’t know. Don’t wanna antagonize her but reading you kids was a tour de force.

BUT LET US NOT GET DISTRACTED LIKE WE DO ALL THE FUCKING TIME

Bolter and Grusin’s article does something quite simple: it attempts to set theoretical lineaments to the three concepts of immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation. Very cool.

The ‘core’ of the whole essay is something pretty much like this:

Our [sick-ass neurotic] Western culture is fixated on both immediacy and hypermediation. To achieve the first, we [very reasonably and not at all pervertedly] paradoxycally construct hypermediated environments. But we do also the reverse [again great reasoning abilities here]: in going all-in for hypermediacy we tend to rely on seemingly immediate devices. All this media push-and-pull is fucking bipolar implies a logic of remediation, in which the emergence of every new media generates reciprocal ‘borrowings’ and incorporations between the new and the old.

Now Bolter. Grusin.

DOES MY PARAGRAPH LOOK THIRTY FUCKING PAGES LONG?

B & G: No

GOOD. THEN WHY THE HELL YOURS DOES?

Fucking academics, man. They drive me crazy.

So the point is that this logic of remediation is based upon the mutual dependence of contradictiory determinations (the fact that immediacy depends on hypermediacy). And well, what is it if not another episode of my highly acclaimed sit-com series 

“What famous philosopher is featured in this paper?”

Our guest star today is a boy you’ve already seen in this post.

Oh yeah baby, keep those antithetical determinations struggling with each other!

And so yeah, “Immediacy depends upon hypermediacy,” and very much like an original synthesis that transcends thesis and antithesis, 

“the desire for immediacy leads to a process of appropriation and critique by which digital media reshape or ‘remediate’ one another and their analog predecessors” (314).

From this point, B. & G. write words upon words to disscuss the concepts of immediacy and hypermediacy, constructing what they define a “genealogy” of the two concepts. But they means this in a very specific way. Is another guest star of “What famous philosopher is featured in this paper” coming to join us?

OF COURSE

but surprises don’t end here, because

IT’S A RETURN!

Oh yeah, your favorite bald philosophical sex symbol is back to tell you that by saying “genealogy” he means 

“an examination of descent” which “permits the discovery, under the unique aspect of a trait or a concept, of the myriad events through which—thanks to which, against which—they were formed” (qtd. in 315).

Therefore Bolter and Grusin investigate the way in which these two concepts have been shaped by cultural discourse over history. Which is all fun and leisure, but not really that important to us.

One thing I did want to talk about tho is the political aspect of immediacy. So let me get this straight. When discussing VR, B&G write:

“All these enthusiasts promise us perceptual immediacy, experience without mediation. They expect virtual reality to diminish and ultimately to deny the mediating presence of the computer and its interface” (317).

Now, you have been blessed enough to encounter some Marxism in your life, you might be reminded of the crucial concept of ideology. An ideology is a set of beliefs shared by members of a society – or imposed upon them – that naturalizes artificial relationships and norms inside that community. The thing about ideologies, though, is that they are not immediately visible. They are, to borrow from B&G, transparent, because they are designed to be invisible and to provide a sense of immediacy in social dialectic. Moreover, the stronger an ideology is – the more rooted it is in culture – the less visible it is. We could say, for instance, that Mark Fisher’s concept of Capitalist Realism works as a very transparent ideology.

Rest in peace, comrade.

But going even deeper, it seems to me that this whole transparency thing is very totalitarian. Like VR is kind of totalitarian, because it seeks complete and utter control over your body and senses. Totalitarianism is like a transparent interface. It is a form of cultural VR. Or rather, ideology is a form of virtual reality.

And, oi, B&G make it clear enough that this works also when individuals have personal freedom. Sure, they’re talking about digital media, but still look at what they write:

“For if immediacy is promoted by removing the programmer/creator from the image, immediacy can also be promoted by involving the viewer more intimately in the image” (324).

That’s DEEP bruh.

Now let’s move on. So immediacy is essentially the dominant regime for much of the history of Western culture. Or at least ever since the Renaissance. It is the dream of being able to produce objects that trick us into believing that what we see is real. Fine.

Hypermediacy is sort of like its nemesis. It is the cultural regime of fragmentation, indeterminacy, multiplicity, heterogeneity and pretty much also of deliberate and explicit artificiality.

IT’S VERY POSTMODERN

VERY META-

It’s culture that is aware of its mediated nature, and breaks that suspension of disbelief stuff that makes you care for characters created by someone else.

See this at work in one of the greatest moments of digital media history.

Bolt ’n’ Grus have a lot of superfluous stuff to say about it, but unfortunately for them I am very postmodern too and my attention spans are short and so I’ll jump to remediation.

Remediation is B&S’s killer application. All their money is on this nice idea. The idea is that one of the defining characteristic of contemporary digital media – or rather, a phenomenon sparked by the emergence of them – is the fact that media represents other media in them. This, they say, can happen in four different modes.

1. Transparency: digital media highlights and re-presents an older media without any trace of irony or critique. This is like when you go search for that old album you really like on Apple Music. The platform does not ‘comment on’ the music. It just allows you to experience it by reproducing the older vynil/CD medium.

2. Emphasis on difference: digital media underlines and renders particularly evident the difference between itself and older media. Kinda like an improvement of older media through digital tools. This encompasses all the ‘expanded’ stuff you can get. Like library guides on our our library’s website. They are text-based like a physical library guide would, but they also have nice little video tutorials which improve them. Through the digital.

3. Refashoning: an ‘aggressive’ form of remediation that tries to refashion older media entirely while still signaling its presence and therefore retaining a sense of multiplicity. Here artificiality is explicit and discontinuity is visible. It is kind of like a new media collage. Something like this, perhaps:

4. Absorption and incorporation: the fourth and final mode is one in which discontinuity is minimized, because a media has entirely absorbed one or more characteristics of another one. Thus, we sort of come full circle, in the sense that absorption is superficially quite similar to transparency. Note that absorption works in both directions. Therefore you have it both in film through CGI and in videogames through cinematic cutscenes.

Our reading for this article ended with Bolter and Grusin saying that at the present moment (which for them is 1996, but non importa) all mediation is remediation, in the sense that “each medium or constellation of media […] responds to, redeploys, competes with, and reforms other media” (345). Which is also a way to offer a new connotation to the concept of media environment.

Now, sadly

WE ARE DONE.

It’s been a hell of a ride. I mean a hell. But also a ride. So we’re kind of even. It is time for me to bid you farewell; remind you to have protected sex always; assure you that, no, you won’t have panick attacks for the rest of your life (it’s the oppressive and ultra-competitive educational system’s fault); and re-assure you that, eventually, the dialectic of history will complete its cycle, unveil the inherent contradictions of capitalist societies, and prepare for the advent of a millenary communist civilization.

This come from Amazon, lol

Everything will turn out well. We will be fine. One day Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin, and Jair Bolsonaro will all rot in hell. We will probably have to deal with the catastrophic consequences of climate change brought about by capitalism but we’ll come out of this with a stronger, more inclusive, and more just society. Our dreams will come true and we’ll all become badass human beings who will be pillars of a reformed, humane society.

Enjoy the ride!

Today’s culture is a celebration of our struggles to become great and revolutionary individuals. Enjoy that too.

Coldplay - Lost!

William Blake, The Angel of Revelation (1805)

Adieu!

Image Sources: GIPHY, metmuseum.org, thenewpolis.com, micciacorta.it, amazon.com

[consciousowl]

Do I Have a Soul?

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground,

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;

and man became a living soul.

Moses in the Book of Genesis

In Ridley Scott’s cult classic, Blade Runner, set in 2019, we meet an L.A. cop, Captain Decker (Harrison Ford), sent to hunt down renegade replicants, or androids, up to no good, being highly resentful that their creator had timed them to die.

Captain Decker meets Rachael (Sean Young), the most advanced replicant. Decker can’t figure out if she, as the creator’s assistant, is a real human being with a soul, or simply his masterpiece. In the end, Decker falls in love with Rachel, and takes her with him. To Decker, it really doesn’t matter whether she is human or not. He simply can’t tell the difference.​

What Is the Soul?

When you speak of the soul, everyone knows what you are talking about, but hardly anyone can clearly explain it. Soul is clearly what makes us human. Soul is the very core of our being. Soul is the essence of our individuality over and against our body.

The soul is defined with various ancient words. In Hebrew, it is nefesh, or the breath of life. In Greek, it is psyche, or mind. In Sanskrit, it is the jivatman, our essence as an individual that migrates from life to life. It speaks of our heart as much as our mind, being closer to the heart.

Genesis depicts the soul as the breath of the Creator that makes the clay figurine, Adam, come alive. Adam is no longer dust; he is “a living soul.” Although this narrative is clearly metaphorical, it speaks to our divine nature, what differentiates us from other animals. We are human, if not also divine.​

Is the Soul and the Spirit the Same Thing?

In the Bible, spirit is represented with different words in the original. “Ruah” (breath or wind) in Hebrew and “Pneuma” (air) in Greek. In Sanskrit, God, from an impersonal standpoint, is “Brahman” (Infinite expansion). In Buddhism, it is often thought that humanity has no soul, as all phenomena are continually changing and are ultimately illusion.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, the apostle, most likely Saint Paul, distinguishes between soul and spirit, knowable only through revelation. In this context, the soul is the foundation of our human nature, while spirit is our divine nature.​

The soul may be everlasting, but not eternal. There was a time when your soul was not, but it may never end. Your spirit, however, is eternal. It always was, it always will be, because it is the very nature of God.

Your soul is the very heart of your individuality, what makes you “YOU” as “Mark” or “Audrey” or “Phil.” It suggests your presence. If you are in love with her, you feel her independent of her physical appearance. Your spirit, however, is one with the Source of the Universe, in which the galaxies spin.

Why Even Ask the Question?

Several hundred years ago, before the modern age, you would seem very strange to the people in your life if you asked a question like this. It was obvious to most cultures, societies and civilizations in the world that we have a soul. The only intelligent question was, “What happens to our soul after we die?” Here again, most societies accepted that our souls actually went somewhere. They survived the body.

With the emergence of the scientific method, the philosophy of rational empiricism emerged out of the immense success of science in making predictions and advancing technology. For experimental purposes, if you can’t publically sense something and actually measure it, it is unreal. It just doesn’t exist.

In the modern age, the soul got increasingly associated with the brain, as opposed to the heart. It became popular to suppose that our mind was entirely due to the intermittent firings of our neurons, much like a cortical thunderstorm. The moment you pull the plug and stop the action, the mind is gone, along with your soul.

Clearly, this assumption didn’t sit well with most people. Thanks to the father of modern philosophy, Renee Descartes, they took refuge in dualism, that the soul resides entirely in a different realm. The body is the body, and the soul is the soul.

As Descartes famously put it, “I think. Therefore, I am.”​

The Challenge From Neuroscience

In the past decade, research on the brain and the human nervous system has escalated. We have already decoded the human genome. Whereas earlier we were in the kindergarten stage, we may be confident that we are now in the elementary stage of understanding brain functioning. The global IT infrastructure required to support this research is now many times greater than it was even a decade ago.

The more we know about the brain, the more tempting it is to try and explain away the soul as simply neurological processes. However, the brain is vastly complex, with billions of neurons in intelligent patterns. If you look at all the possible combination of patterns in any single brain, you will have more than the number of stars in the known universe.​

Scientists have started to attempt on a crude level to reverse engineer the brain with varying degrees of success, as many of our neurological processes are analogical, rather than digital, meaning they are not simply on / off states. In addition, the brain does massively parallel processing way beyond what our current computers can do. Currently, software developers are in the early stages of writing and perfecting code for parallel processing.​

The Challenge from Artificial Intelligence

A.I. research is finally bearing fruit after decades of exasperating setbacks. Back in the 1950’s, mimicking the brain seemed much easier, as our understanding of both the brain and computer technology was so basic. Early on, there were two directions in developing computing. The first was to look at the computer as an ultimate replacement for the brain. The second was to look at the computer as an instrument to augment human intelligence.

Today, A.I. is being commercialized and introduced in every field and industry. We are about to see personal robots, drones, self-driving cars and flying automobiles on an everyday basis. Google has been using deep learning in its apps for years. Systems are now capable of simple self-learning. For example, you can instruct a system to identify pictures of cats from thousands of photos without any labels.

We aren’t yet at the stage where a system can fool people into believing it is a person, but we now see IBM Watson routinely beat, not only world-class chess players, but Jeopardy participants, a game requiring cultural sophistication. One system has even designed a crude, but intelligible, one-act screenplay!​

Can My Soul Be Downloaded into a Machine?

When Timothy Leary, the acid guru, was about to pass away, he gave instructions to freeze his brain immediately after he was gone in the hopes that a future generation could thaw it, and plant it into a human body. If we can transplant hearts, why not brains?

Transhumanists go beyond this. Since many neurological operations can be coded, one might suppose that human consciousness is an “epiphenomenon” of the brain. We are conscious only in so far as we are programmed, and have an electronic current flowing through us. Should this be the case, then all of the code could be put together and stored in a large rack-mounted platform.

The problem with this line of thinking is that we are, from a biological standpoint, organisms, not machines. We are most definitely not simply an assemblage of parts. Rather, every system of the body grew out of a single fertilized egg. Can we really equate life with machinery?​

Will Computers Ever Be Smarter Than Me?

Right now, computing platforms can do many operations much faster than human beings. They can do more operations and do them faster on some, but not all aspects of thinking. The issue seems to be whether computers can beat human beings in generalized intelligence. There are at least a dozen different kinds: verbal, abstract reasoning, spatial logic, kinesthetic, aesthetic, spiritual, emotional and moral.

It would seem to be a long time before computers master all the different types of human intelligence and can be totally mistaken for human beings. However, it is very clear, as with Apple’s Macintosh, that manufacturers and developers can humanize and personalize systems in certain ways, SIRI being a crude beginning.

Even more to the point, it is dubious how successful systems will be in replicating human beings’ actual feelings and emotions. To date, most of the focus on A.I. and neuroscience has been around rationality and perception. Intuition and emotion seems to be largely overlooked. Given the role of the human heart (which is highly intelligent from a neurological standpoint), it might be more appropriate than the brain in these areas.​

Why Both Neuroscience and A.I. Completely Miss the Point

Scientific research into neuroscience and A.I. has yet to deal with what it calls “the hard problem.” How do we explain human subjectivity? When I see a gorgeous sunset upon closing my eyes, where is that sunset? Surgeons can’t really isolate any particular group of cells where it is happening. Our imagination seems to reside in a wholly different dimension.

Dr. Deepak Chopra and Dr. Menas Kafatos recently published a marvelous book, “You Are the Universe,” popularizing what they call “qualitas,��� the experience of quality in what is superficially considered a quantitative world. They suggest that the brain might be a tuning mechanism for experience, which resides “nonlocally,” meaning it can’t be reduced to any specific locality.

We can’t isolate any experience as happening “out there,” as it is only through our internal sensations and thoughts that we can construct the concept of an external body and world. Quantum physics has eradicated the notion that you can have a world without someone to observe it.​

Will My Soul Ever Die?

Throughout history, most cultures have seen the soul going on well after the body has dissolved. Death is seen as the separation of the soul from the body. The body is temporal, but the soul is everlasting. One thinks of reincarnation on the one hand, and becoming one with it all and merging with God on the other.

Near death experiences are vividly narrated, with a strong suggestion of the survival of our individuality, and the overwhelming experience of love and well-being in the afterlife. It would seem that we have another body every bit as real as our current human body. The testimony of Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who flatlined his brain for seven days, seems most impressive in this respect.

The New Testament narrative of resurrection points to a glorified body that has a relationship to the former body, but it is not subject to the same laws. It can eat fish, and yet walk through walls. It can be touched, but is capable of levitating into the sky. Could this be a transformed soul body? In Hinduism, ever subtler dimensions of ourselves each have their own discrete body, culminating in the “Anandamayakosha,” or bliss body.​

Who Am I… Really?

While it is often considered blasphemy to claim that you are God, this may be our greatest truth. If there is only God, which is not a ridiculous proposition after a thorough study of quantum physics, then each of us is God hiding out as you and me. It may be that we live in a divine love story, where the individuality of each one of us is infinitely precious to our Source.

In the wink of an eye, God can bring us all back in a glorified body. If an advanced computer system can launch an entire universe in 3D virtual reality, could God do any less?

If you are interested in exploring the infinite nature of your soul and how it impacts your experience of the world daily… we recommend you do it with Deepak Chopra, a world-renowned thought leader in this space. Click here for more details.​

Do I Have a Soul? appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.