#it's just one of those things where in isolation/in theory none of these religion related things are offensive in and of themselves

[lord-squiggletits]

Salty Ask List: 1, 5, 14, 22 ?

1.What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?

Dr/atc/het 100000%... I just don't understand what their chemistry is supposed to be together. It's partially ruined for me by Drift in MTMTE being an absolute mess of a character who got most of his planned plotlines cut or changed, and partially ruined by the fact Drift spends most of MTMTE straight up absent from the story, and then he and Ratchet meet up in Empire of Stone and come back during Dying of the Light and are just...together romantically now? I don't understand how they have any chemistry at all much less romantic lskdjflkds

I know a big one people talk about is "Ratchet saved Drift's life and then told him he believed in him" but... the way their meeting was written didn't come off as particularly romantic to me? Ratchet saved Drift the same way he's saved countless other addicts in the Dead End and then his parting words to Drift were to tell him to go to the Functionists so they could get him a job. Very "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" kind of advice that clearly didn't work since Drift stayed impoverished, his friend got killed by police brutality, he went into the underworld to be a hitman, etc etc. Like yeah in theory it's very romantic for an OTP's first meeting to be one of them saving the other's life and treating the impoverished person kindly for possibly the first time in their life. It's just that that moment in canon doesn't have romantic vibes to me at all, it's just a doctor-patient encounter in which Ratchet is nice to Drift like he's nice to everyone, except it's also kind of condescending/ignorant bc Ratchet basically tells Drift "oh just get a job and get clean and you'll be fine" as if it's that easy to stop being a homeless/jobless drug addict?? If an ER doctor did that shit to me I'd be more likely to see him as an asshole than to admire or like him at all sdklfjsd.

Then Drift was a Decepticon for millions of years, then he joined the Autobots on Earth and like... he and Ratchet sure existed on the same team together dlkfjldsjlkds there were zero interactions of worth b/t them in phase 1, their ship dynamic came entirely from JRO's writing and even then I feel like it's an informed romance more than an organic and believable one.

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

I actually used to like O/Pli/ta when I first came here, but as I stayed longer it became evident that the overwhelming majority of the fan content of it reeks of "we are very sorry for having a heterosexual ship, let us compensate for it by making the woman a Girlboss Xtreme and the man a weak simp so that you can be sure the woman isn't being Oppressed and Stereotyped by being in a heterosexual romantic relationship" which is one of my most detested types of fan content, so now I have the ship tag blocked sldkfjlsdkdskl. Literally it's just the same "the woman is a TOTALLY COMPETENT AND COOL ACTION HERO and her man is a TOTAL SIMP FOR HER" that's interchangeable with most het ships in other fandoms, where there's no actual personality or chemistry for them and instead it's just the same Fandom Approved Heterosexual Relationship Dynamic.

That and a significant amount of content I see for it is just like blatantly ripped off from Me/go/p dslkfjsdfsjl or like, taking the main MOP dynamic and just swapping OP and Elita's places so now Elita is the cool action hero who's rival to Megatron and OP just Exists as an emotional support husband I guess. Or like Elita is made into a daring action hero while Optimus is reduced to a meek little wallflower who's no one of any real importance and just follows in her wake. It reeks of insecurity and unoriginality, as if the fanbase is cripplingly aware that Elita was made to be the Token Girlfriend and instead of just making her a better character and making the romance she's a part of more equal and compelling for both characters, they have to violently overcompensate by having Elita steal OP's role and everything interesting about him. 😂Like I'm begging people to just be normal about hetero ships. You can ship a man and a woman together without having to diminish the man and girlbossify the woman to prove you're a Real Feminist.

14. Unpopular opinion about your fandom?

Continuity soup is boring and for the most parts creates purely fanon plots/ideas/characterizations that have tenuous relationships to actual canon. It's nice that people have the creativity to make their own AUs, but I also want to read about the actual continuity in question and not someone's mishmash of it.

Like UGH when I read a fic tagged IDW1 I want to see cop Orion not archivist or dockworker Orion. When I read a fic tagged IDW1 I want to read about the Senate led by Proteus and the reigns of Nova/Nominus/Sentinel/Zeta, not about the Council from TFP. When I read a fic tagged IDW1 MegOP I want Orion being a simp for Megatron after reading his stuff/meeting him one (1) time sdkflsdkf not yet another iteration of the tired "one day an archivist and a gladiator became great friends! then they broke up."

It's not hate for other continuities, I'm just tired of the fact that continuity soup is so prevalent that even when I'm specifically filtering for content of the one continuity I want to read about, the fics I find keep having random shit from other continuities interjected into it. I think each continuity has really interesting takes on lore that have potential to be wholly unique for each one, so it's really frustrating when the average fic I can find is just a random mishmash of continuity elements, or more often than not just an IDW knockoff taking place in a separate continuity. Like guys, I'm an IDW stan myself, but wouldn't it be cool if we got more fics that explored ideas that only happen in G1, or only happen in Animated, or Aligned, etc?

Doesn't help that when I AM looking specifically for IDW stuff, most of the content I look at (MOP) does continuity soup for the sake of replacing IDW OP with some sort of aligned/g1 lite OP which makes me salty as hell

22. Popular character you hate?

Drift for sure sdklfsdlk. I mean when I first read about him in the comics (the Drift miniseries) I was like, he's fine I guess he's an action hero whatever. But then literally the more of the comics I read the more his personality and story were just incredibly corny, stereotypical, or boring as hell no matter what writer was controlling him. And he got bounced around between writers a lot, and then even the "main author" people know Drift from (JRO) kept changing his plans for what Drift was supposed to be (and cutting plots related to him) so any hints towards a storyline went nowhere. And then Drift spent basically all of MTMTE gone elsewhere on some exile-adventure, and then during LL he just kind of. Is there, existing.

So like, honestly Drift is a victim of getting bounced back and forth and having his writing changed so often he doesn't reach his full potential, which isn't really "his fault" as a character. It just so happens that I also think the bits of his character that exist are either boring or overhyped or in one case (portrayal of his religion/religious worldbuilding in general) outright offensive. He's basically written like some hippie stereotype with vaguely Asian/Japanese flavoring (the extent of which is basically his name + fighting style) and then he barely like... does anything in the plot? I think he's supposed to be like, ~mysterious and shifty~ but then all of the plotlines that involved him being a secret traitor got cut, so Drift basically just became Weirdly Suspicious For No Reason and his genuine personality/motivations felt indistinguishable from what he was faking and what plots got cut from him. Absolute mess of a character that got almost no payoff for any of the things planned for him, and all that's left is some kooky hippie personality of "hee hoo I believe in auras and mystical vibes and magical colors, also I'm dating an atheist who's openly dismissive of most of my religious beliefs (that I do or don't actually believe in depending on what part of the story I'm in) and this somehow doesn't get in the way of our personal/romantic chemistry

But then the fanbase are basically making him some kind of Gary Stue, obsessed with making headcanons like "Deadlock wrote/edited Megatron's speeches for him too!" and "Drift defected from the Decepticons to try and make a point to Megatron!" and generally trying to make him the Decepticons' Specialest Boy Ever and it's just. Ugh I get that he was under-written in canon, but every bit of fanon I've encountered doesn't make him interesting either. They just kind of make Drift the center of the world where he's actually the coolest, most talented and interesting person ever where other characters owe their accomplishments partially to his influence and I'm just. I don't get it, I don't understand the appeal of fanon and I don't even understand the appeal of canon either. I think part of it is for representation reasons (e.g. Asian, lower class, former drug addict) and it's nice that people can pull something meaningful out of the mess that is canon. It's just for me, canon Drift is so mediocre I don't get why anyone would even WANT him as representation sdlkfjsdlkf. I guess fixing what the writers failed to explore the potential of is an understandable motivation though.

#squiggle answers #long post #as far as asian coded tf characters go cyc and WB have mountains more character and meaningful plot imo #plus their depictions of religiousness are way less offensive and actually play more importantly into their characters #like idk am i the only one who thinks most of JRO's worldbuilding re: religion is an absolute joke #it's a combination of multiple antagonists who are religious zealots (not offensive on its own though) #plus very shallowly explored religious beliefs that mainly come up for plot reasons #plus a lot of the religious beliefs that DO come up are like incredibly unimaginative and boring and stereotypical #plus the plot basically being a deconstruction of the entire religion like. sike all of the ppl you worshipped and myths you believed in #were lies. they're all assholes and also cyberutopia doesn't exist #it's just one of those things where in isolation/in theory none of these religion related things are offensive in and of themselves #but when they're all stacked together it comes off as a kind of Reddit Atheist view of religion #where the more religious a character is the more likely they are to be evil or literally insane/mentally ill #and what religion IS represented is portrayed as nothing more than like. paint colors and a few holidays #as if religion is nothing more than an aesthetic as opposed to a whole philosophy/way of life w a lot of htought behind it

[the-ghost-king]

wait Apollo isn’t originally greek? thats so interesting 👀👀

Where ever did you hear that? /ij

Definitely putting all of this under a read more, it’s a long one!

Cw: Greek statues, they're naked :/

But yeah, Apollo was actually an inherited god, it’s likely that because of this as well he was a blending of multiple different gods to some extent. It’s also good to note that Apollo’s name is unknown, meaning that nobody really knows what exactly Apollo means, which is pretty weird all things considered about the Greeks who placed such importance on the god’s forenames (ie, phoebeus, acestor, age’tor, etc). 

"Though Apollo was the most Hellenic of all gods, he derived mostly from a type of god that originated in Anatolia and spread to Egypt by way of Syria and Palestine." (X)

There’s a couple of different things which point to Apollo being a Anatolian god (or being of, coming from him) named Appaliunas, and it is said they were on opposite sides of a war most beloved of their people during the fight. It’s important to note that it’s believed Appaliunas means “father light” and that he shows some level of importance over drafting peace treaties (which Apollo has some reputation in as the bringer of civilized order). We don't know too much about their connections however, because the documents are incomplete.

This theory also makes sense, because the name Leto (Apollo’s mother) is Lydian in origin, and there’s decent connections to her having been worshiped on the coast's of Asia Minor. And it is known the Greeks have adopted Anatolian gods into their religion before, see Cybele (sometimes called Cybele-Rhea), and the origin of Kore (later Persephone). There's stuff which points also to an Anatolian goddess called "Artimu" (Artemis) who is often confused to Cybele for some reason, and again this bears connections to the Lydians which worshipped Leto. There's information which points to Hekate being a goddess from Anatolia as well, which shows significance considering she is Apollo and Artemis's cousin (leading to my personal question of was Phoebe Anatolian in origin?). Apollo's divine number being 7 shows Babylonian or at least Mesopotamian Origin.

The Geographical location of these two places also bears similarities, they are close to one another, and it's known the Greeks had decent travel capabilities over water. There's also the fact that both of these lands border Troy, which is shown to have significant values in Greek culture and mythology, as well as the Greek belief that the Anatolian gods were present at Troy as well as the Greek gods.

(It's also notable the similarities in naming traditions, Alaksandu for one such example, does not sound too far off from the later Latin name Alexander, which came from the Greek name Aléxandros).

The other possible origin given for Apollo is Aplu (Apulu), a Hurrian god (of people who lived in Anatolia, Syria, and Northern Mesopotamia). Aplu and Apollo bear semblance to one another in more than name, Aplu was the god of plague (bringer of the plague more specifically) and he bears a large amount of resemblance to Apollo Parno'pius/Smitheus and Aplu's main story provides reasoning as to why Apollo may also be the god of healing and Medicine.

The story of Aplu involves the idea that the individual which brings the plague, must also be the one to banish it. This makes Aplu both bringer of plague(s) but also, protector from plague(s). From this we learn Aplu's name means "son of" (please note here Apollo's iconographic connections to "youth" and "sonship" among the Greeks, as the god of kouros), but the connection of "the son of" was a title granted also to the god Nergal (worshiped by many different people(s) across Mesopotamia) who is at least in part someone who holds power over the sun, and holds connection to Shamash (Utu).

Aplu is also often depicted naked (ya know) but wearing a laurel leaf, and part of a cloak... It's funny how these images are Apollo though:

Aplu is also symbolized by a staff and laurel a twig(s), while we know Apollo to be associated closely with the laurel because of Daphne, and Apollo having iconography related to staffs involves him giving his away to Hermes- which perhaps has to do with the caduceus being interpreted as the symbol for medicine, or the connection of Apollo to Asclepius and the rod of Asclepius.

Aplu isn't isolated necessarily either, there is also the Etruscan goddess Aritimi (Artume, Artames, or Artumes) and she oversees animals, human assemblies, and is considered a hunting deity. As well as scrolling through this list, you'll note more than one Greek/Roman mythological figure.

There's also a ton of stuff from Etruscan mythology (Hurrian mythology is just a subsect of Etruscan mythology) which overlaps with Greek mythology, some sources even state Etruscan -> Greek -> Roman mythology (I wont comment on that because I don't know well enough).

There's some other places Apollo's name might have come from, but those are probably the two most likely under the assumption that Apollo is a collective of many gods.

These are the specifics of the Anatolian god's Apollo may be born of/from, but there's a variety of things which point to him and mythology around him being of other origins as well (Minoan, Dorian, and Proto-Indo-European... yeah)

You may have heard one of Apollo's sacred animals is dolphins, Apollo Delphinios/Delphidios, this is because of a Minoan god named Paiawon (Paion) who was worshiped on Crete and also originated in Delphi. In the second part of Homeric hymn to Apollo, Apollo would transform his shape into that of a dolphin and carry the new priests to Delphi for the transfer of religious practices:

"Phoebus Apollo pondered in his heart what men he should bring in to be his ministers in sacrifice and to serve him in rocky Pytho. And while he considered this, he became aware of a swift ship upon the wine-like sea in which were many men and goodly, Cretans... Phoebus Apollo met them: in the open sea he sprang upon their swift ship, like a dolphin in shape, and lay there, a great and awesome monster, and none of them gave heed so as to understand but they sought to cast the dolphin overboard. But he kept shaking the black ship every way and making the timbers quiver. So they sat silent in their craft for fear, and... so they kept sailing on; for a rushing south wind hurried on the swift ship from behind... They wished to put their ship to shore, and land and comprehend the great marvel and see with their eyes whether the [dolphin] would remain upon the deck of the hollow ship, or spring back into the briny deep where fishes shoal. But the well-built ship would not obey the helm, but went on its way all along Peloponnesus and the lord, far-working Apollo, guided it easily with the breath of the breeze..." (X)

Apollo Delphinios was largely only worshiped by people of Crete and surrounding islands, but this is also largely where Paiawon was worshiped as well. There's also many things from early Grecian history which simply state Apollo to be Paiawon or of Paiawon, or at least doesn't bother to specify which god is being talked about.

In the earlier parts of Greek history, seventh-sixth century, there was distinctions made between the pair:

"and in Solon's opinion it is Apollo who makes a man a μάντις (soothsayer) but healers do the work of Paion" (X)

The whole thing with Apollo being descended from Paiawon however, is that Paiawon may not be Minoan but Mycenaean in origin, which means even if Apollo is originated in Minoan culture one of the gods who has influenced that origin wasn't even necessarily Minoan but taken in. Others believe Paiawon was Minoan or Aegean in origin but very far in the past, since his songs used a meter of pre-Greek origin.

You'll also not the commonalities between Paion (a spelling of Paiawon) and Paean (also spelled Paian), Apollo's original name according to Homer. It could mean a variety of things but "who heals illnesses through magic" and "pre-greek" are the most common translations of the word Paean, but it is also associated with music (most specifically a song sung by Thetlas who cured the Spartans) and is said to denote hymns for Apollo.

"PAEAN, that is, "the healing," is according to Homer the designation of the physician of the Olympian gods, who heals, for example, the wounded Ares and Hades. After the time of Homer and Hesiod, the word Paian becomes a surname of Asclepius, the god who had the power of healing. The name was, however, used also in the more general sense of deliverer from any evil or calamity, and was thus applied to Apollo and Thanatos, or Death, who are conceived as delivering men from the pains and sorrows of life... From Apollo himself the name Paean was transferred to the song dedicated to him, that is, to hymns chanted to Apollo for the purpose of averting an evil, and to warlike songs, which were sung before or during a battle." (X)

In regards to the possibility of Apollo having been of Minoan origin, one must consider not only his origins but the origins of the gods and goddesses around him and how they may have developed over time.

In this case Britomartis (Diktynna) is of particular interest, she was the Minoan "mistress of animals", she was a goddess (or sometimes nymph, or oread) of the mountains and the hunt. There's points to the name meaning "sweet maiden" or other similar things, but it is debatable.

Eventually Britomartis would become the goddess of nets in Hellenic myths, and would simply be closely identified with the goddess of Artemis. However, to the Minoans Britomartis wandered alongside a bow-wielding male hunter who's name has been lost, it is likely that aspects of this hunter were absorbed into Apollo; when the introduction of worshiping Artemis was brought to the island of Crete where Britomartis was also worshiped they were compared and quickly said to be of one another.

It is also said in some variations the myths of Britomartis that she was taken to the mainland in the nets of men after fleeing Minos, this seems like a euphemism for her as a goddess of worship being brought by fisherman to mainland and taken into their culture and worship, more so than it sounds like a goddess's story. Perhaps this led to her becoming Artemis, although most myths seem to agree Artemis gave Britomartis immortality... So who knows, but it's a point of particular interest for me.

Also I know I mentioned proto-indo-european origins for Apollo and I could analyze gods and goddesses relating to Apollo being a Minoan god like Aphaea, but I am not going to lie I am rather sick mostly of sourcing everything and I don't like to talk about stuff without stuff to back me up because I don't want to come across like I'm pulling information or ideas out of thin air because that's how misinformation spreads... But yeah, here's a somewhat simplified piece on Apollo's possible origins as a pre-Hellenistic god, and I hope you enjoy because I know you sent the ask a bit ago <3

#asks #glassamphibians #apollo #greek mythology #notpjo #apollo origins #historians please feel free to correct me

[gravitascivics]

DEFUSING THE MORAL PERSPECTIVE

Walk down the street and ask someone at random whether he/she believes it is good to do this or that – for example, pay one’s debts or make allowances for the old or infirm.  Most, if not all will agree that such behavior is good.  Further the inquiry and ask whether he/she would identify such behavior as moral.  

On the other hand, ask him/her whether it is bad to take what doesn’t belong to him/her or to lie about someone else in a defamatory way.  Would that be bad and immoral?  As Jonathan Haidt points out, there is among people high degrees of agreement over what is good and moral or bad and immoral.[1]

         But he also adds that they disagree on how they arrange their values in terms of their political beliefs.

[Haidt] has developed a theory of moral foundations that says that all human beings endorse the same list of moral values, but that people, of different political stripes believe that some of these values are more important than others. In other words, liberals may have somewhat different moral foundations than conservatives.[2]

If one looks and listens to current political discourse, the judgement here is that one hears a heighten tendency to apply inordinate moral judgement to what at other times would just be disagreement over policy.  For example, one does not just object to business regulations, but takes umbrage to how they immorally offend one’s liberty.  Or one can see a policy to address poverty as being counterproductive.  He/she will be readily accused of being unchristian in his/her attitude toward the destitute.

Due to this heightened opinion relative to moral standards, a person is apt to become uncompromising when related issues are considered, discussed, or debated. Uncompromising people are less likely to compromise.  Yet a federal system, more so than, say, a parliamentary system, counts on people compromising.

         The structure of a federal system assumes that policy should be derived from people congregating.  Within those assemblages, they argue and debate, but they are counted on to give and take.  But if each issue or question betrays conflicting views of morality, well, solutions allude the parties since none of the sides can succumb to what is perceived as immoral.  In such an arena, the participants would do well to make the effort to “see” or better stated, understand and appreciate how the opponent or opponents define the issues.

         And this calls for the participants to develop skills; that is, can they, first, handle dilemmas and, second, pose the argument(s) in terms of narratives.  A word on each of these skills is helpful.

         Dilemmas are problems in which the options a problem presents reflect valued options, but the reality does not allow for the eventuality of all possible options.  A person faced with a dilemma must choose to not only accept something wanted (or less unwanted) for something less wanted (or more unwanted) but to forgo the other option(s).  

One can either go to the movies on a given afternoon or go to the ballgame, but not both during the same hours.  Such decisions can be difficult since something wanted is sacrificed or something unwanted must be accepted.  In the extreme this can be highly dramatic and life-shattering.

         Probably, in terms of drama, a well-known dilemma was the one Sophie – in Sophie’s Choice[3]– faced when she had to choose one of her two children to save from certain death at the hands of sadistic Nazi, concentration camp guards.  This dilemma falls not in sacrificing something wanted, but of sacrificing something more unwanted, the death of both of her two children and herself.  Thankfully, such incidences are rare and just about everyone handles the dilemmas they face with reasonable skill – some people are better than others.  

That is, most dilemmas are solvable and within the boundaries of civil life. Yet, while the stakes vary, the structure of the decision remains.  But there is another skill.  Can a participant of a dilemma think of narratives that incorporate the values under contention so that they can see/imagine how the other side(s) perceive what’s at stake? And further, can such an analysis help deflate the dispute to be less moralistic or virulent and more practical and subject to prudence – that is, determining what works for as many people as possible?

         Here is but one way the natural rights view can and is counterproductive.  If every party to a dispute is imbued with the notion that he/she has every right, irrespective of the interests and needs of others, to determine his/her own, isolated path – perhaps even respecting others the same latitude – that person will be less likely to see the dispute from the perspective of others.  

When such a morality – or morality like – is primarily aimed inward – toward the “me” – aims and goals are more likely to be couched in terms of moral prerogatives.  They take on that air of commitment and certitude. A more “my way or the highway” disposition is taken.  And therefore, less likely for the person to even entertain a compromise.

         But if a person becomes used to approaching dilemmas from a more social perspective, holding an understanding that others have not only strong convictions over an issue, but that the convictions might harbor moral level claims and understandings, then perhaps the debate can progress with empathy and even sympathy when appropriate.  And ideally, if both sides can see the conflict as being less than of a moral caliber question and, instead, understand it as an exercise in prudence, perhaps a compromise can more readily be achieved.

         Parents are known to approach their children’s dilemmas with narratives when their kids deal with a sibling or friend.  Johnny and Joanie might want the same piece of cake – the last one – and that reminds mom of the last time she and dad wanted the same thing, but only one could have that thing.  How did they settle the dilemma or dispute?  “I get it this time; you get it next time” or vice versa? Young children can readily imagine such a narrative.  As they grow older, the narratives probably need to be more complex and more nuanced.

         Likewise, civics teachers can approach societal conflicts using this approach.  Perhaps, parties to a tort action, for example, can be analyzed as an arbitration exercise.  The teacher can opt to relay the narrative elements of such a dispute but have the class role play it as an arbitration.  A good case would be one in which the parties first see the contention from a moral perspective, but through the process can downgrade it to a more practical problem that affects the participants.  

        In one such case, one party makes a claim against another because he/she was injured by the accidental discharge of a legally owned weapon.  There is no negligence involved – it is a purely accidental incident.  One-party questions the presence of the weapon where the accident took place. The injured party says the weapon should not have been at a place where people were simply socializing.  The other party states that he/she had the right to have the weapon.

       Both look initially at the issue from the moral right to maintaining a safe environment or, on the other side, from the moral right to exercise a Second Amendment right.  Can such positions be arbitrated?  This ability seems more and more foreign in a society well-entrenched with a natural rights perspective.

      Can the teacher have students prepare two arguments for the opposing side from the one they hold? One argument uses a moral argument, the other uses a practical argument. First, the student needs to have, at some level, an understanding between the two. The exercise can end with the student then offering his/her position which can be compromised.  The results might prove to be interesting.

Perhaps, civics classrooms, which confront a person early on, can provide the opportunity for the related skills – to identify the dilemma and to pose it in a narrative – so that they can work toward being more amendable to conducting constructive conversations.  The overall skill is to be compromising when the issue is not really a question of good and evil, but of the more likely question, what is better than …

[1] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind:  Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York, NY:  Pantheon Books, 2012) AND Timothy D. Wilson, “The Social Psychology Narrative – Or – What Is Social Psychology, Anyway?” in Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction, ed. John Brockman (New York, NY:  Harper Perennial, 2013), 99-114.

[2] Timothy D. Wilson, “The Social Psychology Narrative – Or – What Is Social Psychology, Anyway?”, 113.

[3] William Styron, Sophie’s Choice (New York, NY:  Random House, 1979).

#compromise #political decision-making #Jonathan Haidt #William Styron #Timothy D. Wilson #civics education #social studies

[ourcaptexperiences]

Earlier tonight a friend shared with me a blog post titled “Best CAPT Secret - The truth of residential life in CAPT”. I was exhausted and about to sleep, but I care enough to share my preliminary thoughts on this post. 

Full disclaimer: I have graduated. I do not presently stay in CAPT, I used to stay in CAPT. I am completely out of touch with the current CAPT curriculum, demographics, politics, and people. I am a Christian. I am also an ex-CAPT President (not the one who supposedly “wanted to build a student council of Christians only”. As far as I’ve fact-checked, no such presidential-candidate existed).

I worked in (crisis) communications. I know how quickly and unhelpfully things can go viral as people forward this^ blog post. Please take time to thoughtfully examine the content you are sharing and be helpful in your comments.

-----

There are just 2 points I want to make:

1. All outward behaviour is an expression of an inner belief system, religious in origin or not. 

To quote the author of the blog post I am responding to, “CAPT was- and is meant to be-secular”. 

Yes, in theory; but in practice, there is no such thing as secularity for a religious person. 

If a religious person believes that “God is everywhere”, whether they are in a dining hall, a classroom, in the shower, “God is there”. If anything, these “Christians” she describes in her post were simply living their lives unashamedly, fearlessly, and authentically. What seemed “alarming” to her and highly frequent, was just people living their lives in authenticity, openness, and honesty. 

The author further articulated, “And the more I saw, the more I felt despair and annoyance and suffocation, the more I felt like I didn't and couldn't belong; the more I detached myself from the college.” 

This sentence, in particular, saddened me. What does it mean to “belong”? I quote from the preface of “Community” by Peter Block.

The word “belong” has two meanings:

First and foremost, to belong is to be related to and a part of something. It is membership, the experience of being at home in the broadest sense of the phrase. Belonging is best created when we join with other people in producing something that makes a place better. It is the opposite of thinking I must do it on my own. That wherever I am, it is all on my shoulders and that perhaps I would be better off somewhere else. The opposite of belonging is to feel isolated and always (all ways) on the margin, an outsider. I am still forever wandering, looking for that place where I belong. To belong, is to know, even in the middle of the night, that I am among friends.

The second meaning of the word belong, has to do with being an owner: something belongs to me. To belong to a community is to act as a creator and co-owner of that community.  What I consider mine I will build and nurture. To build community then, is to nurture a wider and deeper sense of emotional ownership and communal ownership. It means fostering among all of a community’s citizens a sense of ownership and accountability, both in their relationships and in what they actually control.

I think the author did experience belonging, with her friends, her neighbourhood, the memelords, through enCAPTsulate, and the kampung CAPT that she created. I respect and admire her for her active citizenry. For taking action and joining with others to produce things that made CAPT a better place. 

I’m sad to hear that as time went by and the more she saw, the more she felt despair, annoyance, and suffocation; and chose to detach herself from the college.

2. “CAPT does not have a diversity issue”. It comes down to one’s definition of diversity.

I make such a bold and ludicrous claim to mimic the assertiveness with which the author of the blog post I am responding to has written in. I take issue with the tone and finality of her words for they do not speak the full “truth” of residential life in CAPT. She speaks of her personal experience which she is entitled to, but I want to remind readers that her experience is subjective and not generalisable.

The reality of life is that we will always find ourselves in small microcosms which are bubbles in themselves. Hardly any organisations, offices, institutions, schools, classes, are “perfectly diverse”. They are all echo chambers to an extent. It comes down to your definition of diversity, and the mindset that you take in living and engaging in the microcosm/ bubble/ echo chamber you find yourself in.

Diversity comes in the form of gender, age, race, religion, interests, passions, majors, backgrounds etc. 

You could have a college full of Christians still call that a diverse community. Why? Because people are multifaceted. Everyone has different strengths, associations, likes, dislikes, histories, life experiences. This college full of Christians could all have different socio-economic backgrounds or come from a different primary or secondary school. Arguably, the very fact that you have a college full of NUS undergraduates already makes it “not diverse”.

I do not seek to undermine the author’s lived experience of CAPT. The discrimination, biasedness, and exclusion she experienced and anecdotes she shared are awful; and frankly, I do agree with some of the points she made like the college’s focus disproportionate focus on community engagement vis-a-vis active citizenry. But I do think it is worth emphasizing that what’s more important is the attitude we take when we realise the “bubbles” we find ourselves in. 

I worked in communications in civil service for over two years, and in my time there I recognised that I lived in a bubble of “public sector concerns”. I made the conscious effort to expose myself to the startup sector, environmental sector, social sector. I did not despair over my microcosm. I acknowledged it, I learnt from it -- what was good, what was bad, the excellence, the standards, the perspective, the people -- and I sought to continue to balance that with seeking alternative perspectives. 

-----

There is much more that could be said in response to the blog post, but to me those were two large points I felt helpful to address on the onset as summerchild’s’s blog post continues to spread through the interwebs.

An offhand comment would say this is “none of my business”, but hey if “active citizenry” is about doing my part to help ease off tense situations and bring some clarity, then yeah why not.

Cheers.

:)

[twinflameshardcore]

Not feeling the twin? Here’s why.

Since the beginning of 2017 it feels like the speed of life was halted. It pretty much reminds me of driving a car and slowing down before taking a turn, since the car didn’t stop completely. There are many planets which are turning direct from a retrograde move, to start with Mercury today, January 8th. This may also influence the way how we feel.

Furthermore, some of us have done our purging related to love, emotional dependency, and control/ego issues so we do not resonate with negative energies anymore. It may be a reason for why some of us feel totally behind the fence, detached, a bit numbed, not worried about or reactive to painful events happening around the world, as if living on a cloud, not in touch with the rest of the population. We may feel like we’re finally for ourselves, not for others, that we don’t serve anymore yet we don’t feel guilty about it. We enjoy our state of being much more than doing anything at the time. We may feel peaceful, satisfied with ourselves, spiritually fulfilled, mentally resting. The entire ‘research’ is ending for those spiritually upgraded because we’ve discovered and then detached from our past. We are no more bothered by some old gods, religions, laws, rules, people, places, conspiracy theories, threats, galactic races etc. whether from this lifetime or others, before Earth. We have trusted our hearts, to feel how they resonate with things around, then we know what feels fishy, and we detach from it immidiately :)

This mental purity may also result in not feeling the twin’s presence in our thoughts and minds unlike previously. If our TFs still prefer to live in the negative 3D energy while we’d ‘leveled up’ and waiting for them on the New Earth, in 5D dimension (which is of course still here but in a different, nicer energy grid) then twins might have been ‘removed’ from heads so they wouldn’t drag us down into the 3D distortions. Instead we could balance that negativity by feeling healed thus positive on our own to pull them up to where we are now, in a better place. It’s always about managing the right balance between TFs therefore, don’t feel guilty if they’re suffering while you’re feeling good, or vice versa. You’re helping them leave a negative vibration by being authentically positive, or at least neutral. There’s no need to worry about this ‘twin’s absence’ in the head because we already have them inside our bodies. We’re merging, uniting, and so the wall between/separation is being removed. Initially, when we mutually recognize our twins, the connection of the two makes a buzz in heads. Two streams of thoughts are running instead of one, and even though you can only read yours, you know there’s the other one stealing your focus. This interference can be max distracting. I was living in such a state of mind for 3 years and only lately, in December 2016 and now I literately haven’t sensed the twin in my head. I literately retrieved my head for myself again ;) I think that once the emotional body is purged, our twins’ emotions don’t interact with ours and so we’re not triggered by their behaviors anymore, especially when we finally believe that they love us, belong to us and we’re only waiting for the next to develop in its own timing.

Emotional dependencies were also purged for many of us who feared of losing the twin. This was related to not enough of self-love and being rejected by our ex-partners in the past, which emotions collected deep in the emotional body. Once we felt more independent, a pleasant space had appeared between us which I think is the space for the 3rd energy, the one we’re generating, to let it reside there.

Staying in 5D energy means also clearing addictions, anything ‘too much/too often’ such as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, playing video games, spending too much money, spending too much time on social networks etc. - basically doing things which take you away from yourself. The Universe desires us to be in touch with ourselves so that not only can we align/unite with our Higher Selves and TFs, but also discover what we came here (on the Earth) for, that individual purpose. I’m not really buying that spiritual talk that we are here to be ‘of service’ to others because it feels like one more slavery issue, inspired by religion. As if we had to feel guilty (again!) if we don’t serve. We are here to be and enjoy ourselves, finally, first and foremost. To feel we are: authentic, natural, complete, liberated. No more role playing and negative ego. It’s like if they asked you: ‘So who would you like to be in the future? A soldier, an engineer, musician, gangster?’ Your answer: ‘None of these. I want to be myself (or my-Self)’ :) You may already find all these addictions of your old-self non-attractive, boring so much that they are easy to be ditched. A bigger picture will be revealed along the way, though I believe, most of us have already tapped into this ‘purpose’ when we were children. It was coming back to us from time to time but we were rejecting such ‘ideas’ because we thought (brain’s limiting beliefs) they were silly, unworthy, waste of time, not paid enough etc. We were simply preventing ourselves from fulfilling our purpose, discouraged by many people, events, experiences etc.

Now, if you’re trying to mentally scan/search for your TF out there, in their apartment, country etc, and can’t find them unlike usually, do something else instead. Feel & think that you’re united, that you are One in a body (from your perspective it’ll be you two in your body), like two souls, spirits glued together, wanting to be One, with no resistance but a pure surrender. Then warm up your heart with a favorite personal visualization, open it like a flower, and hug your twin inside of you, call his/her name in spirit, say ‘I love you’, kiss. Wait a moment to experience if you could feel your twin in response (spiritually) and if you do, your lips will automatically smile, your heart’s chakra vibration will rise higher, and your body will relax through taking a deep breath. Personally, I find it the easiest to do just after waking up when I’m still hugging a pillow and feeling relaxed or when I wake up at night, usually between 3-4 am. These re-connections are difficult to do when you’re active during the day due to many environmental interferences, including a wifi, routers, computers, mobile tower stations, people talking, TV, street noise etc etc.

Finally I’ve made a discovery, or assumption about the recent ‘flu’ outbreak in Europe. Most of Europeans are dealing with a strange ‘sickness’ which results in heavy, fat cough but no fever or other flu symptoms are experienced. Doctors have no cure, antibiotics don’t help, the body’s self-healing lasts up to 3-4 weeks. From a personal experience I can only compare it to a major Ascension symptom - the throat chakra’s clean-up, preparing people for the greater Awakening, followed by the heart’s purge next. For most of people, the throat chakra has been ‘infected’ with negative energy created by speaking nasty things about others, gossiping, making unfair judgment, or judgment at all, arguing, swearing etc. Once we’re affected by 5D energy, this old negative energy is forced to go. I used to be a very judgmental person (a perfectionist) and I had such a mysterious lung sickness in 2014, when I was coughing day and night with no other symptoms. I felt as if I was to spit my lungs out. It was a year after I met my twin, and 2 years after we came across each other online. Then when this undiagnosed sickness passed, my higher heart chakra began receiving those heavy beams of energy from outside, felt like a pressure, followed by episodes of crying whether from strange sadness or excitement. I also felt bliss and amazing closeness with the twin, in spirit (we were ‘separated’ then). I’ve 3 family members in the same house suffering from such a cough now, but I’m not infected, though I obviously took logical precautions to avoid being infected (covering my nose, not touching the face, washing hands very often, isolating in my room). My family was always verbally toxic, always focused on others, calling others (like baseball players on the TV) nasty names, always ready to judge other people’s lives rather than taking a good look at themselves. Most of the people (not Starseeds, we’ve done the healing) are being awakened now, so thus my guess is that because the Light & Love have been pouring onto the Earth strongly since 11/11/2016, it might have forced human chakras to release that bad load of energy in a form of a heavy cough. When throat chakras are cleaned, people will start talking truth from their hearts, not minds unlike before. This is a very good thing because human minds/brains are strongly infected by ‘etheric implants’, toxic whispers etc. People either lie, make unfair assumptions, or withhold the truth thus, they create misconceptions, misunderstandings or, fake news trending lately ;). This is one of attributes of the Game of Duality, to have 2 opponents so the separation, polarization and battle could continue. Therefore, if you feel like you’ve been judgmental (towards others and/or self), monitor your thoughts, and remind yourself to stop judging right away.

Pay attention to January 11th (and November 1st) as these dates sum up to 11/11 (2017=1). When I read all sorts of articles lately, it seems that nobody really knows what's coming. Some bloggers keep repeating the same channelings about incoming and active waves of energy, others are focused on an alien disclosure, but overall, there’s a general feel of waiting for a bell to toll, especially amongst those of us who sacrificed ourselves, dedicated to a cause, did their healing job and been waiting for a ‘pay day’ ;)

Have a good week everybody!

This post is copyrighted by the author of this blog who prefers to remain anonymous. My posts must not be used for commercial purposes of any kind. Respect my work - ask first before you copy, always include a link back to my site when you quote a part of my writing!

#twin flames 11:11 #January 11 2017 #11:11 #flu europe #chakras #throat chakra #Negative Energy #Judgement #self-judgment #detachment #5d earth #new earth #november 1 2017

[inherentsleep-blog]

Modernism, liberalism and morality, or the dual morality.

Note: this is a general attempt to get some of my own thoughts on paper, but they remain quite disorganised. I expect as I actually do re-reading, critique and expand my own understanding that this will become a more coherent post, but this servers as kind of a reminder to myself and way to help describe my own though process.

I think a major mistake that is made when attempting to analyze liberalism is to look at it in a vacuum, particularly without the lens of modernism attached to it. There are several linked ideas here, so I’m going to try to write them all out.

When trying to either critique or promote liberalism, one must define what liberalism is.

The problem with this is that liberalism is a very large ideology that is contextualised by time period, country and thinkers. There is no one single version of liberalism.

Every variation of liberalism acts as a mix-and-match of some of it’s component parts, and therefore the exact variation being critiqued has to be defined. A common theme in the analysis of liberalism is therefore trying to look at it in isolation, and distilling it to a single mode of social and economic relations.

This critique fails, because you inevitably end up arguing against a strawman. Component and complementary ideologies are necessary for the ideology to make sense.

I think one of the inherent problems within the critique is the age of some of the most important scholars, and how changes in thinking have moved liberal positions.

I would argue that from early liberalism the most important thinkers were Locke, Mill and Rousseau. The major shared component here is that they are mostly children of enlightenment thinking.

Within Locke, you can see the idea of rules (in this case, informed by ‘natural rights’) as the foundation of society, but not the end point of personal morality. Personal morality is left to the church, the state is left to be neutral and a simple executor of inherent social rules.

The surety of thought here is typical of enlightenment thinkers.  Thinkers, Kant in particular, inform liberal thoughts on *personal morality* (which is defined as separate from government morality) during this period and this is important for later, but in general early liberalism requires the surety of thought that there is an inherent design of society.

Some branches of liberalism almost stop here. Libertarians sometimes take their cues directly from this era, and molds this thinking into a separate branch of thought.

Many critiques of liberalism also approach from this position.

Liberalism is distilled in many critiques to the idea of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!”

From this several linked ideas follow.

We don’t judge who you sleep with, who you marry or who you interact with, as that is your private choice.

We don’t make laws about what you do with your money, because     private property is protected.

We must give everyone equal, inviolable rules before anything else     because those laws inform our morality.

It’s the foundation of modern democracy, including your right to vote, to not be tortured, and to receive due process in a trial.

The only people who are immoral are not selfish or cruel people, but people who break the rules.

This ignores a very important par of thought in the era, which is the interplay of church, religion and government. The government here is a vessel to enforce natural, god given laws which are the absolute of morality. An immoral person is not someone who violates the rules of the government, but instead violates the written rules of god, as defined by a chosen church. While you can create an irreligious version of liberalism based from this (something interrelated to contractualism, I would imagine) but mainline ‘enlightenment liberal theory’ does not utilise the government as the sole (or even the main) moral standard.

Kantian personal morality also intertwines with this style of thought where the morality of an action varies based on the duty. In this way, personal duty is given to follow the greater social rules, because just as every man has general personal duties, within greater society each man has a duty to god to uphold the rules of the state (which are given by god).

There is then debate on this point. If every man has a duty to god, should the state enforce that duty, or should it simply enforce the most basic rules possible that can be agreed on by a wider society? These two opinions would help inform liberal debate for centuries after, with different branches looking to different rules (but the rule based structure mostly unchanged.)

Within the Anglophone world, Mills (and partly by extension, Bentham, but Mills was always more wildly influential) is by far the most important other thinker in liberalism, I would argue. Mills is important because it is here, I think, you start to see the transition of the idea on the role of government. Mills (in addition to other things) promoted utilitarianism, the idea that an action is moral if it helps the most people. External to debate within utilitarian theory, the important part of the ideology is that it is the start of modernism and modernist political thought within liberalism.

Modernism represents a rejection of the unmeasurable. Society, Economics, Nature and even Morality can all be measured though observation, experimentation, new knowledge and technology within a modernist worldview. Utilitarianism, in particular the Bentham variant, represents a bridge between enlightenment and modernist thought. In order for utilitarianism to be a functioning, self contained unit you must be able to measure the harm and good of an action. In this way, morality is ‘now’ a measurable component.

How then does this interface with the previous understanding of morality? Within the liberal framework, (and a modernist rejection of organised religion) utilitarianism simply directly replaces religion. Kantian morality is not abandoned, but instead is modified as such that because we wish to improve the world (and that improvement can be measured) everyone has a duty to the utilitarian cause, but at the same time is not required to abandon the ideas of local morality or duty. One might say that this system of dual morality is incoherent, where every action is measurable, and you might be morally correct (through duty) in taking a morally incorrect (though utilitarianism) action.  

They might also be at least partially right.

The expression of utilitarianism and its relationship to religion is also a highly complex one, with major regional variance, one with enough material to easily write a book on, but in short one can say that utilitarianism. The church, once the ‘single’ detemir of morality, is now replaced by a mix of church, scientists, philosophers and the state itself, when it acts as a collective voice on morality.

When interfaced with “mixed republicanism” (and the early elements of humanism) the lack of a single moral authority becomes a problem. Democracy is chosen as the answer in the eyes of many liberals, where the general opinion of the voting public decides what the state should view as moral, external to the state itself, and freedom of religion and the much discussed ‘neutrality of the state’ then has to appear.

This interrelation of religion, Kantian morality and utilitarianism becomes more complex when concepts like the real inability to measure the final result of an action come into play. One kind of morality looks at the duty of a person, or what they know when they took an action, but the other is based on utilitarianism, or the result of the action. There are of course other moral frameworks that can fill this roll, and different liberal thinkers have proposed different ones.

The law of the state, this core component of liberalism, then is not based on any one single moral framework. The example of the crimes of attempted murder and murder are a good example, where neither final result nor intent are the single determinants of a crime. There is thus a dual morality, that must be judged holistically though democracy (a jury) and a systematic authority (a judge).

The nature of the liberal system is then such that elements can be removed, expanded on and changed while still retaining the same structural liberal core, but strangely because of slow evolution might contain almost none of the elements that existed within the original idea of liberalism. I would currently posit that just about the only unmovable core of liberalism is that there is a state enforcing the rules of an external morality through a system.

Liberalism can be constructed without republicanism (beyond simply early thinkers, Latin American liberal dictatorships like under Diaz existed). It can be built without utilitarianism, without religion (indeed, the distinction of freedom from religion is made in some liberal countries like France, and different incantations have taken it to different places). It can exist without Kantian thought or the more recent Rawlsian ideas (pure utilitarian liberalism is but one example of liberal utilitarianism). It seems to thrive without natural rights (many modern liberal branches reject natural rights), can reject the more modern ‘human rights’ (consider all of the liberal slave-holding nations of the past for just a single example). In fact, Liberalism seems to be able to function without the belief in the expansion of either economic or social freedom.

The state enforcing an externally derived set of rights based on an external morality while acting as a centralised actor is then just about the only consistent element. In “Anarcho-capitalism” this is removed, along with some libertarian variants but it is just about the only single factor that causes a distinct separation from liberalism. Other groups that interact and intersect with liberalism sometimes change this, but as far as I can tell none are considered liberalism by adherents or critics (excluding the ‘everyone I don’t like is liberal group’).

This comes back then to the thrust of my argument, that liberalism is a name for a group of linked moral theories placed inside a consistent structure of the state. Not all theories that possess a state and external morality are therefore liberalism, because liberalism can additionally be defined by adherence to thinkers who have built within the liberal tradition of a particular place. The definition of liberalism must then be contextualised to who is being critiqued, as a mass critique of liberalism and all of its principles must inherently be contrarian and contradictory, because there are contradictions and debates within liberalism itself.

The dual morality common within liberalism is another deep component to the ideology, one of the role of the state and the role of the moral voice. I think it may be even worth arguing that even if not in all cases, the dual morality of liberal systems is a component that defines them as liberalism, because the very structure of liberalism encourages it. Even in a system with natural rights and a biblical morality, it may be both moral (through the system of morality) and immoral (through the system of natural right) to take a particular action if there is a mismatch. The logical idea must then be that the government must follow the first system and the individual must follow the second.

I would posit that it is partially this relationship that fuels the liberal general dislike of social regulations, the belief that even with a moral government with moral laws sometimes it might be moral to break the law, and therefore punishments based solely off that concept are dangerous, but at the same time liberals may wish to add social regulations in order to make their personal morality and the government morality better align, for example protections for violence against children or restrictions on some types of substance use/abuse.

Any critique without dealing with the chosen liberal moral philosophy, the chosen way to implement it (for example, the ‘reasonable man’ test) and the functional reasons for that implementation (for the same example, the fact that resources for constant votes and jury trials are impossible to distribute, and the reasonable man test is judged as a reasonably functional alternative).

#sleepPol #sleepHIS #to be edited #liberalism