#it's kind of a mix between socialism and capitalism

[fatehbaz]

[In] the making and unmaking of amphibious urban modernity in Recife in the Northeast of Brazil [...] the transformation of the city was predicated on [...] [a] notion of whiteness that required the enclosure of wet, amphibious space to make dry land. [...] Racialised groups – of black, indigenous, and mixed heritages – and the houses, marshlands, and mangroves where they lived, were subject to eradication [...]. [F]rom the 1920s to 1950s, during the rise to hegemony in Brazil of [a form of nationalism,] [...] [the] idea's heartland [was] the Northeast. This period gave birth to Brazilian urban modernity [...]. [F]orests, wetness, and the spectre of commonly held land were understood as threats to whiteness and its self-association with order, purity [...]. To answer the question of why the racial division of nature was so important, [...] turn to the hygienic, boundary-making practices of the Brazilian Estado Novo [...] [and its] eugenic visions [...].

Nature is deeply imbricated in the processes of white supremacy [...]. Recife is one of the largest cities in Brazil, and one of the oldest. [...] Recife is also a centre of Brazilian black culture [...]. One of the key sites in Brazil's slave and sugar trades [...], the city was [...] [a] hub. Many of these people lived in what came to be called mocambos, a word that designated an informal dwelling, but came to mean much more. The population of the mocambos included not only black Brazilians, but sertanejos from the backlands, black and indigenous caboclos, and others [...]. Enclosure was the crucial mechanism of this division.

---

The Recifense geographer Josué de Castro contended that the mangroves were a kind of commons [...]. Zélia de Oliveira Gominho (2012) characterises the city's transformation [from 1920 to 1950] through the oscillation between its twin faces of “mucambópolis” and Veneza Americana (the Venice of the Americas). [...]

Mocambos were seen as [...] the place where exploited labour was kept out of sight. [...] They were also [...] the inheritance [...] of the quilombo - the community of escaped slaves. [...]

Gilberto Freyre was perhaps the single most influential figure in producing this defining national myth in Brazil. In 1936, he wrote a book on the Mucambos do Nordeste [...]. Josué de Castro wrote very differently about the mangroves and mocambos. [...] He analysed Recife as “amphibious”: built half in and half out of the water [...]. When Josué de Castro [...] [wrote] in the early 1930s, the city was in the midst of political turbulence. As land values increased, the city expanded, and [...] [oppressive] politics intensified [...].

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With the installment of the [...] [oppressive] Estado Novo regime in 1937, and its project of creating a “new man,” hygienist modernisation gathered speed. In July 1939, the proto-fascist administration [...] of Agamenon Magalhães, put in place by Getúlio Vargas' repressive Estado Novo, launched the Liga Social Contra o Mocambo (Social League Against the Mocambo, LSCM). The League emerged out of a tellingly named “Crusade” against the mocambos. [...]

Mocambos were characterised as repellent, unhygienic, and dangerous: “the mocambo which repels. The mocambo which is the tomb of a race … a sombre landscape of human misery … which mutilates human energy and annuls work [...].

The LSCM couched its civilisational, modernising mission in the conjuncture of techno-scientific discourses of medicine and planning with clear eugenic tones [...]. [T]he LSCM commissioned a fresh census of the 45,000 mocambos in the city. They brought the mocambos/mangroves into being as objects of knowledge on behalf of the economic elite and local, national, and international capital. In the 1923 census in Recife, “of 39,026 dwellings surveyed, 51.1% were considered ‘deficient’ mocambos.” [...]

---

These were the decades of the embranquecimento of the Brazilian population through public policies of immigration, miscegenation, and sterilisation [...]. This white supremacist ideology was inseparably a politics of nature. Magalhães wrote:

The idle life, the life that the income of the mocambos provides, is a life without restlessness and without greatness. It is a life of stagnant water. … [that] generates in its breast the venom of larvae, which are the enemies of life. Enemies of life, as are the mocambos and the sub-soil of cities, where the polluted waters contaminate pure waters, which come from the deepest layers of the earth. (Magalhães, 1939c, n.p.)

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Attempts to “cleanse” the city functioned through a distinct process: aterramento, the making of land. [...]

Or as 1990s mangue beat [mangrove beat] musicians [...] put it, “the fastest way also to obstruct and evacuate the soul of a city like Recife is to kill its rivers and fill up its estuaries” [...]. This racial division of nature - in alliance with, bound up with, a racial division of space - facilitated the production of spacialised white supremacy.

---

All above text by: Archie Davies. "The racial division of nature: Making land in Recife". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Volume 46, Issue 2, pp. 270-283. First published 29 November 2020. [Bold emphasis and paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for teaching, commentary, criticism purposes.]

#forests #abolition #imperial #colonial #ecology #medical #caribbean #landscape

[mirageofadesert]

Till The End Of The Moon and the issue of audience identification

Who do you think is the main character in TTEOTM? Who do you like the most? Who do you identify with?

One of the things I loved the about this show is its approach to story telling. TTEOTM centers on two main characters with unique perspectives, who's goals are at odds with each other. This pattern is continued with the other characters as well, each of them having a perspective based on their experience and limited knowledge of the overarching story-line.

Reading some comments (mostly on reddit), this approach to story-telling seems to have gotten mixed responses. Among the fair criticism, however, are some comments that at times made me doubt, that we even watched the same show. And while a lot of it could be explained by difference in cultural background, age and media literacy, I think there is a potential problem in whom the audience identifies with, and what they consequently project onto the character.

Who is the main character?

The Main Character is the character with whom the readers most identify and around whom the passion of the story seems to revolve. In theory TTEOTM has two main character, however, these two are not equally fleshed out in the course of the show.

While we first get introduced to Devil God 2.0, it's Li Susu through who's eyes we experience the world. She is the main character for the first part, meanwhile Tantai Jin gets introduced later, but he quickly takes up more and more space. Most of the plot, action and emotional moments are soon linked to his character. The show succeeds in making us pity Tantai Jin and root for him - even through Li Susu is still the heroine of the story.

After Ye Xiwu's death, the story switches and from this point own, we get to know a new world, the sects of Buzhao Mountain, through Tantai Jin's eyes. Both emotional scenes and plot are still mostly linked to his character. Li Susu becomes more and more quiet - and I think some of it is due to the editing. In the last few episodes there are a couple of scenes of the camera just silently circling her. Going by the pattern of cinematography establish so far, these scenes probably had Li Susu's internal dialogue, which was later cut; same as some central moments of personal growth for her character (e.g. most of the demon arc in the Jing capital).

Who does the audience relate to?

Another common criticism is that Li Susu's action "don't make sense" or that she isn't well written. I have already dedicated a long post to this topic (and why I disagree). I believe, the main problem is that parts of the audience can't relate to her.

Some of it might come down to our media consumption habits and even expectations when it comes to Chinese dramas. In my personal experience and following the discourse on different platforms, some c-drama viewers seem to struggle with self-inserting into Li Susu. She doesn't have your usual relatable c-drama problems: parents, marriage, self-esteem, controlling family, social status, popularity etc. Instead, her problems are of the world saving kind. While there are relatable subplots later on (e.g. conflict between siblings, struggling with falling for the "bad boy"), it makes sense that not everyone will feel the same way about her.

Tantai Jin on the other hand is portrayed quite relatable. In an attempt to humanize him, the audience does not only empathise with his situation, his struggles evoke the majority of emotions. While none of us can relate to the pressure of potentially becoming an evil God, motives like marginalization, being ostracized and bullied, abandoned by a parent, fearing both commitment and loss, experiencing a more or less one-sided love or one's life being controlled by forces outside one's control, are human problems and therefore relatable to a broader audience.

I do relate to both differently, and it has elevated my experience of the show. However, Li Susu's character deserves a more flashed out character development, which might have made her accessible to more people.

The be him and to be with him

Like probably many of you, I tend to relate more often to male characters than females. A reason for this is, that female characters in media are often not written well or portrayed from the male gaze. You don't identify with the eye candy, you relate to the hero. Fortunately, Li Susu is not written from the male gaze!

From the glimpses I have seen of the international fandom, fans want to be Tantai Jin (because they identify with him), but they also want to be with him (duh). This is - to no small extent - because of Luo Yunxi's acting skills and popularity. Tantai Jin is not only most people's favorite character, he is "poor little meow mew", "babygirl" and a badass anti-hero. He is both romanticized in his relationship with Li Susu and sexualized on his own.

Identification can - and this is by no means a problem - lead to female-coding male characters in head-canon. Seeing them as a desirable character at the same time, however, can bring a different dynamic to the sexualization. Please, don't understand me wrong - I'm not saying this is something I'm criticizing, nor are these the only factors are at play in this.

I think, it's rather interesting to see the different reaction to male and female leads, and how e.g. cultural bias and gender socialization plays a role here.

With this in mind, the criticism of the characters in TTEOTM becomes understandable - not agreeable, but I'm beginning to understand why people have come to these conclusions. To say that Li Susu is heartless and unfaithful, that honest communication from the beginning would have solved all problems, or that Tantai Jin's sacrifice is a blasphemous appropriation of Jesus' death on the cross (not kidding), always tell more about the person making the interpretation, than about the medium itself.

Thank you for bearing with my rambling on why Tantai Jin is the best boy, and why I think Li Susu deserves better!

#till the end of the moon #tantai jin #ye xiwu #cdrama #tteotm #cdrama meta

[j-psilas]

Arthur Machen's Idea of Evil

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to explain one of my favorite ideas in fiction: the idea of positive evil.

The Christian conception of evil is, more often than not, one of negation. Evil is a lack of goodness, a turning away from God. Adam and Eve were born sinless, but acted against God’s will, and so fell from innocence and grace. Thence came Original Sin, an imperfection that was inherited by all humankind. A defect, a blemish—an alteration of what would have been their natural state.

For many people, this is the familiar way of viewing sin and evil, even if they aren’t familiar with all the strange theological offshoots that came from following it to its logical conclusions.

I’m not going to discuss those here, though they’re certainly worth investigating. Rather, I want to talk about how the late Victorian author Arthur Machen, regarded by many as the “grandfather of weird fiction,” created horror and mystery by rejecting this doctrine, and entertaining the possibility of evil with positive substance unto itself.

Picture very much related.

What separates crime from sin, vice from evil, animal fear from existential terror? Much of Machen’s horror fiction follows this line of inquiry in one way or another, but he answers it pretty directly in the prologue of The White People. It’s structured as a short Socratic dialogue between the author stand-in Ambrose and his evening visitor, Mr. Cotgrave:

‘I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good; but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures; we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant.'

'And you think the great sinner, then, will be an ascetic, as well as the great saint?'

'Great people of all kinds forsake the imperfect copies and go to the perfect originals. I have no doubt but that many of the very highest among the saints have never done a "good action" (using the words in their ordinary sense). And, on the other hand, there have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin, who all their lives have never done an "ill deed."'

[...]

'I can't stand it, you know,' he said, 'your paradoxes are too monstrous. A man may be a great sinner and yet never do anything sinful! Come!'

'You're quite wrong,' said Ambrose. 'I never make paradoxes; I wish I could. [...] Oh, yes, there is a sort of connexion between Sin with the capital letter, and actions which are commonly called sinful: with murder, theft, adultery, and so forth. Much the same connexion that there is between the A, B, C and fine literature. But I believe that the misconception—it is all but universal—arises in great measure from our looking at the matter through social spectacles. We think that a man who does evil to us and to his neighbours must be very evil. So he is, from a social standpoint; but can't you realize that Evil in its essence is a lonely thing, a passion of the solitary, individual soul? Really, the average murderer, quâ murderer, is not by any means a sinner in the true sense of the word. He is simply a wild beast that we have to get rid of to save our own necks from his knife. I should class him rather with tigers than with sinners.'

'It seems a little strange.'

'I think not. The murderer murders not from positive qualities, but from negative ones; he lacks something which non-murderers possess. Evil, of course, is wholly positive—only it is on the wrong side. You may believe me that sin in its proper sense is very rare; it is probable that there have been far fewer sinners than saints. Yes, your standpoint is all very well for practical, social purposes; we are naturally inclined to think that a person who is very disagreeable to us must be a very great sinner! It is very disagreeable to have one's pocket picked, and we pronounce the thief to be a very great sinner. In truth, he is merely an undeveloped man. He cannot be a saint, of course; but he may be, and often is, an infinitely better creature than thousands who have never broken a single commandment. He is a great nuisance to us, I admit, and we very properly lock him up if we catch him; but between his troublesome and unsocial action and evil—Oh, the connexion is of the weakest.'

It was getting very late. The man who had brought Cotgrave had probably heard all this before, since he assisted with a bland and judicious smile, but Cotgrave began to think that his 'lunatic' was turning into a sage.

'Do you know,' he said, 'you interest me immensely? You think, then, that we do not understand the real nature of evil?'

'No, I don't think we do. We over-estimate it and we under-estimate it. We take the very numerous infractions of our social "bye-laws"—the very necessary and very proper regulations which keep the human company together—and we get frightened at the prevalence of "sin" and "evil." But this is really nonsense. Take theft, for example. Have you any horror at the thought of Robin Hood, of the Highland caterans of the seventeenth century, of the moss-troopers, of the company promoters of our day?

'Then, on the other hand, we underrate evil. We attach such an enormous importance to the "sin" of meddling with our pockets (and our wives) that we have quite forgotten the awfulness of real sin.'

'And what is sin?' said Cotgrave.

'I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?

'Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is.'

[...]

'You astonish me,' said Cotgrave. 'I had never thought of that. If that is really so, one must turn everything upside down. Then the essence of sin really is——'

'In the taking of heaven by storm, it seems to me,' said Ambrose. 'It appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner. You can understand why it is so rare. There are few, indeed, who wish to penetrate into other spheres, higher or lower, in ways allowed or forbidden. Men, in the mass, are amply content with life as they find it. Therefore there are few saints, and sinners (in the proper sense) are fewer still, and men of genius, who partake sometimes of each character, are rare also. Yes; on the whole, it is, perhaps, harder to be a great sinner than a great saint.'

'There is something profoundly unnatural about Sin? Is that what you mean?'

'Exactly. Holiness requires as great, or almost as great, an effort; but holiness works on lines that were natural once; it is an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels and in making this effort man becomes a demon. I told you that the mere murderer is not therefore a sinner; that is true, but the sinner is sometimes a murderer. Gilles de Raiz is an instance. So you see that while the good and the evil are unnatural to man as he now is—to man the social, civilized being—evil is unnatural in a much deeper sense than good. The saint endeavours to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall.'

Emphasis added by me.

Sin, in Machen’s eyes, is a violation of the most fundamental laws of our universe—the principles that determines what is good, what is natural, what is up and what is down. In Platonic terms, it is a violation of the reality that proceeds from ‘God,’ the One, the Good.

To break these laws is not merely to turn away from God, but to turn towards something else. Some entity or principle that is wholly foreign to the Good, and is intruding upon our reality, imprinting itself upon matter and spirit alike. 

The sinner turns towards this Evil, just as the saint turns towards the Good, because it induces the same spiritual ecstasy, just in the opposite direction. 

You are making contact with a great spiritual Truth, be it supernal or infernal or simply weird, and the very essence of your being is undergoing a process of sublimation in accordance with that principle.

It’s a terrifying idea because it empowers evil in a way that Christian doctrine simply does not allow, and it acknowledges that depravity is, on some level, empowering. It’s not just that we want to get away with breaking the rules. It’s not that we want to follow our appetites without regard for the harm that it may cause. No, sometimes human beings want to commit real violence, spiritual or physical, simply for its own sake—just like we do good things for the sake of goodness.

Attributing that impulse to the influence of a transcendent law or entity, of the same kind as the One, presents an existentially perilous universe. Suddenly we are beset from all sides by forces from outside our reality, as infinite as there are directions, all of which threaten to change the essence of who and what we are. Acknowledging these intrusive powers could mean succumbing to them, and becoming something as foreign to humanity as blossoming cobblestones are to the laws of physics.

Someone beside you, to all appearances human, could be wearing that form only externally, and temporarily. They could in fact belong to something that should not exist in our world at all. And if given the chance, they would discard their human face and show you something that should not be manifested in matter at all.

Chilling, isn’t it?

I was going to talk about this idea in fiction besides Machen’s—I actually see some echoes of it in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, of all things—but this is already a fairly long post. I’ll save it for another time. 

To those who bothered to read this far, what are your favorite examples of ‘positive evil’ in fiction?

#Arthur Machen #horror #weird fiction #Neoplatonism #Christianity

[olderthannetfic]

Could a part of the concern about "blah blah morally questionable actions in fiction blah blah" among the toxic ya crowd and fandom antis be because people are trying to live vicariously through whatever they're reading or watching instead of living their own lives? I used to feel a bit like they do when I was younger, but then I grew up and experienced more of life and found community. I no longer have to experience things realistically in fiction because I have an actual life. If I read unrealistic queer sex in a book, I don't chase down authors because I can actually have queer sex in real life lol. So now things in shows, books, and movies are just explorations of ideas and concepts, and I make a distinction between "representation" and simple "depiction" of identities.

But maybe that mixed in with how capitalism has bogged down so many different communities and groups into passivity, so people might feel like their only form of "activism" is "Consume Morally Correct Media To Be A Good Person" instead of doing that with their actions in real life.

I mean, all that mixed in with typical Christian Fundamentalism at its core too, of course.

--

I think it's that when you are either young or traumatized, black and white thinking can be attractive for the false sense of safety it offers.

People with more life experience and/or better lives with more control over whom they socialize with will often abandon that kind of thinking.

But I do agree with you that having actual community makes people unclench about petty internet fights.

[sierradeaton]

I’m sorry I’m sorry I know you get scared by asks (?) but I saw your recent post and I braved the world of Pinterest yesterday and now I can’t unsee it. how much of fandom culture (hopefully it’s changed since the 2010s when we were teenagers) is just like. Incel culture for teenage girls?? like ‘good luck post for your fave to notice you’ but then there’s a culture of cycling between Actually Expecting That (thus being mean to irl gf’s etc) and like. Not knowing what to do when it inevitably either doesn’t happen or you do interact but they’re just the kind of friendly they are with every other fan and you’re not special?? and to me it’s sad bc we’re here to connect with their art and maybe you can bond with people irl who connect with their songs too, and yet there’s this entitled expectation that goes and ruins it not only for those people but actually does a bunch of collateral damage to the few who end up yk dating a celebrity??? anyway. rant. I’ll probably come up with some Nice Thing to do about it but mostly I’m glad the fandom has outgrown that (for the most part at least)! anyway. I really hope you’re doing well today you deserve all the love <3 (and all the… ramen?? idk)

i do get scared you're observant 😭 thank you for prefacing this with that actually so i stay calm 🥺

i think fan culture IS really sad :( i'm not sure what pushed it to be this way, a mix of social media and capitalism in fan culture i think has a lot to do with it. i don't know if people are JUST fans of the music as much as like people who grew up listening to 90s/00s music are? not to pull like "back in my day" grandma type shit but 😭 i feel like so much of fan culture ruins the actual experience of just listening to the music even.

i think it's harder to find like minded fans these days here for the right reasons. i looove the community we've cultivated on here with the amazing mutuals i have and bonding over the art we're given & loving these boys for who they are and not what we'll get out of it. i do think a lot of the fandom here has outgrown that stuff and it's different even than when i joined the tumblr fandom in 2019. it's better now imo. :')

ty for engaging with me on this 💖

#love letters from heaven #faithfromanewperspective #i've always been in particular defensive of the significant others for celebs just because all they did was love the same person we love #how can you be mad at that!

[philosopherking1887]

Another rant about Neo-Rousseauianism on the Left

Why do people in the online Left have to set up this false dichotomy between “people are inherently evil” (i.e., selfish, competitive, aggressive) and “people are inherently good” (i.e., altruistic, cooperative, caring -- since those are the meanings we all tend to assume these days)? Showing examples of people being altruistic, or evidence that ancient humans cared for the vulnerable in their communities, doesn’t prove that that is the pure, sole essence of human nature; it shows that that’s part of human nature.

Human beings everywhere, in all cultures and time periods, have always shown a mix of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ behavior. Both tendencies exist in all groups; (almost) all individuals have both tendencies within them. Why is it so difficult to draw the inference that both are equally natural, and neither is a mere imposition of the artificial conditions of civilization (or capitalism, or Western colonialism, or whatever)? Then you won’t be ~shocked~ when people sometimes are selfish and violent, sometimes for no good reason -- i.e., when it’s not somehow determined by their social situation (or they’ve been “corrupted by society,” in more overtly Rousseauian terms).

Why does this bother me so much? It all comes back to what my professor in a history seminar on the French Revolution said about how Rousseau’s philosophy led to the Terror, which I didn’t fully understand at the time, but which has come to make more and more sense as I spend time in Leftist spaces on the internet. Rousseau claimed that human beings are naturally good, but living in society, particularly in corrupt social structures that makes some people dependent on others, corrupts their natural inclinations to sympathy and leads to envy and the desire to dominate others. If we can just institute perfect social structures, then, everyone would return to their naturally innocent, benevolent state. (Rousseau’s own views are a little more complicated, but this is more or less how the Jacobins read it.)

But what happens when people continue to show selfishness and the desire to dominate within a social structure that has been (in theory) perfected? What’s wrong with them? Ideally, they can be ‘reeducated’; but if they persist in not being appropriately good-natured, they must be dangerous anomalies, and there’s no choice but to extirpate them from society, to purify it. This was what happened during the Terror, when people appeared to the Jacobins to be working against the good of the people (as they understood it): they must still be corrupted remnants of the old society, unsuited to have a place in the new.

Left Anarchism rests on the Rousseauian assumption that if you just leave people to their own devices, they will all be benevolent and prosocial; that what actually makes people bad is the existence of laws and institutions, and if no one has institutional power, then no one will harm or wrong anyone else. But we have zero evidence that this is true, and it honestly just seems like a perverse interpretation of human history. Under lawless as under lawful conditions, people still show a mix of benevolent, self-interested, and malicious impulses and behaviors.

The idea that humans are or should be naturally good, not naturally a mix of good and evil, encourages the idea that people should be punished not just for breaking explicit laws, but for behaving immorally (or even just having those inclinations), because it shows that they are somehow intrinsically wrong or corrupted, a dangerous deviation from wholesome human nature. And the only mechanism available to sanction anti-social or ‘immoral’ behavior in a society without laws and institutions is vigilante or ad hoc mob violence. Who decides what’s deserving of punishment? Who decides what the punishment is? Anyone and everyone. It has the potential to collapse into a kind of totalitarianism, where everyone has to fear their neighbors -- but now they have no clear way of knowing what will incur punishment. (And frankly, we already see this kind of thing in microcosm in the self-cannibalism and purity politics of online spaces dominated by certain strains of Leftist ideology and social justice rhetoric.)

A system of laws is preferable to anarchism for exactly the same reason that it’s preferable to authoritarianism and client-based systems of affiliation and loyalty (feudalism and its smaller-scale variants): it minimizes arbitrariness. Generally speaking, people have a way of knowing what they can do and what they’ll be punished for; they’re not subject to the whims of individual rulers or vigilantes. Most people will follow the laws because they want to be cooperative, or just because everyone else is doing it. But some people need the threat of predictable sanction so that their self-interest will guide them to behave in ways that are beneficial to the community. The rule of law rests on the assumption that people are a mix of altruistic and selfish, cooperative and opportunistic. Ideally, institutions moderate the ability of opportunistic individuals to wield power arbitrarily. They are built to harness a combination of the altruism and self-interest, the generosity and ambition of individuals to work for the good of the whole society.

And if the laws and institutions aren’t working for the benefit of the whole society? You change them; you don’t tear them all down on the assumption that the mere existence of institutions is what causes oppression and injustice, and that an egalitarian utopia will materialize as soon as all the Bad People (the billionaires, or the cishet white men or whatever) are guillotined (or eaten, or shot into the sun). There’s not a single class that can be identified and pruned out as the source of all evil in society. There will still be selfish, opportunistic, competitive, violent tendencies within people after the ones currently in power have been executed; you can’t rely on Fundamentally Good Human Nature to reassert itself in the absence of those Few Bad Apples.

You think there shouldn’t be billionaires? Great, I agree on that. But the solution is not to execute the people who are currently billionaires because they made all their money by exploiting people and they were immorally hoarding all their wealth instead of giving it away to people who are starving. You know what that sounds like to me? The revolutionaries beheading Louis XVI not because he broke any identifiable laws, but because “no one reigns innocently.” You can’t execute people for being immoral. You make laws so that people who are inclined to behave immorally can’t do massive harm to others without incurring predictable penalties. You rewrite the tax code so that it’s impossible for anyone to become a billionaire without breaking the law. You change employment laws so that employers can’t exploit their workers in the ways that were necessary for the owners to become billionaires. If the billionaires broke existing laws to amass their wealth, make sure they’re prosecuted “to the full extent of the law,” as they say. But the sentence for committing financial crimes, tax fraud, employment violations, etc. is unlikely to be the death penalty. Can you prove that bad working conditions caused deaths? Great, maybe you can get ‘em on negligent homicide. But there’s no sane, rational, sustainable system that can license summary executions for people who caused a lot of harm by doing bad things that were legal, or didn’t carry the death penalty, at the time they did them.

#it's all connected #the 'people aren't selfish' and 'we are built to pack-bond' posts #and the 'kill jeff bezos' posts #and the 'i saw goody proctor reading dubcon fic' #neo-rousseauianism #anti-anarchism #institutions are good actually #or they can be #philosophy #political philosophy #human nature #moral philosophy #rousseau #jean-jacques rousseau #the french revolution

[zeroducks-2]

{Commission Info} Closed

Hi, I'm Zero - Welcome to my pond! And if you come from the old blog, nice to see you again ♥

Blog Navigation: My Art - My Fanfiction (includes things I don't post on AO3) You can find my other socials here. I recently made one in hope to escape the rampant censorship, we'll see how it goes.

The posts in which I complain about stuff are tagged #ramblings if you want to avoid them.

I'm currently hyperfixating on DCU/Batman, especially the Sladick niche. I also post/reblog batfamily content (batcest or just wholesome), with a mix of dark/fucked up things & fluff/wholesome things. I love being gross to Dick though no one is safe from me.

I love all DC ships, just not equally! Almost nothing grosses me out and I don't have NOTPs, so know that you can find just about anything here, 90% of which is DC Centered. Feel free to send me prompts, brainworms or ficlets, I love them all and I love your ideas ♥

I am every fucked up character's apologist - they looked great while doing their thing and I stan all the evil queens, kings and monarchs, irredeemable or otherwise.

I post/reblog nsfw, but given that tumblr started trying to kill my previous blog although everything was always tagged & censored properly, the censorship here is going to be more severe. Links will be provided for uncropped/uncensored versions of my art where needed!

I am regardless uncomfortable with minors following me, so please If you're a minor or uncomfortable with kinky stuff, DNF or just block me. Fyi:

I like fucked up shit and I will sometimes post/reblog it

I'm queer, polyamorous, and a bitch who does their own thing & is interacting with fandom stuff cause real life sucks. It is not in my interest to directly engage with fandom discourse, but my stance is that if you can't make a difference between reality and fiction, and you feel the need to personally attack people who dabble in content that makes you uncomfortable, block me because you won't like what I do.

I don't bother writing out under every post the classic "I don't condone this in real life!1" because I feel it's unnecessary - I assume that who follows me has enough critical thinking skills to not need a reminder, but in case you do you can have it here: I don't condone any fucked up fandom thing in real life, this is fiction, no one is getting hurt & we're just having fun. Again if you don't manage to grasp this then please kindly block me.

Last but not least - this blog really hates capitalism, racists, terfs, swerfs, all flavors of queerphobes, ableists and exclusionists of any kind.

Again if any of the aforementioned bothers you on any level, do unfollow/block me and let's all keep conducting our peaceful existences away from each other.

If you decide to stay - feel free to send me asks, whether it's questions, art/fanfiction requests, if you want feedback on something you wrote or if you just wanna chat. I can't guarantee I'll be able to create some art/writing for you, but I really appreciate it 💚 💛 (pro-tip: if it's Sladick it's more likely that I'll do it!). You can also send me hate if that's your thing, I won't kinkshame you I promise.

Stay exceedingly handsome!

#reposting from the old blog cause still relevant #I tag with ramblings the posts in which I complain about stuff in case ppl don't wanna see those #other useful tags: #vampire!dick #strip game #my asks #my commissions #ask game #my art #sladick

[hottubraccoon]

Kamikita; Land of Patience and Glory

south west corner of the continent, primarily human citizens

Matt Seymour on Unsplash.

Society:

The social structure mostly mimics the classes of England in the late middle ages. Kamikita call themselves gracious or foolhardy, but outsiders often call them compassionate people, or arrogant bastards. This could be because travelers and immigrants are greeted kindly with the expectation that they will be leaving, and if not they are encroaching on humans lives. Ironically, humans are happy to settle anywhere in Klenith. Subtle or easily hidden tattoos are fine, magical or otherwise, and few subtle piercings are also acceptable. Makeup, jewelry and perfume are fun and creative ways to decorate yourself, hats and umbrellas are trending in Kamikita recently. Typically, an attractive human will not use any artificial things to make themselves more beautiful. Long hair and a good sense of humour are desired. If the disabled cannot be supported by their families, they can be helped at the centers run by religious followers. The buildings are made for anyone that cannot support themself and can be found in any major city in Kamikita. In smaller towns, the religious sites may take these people in but may also send caravans to larger cities when resources are stretched thin.

Professions:

Education in Kamikita is generally privatised, those able to pay will send their children to learn in certain guilds in major cities, otherwise families teach their own in the family business. This means there are no schools, the closest being following an 'instructor' while being inducted into a guild. Art is celebrated in Kamikita, especially in festivals and ceremonies of all kinds. Song and dance are the most popular forms, anything musical can bring people together.

Language:

The 4 main languages in Klenith are human, orcish, dwarvish, and elvish. In Kamikita, their main language is human with use of all other languages within their merchant guilds and/or along their borders. Human has no discernible accent. Their writing however is very fun, loopy, and letters flowing together*. There is the royals sign language, and general peoples sign language which started in the merchant guilds and quickly grew to be popularly used throughout Klenith. It is commonly referred to as the merchants hand signs but because of its use everywhere and outside the guilds as well, it is very much the general language overall. Kamikita has fairly even swears from vulgarity and religious words. Humans like to mix and match swears from other countries, finding the most obtuse way to insult someone. As for gestures, the middle finger is common, and pulling at your bottom eyelid. The royal family bare a green crest with a yellow four pointed star, held at the top between two black hands. The royal colours are yellow and green. The star has four points, representing the four major roads out of the capital city, Maashi, and the hands holding the 'city' aloft are the people in Kamikita.

*like cursive english

janedvn on Unsplash.

Other Parts:

For Great Kettering. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

For Solistal. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

For Kamikita. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

For Birkina. 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

#ted talks #the klenith saga #tws #my writing #my worldbuiding #worldbuilding #settings #kamikita #maashi #humans #patience and glory #society #professions #languages #links #unsplash #undescribed image #fantasy #high fantasy #part 3 #part 3 of 4

[racefortheironthrone]

What did Keynes mean by Socialization of investment? What sort of policies does that entail?

When Keynes uses the term socialization, what he's talking about is the transformation of an industry or other economic process from a laissez-faire free market to something close to nationalization in a socialist revolution, although he believed the same results could be achieved without formal nationalization and government ownership of the means of production - if you established the right public policies that would promote a mixed economy.

So of all the economic processes to socialize, why investment? Keynes was pretty critical of the private market, especially the stock market, when it came to investment. He felt that there was chronic under-investment in new capital equipment and R&D, and that far too much capital was effectively wasted in gambling on stocks and bonds and then ultimately even more abstract and unproductive financial assets (think derivatives, bitcoin, NFTs). He referred to the stock market as an irrational casino - and since he had been a professional investor and investment manager who had won and lost and won several large fortunes on the stock market, he knew what he was talking about. So Keynes felt that instead of relying on the free market to provide the investment that Europe and the United States would need to rebuild after World War II, that the state had to step up and provide some direction. Again, he didn't want to formally nationalize the banking sector, but he did want the central bank to adopt the right kind of monetary policy (if necessary, he was willing to "euthanize the rentiers" by lowering interest rates to the point where no one could make money by investing it), the government to pursue dirigiste spending and lending policies, a corporatist system of cooperation between business and government (similar to what emerged in Germany and Scandinavia), and of course Keynes' characteristic counter-cyclical fiscal policy.

#history #john maynard keynes #socialization of investment

[continuations]

AI Safety Between Scylla and Charybdis and an Unpopular Way Forward

I am unabashedly a technology optimist. For me, however, that means making choices for how we will get the best out of technology for the good of humanity, while limiting its negative effects. With technology becoming ever more powerful there is a huge premium on getting this right as the downsides now include existential risk.

Let me state upfront that I am super excited about progress in AI and what it can eventually do for humanity if we get this right. We could be building the capacity to turn Earth into a kind of garden of Eden, where we get out of the current low energy trap and live in a World After Capital.

At the same time there are serious ways of getting this wrong, which led me to write a few posts about AI risks earlier this year. Since then the AI safety debate has become more heated with a fair bit of low-rung tribalism thrown into the mix. To get a glimpse of this one merely needs to look at the wide range of reactions to the White House Executive Order on Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. This post is my attempt to point out what I consider to be serious flaws in the thinking of two major camps on AI safety and to mention an unpopular way forward.

First, let’s talk about the “AI safety is for wimps” camp, which comes in two forms. One is the happy-go-lucky view represented by Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” and also his preceding Tweet thread. This view dismisses critics who dare to ask social or safety questions as luddites and shills.

So what’s the problem with this view? Dismissing AI risks doesn’t actually make them go away. And it is extremely clear that at this moment in time we are not really set up to deal with the problems. On the structural risk side we are already at super extended income and wealth inequality. And the recent AI advances have already been shown to further accelerate this discrepancy.

On the existential risk side, there is recent work by Kevin Esvelt et al. showing how LLMs can broaden access to pandemic agents. Jeffrey Ladish et. al. demonstrating how cheap it is to remove safety training from an open source model with published weights. This type of research clearly points out that as open source models become rapidly more powerful they can be leveraged for very bad things and that it continues to be super easy to strip away the safeguards that people claim can be built into open source models.

This is a real problem. And people like myself, who have strongly favored permissionless innovation, would do well to acknowledge it and figure out how to deal with it. I have a proposal for how to do that below.

But there is one intellectually consistent way to continue full steam ahead that is worth mentioning. Marc Andreessen cites Nick Land as an inspiration for his views. Land in Meltdown wrote the memorable line “Nothing human makes it out of the near-future”. Embracing AI as a path to a post-human future is the view embraced by the e/acc movement. Here AI risks aren’t so much dismissed as simply accepted as the cost of progress. My misgiving with this view is that I love humanity and believe we should do our utmost to preserve it (my next book which I have started to work on will have a lot more to say about this).

Second, let’s consider the “We need AI safety regulation now” camp, which again has two subtypes. One is “let regulated companies carry on” and the other is “stop everything now.” Again both of these have deep problems.

The idea that we can simply let companies carry on with some relatively mild regulation suffers from three major deficiencies. First, this has the risk of leading us down the path toward highly concentrated market power and we have seen the problems of this in tech again and again (it has been a long standing topic on my blog). For AI market power will be particularly pernicious because this technology will eventually power everything around us and so handing control to a few corporations is a bad idea. Second, the incentives of for-profit companies aren’t easily aligned with safety (and yes, I include OpenAI here even though it has in theory capped investor returns but also keeps raising money at ever higher valuations, so what’s the point?).

But there is an even deeper third deficiency of this approach and it is best illustrated by the second subtype which essentially wants to stop all progress. At its most extreme this is a Ted Kaczynsci anti technology vision. The problem with this of course is that it requires equipping governments with extraordinary power to prevent open source / broadly accessible technology from being developed. And this is an incredible unacknowledged implication of much of the current pro-regulation camp.

Let me just give a couple of examples. It has long been argued that code is speech and hence protected by first amendment rights. We can of course go back and revisit what protections should be applicable to “code as speech,” but the proponents of the “let regulated companies go ahead with closed source AI” don’t seem to acknowledge that they are effectively asking governments to suppress what can be published as open source (otherwise, why bother at all?). Over time government would have to regulate technology development ever harder to sustain this type of regulated approach. Faster chips? Government says who can buy them. New algorithms? Government says who can access them. And so on. Sure, we have done this in some areas before, such as nuclear bomb research, but these were narrow fields, whereas AI is a general purpose technology that affects all of computation.

So this is the conundrum. Dismissing AI safety (Scylla) only makes sense if you go full on post humanist because the risks are real. Calling for AI safety through oversight (Charybdis) doesn’t acknowledge that way too much government power is required to sustain this approach.

Is there an alternative option? Yes but it is highly unpopular and also hard to get to from here. In fact I believe we can only get there if we make lots of other changes, which together could take us from the Industrial Age to what I call the Knowledge Age. For more on that you can read my book The World After Capital.

For several years now I have argued that technological progress and privacy are incompatible. The reason for this is entropy, which means that our ability to destroy will always grow faster than our ability to (re)build. I gave a talk about it at the Stacks conference in Berlin in 2018 (funny side note: I spoke right after Edward Snowden gave a full throated argument for privacy) and you can read a fuller version of the argument in my book.

The only solution other than draconian government is to embrace a post privacy world. A world in which it can easily be discovered that you are building a super dangerous bio weapon in your basement before you have succeeded in releasing it. In this kind of world we can have technological progress but also safeguard humanity – in part by using aligned super intelligences to detect what is happening. And yes, I believe it is possible to create versions of AGI that have deep inner alignment with humanity that cannot easily be removed. Extremely hard yes, but possible (more on this in upcoming posts on an initiative in this direction).

Now you might argue that a post privacy world also requires extraordinary state power but that's not really the case. I grew up in a small community where if you didn't come out of your house for a day, the neighbors would check in to make sure you were OK. Observability does not require state power per se. Much of this can happen simply if more information is default public. And so regulation ought to aim at increased disclosure.

We are of course a long way away from a world where most information about us could be default public. It will require massive changes from where we are today to better protect people from the consequences of disclosure. And those changes would eventually have to happen everywhere that people can freely have access to powerful technology (with other places opting for draconian government control instead). 

Given that the transition which I propose is hard and will take time, what do I believe we should do in the short run? I believe that a great starting point would be disclosure requirements covering training inputs, cost of training runs, and powered by (i.e. if you launch say a therapy service that uses AI you need to disclose which models). That along with mandatory API access could start to put some checks on market power. As for open source models I believe a temporary voluntary moratorium on massively larger more capable models is vastly preferable to any government ban. This has a chance of success because there are relatively few organizations in the world that have the resources to train the next generation of potentially open source models. 

Most of all though we need to have a more intellectually honest conversation about risks and how to mitigate them without introducing even bigger problems. We cannot keep suggesting that these are simple questions and that people must pick a side and get on with it.

#ai #artificial intelligence #safety #regulation #open source

[mariacallous]

BAUTZEN, Germany—Ever since the populist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came onto the country’s political scene, there has been an explicit taboo among the other parties against collaborating with it. Leaders of the five main other parties in Germany’s Bundestag—the center-left Social Democratic Party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union bloc, the Greens, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, and the Left party—have vowed not to work with the AfD in any form, erecting what they refer to as a Brandmauer (or “firewall”) between them and the far-right party.

But 10 years after the AfD’s founding, that so-called firewall is beginning to show cracks. The AfD has become both more successful and more radicalized in recent years. It has capitalized on a mix of anti-refugee sentiment, coronavirus skepticism, and economic insecurity to become the strongest party in two of five eastern German states and win double-digit support nationally. And it’s in places like Bautzen, this AfD stronghold of around 40,000 people in eastern Saxony, that the national parties’ commitment to isolating the AfD is breaking down.

In December 2022, when the AfD proposed cutting benefits for refugees in the area to Bautzen’s district-level council, 19 members of the CDU voted in favor of the plan. Udo Witschas, one of the CDU representatives who backed the proposal, said he thought it was “completely fine” to vote with the AfD—and in a video published on his Facebook page, he echoed the kind of anti-refugee rhetoric common among the AfD. Speaking about the possibility of housing refugees in a nearby gym, Witschas said, “It is not our intention to let sports, whether school or leisure sports, bleed for this asylum policy.”

The move made headlines and put national-level leaders of the CDU under pressure to condemn Witschas and others who voted with the AfD. But CDU chief Friedrich Merz, who had previously declared that any CDU politician working with the AfD would face expulsion from the party, notably remained silent. Since then, the members of the Bautzen CDU who voted for the proposal have not faced consequences within the party.

The French came up with the idea of a cordon sanitaire in Central and Eastern Europe just after World War I to contain the spread of Bolshevism; in domestic politics, it came into vogue in Belgium in the 1980s to contain the contagion of extremist parties. It’s only gained importance in recent years as populist far-right parties make electoral gains across the continent. Germany, given its history, has stronger built-in protections against extremist political forces; in general, its politicians have taken a stricter approach than some of its neighbors.

But as the vote in Bautzen shows, situations at the local and state level are starting to chip away at this cordon sanitaire. Whether on refugee issues, covered bus stops for school children, gender neutral language, or personnel decisions, members of Germany’s mainstream parties (particularly the CDU) have voted with the AfD on numerous local-level propositions and even a few state-level ones. These votes—while they may not get so much attention at the national level—work to normalize the party at the local level and, the AfD hopes, help lay the groundwork for them to govern.

“It’s easier for the AfD to get normalized on these questions like a swimming pool or a soccer field or traffic jams because local politics is less about ideology and identity than is national politics,” said Johannes Hillje, a political consultant who has tracked extreme-right rhetoric in Germany. “And there, it’s a very good normalizing strategy for the AfD to show that they work on solving normal people’s problems—and it’s more difficult for other parties to argue why they resist the cooperation.”

Discussion about Germany’s firewall comes as similar taboos have been broken across Europe, also largely by conservative parties. Last fall, Sweden’s center-right Moderate Party agreed to work informally with the populist far-right Sweden Democrats after the Sweden Democrats came in second in the country’s September 2022 parliamentary elections. Other countries, like Austria, have been including far-right parties in government for decades: The far-right Freedom Party first entered government with the conservative Austrian People’s Party in 2000—and again from 2017 to 2019. In Spain, the conservative People’s Party has been happy to team up with far-right Vox to secure power in a handful of regions.

In Germany, the cordon sanitaire has held longer and is backed up by constitutional and legal protections against extremist forces put in place because of Germany’s Nazi past. Germany’s domestic intelligence service, for example, has the power to surveil and even ban political parties for extremist or anti-democratic behavior (which it is doing to the AfD), and the country has strict laws prohibiting hate speech. As a result, any party cooperating with the AfD, even informally or unintentionally, can face swift backlash. Three years ago, the CDU’s decision to vote with the AfD to oust the state of Thuringia’s left-wing premier caused a huge national controversy and led to the resignation of then-CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

“There are, of course, policy incentives for the Christian Democrats to cooperate with the AfD,” said Marc Debus, a political scientist at the University of Mannheim who focuses on voter demographics. “That then creates some problems for the Christian Democrats in western Germany and on the national level.”

But once a taboo has been broken at a certain level, future breaches of that taboo garner less attention. In Thuringia, the CDU proposed a law to end gender neutral language in November 2022, which the AfD supported. (The state-level CDU leader, Mario Voigt, justified it by saying his party can’t back down from its policy priorities “simply because we’re afraid of applause from the wrong side.”) That, and other instances of voting together in Thuringia’s state parliament, have made headlines but not brought a full-out scandal to the national level.

Part of the calculation for voting with or cooperating with the AfD, local-level politicians say, is a sheer numbers game. By now, the AfD has certainly become an established part of the political landscape in Bautzen: In the 2021 federal election, the AfD won a significant portion of the district that includes Bautzen, ahead of any other party.

In the Bautzen City Council, the AfD holds 7 out of the 30 seats; when you include an AfD-leaning independent member and a local-level party that’s ideologically similar to the AfD, there are an additional eight members who often vote with them—half the council. Shutting the AfD out entirely makes it nearly impossible to get any work done.

Strong support for the AfD in the east “increases the pressure on the CDU because the CDU might end up asking, in Saxony or especially in Thuringia, do we govern with the AfD, do we govern not at all, or do we govern with the Left party. This will create a huge conflict within the CDU,” Hillje said. “The CDU in that sense is sort of the gatekeeper for the whole democratic spectrum. It comes down to that in the end.”

That’s true in Bautzen as well, where local politicians say there is a marked difference between the way the district-level party and the city-level party handle the AfD. At the district level, CDU politicians have no issue voting with the AfD and even sharing their rhetoric on certain issues; at the city level, Katja Gerhardi, leader of the CDU group in the city council, said she and her colleagues try to balance getting work done with not giving the party undue influence.

“For me, the firewall means that I exclude any kind of cooperation with the AfD—I would never discuss joint motions with the AfD or things like that,” Gerhardi said. That said, “if the AfD submits a proposal that’s factual and that makes sense, of course I’ll vote in favor of this motion if it serves the city and serves the people of this city.”

Still, Andrea Kubank, who sits on both the city and district council for the Left party, disagreed, saying on principle, she doesn’t vote for policies proposed by the AfD. “By pretending that they’re equal partners on the city council or the district council, by having that discourse with them, these private conversations—that has all led to this normalization [of the AfD],” Kubank said. “And that, I think, is very dangerous.”

On a recent chilly, sunny afternoon, members of the city council in Bautzen, including Gerhardi and Kubank, gathered for their monthly meeting. When it came time for member inquiries, one AfD council member raised the issue of a local event that had been refused rental space over concerns about the speakers’ reported antisemitic backgrounds. This refusal to rent to the group, the AfD member said, was a violation of those citizens’ Meinungsfreiheit (or “freedom of opinion”), a common refrain among AfD members in the face of criticism from other parties.

Council members from the mainstream parties—including the Left party, the Greens, and the CDU—presented a united front against the AfD, speaking out against the event and saying city hall was right not to give a platform to conspiracy theorists and openly antisemitic speakers.

“We know that Bautzen is often referred to as a ‘brown nest,’” Gerhardi said. (The color brown typically refers to neo-Nazis). “When we allow this, then we confirm this impression, and that’s not something we should do.” Members of the AfD, and some members of the public in the audience, shook their heads or tried to interrupt her.

With regional elections on the horizon in three eastern German states where the AfD is the strongest or second-strongest party in the polls—Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg—these questions about how and whether to work with the AfD are only becoming more urgent. Some people in Saxony’s CDU, for example, have openly mused about forming a state-level government with the AfD.

In his speech commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the party’s founding this month, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla nodded to those dynamics, declaring the party would be in government in the near future “first in a state in the east, and then in the west, and then nationally.”

“There are some politicians who want to build firewalls,” he said. “We East Germans have experience with walls, and the last wall that was built in Germany [the Berlin Wall], … we East Germans tore it down.”

[findingariaene]

It feels hard to accept that I have value. Hard to trust in that being a reality. Subjectively, I know I have some value to others in such and such or so and so way, though it's easy to downplay or minimize said value. Concrete, enduring value; it's hard for me to say that life even has that sort of value. I feel like it's true, but then I also eat meat, don't I? And my ability to care intensely beyond my immediate circles is diminished, even though I'm still a fairly bleeding heart type.

The notion of, 'doing good makes you worthy' is hard to shake. For me, rather than everyone; it's far easier for me to be like, 'everyone deserves some understanding and respect for their personhood' even if they're a horrible affliction on others. Double standards. Why? Double standards seem really common in society, at least in our society, whether it's outwardly benevolent or cruel. 'I deserve more,' 'I deserve less.' I recognize the self-preservation, selfish defenses of 'I deserve more consideration/forgiveness/excuses' and it's been easy to push toward unraveling that to be less judgmental toward others. It's not frictionless to make progress on that front, but the purpose of it is clear and enduringly worthwhile to me. Being kind toward everyone is another matter, even though I gravitate toward it…

That's a tangent, though. Society bluntly and subtly cultivates that sense of 'not good enough' to fuel unease and its resulting purchases. Yay, capitalism. Then, personally, the wound of a willfully absent mother grew its own seed of worthlessness. That 'I wasn't worth sticking around for' grew much, much larger than what my dad sticking around communicated to me. It's too easy to dismiss his behavior as being morals and conviction, rather than proof of value. There's further unsettlement at his recent revelation that he got back with my mom so that my brother could be born to the same parents as I; that was more of a priority to him than being with her longterm, after she cheated on him and left the first time. I can't say how 'good' of a person my dad is, honestly. He's tangled between violence and not in a way I struggle to describe - heck, he struggles to adequately describe it, and I've asked many times.

Again, a bit of a tangent.

So, origins of double standards are clear enough. Why do they persist, though? Memories of arrogance, the shock of wounding others; they're hard to forgive in myself. To not build limiters and recursive incrimination to avoid inflicting pain again. Of course it's blurred the line between diligence and censure. Over time, disgust over indulgent self-pity proved more effective than else in driving me toward changing these behaviors. Not self-love or support. Which isn't to say I stopped feeling I deserved some castigation, I just… bled away the effort. Let it be belief with minimal activity.

That toxic mix of self-denial and self-hate has eroded much more than the social programming. Which surprises me and doesn't. The more I've leaned into transition, gender fuckery, embodiment, possessing an identity that wasn't mostly performance, the more sway the social programming has gained on me. The need to reach some threshold of femme beauty standards coalesced, specifically. There's a bleak humour in switching from disliking my height for decades to liking it, and not caring about facial hair to occasionally wanting to scar myself to stop growing hair in places. I'm surprised that I'm so surprised by that.

Positive social feedback feels important. More important than it should, from my perspective toward mental health, but social exclusion has always held vast power for our species. We thrive together and crumple alone. Still, clearing away internal notions of worthlessness will hopefully make it easier to selectively receive social feedback and create better filters between self and social programming. Hopefully.

It's enough of a path, anyway, and there's more of a self worth preserving now to motivate me. Self-valuation isn't merely instrumental anymore to the performance; it's vital to thriving. To making the most of what years remain in this life.

#value #self worth

[poimandresnous]

About Me (For Twitter)

So for some odd reason, over 3000 of you knuckleheads decided to follow me. I reckon a new “about me” is in order then. I’ll never delve my name or face on socials. Just a personal preference. I’m 25 years old. Will be 26 in September 2023. I grew up in the southeastern part of the US and have lived all over my state. I am 2 years and 5 months sober from drug abuse. Technically I’m “California Sober,” meaning I still partake in the consumption of hashish oils (wax, dabs, or whatever the kids call them now). A lot of what I post and how I approach my walk with spirituality is heavily painted by my past from living as a drug addict. I got hooked on the dragon at age 18, but was already addicted to the lifestyle, fast money, and opiates & benzos from a very early age (age 14).

Essentially, I center my beliefs and praxis around the Corpus Hermeticum and other various Hermetic tractates. Though I’m also a syncretist and my beliefs and practice are highly unorthodox, to say the least. The core of my spiritual practice is meditation, exercise, theurgy, yoga, reciting aphorisms, and hymning to the gods of old. I worship Levanite Greco-Egyptian deities; I syncretize Asherah and Isis, YHWH and Amun, and worship many other gods and goddesses. I also dabble in the Arbatel and PGM often enough, but not so much since school started for me this summer. You could consider me a Platonic polytheist, a Hermeticist, or just a child of faith. The latter is what I prefer. I also venerate prophets and heroes. The main ones being Jesus Christ and Lao Tzu. Hermes Trismegistos is a whole other conversation. To me, he’s a god, a hero/prophet, and a master magician. I will not defend why I believe what I believe in this thread but I am happy to answer any questions on how or why I think what I believe.

I’m currently working my way through Iamblichus’s Platonic reading list. Currently on the Sophist. I also adhere to the Pythagorean idea that we do not need to escape or transcend this world but rather harmonize with it.  Also, I am getting more into Daoism these days. I am incorporating the Three Treasures into my theurgy/silent prayer. Eventually, I would like to become a disciple under a Daoist master and formally learn Daoism and its praxis and how that can benefit me and my understanding of myself, God, and everything in between. Also delving into Musashi Miyamoto’s philosophy, whose influence comes from Japanese Buddhism.

I also dabble in (capital S) Stoicism. So no, not the 1940s-1950s American trope of what a “stoic” man is. But this is not an apologetics thread for Stoicism. All I’ll say is that the philosophical school is highly misused and taken out of context to promote either nasty things or to completely misrepresent the philosophy negatively.

To the nazis, trans/homophobes, and “trads”:  This is not the page for yall. I believe race mixing is a great thing, and gender is a societal construct. I will not express any political beliefs or feelings other than to shit on the above-mentioned groups, and even then, most of the time, I’ll block that kind of crowd and not let them use my page as a platform to spread hate. I am apolitical. Recently had to renew my license, and I told them I do not want to register to vote. So, judge me how you will be based on that, I guess. I don’t police my followers, so if any of you good people see that I’m mutuals with someone that belongs to those above-mentioned groups, please kindly DM me and I’ll handle it. Meaning I’ll block the account. No drama, No BS, just cutting chaff from the wheat.

The content I post, are quotes from my readings, the ancient hymns I study, and dashingly long threads summarizing what I read, and just general esoteric rambles. I’m not afraid to be wrong or look ignorant anywhere I go on social media, so if you see a mistake in my rambles, quotes, or whatever, please kindly let me know! I love you all, and I hope we can all learn something from one another. Gods bless you all.

[willievermakeithome]

EAW (Season 1) is Finished

My relevant notes, for whatever they’re worth, regarding my re-watch of the final episodes of EAW - I’m gonna avoid talking about moments that I feel were OOC for the most part (except the most glaringly obvious examples - YES I’M TALKING ABOUT MINWOO, WE’RE GOIONG THERE), because there’s enough debate about it and it’s all mostly open to personal interpretation anyways. But I’m gonna try to hit the big points, what improvements I hope to see in Season 2, and then I’m gonna share a little conspiracy theory that I’d love to get other’s opinions on. (this is a long post)

As an autistic that loves k dramas and romance, I was beyond excited - and also incredibly trepidatious - when this drama was first recommended to me on my Netflix home screen. The first 10ish episodes are by far the best in my estimation, and I can at least say for certain I will be re-watching those. The second half of the season ... gives me more mixed feelings.

- Hanbada is the big bad. I saw a post a while back (I’m sorry, I tried to find it but I like and reblog too many things! 😭) talking about how Hanbada is the big bad (bc social justice, fighting for the people, anti-capitalism, etc etc) and I think this is absolutely the direction they’re going. We’re not supposed to have rosy tinted glasses on about where Woo Youngwoo works - and perhaps this also kind of tied into Minwoo’s initial purpose in the show.

I’ve noticed more and more as each case comes about that I am less and less on Hanbada’s side; I think it’s partly why they talked early on in the series about the conundrum of morals & ethics so many times, exploring the grey area in many ways, and also pointed out that while Hanbada does take on a lot of public interest cases, at the end of the day - they’re a business and making money/winning cases comes first before anything else. The reveal that the CEO is pretty ruthless and has no issue using WYW as a chess piece against TSM, only heightens my distrust of the firm. Ultimately I see Season 2 digging even more into that (why the fuck are these two powerhouse women beefing anyway?) and I think it’s going to heavily tie in with Youngwoo’s growth as a lawyer and HOPEFULLY THIS WILL ALSO INCLUDE ATTORNEY JUNG ☺️✨

- The Tae Su Mi Dilemma. I don’t like that she’s portrayed negatively for not wanting to have a baby in the first place, but that’s generally where my defense of her ends. The minute she learned about WYW she tried to have her shipped off because of her own political desires and she can fuck right off with that. And then the plotting in the shadows with Minwoo that eventually fell apart ... But to be honest, I feel like the show didn’t have a clue what they were doing with TSM’s character; the show painted TSM as this badass powerhouse of a character but at the same time reduces her to the simple title of mother and I feel like that sends mixed messages to me as the viewer. I’m guessing that they were aiming for a morally grey vibe, but she ends up just kind of reading as ... muddy to me. 

However, even though TSM stepped down from the Minister of Justice candidacy, do we really think she’s just gonna move on and let Hanbada’s CEO out-maneuver her??? I think not. More than anything TSM has been characterized as political and calculating so I think there will be more clashing between the two of them in Season 2.

- The Minwoo Redemption. 

*I walk on the stage and check the mic, clears throat* 

THAT. Was not a redemption arc. That was a guy who quite literally just suddenly stopped being a huge gigantic ass. Randomly. And then they threw in a love line for shits and giggles and were like “love and romance will fix him and his problems”.

No. Rejected. I fully rejected that and I think Minwoo’s storyline and the TSM vs CEO storyline are some of the most poorly done ones on the show. Minwoo out and out tried to frame Youngwoo and get her fired in episode 12 (I believe it was) and then in episode 14 he’s biting his tongue so he doesn’t spill her deep dark secret while he’s tipsy???? The math ain’t mathin’. Taking accountability for wrong you’ve done is a big part of being redeemed and Minwoo hasn’t had to take accountability for SHIT. I’m not saying he needs to prostrate himself before WYW and beg for forgiveness, but I am not happy about the 🤷‍♀️’guess he’s cool now’🤷‍♀️ narrative that’s being portrayed. The guy should be like “yeah, that thing I did was fucked up”, at the very least! The bar is so low y’all 😭

I hope they develop him more in Season 2 - a true redemption arc could be well done if some real work was put into his character development. For some reason I’m envisioning a scenario where Soo-yeon’s dad tries to bribe him; Idk enough about his background to know if that would make sense story-wise, but it would be interesting if he was put into the position of choosing between his crush and explicit money/power - which is what he’s always wanted. If they’re really gonna try to redeem him and make him a character I don’t wrinkle my nose at every-time he appears on my screen (no hate to the actor, he’s obviously done a fantastic job) - give me something meaty 🥩 give me grief and desire and conflict and none of this wamby pamby “well if this is what Soo-yeon wants, I guess I’ll do it” nonsense.

which, just as a side note, Minwoo and Soo-yeon having a ‘romantic moment’ while bonding over Youngwoo’s sPeCiAl TrEaTmEnT (literally right after she was KICKED OFF A CASE) is not, and never will be, the move. #sorrynotsorry 🤷‍♀️

- I love Attorney Jung, but he needs to slow the fuck down. You love him, I love him, we all agree he’s been a great mentor and teacher and that’s where his strength lies. I’m not even terribly mad about the Cancer storyline because he lived and it gave us that amazing found family scene with the noodles 🍜 😭 (I wanted to eat noodles so bad after that ep!) However, while the wink wink nudge nudge he gave us at the end was funny, boi better be taking a break! He doesn’t have to quit working entirely, but he does need to slow down - and I’d love to see him leave to start his own practice or go work with Attorney Ryu at hers. He can still do important and meaningful work without running himself ragged to do so, or working for large money hungry corporation that will make him sacrifice his integrity - and! He can take Attorney Woo with him. ✨ Their work dynamic was my favorite by the end of the show. Pre-episode 12-16, it would’ve been Youngwoo and Junho’s but we really didn’t see as much of that comradery from them during the second half. 

sidenote: did anyone else notice that Jung would start waving his arm (almost in a time out gesture) whenever he saw people might be offended by something Youngwoo said? like *waves hand* “she doesn’t mean it like that” - I thought this was so cute and a great acting choice

- The love confession and the cat thing. I’ve tried to find this analogy charming but I just can’t. I read a post explaining the translation difference between ‘owner’ and ‘butler’ and while that does seem like a cute cultural reference I just might not be getting, I can’t get past what the comparison signifies for me, personally. It reminded me of a tiktok I watched, criticizing pop-culture and more main stream media for constantly portraying the neurodivergent and autistic characters as an “other”, as ‘not human’ - the list going on from robots, to aliens, to animals or monsters. 

In Star Trek, its Spock (alien) and Data (android). In Marvel, it’s Groot (alien), Drax (alien), Mantis (alien), Rocket Raccoon (animal? Science lab experiment? 😬), and Vision (AI). And those are some cool characters - don’t get me wrong, but if you knock out every single one that is A) not human and/or B) a gigantic asshole, that leaves very few characters left for me to try to see myself in. Even in Woo Youngwoo’s analogy that she explains to TSM, everyone involved is a whale - she’s just a different species of whale. And in the opening credits of the show - they always show a blue duck among a bunch of yellow ducks. There are many ways to indicate someone being different without isolating them from the human experience. So yeah, it rubs me wrong seeing another show fall into that trap even in a teeny tiny way, but worse than that *for me* - a cat and its butler, or caretaker which seems to be the underlying message, are not equals. And that’s one thing I know a lot of us wanted for Woo Youngwoo. More than anything we wanted a romance for her where she was an equal partner, not someone who needed to be watched after. If I squint a little bit I can kinda understand what they were *trying* to convey but this just ... missed the mark for me. You are all more than welcome to feel differently, of course.

And ironically - almost in direct contrast to my discomfort with the cat analogy - immediately preceding the scene is when Youngwoo leaves the car to confront TSM but as she goes, she looks back at Junho. She leaves, off to discover her next moment of wonder - to do her job, but she looks back at him. She’s reminding him that she knows he’s there, that she cares. She’s showing Junho that even though her wonderful brilliant beautiful self is off on another quest, she hasn’t forgotten him - when so many times before in this show she’s run off without notice or concern (not saying that's a bad thing; just pointing out the change) and now she’s giving him a sweet acknowledgement of his presence in her life. And the way Junho teared up seeing her do that 😭 It was that part - more than anything else - that gave me warm fuzzies and made me think “yeah, they can do this.”

I’m happy that our whale couple made it back to each other but damn, does it feel bitter sweet in a lot of ways. It’s a strange headspace for me to be in with this show, for it to make me uncomfy but also happy at varying levels during different moments.

What I would like to see in Season 2:

- Little brother Sang Hyun and Woo Youngwoo: Youngwoo’s reaction to being called Noona 😭 (instantly she was like, “I must protecc!”) was heartfelt and relatable. I loved them. I want more of them. I want to see them interact and eat kimbap together. 

sidenote: I defo think Sang Hyun and TSM are autistic and I’d love for the show to really lean into that more in S2

- Junho needs to meet her dad and be let in on the family secret cause I dislike that it was MINWOO of all people who recognized how heavy it was for Youngwoo to be working a case with her bio-mom and half brother, and then to have to be the one to interrogate him! It was so stressful.

- Woo Youngwoo’s independence: A big motivator for me to continue watching was because of Youngwoo’s personal development; I wanted to see her continue to grow, to become more independent and self sufficient as time went on. Wasn’t she at one point talking about moving out of her dad’s place and staying by herself? I guess that got thrown out because they weren’t sure if she could afford it but our girl is a fulltime attorney now so I really hope that’s on the agenda! She doesn’t have to live alone, she could even move in with Dong Geurami!!! Which I would personally love because we didn’t get nearly enough WYW and DGR scenes in the-episodes-that-shall-not-be-named.

- For the love of god stop cutting off the conclusions of formative discussions surrounding Youngwoo and Junho’s relationship! and please show them having more functional communication cause wow I’m still scarred from the-episodes-that-shall-not-be-named. And if the writers start out Season 2 with more writing like THAT ... then I will put on a party hat cause I will be the clowniest of clowns 🤡

My tinfoil hat theory: it literally feels like different writers were working on some unexpected storylines starting around episode 13. I don’t know much about filming schedules or anything but I do know that some things can be filmed beforehand and changed afterwards depending on where they want the show to go based on public response. I can’t help but wonder if after the praise they got, and they knew a second season was highly likely, that they changed some things around to drag it out more and leave something to delve into during S2. I keep thinking about what Soo-yeon said to Minwoo in Jeju; “I almost called the police and had you arrested for acting so out of character!” (or something along those lines). I could be way off but that feels very on the nose; and if Minwoo’s storyline ending up changing last minute, it would make sense to me.

In Conclusion: If this were a stand alone season, I don’t think I could be satisfied with how it ended. 

But! They have been given a second season, and I hope they take the opportunity to improve the things they dropped the ball on. It’s not a chance a lot of dramas get, so I hope they grab it with both hands. 

I may not necessarily be running to my Netflix when S2 drops. I’ll probably feel more inclined to wait it out a bit and gauge how it’s going based on other’s reactions but I’m surprised to say (given how painful some of these episodes were to re-watch - that lunch with Junho’s sister will live in infamy - eek!) I’m actually not opposed to checking in again to see what all these characters are up to in 2024.

Taking the good with the bad, is my stance for now I suppose.

#extraordinary attorney woo #eaw #Elle watches EAW #kdrama #k drama #korean drama #extraordinary attorney woo finale #long ass post #my post #my opinions #taking the sweet with the sour #the good with the bad

[shituationist]

The critique of North American anarchist outlet "Crimethinc" (rendered in this essay as "Crimethink") echoes a lot of what I've been thinking lately:

In a totally erratic way, Crimethink has in previous years asserted that “affinity groups are all-powerful”. All-powerful generally and abstractly (citing examples only from symbolic activism), but all-powerless to clash with military rule. Thus the anarchist movement in the ukrainian territory, scattered, without revolutionary orientation and without directly acting towards the cultural, and the necessary political-military social autonomy, ended up in nationalism. The remark I had made, about the origins of war and nationalism from affinity, is also valid in reverse, although I had not prophesied the call of the Resistance Committee, nor was I aware of the participation of (former) anarchists in the counter-autonomist war. Affinity found a centuries-old root in nationality, and a hotbed in fascism. I have the impression that this kind of confusion between anarchism and nationalism has also sprouted in the US and is expressed from the anti-centralist Boogaloo, to the Trump supporters like Blake in Capitol Hill. From fanatical reliance on affinity groups, Crimethink found itself projecting a pseudo-platformism through nationalism.

The question of ideology, which had preoccupied Crimethink, becomes topical. Crimethink, reproducing the academic purity of the Situationists, has excoriated ideology. Beginning with a trite denial of dogmatism (with which everyone would agree today), the anti-ideologues believe and profess to be free of prejudice; they tell only truths. It is not necessary to have a diploma on the psychoanalysis term of denial to understand that the person who says, “I am not making this terrible mistake,” will do so blindly at the first turn. The darkest ideology is the denial of ideology. It is true that Crimethink has defended ideas like affinity groups, denial of democracy, denial of civil war, and denial of ideology with monolithic passion. Dogmatism that denies ideology differs from dogmatism that acknowledges that it does ideology in the coherence of its material. The non- ideologue mixes anything and everything without seeking coherence. He can elevate the most insignificant detail to a cosmological principle. Whereas the ideologue at least understands that every idea derives its truth or worthlessness from its relations to the entirety of ideas. And if he is not a dogmatist, he understands the concepts in a dialogue in a relativist way.

What, then, does the “territorial resistance of Ukraine” have to do with ideology or with non-ideology? It was squeaky clean of ideology and thus adapted to the seemingly more natural ideology: the ideology of national cleansing and historical cleansing from anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism…Simply, “Europe”.

From the absolute denunciation of the concept of democracy, a concept that has emerged as a question upon real social processes, from Kurdistan, Crimethink instantly went to the projection of some who propose oligarchic democracy and the regimes of Central-Western Europe as the body of the Virgin Mary. Crimethink had opened a dialogue around the concept of democracy. However, the uncritical republication of a polemic propaganda in favor of imperialist democracy is remarkable. There is a meeting point between the two positions, which becomes self-defining in the actual conflict. In 2020 Crimethink opposed class-political warfare and instead identified liberals (in the political sense, as used by Americans) and the Democratic Party as allies of the social movement. Not democracy by and for the social movement, only pure ideology. But instead, democracy by and under the state, without ideology, only bare capitulation. Now, in a war that exposes the full destructive dynamics of capitalism, with the Democrat president of the United States outdoing the Pentagon pragmatists in war mongering, Crimethink has given the lead to an adventurous stance of identifying with some TV persona in the role of a national hero with nuclear dreams (Zelensky). Well done comrades! Straight ahead to blowing up the Earth.

And later, criticizing the tendency of North American and East European anarchist movements to affiliate with far right and (neo-)liberal nationalisms:

The fact that the russian military state has nazis and mercenaries in its ranks does not justify the other side. Today in the ukrainian space the conditions are clearer than ever for us recognize the necessity of the political-military autonomy of the anarchist movement and the social forces. In the opposite direction, the Resistance Committee, in order to support its turn to the nationalist forces, is resorting to the overt defense of the ukrainian state against accusations of its nazi manifestations. In its newest articlexxiv on Crimethink, although it exclaims that the ukrainian state is neoliberal (the fascists can easily adopt this reformist critique) and “not sympathetic” (as if there are sympathetic states), it compares it to the russian and belarusian states in order to exonerate it. It boldly placates and exonerates practices of ethnic cleansing: the ban on the russian language is called ‘some problems of linguistic discrimination’, a practice which is also exonerated, since ‘russian is freely spoken in the sphere of private life’. As if to say, “you are lucky we let you survive in clandestinity”. In conclusion, the Committee attacks the international anti-fascist movement, calling all critics of the ukrainian state “complicit in the bloody crimes of Putin’s authoritarian regime”. Nationalist bipolarization permeates the Committee’s discourse. “Thus, any person who speculates on Ukraine (sounds like a totalitarian proclamation), saying that it is “a nazi state or something like that (such as having the Azov battalion in its ranks to commit atrocities?)…is a participant in Putin’s forces…”. The Resistance Committee does not convince that it is not undertaking a project to integrate local anarchists, and internationalist solidarians, into the fascist structures of the ukrainian bourgeoisie and of NATO, consciously or unknowingly.

“…Our experience in Syria encourages us not to underestimate the reactionary currents within the popular movements… In addition to offering important posts to ultra nationalists, the Ukrainian regime was resettled by oligarchs and others concerned with defending their own economic and political interests and extending a capitalist and neoliberal model of inequality.” Are the Syrian revolutionaries, who until two weeks ago hated Putin more than anyone else on earth, “complicit in Putin’s crimes”?

As for the accusation of “participating in Putin’s forces and crimes”, anarchist revolutionaries don’t buy this. Ukrainian and russian fascism are brothers fighting over the same field. Only they fight by slaughtering the people whose field it is.

It's a good read all the way through. The author pulls no punches, and the translation seems a little hastily done, but there's a lot to glean from it for anarchists who assert the primacy of class struggle and the social revolution against nationalist trends in anarchist discourse, especially as this relates to anarchist struggles in warzones.

[weddingbanquets1]

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