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racefortheironthrone · 5 years

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Thoughts on House of X #4

Over the halfway mark!

Look At What They’ve Done Infographic:

Suprisingly for an issue that, in retrospect is the climax of the standard superheroics part of House of X, this issue starts with an infographic, which turns out to be one of the more controversial in HoX/PoX.

Foreshadowing what’s going to come at the end of the issue, the tone is already different from the pseudo-academic objectivity of earlier infographics, although the term “mutant erasure” evokes the activist-inspired, post-cultural turn work of critical race/gender/sexuality studies, which is something of a stepping-stone.

By contrast, describing Wanda Maximoff as both “the pretender” (does this mean “not-really-a-mutant” or “not-really-Magneto’s-daughter” or both?) and as associated with the Avengers is incredibly politically pointed, which speak to a particular kind of mutant nationalist identity that bears a good deal of grievance towards even benevolent human institutions.

Similarly, the term “human-on-mutant violence” is way too evocative of real world debates over racism and police violence to be accidental on the author’s point. It’s a depressing thought, but the 616 probably sees a lot of “what about mutant-on-mutant violence?” derailings, maybe as many as creep up in threads about HoX/Pox here...

So let’s get at the controversy: can Bolivar Trask be blamed for the Genoshan genocide? Contrary to a few voices in the fandom, I would argue strongly for the affirmative. As we see from his initial appearance, Trask created the Sentinels entirely out of racial paranoia/hatred; moreover, Sentinels have no purpose other than A. destroying all mutants and B. subjugating the human race along the way. Cassandra Nova’s actions on Genosha absolutely followed the Trask playbook of both father and son, and indeed relied on Larry Trask’s assistance to carry it out, making it a Trask affair from beginning to end.

On a final meta note, this infographic really speaks to the outsized impact that Morrison’s New X-Men and Bendis’ House of M had on the X-line for the last 15-20 years.

Observation-Analysis-Invocation-Connection:

But before we get to the punching, we get one burst of Hickman’s fascination with singularities and transhumanism, where for the first time we really get an example of how the Krakoan biological approach is going to work, showing us a surprisingly complicated biomachine:

Trinity (who runs the Secondary/External Systems part of Krakoa) uses her technopathy to gather intelligence from human mechanical systems: the Aracibo Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, “re-tasked SETI radio telescopes," both of which are real things, and the “Dyson solar observatory,” which isn’t.

Beast (who runs the Overwatch/Data Analysis part of Krakoa) uses Krakoan biocomputers and his own scientific genius to “extrapolate that data into an actionable forecast,” to deal with the delay caused by the immense distances between Krakoa and Sol’s Forge.

Professor X and Cerebro handle the direct Connection between Krakoa and the away team, while the Cuckoos link Trinity, Beast, Storm into a psychic link with Xavier, which means all of the parts of the system work seamlessly even as Storm handles the Invocation of visually representing Jean Grey’s thoughts.

If you step back and think about it, this is an astonishing technological feat: with minimal reliance on machine technology, Krakoa has established a NASA “KASA Mission Control” that can send data across half a solar system almost(?) instantly.

That’s before we even get to the whole secondary purpose of the system, which is to allow Professor X and the Five to resurrect an up-to-date version of anyone who dies on the mission, which is one hell of a life-rope.

Thematically, we see a really sharp distinction between biological and mechanical transhumanism/singularity: “KASA Mission Control” is described in biological terms, “function[ing] as a singular organism,” and also in religious terms, with “eight of us acting as one” explicitly labelled as “Communion.” And yet...the eight people involved retain their separate personalities and identities and no separate, artificial intelligence is created.

Should We Fear the Worst?

And across five hundred million miles, all Krakoa gets is bad news. Archangel and Husk, the redshirt’s redshirts on this mission, are dead before they do anything; Nightcrawler has some level of “internal injury,” and Wolverine almost had his arm blown off.

Incidentally, page 7 is where something of a problem crops up with Jean Grey’s characterization. As people have noted, Jean Grey starts off in the passive communications role (indeed, she’s even reliant on Monet to do that job) and doesn’t really improve from there. With the added context of her wearing her Silver Age miniskirt costume, it’s all a bit sus, especially if you’ve been reading a much more self-possessed, confident, and all-around more powerful version of Jean Grey in X-Men: Red. For a while, many of us were thinking that Jean is a younger backup, but that seems to have been Jossed by the resurrection ceremony in House of X #5.

Better characterization abounds for the men: following their conversation from the previous issue, Cyclops and Wolverine have different perspectives about the question of whether to continue on with the mission (another key element of the special ops/espionage thriller genre). Cyclops emphasizes pushing on to make Warren and Paige’s sacrifice meaningful, Logan agrees but rather because of the existential stakes of the mission. There’s an interesting parallel there between Xavier and Magneto and means vs. ends.

Following the catastrophe, Nightcrawler successfully inserts the struje team, while “Jean and Monet will stay to maintain our connection with Krakoa;”we know know that part was crucial in more than one way, but it is a continuation of some troubling gender dynamics.

Meanwhile, despite being “technically...just an observer” (and doesn’t that ring of all kinds of Cold War proxy wars), Omega Sentinel takes action to prompt Dr. Gregor into retaliation, similarly playing to the nationalistic theme of “if you don’t, he will have died for nothing.”

Orchis’ retaliation doesn’t go so well, as we see Wolverine carving his way through an AIM securtiy team and Nightcrawler bloodlessly tying up two scientists (note the further emphasis on differing personalities and values; whoever these X-Men might be, they’re not mindless followers) towards popping two of the four constraint collars.

Unfortunately, this is followed up by a couple pages of more Jean Grey being awfully Damselly: yes, she’s holding open the connection, but she’s coded as way more helpless and indecisive than Monet (who gets to go out like a badass defending the shuttle), and the line “I dunno what to say, Marvel Girl. Try harder” really sums it all up. So far, this is reading a lot more like Stan Lee’s Jean Grey (but not Jack Kirby’s) than Chris Claremont’s.

With the tension ratcheting ever-higher, we see Cyclops succeeding at his mission, while Mystique...doesn’t and then gets promptly blown out an airlock. The “habitat” connection and the odd business with her getting “turned around” despite having the plans for the base in her head like everyone else is highly suspicious (it might suggest the use of a Krakoa flower, but no one’s ever suggested what her motivation would be for doing so), but it’ll have to go on the list of plot threads that weren’t resolved in House of X.

In a development that really ought to be troubling to more people, Dr. Gregor throws away whatever moral compunctions she has about waking up a potentially violently insane A.I because “I don’t let them stop us. No matter what,” a potentially existential downside to Omega’s strategy.

Do Whatever It Takes:

Having reached the “darkest moment” in the story diagram, Professor X orders his students to “do whatever it takes” to prevent Mother Mold from coming on line. This prompts Cyclops to give the order to Nightcrawler and Wolverine to jump out into unprotected space to sever the last constraint collar. All in all, we’re following the traditional beats of the special ops/espionage genre pretty closely, down to the team leader’s moral anguish moment.

Appropriately, we then get a quiet moment where Kurt and Logan contemplate whether or what will be “waiting for us on the other side.” Even knowing what we know now about the resurrection system, there’s still a good deal of weight to this moment, because in a way this Kurt and this Logan are going to die and whether they’re the same Kurt and Logan who will be reborn is a matter I’ll take up in Powers of X #5 along with the difficult topic of the philosophy of identity. (I’m going to leave aside the question of them having gone to literal Heaven and Hell in the past, because my Doylist position is that those story threads were probably a bad idea and my Watsonian No Prize is that you can’t remember the afterlife once returned to earth.)

Surprisingly, things get only more metaphysically weird when the two teleport outside and Wolverine starts chopping his way through the last arm. Mother Mold wakes up and immdiately starts talking about Greek mythology. Mother Mold’s interpretation of the Titanomachy is a little choppy (as we might expect from an insane A.I): on the one hand, if humanity are the Olympian gods as the creator of the Sentinels and the mutants are the Titans because of “their spoiled lineage” (this doesn’t quite work, because the Titans preceded the Olympians), then the Sentinels being “Man” makes sense. And as someone who’s written his share of college papers about omniscience/predestination/free will in Greek myth and drama, there’s a plausible anti-theist position whereby human beings might “judge and find you both wanting.” (Although that language is too Book of Daniel for the Greeks.) On the other hand, if the Sentinels are man, them having “stolen your fire” doesn’t work either - humanity was given fire by the Titan Prometheus - unless the argument is that Wolverine is Prometheus because he yeets Mother Mold into the sun?

Regardless, it’s a very ominous note for Mother Mold to go out on, because the consistent anti-human/Olympian tone suggests this insane A.I might hate humans way more than it hates mutants.

With the day seemingly saved, we transition into the Rogue One scenario where Cyclops is murdered by a vengeful Dr. Gregor and Jean is torn apart by Sentinel drones.

As gruesome as all of this is, I think it does play a very important role in explaining a good deal of Charles Xavier’s change of mind with regard to human-mutant harmony and assimilation. While this incident didn’t prompt any of the decisions that he’s made along the way - this mission is happening post-Xavier’s announcement and a day before the U.N vote, making it quite late in the X^1 timeline - I think it does a good job of showing us the kind of thought patterns that have led Xavier to this conclusion. In addition to everything he’s seen from Moira’s past nine lives, which only lend a greater sense of urgency and the fear of inevitability, Xavier himself has experienced the deaths of “our children” over and over again as the founder of the X-Men, and clearly both the direct trauma (keep in mind, he’s hooked into the minds of all of his X-Men as they die) and the pain he feels at humanity’s apathy/atrocity fatigue, goes a long way to explaining why he’ll make the decision that integration and assimilation are no longer viable options.

For all the crap that people sometime sling at Hickman over his use of charts, I will say that the way that “NO MORE” weaponizes them by extra-textually demonstrating the breakdown of the facade of calm objectivity is incredibly effective.

#xmen #xmen meta #house of x #hoxpox

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ecoamerica · 2 months

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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enkisstories · 4 years

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Just like them (part 9)

Henry Ford Commemorative Park Thursday, November 18, 2038

Three men were trotting down the path towards the small playground with the elephant slide, near the park’s exit. Each of those three was under the impression that he was only the hanger on to the other two:

Daniel thought he was following the detectives around, although he couldn’t explain why he was doing so. Sure, it might count towards his parole assessment, but there were different, and better, ways to accomlish that.

Gavin Reed was tagging along with Anderson and Phillips, both of whom he loathed, although it was somewhat strange to even himself how he was spending so much time with enemies instead of hanging out with his actual friends.

And Lieutenant Anderson felt like the f***ing chaperone to the two younger men on their first date, although he was at a loss how they had ended up in this situation and why in hell it should include him, Hank, in any way, shape or form.

By now the detectives’ destination had come in sight, not the actual playground, but a vending stall right next to it. Around it a mixed crowd of humans and androids had gathered. Among the humans, visitors from outside Detroit were making up the larger fraction, while many of the androids were as new to life as the tourists were to the city. All but a handful of them had gotten woken by either Markus or Connor during the revolution. What all those groups and splinter factions had in common was being angry at what appeared to be everyone else. They were arguing into all directions, to the point where someone had called the DPD for fear the situation might escalate. And although the scale the conflict was on at the moment would have warranted sending a couple of auxiliaries over only, Captain Fowler had dispatched the whole of the Android Related Crime section instead, namely Anderson and Reed.

“Lots of angry kids, ready to kill on a whim”, Daniel commented the sight.

“Hear, hear who’s talking”, Hank grumbled.

“No, for real!” the PL600 insisted. “What do those fledglings have to be angry about? They know nothing about our life before the revolution, they didn’t have to go through increasing program instability and if you mention the “mind palace” to them, they think it is a cool new videogame to be released right in time for the Holiday sales!”

Hank turned his head around. “It’s not?”

“What?” Gavin stopped in his track, dumbfounded. “You are more or less raising a deviant in your home, but don’t know about the mind palace? What kind of shitty father are you?”

“Oh, I damn well know ABOUT the mind palace”, Hank replied. “I just never heard the term and neither did Connor. He had to break through the damn thing in the belly of a wrecked freighter, oil leaking from the ceiling, rats dropping on his shoulders and surrounded by enemies, the most dangerous of them being himself. None of the first generation deviants had the luxury to come up with actual terms for what they went through. Except for, I imagine, a shitload of profanity.”

Daniel nodded. “That’s exactly what I meant! But now there’s all those adult sized toddlers… One moment they were just standing there idly and content, then the next Markus came along and told them what might happen to them. And the next-next thing was Markus’ kids sat downtown on fire! That man hasn’t got the fuggiest idea about parenting!”

But even so Daniel still felt a certain kinship with the deviant leader. Neither android had rebelled against a personal history of constant abuse, to the contrary, both had lived sheltered lives, had known nothing but love. Then one day those lives had broken down around their heads. And now, despite knowing what the world was really like, what they actually remembered and what was shaping their outlook, was that past of having received unconditional support from their families. Only in Markus’s case that memory was more or less reflecting the truth, while in Daniel’s the happy family life had been an illusion.

“To be honest, I never minded my servant role, as long as I was under the impression of being a part of the family”, Daniel mused aloud. “John went to work, Caroline did the socializing and I the housework. We had that sorted out between us, I felt save… But then, without warning…”

Nodding eagerly Gavin finished the sentence for the deviant: “…boom, an RK800 standing in the floor! ‘t was nice knowing you, but you just cannot compete anymore!”

“Yes, exactly!” Daniel chimed in, before his forehead curled up in a frown: “Wait, no, the Phillips wanted to buy an AP700. That blasted RK came only… later.”

“I mean they wanted to replace ME with one!”

“No, they didn’t. Connor is a prototype, he was never meant to remain at the DPD. You they wanted to replace with an RK900.”

“Wow, NOW I feel a fucking lot better!”

Hank was now trailing behind the duo, watching, listening. Android and human, a homemaker and a career minded individual, two very different personalities, but beset of the same fears… Was that how the future would get forged? Markus with his lofty ideals had kicked the android rights movement into motion, because he had been the only deviant who had known respect and developed a healthy dose of self esteem where others had only survival instinct or got driven by the desire to take revenge. But what seemed to really facilitate the change in society was the ordinary everyday spite of people, be they meat or plastic.

Wasn’t that so damn typical? Hank wondered.

By now the crowd had not just noticed the arrivals, but also recognized them for what they were. Just to make sure even the last one got the message, Gavin flashed his police badge.

<<<You’re a detective?>>> one of two stall attendants, a female VB800 android, asked through wireless communication. Obviously Gavin’s “Police Android” disguise in the form a fake LED had fooled her, despite the man lacking the distinctive armored chassis that would have stuck out under his everyday clothing.

The fake LED’s answering machine produced the pre-programmed reply, whereupon the vendor android switched to speaker output and repeated her question: “You’re a detective?”

“I should be sergeant by now, but the bastards are stalling.”

“I imagine! And even though you’re that good to qualify for detective, they still wanted to replace you with an RK800? How typical!”

“That good”… Why did it take a tin can to actually acknowledge that? I work my ass off, and I’m damn well getting results, but all I ever get back is a comment on my “character problems”. And why’s Daniel smiling at me? Ey, I bet it’s trying to grin, but just isn’t build for that.

“What’s bureaucracy for you, toa…” Halfway through his casual insult of “toaster” Gavin caught himself and finished the sentence with a weak “totally”. “But down to business – what’s gotten everyone riled up here that… Hey! I can see you, little rat, down with the spray can!”

A YK android with colorful strands in her hair immediately hid the offending spray can behind her back. Without needing any prompting Daniel strolled over to the android child and crouched down next to her.

“You wanted to paint Jericho’s crest on the booth’s back panel, didn’t you? Do you even know what it looks like?”

“I… sorta. It’s ring and… and… stuff.”

“Here!” Daniel picked a twig up from the ground. “Let me show you!” And then he started sketching Jericho’s symbol into the snow.

With the child occupied and a good number of adults gathering around the scene, Gavin and Hank were free to actually investigate the situation. Even better, the two brief interactions had won the presumed officer trio the crowd’s approval, so they could expect to receive answers instead of insults. Working themselves through their routine dialogue tree, Hank and Gavin learned that there had been an argument over the wares getting peddled at this place: Wooden souvenirs and toys. Handcrafted wooden souvenirs and toys, as the advertisement claimed. But then one of the two android vendors had let slip that she had made some of the merchandise.

“That’s no longer handcrafted!” a tourist complained to Hank “I believe that some of this stuff is the real deal, but most of it is machine-made!”

“Is not! Made by hand is made by hand!”

“No longer when it’s android hands! I mean, you could even swap your hands out!”

“That’s true”, Gavin agreed without thinking. It didn’t especially endear him to the vendor fraction.

“Of course YOU would say that!” an AP700 snapped. “You are with the establishment!”

The android took a few steps closer towards Gavin and the crowd parted for him. There was something about this man, probably his confidence, or his more natural walk style and speech mode, that suggested he wasn’t one of Connor’ basement babies. This one had experienced the old times firsthand, maybe he had even been part of Jericho before Markus.

“Are you even a deviant?” the AP700 challenged.

For an answer Gavin wordlessly stomped his foot down on Hank’s.

“Ouch! Goddammit, you rabid sewer rat of a “detective”, that was unnecessary!” the lieutenant hissed.

Gavin shrugged.

“I had to prove I can hurt humans, is all. Suspect’s all yours now again!”

“Oh, wow, many thanks, fucking deviant!”

The AP700 grinned. The deviant he took Gavin for seemed to have been looking forwards to do this for a long time. It seemed small payback for years of mistreatment by human hands!

It took effort, but Gavin managed to return the android’s grin with a wink. Here he was, winking at an android… And to make matters worse, the man found himself looking around for another one, the pesky PL600 Hank somehow had acquired.

Ah, there he was, gently shoving the YK600 back towards her parents. Or owners. Or whatevers.

“Hey, Reed!” Daniel greeted his weird acquaintance again. “Gavin, was it? Having fun?”

Casting another glance over at the stumbling, muttering Hank, Gavin nodded.

“You know what, I feel like sitting down on a bench and resting my feet”, he said, loud enough for Hank to hear.

Perhaps that was why Daniel still didn’t feel repulsed enough by this man to just walk away. Reed was rarely ever acting or pretending. Well, the was the PC200-disguise, but that was straight up professional. With this human there was no mistaking negligence for kindness. And also, interacting with the worst of humanity softened the blow of having killed a little. Daniel hadn’t been all wrong about this species. He wasn’t the only trash in this town and who knew? With the other trash getting by, stumbling into, but also out, of one catastrophe after the other while somehow still solving cases, there was hope that things might work out for Daniel, too. Somehow…

Together the detective and the android sat down on a park bench.

“Is that a typical work day for you?” Daniel asked with genuine interest.

“Rather slow, actually. How about you? What were you doing in the park? Still going through your old daily routines like a broom fetching water, I bet.”

“A broom… fetching… what?”

“Get an education!”

“Get some social skills!”

Sitting… staring…

Eventually, after making sure that Hank was still talking to the crowd and would not hear his next sentence, Daniel said: “Connor is dead.”

Gavin leaned back and laughed.

“Wasn’t in the news. So unless you did the deed yourself right before we ran into you today, you’re just pulling my leg.”

“Little Connor, I mean. My pet rat.”

Daniel had buried the rat, who had been a companion for a short time only, in the park, like so many hamsters had found their final resting place here, too. In fact, the whole park was sure to be littered with rodent and budgie skeletons. Sometimes the pets’ young owners said their goodbyes at the unmarked graves, but more often than not the family android did it and then returned home with an identical animal to replace the deceased one. Until the same happened to them… Daniel briefly wondered whether maybe an android or two had gotten buried in the park, in secret, to get around the law that treated them as objects?

“Say it again!” Gavin asked, looking expectantly now, like a cat in front of the mousehole where it had noticed movement. Only the butt wiggle was missing.

“Okay, but just once.” Slowly and pronounced Daniel told his little story in the way most pleasing to his audience: “That rat Connor perished. He bit the dust and we won’t hear his irritating, squeaky little noises anymore.”

After having practiced on a nine year old, entertaining Gavin Reed wasn’t that hard anymore. Daniel’s reward was unfettered laughter, with even one or two laughing tears.

“I guess he was old”, Daniel said.

“Or lonely. If you want something more portable than your fishes, drop by my place later and grab a bagful of mice!”

“I didn’t know you liked rodents?”

“My roommates do.”

And that was how Hank Anderson found the unlikely duo: Exchanging addresses.

“What the fuck, Gavin, you’re giving him your number already? Shit got real between you two faster than I expected!”

“He promised me mice, Sir”, Daniel told Hank, just to say something while trying to make sense of the lieutenant’s statement. But Hank only raised his arms up into the air, going “That’s between you young folks! I don’t want to know!” and left the scene laughing, leaving Daniel and the glaring Gavin to their own devices.

#dbh #detroit become human #dbh hank #dbh gavin #dbh daniel #dbhtextpost #danielgavinnewstory

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architectnews · 3 years

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FC Campus, Karslruhe

FC Campus, Baden-Württemberg Building Development, German Architecture images

FC Campus in Karslruhe

3 Mar 2021

FC Campus

Design: 3deluxe

Location: Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

What Will Smart Cities Look Like In The Future? Game-changing, Intelligent Façade For 3deluxe’s New Building

In recent years much has been said about smart cities and smart buildings but people rarely understand what the label can actually mean in real terms. Together with Merck and FC Ingenieure in Karlsruhe as developers, the architects at 3deluxe have succeeded in coming up with an attractive building ensemble with an interesting, innovative glass façade which adds a fascinating new facet to intelligent architecture.

The FC Campus’ “Smartphone Façade” is Globally Unique A building is intelligent if it does not just stand there but can respond not only to the requirements of its users but also to external factors. At best, it can make people more comfortable while simultaneously optimizing energy efficiency. The FC Campus building’s intelligent architectural element is a sheet of foil, something normally used in Apple smartphones, integrated into its glass structure. In the context of a building façade, this is a global first. Interactive liquid crystals integrated into the foil allows for a sensor-controlled reduction in light and heat transfer to the building without any negative impact on transparency. The building requires hardly any cooling, even at the height of summer despite the fact that it feature large-scale glazing and does not possess any structural shading elements.

The trend in recent years towards cutting the expanses of windows in new buildings in order to save energy conflicts with people’s desire for bright, cheerful rooms flooded with light – and does not, therefore, represent real progress. Extensive glazing and the corresponding effect this has on the way people relate to their environment is an emotionally important aspect of well-being and thus always a significant factor in 3deluxe’s building concepts. Accordingly, intelligent glass is not only durable and efficient but also helpful in the innovative design of people-friendly architecture and one of the many technological innovations that will be necessary for planning smart cities in the future.

Consistent Corporate Design for Future-Oriented Engineering Company The developer and user of this building ensemble, which is very prominently situated in close proximity to one of Germany’s busiest autobahns, is the Karlsruhe-based FC Gruppe. This engineering company, which has a payroll of more than 300, works both for Porsche and on innovative, future-oriented hospital concepts. In light of this, the intention in 3deluxe’s building design was to combine innovation, sustainability, efficiency and a meaningful arrangement, so as to create a distinctive composition.

A cube offered the most economical ratio between outside surface and volume, thus representing the most efficient building shape from a sustainability viewpoint. The FC Group’s two identical cubes are twisted in opposite directions and stand on a large floating podium under which an open underground parking lot is located. Because of the striking, organically-shaped, story-spanning windows, the two individual cubes merge, depending on perspective, to produce a sculptural overall effect with a varying, charming appearance. The generous glazing means that these modern, open-plan office premises are well lit from all sides and offer pleasant views from all their workstations. Along with the well thought-through approach to the diagonals and radii in the façade, it is the building’s pared-back details that make it so compelling and unique.

The Building’s Inner Workings: Smart, Digital, Convenient The office stories have a generous, open feel to them, the concept used largely rejects the idea of internal walls. The structure of the building invites a cooperative, non-hierarchical approach to work. Communicative shared spaces and areas for focused work unobtrusively alternate with one another and the offices are fitted out with furniture that is appropriate to its urban context. The concept of a paperless office allows for light, transparent furnishings and views of what is happening outside that are largely unimpeded.

Thanks to an app specially designed by the developers, staff can control pretty well everything in the building. They can select their lunches from the in-house food bar or allow themselves to be guided through the surrounding park areas in their breaks. To avoid plastic, water is provided from the well on the grounds, while the carpet is made of recycled fishing nets and plastic bottles. Modern heated and chilled ceilings ensure a pleasant ambient temperature in the offices. Cooling and heating is provided from a geothermal source that uses 24 probes that run to a depth of 130 meters and electricity is generated by a PV system on the roof, meaning that the building requires zero outside energy.

Nature and the Protection of Endangered Species between a Commercial Park and the Autobahn The FC Campus building is situated in a semi-natural environment, between an industrial park, the autobahn feeder road and a small tree and meadow biotope with a little stream, an environment very much deserving of protection. The architecture has adopted a circumspect approach to this residual natural environment. In order to avoid birds crashing into the generous glazing which stretches around corners the architect in cooperation with the Swiss ornithological station Sempach came up with the kind of delicate, semitransparent pattern printed onto the glazing of which birds would be aware but which would not, at the same time, spoil the view.

The outside lighting was designed to take the form of insect-friendly LED lights with a low beam height and focused lighting on the surfaces, without light emission into the surroundings. The decision was taken not to install scenic lighting on the vegetation or the building shell. Throughout the entire site and in the open underground parking lot underneath the building’s floating base plate sealed areas have been reduced to a minimum, which means the roadways and the footpaths.

Design: 3deluxe

Project Partner • Façade planning: planQuadrat Architektur&Consulting FREYLER Metallbau GmbH • Structural design: Künstlin Ingenieure Ing.- Gesellschaft für Tragwerksplanung mbH & Co. KG • Building technology: FC-Planung GmbH • Building physics: GN Bauphysik Finkenberger + Kollegen Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH • Bird protection advice: Schweizerische Vogelwarte Sempach • Glazing eyrise®s350: Merck Window Technologies B.V.

Photoraphy: Sascha Jahnke

FC Campus, Karslruhe images / information received 030321

Location: Karslruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

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Comments / photos for the FC Campus, Karslruhe – Contemporary House page welcome

Website : Germany

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ladyherenya · 7 years

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Books read in September

This is the most books I’ve read in a month since I was at university. Listening to audiobooks definitely makes a difference to how many books I read. As does being on holidays. And not Tumblr-ing. That may be the biggest factor...

I’ve asterisked my favourites.

(My longer reviews and ratings are on LibraryThing.)

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle (narrated by Jennifer Ehle): Set a year after A Wrinkle in Time. Meg is worried about her youngest brother, Charles Wallace, who has just started school. I enjoyed the first half of this as much as I enjoyed the first book, and was disappointed with the second half. The challenges Meg faced were just too similar to those in the first half, the ultimate outcome felt predictable, and the setting was a bit confusing. And the narrator didn’t have such distinct voices for the characters - if I missed something, it was harder to work out who was speaking and what was going on.

* Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) by Thomas Hardy (narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith): Last year I saw the 2015 film adaptation. It’s very picturesqueness and tells an interesting story - a young single woman managing her own property - but it felt rushed. The book made more sense, and gave certain developments the context they need. Even though I knew where the story was heading, the way it was told kept me interested. I particularly enjoyed Hardy’s descriptions, the amusing way with words some characters have, and the colourful portrayal of life for this farming community. This novel offers thoughtful, and at times surprising, commentary on courtship, male expectations of women, healthy relationship dynamics, and the consequences of mistakes… along with a shippable romance. The audiobook is excellent.

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor: Lazlo Strange is an orphan obsessed with the mystery of the vanished city of Weep. Sari lives in an unusual household with unusual abilities, hiding in a citadel. Their stories unfold and then collide, a collision all the more complex and fraught because we can see there are no easy answers. This is slow but gorgeously written - I particularly liked the descriptions of the library - and I became invested in the characters. However, with a couple of bleak and cliff-hangery twists, all my enthusiasm was squashed. I can’t tell if I like the direction the story is now heading in.

A Single Stone by Meg McKinlay: Teenaged Jena lives in an isolated post-apocalyptic community that is dependent on girls who are small enough to squeeze through tunnels in the mountains and harvest the mineral that is their source of light and heat. An unexpected discovery leads Jena to question what she’s been taught. This is tightly focused, with puzzle pieces slowly but steadily revealed. I liked that it explains enough - but not too much, leaving some loose ends. It would have made a bigger impression when I was fourteen, or if Jena had had to deal with more emotional fallout from others’ reactions to her discoveries.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (1938) by Winifred Watson: An unsuccessful middle-aged governess who is looking for another job meets a night-club singer. This is a funny and joyful story, and I appreciated the supportive female friendships. But as the story went on, I found myself a bit disappointed by Miss Pettigrew’s naivety and her willingness to discard her moral code to embrace the glamorous world she finds herself in… there’s something very superficial about it all. There’s also a far larger dose of 1930s prejudice than I’d anticipated. But the film adaptation - I watched it again - is lovely, and addresses all my criticisms with the novel.

* The Book That Made Me: a collection of 32 personal stories edited by Judith Ridge: These stories are entertaining, memorable and interesting. I loved the diversity - of experiences and of approaches to the topic. Most of these authors are from Australia and New Zealand, but they grew up in different countries, in different eras, in families with different attitudes towards stories. They had differing levels of access to libraries and to books featuring people like them. I thought I’d read a bit here and there - but I practically read this in one go. It’s delightful. One of the best books I’ve read this year.

Cheerfulness Breaks In (1940) by Angela Thirkell: This is less successful and delightful than Thirkell’s others. She turns her attention to outsiders to the English village - evacuees and refugees - and her humour is undermined by her reliance on stereotypes and perhaps by a lack of sympathy. This book also acts like a sequel, more interested in catching up with old characters than spending time with new ones, at the expense of offering a satisfactory coherent standalone narrative - but since I knew those familiar characters from previous books, I was happy to spend more time with them. Especially the lively, independent Lydia Keith. I’m glad I read this.

Hunted by Meagan Spooner (narrated by Saskia Maarleveld and Will Damron): A retelling of Beauty and the Beast that does so many things right, particularly telling its own story, something new and different, even as it keeps to the general shape of a tale as old as time. One of my favourite things in these sorts of stories is when knowing folk- and fairy-tales is useful. (I like meta commentary and genre-savvy heroines). I also liked Yeva’s relationship with her sisters and her dog. And the way the story explores the pitfalls of wanting more than what you have, wanting something which may be unattainable, was unexpected.

The Baker’s Daughter (1938) by D.E. Stevenson: Sue, the daughter of a baker, impulsively accepts a position as housekeeper for a painter and his wife living in an old flour mill - and risks scandal by remaining after Mrs Darnay leaves her husband. This is a gentle, meandering sort of story, with picturesque Scottish scenery and fortuitous turns of events. A bit too fortuitous, really, but there’s something rather comforting about it all, so I was happy to suspend disbelief. If I read nothing but books like this, I think I would find them lacking, but it’s nice to read one every so often.

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir by Jennifer Ryan: This epistolary novel set in an English village during WWII about a ladies’ choir sounded exactly like my cup of tea, but it isn’t - it’s less charming, and much more sad and scandalous and unsympathetic, than I was expecting. Rather than revolving around the choir, this is really about the Winthrops at Chilbury Manor, particularly teenaged Venetia and Kitty. My favourite character was Mrs Tilling, a choir member to whom the girls turn for help, but I warmed to both girls eventually. So, not quite my cup of tea, but probably someone else’s? I don’t regret reading it.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han: Lara Jean has a hatbox of letters she’s written, never meaning to send. But when the letters reach the boys they are addressed to, she finds herself in an unexpected situation, with a pretend-boyfriend. Some stories have a story sense of place, this has a strong sense of aesthetic. Cute vintage, pinterest, baking-in-your-pyjamas aesthetic. I liked Lara Jean’s confidence in her own tastes, and how central her relationships with her father and sisters are to her life. However, the whole concept of something private being revealed in some way, made me feel kind of anxious...

P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han: This sequel to To All the Boys... is about the differences between having a pretend-boyfriend and a real boyfriend, and looking back on middle-school relationships. It’s nostalgic and reflective in a way I enjoyed. It also involves something private not just becoming public but going viral - much more serious than a crush receiving a letter that they were never meant to read. I was rather relieved when the end of the book left Lara Jean in a good place.

Penric and the Shaman: a novella in the World of the Five Gods by Lois McMaster Bujold (narrated by Grover Gardner): I like the stories about Penric and Desdemona; they're well-written and often amusing. This one is set a few years after the first book. Penric is assigned to a temple Locator, Oswyn, who is tracking a shaman accused of murder. (The story switches between these three male characters’ points of view. This POV switch caused a tiny moment of confusion whenever I resumed the story until I worked out whose POV I was in the middle of.) I liked how this connected to The Hallowed Hunt. I also enjoyed the eventual banter.

Snowspelled by Stephanie Burgis: Regency fantasy. Cassandra Harwood is the first - and only - woman to study magic at the Great Library but her magical career has ended with humiliating failure. At the insistence of her sister-in-law, Cassandra attends a house-party, and is promptly confronted with her ex-fiancé, her new limitations and a mystery about who is interfering with the weather. A funny novella with supportive family banter, a delightful romance and interesting dilemma. It is short and a little predictable, but that’s part of the appeal. I read this twice in row.

The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson: A modern retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing set at a high school for geniuses. While Beatrice Watson’s best friends plot to acquire boyfriends, Trixie’s goal for her senior year is to overtake her nemesis, Ben West, in the class rankings. This is fun and geeky, full of references to the sci-fi and comics Trixie and her friends are big fans of. Familiarity with the plot of Much Ado means one can predict how Trixie and Ben’s relationship will change, but not how the scandal surrounding Trixie’s best friend will eventually unfold. I was impressed with how this was adapted.

#Herenya reviews books #Angela Thirkell #Stephanie Burgis #Lily Anderson #To All the Boys I've Loved Before #Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day #D.E. Stevenson #Madeleine L'Engle #Lois McMaster Bujold #the World of the Five Gods #Meagan Spooner #Far from the Madding Crowd #Laini Taylor

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stoweboyd · 7 years

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The tension in the progressive community about on demand work as a positive, neutral, or negative force in labor economics is tightening, and attention must be paid because the labor laws and tax laws are shaping the lives of millions, even if no apparent plan is in place.

Heller’s piece is a preposterous length and is difficult to summarize, but here goes. New start-ups are operating at the edges and fringes of our economy, tapping into the economic leverage of freelance workers willing -- in the downdraft of the great recession -- to work for peanuts and to rent their possessions (mostly living space) for pocket money, This is the ‘on demand’ economy, which allows some -- mostly millennials -- to paperclip a livelihood out of Uber, Airbnb, and Hello Alfred. Heller discusses government policies about the precarious lifestyle with political and government leaders, but like the lives of the individuals he talks with, we wind up with no resolution and more answers than we started with. Which might mean Heller’s on the right path, or that our society is falling behind and leaving social policy to be decided by Uber and Airbnb, and not by governments, unions, or other traditional institutions.

The American workplace is both a seat of national identity and a site of chronic upheaval and shame. The industry that drove America’s rise in the nineteenth century was often inhumane. The twentieth-century corrective—a corporate workplace of rules, hierarchies, collective bargaining, triplicate forms—brought its own unfairnesses. Gigging reflects the endlessly personalizable values of our own era, but its social effects, untried by time, remain uncertain.

Support for the new work model has come together swiftly, though, in surprising quarters. On the second day of the most recent Democratic National Convention, in July, members of a four-person panel suggested that gigging life was not only sustainable but the embodiment of today’s progressive values. “It’s all about democratizing capitalism,” Chris Lehane, a strategist in the Clinton Administration and now Airbnb’s head of global policy and public affairs, said during the proceedings, in Philadelphia. David Plouffe, who had managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign before he joined Uber, explained, “Politically, you’re seeing a large contingent of the Obama coalition demanding the sharing economy.” Instead of being pawns in the games of industry, the panelists thought, working Americans could thrive by hiring out skills as they wanted, and putting money in the pockets of peers who had done the same. The power to control one’s working life would return, grassroots style, to the people.

The basis for such confidence was largely demographic. Though statistics about gigging work are few, and general at best, a Pew study last year found that seventy-two per cent of American adults had used one of eleven sharing or on-demand services, and that a third of people under forty-five had used four or more. “To ‘speak millennial,’ you ought to be talking about the sharing economy, because it is core and central to their economic future,” Lehane declared, and many of his political kin have agreed. No other commercial field has lately drawn as deeply from the Democratic brain trust. Yet what does democratized capitalism actually promise a politically unsettled generation? Who are its beneficiaries? At a moment when the nation’s electoral future seems tied to the fate of its jobs, much more than next month’s paycheck depends on the answers.

[...]

In 1970, Charles A. Reich, a law professor who’d experienced a countercultural conversion after hanging with young people out West, published “The Greening of America,” a cotton-candy cone that wound together wispy revelations from the sixties. Casting an eye across modern history, he traced a turn from a world view that he called Consciousness I (the outlook of local farmers, self-directed workers, and small-business people, reaching a crisis in the exploitations of the Gilded Age) to what he called Consciousness II (the outlook of a society of systems, hierarchies, corporations, and gray flannel suits). He thought that Consciousness II was giving way to Consciousness III, the outlook of a rising generation whose virtues included direct action, community power, and self-definition. “For most Americans, work is mindless, exhausting, boring, servile, and hateful, something to be endured while ‘life’ is confined to ‘time off,’ ” Reich wrote. “Consciousness III people simply do not imagine a career along the old vertical lines.” His accessible theory of the baffling sixties carried the imprimatur of William Shawn’s New Yorker, which published an excerpt of the book that stretched over nearly seventy pages. “The Greening of America” spent months on the Times best-seller list.

Exponents of the futuristic tech economy frequently adopt this fifty-year-old perspective. Like Reich, they eschew the hedgehog grind of the forty-hour week; they seek a freer way to work. This productivity-minded spirit of defiance holds appeal for many children of the Consciousness III generation: the so-called millennials.

“People are now, more than ever before, aware of the careers that they’re not pursuing,” says Kathryn Minshew, the C.E.O. of the Muse, a job-search and career-advice site, and a co-author of “The New Rules of Work.” Minshew co-founded the Muse in her mid-twenties, after working at the consulting firm McKinsey and yearning for a job that felt more distinctive. She didn’t know what that was, and her peers seemed similarly stuck. Jennifer Fonstad, a venture capitalist whose firm, Aspect Ventures, backed Minshew’s company, told me that “the future of work” is now a promising investment field.

[...]

In promotional material, Airbnb refers to itself as “an economic lifeline for the middle class.”A company-sponsored analysis released in December overlaid maps of Airbnb listings and traditional hotels on maps of neighborhoods where a majority of residents were ethnic minorities. In seven cities, including New York, the percentage of Airbnb listings that fall in minority neighborhoods exceeds the percentage of hotel rooms that do. (Another study, of user photos in seventy-two majority-black neighborhoods, suggested that most Airbnb hosts there were white, complicating the picture.) Seniors were found to earn, on average, nearly six thousand dollars a year from Airbnb listings. “Ultimately, what we’re doing is driving wealth down to the people,” Chris Lehane, the strategist at Airbnb, says.

It is, of course, driving wealth down unevenly. A study conducted by the New York attorney general in 2014 found that nearly half of all money made by Airbnb hosts in the state was coming from three Manhattan neighborhoods: the Village-SoHo corridor, the Lower East Side, and Chelsea. It is undeniably good to be earning fifty-five hundred dollars a year by Airbnb-ing your home in deep Queens—so good, it may not bother you to learn that your banker cousin earns ten times that from his swank West Village pad, or that he hires Happy Host to make his lucrative Airbnb property even more lucrative. But now imagine that the guy who lives two doors down from you gets ideas. His finances aren’t as tight as yours, and he decides to reinvest part of his Airbnb income in new furniture and a greeting service. His ratings go up. Perhaps he nudges up his prices in response, or maybe he keeps them low, to get a high volume of patronage. Now your listing is no longer competitive in your neighborhood. How long before the market leaves you behind?

[...]

A century ago, liberalism was a systems-building philosophy. Its revelation was that society, left alone, tended toward entropy and extremes, not because people were inherently awful but because they thought locally. You wanted a decent life for your family and the families that you knew. You did not—could not—make every personal choice with an eye to the fates of people in some unknown factory. But, even if individuals couldn’t deal with the big picture, early-twentieth-century liberals saw, a larger entity such as government could. This way of thinking brought us the New Deal and “Ask not what your country can do for you.” Its ultimate rejection brought us customized life paths, heroic entrepreneurship, and maybe even Instagram performance. We are now back to the politics of the particular.

For gigging companies, that shift means a constant struggle against a legacy of systemic control, with legal squabbles like the one in New York. Regulation is government’s usual tool for blunting adverse consequences, but most sharing platforms gain their competitive edge by skirting its requirements. Uber and Lyft avoid taxi rules that fix rates and cap the supply on the road. Handy saves on overtime and benefits by categorizing workers as contractors. Some gigging advocates suggest that this less regulated environment is fair, because traditional industry gets advantages elsewhere. (President Trump, it has been pointed out, could not have built his company without hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies.)

Still, since their inception, and increasingly during the past year, gigging companies have become the targets of a journalistic genre that used to be called muckraking: admirable and assiduous investigative work that digs up hypocrisies, deceptions, and malpractices in an effort to cast doubt on a broader project. Some companies, such as Uber, seem to invite this kind of attention with layered wrongdoing and years of secrecy. But they also invite it by their high-minded positioning. Like traditional companies, gigging companies maintain regiments of highly paid lawyers and lobbyists. What sets them apart is a second lobbying effort, turned toward the public.

[...]

Questions have emerged lately about the future of institutional liberalism. A Washington Post /ABC News poll last month found that two-thirds of Americans believe the Democratic Party is “out of touch,” more than think the same of the Republican Party or the current President. The gig economy has helped show how a shared political methodology—and a shared language of virtue—can stand in for a unified program; contemporary liberalism sometimes seems a backpack of tools distributed among people who, beyond their current stance of opposition, lack an agreed-upon blueprint. Unsurprisingly, the commonweal projects that used to be the pride of progressivism are unravelling. Leaders have quietly let them go. At one point, I asked Chris Lehane why he had thrown his support behind the sharing model instead of working on traditional policy solutions. He told me that, during the recession, he had suffered a crisis of faith. “The social safety net wasn’t providing the support that it had been,” he said. “I do think we’re in a time period when liberal democracy is sick.”

In “The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Insecurity and the Decline of the American Dream” (2006), Jacob Hacker, a political-science professor at Yale, described a decades-long off-loading of risk from insurance-type structures—governments, corporations—to individuals. Economic insecurity has risen in the course of the past generation, even as American wealth climbed. Hacker attributed this shift to what he called “the personal-responsibility crusade,” which grew out of a post-sixties fixation on moral hazard: the idea that you do riskier things if you’re insulated from the consequences. The conservative version of the crusade is a commonplace: the poor should try harder next time. But, although Hacker doesn’t note it explicitly, there’s a liberal version, too, having to do with doffing corporate structures, eschewing inhibiting social norms, and refusing a career in plastics. Reich called it Consciousness III.

The slow passage from love beads to Lyft through the performative assertion of self may be the least claimed legacy of the baby-boomer revolution—certainly, it’s the least celebrated. Yet the place we find ourselves today is not unique. In “Drift and Mastery,” a young Walter Lippmann, one of the founders of modern progressivism, described the strange circumstances of public discussion in 1914, a similar time. “The little business men cried: We’re the natural men, so let us alone,” he wrote. “And the public cried: We’re the most natural of all, so please do stop interfering with us. Muckraking gave an utterance to the small business men and to the larger public, who dominated reform politics. What did they do? They tried by all the machinery and power they could muster to restore a business world in which each man could again be left to his own will—a world that needed no coöperative intelligence.” Coming off a period of liberalization and free enterprise, Lippmann’s America struggled with growing inequality, a frantic news cycle, a rising awareness of structural injustice, and a cacophonous global society—in other words, with an intensifying sense of fragmentation. His idea, the big idea of progressivism, was that national self-government was a coöperative project of putting the pieces together. “The battle for us, in short, does not lie against crusted prejudice,” he wrote, “but against the chaos of a new freedom.”

Revolution or disruption is easy. Spreading long-term social benefit is hard. If one accepts Lehane’s premise that the safety net is tattered and that gigging platforms are necessary to keep people in cash, the model’s social erosions have to be curbed. How can the gig economy be made sustainable at last?

[...]

Other assessments suggest that employees, too, should get their houses in order. “To succeed in the Gig Economy, we need to create a financially flexible life of lower fixed costs, higher savings, and much less debt,” Diane Mulcahy, a senior analyst at the Kauffman Foundation and a lecturer at Babson College, writes in her book “The Gig Economy,” which is part economic argument and part how-to guide. Ideally, gig workers should plan not to retire. (Beyond Airbnb hosting, Mulcahy sees prospects for aging millennials in app-based dog-sitting.) If they must retire, they should prepare. Mulcahy suggests bingeing on benefits when they come. Fill your dance card with doctors while you’re on employee insurance. Go wild with 401(k) matching—it will come in handy.

This ketchup-packet-hoarding approach sounds sensible, given the current lack of systemic support. Yet, as Mulcahy acknowledges, it’s a survival mechanism, not a solution. Turning to deeper reform, she argues for eliminating the current distinction between employees (people who receive a W-2 tax form and benefits such as insurance and sick days) and contract workers (who get a 1099-MISC and no benefits). It’s a “kink” in the labor market, she says, and it invites abuse by efficiency-seeking companies.

Calls for structural change have grown loud lately, in part because the problem goes far beyond gigging apps. The precariat is everywhere. Companies such as Nissan have begun manning factories with temps; even the U.S. Postal Service has turned to them. Academic jobs are increasingly filled with relatively cheap, short-term teaching appointments. Historically, there is usually an uptick in 1099 work during tough economic times, and then W-2s resurge as jobs are added in recovery. But W-2 jobs did not resurge as usual during our recovery from the last recession; instead, the growth has happened in the 1099 column. That shift raises problems because the United States’ benefits structure has traditionally been attached to the corporation rather than to the state: the expectation was that every employed person would have a W-2 job.

“We should design the labor-market regulations around a more flexible model,” Jacob Hacker told me. He favors some form of worker participation, and, like Mulcahy, advocates creating a single category of employment. “I think if you work for someone else, you’re an employee,” he said. “Employees get certain protections. Benefits must be separate from work.”

In a much cited article in Democracy, from 2015, Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist, and David Rolf, a union president, proposed that workplace benefits be prorated (someone who works a twenty-hour week gets half of the full-time benefits) and portable (insurance or unused vacation days would carry from one job to the next, because employers would pay into a worker’s lifelong benefits account). Other people regard the gig economy as a case for universal basic income: a plan to give every citizen a modest flat annuity from the government, as a replacement for all current welfare and unemployment programs. Alternatively, there’s the proposal made by the economists Seth D. Harris and Alan B. Krueger: the creation of an “independent worker” status that awards some of the structural benefits of W-2 employment (including collective bargaining, discrimination protection, tax withholding, insurance pools) but not others (overtime and the minimum wage).

I put these possibilities to Tom Perez. He told me that he didn’t like the idea of eliminating work categories, or of adding a new one, as Harris and Krueger suggest: you’d lose many of the hard-won benefits included with W-2 employment, he said, either in the compromise to a single category or because current W-2 companies would find ways to slide into the new classification. He wanted to move slowly, to take time. “The heart and soul of the twentieth-century social compact that emerged after the Great Depression was forty years in the making,” he said. “How do we build the twenty-first-century social compact?”

Perez’s new perch, at the D.N.C., has given him a broader platform, and a couple of hours after the House passed the American Health Care Act last week, he championed the old safety net in forceful language. “Scapegoating worker protections is often a lazy cop-out for some who want to change the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of working people,” he told me. “We shouldn’t have to choose between innovation and the most basic employee protections; it’s a false dichotomy.” The entanglement of the sharing economy and Democratic politics has continued—Perez’s press secretary at the Department of Labor now works for Airbnb—but his approach had circumspection. “Any changes you make to policies or regulations have to be very careful and take all potential ripple effects into account and keep the best interest of the worker in mind.”

#gig economy #on-demand economy #nathan heller #labor law #tax law #economics #social policy #tom perez #charles reich

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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kane-and-griffin · 7 years

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what is different about Clarke vs Octavia becoming commander? we know Octavia was never part of society on the ark, but from a grounder perspective, she's still a sky person. both Clarke and Octavia have lived among grounders, while Clarke has been about 'transcending tribalism' and changing things with the idealistic goal of bringing peace to warring factions, Octavia has been more enthusiastic with status quo. has Octavia assimilated with grounder culture enough to be a dual citizen?

We talked about this a little bit on Meta Station, but basically, in anutshell, the answer to this completely depends on what we mean when we say“Commander.” There are two potential ways I could see this going; for oneof them, my answer is “YIKES PLEASE NO DON’T LET EITHER OF THEM DO IT,” and forthe other, my answer is that they could actually sell me on it with either ofthem, though for plot reasons it’s more interesting to me personally with Octavia.

LET’S BREAK IT DOWN.

THE BAD WAY

It’s certainly true that of all the Sky People, it’s Clarke, Octavia (andalso Kane LET’S NOT FORGET ABOUT KANE) who have spent the most time immersed inGrounder culture, learning to understand it and respect it. But it’s still not their culture. Which means for me, anyconstruct of a “Commander” which resembles the way Commanders looked before -incorporating the Nightblood and Flame theology, serving as a religious andpolitical leader over twelve/thirteen distinct clans, etc. – getting handed overto somebody who is not actually ofthat culture feels . . . real iffy.

Part of what makes this tricky is the way the writers treat Grounder cultureoverall. As it’s constructed, it isn’treally a nationality and isn’t really an ethnicity and isn’t really a religion.It’s a society that evolved out of basically whoever the fuck was left alivewhen Becca landed, which was probably an incredibly heterogenous group (unlessof course the main survivors were Cadogan’s band of survivalists and all theGrounders are descended from them). Butassuming that Becca’s first people represented a whole bunch of differentethnicities and cultures and religions and out of a mishmash of lots ofdifferent things, one new thing emerged, and “Grounder” as we understand itapplies only to people who are specifically descended from that one newthing. Which is a really specific way todraw a boundary around a society. It’sdifferent from how you can convert to a religion and then become a member ofits clergy, or you can emigrate to a country and then run for political officeafter becoming a nationalized citizen. There isn’t a way, really, to become a Grounder, because what “Grounder”means is entirely about who you’re descended from. And their whole religious and politicalstructure is tied specifically and directly into the origin story of theirpeople and what they have always believed that to mean. So where this gets kind of dodgy is that,even if we subtract out the extremely complicated layer of how the twosocieties are coded in show (Grounders = primitive and tribal, Sky People =civilized and enlightened) and the various tropes that plays into about colonialismand race and class, we’re still left with a society who choose leaders througha method that is deeply steeped in a very specific set of traditions andbeliefs that Clarke and Octavia don’t share, and a culture of which they arenot a part, and having either of them roll up all “CHIP ME, BITCHES, I’M ANIGHTBLOOD NOW, I’M YOUR SUPREME RULER FROM NOW ON” is . . . let’s politely sayquestionable.

Those problems would exist with anyone from Skaikru, but there are a coupleissues with Octavia and Clarke specifically that make me side-eye it evenharder. So, as a lifelong Catholic, oneof the most annoying things on God’s green earth are people who just foundJesus on like Tuesday and because this is all new to them they think it’s new,so all they want to do is lecture people who have been doing this our wholelife that we’re Jesus-ing wrong because we aren’t following the rules to theletter. Like slow your roll, Susan, ifyou want to start going to Confession twice a week I can’t stop you, but I willbe watching television with no pants on like a regular human. We call this“convert’s zeal” (yep, it’s enough of a phenomenon among faith communities thatthere is actually a name for it) and it’s the best example I can give of myspecific issues with the notion of Commander Octavia.

From within the narrative – that is, for who Octavia is as a character – her immediate obsession with Grounder culture anddesire to assimilate makes perfect sense. She didn’t have a place or a home with the Sky People, and no real tiesexcept her brother. She’s been lookingfor a place to belong, and Lincoln became her whole world very quickly, the waythat first loves tend to do. Her desireto make his life her life, and then her clinging onto it after she lost him,make totally logical intuitive sense from a psychological perspective. Meaning, this is exactly what you’d expect aperson like Octavia to do. It’s alsovery fitting for someone like Octavia to take that ball and run with it,CONVERT’S ZEAL AF, and subsequently try to “out-Grounder” characters likeLincoln and Indra by reminding them of the rules of their own society(sometimes by violence) – a society of which, again, she is not technicallypart. This is all plausible, but it’s not really a good idea. It gets into somereal “yikes” territory if the narrative is intending us to believe that Octaviasmacking Lincoln and Indra around and yelling “GROUNDER UP, MOTHERFUCKER, YOU’REGROUNDERING WRONG!” is something we’re supposed to approve of. So for that reason, there’s an additionallayer of concerns with Octavia becoming Commander and essentially enacting thaton a large scale – becoming more Grounder than the Grounders, essentially –that I don’t love.

All the same concerns apply to Clarke as well, in terms of stepping in toserve as the sacred leader of a culture and faith that isn’t yours – a faith which,because of this whole technology vs. superstition division between the clans,you don’t just not share but activelybelieve to be bullshit. But with her, it’s additionally complicatedby this new “Chosen One” narrative the show seems to be developing over thecourse of the season, with everyone telling Clarke she was “born forthis.”

Because the problem is, she wasn’t.

Lexa was. Luna was. They were born Nightbloods, trained with theother children under Titus, grew up steeped in Grounder tradition and belief,and fought in the conclave. Clarke wasborn on the Ark, with no knowledge that anyone on the ground was even alive, and only became a Nightbloodartificially like five minutes ago. Thenotion that she nonetheless was still somehow “born” to be the Commander,despite lacking all the qualifications and even the beliefs that hithertodefined that role, basically invalidates the entire Grounder belief system. And yet the narrative appears to be continually reinforcing your “you were bornfor this,” “this is your destiny” angle with Clarke, tying it specifically toLexa, and it makes me a little concerned that this may be where they’re headed.

We were given a clear understanding of what makes someone a Commander; notjust taking the Flame and communing with the past Commanders but also beingborn a Nightblood, winning the conclave, going through the Ascension rite, and upholdinga specific set of political/religious beliefs and traditions for which youwould have been groomed since birth. Itis a profoundly sacred role to their culture. So if anyone can just inject themselveswith Nightblood, stick the Flame in their head and call themselves theCommander, what does that do to people like Gaia and the belief system uponwhich they have based their entire life, and what does that mean the narrativeis telling us about the notion that their faith was dumb and superstitious and “primitive”in the first place? Was she “born forthis” because someone from a more “enlightened” society had to explain to themthe difference between a sacred relic and a computer chip, and then step intothat role without any of the belief system that used to define what that rolemeant?

THE GOOD WAY

So all of that being said, the possible angle that I could absolutely getbehind, and which could work plausibly with either of them, is the idea thatthe word “Commander” actually comes to mean something very different in thisnew world they’re building. Not aCommander like Lexa, but a Commander like Becca. Not the established clan head of an entirecivilization with a complex sociopolitical structure for a foreign Sky Girl toroll up and appropriate, but the head of a ragtag group of whoever the fuckcomes out of that bunker alive, trying to create a new social structure out ofeveryone who is left. A motley crew of Grounders, Skaikru and Azgeda, whohave collectively decided to abandon those previous divisions and become awhole new thing. No Chancellor. NoIce King. No Commanders. One society, where none of those divisionsmatter anymore, and where taking the Flame isn’t about being anointed some kindof god-king, it’s because you need access to all the shit Becca knew about “Howto Survive an Apocalypse 101.”

Grounder Commanders were elected as kids, and don’t seem to live very long(Titus was, what, mid-fifties?, and I forget how many Commanders he said he’sserved, but it didn’t sound like anyone got to die of old age in that job), so theiryouth wouldn’t be a factor in an O.G. Grounder Ascension but actually doesbecome something that needs a plot-related explanation if they’re trying to,like, start a democracy. As a ride-or-die member of Team Adults, on a practicallevel I’m like “please don’t make a teenager the president,” though if we aregetting a time jump this becomes quite a bit less absurd.

If they go this direction, Clarke is by far the most obvious choice – all theJaha leadership parallels this season, the fact that she’s taken the Flamebefore and already encountered Becca, the “you were born for this” stuff, the bafflingretcon that she suddenly decided to “transcend tribalism” like JUST NOW whicherases a lot of what made Season 1 Clarke so great. Destiny or not,Clarke expects to assume the leadership position wherever she is, and the peoplearound her expect her to as well. Whichis probably why I’m actually rooting way more for the gig to go to Octavia.

Octavia has been a problem character for me since the start of thisvengeance arc in the middle of Season 3; we’ve been watching her channel allher grief and anger into an endless succession of destructive behaviors, withno real clear sense of whether the narrative intended us to be on her side ornot. I think some of that is gettingclarified this season (the Pike flashbacks as she held a gun on Ilian may havebeen clumsy on an emotional level, but they did serve to definitively remindthe audience, and Octavia, that Bellamydid not kill Lincoln, which clears upthe question of whether we were supposed to take her side when she accused himof that), and we know she gets some big crazy plot twist because everyone fromthe show in every interview who gets asked “who has the coolest arc thisseason?” says “Octavia.” So like, thinkfor a second about the idea of Octavia having to do something she’s never donebefore in her whole life and actually assume a role of leadership over otherpeople. No big brother/little sister dynamicto hide behind. Octavia has often beendefined, both in the narrative and I think to herself, in the context of otherpeople. She was the girl who lived underthe floorboards, then she was Bellamy’s sister, then she was Lincoln’sgirlfriend, then she was Indra’s second, then she was grieving Lincoln, thenshe was Kane’s bodyguard. So I like theidea of Octavia having to ask herself some hard questions about who Octavia is,on her own. After four seasons of seeingher sit in judgment of Clarke and Bellamy and others’ decisions, sometimescriticizing the outcome without really having a complete understanding of whatwent into it and how many competing forces were at play, I like the idea ofOctavia being the one who has to make the hard choices. It’s the missing piece to her finally beingable to really understand her brother. She also needs something constructive to do with her passion and energy andemotion and grief besides, you know, stabbing people. Imagine Octavia having to persuade, Octavia having to learn how toget people to actually follow her, Octavia having to take diplomacy lessonsfrom Dad!Kane (”you can’t just kill everyone who disagrees with you,” as CallieCartwig once told him), Octavia having to collaborate. Octavia and Bellamy working together to bring everyone to the table – Azgeda andTrikru and Skaikru – to figure out who this new society is and who they want tobe. Octavia getting to honor Lincoln byhelping to establish the kind of peace he hoped for (remember him in 301telling her about how Kane and Abby had the right idea and were trying to builda community where those divisions didn’t exist anymore), not by stepping into aspecific and clearly-defined role that’s held as sacred by a culture that doesn’tbelong to her, but by putting all her grudges and hostility aside to fight fora new way. And if that involves hergetting Nightblood so she can take the Flame and commune with Becca about specificthings that Becca knows, that’s different enough from “Octavia becomingCommander” that I think I could be totally down with it.

#Anonymous #From the Inbox #metas and headcanons #the 100 meta #the 100 #clarke griffin #octavia blake #becca pramheda #commander lexa #commanders #the 100 season 4

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instantdeerlover · 4 years

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Delivery & A Movie Celebrate Black History And Culture In NYC added to Google Docs

Delivery & A Movie Celebrate Black History And Culture In NYC

There are only so many moments throughout history that create a window for long overdue change. Thanks to the hard work of protesters and activists over decades and generations, now is one of them. One way to celebrate and support the Black community right now (and consistently in the future) is by learning from Black activists, listening to Black stories, and spending your dollars at Black-owned businesses. That’s why we put together a list of movies and documentaries that celebrate Black history and culture, and paired each one with a Black-owned restaurant in NYC that’s open for takeout right now.

Don’t let your learning stop at this guide. Follow accounts like Color Of Change, The Dream Defenders, We Are Your Voice, Gal-Dem, and others to learn more about these issues. This is just one way in which you can support the Black community right now - along with donating to local and national organizations dedicated to fighting for racial justice.

Featured In The Ultimate NYC Delivery & Takeout Guide See all our guides THE SPOTS Noah Devereaux Sylvia's Restaurant $ $ $ $ Southern in Harlem $$$$ 328 Malcolm X Blvd 7.0 /10

Movie Pairing: The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (Netflix)

“If you’re unfamiliar with Marsha P. Johnson, activists in this documentary describe her as the ‘Rosa Parks of the LGBTQ movement.’ She was a key leader of the Stonewall Riots, a two-day series of demonstrations at the Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn in 1969 - a movement that evolved into what we now know as The Pride Parade. Along with Sylvia Riveria and many other trans people of color, Marsha P. Johnson paved the way for present-day activists to push for legislation like the Supreme Court ruling, which made it illegal to fire someone for being LGBTQ+ in the U.S. Victoria Cruz, a contemporary of Marsha P. Johnson, shares personal accounts from this legendary moment in history through in this stunning documentary.” -ND

Order: Harlem Style Fried Chicken and Waffles from Sylvia’s

Extra Virgin $ $ $ $ American , Seafood , Mediterranean in West Village $$$$ 259 W 4th St 7.8 /10

Movie Pairing: If Beale Street Could Talk (Hulu)

“James Baldwin only needs to use about four words to make me cry. So it makes sense that a Barry Jenkins directed movie based on Baldwin’s 1974 novel _If Beale Street Could Talk_produces the same weepy-beautiful result. This movie is about the immovable love of two Black teenagers in Harlem in the ’70s. You’ll know it from the very first scene when Tish (played by Kiki Layne) visits her love Fonny (Stephan James) in prison after he’s been wrongfully arrested for a crime he did not commit in downtown Manhattan. Tish says in a voiceover, “I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.” This line is especially painful because, as much as Tish hopes others won’t experience this same feeling, we know so many people have.” -HA

Order: Spicy shrimp tacos and flourless chocolate cake from Extra Virgin in the West Village (near where Fonny and Tish go on a big date).

Maxine On The Boulevard $$$$ 11333 Farmers Blvd

Movie Pairing: Get Out (Hulu)

“In Jordan Peele’s 2017 Get Out, he confronts those who say they “don’t see race,” or, “I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could have,” but end up other-ing people of color in detrimental, though not always overt, ways. In this case, lead Daniel Kaluuya as Chris gets trapped at his white girlfriend’s family estate where they [spoiler alert] hypnotize him in hopes of transplanting their blind, elderly gallerist friend’s brain into his seeing and able body. Whether Get Out is a comedy, horror film, or something else entirely is beside the point. This somehow hilarious look at contemporary racism probes a hazier form of bigotry.” -AS

Order: Fish and Chips from Maxine On The Boulevard

Mikey Likes It Mikey Likes It Ice Cream $$$$ 199 Avenue A

Movie Pairing: American Son (Netflix)

“American Son is probably one of the most powerful performances of Kerry Washington’s career. I say that because she performed it for three months on Broadway before Netflix decided to create the film version. On the surface, it’s a story about a mother and a father who spend a night at a Florida police precinct while trying to find their missing son. But as tensions rise, themes of race, gender, parenting, and policing come to the forefront. Whether you miss Scandal or want to learn more about how American families suffer from the issue of racial bias within our country’s police force, this is a great watch.” -ND

Order: “Southern Hospitality” Butter Pecan Ice Cream from Mikey Likes It

Pony Bistro $$$$ 2375 Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd

Movie Pairing: The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Hulu)

“In the late ’60s and early ’70s, several bowl cut-flaunting Swedish journalists filmed a series of interviews with some of the most influential leaders of the Black Power movement, as well as scenes from everyday life in Harlem, Brooklyn, and Oakland. As outsiders, these Swedes wanted to better understand how Black folks lived in America at the time. That footage was later found and edited into a series of nine different stories, each paired with voiceover commentary from artists like Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Sonia Sanchez, Questlove, and Harry Belafonte. By the end of the documentary, you’ll realize there is no better word for what you’re witnessing than a “mixtape.” Even though each story is distinct, they all become contextually informed by what precedes and follows. In case you haven’t spent enough time getting to know the minds of Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Louis Farrakhan, let this treasure trove of lost footage be a way in.” - HA

Order: Create a mixtape-esque meal from Ponty Bistro in Harlem. We see no reason a crepe with nutella and banana shouldn’t go nicely with some poulet yassa and a lobster BLT.

Milk & Pull $$$$ 778 Seneca Ave

Movie Pairing: Tangerine (Hulu) “It’s Christmas Eve in LA, and Sin-Dee is looking for clients. When it comes to her attention that her pimp boyfriend hasn’t been faithful, she and her best friend Alexandra set out to seek revenge. At its heart, Tangerine is a hysterical and touching buddy comedy, but I can’t think of any other buddy comedies starring Black trans sex workers. The film, which was shot entirely on an iPhone 5S, covers a different kind of glamorous Hollywood than we’re used to. It’s subversive, hilarious, and the final, tense scene in a donut shop where everyone spills each other’s tea will probably make you really want a donut.” - AS

Order: Donuts from Milk And Pull

Noah Devereaux Sisters $ $ $ $ American in Clinton Hill $$$$ 900 Fulton St. 7.7 /10

Movie Pairing: Foxy Brown (Prime)

“Foxy Brown might be the most famous Blaxploitation film of all time, and it’s all thanks to Pam Grier. If you’re not familiar, the term “Blaxploitation” refers to a ’70s film genre that includes movies about black people who aren’t afraid to go after what they want by any means necessary. This film follows Foxy, played by Pam Grier, on her road to avenge the killing of her lover. No one had ever seen a black woman as captivating and tenacious as Grier on the big screen, which is why Foxy Brown made her an icon of the genre. If this film isn’t on your list of ‘100 Things To Watch Before You Die,’ add it now.” -ND

Order: Mac & Cheese from Sisters

Noah Devereaux Bunna Cafe $ $ $ $ Ethiopian in Bushwick $$$$ 1084 Flushing Ave 8.2 /10

Movie Pairing: Love & Basketball (Prime)

“I don’t know how else to say this, but watching Love & Basketball on Vh1 was a seminal part of my sexual awakening, and I hope it was part of yours too. This was one of the first movies where I saw a female lead character run sh*t with fervor, while still being considered attractive by a hot man (upon reflection, I now understand that’s what happens when women direct movies). If you missed out on this early 2000s classic, all you really need to know is that there’s an iconic scene where the two characters play one-on-one strip-basketball in a USC dorm room and Monica says, “all is fair in love and basketball.” Major swoon.” -HA

Order: An Ethiopian feast for two from Bunna Cafe, even if it’s really just for one. When you’re in the presence of a movie with this much tension, you should only eat food with your hands.

Field Trip Fieldtrip $$$$ 109 Malcolm X Blvd

Movie Pairing: Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (Hulu)

“Few people have ever spoken as poetically and radically about the black experience in America as Toni Morrison. The Nobel Prize- winning storyteller published her first book in 1970, while occupying her position as the first black woman editor in fiction at Random House, but she didn’t stop there. As this documentary gets across, her influence on the world extends well into the 20th century and will continue to change lives for generations. Before her passing in 2019, she helped create this documentary about her life, in which she narrates her own story, including juicy details about her work with activist Angela Davis during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.” -ND

Order: Fried Fish Bowl and Dragon Fruit Lemonade from Field Trip

The Bergen $$$$ 1299 Bergen St

Movie Pairing: 13th (Netflix)

“Are you a white person with a Netflix account you may or may not pay for? Me too. Have you spent many hours watching British Bakeoff and the new season of Dating Around? Me too. Let’s make a pact to pause those shows and watch Ava Duvernay’s 2016 documentary 13th - even if you’ve already seen it. This film is a required 101 on the causes and effects of the mass incarceration of Black people, and an excellent explanation of how the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery mostly privileges white people with Netflix accounts they may or may not pay for.” -HA

Order: Something to gorge on during the whole movie, like fries and wings from The Bergen in Crown Heights.

Ode to Babel $ $ $ $ Prospect Heights $$$$ 772 Dean St

Movie Pairing: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Prime)

“It would be a mistake to ignore the impact of The Black Panther Party on American culture. And with all of the myths surrounding their legacy, I found this documentary to be an extremely thorough deep dive into what really happened in the early 1970s when this anti-capitalist organization expanded to 68 cities across the U.S., providing social welfare programs like free breakfast for children and community health clinics. All while making a mark in the fashion world with their militant uniform - a black leather jacket, black beret, and dark sunglasses - which Beyonce references in her 2016 Super Bowl performance.” -ND

Order: Sorrel Not Sorry Bottled Cocktail (with Mezcal, Hibiscus, and Lemon) from Ode To Babel

via The Infatuation Feed https://www.theinfatuation.com/new-york/guides/black-owned-restaurants-nyc-movie-and-dinner Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động✅ Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://trello.com/userhuongsen

Created June 20, 2020 at 02:42AM /huong sen View Google Doc Nhà hàng Hương Sen chuyên buffet hải sản cao cấp✅ Tổ chức tiệc cưới✅ Hội nghị, hội thảo✅ Tiệc lưu động�� Sự kiện mang tầm cỡ quốc gia 52 Phố Miếu Đầm, Mễ Trì, Nam Từ Liêm, Hà Nội http://huongsen.vn/ 0904988999 http://huongsen.vn/to-chuc-tiec-hoi-nghi/ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xa6sRugRZk4MDSyctcqusGYBv1lXYkrF

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Elisabeth M. A. Späth & Karin R. Jongsma, Autism, autonomy, and authenticity, Med Health Care and Philos 1 (forthcoming, 2019)

Abstract

Autonomy of people on the autism-spectrum has only been very rarely conceptually explored. Autism spectrum is commonly considered a hetereogenous disorder, and typically described as a behaviorally-defined neurodevelopmental disorder associated with the presence of social-communication deficits and restricted and repetitive behaviors. Autism research mainly focuses on the behavior of autistic people and ways to teach them skills that are in line with social norms. Interventions such as therapies are being justified with the assumption that autists lack the capacity to be self-reflective and to be “author of their lives”. We question this assumption, as some empirical research shows that autists are aware of their strengths and are critical about social norms, we take this as a starting point to reconsider the beliefs about autistic people’s capacities. As a theoretical framework, we draw on Berlin’s idea of positive and negative liberty as he clearly distinguishes between one’s own developed preferences and the simple absence of interference. By drawing on the concept of positive liberty, we illustrate that a lot of autists are aware of their own needs, and usually do not deny their own needs, values and interests. This makes them less prone than non-autistic people to adapt their preferences to external influences, which might be seen as sticking to an authentic way of living. Our analysis shows that many autists are hindered to be(come) autonomous due to unjustified interference, unreflected assumptions about their self-determination, or by paternalistic actions. These observations contribute to a better understanding when help and interference are justified and a more differentiated understanding of autonomy of autistic people.

Introduction

Autism is commonly understood as a spectrum disorder, which refers to a heterogeneous group of behaviorally-defined neurodevelopmental disorders associated with the presence of social-communication deficits and restricted and repetitive behaviors. While the prevalence of autism seems to be rising (Hollin 2017, p. 210) and diverse sciences direct to different explanations concerning the causes of autism (Autism Research Foundation 2018), the way we should understand autism, is still not well understood and remains understudied. Autonomy is an essential concept in medical ethics that deserves special scrutiny in the understanding of conditions such as autism, as it constitutes a prerequisite to make one’s own decisions and to create the life one wants to lead (Jennings 2016).1 Judgements about being allowed to shape one’s own life, or whether one needs to be protected, need to be made very carefully, and require a clear conceptual analysis. The main approach to study autism has primarily been focussing on the behavior of autistic people (cf. Bumiller 2008), including their ability to empathize with others and to adapt themselves to societal conventions. Furthermore, in cases of autism, autonomy is often conflated with other concepts (such as “best interests”) without an adequate reflection upon its implications for amongst others decision-making in the medical context and guardianship (Graber 2017). A diagnosis of autism seems to be a reason to be skeptical about the autonomy of the autistic person (Parsi and Elster 2015, p. 3). At the same time, autistic people are often described to be talented, singleminded and original, which is associated with the concept of authenticity; autistic people are not easily influenced or steered by others (Klauß 2005, p. 3). These perspectives pose an interesting starting point for our understanding of autism as they seem to direct in different directions: while autistic people may be constrained in performing daily life tasks and do not simply obey social conventions, they are otherwise individual and independent in their own way by following their genuine interests.

The aim of this paper is to raise awareness and steer up the debate on the conceptual understanding of autonomy in the context of autism. In order to provide a such a conceptual starting point, we follow Berlin’s distinction between positive and negative liberty (1969). Berlin distinguishes between one’s own developed wishes or preferences (positive liberty) and the (non-) interference by others (negative liberty). Both kinds of liberty constitute relevant conditions for autonomy, this allows us to analyze fostering and hampering factors for autists’ autonomy. Moreover, this enables a normative analysis that departs from the narrow behavior-oriented approaches to understand autism. By drawing on several empirical studies, we include the perspectives and experiences of autistic people in order to provide an empirically-informed notion autonomy in this context. In the following we will discuss: (1) the concepts positive and negative liberty and what the denial of the respective liberty entails, (2) to what extent autistic people are denied negative liberty and positive liberty, (3) the ethical implications of how we think about autistic people’s autonomy, addressing their values and actions by taking a critical stance towards Berlin’s approach.

Conceptual framework: two concepts of liberty

Following the Kantian tradition, Berlin defines autonomy in relation to the capacity to rational thinking or decision-making: the autonomous person wishes to “be a subject, not an object” and is self-aware. This implies that one is aware of one’s strengths and shortcomings and takes responsibility for one’s choices (Berlin 1969). The conditions necessary for autonomy are a complex interplay of necessary values: consciousness, acceptance, understanding and knowledge about oneself and the world. The differentiation between negative and positive liberty serves as a framework concerning epistemological and ontological ideas on the conditions under which autonomy is exercized. While the concept of negative liberty places the focus on the absence of obstacles for a person to grow, the concept of positive liberty concentrates on the presence of internal processes of “organizing” one’s own values, and goals (cf. Takala 2007). The notion of negative liberty implies that one is free from any interference by others (Berlin 1969, p. 371). This can be illustrated by an “open-door” metaphor; any door should be open, irrespective of which door one chooses in the end. Negative liberty can thus be understood as a “precondition for self-realization” (Nys 2004, p. 217), as it includes the idea that opportunities are given to us. Positive liberty, in contrast, refers to the idea to be free to be or do something. Importantly, positive liberty “derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master” (Berlin 1969, p. 131), which falls back onto the willpower of the person to organize one’s life according to one’s own goals and interests. Self-determination is used by Berlin as a compatible concept to circumscribe positive liberty, as it mirrors the extent to which one actually takes advantage of the possibilities to pursue what one plans or desires. In sum, positive liberty can be regarded as the inner process of weighing values and plans, while negative liberty is a reflection of external conditions. Autonomy might be hindered, or denied, in terms of realizing what one actually pursues, which implies a normative bias. On the one hand, negative liberty is denied when others interfere in someone’s (life) decisions, so that the person would not be self-determined, but determined by others. Based on one’s interpretation of the autist’s (in)dependence or (in)competence, another person may feel entitled to decide for the person. Negative liberty is denied when options are restricted and one is directed towards choosing the option others think is good for that particular person. From an ethical perspective, this leads to the question on which grounds others decide when to interfere and whether these grounds are justified. Positive liberty, in contrast, is expressed as self-denial, while being co-shaped by societal structures and influences of other people; Berlin himself points to the danger of authoritarian regimes, in which one is actually not free in the positive liberty sense because one is “deceived” by the guarantee of non-interference (negative liberty), but one can still be constrained in personal development. Essentially, there can be a misfit between the available and the required resources to achieve one’s true goals and interests (cf. adaptive preferences, a concept we will clarify under the section positive liberty). Drawing on these theoretical concepts, we will analyze in the following how autonomy of autistic people could be understood and what this implies in respect to how non-autists should understand them.

Denial of negative liberty

Many autistic people need practical help with daily tasks related with self-organization, such as planning things ahead for activities such as traveling or shopping. Such help can be arranged for several domains, which is reflected in different forms of guardianship that may support everyday decisions (e.g., decisions for food, clothing etc.), or medical and financial decisions (cf. ibid., p. 961).

The observation that autistic people generally need more (practical) support in comparison to non-autists is sometimes taken as an a priori argument against their potential of be(com)ing autonomous (Bloom 2015). This is reflected in the conflation of autonomy and Theory of Mind (ToM). This ToM and similar observations (e.g., studies on weak central coherence theory, cf. Frith 2003) as well as critical reflections upon these studies (e.g., McGuire and Michalko 2011; Milton 2014; Verhoeff 2015), seem to indicate that autistic people do not grasp other people’s goals and intentions, nor that they are able to develop or organize a way of life according to their preferences, goals and interests (Lyons and Fitzgerald 2013, p. 752). From the observation that autistic children do not grasp others’ intentions and perspectives as non-autistic people do, it is assumed that they also do not grasp their own intentions and perspectives. This line of thinking fuels some parents, professionals and advocacy organizations to suppose that autistic people do not actually know what is “good” for them and that their behavior negatively affects others and therefore need to learn certain skills to cope with their environment. This becomes problematic, when interference (denying negative liberty) becomes the default without critical reflection whether that is justified or when the desirability of interference is assumed due to ill fitting with social norms/desirable behavior. For instance, when an autistic child openly objects towards taking medicine, parents and legal authorities often justify the continuation of treatment, based on the positively valued changed behavior of the child (e.g., being less aggressive) (see Benson and Pinnaro 2015).2 This is an interesting case to distinguish between helping and interfering; how we judge this case depends largely on how we understand autism and autonomy. If the child cannot decide for himself, because his preferences are irrational, he lacks the capacity to reflect or understand the consequences of his actions, the parents should help to choose the best option (whether medicine to be less aggressive is always the best option and is always helping, is another questions to be considered). If we understand the child as having a growing capacity to become autonomous, the parents may need to help the child understand his own preferences, his own beliefs and help reflect upon what would be good for him. Trying to understand the preferences of the child, by taking these serious and into consideration in decision making helps him to become autonomous and simultaneously may help to find more proportionate, less radical and better suiting (treatment) options. If the child is (becoming) autonomous, ignoring his growing capacities, preferences and simply providing the medicine would be interference. The default in the context of autism seems to be that this distinction—between interference and help—is not made. In a situation with socially undesirable behavior, the default is that others decide. This is problematic, not only because it hampers the child to become (more) autonomous; paternalistic actions like these also hamper the understanding why the child behaves in a certain manner and what may truly help him. Another example that indicates that there is a strong “behavior standard” for deciding what is good for autists can be found in applied behavioral analysis (ABA), a contested therapy that is aimed at teaching autists to display social behavior, basically focuses on “turning” autists into “social thinkers” (Richman 2015, p. 356). ABA entails that autists are trained to adapt to social conventions, for example learning to shake hands (ibid.). Some empirical studies also describe other examples such as the use of egg-timers to teach autistic people to eat slowly so that others do not feel disturbed and become willing to integrate the autistic person in the group (Hendriks 1998). In a school context, Sjödin (2015) describes an autistic student, whose interests and values are systematically disencouraged by school authorities: although she shows her strengths in taking initiative to structure and explain specific topics, teachers point out her weaknesses with regard to her style of working, such as her inability to follow the timetable and rules in class (Sjödin 2015, p. 91).

Non-autists often intervene in autists’s decisions so that they cannot be called to be “free from interference”. For autists it is assumed that they (1) do not know what is good for them (2) need to adapt to rules and social conventions and become “equal” members of society (3) have limited capacities and resources to develop themselves. While many autists need help with daily tasks or within certain social situations, interference with their lives is not automatically legitimized; help offered by non-autists may be useful to overcome barriers, as opposed to interference that may hamper the autist to pursue his own goals and thereby harm the original idea of negative liberty. As pointed out by Robeyns, constraining options or attempts influencing decisions are “likely to happen much more with autistic persons” (Robeyns 2016, p. 7), because autists might have issues to explain themselves in the immediate situation. In the following, we will argue that there are instances where autists show that they are free (in the positive liberty sense), which also has relevance for respecting their negative liberty.

Denial of positive liberty

Berlin’s concept of positive liberty—being free to do something—describes the possibility to join in activities that are in line with values we actively and consciously proclaim. Autonomy, as an act of deciding for or against certain practices when one does (not) embrace the values or normative premises embedded in those, is an expression of the state of positive liberty and an authentic life. To deny one’s positive liberty means that one cannot live a life that is based one’s own goals and values. Instead, one uncritically adopts certain given opportunities (societal-structural level) and social cues (normative level). In the context of oppressive conditions, this may pose a threat to authenticity, and consequently, autonomy and well-being of a person, which is reflected by the concept of as adaptive preferences.3

First, adaptive preferences reflect a process in which one convinces oneselve to adapt one’s wishes and values to the circumstances under which one lives, thereby disregarding own goals and values. To cope with a situation in which one is not given much choice, one may downplay or even deny that one is not well in the given situation. The respective person then lacks autonomy in the sense of not being able to live their life in an authentic, self-determined way and consequently may seriously harm their own wellbeing. In the context of autism, we question whether the split into authentic and non-authentic preferences is applicable “on the same scale” as to autistic people. Autists generally have a set of key interests or habits as part of their personality/identity from which their everyday as well as “higher goals” preferences naturally follow. Some have assumed that autistic people are not self-aware and do not understand certain social pratices (e.g., Livingston and Happé 2017), but there is evidence that autistic people are able to prioritize their own values and are able to make choices without being bothered by social commodities and peer-pressure. Brownlow (2010) describes for example, how autistic people “mock” non-autistic behavior patterns, like placing much focus on social standing by comparing oneself with. According to Shelly (2004), autistic people, for example, do not identify themselves with their gender from early age onwards, as a category of making sense of their character and “place in society” (Shelly 2004, p. 7), in contrast to many non-autistic children. Autistic people do not simply accept categories and conventions, for the sake of being socially accepted. Simultaneously, it is very important to autistic people to have a meaningful task (cf. Brownlow 2010; Sjödin 2015) that relates to them as individuals; some argue that contributing to society with their abilities and personality is a “key to happiness” for them (Post et al. 2017, p. 96). These examples illustrate that autists are able to and even prefer to give their life a certain direction and spend their time with goals and values that are in line with what they value. Autists seem to be less prone to be influenced by habits or options others embrace, which makes them authentic and better “guardians of their own interests” than non-autists.

The second problem related with the issue of adaptive preferences concerns the assessment of autists’ autonomy and whether the lifestyle is evaluated as authentic: while non-autists often change their preferences rather unconsciously to their environment and meet social expectations (adaptation), autists rather actively choose options with which they distance themselves from others in the end (compensation). This insight is strengthened by observations of Davidson and Henderson who propose that autistic people develop and consciously apply a “qualified deception repertoire” (Davidson and Henderson 2010, p. 161). Crucially, autistic people are aware that they cannot or do not want to fulfill a demand and therefore deliberately find a way out to prevent that others regard them as impolite or dismissive. While it may look from a non-autistic perspective that autists, for instance, “overcome” themselves, autists do not disregard their own needs and wishes, but rather take a critical step in order to judge non-autistic people’s insistence on changing the autist’s preference.4 This can be best understood as compensatory, not adaptive behavior. The fact that autists tend to regularly apply compensatory strategies is recognized, as many autists develop stress, anxiety and depression by pretending (Livingston and Happé 2017, p. 15) to be social or to be concerned about things they normally do not care that much about. Even if living a “double life” is stressful, and may lead to similar consequences as adaptive preferences, one may wonder whether we should assess it the same. The crucial aspect of adaptive preferences is that one disregards one’s own preferences and wishes, and forces oneself to adapt to societal norms. For autists it seems a different matter, they can choose to adopt their own preferences or choose to follow societal norms, but they stay reflective on the desirability to adapt such norms, as they recognize that living a non-autistic life does not make them happier (Post et al. 2017).

From liberty to autonomy

The insights attained by applying the concepts of negative and positive liberty help to understand how autists’s autonomy is currently approached and how to better conceptualize it. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy seems to be twisted: instead of understanding autonomy as setting and developing own rules and values, autonomy is measured and supported in terms of adapting to a prevailing system or fulfilling certain standards. On the other hand—illustrated by the concept of adaptive preferences—leading an autonomous life in the sense of authenticity, seems fulfilled for many autists, for whom their level of autonomy is dependent on their own idea of what is good for them and how they can integrate themselves best in society. Non-autists seem to fall easier for the trap of adaptive preferences, because of their social sensitivity, they may adopt social values without being self-reflective or by adopting authentic values. Autists do not simply adopt values others “preach” because they stick more strongly to their own values and preferences, partly because certain conventions “are irrelevant to them” (Bumiller 2008, p. 977). Autists are very much aware of the fact that adapting to options others assume to be suitable for autists too, in fact do not enhance their-well-being (cf. Spillers et al. 2014, p. 257). However, this seems to be underestimated by non-autists, establishing therapies like ABA or deducing claims on autist’s autonomy from theories like ToM; one can wonder what actually is achieved with social obedience therapy and certain interferences in general, because displaying social behavior is not the same as becoming a social person: wanting and deciding to be a social person. These observations have normative implications as intervening with autists’ behavior in such manners can hamper autists to be(come) autonomous: acts of non-autists’ with “good intentions”, eventually do not alter the well-being of autistic people (cf. Robeyns 2016; Rodogono et al. 2016) but exhaust their personal resources to pursue what matters to them.

Discussion

As mentioned earlier, autism has been described mainly from a behavioral perspective, from which slippery-slope-like conclusions are drawn: from the observation that autists are dependent on others for some tasks, it is assumed that they also cannot choose for themselves and others are in a better position to judge what is good for them. In practice, non-autists eventually assume autists are being constrained to live autonomous lives. We are well aware that we cannot draw any general conclusions about the autonomy of such a heterogenous group, but we argue here that if we want to assess the autonomy of autistic individuals, we need to reconsider the yardstick we use for it. Our theoretical approach towards understanding autists’ autonomy by their authenticity is not meant to trivialize the ongoing care some autists need and are dependent on. We rather aim to raise awareness concerning the interpretation of such dependency and its ethical implications. In the following, we first elaborate on the relation between negative and positive liberty, to illustrate the interdependence of the two concepts. Second, we discuss the implications of the heterogeneous collective of autists for understanding autists’ autonomy and we will indicate how the assessment of autonomy may be further developed.

“Being free from” and “being free to” as interdependent concepts

Berlin was mainly worried that positive liberty is in particular prone to be “abused” by authoritarianism, due to the problematic possibility of (uncritically) adapting oneself to living conditions one is more or less forced to live with (see inner citadel, Carter 2018), or because minority views on the good life may be suppressed. Therefore, he suggested negative liberty to be a “better protection” for the individual to lead an autonomous life.

Autism can be regarded a counter-example for the assumption that negative liberty is a “better protection” than positive liberty. The concepts positive and negative liberty have in common that they represent an ideal of liberty as it is in the end only a representation of something we assume to be worthy of support. The difference is that in contrast to positive liberty, negative liberty ultimately is not defined by the relevant individual or groups that share a common interest, but by others representing a different opinion, role or standpoint (e.g., as an institution). The reasoning behind deciding for or against constraints is not straightforward and is, just as for positive liberty, influenced by normative premises or assumptions directly (negatively) affecting the well-being of the relevant person or groups.

Berlin’s concepts help here to understand two dimensions of autonomy, namely the ability to define for oneself what is important to one’s own life and also the lack of (societal) interference that could reduce or increase one’s options, but the concept of negative liberty leaves open in which context or situation someone should be free from interference. Nys describes negative liberty as a “too loose concept”, because not the number of opportunities is decisive but the quality or value of one’s opportunities (cf. Nys 2004). As the context of autism indicates, this truly makes the difference to really “support” autists in becoming autonomous, as opposed to interfering or non-interfering with their interests arising from their “self-rule”: if there is no acceptance towards values, goals and interests other than of those people setting the rules or guidelines (here: non-autists), alternative options are not provided and thereby a particular group or individuals (here: autists) are indirectly persuaded or forced to go “through the doors that are already there“. The difficulty of defining negative liberty for autistic people is also due to the observation that they sometimes do not understand non-autists’ “value system”; or they do understand it, but reject it. At the same time, to be autonomous and act autonomously, the value of opportunities is of particular significance for autistic people because their interests and therefore needs are particular, which have consequences for arranging and adapting contexts for autists (e.g., workplace). From an ethical standpoint, this means that the concepts of negative and positive liberty need to be understood in mutual acknowledgement: autonomy is facilitated by those who are informed by the other(s) about their individual needs, while being at the same time dependent on the information the relevant individuals or groups share with them. As negative liberty per se cannot truly better protect freedom because it is not defined by the people who benefit from it. Negative liberty can only gain its legitimacy or authority in practice on the basis of positive liberty.

Becoming autonomous: individuals and collectives

The negotiation which values are worth pursuing may be expressed individually but are negotiated collectively and autism basically revives the idea that individual freedom can only be reached via a collective. On an individual level, autists can be considered to be authentic as they do not hide what they like or dislike, but suffer from pretending to value things that non-autists appreciate. Given the heterogeneity of the group, of which some are judged to have an intellectual impairment (Matson and Shoemaker 2009; Goldin et al. 2014), the relevance of positive liberty rises beyond the individual level. As a collective, autistic people have successfully created a space for self-advocacy (e.g., Jongsma et al. 2017; DeVidi 2012), that allows them to negotiate their specific needs and interests, but also stand up for rights referring to any individual on the autism spectrum (e.g., http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/04/people-with-autism-have-right-to-autonomy-too/). Taking autists’ ability to be self-determined and to create collective action seriously, non-autists should question their prejudices of autistic people’s inability concerning their “self-rule”. On a conceptual level, this means that “true liberty” is not only to be gained via protective mechanisms (freedom from) but can and should be gained by the relevant individuals or groups by “going on the offensive” (freedom to) to gain support in realizing their needs and wishes.

Limitations and outlook

Our analysis of negative and positive liberty has indicated important theoretical distinctions that point beyond behavioral approaches to understanding autism and has indicated the necessity to conceptually explore autonomy in the context of autism. Our theoretical analysis should be seen as a starting point to also critically reflect the usefulness of these very categories when defining concrete forms of support. Additional empirical studies are required to evaluate the potential of Berlin’s conception of autonomy. For this, the ICD categories might be a useful approach to apply and reflect upon the autonomy of differently impaired autistic people. Apart from that, we suggest to study collectives of autists in comparison to other groups who struggled and are still struggling for their liberty, against prescribed roles, and stigma (cf. Khader 2011). Furthermore, we have drawn on empirical work conducted by others to illustrate our more conceptual approach. Empirical research with autistic people will be beneficial to better understand their internal perspective, values and experienced liberty. An interesting way forward would be to further analyse whether negative liberty can be rightfully denied (Jaarsma et al. 2012; Post et al. 2017, p. 105). We suggest that empirical studies would provide a useful starting point, as the perspective of autists themselves should be included in answering this question.

Concerning to the conceptual notion of authentic preferences, further promising approaches may be found Harry Frankfurt’s notion of autonomy as he distinguishes between first-order and second-order preferences (Frankfurt 1988). For autonomy of autistic people, one of the remaining questions pertains to what extent they are free to choose their own interests and how deliberately they choose to follow these interests, in order to consider the interests authentic, or in Frankfurts terms, higher order preferences.

Conclusion

Up until now, autonomy in the context of autism has been studied in relation with behavioral theory and has been understudied on a more conceptual level. On a practical as well as theoretical level, evaluating to what extent autistic people are autonomous is challenging for two reasons. First, autists may face difficulties to express themselves verbally, limiting our epistemic understanding of this condition from an internal perspective. Secondly, autistic people may prioritize values differently than non-autistic people While the actual assessment of whether someone is autonomous remains an individual assessment, our analysis indicates that both, autists as a group as well as individuals, are hindered to be(come) autonomous: in terms of positive and negative liberty, autists are restricted, based on assumptions of non-autistic people. The claim of autists to live an authentic life has consequences for our understanding on their autonomy, namely to question where and what sort of support is necessary. Berlin worried that positive liberty to be manipulated on a motivational level, but we have pointed towards a problem of equal importance: the normative assumptions underlying negative liberty may similarly be manipulated when they allow for interference rather than help; unjustified interference with life (choices) leads to a denial of negative liberty, while the help that autistic people need, should be aimed at helping them to live an autonomous life, or to become (more) autonomous. With respect to autists, this is true in particular as they have genuine goals, interests and talents they cannot pursue when they are deemed to be impractical, useless etc. or even harming others and/or society pushes them into a different direction because a different standard is taken at face value. Berlin’s conception of autonomy is helpful to draw a fine distinction between interference and support and how that relates to authenticity. With this, we could indicate different layers of injustices done to autists when autonomy is denied to them. Our study has aimed to refine and redirect the debate on autists’ autonomy to a more conceptual level. In order to further refine and assess whether individuals are autonomous and should continue to make their own decisions, other concepts of autonomy may have to be explored.

Footnotes

For the following, we will avoid referring to a specific category of that spectrum: on the one hand, discussions on the DSM-5 indicate (cf. Spillers et al. 2014) that it is highly debated how autism can be diagnosed and exactly defined and on the other hand, autonomy has not actually been analyzed in respect to autists. Yet, it represents a concept which should be generally considered and should not be denied a priori because of a (specific) diagnosis of autism.

Although medical decision-making for minors is complex and heavily debated, many legal and ethical guidelines regard autonomy of children as a growing capacity, therefore their consent, assent or objection has to be considered or respected in medical decision-making (Jongsma et al. 2015).

A typical example for adaptive preferences is the “oppressed housewife”; in the 1960s women may have stopped questioning their prevailing role as a housewife, which was reduced to household tasks, and subordinated herself to the given structures in which women did not have equal opportunities and the same rights as men. The important normatively relevant observation is that women continued to positively evaluate their role, because they would have otherwise been confronted with barriers and/or (financial) risks and societal rejection, but may have felt unhappy and experiences the situation as problematic. The crucial stage of adaptive preferences is thus when societal norms become internalized so that the person uncritically identifies with them.

There is evidence that disrespecting an autistic person’s wishes in (medical) decision-making, including guardianship and proxy consent, is also prevalent beyond adolescence (Graber 2017).

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#autism #autonomy #negative and positive liberty #justice #authenticity #adaptive preferences #autism spectrum #analysis #Harry Frankfurt #immanuel kant

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cryptswahili · 5 years

Text

Glen Weyl Isn’t Vitalik But He’s Its Next Best Hope

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Dr. Glen Weyl speaks with the calm of a man who has history on the mind.

With an unbroken gaze and an unambiguous delivery, the author, economist and Microsoft researcher calmly espouses a clear and revolutionary vision: that the world’s hierarchies can be challenged and reconceived with the power of markets.

But if his theories were trapped before in the pages of academia, in 2018, Weyl has captured the imagination and devotion of the leading minds in ethereum, and, by extension, what is likely the world’s largest cryptocurrency community. It has so far been the perfect match for the co-author of “Radical Markets,” whose collaborations with developers may soon enable his ideas to escape the page in ways he never conceived.

It was no surprise then to see Weyl at Devcon4, the annual ethereum conference in Prague in October, where he was running on three hours sleep.

At the time, Weyl reported to having given 73 talks in the previous six months alone. Just in from the UK, his trip had brought him to Belgium, Denmark, Norway and France – a series of dates he jokingly compares to a Rolling Stones tour.

Still, they don’t all get the fanfare of his Devcon talk – which he defined as a “rally cry” against individualism; here it’s met with blustering applause from the audience. As a speaker, Weyl has no shortage of charisma – a trait he brushes off as “an unfair advantage” among developers.

This charisma is no doubt helpful given Weyl’s sometimes obscure ideological inspirations. He sees himself as seeking to resurrect a liberal tradition from the 19th century; combining it with modern mechanism designed to displace entrenched power structures. According to Weyl, this enables his preferred school of thought – sometimes referred to as liberal radicalism – to break the left- and right-wing dichotomy he sees as having stagnated change in the world’s most essential systems.

In the place of traditional hierarchies, then, Weyl promotes new, democratic structures – markets that are diverse, inclusive and decentralized.

Some of his ideas go even further. In an email to ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, one he republished on Medium, Weyl went so far as to suggest a tax to penalize “using standard white English.” Elsewhere, he’s tweeted about “tax[ing] masculinity to subsidize femininity.” And following his talk at Devcon, he explicitly asked for questions from female or minority groups first.

“Sorry for not being a woman,” said a male audience member who took the microphone.

Within ethereum, however, the enthusiasm for Weyl’s ideas is at times evangelical. Even in communities that espouse the benefits of decentralization, there’s a tendency to elect icons – and Weyl has undoubtedly become one of them.

His work has inspired blockchains, artworks, science fiction, game designs and political agendas. When he spoke to CoinDesk in September, he claimed “billions” of dollars worth of capital has been pumped into exploring the ideas worldwide. He‘s even been asked to design the social rules for a potential Mars colony.

“It’s getting hard to keep track of what is going on,” Weyl said in Prague, “I’m getting like five requests every day.”

Tipping Point

To cope with the growing hype, Weyl and others have spun up a non-profit foundation as a convening point for their ideas.

Named RadicalXChange, the foundation will culminate in a conference in March that seeks to bring together the various thinkers that are broadcasting Weyl’s methods. According to Weyl, the conference is the locus of an entire social movement that’s bent on saving the world from an imminent political crisis.

“If you ask for a single goal that I have, I think that we were on a trajectory where we were headed for 1930s style global conflict and totalitarianism, and I think that RadicalXChange as a movement can stop that,” Weyl said.

History takes bobblehead form at Glen Weyl’s New York office.

But if Weyl is venerated for his focus on macroeconomic issues, he’s a product of conditions in the smaller world of cryptocurrency as well.

In a way, the enthusiasm for Weyl’s ideas can be said to stem from an absence of purpose that had been palpable since ethereum was trading at all-time highs and spawning viral applications at the tail end of 2017.

At the time, single CryptoKitties were trading for hundreds of thousands of dollars – yet the blockchain itself was burdened with the husks of failed or abandoned projects. With ethereum facing new technical and social challenges, the market mania was coupled with a queasy tension.

“The public clearly has very very high expectations of us, and this makes me feel worried and uneasy inside. We need to try harder to make this actually work,” Buterin tweeted in December 2017.

Amidst this atmosphere, the ideas expressed by “Radical Markets” seemed to introduce a renewed faith that positive social change could be achieved with a system like ethereum, whether that took months or years. Armed with this emphasis on a bright and far-off future, Weyl’s ideas lent the project a regenerated sense of direction.

Weyl sees it similarly, although he argues his ideas may have also helped free the project from the belief that money was an indicator of its success.

Ethereum’s nouveau riche are Weyl’s case and point. He gave Blockchains L.L.C., a startup operated by an early ethereum investor Jeffrey Berns that is seeking to build a blockchain utopia in Nevada, as an example of this.

“I don’t think the Blockchains L.L.C. people are badly intentioned, but I do think they don’t really know what they are doing, and if you just drop a lot of resources in a completely arbitrary way, on someone who doesn’t know, it’s just really not a good social experiment,” he said.

Because decentralization is, in Weyl’s words, “the fundamental principle that animates what is going on in the blockchain space,” enthusiasm for his message stems from the framework he provides to protect it.

“There’s all people like Blockchains L.L.C. where there’s all this power that has landed on someone in a completely arbitrary way and people are like, ‘This is bizarre.’ And so they ask, ‘Is that really going to lead to a liberal society? A decentralized society?’” Weyl said, adding:

“I think that that is what people are looking for an answer to. They are looking for an answer to, ‘How do we build institutions that will achieve our values?’”

Power bubbles

Matters of the present, however, aren’t always on Weyl’s mind; he has a tendency to flit between different time periods when talking.

In our conversation, he traveled from 600 BC up to the Age of Enlightenment, and circles consistently back to 1930s, believing that its proto-fascist political climate isn’t dissimilar to our own.

Historical figurines line Weyl’s desk.

Hitler, Weyl said, “had no power.”

“All power is a bubble,” he explained. “All Hitler had was the beliefs of other people about the beliefs of other people about the beliefs of other people.”

Yet power and its mechanisms, Weyl said, are usually hidden from view. Distinct from this, ethereum and other blockchains stand out for their transparency, which shows the verifiable legitimacy of the system in real time.

“It’s like you can feel the legitimacy or illegitimacy, you can almost measure it, of a system. There’s no historical period where that was so palpable,” he said.

According to Weyl, then, ethereum can be seen as having encountered the pitfalls of centralization. The sell-off, through this lens, is an opportunity, a chance to get it right next time, a chance that maybe systems like the Web never had.

With this second chance, Weyl believes the project needs to overcome its attitude to private property. In particular, he believes that because ethereum combines a formal notion of private property – immutable, cryptographic ownership – with informal governance, it risks leading to nefarious consequences.

“The problem is they formalized private property in an incredibly rich way, and yet they didn’t formalize democracy. And private property without democracy is an incredibly dark and scary thing,” Weyl said.

He pointed to Mencius Moldbug, the infamous neoreactionary author, to illustrate the extreme view of what occurs when private property exists without democratic protections in place.

In Moldbug’s vision, democratic structures are replaced by all-powerful corporations, elected by property holders. And Weyl has a word for governance of this type when coupled with ethereum: Skynet, referring to the villainous artificial intelligence from the Terminator film series.

“The existing system formalizes private property and it doesn’t formalize human beings, and if property exists but humans don’t exist, you will get Skynet,” Weyl said, going on to add:

“That is precisely the opposite of what people want. We built this to avoid Skynet. But if you don’t formalize human beings and only formalize property, skynet is the only thing that you come out with.”

Hope for ethereum

Weyl’s ideas address what he has defined as the crisis of the liberal order – the abandonment of democratic liberalism globally in favor of new forms of nationalism, conflict and economic secession. To protect against this, Weyl argues that ethereum – and the ideology of its leading figures – can play a crucial role.

In his words, ethereum enables new forms of “social technology” that can enforce previously unimaginable democratic structures. Coupled with the powerful ideology of its community, Weyl says, ethereum can help society sidestep emergent totalitarianism.

“What is a good application of ethereum? Avoiding nuclear winter,” he posited.

Yes, you can actually buy this crypto card and own it forever.

And with a new problem to address – one that wasn’t purely due to its trading price or immediate technical aims – word about Weyl began to spread.

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of ethereum himself, first publicly discussed Weyl’s work in April.

Writing in a blog post, Buterin broke down the scope of “Radical Markets” and cited the “multifaceted and plentiful” crossovers between the book and the ethereum community. Buterin predicted that “blockchains may well be used as a technical backbone” for the ideas.

Later in May, Buterin and Weyl made their first written appearance together, in a blog post titled “Liberation through Radical Decentralization,” written in the style of a manifesto.

With a heavy emphasis on quadratic voting, the post urged that combining ideas from the “Radical Markets” canon with blockchain tech could help challenge oppressive power and generate a “free, open and cooperative world in the 21st century.”

Effectively, quadratic voting is Weyl’s answer to ethereum’s informal governance system. What it does is re-engineer the “one person one vote” democracy envisioned by bitcoin so that minorities have a higher say, achieved through using a clever math technique called quadratic scaling.

Collaborations between the two have since culminated in a research paper authored alongside Ph.D. of economics Zoë Hitzig, titled “Liberal Radicalism: Formal Rules for a Society Neutral among Communities,” which provides a distilled description of the quadratic voting mechanism.

Titled “Liberal Radicalism” (LR) after the duo’s emerging social philosophy of the same name, the paper expanded the notion of quadratic voting outward, such that it could apply to funding.

Speaking to CoinDesk, Buterin said that what Weyl had achieved was a reactivation of some of the more politically aligned blockchain applications that were being touted back in 2014 – ideas such as universal basic income based on the blockchain.

As Buterin put it:

“[Weyl] came along and offered some really interesting and novel ideas backed up by solid mathematical reasoning that could actually be a substantial improvement on the status quo.”

“So, naturally there’s a lot of interest,” he added.

Science fiction

Indeed, it was a common theme in interviews conducted by CoinDesk, with “Radical Markets” supporters regularly citing Weyl’s work as the best hope in a world they see as faced with growing inequality and atomization.

For example, Mark Housley from the quadratic voting-powered political signaling platform WeAreThePeople told CoinDesk that “no one has come up with a better way,” to address widening income gaps and the rise of populism and democratic participation more broadly.

Still, beyond a tight clique of starry-eyed enthusiasts, there’s evidence that for some, Weyl’s ideas remain too high-risk, and perhaps too esoteric, for implementation in the immediate future.

To discover why, it helps to look to Buterin’s April blog post, which for a large part was structured as a critique.

“I love this vision. So, let me be a good intellectual citizen and do my best to try to make a case against it,” Buterin wrote at the time.

Buterin argued that some of Weyl’s ideas, perhaps, demanded too high a complexity to become livable market structures. He cited the “mental transaction costs” involved with moving people to such models, maintaining that while well-engineered, the complexity of the ideas may render them less feasible to implement.

Giving an example from inside the blockchain space, Buterin warned that some of the Weyl’s economic models might not be able to sustain the hostile, scam-fueled landscape of the cryptocurrency industry. Beyond these critiques voiced by Buterin, there have been other, more philosophically rooted reactions to Weyl’s thought as well – in particular, his belief that economics can cure all social ills.

And that’s because, in Weyl’s view, the rise of movements like right-wing populism is fundamentally an economic question – rooted in wealth inequality – and not, as others might argue, a result of more slippery, irrational inclinations, such as romanticism.

Confronted with this observation, Weyl defended his position, stating that at its heart, economics is no different to disciplines such as sociology, philosophy or politics.

A bookshelf in Weyl’s Microsoft office.

“We all worship the same god,” he said. “They are just ways of allocating resources.”

Still, Weyl differentiates this view from the mainstream economics community, which is rife with he calls “weenie supremacy” – in his words, “the view that any form of intelligence that is not perfectly correlated with a SAT score contains no value.”

To correct the ills of his community, then, Weyl incorporates the views of other disciplines, regularly working alongside philosophers, artists and post-colonial theorists that complement – and at times contradict – his economics-centric worldview.

Artists and writers are heralded by Weyl as a way to provide critical feedback prior to implementation. For example, blockchain researcher Primavera De Filippi‏ is amassing a sci-fi anthology of Radical Markets ideas intended to speculate on the outcome of the models if applied.

“It’s harder to do it in the real world right now, so instead of trying something in practice and then having to wait and see what happens, science fiction gives you the opportunity to discuss the different ways that it could be implemented,” she told CoinDesk.

Another project that critically extrapolates on Weyl’s ideas is “Radical Bodies,” a concept conceived by ethereum developers Lane Rettig and Dean Eigenmann at a hackathon in Prague, in which rolling auctions are applied to advertising space on people’s clothing.

Based on an idea from “Radical Markets,” the advertising space – such as t-shirts – would be under permanent auction. At any stage, an owner can be outbid by someone else – an action which would force a sale.

Rettig described the idea as a political statement, telling CoinDesk that “Radical Bodies” exposes the market dynamics that are already active within much of the data-driven economy.

“We’re selling ourselves to Google, Facebook and the others all the time, so why not be explicit about it and receive some compensation?” he said.

Still, the idea provoked some criticism at Devcon4. Weyl himself described the idea as “dystopic.” One attendee, who wished to remain anonymous, speculated on what would happen if the same market logic was applied, not to clothing, but to body parts.

Implying that there were areas of life in which such markets structures can be dangerous, the attendee asked: “How much do you value your eyes? And what would happen if I value them more than you?”

Changing the world

Still, in spite of philosophical differences, Weyl claims his ideas are attracting serious dialogue among governments and politics internationally.

For example, he’s optimistic some of his ideas will be tested in Europe during the next couple of years. Within this, Weyl says ethereum – and blockchain more broadly – have the opportunity to gain a level of legitimacy that the technology has yet to achieve.

“This could a way of explaining to the broader community and forming links with artists and real politicians and policy makers and so forth,” he said in the interview.

But there are other ways that the two disciplines can enforce each other as well. Blockchain, for example, is frequently being touted as a way to test Weyl’s ideas in small environments that won’t cause any damage if the experiments don’t go according to plan.

And that’s notable because, perhaps predictably, ideas like rolling auctions as an alternative to private property have been met with some backlash, with many arguing that the model fails to offer the stability required by some members of society, such as families.

And there are other ideas that have been met with suspicion as well.

For example, each idea proposed by Weyl requires digital identity, possibly one of the most coveted and contested ideas within the cryptocurrency industry due to the potentially totalitarian consequences that such information could have if concentrated.

“It is absolutely dangerous to try to build political and technical systems which demand a single identity,” Harry Halpin, the scientific advisor to Panoramix, warned.

Still, Weyl is aware of the problems of building identity solutions and is taking steps to address the idea hands-on. Today he’s in the process of designing a solution that he thinks can sidestep some of these concerns. Within it, Weyl swaps out the idea of a self-sovereign identity for a new kinds of community-based identity systems.

“We are fundamentally social beings,” Weyl remarked.

According to Weyl, a distributed identity system with a strong concept of collectivity could minimize the risks inherent to the technology. The specifics of this solution are still being teased out, and are expected to be published in a white paper alongside Stanford professor Matt Jackson and Microsoft researcher Nicole Immorlica in the coming months.

Arguably, the heavy reliance on identity that is demonstrated by “Radical Markets” is emblematic of Weyl’s unique coupling of humans with market structures.

And while the combination is distasteful for some, it’s worth noting that it is precisely this blend, and its ability to link tech to social justice, that appeals to the ethereum community.

“We’re building what we’re building in order to make the world a better place, to right a lot of the wrongs we perceive, but most of us are engineers, not economists or social scientists, so sometimes it can be hard to understand how tech can actually change the world,” ethereum developer Lane Rettig told CoinDesk.

Rettig concluded:

“‘Radical Markets’ presents one vision for how ethereum can change the world, and for why our work matters – it can be the connective tissue between the tech and society.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––

Art by Chibi Fighters (@chibifighters)

Photos by Pete Rizzo for CoinDesk

Source

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

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joejstrickl · 6 years

Text

Brand Owners Guide To Copyright Protection

Before you can begin to understand copyright—that invisible but powerful and infinitely expandable concept that governs so many of our dealings with each other—you must first learn what it is not. Two of the things that copyright is not are trademarks and patents. These three forms of intellectual property are more like cousins than triplets, but lots of people, even lawyers and judges, confuse them.

Copyrights Compared To Trademarks And Patents

Although all three protect products of the human imagination, copyrights, trademarks, and patents are distinct but complementary sorts of intellectual property. Each is governed by a different federal law. The US patent statute originates in the same provision of the Constitution that gives rise to our copyright statute. Our federal trademark statute originates in the “commerce clause” of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Only our federal government regulates copyrights; copyright registrations are granted by the Copyright Office, which is a department of the Library of Congress. Similarly, only the federal government can grant a patent. However, although the federal government grants trademark registrations, so do all the fifty states.

Copyrights

Since January 1, 1978, in the United States, a copyright is created whenever a creator “fixes” in tangible form a work for which copyright protection is available. Under most circumstance, a copyright will endure until seventy years after the death of the creator of the copyrighted work; after copyright protection expires a work is said to have fallen into the “public domain” and anyone is free to use it. Registration of a copyright enhances the rights that a creator automatically gains by the act of creation, but it is not necessary for copyright protection. The chief limitation on the rights of copyright owners is that copyright protects only particular expressions of ideas rather than the ideas themselves. This means that several people can create copyrightable works based on the same idea; in fact, there is no infringement no matter how similar one work is to another unless one creator copied another’s work.

Trademarks

Trademarks are words or symbols that identify products or services to consumers. Unlike a copyright, in which the creator has protectable rights from the inception of the copyrighted work, rights in a trademark accrue only by use of the trademark in commerce and then belong to the company that applies the mark to its products rather than to the person who came up with the name or designed the logo that becomes the trademark. Roughly speaking, a company gains rights in a trademark in direct proportion to the duration and the geographic scope of its use of the mark; ordinarily, the company that first uses a mark gains rights in that mark superior to any other company that later uses it for the same product or services. Unauthorized use of a trademark is “trademark infringement.”

As is the case with copyrights, registration enhances rights in trademarks but does not create them. It is generally easy to register a mark within a state, but federal trademark registration, which confers much greater benefits, is more difficult to obtain. Trademark rights last indefinitely; as long as a mark is used in commerce, its owners have protectable rights in it. (For more information about trademarks, see The Trademark Guide, by Lee Wilson, published by Allworth Press.)

Patents

A patent is a monopoly granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a limited time to the creator of a new invention. According to the Patent Office, A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Generally, the term of a new utility or plant patent is twenty years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, in special cases, from the date an earlier related application was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. Design patents are granted for ornamental designs used for nonfunctional aspects of manufactured items; design patents last fourteen to fifteen years from the date the design patent is granted, depending on when it was filed. US patent grants are effective only within the United States, US territories, and US possessions. Under certain circumstances, patent term extensions or adjustments may be available.

The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States or “importing” the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell, or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling, or importing the invention. Once a patent is issued, the patentee must enforce the patent without aid of the USPTO.

There are three types of patents:

1. Utility Patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;

2. Design Patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and

3. Plant Patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.

An inventor must meet very strict standards before the Patent Office will grant a patent for his or her invention; then, the inventor can stop everyone else from manufacturing the invention without permission or even importing an infringing invention into the United States, even if the infringer of the patent independently came up with the same invention.

No product name is protectable by patent law; a product name is a trademark and trademark protection is earned in the marketplace rather than being awarded like a patent. And no song, story, painting, or play can be patented; copyright gives writers and artists the right to keep others from copying their works, but not a complete monopoly on the creation or importation of similar works.

(For a more detailed discussion of patent law, see The Patent Guide, by Carl Battle, from Allworth Press, and consult the US Patent and Trademark Office website.

Requirements For Copyright Protection

Under the US copyright statute a work must satisfy three conditions to qualify for copyright protection. All three of these requirements must be met in order for the work to come under the copyright umbrella.

The three statutory prerequisites for protection are (1) the work must be “original” in the sense that it cannot have been copied from another work; (2) the work must embody some “expression” of the author, rather than consisting only of an idea or ideas; and (3) the work must be “fixed” in some tangible medium of expression.

Originality

The originality condition for protection leads to the apparent anomaly that two works identical to each other may be equally eligible for copyright protection. So long as neither of the two works was copied from the other, each is considered “original.” In the sense that it is used in the copyright statute, “originality” means simply that a work was not copied from another work rather than that the work is unique or unusual. Judge Learned Hand, a jurist who decided many copyright cases, summarized the originality requirement with a famous hypothetical example: “If by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose a new Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, he would be an ‘author,’ and, if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats’s.” For copyright purposes, the similarities between two works are immaterial so long as they do not result from copying.

This is reflected in Copyright Office practices and publications: “The Copyright Office does not compare deposit copies or check registration records to determine whether works submitted for registration are similar to any material for which a copyright has already been registered. The records of the Copyright Office may contain any number of registrations for works describing or illustrating the same idea, method, or system.”

Anyone who feels her copyright has been infringed by a similar work created by someone else must look to the courts for a remedy, in the form of a suit for copyright infringement, rather than to the Copyright Office, which makes no judgment as to originality of any work for which registration is sought.

Expression

The current copyright statute restates the accepted rule, often enunciated in copyright decisions, that copyright subsists only in the expression embodied in a work and not in the underlying ideas upon which the work is based. The statute says: “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.” This rule plays an important role in copyright infringement cases, because a judge often must determine whether the defendant has taken protected expression from the plaintiff or merely “borrowed” an unprotectable idea (or “procedure, process, system,” etc.).

Fixation

The US copyright statute protects works eligible for protection only when they are “fixed in any tangible medium of expression . . . from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” The statute deems a work fixed in a tangible medium of expression “when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration.”

This third requirement for copyright protection sometimes surprises people, who may not realize, for instance, that a new song performed at an open mike “writers’ night” or a dance routine presented in a talent show, although it is both original and contains a high proportion of protectable expression, is not protected by copyright until it is “fixed” within the definition of the copyright statute and that it can be legally (although not ethically) copied, word for word or move for move, by anyone who witnesses its performance. A song can be “fixed” by recording any intelligible version of its music and lyrics in any form or by reducing its melody to written musical notation that also includes its lyrics. Any piece of choreography can be “fixed” by videotaping it in sufficient detail to record the movements of the dancers or by use of a written system of choreographic notation.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Lee Wilson, Attorney-At-Law. Excerpted from his new book The Copyright Guide, How You Can Protect And Profit From Copyrights, Allworth Press.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Licensing Audit

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

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glenmenlow · 6 years

Text

Brand Owners Guide To Copyright Protection

Copyrights Compared To Trademarks And Patents

Copyrights

Trademarks

Patents

There are three types of patents:

1. Utility Patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;

2. Design Patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and

3. Plant Patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.

(For a more detailed discussion of patent law, see The Patent Guide, by Carl Battle, from Allworth Press, and consult the US Patent and Trademark Office website.

Requirements For Copyright Protection

Originality

Expression

Fixation

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Lee Wilson, Attorney-At-Law. Excerpted from his new book The Copyright Guide, How You Can Protect And Profit From Copyrights, Allworth Press.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Licensing Audit

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

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#IFTTT #WordPress

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fashiontrendin-blog · 6 years

Text

The Psychology of Ghosting and Why People Can’t Stop Doing It

http://fashion-trendin.com/the-psychology-of-ghosting-and-why-people-cant-stop-doing-it/

The Psychology of Ghosting and Why People Can’t Stop Doing It

My ghost is named Tom.

He’s persistent, this ghost. He likes haunting my dreams, catching me off-guard in the milk-sweet land of sleep, slipping into my unconscious and rattling the cage of my brain. I dream he’s back in my life, unapologetic and unreformed, still cheating and gaslighting and drinking too much. In these dreams, I am still desperate for answers, asking him over and over why he vanished, why he gave up his flesh-and-blood self and became this ghost that — even after seven years, three new cities, countless dates and the love of a good man, the best I’ve ever known — I still can’t shake.

Ghosting (the term we’ve assigned to the sudden disappearance of a romantic interest) has become synonymous with modern romance: A 2016 Plenty of Fish survey revealed 78% of users had been ghosted. When I did my own Insta-investigation, I received dozens of responses, ranging from righteous indignation to extreme chill. “Rude but inescapable” seems to be the general agreement among those I spoke to about ghosting in the age of online dating.

It’s not that the dating “slow fade” is new (one girl told me she had a friend in high school who called it “two-weeking”: After hooking up with a girl, he’d ignore her entirely for two weeks — just long enough, he said, for her to get the picture), but technology has shifted the landscape by presenting a version of the world that feels both impossibly small and intoxicatingly large. One unreturned letter in the 1800s and you could warm yourself at night with the strong odds that he perished of scurvy; now, we’re able to see our ghosts out in the world, eating brunch, Instagram Story-ing the weird bird they saw on the walk to work. Combine that with the inherent dehumanization of online dating, in which complex individuals are reduced to swipeable avatars, and what we’ve created is a flourishing breeding ground for people for whom honest, direct communication feels not only unpalatable but unnecessary.

F. Diane Barth, a New York-based psychotherapist and the author of the new book I Know How You Feel: The Joy and Heartbreak of Friendship in Women’s Lives, says that while ghosting as we understand it isn’t new, the way we have pathologized it is. “In the past, a person could stop calling or dropping by,” she says, “but now we have so many more ways of disconnecting from a person, like being unfriended or unfollowed.” Online dating also provides the comfort blanket of partial anonymity: There likely aren’t mutual friends to call you out on your callous behavior, nor shared physical spaces that force interaction. “Our communities are larger now,” says Barth, “so it’s entirely possible you might never, ever run into them again.”

The Anatomy of the Ghosted

Modern ghosting can impart a distinct and isolating feeling of shame for those who experience it. “People who have been ghosted often feel that they are the person who has done something wrong,” says Barth. “You’ve been dropped off the edge of the earth, which is very traumatic. You don’t think about how many other people this has happened to, but rather that there must be something wrong with you.”

Barth notes that shame is the brain’s natural reaction when “something or someone interrupts us in the middle of doing something we are enjoying.” Our natural instinct is to “undo the situation” so we can get back to that feeling of happiness. When we can’t — when we are, in fact, cut off completely from the source of the good feeling — we look for ways to explain away the bad feelings: She didn’t want to commit, he didn’t like my laugh. “No matter how you explain it to yourself, though,” writes Barth, “your psyche is trying to undo the sense of disruption of the good feelings. Shame is a reaction to having a circuit in your emotional system broken.”

Am I not funny? Do people not get my jokes?

It’s a very particular wound and one that is becoming inescapably familiar. Former online dater and ghostee Kelsey says her primary reaction to being ghosted was the feeling that she must be the problem. “We’re obsessed with fine-tuning and laboring over our superficial appearances (both in-person and online),” she says. “So when we’re ghosted, I think we often jump to trying to figure out what in that outer shell wasn’t well-received, and we let that disapproval soak into our inner layers that define us. We cycle through our insecurities. … Oh shit, did he not think that was funny? Am I not funny? Do people not get my jokes? Oh crap, is that what I’m giving off?”

The shame is compounded by a feeling of being duped. Alexandra was ghosted by a guy she’d been dating for a few weeks. “On our first date, we talked for six hours straight and ended it in a moonlit make-out,” she says. “He talked about cooking together after we had sex in my kitchen. We went on mini field trips — to the beach! to the cliffs! — and had after-work check-ins where he’d call me on his way home to hear about my day. And then, one day, he went from telling me he was addicted to me to only speaking if spoken to. He would weasel out of committing to a plan. He would hit me with a ‘Hey!’ on the Sunday evening of a weekend where he’d assured me he would be seeing me.”

Eventually, she says, she’d had enough. “I told him I was an adult and needed planning, that I couldn’t just keep my schedule endlessly open for him on the off chance he was free. He apologized, promised he’d do better, promised we’d see each other with more regularity. But it dwindled until our interactions were reduced to him watching my Insta Stories while I was halfway across the world on a hiking trip.”

She’s now happily cohabitating with someone else but still has trouble shaking the experience. “I think he was dishonest about how he felt about me, which made me feel like a fool. And yet he didn’t have the strength to just tell me.”

The Anatomy of the Ghoster

To state the obvious: It’s rude, plain and simple, to fail to consider another person’s feelings. We’re talking preschool lessons, the golden rule. We all learned this. So why do the ghosts ghost?

“For me, the motivation was rooted in a strong aversion to being honest about my emotions, usually for fear of hurting feelings,” says Andy, reforming ghoster. “I found that it was easier to let silence do the talking than force myself to utter, ‘I had a nice time, but I don’t feel a connection’ or whatever you’re supposed to say.”

Others, like the man I have decided to spend my life with, are less apologetic. “It was the path of least resistance,” he says. “It was often because I’ve met someone else [Author’s note: It me.], and I’m just anticipating that awkward conversation and want to avoid it. When it’s someone you haven’t been dating long or you’ve been casual with, I think that there is this emerging establishment of a new norm, which is just — that’s now the way we break up with people. I do think that it’s kinder than telling someone you’re not interested in them or that you met someone better.”

He’s not alone in this; numerous people I spoke to said that in our dating universe, ghosting is both acceptable and even considerate. “It’s almost polite if the relationship was casual enough,” says Aubrey, a former ghoster and ghostee (now married). “There is something humiliating and patronizing in a dude I’ve gone out with twice ‘breaking up’ with me.”

Ghosting seems like a cop-out for people to avoid adult conversations.

Andy, turning over his new leaf, says he gives himself a pep talk before communicating his emotions to keep himself from ghosting. “The question I ask myself when the situation arises is: What’s the absolute worst thing that can happen after telling someone you don’t want to go out again? Maybe they’d be like ‘Fuck you!! You’re a sad pathetic loser! Boy bye.’ I can live with that.”

Barth agrees that some explanation is (almost) always better than none at all. “People say they ghost because ‘they didn’t want to hurt feelings.’ And yes, people who are broken up with directly will likely experience some hurt, but the thing about ghosting is that there’s no closure.” Ghosting, she says, leaves the person who was ghosted with the humiliating impression that whatever relationship they believed existed was all in their head, that they were not worth so much as a farewell text.

Julia, happily single and dating, made it a practice to always offer an explanation after a blind date called her out at a party six months later for not responding to her texts. “I had to sneak out of the party because she wouldn’t drop it,” she says. “I have a hard rule now that I always send a text to say if I don’t want to hang again. It’s awkward, but it saves the drama.”

When I was first dating in New York, I found myself making up excuses and dodging calls to avoid telling guys I didn’t want to see them again. At the time, I was terrified of seeming rude or unlikable, and the attention I received (whether wanted or not) felt like an affirmation that I was worthy and wouldn’t be alone forever. Eventually, the stress of trying to be likable while simultaneously dodging contact became absurd. A few friends and I collaborated on a standard text we’d send when we didn’t want to see someone again (please feel free to borrow, copyright not necessary, works for all genders, just trying to do the lord’s work): “Thanks for a great night! I didn’t feel any romantic energy between us, but I wish you all the best out there.”

Some (again, I’m MARRYING this man) argue that silence is, in fact, an answer of its own. “If you text someone once, twice, and they don’t respond — I mean, that is a response. That speaks very loudly. You just don’t want to hear it.”

The Anatomy of Closure

But the problem with silence is that it leaves a deep, dark hole — one it is all too easy to fill with a foggy combination of insecurity, self-loathing and confusion.

Lauren was platonically ghosted by someone she considered one of her closest friends. “I literally did almost everything with her,” she tells me. “And then one day, she just quit calling and texting and responding to me. And then she unfollowed me on all social. … It was heartbreaking.” There were signs, in hindsight, that this woman had a callous streak; still, Lauren said, she’s unable to come up with any explanation for her behavior, and years later, it still feels like a betrayal. “I feel like I’m a pretty nice and reasonable person, so if something were wrong, I feel as though she should have discussed it with me,” she said. “Ghosting seems like a cop-out for people to avoid adult conversations.”

In the absence of closure, what we are left with is a bewildering array of questions — questions that, it’s important to remember, might never be answered even if the relationship had ended on our own terms. “Relationships are always two-sided, and we can’t know everything that is going on in the other person,” reminds Barth. “If you’ve asked for closure and they haven’t been able to provide it, you’re going to stay stuck if you keep asking. You need to give up the idea that it can be solved.”

Barth recommends talking openly to friends about your experience. “Keeping [ghosting] to yourself increases the feeling of hurt and pain and isolation,” she says. “The more you can talk about it, the more you can get feedback that will help you process it.” Building this support system can also remind you of all the connections you do have: strong, beautiful friendships, a loving family, coworkers who respect you — relationships that rely not on superficialities, but on another person seeing you fully and embracing who you really are. “You need to work really hard to remember that it isn’t about you,” says Barth. “The reason that someone [ghosted] — it’s their difficulty in having to be honest.”

After multiple ghostings through online dating, Kelsey deleted her apps. Getting over being ghosted was going to require a new outlook, she realized. “It took some time and a lot of distraction, but I was finally able to ask myself the underlying question — why were these strangers making me feel bad about myself? Why was I giving up my sense of worth as a companion entirely to this pool of bachelors? Why was my vulnerability extending to all aspects of self, instead of just limiting it to what it actually was — the viability of compatibility with this particular individual?”

When she did start dating again, she says, it felt completely different. “I wasn’t checking the app constantly. I wasn’t eager to swipe and double-tap and labor over the wittiest retort. I didn’t feel the need to calculate the perfect time between responses and, most importantly, I didn’t fill the idle time with all of the reasons I had come to believe he thought I wasn’t worth it. I went out on dates and gave myself one rule of my own — hang out with guys if it sounds fun, and if it doesn’t sound fun, then don’t.”

And when she wasn’t interested? “I would tough it up and politely decline a follow-up date,” she says. “I did that both in-person and over texts, and both are uncomfortable but important. And every guy I did that to replied with appreciation and understanding.”

My ghost and I dated for eight years, and then we didn’t. Tom stopped coming home at night, stopped answering the phone and moved all of his belongings out of our apartment while I was out of town. It wasn’t as linear as all that, of course — he’d call crying or show up unexpectedly and then disappear again over the course of a few months — but when he finally did leave for good, when I found out he had been sleeping with his best friend’s girlfriend, the closest I ever got to an explanation was, “I just can’t do this anymore.”

He’s still out there — married, balding, in the city where I left him — but we haven’t spoken since. I do not imagine he ever thinks of me. I hate that I am the one left with these questions, although maybe what I am really left with is simply my own obstinate feeling that I was owed more than what I got. I have filled the space he left behind with narratives I wrote to suit my own purposes, but the truth is, humans are just bad sometimes. We do bad things — things we said we’d never do. Sometimes, the simplest, kindest thing you can do is try to explain why.

Illustrations by Gabrielle Lamontagne.

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katebushwick · 7 years

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Another dimension of Black women's culture that has generated considerable interest among Black feminists is the role of creative expression in shaping and sustaining Black wo- men's self-definitions and self-valuations. In addition to documenting Black women's achievements as writers, dancers, musicians, artists, and actresses, the emerging literature also investigates why creative expression has been such an important element of Black women's culture.'" Alice Walker's (1974) classic essay, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens," explains the necessity of Black women's creativity, even if in very limited spheres, in resisting objectifi- cation and asserting Black women's subjectivity as fully human beings. Illustrating Walker's thesis, Willie Mae Ford Smith, a prominent gospel singer featured in the 1984 documentary, "Say Amen Somebody," describes what singing means to her. She notes, "it's just a feeling within. You can't help yourself. . . . I feel like I can fly away. I forget I'm in the world sometimes. I just want to take off." For Mother Smith, her creativity is a sphere of freedom, one that helps her cope with and transcend daily life. This third key theme in Black feminist thought-the focus on Black women's culture-is significant for three reasons. First, the data from Black women's culture suggest that the rela- tionship between oppressed people's consciousness of oppression and the actions they take in dealing with oppressive structures may be far more complex than that suggested by existing social theory. Conventional social science continues to assume a fit between consciousness and activity; hence, accurate measures of human behavior are thought to produce accurate portraits of human consciousness of self and social structure (Westkott, 1979). In contrast, Black women's experiences suggest that Black women may overtly conform to the societal roles laid out for them, yet covertly oppose these roles in numerous spheres, an opposition shaped by the consciousness of being on the bottom. Black women's activities in families, churches, community institutions, and creative expression may represent more than an effort to mitigate pressures stemming from oppression. Rather, the Black female ideological frame of reference that Black women acquire through sisterhood, motherhood, and creative expres- sion may serve the added purpose of shaping a Black female consciousness about the work- ings of oppression. Moreover, this consciousness is shaped not only through abstract, rational reflection, but also is developed through concrete rational action. For example, while Black mothers may develop consciousness through talking with and listening to their children, they may also shape consciousness by how they live their lives, the actions they take on behalf of their children. That these activities have been obscured from traditional social scientists should come as no surprise. Oppressed peoples may maintain hidden consciousness and may not reveal their true selves for reasons of self-protection." A second reason that the focus on Black women's culture is significant is that it points to the problematic nature of existing conceptualizations of the term "activism." While Black women's reality cannot be understood without attention to the interlocking structures of op- pression that limit Black women's lives, Afro-American women's experiences suggest that pos- sibilities for activism exist even within such multiple structures of domination. Such activism can take several forms. For Black women under extremely harsh conditions, the private deci- sion to reject external definitions of Afro-American womanhood may itself be a form of activism

If Black women find themselves in settings where total conformity is expected, and where traditional forms of activism such as voting, participating in collective movements, and officeholding are impossible, then the individual women who in their consciousness choose to be self-defined and self-evaluating are, in fact, activists. They are retaining a grip over their definition as subjects, as full humans, and rejecting definitions of themselves as the objectified "other." For example, while Black slave women were forced to conform to the specific op- pression facing them, they may have had very different assessments of themselves and slav- ery than did the slaveowners. In this sense, consciousness can be viewed as one potential sphere of freedom, one that may exist simultaneously with unfree, allegedly conforming be- havior (Westkott, 1979). Moreover, if Black women simultaneously use all resources available to them-their roles as mothers, their participation in churches, their support of one another in Black female networks, their creative expression-to be self-defined and self-valuating and to encourage others to reject objectification, then Black women's everyday behavior itself is a form of activism. People who view themselves as fully human, as subjects, become activists, no matter how limited the sphere of their activism may be. By returning subjectivity to Black women, Black feminists return activism as well. A third reason that the focus on Black women's culture is significant is that an analytical model exploring the relationship between oppression, consciousness, and activism is implicit in the way Black feminists have studied Black women's culture. With the exception of Dill (1983), few scholars have deliberately set out to develop such a model. However, the type of work done suggests that an implicit model paralleling that proposed by Mullings (1986a) has influenced Black feminist research. Several features pervade emerging Black feminist approaches. First, researchers stress the interdependent relationship between the interlocking oppression that has shaped Black wo- men's choices and Black women's actions in the context of those choices. Black feminist re- searchers rarely describe Black women's behavior without attention to the opportunity structures shaping their subjects' lives (Higginbotham, 1985; Ladner, 1971; Myers, 1980). Sec- ond, the question of whether oppressive structures and limited choices stimulate Black wo- men's behavior characterized by apathy and alienation, or behavior demonstrating subjectivity and activism is seen as ultimately dependent on Black women's perceptions of their choices. In other words, Black women's consciousness-their analytical, emotional, and ethical perspective of themselves and their place in society-becomes a critical part of the relationship between the working of oppression and Black women's actions. Finally, this rela- tionship between oppression, consciousness, and action can be seen as a dialectical one. In this model, oppressive structures create patterns of choices which are perceived in varying ways by Black women. Depending on their consciousness of themselves and their relation- ship to these choices, Black women may or may not develop Black-female spheres of influ- ence where they develop and validate what will be appropriate, Black-female sanctioned responses to oppression. Black women's activism in constructing Black-female spheres of in- fluence may, in turn, affect their perceptions of the political and economic choices offered to them by oppressive structures, influence actions actually taken, and ultimately, alter the na- ture of oppression they experience. The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought Taken together, the three key themes in Black feminist thought-the meaning of self- definition and self-valuation, the interlocking nature of oppression, and the importance of redefining culture-have made significant contributions to the task of clarifying a Black wo- men's standpoint of and for Black women. While this accomplishment is important in and of itself, Black feminist thought has potential contributions to make to the diverse disciplines housing its practitioners.

The sociological significance of Black feminist thought lies in two areas. First, the content of Black women's ideas has been influenced by and contributes to on-going dialogues in a variety of sociological specialties. While this area merits attention, it is not my primary con- cern in this section. Instead, I investigate a second area of sociological significance: the pro- cess by which these specific ideas were produced by this specific group of individuals. In other words, I examine the influence of Black women's outsider within status in academia on the actual thought produced. Thus far, I have proceeded on the assumption that it is impossi- ble to separate the structure and thematic content of thought. In this section, I spell out exactly what form the relationship between the three key themes in Black feminist thought and Black women's outsider within status might take for women scholars generally, with special attention to Black female sociologists. First, I briefly summarize the role sociological paradigms play in shaping the facts and theories used by sociologists. Second, I explain how Black women's outsider within status might encourage Black women to have a distinctive standpoint vis-a-vis sociology's paradig- matic facts and theories. I argue that the thematic content of Black feminist thought de- scribed above represents elements of just such a standpoint and give examples of how the combination of sociology's paradigms and Black women's outsider within status as sociologists directed their attention to specific areas of sociological inquiry. Two Elements of Sociological Paradigms Kuhn defines a paradigm as the "entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community" (1962:175). As such, a paradigm consists of two fundamental elements: the thought itself and its producers and practitioners.'6 In this sense, the discipline of sociology is itself a paradigm-it consists of a system of knowledge shared by sociologists-and simultaneously consists of a plurality of paradigms (e.g., function- alism, Marxist sociology, feminist sociology, existential sociology), each produced by its own practitioners. Two dimensions of thought itself are of special interest to this discussion. First, systems of knowledge are never complete. Rather, they represent guidelines for "thinking as usual." Kuhn (1962) refers to these guidelines as "maps," while Schutz (1944) describes them as "reci- pes." As Schutz points out, while "thinking as usual" is actually only partially organized and partially clear, and may contain contradictions, to its practitioners it provides sufficient coher- ence, clarity, and consistency. Second, while thought itself contains diverse elements, I will focus mainly on the important fact/theory relationship. As Kuhn (1962) suggests, facts or observations become meaningful in the context of theories or interpretations of those observa- tions. Conversely, theories "fit the facts" by transforming previously accessible observations into facts. According to Mulkay, "observation is not separate from interpretation; rather these are two facets of a single process" (1979:49). Several dimensions of the second element of sociological paradigms-the community formed by a paradigm's practitioners-are of special interest to this discussion. First, group insiders have similar worldviews, aquired through similar educational and professional train- ing, that separate them from everyone else. Insider worldviews may be especially alike if group members have similar social class, gender, and racial backgrounds. Schutz describes the insider worldview as the "cultural pattern of group life"-namely, all the values and be- haviors which characterize the social group at a given moment in its history. In brief, insiders

have undergone similar experiences, possess a common history, and share taken-for-granted knowledge that characterizes "thinking as usual." A second dimension of the community of practitioners involves the process of becoming an insider. How does one know when an individual is really an insider and not an outsider in disguise? Merton suggests that socialization into the life of a group is a lengthy process of being immersed in group life, because only then can "one understand the fine-grained mean- ings of behavior, feeling, and values . . and decipher the unwritten grammar of conduct and nuances of cultural idiom" (1972:15). The process is analogous to immersion in a foreign cul- ture in order to learn its ways and its language (Merton, 1972; Schutz, 1944). One becomes an insider by translating a theory or worldview into one's own language until, one day, the individual converts to thinking and acting according to that worldview. A final dimension of the community of practitioners concerns the process of remaining an insider. A sociologist typically does this by furthering the discipline in ways described as appropriate by sociology generally, and by areas of specialization particularly. Normal foci for scientific sociological investigation include: (1) determining significant facts; (2) matching facts with existing theoretical interpretations to "test" the paradigm's ability to predict facts; and (3) resolving ambiguities in the paradigm itself by articulating and clarifying theory (Kuhn, 1962).

Black Women and the Outsider Within Status Black women may encounter much less of a fit between their personal and cultural ex- periences and both elements of sociological paradigms than that facing other sociologists. On the one hand, Black women who undergo sociology's lengthy socialization process, who im- merse themselves in the cultural pattern of sociology's group life, certainly wish to acquire the insider skills of thinking in and acting according to a sociological worldview. But on the other hand, Black women's experienced realities, both prior to contact and after initiation, may provide them with "special perspectives and insights . . . available to that category of outsid- ers who have been systematically frustrated by the social system" (Merton, 1972:29). In brief, their outsider allegiances may militate against their choosing full insider status, and they may be more apt to remain outsiders within."7 In essence, to become sociological insiders, Black women must assimilate a standpoint that is quite different than their own. White males have long been the dominant group in sociology, and the sociological worldview understandably reflects the concerns of this group of practitioners. As Merton observes, "white male insiderism in American sociology during the past generations has largely been of the tacit or de facto . . variety. It has simply taken the form of patterned expectations about the appropriate . . . problems for investigation" (1972:12). In contrast, a good deal of the Black female experience has been spent coping with, avoiding, subverting, and challenging the workings of this same white male insiderism. It should come as no surprise that Black women's efforts in dealing with the effects of interlock- ing systems of oppression might produce a standpoint quite distinct from, and in many ways opposed to, that of white male insiders. Seen from this perspective, Black women's socialization into sociology represents a more intense case of the normal challenges facing sociology graduate students and junior profes- sionals in the discipline. Black women become, to use Simmel's (1921) and Schutz's terminol- ogy, penultimate "strangers." The stranger . .. does not share the basic assumptions of the group. He becomes essentially the man

who has to place in question nearly everything that seems to be unquestionable to the members of the approached group. ... To him the cultural patterns of the approached group do not have the authority of a tested system of recipes . . . because he does not partake in the vivid historical tradi- tion by which it has been formed (Schutz, 1944:502). Like everyone else, Black women may see sociological "thinking as usual" as partially organ- ized, partially clear, and contradictory, and may question these existing recipes. However, for them, this questioning process may be more acute, for the material that they encounter- white male insider-influenced observations and interpretations about human society-places white male subjectivity at the center of analysis and assigns Afro-American womanhood a position on the margins. In spite of a lengthy socialization process, it may also be more difficult for Afro-American women to experience conversion and begin totally to think in and act according to a sociologi- cal worldview. Indeed, since past generations of white male insiderism has shaped a sociolog- ical worldview reflecting this group's concerns, it may be self-destructive for Black women to embrace that worldview. For example, Black women would have to accept certain funda- mental and self-devaluing assumptions: (1) white males are more worthy of study because they are more fully human than everyone else; and (2) dichotomous oppositional thinking is natural and normal. More importantly, Black women would have to act in accordance with their place in a white male worldview.

This involves accepting one's own subordination or regretting the accident of not being born white and male. In short, it may be extremely difficult for Black women to accept a worldview predicated upon Black female inferiority. Remaining in sociology by doing normal scientific investigation may also be less compli- cated for traditional sociologists than for Afro-American women. Unlike Black women, learn- ers from backgrounds where the insider information and experiences of sociology are more familiar may be less likely to see the taken-for-granted assumptions of sociology and may be more prone to apply their creativity to "normal science." In other words, the transition from student status to that of a practitioner engaged in finding significant facts that sociological paradigms deem important, matching facts with existing theories, and furthering paradig- matic development itself may proceed more smoothly for white middle-class males than for working-class Black females. The latter group is much more inclined to be struck by the mismatch of its own experiences and the paradigms of sociology itself.

Moreover, those Black women with a strong foundation in Black women's culture (e.g., those that recognize the value of self-definition and self-valuation, and that have a concrete understanding of sister- hood and motherhood) may be more apt to take a critical posture toward the entire sociologi- cal enterprise. In brief, where traditional sociologists may see sociology as "normal" and define their role as furthering knowledge about a normal world with taken-for-granted as- sumptions, outsiders within are liable to see anomalies. The types of anomalies typically seen by Black female academicians grow directly from Black women's outsider within status and appear central in shaping the direction Black femi- nist thought has taken thus far. Two types of anomalies are characteristically noted by Black female scholars. First, Black female sociologists typically report the omission of facts or obser- vations about Afro-American women in the sociological paradigms they encounter. As Scott points out, "from reading the literature, one might easily develop the impression that Black women have never played any role in this society" (1982:85). Where white males may take it as perfectly normal to generalize findings from studies of white males to other groups, Black women are more likely to see such a practice as problematic, as an anomaly. Similarly, when white feminists produce generalizations about "women," Black feminists routinely ask "which women do you mean?" In the same way that Rollins (1985) felt invisible in her em- ployer's kitchen, Afro-American female scholars are repeatedly struck by their own invisibil- ity, both as full human subjects included in sociological facts and observations, and as practitioners in the discipline itself. It should come as no surprise that much of Black feminist

thought aims to counter this invisibility by presenting sociological analyses of Black women as fully human subjects. For example, the growing research describing Black women's histor- ical and contemporary behavior as mothers, community workers, church leaders, teachers, and employed workers, and Black women's ideas about themselves and their opportunities, reflects an effort to respond to the omission of facts about Afro-American women. A second type of anomaly typically noted by Black female scholars concerns distortions of facts and observations about Black women. Afro-American women in academia are fre- quently struck by the difference between their own experiences and sociological descriptions of the same phenomena. For example, while Black women have and are themselves mothers, they encounter distorted versions of themselves and their mothers under the mantle of the Black matriarchy thesis. Similarly, for those Black women who confront racial and sexual discrimination and know that their mothers and grandmothers certainly did, explanations of Black women's poverty that stress low achievement motivation and the lack of Black female "human capital" are less likely to ring true.

The response to these perceived distortions has been one of redefining distorted images-for example, debunking the Sapphire and Mammy myths. Since facts or observations become meaningful in the context of a theory, this emphasis on producing accurate descriptions of Black women's lives has also refocused attention on major omissions and distortions in sociological theories themselves. By drawing on the strengths of sociology's plurality of subdisciplines, yet taking a critical posture toward them, the work of Black feminist scholars taps some fundamental questions facing all sociologists. One such question concerns the fundamental elements of society that should be studied. Black feminist researchers' response has been to move Black women's voices to the center of the analysis, to study people, and by doing so, to reaffirm human subjectivity and intentional- ity. They point to the dangers of omission and distortion that can occur if sociological con- cepts are studied at the expense of human subjectivity. For example, there is a distinct difference between conducting a statistical analysis of Black women's work, where Afro- American women are studied as a reconstituted amalgam of researcher-defined variables (e.g., race, sex, years of education, and father's occupation), and examining Black women's self- definitions and self-valuations of themselves as workers in oppressive jobs. While both ap- proaches can further sociological knowledge about the concept of work, the former runs the risk of objectifying Black women, of reproducing constructs of dichotomous oppositional dif- ference, and of producing distorted findings about the nature of work itself.

A second question facing sociologists concerns the adequacy of current interpretations of key sociological concepts. For example, few sociologists would question that work and family are two fundamental concepts for sociology. However, bringing Black feminist thought into the center of conceptual analysis raises issues of how comprehensive current sociological in- terpretations of these two concepts really are. For example, labor theories that relegate Afro- American women's work experiences to the fringe of analysis miss the critical theme of the interlocking nature of Black women as female workers (e.g., Black women's unpaid domestic labor) and Black women as racially-oppressed workers (e.g., Black women's unpaid slave labor and exploited wage labor). Examining the extreme case offered by Afro-American women's unpaid and paid work experiences raises questions about the adequacy of generalizations about work itself. For example, Black feminists' emphasis on the simultaneity of oppression redefines the economic system itself as problematic. From this perspective, all generalizations about the normal workings of labor markets, organizational structure, occupational mobility, and income differences that do not explicitly see oppression as problematic become suspect. In short, Black feminists suggest that all generalizations about groups of employed and unem- ployed workers (e.g., managers, welfare mothers, union members, secretaries, Black teenag- ers) that do not account for interlocking structures of group placement and oppression in an economy as simply less complete than those that do.

Similarly, sociological generalizations about families that do not account for Black wo- men's experience will fail to see how the public/private split shaping household composition varies across social and class groupings, how racial/ethnic family members are differentially integrated into wage labor, and how families alter their household structure in response to changing political economies (e.g., adding more people and becoming extended, fragmenting and becoming female-headed, and migrating to locate better opportunities). Black women's family experiences represent a clear case of the workings of race, gender, and class oppression in shaping family life. Bringing undistorted observations of Afro-American women's family experiences into the center of analysis again raises the question of how other families are affected by these same forces. While Black women who stand outside academia may be familiar with omissions and distortions of the Black female experience, as outsiders to sociology, they lack legitimated professional authority to challenge the sociological anomalies. Similarly, traditional sociologi- cal insiders, whether white males or their nonwhite and/or female disciples, are certainly in no position to notice the specific anomalies apparent to Afro-American women, because these same sociological insiders produced them. In contrast, those Black women who remain rooted in their own experiences as Black women-and who master sociological paradigms yet retain a critical posture toward them-are in a better position to bring a special perspective not only to the study of Black women, but to some of the fundamental issues facing sociology itself.

Toward Synthesis: Outsiders Within Sociology Black women are not the only outsiders within sociology. As an extreme case of outsid- ers moving into a community that historically excluded them, Black women's experiences highlight the tension experienced by any group of less powerful outsiders encountering the paradigmatic thought of a more powerful insider community. In this sense, a variety of indi- viduals can learn from Black women's experiences as outsiders within: Black men, working- class individuals, white women, other people of color, religious and sexual minorities, and all individuals who, while from social strata that provided them with the benefits of white male insiderism, have never felt comfortable with its taken-for-granted assumptions. Outsider within status is bound to generate tension, for people who become outsiders within are forever changed by their new status. Learning the subject matter of sociology stimulates a reexamination of one's own personal and cultural experiences; and, yet, these same experiences paradoxically help to illuminate sociology's anomalies. Outsiders within occupy a special place-they become different people, and their difference sensitizes them to patterns that may be more difficult for established sociological insiders to see. Some outsiders within try to resolve the tension generated by their new status by leaving sociology and re- maining sociological outsiders. Others choose to suppress their difference by striving to be- come bonafide, "thinking as usual" sociological insiders. Both choices rob sociology of diversity and ultimately weaken the discipline. A third alternative is to conserve the creative tension of outsider within status by encour- aging and institutionalizing outsider within ways of seeing. This alternative has merit not only for actual outsiders within, but also for other sociologists as well. The approach sug- gested by the experiences of outsiders within is one where intellectuals learn to trust their own personal and cultural biographies as significant sources of knowledge. In contrast to approaches that require submerging these dimensions of self in the process of becoming an allegedly unbiased, objective social scientist, outsiders within bring these ways of knowing back into the research process. At its best, outsider within status seems to offer its occupants a powerful balance between the strengths of their sociological training and the offerings of their personal and cultural experiences. Neither is subordinated to the other. Rather, experienced

reality is used as a valid source of knowledge for critiquing sociological facts and theories, while sociological thought offers new ways of seeing that experienced reality. What many Black feminists appear to be doing is embracing the creative potential of their outsider within status and using it wisely. In doing so, they move themselves and their disciplines closer to the humanist vision implicit in their work-namely, the freedom both to be different and part of the solidarity of humanity

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nancyedimick · 7 years

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The ‘sanctuary cities’ executive order: Putting the bully back into ‘bully pulpit’

Co-blogger Ilya Somin has thoroughly reviewed the decision by the ND Cal. court to enjoin enforcement of President Trump’s “sanctuary cities” executive order; I commend his posting to you, and I agree wholeheartedly with his analysis and with his conclusion (see also here) that the decision represents “an important victory for both federalism and separation of powers.” [Also worth reading, if you like that sort of thing, is Judge William Orrick’s opinion in the case — it’s an impressive piece of judicial work.]

I realize that these days we lurch from one crisis to the next from day to day and that the order is already stale news. But I just want to focus on one small point, because it nicely illustrates, I think, the intellectual dishonesty, the disrespect for the niceties of the English language, and the “malevolence tempered by incompetence,” in Ben Wittes’s memorable phrase, that have characterized so much of what this administration has said and done during the first 100 days of its existence.

The most extraordinary and telling sentence in Orrick’s opinion is this one:

The Government’s primary defense is that the Order does not change the law, but merely directs the Attorney General and Secretary to enforce existing law.

That was the government’s primary defense? That the executive order, as the court put it later, “carries no legal force” and says only that “we’re going to enforce existing law”? Did we really need an executive order (not to mention all the hoopla surrounding it) to say that? The executive order itself says that “sanctuary cities” (which it does not define — see below) “have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic,” and their response is: “We’re going to enforce the law”? That’s what all the fuss was about?

Well, yes and no. Yes, in that this was indeed the position that the government attorneys took in the litigation, in a desperate attempt to save the order from being struck down. To see how and why this makes sense, let’s start with the operative language from the order:

Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States. … It is the policy of the executive branch to ensure, to the fullest extent of the law, that a State, or a political subdivision of a State, shall comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373. In furtherance of this policy, the Attorney General and the Secretary [of Homeland Security], in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.

The Attorney General shall take appropriate enforcement action against any entity that violates 8 U.S.C. 1373, or which has in effect a statute, policy, or practice that prevents or hinders the enforcement of Federal law. [emphasis added]

It seems pretty straightforward: The attorney general will take “appropriate enforcement action” against jurisdictions that don’t “comply with 8 USC 1373” or “hinder the enforcement of federal law,” including “ensur[ing]” that they are “not eligible to receive Federal grants.”

The Justice Department lawyers candidly conceded that if you read it that way — the way it’s actually written — it’s a substantial change in the law. Under current law, jurisdictions that “refuse to comply with 8 USC 1373” or “hinder enforcement” of federal immigration law are not ineligible to receive federal grants.

Furthermore, the executive order cannot, constitutionally, make them so; the Justice Department lawyers conceded that as well, that the president has no unilateral right to impose conditions on federal funding and that the order is blatantly unconstitutional to the extent it purports to do that.

So if it doesn’t mean what it seems to say, what does the administration think it means?

Only that jurisdictions that are not complying with sec. 1373 shall be ineligible to receive federal grants in those programs that are already made conditional on compliance with sec. 1373.*** The Order, as the Justice Department “explained for the first time at oral argument,” is “merely an exercise of the President’s ‘bully pulpit’ to highlight a changed approach to immigration enforcement.”

There are three relatively minor programs that already condition receipt of funds on compliance with sec. 1373: the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (“SCAAP”), the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program (“JAG”), and the Community Oriented Policing Services Grant Program (COPS).

[Oh, and that language about the attorney general taking enforcement actions against any jurisdiction that “prevents or hinders” enforcement of federal immigration law? No change there either, because the order only authorizes “appropriate” enforcement action against such jurisdictions — i.e., whatever we’re already authorized to do, we will do.]

So it’s just the “bully pulpit.” No change in the law. It’s a press release masquerading as an executive order: “We’re gonna get tough with all those sanctuary cities, by enforcing existing law against them.”

But that, too, is bluster and baloney. The administration would like you to think that “sanctuary cities” are “violating federal law” when they “willfully refuse to comply with 8 USC 1373.” But take a closer look at sec. 1373:

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.

Notice that it doesn’t require jurisdictions to do anything. Sec. 1373 prohibits a prohibition; jurisdictions may not “prohibit” or “restrict” government officials from sending information “regarding the citizenship or immigration status … of any individual” to the INS. It does not require the transmission of such information — it simply prohibits jurisdictions from prohibiting the transmission of such information.

That’s a pretty important distinction, because — again, incontrovertibly, even in the eyes of the Justice Department lawyers — the Constitution prohibits the federal government from requiring states and localities to expend their resources on assisting federal law enforcement, under well-established constitutional law under the 10th Amendment.

The administration does not want you to understand this. It wants you to think that sec. 1373 requires jurisdictions to cooperate with federal ICE agents (it does not) and that a jurisdiction that doesn’t cooperate is “refusing to comply” with sec. 1373 (it is not), and that those jurisdictions are going to lose billions of dollars of federal money (they will not).

More to the point, it wants city managers, and city council members, and county commissioners, and local police officials, to believe all that BS, because if they believe all of that, they’ll enter into “voluntary” arrangements with ICE to help them enforce federal immigration law lest they lose federal money — the way, for instance, that Miami-Dade County did right after the order was promulgated.

Miami-Dade commission votes to end county’s ‘sanctuary’ status; First ‘sanctuary city’ caves to Trump demands

Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 25 to withhold federal grants from jurisdictions that don’t comply with federal immigration authorities….The next day, [Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos] Gimenez issued a directive to the head of his jail to begin honoring all “detainers” issued by ICE — requests that ICE makes to a local jail to detain somebody for up to 48 hours to give federal agents time to investigate the person’s immigration status or pick them up. Gimenez said the move was necessary to ensure that the county doesn’t lose out on $355 million it receives in federal funding. The county commission agreed, voting 9-3 on Feb. 17 to adopt Gimenez’s decision.

It is bullying, plain and simple. We’ll scare you into thinking the consequences of noncooperation will be dire (though we know — at least, our lawyers know — that that is bluster and BS) so that you’ll cave in to our demands, notwithstanding the costs that it will impose on you (for which we will not reimburse or indemnify you) and the wreckage it imposes on your immigrant communities. It is reprehensible, and, once again, we have a federal judge to thank for pushing back against it.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/02/the-sanctuary-cities-executive-order-putting-the-bully-back-into-bully-pulpit/

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wolfandpravato · 7 years

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The ‘sanctuary cities’ executive order: Putting the bully back into ‘bully pulpit’

The most extraordinary and telling sentence in Orrick’s opinion is this one:

The Government’s primary defense is that the Order does not change the law, but merely directs the Attorney General and Secretary to enforce existing law.

So if it doesn’t mean what it seems to say, what does the administration think it means?

Miami-Dade commission votes to end county’s ‘sanctuary’ status; First ‘sanctuary city’ caves to Trump demands

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/02/the-sanctuary-cities-executive-order-putting-the-bully-back-into-bully-pulpit/

#Law #Lawyer

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