#there are still a lot of issues of economic dependency and control especially for young adults

[aronarchy]

Why we don’t like it when children hit us back

To all the children who have ever been told to “respect” someone that hated them.

March 21, 2023

Even those of us that are disturbed by the thought of how widespread corporal punishment still is in all ranks of society are uncomfortable at the idea of a child defending themself using violence against their oppressors and abusers. A child who hits back proves that the adults “were right all along,” that their violence was justified. Even as they would cheer an adult victim for defending themself fiercely.

Even those “child rights advocates” imagine the right child victim as one who takes it without ever stopping to love “its” owners. Tear-stained and afraid, the child is too innocent to be hit in a guilt-free manner. No one likes to imagine the Brat as Victim—the child who does, according to adultist logic, deserve being hit, because they follow their desires, because they walk the world with their head high, because they talk back, because they are loud, because they are unapologetically here, and resistant to being cast in the role of guest of a world that is just not made for them.

If we are against corporal punishment, the brat is our gotcha, the proof that it is actually not that much of an injustice. The brat unsettles us, so much that the “bad seed” is a stock character in horror, a genre that is much permeated by the adult gaze (defined as “the way children are viewed, represented and portrayed by adults; and finally society’s conception of children and the way this is perpetuated within institutions, and inherent in all interactions with children”), where the adult fear for the subversion of the structures that keep children under control is very much represented.

It might be very well true that the Brat has something unnatural and sinister about them in this world, as they are at constant war with everything that has ever been created, since everything that has been created has been built with the purpose of subjugating them. This is why it feels unnatural to watch a child hitting back instead of cowering. We feel like it’s not right. We feel like history is staring back at us, and all the horror we felt at any rebel and wayward child who has ever lived, we are feeling right now for that reject of the construct of “childhood innocence.” The child who hits back is at such clash with our construction of childhood because we defined violence in all of its forms as the province of the adult, especially the adult in authority.

The adult has an explicit sanction by the state to do violence to the child, while the child has both a social and legal prohibition to even think of defending themself with their fists. Legislation such as “parent-child tort immunity” makes this clear. The adult’s designed place is as the one who hits, and has a right and even an encouragement to do so, the one who acts, as the person. The child’s designed place is as the one who gets hit, and has an obligation to accept that, as the one who suffers acts, as the object. When a child forcibly breaks out of their place, they are reversing the supposed “natural order” in a radical way.

This is why, for the youth liberationist, there should be nothing more beautiful to witness that the child who snaps. We have an unique horror for parricide, and a terrible indifference at the 450 children murdered every year by their parents in just the USA, without even mentioning all the indirect suicides caused by parental abuse. As a Psychology Today article about so-called “parricide” puts it:

Unlike adults who kill their parents, teenagers become parricide offenders when conditions in the home are intolerable but their alternatives are limited. Unlike adults, kids cannot simply leave. The law has made it a crime for young people to run away. Juveniles who commit parricide usually do consider running away, but many do not know any place where they can seek refuge. Those who do run are generally picked up and returned home, or go back on their own: Surviving on the streets is hardly a realistic alternative for youths with meager financial resources, limited education, and few skills.

By far, the severely abused child is the most frequently encountered type of offender. According to Paul Mones, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in defending adolescent parricide offenders, more than 90 percent have been abused by their parents. In-depth portraits of such youths have frequently shown that they killed because they could no longer tolerate conditions at home. These children were psychologically abused by one or both parents and often suffered physical, sexual, and verbal abuse as well—and witnessed it given to others in the household. They did not typically have histories of severe mental illness or of serious and extensive delinquent behavior. They were not criminally sophisticated. For them, the killings represented an act of desperation—the only way out of a family situation they could no longer endure.

- Heide, Why Kids Kill Parents, 1992.

Despite these being the most frequent conditions of “parricide,” it still brings unique disgust to think about it for most people. The sympathy extended to murdering parents is never extended even to the most desperate child, who chose to kill to not be killed. They chose to stop enduring silently, and that was their greatest crime; that is the crime of the child who hits back. Hell, children aren’t even supposed to talk back. They are not supposed to be anything but grateful for the miserable pieces of space that adults carve out in a world hostile to children for them to live following adult rules. It isn’t rare for children to notice the adult monopoly on violence and force when they interact with figures like teachers, and the way they use words like “respect.” In fact, this social dynamic has been noticed quite often:

Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority” and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person” and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.

(https://soycrates.tumblr.com/post/115633137923/stimmyabby-sometimes-people-use-respect-to-mean)

But it has received almost no condemnation in the public eye. No voices have raised to contrast the adult monopoly on violence towards child bodies and child minds. No voices have raised to praise the child who hits back. Because they do deserve praise. Because the child who sets their foot down and says this belongs to me, even when it’s something like their own body that they are claiming, is committing one of the most serious crimes against adult society, who wants them dispossessed.

Sources:

“The Adult Gaze: a tool of control and oppression,” https://livingwithoutschool.com/2021/07/29/the-adult-gaze-a-tool-of-control-and-oppression

“Filicide,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filicide

#repost of someone else’s content #medium repost #Alba M. #purity culture #ageism #adultism #youth oppression #childism #child abuse #parental abuse #youth rights #youthlib #youth liberation #parricide #nuclear family abolition #anarchism #note: I would consider reevaluating the demonization of adults who kill their parents too #many victims remain entrapped well into adulthood #there are still a lot of issues of economic dependency and control especially for young adults #and I don’t think such a totalizing power imbalance engendered in childhood is so easily levelled #even if an adult does become financially independent #likewise for adult victims of intimate partner abuse: also structurally made difficult for them to leave #even if not criminalized to the same degree #anti-abuser aktion

[kimberlybrown00]

Free Enjoy Creating Positions Manual - Just how to Have Explosive Sex

The internet was only getting started to gain popularity. When you mentioned the term, porn was probably the first thought that came to mind for many people. However, as time as gone by, this notion has evolved as people have discovered the benefits to make use of the internet and ways to create a business with it. But, porn remains quite significant on the internet. In fact, with the high speeds of connection to the internet, downloading porn clips films, videos, and other content happens in a matter of minutes and someone can easily enjoy a daily dose the same. As the subject of this article suggests, is it realistic to rid the web of porn? It is not possible. A cause like this would be a big waste of time.One of the things that make this issue difficult is the amount of money produced by the porn industry. That's why you'll find thousands upon thousands of porn websites, whose clients are largely males and spend a large portion of their money looking for sex online. To entice clients, some sites offer free videos. Some sites allow users to upload their own videos. No matter what, you will still find those who pay to have sex on the internet.The presence of pornography on the internet isn't only dependent on money, but also by the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech. At the beginning of the web, the online world was viewed as'morally clean' with people using words in a controlled manner and taking care not to offend others. However, as time went by , and people have been allowing people to speak what they think is a fact, pornography has been growing and enlarging its online realm. However, porn is always there and will continue to be no matter how it appears. The internet has made it much easier to access porn. It has also reduced the embarrassment of those who need to buy porn movies from adult stores. However, this can mean that children even as young as 3 years of age can have access to pornographic material. But thank goodness for the internet and its capacity to provide security and ensure that parents can control the types of websites their children access. Parents have the sole responsibility to ensure that their children don't have access to adult content on websites. The internet does not have any responsibility for this. One of the main issues of pornography is the addiction. There are an abundance of people obsessed with porn that they'll be seeking out any chance to download either pornographic video clips or images to satisfy a need that is difficult to satisfy. Alcoholism has been in the news for quite a while and has been around for a long time, just like alcoholics. It's not possible to completely eliminate alcohol, but it is important for alcoholics to acknowledge their problems. Child pornography is a problem that is not able to be removed. While there are laws that prohibit this kind of behavior however, it has found its way into the world of internet. The laws of one country cannot regulate or legislate the internet. Every nation has its own laws. In China, for example they are able to block websites that they deem inappropriate. What are the acceptable and non acceptable forms of pornography? These are tough questions to answer in regards to the definition of pornographic material as well as what is considered to be normal. What defines a pornographic line is not clear because different individuals have their own distinct views on pornography. According to the British government, 'violent and extreme pornography constitutes a crime'. However, what might seem extreme for one person may not be extreme for another. Freedom of expression and speech should be granted if it doesn't cause violence between parties. The freedom of expression seems to be limited by the internet. It should not be viewed as a threat to the ability of the internet to remove pornography. This will only lead to futility. It is essential to have the ability to control and take measures. They are worried that their female partners will become bored with their sexual activities and will seek out more comfort somewhere else. Kama Sutra's sales continue to rise despite economic downturns. We'll provide the free information on how to get a sex that is explosive. You can't miss foreplay as it is an essential element of making love. It helps you prepare yourself and your partner for sex and aids in building the sensation. According to experts, it takes minimum 15 minutes of arousal before a woman can orgasm.So how can you get the most out of your foreplay? Foreplay can be more than simply touching and kissing. Askmen.com put it beautifully: "Foreplay should encompass everything and everybody your lady loves kissing and caressing is always appreciated but don't confine yourself to the traditional standbys." We recommend the following activities to spice up foreplay. Watching porn movies with your partner, a hot eye contact, dirty talk, sensual massages and oral sexual contact. The Best Lovemaking Positions-If your goal is to give her the ultimate climax, you need to have positions that provide exotic stimulation to her clitoris and her G-spot. The two most sought-after position for lovemaking that are the Goat and the Three. It is one of the most sought-after positions for women who are in the top positions. This position will require you to sit in a comfortable chair that has a back that is supportive. The person is seated on your thigh and face against you. Then, she shifts her hips upwards and down on your penis shaft. For maximum stimulation, she is able to regulate the depth and angle that her penetration takes place. This position limits your movement however you are able to touch her breasts and clitoris to stimulate her. Position 69: This one lets both partners have orgasm simultaneously. Firstly, apply generous amounts of lubricants on your fingers. After that, place your hands over her genitals, and lie down. Then, use your fingers to stimulate her clitoris until there is an increase in the amount of water. If she's excited take a kiss and kiss her clitoris and the perineum. If done properly the act of oral sex is sufficient to send her great orgasm.Addiction to porn is a far more serious issue than we realize. The latest estimates indicate that around 40-60 percent of all men, and 35 percent of womenhave some kind of problem with it. My research has found that those with these addictions are extremely cautious of discussing pornography with anyone. Even when they know someone who has. They believe that their issue is unique and they are the only ones who suffer from it. Their reticence in seeking assistance can result in deeper or more severe compulsive behaviour. Compulsive behaviors can become something of a compulsion or a complete addiction if they are not treated. The danger of addiction to pornography is far greater than watching of sexually explicit images. Many people become obsessed with sexual pleasure to the point where they can't think of any other option. The result is that every circumstance is sexualized, sometimes inappropriately. People's need to have a sexual experience can rise to levels that are illegal and dangerous. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with pornography, here are some helpful guidelines to help begin the process of healing.One of the toughest things anyone can accept that they're struggling. Here's a story of someone I had the privilege of working with. The couple was in turmoil. He was hooked on porn for hours on end, sometimes for up to 4 to 6 hours. He was also staying up late and was not getting enough sleep. He was paranoid about the possibility that someone would discover his issue. He kept magazines, DVDs, and cassettes. All of this while feeling a sense of guilt and shame. When I first met him, his response to me was: "I'm not sure that I'm suffering from a problem!" That's the power of denial. To find added information on this please find useful source. It is possible that you are contemplating whether you're suffering from issues. Maybe you're wondering whether it is really something serious. I can tell you this If you're feeling anxiety, guilt, shame or regret about your past actions, there is problems. You should seek treatment. If you are able to admit that you have a problem you're ready to take the next step.Isolation is one of the biggest contributors to a pornography problem. If a person continues trying to resolve the issue on their own then they'll continue to get the same results. Pornography is an issue that is deeply rooted within the emotional blind spots that require that others help. People who cover up their issues can't be helped. I didn't tell anyone--my wife, my closest friends, my pastor (especially the people in my church!) or anyone else! They would all judge me. I thought they'd have to judge me. I felt lonely and isolated, and I did! Added to this was my pride which kept me from seeking help from different avenues, like support groups. I was not interested in being a part of support groups because I felt they were all losers and perverts (who was who judging whom?). and I worried about my privacy. "Though isolation is the main enemy of healing, it doesn't mean that a person ought to openly talk to anyone with a problem. It's important to find an honest person who has the ability to aid in healing.There is an old saying that is found in 12-step programs that "You are as sick as the secrets you keep." This secrecy keeps the addiction cycle going. To be healed, it is important to find a person with whom you are able to share all your secrets. A lot of people fear that they don't know someone. They also worry that they'll be judged by other people because of the actions they share. Finding someone might be much easier than you think. There are many 12-step programs that are available in all communities along with counselors and ministers who would be happy to help. Secrets lose their power when the right people are able to aid. When secrets are no longer effective they begin to heal. begins.Next, it is absolutely necessary to get rid of any pornographic material, whether it's hard or soft, that is in the possession of a person. To begin, destroy all pornographic: tapes, DVDs magazines, files, files and computer files. Do not toss them, but take them away! They can be found accidentally if they are in a good state. It is imperative that the materials be destroyed. Also, stop all subscriptions for pay television sites, pornographic channels, and magazines with sexy content. These include magazines that feature sexually attractive models. Unblock private phones that are used to have sexual content. Close the account for mail if post box offices are being used to send private messages. Go through personal libraries, videotapes and DVD collections to be sure that nothing exists that could be used to satisfy the desire for more - this includes R Rated films. Be vigilant in removing these temptations! When these materials have been destroyed, the next step is to create a new set of operating limits. Boundaries are the boundaries we create to stop dangerous things from getting within our reach. Through the creation of new boundaries we can avoid situations that previously triggered our emotions. The process takes time and is improved by trial and error. However, almost everyone can identify the more obvious options. If one realizes that they cannot resist purchasing pornographic magazines from the convenience store, then they decide to limit their purchases and make a promise to never go on their own to a convenience store. Someone who isn't able to stop acting out while they are at home alone must be prevented from doing it until they have a reduced appetite for pornography. Each person is different and what causes one person's behavior may not affect one person in the same way. Someone else might not be attracted to pornographic magazines, however they may still be drawn to sexually explicit pay per views, HBO, and Cinemax shows. In such a case, an important boundary is to stop these services. If someone is constantly tempted to buy pay per watch movies, they need to alter their subscription to cable or drop it altogether.Some individuals trigger more easily when they are feeling lonely, angry, hungry or tired (HALT). Becoming aware of these emotional and physical conditions can help people stay clear of triggers that can cause to being out.The research is conclusive and it's difficult to argue with the results. The rate of recovery from sexual addiction is close to zero for people who do not have an accountability system in place. For those in an effective program that has an accountability component the recovery rate rises up to around 80 percent. Accountability is a constant communication with a specific person who is knowledgeable of the addiction's challenges. A accountability partner will inquire about how successful they have been in keeping "sober" for that day, and provide suggestions for improvement. An accountability partner should be with the same sexual orientation and have experienced similar issues through a recognized program. It is not recommended to have spouses as an accountability partner.For myself I have an accountability partner who is named Rick. We see each other at least four times a week and discuss almost every topic. The length of our conversations typically ranges from five to 10 minutes. Although Rick and I are utterly different, we are determined to be free from pornography and sexual impureness. Rick helps me to see the world from a new perspective and holds me responsible for my actions. Additionally, I act as an accountability partner to several others. My role is to assist my mentors overcome their issues with porn by being a caring person to ask them hard questions about whether or not they've been keeping their sexuality pure.One important distinction that deserves a mention of it's own, is reporting on the internet using software. The internet is a tempting spot for porn. It's nearly mandatory that anyone who has problems with pornography use special-designed software for filtering and reporting. Filtering software prevents the most obvious pornographic sites from appearing in the web browser. Reporting software allows you to use your computer however you'd like, while also reporting every site to your accountability partner. Many people, who are serious about healing from pornography, find that this can greatly reduce the need to browse pornographic websites.

#πορνό βίντεο

[exxar1]

Episode 5: Why Machiavelli Would Never Wear a Mask (And Why You Shouldn’t Either)

12/9/2020

Last week’s episode of the Young Heretics podcast was about The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince is one of those classics of western lit that I’ve never actually read – or even taken a college class where this was one of the texts. What little I remember about this text is from history class during my junior year in high school. Mrs. Jones (no relation) told us that Machiavelli wrote The Prince as a treatise on political philosophy. He believed that the ends justified the means, and that the best way for a prince to retain power over the people was to rule by fear rather than love. The word “Machavellian” has always been used as a pejorative description in our modern society, often referring to those people who are cold, heartless, and unfeeling. Machiavelli’s name has become synonymous with those characters in popular movies, books and TV shows that attempt to control other characters and events by using various means of deceit and guile.

Now, to be fair, Mrs. Jones’ interpretation and summary of The Prince is not entirely wrong. I did a brief Google search on Machiavelli and The Prince, and about half the links of my search results reaffirmed that view. The other half, however, offered a surprisingly different take on The Prince, one that is also shared by Spencer Klavan on Young Heretics. That podcast is now 29 episodes old, but this is the first one that has presented me with something entirely new – both the text itself and the interpretation of it.

In his advice to the titular prince, Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli instructs him on how to best maintain power and control of his subjects and his state. The best way to do this, Machiavelli believed, was for the prince to be feared rather than loved. Also, at times, it would be necessary to use what many would consider to be unjust or immoral means in order to sustain that power and control. Hence Machiavelli’s negative reputation in the history books and modern culture.

But Spencer makes the argument that Machiavelli’s reputation is ill-earned. There’s more to this Italian philosopher than what has been passed down in the history books. To put it simply, Machiavelli was a realist. He addressed human nature – and human behavior – in harsh, realistic terms. This was how Machiavelli viewed the world. To use our vernacular, he didn’t sugarcoat the bad stuff. He understood how people behaved – both the ones in power and the ones being ruled – and he framed his advice to his prince in these simple, realistic terms.

I’ve spent the last several days thinking about this episode, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Spencer chose this episode to air when it did. All over the country, many state governors have issued lockdown orders for their principalities in response to a renewed surge in positive cases of COVID-19. As any of you who know me – either in real life or via social media – can attest, I am a rabid believer in the battle against face masks and the lockdowns. I’m also a firm believer in the actual science – as opposed to the political nonsense spouted by Doctor Fauci and his panel of “experts” – that says over and over how useless and pointless the masks are in the efforts to stop the spread of the corona virus. And, as you also know, I have plenty of time on my hands to think while at my day job, and the other day I came to a rather startling conclusion:

We should all be more like Machiavelli.

When exactly did we, the American people, become a nation of whiny, spoiled, self-entitled sissies? A nation of people who are so terrified of the possibility of dying that we happily give up our most basic freedoms and cower inside our homes or behind masks? Because that's exactly what's happened. The basic liberties and routines of our daily lives and, for many, their very livelihoods, were suddenly halted and/or shut down by our state governors who were acting in response to so-called science and medical “experts” in the effort to save a small, vulnerable percentage of our population. I've lost count of the number of times I've read  on social media posts in the last 6 months about how pro-maskers wear a mask to protect their 85 year old grandmother or their 70 year old father. I've been called “heartless” and “pro-Nazi” from strangers in the comments section of news articles whenever I respond with the same argument that I'm going to put forth here.

We of the last couple generations have become so soft and spoiled and lazy that we've forgotten just how harsh and deadly real life can often be. And I'm including myself in that crowd. Those of us born in the last four decades of the 20th century have known nothing but prosperity and comfort, especially if – like me – you grew up in a typically middle class household. This is even more true of anyone born after 1995. I'm speaking of the generation that has never known life without Starbucks, Amazon, Google or a cell phone; the generation that grew up using laptop computers and watching TV by streaming it on the internet. In fact, we've become so complacent that we don't even have to leave our comfort zones to order a Big Mac from McDonald's or groceries from Walmart. When I was growing up in the 80s, I remember having to wait an eternity (4-6 weeks) for a toy to arrive that I had mail-ordered from a Sears catalog. Nowadays, I complain if my Amazon package isn't on my doorstep within 24 hours.

For pretty much all of us, 2020 was a massive wake-up call; a Mike-Tyson-punch-to-the-face or dive-into-Lake-Michigan-in-the-middle-of-December kind of wake-up call. None of us were prepared for a pandemic whose projected death toll was in the millions. Everyone from the top down – the president, our congressmen, our state governors, the national and local health experts – reacted instinctively. The medical experts, especially, were very quick to panic, based primarily on preliminary reports from European countries and China. Many state governors – most of them Democrats – were quick to declare a state of emergency and issue a lockdown order for their respective principalities. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were suddenly without work. Unemployment claims shot through the stratosphere. Congress approved an economic stimulus package. Everyone in the government – both national and local – assured us citizens that the lockdowns were temporary, two months at most.

But, of course, two months became three, then four, and by mid-July, many states were still in phase one or two of their “re-opening”. By this point, even the liberal-controlled mainstream media was reporting on the sudden spike of suicides in the lockdown states. Millions of unemployment claims were stuck in severe backlog, and more and more workers were being put on furlough by their employers – or just simply laid off. Here in Las Vegas, for example, the entire strip was a complete ghost town from mid-March to mid-June. This city's economy is utterly dependent on the tourism industry, and, with all casinos and hotels completely closed, the city as a whole suffered greatly. It's still suffering, in fact, even though most of the strip has been open since mid-July. Almost all the hotels and casinos can only afford to be open from Thursday to Sunday. Thousands here are still unemployed or working two part time jobs for barely minimum wage just to make basic ends meet.

And now, as I write this, our governor – along with those of California, New York, and many others – has declared a second round of lockdowns. In California, both Governor Newsom and the mayor of L.A. have banned indoor AND outdoor dining at all restaurants. And again, we the citizens have been told that this is for our own safety, and that these lockdowns will be temporary. One doesn’t have to look far on Twitter or Facebook to see cell phone videos of desperate, tearful, and/or furious restaurant and bar owners engaged in verbal rages about the injustice of all of this.

Here’s what should have happened clear back in February of this year:

Our leaders – our princes, if you will – both national and local, should have consulted not only the medical experts but also a team of economic and social advisors. The governors of every state should have taken a long, hard look at the long term cost of even a brief economic shutdown versus the projected death toll in the short term if COVID-19 was allowed to run its natural course through the U.S. population. You can already see where I’m headed with this. Our governors chose to shut down their states, to close all “non-essential” businesses, and ordered all citizens to self-quarantine. This was only supposed to be for a few weeks, at most. But we’ve all witnessed the long term effects of these shutdowns – skyrocketing unemployment rates, a rapid, severe spike in suicides and domestic abuse cases, and children who are falling so far behind in school due to “distance learning” that many will simply end up dropping out or repeating the same grade for another year.

Our princes should have been more like Machiavelli. They should have allowed life to continue as normal – no mask mandates, no social distancing orders, and most definitely no mandatory quarantines. Instead, the princes should have advised all citizens that the choice was theirs to self-quarantine or not, and that face masks would also be encouraged but completely optional. The result of this, of course, would mean a very high death toll in the short term. There would be no way to avoid this. As we already know now, face masks and social distancing are pointless and useless when it comes to preventing the spread of COVID. The highest numbers of fatalities would be among those older than 65. Hospitals and morgues would be overwhelmed. Emergency triage centers would have to be established in parking lots and empty football stadiums. For a month or two, the news headlines would be filled each day with the most recent death tolls.

But then, into the third month, the death count would start to go down. As herd immunity was finally achieved, life would, slowly but surely, get back to normal. And through it all, there would have been a slight drop in the regular business of many restaurants, movie theaters, and other recreational businesses that rely on tourism and seasonal traffic. But, ultimately, the country would have recovered from this much faster than they will in our present timeline. As it stands now, hundreds of thousands of small businesses across America have gone bankrupt and closed their doors for good. Even major restaurant chains like Ruby Tuesday and Sweet Tomatoe’s have permanently closed many – if not all – their locations. In the alternate timeline, where they had been allowed to remain open with no restrictions of any kind on the number of customers they were allowed to have inside at any time, these businesses would most likely still be up and running.

Yes, that means that your 75 year old father or your 90 year old grandma would have probably died. But that’s life. Like Machiavelli, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Life is hard. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re in for a long and frustrating existence on this earth. And lest you think I’m speaking from some superior, unaffected, condescending platform where I have not experienced any loss or hardship this year, let me remind of you of my blog post about my close friend Aaron Walker from a month ago. No, his death was not the result of COVID, as far as I know, but it was sudden, and it was completely unexpected. I’m still feeling his loss. But you know what? Life goes on. We mourn the dead, we bury them, and then we move on. Death is a fact of life. Machiavelli would have understood that, and so should all of us in 2020. This year has seen a lot of death, more than anything in recent decades, in fact. But that’s life. That’s the way life goes sometimes, and trying to avoid that inevitability by forcing face masks and quarantine and shutting down businesses on a whim is not going to change that simple fact.

I know many of you reading this are probably screaming at your phone screen right now, calling me all kinds of names and cursing me. “How can you be so heartless????” you rave. “How can you allow so many elderly and innocents to die just so you can still go to the movies or sit down at McDonald’s to enjoy your iced coffee and Big Mac????” “You’re a murderer because you still refuse to wear a mask in public!!!!”

And you know what? You’re absolutely right. I am probably infecting others by not wearing a mask. I do still want to go to a movie on Friday night and pig out on overpriced popcorn and soda. I do enjoy going out to eat at least once a week with all my friends. And yep, I’m perfectly fine with accepting the reality that many people are going to die because our governors refused to sacrifice the whole society in the chance that it might save a few innocent lives.

In other words, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” That edict is as true today as when Spock said it to Captain Kirk in Star Trek 2 in 1982. Machiavelli would have completely understood that statement, and he also would have understood this: that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. We humans have been spreading disease to one another ever since Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Death, you see, is the natural consequence of sin. Death is unavoidable, and death comes for us all. For some of us, we are lucky enough to live rich, full lives. For others, death comes all too soon. My grandfather will be 90 years old this year on December 31st. If I were to ask him today if he were ready to shuffle off this mortal coil and be welcomed into the arms of our Heavenly Father, his answer would be an immediate and resounding, “Yes!”. Your 75 year old father or your 85 year old grandmother are most likely looking forward to death. That doesn’t mean you should just kill them now by your own hand to hasten the inevitable. But it does mean that they are ready to meet their maker if their number is up. (And, by the way, is not more cruel to force the elderly to slowly waste away alone, locked up in forced quarantine in nursing homes, not allowed to see or even speak to their loved ones until they eventually die of depression, loneliness or COVID???)

COVID-19 is an act of God. It’s a chance of nature, a random thing that has struck the human race, and none of us have the power to change it or ward it off or protect ourselves and our loved ones against its wrath. As we have been doing since the Tower of Babel, we humans have infected one another and survived many, many plagues worse than this one. So you need to stop your whining, stop your complaining, pick yourself up, and get on with your fucking life. And, while you’re at it, you might want to open your Bible and get acquainted with your Creator. Because, sooner or later, you’re gonna meet him, and if you have not accepted his son, Jesus Christ, as your lord and savior, you will spend eternity in a place that makes COVID look like a summer’s vacation in the Florida Keys.

So, in conclusion, be more like Machiavelli. Throw away your damn mask, rise up against the tyranny of our modern princes, and help me get our lives back to normal. If we do not stand up for our freedoms we will most assuredly lose every last one of them.

Mmmmm-kay???

(And, by the way, if you haven’t been listening to Young Heretics, I strongly advise you to drop everything and begin immediately. Look it up on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. It will change your life. 

You’re welcome.)

#covid #covidiot #life #god #mask #liberty #freedom

[trh-thesussexes]

HRH The Duke of Sussex Interviews Dr Jane Goodall For The September Issue

#Duke of Sussex #Prince Harry #Dr Jane Goodall #Vogue19 #Interview

[redorblue]

The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante

I just finished reading The Story of a New Name, the second part of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, and I’m completely blown away by how good this book is. The first one, too, and I can’t wait to read the third and fourth part, but this one genuinely makes me want to bow down to Elena Ferrante and promise her my firstborn child. I’m not saying that it doesn’t have its lengths, but the amount of detail that she puts into the settings and the richness of the characters’ inner lives makes me want to read twenty more of its kind - it’s just that good. It even makes me want to freshen up my Italian because the difference between speaking standard Italian and the Neapolitan dialect is an important part of the book and would probably add a lot more depth, but... I can’t wait that long.

The first two installments of the tetralogy are mostly set in Naples in the 1950s and 1960s, in a poor neighborhood at the outskirts of the city. This is where Elena and Lila grow up: two girls with very similar backgrounds (working class fathers, stay-at-home mothers, miserable living conditions, a lot of domestic and street violence), but with very different personalities. Lila is a very extroverted person, direct to the point of rude or aggressive, courageous, impulsive, sometimes manipulative, very passionate, and gifted with a very creative and astute kind of intelligence. Elena is more of an introvert, a very diligent, responsible and disciplined person who tries to avoid conflict at all cost and has a good eye for unwritten social rules, with a rich emotional life but an aversion to sharing it with others. She’s also gifted intellectually, but rather as a result of hard work; she’s what you’d call booksmart as opposed to Lila’s intuitive intelligence that’s mostly focused exclusively on her rather volatile fields of interest.

In short, in many regards they’re each other’s opposite, which makes their friendship incredibly fascinating from the outside and alternately fortifying or toxic from the inside. When things are good, they ignite each others’ brains with ideas and they support each other no matter what; when they aren’t, Lila manipulates Elena into things that hurt her (or both of them really) and intentionally ignores her discomfort, while Elena distances herself, judges Lila and tries to assert her own superiority. The competitive streak that runs through their friendship at times inspires both of them to surpass themselves, but it also leads to them constantly trying to outdo each other - and let the other know. No matter how fraught their relationship gets though, they are always the most important person in the other’s life, both the anchor that stabilizes them as well as the benchmark that they measure themselves against. It’s a defining element of both the main characters’ lives, even as their paths drastically diverge: Elena, because of a combination of luck and hard work, gets the chance to continue her education after primary school and even goes to university, while Lila, who has the talent but lacks the luck, is not allowed to go to school any longer and is ultimately forced by circumstance to get married at 16 - which, considering her personality and the society she lives in, obviously does not go well. All in all, it’s a fascinating portrayal of a lifelong friendship under (at times) incredibly difficult circumstances that shapes both of them at their very core. It doesn’t romanticize or trivialize a bond like that, but shows it in all its ugliness and glory, and what’s more: it makes this friendship the central relationship of the book.

But the story is not only a brilliant examination of female friendship (and it is very distinctly female: both characters can never escape their roles as girls/young women in a heavily patriarchal society), it’s also a very observant analysis of the ways that class and gender intersect to shape and constrain the paths and personalities of Elena, Lila and their friends and neighbors. I’m tempted to add ethnicity to the mix, too; I’m not sure if ethnicity is the right term, but I can’t think of a better one, so I’ll stick with that. I’m not exactly knowledgeable about Italy’s demographic makeup, but if I remember it correctly, there is a quite distinct divide - culturally, economically, socially, linguistically... - between the North and the South, with the North as the economically stronger (and possibly less corrupt) part and therefore in a position to look down upon the South. This is an especially important aspect of Elena’s story in The Story of a New Name, when she goes to Pisa to study and feels forced to hide her Neapolitan background as much as possible. However, in the neighborhood where Elena and Lila grew up and where most of the first and second book takes place, ethnicity plays less of a role. Externally, within the framework of greater Naples, the main dividing line is class, expressed as income, way of speaking, access to education, clothing, and general display of wealth. The neighborhood itself, on first glance, is more homogeneous: even the local bigshots, who own a car, give out shady loans to the entire neighborhood and maintain ties to the mafia, aren’t particularly educated or refined in comparison with the Neapolitan upper classes. What they do have is money, and that’s one of the observations that I love about this book: money, no matter how much of it you amass, can never be the same as being born upper class; it can buy some privileges, but it can’t buy parity with the truly powerful. Within the limited domain of the neighborhood, however, money is one of the main mechanisms of stratification, the other being gender.

Toxic masculinity plays an important role in the story, and it shapes the lives of everyone in the neighborhood in different ways. We don’t meet many of the older men (= parent generation), but that’s a statement in and of itself: many of them are either dead, dying, or in prison. Those that are left are characterized by submissiveness and resignation to those with more power, and they channel their feeling of powerlessness and the resulting emasculation by beating and abusing their wives and children. The older women have lived too long under such circumstances: they do care about their children in some way, but the methods they use to make especially their daughters conform to patriarchal expectations and thereby protect them from male wrath end up doing just as much harm as the fists of the fathers. Female solidarity and close personal friendships such as that of Elena and Lila are rare because of the women’s feeling of disempowerment, trauma from a lifetime of violence and general economic hardship. And so the vicious circle repeats itself, with everyone caught up in it absolutely miserable, but unable to do anything about it, since class limits make it virtually impossible to get out.

This is equally true for the younger generation. The boys are taught from a young age to associate male behaviour with violence, aggression, a very prickly sense of honor, and a superiority over women that allows them to possessively watch over them and use violence against them to keep them in line. This holds true for rich and poor neighborhood boys alike, which proves that it is not an issue of class alone. The author further supports this argument by giving counter-examples like Alfonso, who in theory is just as predisposed to toxic masculinity as all the other boys: a violent father, (temporary) economic deprivation, violence in his peer group... What makes Alfonso different from most of the other boys is his personality on the one hand and his advanced education on the other. I think the author is saying that education is the key to overcome at least the worst outgrowths of violent male behavior. Of course education is contingent upon the class a person is born into, but with Alfonso, and partially Enzo (and Nino, too, much as I hate to admit it), she proves that neither class nor gender automatically make a man violent - and that neither one is an excuse for toxic masculinity. This claim is strengthened further by a counterexample, namely Bruno Soccavo, the son of a rich industrialist who leads a privileged life and still thinks it his right to sexually exploit the female workers at his factory.

But since the focus of the story is on Elena, Lila and their female friends and frenemies, this is where we get the most intimate insights into what toxic masculinity and economic deprivation/dependence together do to f**k up the lives of girls and young women. The girls mostly display a pretty thorough understanding of how things work: they know what they can and can’t tell the boys in order to avoid violence among the boys and towards the girls themselves. I’m pretty sure that even Lila knows how to avoid offend the boys’ sense of honor, but between her recklessness courage, her desire for freedom and her self-destructive streak, she just doesn’t care very much. But even this understanding, the result of a lifetime of studying the behavior of the men around them, does not help them very much because it doesn’t leave them enough room to put their feet down, let alone breathe. Lila is the best example of this: after being denied further education and blossoming into a beautiful teenager that attracts the attention of every male around her, including a rich mafioso, she really has no other option than to marry the (seemingly) most acceptable of her suitors at 16 years of age. But of course, he turns out to be violent and controlling, too, and since he’s more powerful than her brother and father, she really has nowhere to turn to. And as I mentioned already, neither the older women nor the girls have enough emotional or material capacities to meaningfully help each other. Some of them also simply don’t want to (the author doesn’t romanticize anything here, either), but I dare say that even that is a result of economic deprivation plus toxic masculinity: from a very young age they’re drilled to think of marriage as their only way to relative economic security, and their future husband’s affection as the only way to avoid being beaten or even killed. So it’s natural that female solidarity, as desirable as it’d be, is not very wide-spread in the neighborhood. Basically, what the book says about toxic masculinity and patriarchal systems is this: yes, it hurts both men and women, young and old, rich and poor; but in the end, it’s always the women, and especially the poor women, who end up with bruises on their face.

#the story of a new name #the neapolitan novels #elena ferrante #book review #toxic masculinity #intersectionality #seriously this book is so good #I adore it

[itscessang-blog]

Deliberation regarding few predicaments

 Advocacies or Projects include but are not limited to:

1. Anti –Drug Campaign

For many years, a real push has been looming on the idea of legalizing now illegal drugs. This has become a hot debate throughout nations all over the world, from all walks of life. Drugs have been a wide range of issue here in the Philippines, therefore, making our current President Rodrigo Duterte to form the Anti-Drug campaign in order to abolish the broad use of drugs.

Drugs are a major component that makes our country be on its lowest points. The humanity are affected and destroyed. As well the Philippine president sees drug dealing and addiction as “major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress. Anti-Drug Campaign is a big use and help to the overflowing issues here in the country as we talk about Drugs.

Ultimately, the seeds of doubt with respect to Duterte’s war on drugs are tied not to opposition to the president for opposition’s sake, but legitimate fears that it could be used to silence not just drug suspects but also the critics of the Duterte government. Multiple launches of failed policies are unlikely to resolve that underlying distrust.

2. Youth Election Volunteer Mobilization

Youth Election Volunteer Mobilization focuses on touching the lives of the youth, so the youth can touch the world. Make a difference and give the youth a chance to prosper and rise against all hindrances. Give the youth a stage to voice out what they wanted to share to the world. Its mission is to provide a platform to bring together Filipino youth in cooperation with youth organization and to become effective advocates of sustainable development and enable meaningful youth participation.

Young people need to vote. They need to get out there. Every vote counts. Educate yourself too. Don’t just vote. Know what you’re voting for, and stand by that. The youth is the most powerful weapon that we have in our dying country. This is the hope to acknowledge our faith in our life.

3. Animal Welfare and Rights

 In regards to animals, the issue of rights and whether they exist becomes a touchy subject. Many people see animals as mindless creatures or as food, while others think they have emotions and can feel pain.  Animals have the right to equal consideration in regards to their being used for human needs as most people use animals for their own needs on a daily basis even if only indirectly whether to entertain us, or to attain the product we are using, or on our dinner plate.

The controversy about the treatment of we humans to animals range from some activists and philosophers that are outspoken against animals being used by humans in any way for our own personal needs.

Animal rights - moral or legal entitlements attributed to nonhuman animals, usually because of the complexity of their cognitive, emotional, and social lives or their capacity to experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure. Human rights need to be protected, so do animal rights.

We should respect that and give them the same respect we give each other. Animals deserve to be given those same basic rights as humans. All humans are considered equal and ethical principles and legal statutes should protect the rights of animals to live according to their own nature and remain free from exploitation. 

4. Environmental Conservation and Action

Environmental protection is the implementation of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair damage and reverse trends. Various laws and provisions are made and executed in order to fortify our mother nature.

The government is also carrying out projects for the development and utilization of water resources with the recognition that the social mission of the action is to contribute to establishing an environment-friendly and sustainable society.

5. Contemporary ICT Issues such as:

Cyber-Bullying

Cyber bullying or cyber harassment is a form of bullying or harassment using electronic means. Cyber bullying and cyber harassment are also known as online bullying. It has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers. A problem that leads to depression and anxiety cannot be left unnoticed. While teenagers do not often regard cyber bullying as a real problem, most adults are truly concerned with this issue. Even though many people claim that there is nothing real on the Internet, the incidents of depression and suicides caused by cyber bullying are rising. 

With the anonymity and hidden identities online it is still a challenge to trace the guilty party. Nevertheless, the states are doing their best to pass new legislations that will regulate cyber bullying and persecute the tormentors. Due to this, implementation of various laws are given in order to lessen the issues regarding cyber-bullying.

Copyright Infringement

Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright. Copyright infringement takes place when a person other than the copyright holder copies or reproduces the expressions of a work. This simply means that information or ideas are not protected, but protection is on the expression of the idea. Copyright infringement can also occur when a person does not exactly reproduce the work, but the expressed work is substantially similar to already illegally copied work

Green Technology

Environmental technology, green technology or clean technology is the application of one or more of environmental science, green chemistry, environmental monitoring and electronic devices to monitor, model and conserve the natural environment and resources, and to curb the negative impacts of human involvement.

As human lives are advancing constantly, the basic needs of human being are increasing tremendously as well. The human intrusion needs have altered the natural environment and arouses problems such as pollution, climate change and global warming. In order to get rid of these problems, Green Technology is introduces to recover the Earth back to a healthy state. Green Technology is a new technology that introduced to protect the Earth against environmental pollution. 

Internet Addiction

Internet addiction is a behavioral addiction in which a person becomes dependent on use of the Internet, or other online devices, as a maladaptive way of coping with life's stresses. Internet addiction is an umbrella term that refers to the compulsive need to spend a great deal of time on the Internet, to the point where relationships, work and health are allowed to suffer.

Internet addiction is a growing problem with more and more people. The internet is much more accessible to people now than it was just a few years ago. The internet provides people with entertainment, loads of information, and an escape from everyday life, but like anything else, too much a good thing can be addictive.

In the modern world internet access is a vital part of everyday life. It is important for education, and is a necessary skill for those entering the job markets of today. The internet is highly entertaining and informative. 

--------- REFLECTION ----------

Different advocacy has been made and completely implemented throughout the years. This is to lessen and control the arising number of issues regarding different trouble such as Ict issues. Developing and continually pursuing this advocacy can be a great help in the community in order to speak out the truth and pursue ideas that can educate and inform others concerning about this issues.

Upon the continual advancement of technology, we, humans, cant say no to the evolution of it. It became our partner in our everyday lives. Technology has dark sides that we cant deny so we need to limit and lessen the amount of time we apply in using this. Lots of platforms are given to educate us and persuade us regarding the usage of technology to avoid being a puppet of technology. There are lots of platforms and implemented laws that are now integrating to schools and premises to help us understand and be aware of the pros and cons of technology.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Erica Heftmann breaks free from the control of the FFWPU / UC

Dark Side of the Moonies by Erica Heftmann  (Penguin Books 1982)

Erica Heftmann was born in Washington, DC, in 1952. She believed she was born again in 1974 to Korean parents — the Lord of the Second Advent, Reverend Moon, and his wife, Hak Ja Han. She was deprogrammed from the Moon cult and became interested in the issue and power of mind control. In the 1980s, because of her research and expertise in that field, she was in demand as an adviser to mental health professionals, clergy, legislators, educators, legal and medical practitioners, law enforcement agencies, mind control victims and their families throughout the world.

Contents

Part I – Heavenly Deception

Part II – Free Will But No Choice

Part III – Return to Reality

Part IV – From the Outside Looking In

1 The Technology of Mind Control 2 Deprogramming Therapy 3 Judiciary, Legislature and the ‘Cryptocracy’ 4 Critical Judgement

Notes

Dark Side of the Moonies is the disturbing account of one person who gave up her own mind, her whole life to a man she thought was the messiah.

Since her liberation from the Moonies, she has come to understand the power that was used to control her. In revealing the hidden life of one cult, Erica Heftmann exposes the startling force cults are exerting in society – and the grip they have on many people.

I was a Moonie. When I regained my mind and could look back at the horror of it, I realized that my freedom was conditional. I was haunted by the need to understand how and why I had been transformed into what I hated most. Now I would be an ex-Moonie. My innocence would never return. … I had to live with the ignorance and prejudice of a public that believes I was somehow pre-disposed to becoming a cult member while they are immune. People think cults are something to laugh at, groups of religious half-wits who would never have made it in life anyway and are better off where they are. I was there … to further incredible schemes of political and economic power.

I am setting out my story and my explanations of it. I do this for the sake of others who have suffered agonies so profound as to make my cult experience seem like a holiday. I wish that I could bring voice to the countless others... I write this for people under mind control, especially those I love who are mentioned in these pages. Do not be afraid to use your own minds; you need no greater masters.

In this era we are learning about the plight of the handicapped, the minorities, those who have been denied the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We must learn about all unfortunates because we are responsible for depriving them by our failure to listen, to understand, to allow them the right to help themselves. Those who are able and refuse to help are the true unfortunates. They do not know how precious life is.

Erica Heftmann 1981

page 1

Part I – Heavenly Deception

On the last day of 1974 I nudged my way through the bustle of downtown Los Angeles with a lot on my mind. It wasn’t only taking inventory of the past year. It was the pattern I saw emerging. Breaking away, testing new ground, retreating. Every path led to the same edge and, feeling I couldn’t make it across, I would go back to find another path. I had come to know the edge pretty well.

I was surprised to hear the stories that circulated about me because I considered my life to be too ordinary. My measuring standards were not set by my peers but by the characters that peopled my books and travels.

Adulthood was edging me away from my mother and an older sister I adored. My father and brother had removed themselves from the family during my late childhood but what was left was stable. Mom was always patient, comforting, totally involved in her two girls.

I had a short romance with formal education. After two terms at university I declared myself graduated, having learned everything I felt the institution had to teach me: how to find a book in the library and how to sit down to coffee with an interesting professor.

With full sails and no rudder, I went to Europe taking every precaution not to be a hippie, annoyed that of all the times I could have been born on this planet I had to co-exist with a counter-culture that popularized doing one’s own thing. I picked my way carefully to avoid the throngs of stereotyped individuals who faced me at every turn. …

My mother was not easy to rebel against because I felt she was usually right. How could I break away and establish my own identity if there was no risk involved? She was always there to fall back on, to soften the blows. … Maybe you’ve been on your own for a few years but the world has just been your playground.

Wait a minute. Don’t be that hard on yourself. Someone puts you on a speck of cosmic dust whirling through space without asking your permission and then just as rudely and abruptly and inevitably takes you away. While you’re here you’re given a set of problems and a set of rules for solving them. Like someone leaving a kid to amuse himself with square pegs and round holes. ’Bye kid, see you in eighty or ninety years. No, Erica, I don’t blame you one bit for stepping back to take a look at it all. People are manipulating and killing each other and for what? Do they even enjoy the spoils of their exploits? Why waste your life trying to set things up for them to destroy when you have enough sense to realize that there’s something else in this existence to do?

Lonely, confused and worried about fulfilling my potential, I had escaped the forced gaiety of the office New Year’s party. Everyone making crass jokes about resolutions and getting drunk to forget them.

On the last working day of the year, all the desk calendars in the office buildings were collected and released into the wind from the roofs. They fluttered down like ticker tape. Now as I walked the last couple of blocks to the bus stop, I stared at them cluttering the pavement. Some pages had little notes jotted on them. OCTOBER 15/meet Dave for lunch. Or 2:00/REGIONAL MEETING. Giving in to a wave of melancholy, I couldn’t help but see the metaphor days lying in the gutter, accumulated so quickly and then forgotten.

A big commuter bus moved away from the kerb and blasted a clump of pages into an open drain with its exhaust. So it’s come to this, has it, I tried joking with myself.

I looked up about the same moment that I felt someone gazing at me. A pair of blue eyes much like my own. A young woman just a few paces away was watching me. She was wholesome looking, rather tall, and had a short, dark-haired young man with her.

In my memory, it is etched that I was the one to start the conversation but I know that this is not the way it happened. There was just something so familiar and so welcoming in her eyes that I felt myself reaching out to make the first move.

All I needed for an introduction was to know that they were foreigners. How well I remembered the feeling of being a newcomer to a city and how comforting it was when strangers had stopped and talked with me.

The girl’s name was Ingrid and she was from Switzerland. The one she towered over was Antonio, a Peruvian. I asked how such an unlikely combination had met They explained that they were touring with an organization called International One World Crusade. This was their last stop in America and within a week they would push on to Japan.

Ingrid had spent all of her time in Los Angeles cooped up in the kitchen cooking for the others. On her first opportunity to get out and see the sights, she was delighted to meet someone. They chatted on. Out of the corner of my eye I was searching for a coffee shop we could dive into. I made the suggestion. It was one of those magical meetings that happens when one travels and I could tell the feelings were shared all around. My bus didn’t stop running for a few hours.

‘We’d love to,’ Ingrid said, ‘But we are just on our way back for an evening meeting. Would you like to walk with us? You could see our headquarters office and meet some of the others.’

Something flickered in me, making me want to bolt, no matter how friendly they were. Something about not being on neutral turf. I noticed it at the same time I realized that I was already walking with them in their direction. …

page 187

Part III Return to Reality

Up late this morning. At 6.00 I should already be in the lodge with Paul to correct reflection books. Paul is the best assistant I’ve ever had and this is by far the most successful workshop since the old days with Alex. Yesterday Mr Kadachi gave the VOC lecture so that we could have some time to catch up on our reports but we scrambled up onto the roof of the lodge to talk instead.

I think it is important to develop a good subject-object Foundation for the Abel position we hold collectively. …

Paul is still having Chapter Two problems about his old girlfriend. I am glad he is confiding in me. I remember all the times Kathy and I kept him away from Lisa and occupied when the centres used to come up for weekend workshop. I thought Lisa’s transfer to MFT would solve a lot. They were both trying hard to overcome and by all external appearances they had but now I’m finding out that Paul is entertaining hopes of being blessed with her. It isn’t good to think about the Blessing, especially trying to second-guess Father. Paul keeps insisting that Spirit World prepared them for the Family because they had been sweethearts since high school. . He is suffering so much and so much wants to please Heavenly Father.

We must be a good combination because we’ve been having such fantastic results with our workshops. We work as a unit. Father was right that if you serve someone well enough, you make him dependent on you. He opens up to you and gradually the power shifts its balance point. If you are a good object, it is much more important than being a mediocre subject. …

I have finally learned how to handle sleep. Imagine how much time is wasted in the Fallen World. Midnight is just the beginning of the evening for me. Paul covered for me for fifteen minutes yesterday during discussion and made me sleep. On the way down the hill with the class, he whistled for me when they passed the dorm and I was out the back way and down to the lodge before them. I had only had forty-five minutes of sleep the night before and during the past weeks it has been usually two hours, sometimes three. That fifteen minutes was like a whole night I got up completely refreshed. I think I’ve finally broken through.

I must apologize to Mr Kadachi. I was so upset with him because he slept during the day and pulled staff meetings as late as 3.30 in the morning — never before 2.00. The meetings were late only because he was reading or playing with his lizards. When he had us as a captive audience he would put off staff matters and expound on some recent theory about the Restoration. I contradicted one of his theories and still feel horrible about it but it did bring the meeting to a quick close. No one else would dare stand up to Kadachi-san. …

The day sailed by with its own effortless momentum. In the afternoon I was called into the kitchen for a phone call. Mr Kadachi was pacing. I picked up the receiver.

‘Erica? I was afraid I wouldn’t get through to you. They gave me the usual runaround.’

‘Well, Mom, sometimes I’m busy and can’t get to the phone.’

‘Too busy to take a call from me?’

I rolled my eyes up. How would she like it if I interrupted her at work?

‘I’m here in San Bernardino and I hope you won’t give me some story about being too busy to see me today. We have a date, you know.’

Did we? It seemed that I was always trying to get out of some engagement and I kept postponing these visits with promises. Guess she finally caught up with me. Kadachi was at my side poking around in his lizardarium. I placed my hand over the receiver.

‘She says she’s in San Bernardino and wants to see me today.’

‘You have a workshop to look after. Tell her to make it another time.’

I uncovered the receiver. ‘I have a workshop to look after. Could we make it another time?’

‘Erica, I’ve driven all this way.’ She sounded a bit frantic. ‘Are you going to make me turn around and go back? I’m leaving for New York tomorrow, remember, and I want to see you before I go.’

‘She’s insisting. She says she’s driven all this way and wants to know if I’m going to make her turn around and go back. She’s leaving for New York tomorrow.’

Kadachi gave me a look that revealed nothing and turned back to his lizards. How could I be so weak as to have to bother him and get him to tell me what to do?

‘Look, Ma, I’m going to have to go now. My class is starting.’

Click

I was hardly out the door when the phone rang again. It took three calls before I was reluctantly given permission to go. I wasn’t pressuring either side, they just fought it out with me as the transmitter of information. The condition was that I be back for evening discussion. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world anyway.

By the time she and my step-father Chuck arrived, I was bathed and had styled my hair with a blow-dryer I found in the sisters’ cabin. I also found a ‘good’ set of clothes I’d never seen before. They fit and I looked very nice when I sized myself up in the mirror.

I ran down the steps of the lodge to meet them. The guard at the gate had already informed me of their arrival. After quick hellos I found myself in an argument. I wanted them to come inside and meet my friends. They replied flatly that they were not interested in coming in, only in seeing me.

‘You say you’re interested in what I’m doing. How are you ever going to find out if you don’t see for yourselves? You just keep reading those negative articles.’

They could hardly conceal their discomfort and my mother couldn’t pass the opportunity for some hostile remarks so I decided that it was better to leave right away. Then, at least, I could return earlier. Paul was thrilled about taking over for a while and I was looking forward to the meal so it wasn’t a bad arrangement after all. I told them to wait a moment on the landing. I searched for Kadachi to say goodbye. His wife told me he had locked himself in his room at his cabin. I would probably return before he emerged from his meditation.

I slid in the front seat between my parents and chattered the whole way down the mountain. I told them about Roy’s close scrape with his parents. They had tried to kidnap him but he escaped. He was sorry for hurting his father in the tussle on the ground but not sorry enough to speak with them. I usually handled Roy’s calls. They simply would not understand that he had been transferred. They thought we were hiding him. No one at camp even knew where he had been transferred to.

‘Imagine parents trying to do something like that to their own child!’ I gasped.

Chuck dropped us off at a small restaurant in town while he went to see about getting something fixed on the car. I ordered a large meal and wolfed it down. Mom didn’t touch what she had ordered. She said that she was coming down with flu and had lost her appetite. If my stomach had been able to stretch, I would’ve eaten her meal as well. We didn’t talk much. These days we had little in common. I couldn’t see the point in pretending to be interested in the Fallen World and she refused to take an interest in the Restoration. She kept glancing at her watch, obviously worried about Chuck taking so long.

When he arrived, he said he wasn’t hungry either and they wanted to beat the traffic back to town. They still had to pack for their trip. He hastily paid the bill and we went out to the car. The lot was dark and the car was at the rear of the building. I instinctively sized up the lot for fundraising. Hard habit to get over. Good thing I was going back to camp instead of out blitzing.

I was grabbed from behind and thrown forward. It happened so quickly that I was in the back seat between Chuck and a strange man before I caught my breath. My mind jammed. My mother was in the driver’s seat revving the engine and another person sat in the front seat on the passenger’s side. We took off as the doors were being pulled closed.

It was several moments before I could speak. My mind snapped into the witnessing mode. I politely extended my hand to the man on my right to introduce myself.

‘How do you do? My name is Erica.’

He reached under the seat and brought out a bouquet of flowers. Presenting them, he said, ‘Very well, thanks. My name is Dana. Here, these are for you.’

Dana! I couldn’t believe it. Dana Stevens? It must have been ten years since I’d seen him — he’d been living in Paris for that long. He was a dear friend of the family, someone I had been infatuated with as a child. Mom had told me that he had come back a few weeks before to get married.

I could not recognize him in the dark but there was no mistaking his style. I looked at the person in the front seat. A woman. She must be his new wife.

‘Mrs Stevens, do you mind if I embrace your husband?’ I threw my arms around Dana’s neck. It was totally unprincipled but my mind was jilted and I was too happy to see him to care about Principle for that moment.

My mother had the wheel gripped firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Erica. You didn’t show up at Dana’s wedding so we’re going to have another reception party now just for you.’ I believed her even though I still felt a panic. I had no time to be part of a practical joke. They would worry back at camp, especially Kadachi. I pleaded for her to stop and let me phone them at least. My mother could always out-insist me, especially when I became hysterical. I thought of leaping from the car, disregarding the danger, but I was flanked by two strong men. Roy had told everyone to carry matches with them so they could set fire to the place if anyone ever took them by force. A lot of good that would have done me. I was no longer in the mood for conversation and numbly rode the rest of the way in silence. My mind was blank as if I had been unplugged.

We pulled off the freeway somewhere in Long Beach and, after circling around some residential streets, pulled up at a modest house with several cars parked in the driveway. They surrounded me on the few steps into the house and then, with some other people, formed a corridor so that I had no choice but to go past them to the rear of the house. I didn’t know how many people were in the house or who they were. It didn’t look like a party.

I entered a small bedroom at the end of the hall. The room was tiny, carpeted and bare except for a blanket and a pillow. There was a piece of plywood covering the one small window. Through my mind flashed the story of The Collector. It was clear to me that I was going to be held prisoner for someone’s pleasure but I had no idea for what purpose.

The sight of the blanket and pillow made my heart stop. I knew this was the end of the line. When I looked up I saw half a dozen strangers standing around me. The door was shut. It was explained to me that I would have to speak with these people. Disbelief clogged my mind. They wanted to talk to me about the Movement. How could they talk to me about something they knew nothing about? I understood then that I would stay in that room until I converted them all or died — there would be no way to escape unless I could befriend one of them and gain sympathy to be set free. I wondered how that tiny room would look after the first year. I would know every crack on the ceiling, every sound from the outside. I looked for Dana. Surely he would help.

‘Can I see Dana please?’

‘I’ll see if I can find him for you. In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself comfortable?’ It was a woman who spoke. She was thirty-ish, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. She looked nervous, which gave me confidence. She left the room and two or three of the others trailed out with her.

Dana appeared at the door. His shirt was unbuttoned and he had a beer in his hand. He looked at me with mild surprise as if he couldn’t fathom why I might want to speak with him.

‘Dana, what do you think you’re going to prove with this? I’m going to be missed at camp by people who care about me. What sort of a kangaroo court do you intend to hold? You’re holding me prisoner. You can’t do that.’

Spectacularly unimpressed with my plea to his sense of justice, he suppressed a belch and scratched his chest. ‘I’m not the one who made the decision, you know. Your mother wants you here. It can’t hurt to listen.’

‘Listen? Under these conditions? Why didn’t you just arrange to have these people, whoever they are, come and meet me in a coffee shop somewhere? I would discuss anything with anyone at any time. That’s my job.’

‘Well, your anywhere and anytime and anyone seems to be here and now with these folks, doesn’t it?’

The years had changed him. I remembered the late-night talks, how, he had made my head spin with his unconventional ideas. He was the one who first infected me with the idea of breaking free. Now he had sold out like the rest of them, even getting a beer belly. There would be no point in talking to my mother. I knew how she was once she made up her mind about something. I asked to see Chuck. I knew he would not be able to conceal anything. His face always gave him away. He had always listened to my ideas with endless patience and took my troubles to heart. He supported and nurtured my individualism with pride, even the things that must have been hard to swallow. Surely he would understand me now. Yet when he came in and sat in the same place that Dana had been sitting, I wondered if I was going to come up against the same stone wall. Maybe they had some kind of routine worked out. We were no longer on the same team. God had divided us.

He didn’t give me the chance to wonder long. He took me in his arms. ‘We had to do this, honey.’ His voice broke and he cried, unable to speak for a while. ‘It’s a horrible thing to have to see you here like this. We want you to be free. I know that’s a hard thing to understand, that we’ve locked you up to free your mind. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t love you. All we want you to do is to listen to these people. They’re good people, honey, don’t be afraid. You know your mom would never let anyone hurt you. That’s why she wants you away from that group. We miss our girl — the one who’s so free, the one who was never afraid to stand up for what she believed.’

Now it was my turn to force back the tears so I could speak.

‘Will you stay with me?’ I was terrified of the thought of them leaving the next day for New York.

‘Of course we’ll stay with you.’ It was my mother. She must have been listening at the door. I didn’t hear her come in.

‘You aren’t going to New York?’

‘No, that was just a story to get you to come with us. We were so afraid that you would cancel again and now that we brought Sara out here —’

‘Sara? Is she that lady? The one in the shorts.’

My mother held a handkerchief for me to blow my nose as she had done when I was a child. ‘Now the other side, blow hard, you can do better than that.’ I laughed through the tears until Sara walked in with some others and my panic returned.

I decided to size up my captors. Mom and Chuck left the room. The others sat around me in a semi-circle. Danny had been in the Children of God. He said he’d been deprogrammed by Sara.

Doug had been in the Family. As soon as I learned this I tried to see the brother in him. Sometimes he revealed it but he had been in the Fallen World too long. The brother in him was only a flicker. Perhaps he would be the one I would befriend if I could convince him of Principle. He could help me escape back to Father. Would that make him my spiritual son? He did not want to talk about his spiritual parents or his missions. He said they were not important. What else could there be to talk about if we were going to talk about the Family?

Jill had been in the Family too, but not long enough to know very much.

I didn’t know quite what to make of Sara. She seemed to try to blend into the background and quite succeeded — all but those eyes of hers. Every time she caught my glance she pinned me to the spot.

Something was rattling around loose in my mind trying to find where it belonged. Maybe my whole mind was rattling around loose. I felt fatalistic — the controls were jammed on automatic pilot I felt almost... well, sportive, gay... having the burden of the destiny of mankind lifted from me temporarily. The ball was for once in somebody else’s court. A funny thought lifted the corners of my mouth. Old girl, you only get kidnapped once in life, that is, unless you’re terribly unlucky. You may as well have a good time. After all, you’ve got a captive audience.

I made myself comfortable. ‘It looks like we’ll be here for a while,’ I remarked breezily. ‘If you want to do your job properly, you’ll need some background information on me. I guess I’d better tell you about myself.’

Danny stretched out and groaned, then unclasped his hands from behind his neck and drew himself up on one elbow. ‘The only thing we need to know about you is already obvious. You’re brainwashed.’

‘You watch too many movies. Who do you think you are, Clint Eastwood? Where did you get this brainwashing stuff?’

‘Well, Queen-for-a-Day, what happened to your humility, love, understanding for mankind and all of that? If you were a real disciple of Christ, you’d be praying for me and setting a good example. I guess your dignity and integrity only work when you’re plugged into your little messiah.’

Doug shot him a look to keep quiet. Interesting. They were not united so I was bound to triumph. First rule of Principle. Unity forms the Foundation. I had the knowledge of Principle on my side, they had nothing, not even unity. Evidently Doug remembered something of it in trying to keep Danny in line.

Danny rolled onto his back and addressed the ceiling. ‘All right, go ahead and give us your testimony. I probably know it word-for-word already. I’ve heard enough of them and they’re all the same. Don’t tell me, let me guess — you went to India, came back and read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, had an abortion, became a militant feminist —’

Doug cut in, ‘Don’t mind him. Sure, I want to hear your story. It’s hard to be a Moonie. You wouldn’t be where you are unless you were a good person but don’t tell me that you joined because you realized it was the truth. None of us joined because we understood what they were teaching us.’

I began my story. To my surprise, it didn’t come out like I had planned it. It wasn’t my usual testimony. I told them about my life before, about the things I had loved and believed, things I had forgotten until then. I must have talked for two hours. Sara was pacing outside. Jill left for a while and when she came back in she asked me if I wanted anything to eat.

‘No thanks,’ I answered. ‘I had dinner with my mother.’ My mind drifted back to the camp for a moment. It seemed universes away. I wondered where I was. Whose house was this?

‘Is this Sara’s house?’

‘No,’ Jill answered. ‘It belongs to a woman named Alice.’

‘Can I see her?’

A woman was brought to the door. She hesitated before coming in. She was a friendly looking, middle-aged lady, the kind I’d seen by the hundreds on the lots, motherly, middle-class. I thanked her for letting us use her house. It seemed to me that it must have been a great inconvenience to have so many people in her home for such a long time. I indicated the boarded window. I was sorry for my being the cause of her house being turned upside-down. Tears formed in her eyes.

‘Honey, your parents love you very much. Everyone here is very concerned for you. We all want the best for you. Everything will turn out all right.’ She hesitated and phrased her question shyly. Jill says that you don’t want anything to eat. Can I bring you something else? Something to drink? How about a glass of warm milk?’

Warm milk, yech. I always hated it and gagged on it but I didn’t want to refuse her hospitality. For her sake I gratefully accepted. I was glad I did when I saw the look on her face. She couldn’t have been more happy if I’d given her a million dollars.

While she was fetching the milk, the conversation turned away from me and the kids talked among themselves. I couldn’t hate them. I wished that I could have joined in the conversation but it was as if they were speaking another language, things I hadn’t any knowledge of. Danny was sprawled out comfortably. Jill was teasing him and heaved the pillow at him. He propped himself up with it and turned to me.

‘So, this Moon is the messiah, eh?’

The devil himself couldn’t have been more satanic. What a way to talk about Father! It slashed my heart to hear him referred to as ‘Moon’. I would have to educate this guy if we were going to be able to talk at all. He would have to learn to call him Reverend Moon.

‘History will show if he is the messiah or not Reverend Moon has —’

‘I know, he has the potential of becoming the messiah but now he is in the John the Baptist position. I’ve heard it all before. Why don’t you just come out and say it. It will save us a good twenty-four hours. Don’t give me all the PR lines. I know you believe he’s the messiah.’

‘Well, I have to define what messiah means.’

‘Yeah, he has to be born in Korea between certain years — where’d you get all this information anyway? I could tell you that the messiah has to be 5’5”, have blue eyes and be born in Los Angeles in 1952. How’s that grab ya?’

‘God has revealed certain things to me.’

‘What’d He do, call you on the phone?’

‘Don’t you believe in God?’

‘Don’t try to get off the subject by attacking me. Yes, I believe in God but my God doesn’t go around talking to me. Just answer a simple question: did God call you on the phone?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Does that mean no?’

‘No, God did not call me on the phone. There, are you satisfied?’

‘Did He send you a telegram?’

Doug broke in. ‘What he means is how does God communicate with you. You said that God revealed certain things to you. How did you receive them?’

How did I receive them? I just knew. ‘I just knew.’

‘Maybe you just knew wrong?’

‘Divine Principle clearly outlines the qualifications for the messiah.’

‘Great, who wrote the Divine Principle?’

‘It was revealed by God.’

Doug looked at Danny. ‘You getting dizzy yet? I told you the Moonies have everything tied up and you can go round and round for ages without getting anywhere.’

Danny sat up and looked at me. ‘It’s no different than my group. We believed our leader was the end-time prophet Why? Because his doctrine said so. I thought God revealed it to me too.’

‘Well, you were misled. Divine Principle talks about that. You were in a cult’

‘And you are in one.’

Alice came in with the milk and my mother trailed in after her.

‘Are you getting sleepy? I brought you some things to sleep in.’ She produced a nightgown and slippers. My eyes popped out of my head. A nightgown no one had worn before. It was so beautiful, so elegant, and slippers. I couldn’t wait to put them on.

‘Where can I change?’ Surely I wasn’t expected to change in front of the men. I had heard that men in deprogrammings humiliated and raped sisters.

Danny and Doug stood to leave.

‘Good-night, Brothers.’

Doug said good-night but Danny couldn’t resist getting in one last little dig. ‘In case you didn’t know, we are not biologically related. Brothers is also not a common slang term — it’s a Moonie word. The sooner you stop talking like a Moonie, the sooner you’ll stop thinking like one. Do me a favour, hey? Every time you use a Moonie word and I stop you, try substituting an English word.’

‘Okay, good-night, Clint Eastwood. How’s that?’

He tossed the pillow at me.

Sara and I were alone. She was cautious but wanted to know how I felt, what I needed, what my fears and anticipations were. There was nothing about her or any of the others that would cause me to distrust them. I could see that they were sweet and honest people, just misled and being used by satanic forces. Mostly, my mind was on sleep. The opportunity to sleep away from masses of people, in clean bedding, in a quiet house, in my own nightdress, close to my parents — it was too much of a luxury to put off.

Sara asked if I would mind if she and Jill slept in the room with me. I laughed. Would I mind having only two sisters in the room with me? I was under the covers in a flash and the light was turned out. They left the door ajar. They were going to sit in the kitchen for a while and come to sleep later. Mom came in to say good-night. I made her promise me one last time that she would not leave for New York that she would be there when I awoke in the morning. I don’t remember if she left before I fell asleep.

With the window boarded over and no sunlight, I had no idea what time it was. By habit, I was completely awake. From totally off to totally on in a millisecond. I tried to fall asleep again but it was useless. I’d have to get up sometime and face the music. This was Sunday. I had probably missed Pledge. I couldn’t muster my thoughts to say a proper Pledge but I started in on a short prayer. Security and anxiety were marbled in my heart As long as we talked about Principle, I would be safe. They were not united and they did not have God’s truth. There was no way they could harm me. It would just be a matter of time. Sara came in.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to wake you. I just came in to find my brush.’

‘It’s okay, I just woke up before you came in. What time is it anyway?’

‘Ten o’clock. Bet you’ve never had such a good sleep in the cult.’

Cult! That word hurled frustration, fear and anger at me. I stood up quickly and began to fold my bedding.

‘You want to take a shower?’

‘Yes, thank you. If I may.’

Sara showed me across the hall. What a luxurious bathroom. I felt like a princess. A fresh set of towels were set out for me and everything was spotless. A new toothbrush and a new tube of toothpaste, a hairbrush, even some cosmetics. I turned the shower on full blast. Sara yelled through the door.

‘There’s plenty of hot water. Let’s forget about the cold shower conditions, okay?’

‘Okay!’ How did she know about conditions? She obviously didn’t know very much. I couldn’t set a condition without clearing it with a central figure anyway. I stepped into the shower. Ah, I would have a hard time stepping out again. I watched the steam escape through a small window. I remembered in The Collector that the woman had thrown a note out the window in hopes that someone would pass by and read it. Maybe I could do that. But what good would it do? I was in the Fallen World now. Even if I could squeeze out the window and run away, to the police maybe, they’d just bring me back here. In Satan’s world who would help a Family member? I would have to work it another way. I didn’t have enough mental power to consider the future anyway. It was all I could do to concentrate on the present I was being bombarded with new-old sensations, the things in the bathroom, the cleanliness, the newness, the freshness, the comfort and security. I was reluctant to turn off the shower. My mother came in and talked to me through the shower door. She wanted to know if I needed shampoo or anything else. If nothing else, it was overwhelming to be with her in circumstances that seemed so normal. It was like being on holiday. Maybe I could postpone the inevitable confrontation. I felt a surge of energy and wanted to crow with pleasure. Sleeping until ten o’clock!

Mom brought me some clothes to change into, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. It felt deliciously wonderful and forbidden to wear them. I asked permission to keep the slippers on. She gave me a queer look

The bedding was put away and the room was bare again but for one blanket and a pillow. As I dried my hair with a towel, Danny asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I wasn’t in the mood for eating. We decided on coffee.

He brought it in and went out again for his Bible. Doug carried in a small case of papers. They wanted to talk about fundraising. Fair enough. Doug had been on MFT. I couldn’t understand why he asked me questions he already knew the answers to — questions about the Economic Restoration. It was as boring as giving lecture to answer him.

They couldn’t do anything to dislodge the truth. After all, they had nothing better to offer. Nothing better than beer, cigarettes, divorce — the Fallen World. I remembered how Larry had told me that even if God did not exist and if Father wasn’t the messiah, the gathering of dedicated people giving endlessly of themselves was bound to be the best thing yet.

‘Why do you lie on the streets when you beg money from people?’ Sara entered into our discussion.

‘I don’t lie. I never did. Lie about what?’

‘Lie about where the money was going.’

‘Everyone knew I was from the Unification Church. We even wore —’

‘— badges issued by President Salonen,’ Doug. ‘But most people didn’t understand that you were a Moonie. If they ask you outright if you are raising money for Reverend Moon, you deny it, don’t you?’

‘Never! I’m proud of Father. Why would I conceal the truth?’

‘You lied to Tom Evans.’ Now my mother. Okay, I made a sales pitch in the gallery of someone who worked with my mother and by the time I realized who he was I couldn’t retract what I had said.

‘Okay, so I lied once.’

‘Once!’ Everyone cried out in unison.

I was not hurt for myself. I was trying to shield Father from their attack. Nothing they could say or do to me would worry me, but they must not blaspheme.

Sara said, You don’t even know when you’re lying and when you’re not. You weren’t like that before. Somebody taught you a little trick called Heavenly Deception.’ Danny chimed in, Yeah, we did the same thing in the Children of God but we called it Spoiling Egypt.’

Sara continued ‘And in Scientology they call it Fair Game and in the Divine Light Mission they call it something else and I call it a con game. How could you tell people the truth about where the money was going when you don’t even know yourself? What about your little 40-day condition that was extended? Where did that money go?’

How did she know about that? I told her what I had found out. The money went to buy some land.

‘That land was already paid for, honey. The money you raised went straight into Moon’s pocket for some little private business deals. Wake up, Erica, you’ve been had.’

I turned to Doug. ‘You know the importance of fundraising. It is to pay indemnity. We have to restore tribal, national and other levels.’

Doug turned to his case of papers and fished out a page from Master Speaks. He read to me from it that Father said all of that indemnity was paid already. I demanded to see the page. Master Speaks. The first thing that hit me seeing it was the format of the page. The familiarity of it energized me. He snatched it back.

‘Don’t space out on me. I know you are visually programmed. The sight of the thing reinforces your programming. Just read these lines.’

I read them. How did I know the paper wasn’t a forgery. ‘Mother, how could you want me to believe people as low as these. Look at Sara. Look at the way she’s dressed, the way she speaks.’ Sara stiffened.

‘Please don’t smoke in front of me either,’ I demanded. How satanic to fill the room with smoke. She didn’t say a word, just stubbed out her cigarette and put the ashtray outside the door.

‘I won’t smoke in front of you if it bothers you but I’ll tell you this, you spoiled brat, it’s not the smoke that bothers you. It’s this holier-than-thou little goodie-two-shoes routine of yours. Why don’t you come back down to earth with the rest of us mortals. You can’t even answer simple questions. How thin your perfection is when you’re outside your self-centred cult. You think you’ve become more God-like? Is God so arrogant? You think you’re saving the world with Moon’s money? What do you know about responsibility? Do you tend the sick, the poor, do you ever pay income tax?’

‘I’m a missionary without income. I have nothing to pay tax on.’

‘Maybe, but you have to file every year with the government anyway. When was the last time you filed?’

‘Okay, so I didn’t file last year, big deal.’

The morning dragged on. They kept talking from man’s point-of-view. I kept talking from God’s point-of-view.

We broke for lunch and, while we ate at least, the crew eased up on me. As soon as I put my plate down, Danny looked over at me through narrowed eyes.

‘So, Moon’s still the messiah, huh?’

I had to fight to keep the food from coming back up. There was just no point going on like this. We could discuss until Satan’s restoration and they still wouldn’t make sense.

‘You can say what you want but you’ll never make me lose my love for Father.’

‘Erica, when we point things out, just assess them as they are, at face value. If the Bible says one thing and Doctrine X contradicts it, then that doctrine is wrong if it claims to be harmonious with the Bible. You click off when anything threatens Moon. You have no ego, no mind of your own. You’ve got two possibilities: a) Moon is the messiah, b) Moon is not the messiah. If it helps you, let’s not say Moon, we’ll say Mr X instead. Now, he’s either the messiah or he’s not. He can’t sort of be the messiah, agreed?’

It took us a long time to get on equal footing. Finally he got me to accept, for the sake of argument, the hypothetical.

‘If he is the messiah, we can all pack up and go home. If he’s not the messiah and has claimed to be, then what is he?’

I couldn’t fill in the blank.

‘If he’s not the messiah and he’s claimed to be, then he’s a fraud. Now, how can we determine if he is or not? Glad you asked that question, folks. Let’s make it really easy on him and not even use the acid test. We’ll just let him cut his own throat. He says that God is eternal, absolute and unchanging, further that he is the second Christ. It follows, seeing as God doesn’t change His mind, Moon must jive with what the first Christ said about Christ’s mission.’

This was not so difficult to accept as the initial point. Once he got rolling, I could follow him after a fashion. As soon as he pulled out the Bible to substantiate what he said, to prove that Jesus and Father did not agree, I was hopelessly lost again. Every time he made a point, I would do a quick scan through Purpose/Fall/Restoration.

I was aware of the binary functioning of my brain. Each question entered and was shuffled off down yes/no corridors until it met the proper answer or a dead end. Something like a pinball machine. I worked the flippers like mad but the balls just rolled down the chute. Danny would send the ball shooting out again and I made the same scan through Principle with the same result. Sometimes a phantom answer would appear but it would vanish either before or after the question passed through. I couldn’t hold both a question that didn’t compute and a phantom answer that didn’t compute. One of them faded as I concentrated on the other.

Danny was well versed in the Bible. If only Kadachi or Alex could have been with me. Surely they would know the answers. There had to be Divine Principle reasons why the Bible was wrong, I just didn’t know them. After a while my attention scattered. When we talked about the Family, I felt my mind become agile again but as soon as Danny started up with his Bible, my brain felt like cotton and my eyelids started to droop.

Some people came in the room quietly like they were entering a theatre after the show had started. I felt like I was on the operating table in an arena for medical students. Bright lights and someone saying, ‘Here we see the soul exposed, badly lacerated. The heart is bleeding and the mind is twisted. Some of this will be corrected through surgery but the patient will probably never be healthy again.’

One of the visitors, a middle-aged man with a kind face picked up Danny’s Bible and leafed through it. I braced myself for a raging born-again argument ‘You believe you’re doing God’s will, don’t you?’ Probably next he was going to ask me if I knew God’s will by telephone or telegram. I set my jaw. It’s too long a story to explain — if I told you that I know God when I see Father, you’d never understand.

‘You’d do whatever Moon asked you to, wouldn’t you?’ ‘He would never ask me to do anything that was not the will of God.’

‘What if he asked you to kill your mother?’

‘ — ’

‘Why don’t you answer me?’

‘ — ’

‘Forget about answering that question. Your silence tells me what I really wanted to know: you actually have to sit and think about whether or not you’d kill your mother if a man told you to. A man, Erica, not a god, and you are under his control.’

He snatched up the Bible. The sound of the turning pages was like trees falling in the forest.

‘“If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” The Bible says to help the poor, to help other people. Jesus didn’t tell his followers to give Him their possessions. He told them to distribute them among the needy. Do you believe that is a good thing to do?’

I nodded.

‘Well, then, that makes you better than True Father, doesn’t it? You want to give to the poor and your messiah only wants to take everything for himself.’

I was too weary to begin to explain to him the meaning of the Economic Restoration. When Jesus was on earth, it was the mission of the messiah to serve mankind. For the Second Coming, it became the duty of mankind to serve the messiah.

He wouldn’t let go of that point. That makes you a better person than your Master of the Universe, doesn’t it?

‘You have more compassion than he does. You don’t see anything wrong with him keeping everything for himself?’

I thought back to Father’s visit that had left me so desolated. I remembered that the brothers and sisters from the centres drove through the night to get back to their centres and sleep only an hour or two before having to drive back for Father’s morning address. Meanwhile, Father was sleeping in silk sheets. He could have at least let them sleep in the garage. One driver fell asleep and his van had gotten into an accident.

I began to cry. The man holding the Bible was looking at me waiting for an answer. I couldn’t speak. He put the Bible down and cradled me. So long I had been giving, giving, giving everything I had. He rocked me gently and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, baby, we’re right here. Don’t be afraid. We’re all going to see you through this, doll.’ He didn’t try to hush me, he just let me cry. I tried picturing True Father in my mind but I could not see him comforting me like this. I couldn’t believe that even in the Spirit World he was beside me. All I knew was the here-and-now of things and their realness. Fear gripped me — so this is how Satan would win me — with confusion, with trying to soften the warrior in me.

I heard myself make the man promise he would come back the following day. When he went to the door, I got up and extended my hand, Moonie-style, to shake hands with him. He grabbed me in a bear hug and ruffled my hair, ‘You’re gonna be all right, kid.’

With the others, discussions went on without either side gaining. I retreated under the blanket. Only my head showed, propped on the pillow. Doug and Sara and Jill continued. They would go through a point and ask me to clarify my side of it. I had just not studied enough, not read enough Master Speaks. There were answers to these things but I did not know them. The things they asked me didn’t matter. I believed in Father.

Sara asked me, ‘What I want to know is why you need so much proof to get out of the group. Lord knows you didn’t need any proof to get into it If I ask you if two plus two is five, do you need to look it up? No! You just use the common sense you had as a child. So why, if I show you things that don’t add up by Moon’s system, can’t you see it?’

Danny came over and ripped the blanket off me. ‘It’s the dead of summer, you know. The rest of us are sweating. What are you, a foetus? Sit up and join the human race.’

I grabbed the corner of the blanket and we each tugged our end of it. ‘Well, I see you have enough strength to fight for your baby blanket, don’t you have enough strength to fight for your mind? We’ve been sitting here hour after hour force-feeding you. Where’s your interest? Some disciple you are. Let’s assume that Moon is the messiah and we’re satanic. Don’t you have a lot to learn from us? You should be picking our brains for all we’ve got, go back to your cult and show them the blueprint of the opposition. You’re a lousy Moonie, I’ll say, and you’re not much of a human being. Your brain doesn’t work. We ask a simple question and you either space out or tell us something Moon said. I think we might as well just cover you up with this blanket and stick you six feet under, babe.’

He smiled. ‘But it’d be a shame, ’cause I know you’re in there, somewhere. I know because I’ve been through it. I’m only tough on you because someone’s gotta do it, otherwise we’d sit here playing games. Honest, I’m really a decent guy.’ We both started laughing. ‘We drew straws to see who would play the part of the heavie. Doug and I were arguing about it, weren’t we bro? We both accused the other of getting the part last time. I’ll tell you what, you think he’s sweet? He can be a worse son-of-a-bitch than I.’ That was signal for them to start rough-housing. We all needed a break. I went to the bathroom.

I closed the bathroom door. I’d had chances to be alone for a few moments like this in the Family but it wasn’t the same. I was never alone-alone. I looked at myself in the mirror, something I so rarely did that I knew Father’s face better than I knew my own. I noticed my locket. It had been given to me by Maria and was engraved: ITPN. In True Parents’ Name. Kadachi-san explained to me that it was blasphemy to abbreviate Parents’ name even in that much-used phrase that we signed our letters with. I wore it with some embarrassment but refused to take it off because it was given to me by my spiritual child. Maria got kicked out of the Family. Dr Baum ordered me not to talk to her anymore, even when she called up desperate to be allowed back into the Family. She was so exhausted after Yankee Stadium that she had stayed in bed for three days and Dr Baum turned her out for a problem of attitude. It tore me in two to have to refuse to come to the telephone when she called up pleading.

I unlocked the chain. That same chain had once held the cross given to me by Father Peter. Reverend Kropf made me remove it because the cross was a symbol of Satan’s victory. Inside the locket were pictures of Father and Mother. I looked at them.

I had heard that deprogrammers were likely to deface pictures of Parents and nothing could be worse, but I liked them all — even, perhaps especially, Danny. Deprogrammers could torture brothers and sisters but we had to protect Parents to the death. I removed the pictures and swallowed them to save them from harm. Everything was out of focus in my mind. As we talked in the room, the obvious Principle answers were in my mind. They were my mind. But at some point, I don’t know when, a second answer started to appear, a phantom that would hover and then disappear like the tiny stars you can only see if you look slightly away from them. The two answers would passively cancel one another and only the question would remain until I could no longer remember it. I looked at the locket in my hand. I was of two minds, two hearts. It seemed a millstone around my neck. I left it on the toilet tank.

‘Let’s talk about this messiah of yours,’ Sara. ‘Do you know anything about his past?’

I did. He had seen Jesus when he was sixteen, had been in prison before he began his ministry.

‘Did you know that the university where he claims to have gotten a degree in electrical engineering has no record of him? No record by either name. His real name isn’t Sun Myung Moon, you know. He changed it from a name that means shining dragon — sounds more like the Beast than the messiah. He’s been married before, arrested for indecent acts. He’s a common thug, a businessman, a criminal. He’s a pimp and he’s got kids like you out on the street hustling for him. He even claims to be a Jew, doesn’t he?’

‘Well, a descendant of the House of David. I guess that would make him a Jew.’

‘Funny since he claims that the Orientals are descendants of Japheth and the Jews of Shem. How do you feel about him saying that the six million who died under Hitler died because it was God’s will. This coming from a Jew.’

‘You answer that yourself. You’re the guys who claim to have all the answers.’

‘Sit up,’ Sara urged. ‘Come on, don’t cop out now. You should be defending your faith. There’s nothing wrong with thinking about things. Think! If you’re trying to find the answer in the DP, you won’t find it because the answer is just not there. Two and two will never equal five.’

My mind was elsewhere. I looked at the stack of papers. The reverse of an article we had just read was on the top of the heap. It showed a reproduction of a painting of Jesus on the cross. It was exquisite. It reminded me of the fresco I used to study in the Greek Orthodox cathedral Jesus of infinite tenderness and dignity, Jesus who by His deeds gave meaning to life. Across the stack on another part of the floor was a picture of Reverend Moon. His pudgy, glistening face peered up at me. My eyes went from one to the other, from Jesus to Reverend Moon and back again.

Sara and the others seemed at a standstill. Sara picked up the Bible and leafed through it. She stopped at a page in Genesis and handed the book to me. ‘Read that. Start with Genesis 2:24.’

I read aloud: ‘Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more subtle than any other —’

‘Stop right there,’ said Sara.

I looked up at her.

‘Don’t you see it? Adam and Eve were husband and wife before the Fall, not brother and sister; husband and wife, one flesh. They did not fall because they had sex before becoming perfect. And further, Lucifer fell before them because it says that Eve was tempted by a serpent, not the Archangel.’

I looked back at the page. My vision sharpened with an almost audible click. My face burned, my blood was pounding through my body. I looked back up at her. Sara was waiting.

What happened next happened clearly, frame by frame, but was all contained in a split second.

What was spectacular was not the question nor the answer but a total sensation that I had to acknowledge and identify. Doubt, I called it. Doubt. Perhaps I could entertain the possibility that what they were saying was true. I felt myself peering over a cliff. The abyss was so without light and without bottom that the shock weakened me. I feared I would fall and equally feared remaining on the edge. But no sooner did the shock seize me than I found myself on the opposite side.

The split second came as I was handing the Bible back to Sara. ‘Well, then, what was the Fall?’

‘I’ll tell you my interpretation but there are many. Everyone in this house would tell you something different and some don’t even have an opinion or couldn’t care less. That’s all okay. That’s what life’s about.’

It never occurred to me that people could have different opinions or no opinion at all. I was sure that these people would try to destroy the Divine Principle and then unveil their truth. Subconsciously, I must have believed that it would be the antithesis of goodness and that ... what a totally astounding idea that I could choose what I wanted to believe. This last idea came as Sara explained that there was no rush on truth, that I would have the rest of my life to think about things. Still, most of my mind believed that the non-Family force had the scoop on the Fall.

Sara handed me back the Bible and pointed to Genesis 3:5. It read: ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’

She stated simply, ‘If you are tempted to place yourself in the throne of power you lose your innocence and you learn the true nature of good and evil.’

At dinner-time my face was still burning. The message came in from the kitchen to find out what I wanted to drink with dinner – milk, juice, water, coke.

‘Make it a gin and tonic.’

‘Getta load of her,’ Danny nudged Doug. ‘Queen-for-a-Day is having herself a drink. Hey, no drinking on the job.’

‘Well then, we’ll take a break — and while we��re at it we can call a truce until dinner’s over. What do you say? I won’t call you Clint Eastwood and you won’t ask me if Reverend Moon is the messiah.’

I felt frisky and in a mood for celebrating something but I had nothing to celebrate. I didn’t want to cope with anything. I concentrated on my dinner.

‘Compliments to the chef!’ I called out. ‘Must’ve been you, Mom, no one cooks like you.’

Different sensations were rushing me, things I’d never known could be sensations — like spontaneity. Not checking the catalogue in my brain before or after a thought or action. Sara sat next to me with her plate.

‘Yeah, your mom is a great cook. I’ll tell you, she’s a great lady. Sure it was easy for you to make the choice between your family and the cult because you never lose your family so it’s not a real choice. You can cut them off, mistreat them, but they always love you. Moon wouldn’t know you if he tripped over you. You couldn’t get through to him on the phone now if you wanted him to come and rescue you. But your real parents? They’d go through anything to rescue you and believe me, they already have. I know you couldn’t have looked your mother in the face and told her that Mrs Moon is your True Mother. You’ve got a lot to learn about parenthood. You know how Moon is always saying that his members are more loving than anyone else and they have ‘Parental Heart’ — honey, you could never fathom what real caring is. You’ve been in a make-believe world. Moon used you. Your parents never stopped caring, never gave up on you.’

My tears were hot They had nothing to do with what she was saying. The thought of my mother’s love made me feel that I could love myself, forgive myself, cleanse myself of the never-ending guilt I had felt in the Family. For once I could feel that I had given of myself, that I was a good person. No matter what Sara said, I was not a spoiled brat. I was sincerely trying to do the best thing. I felt the two of me, one pitiful and the other pitying.

Doug joined us. He had a VOC lecture book in his hand. ‘You know, what really gets me is how you went on and on so self-righteously about Moon being against communism. What do you or anyone else in the group really know about it? Did you know that Moon uses the identical methods of indoctrination? You have the world so sharply divided between Satan and God, black and white. Do you think that fascism is any better than communism? Was Hitler any better than Stalin? I can see the Moonies on trial saying, “I was only following orders”. What about democracy?’ He paused and fished in his case for some papers.

‘You need only one error in the Divine Principle to make it false. We’ve shown you hundreds. It’s a strange thing about mind control — if you demolish most of the doctrine and leave just a tiny bit standing, the mind hangs onto it.’

Evening brought another guest. Mom had been talking about a young man who had been deprogrammed from the Divine Light Mission. She was glad that he had been able to arrange the time to come and talk with me. He talked about his job, asked how I was feeling, stayed away from heavy subjects. It was hard for me to remember how conversations were supposed to go. By the time he got to the end of a question, I had forgotten the first part of it. He sensed that I was bleary.

He set up a tape recorder for me to hear a speech by his former guru. A man with a funny accent was saying something like: when you have evil thoughts, push them out of your mind. Because your mind troubles you, give it to me. It won’t trouble me.

The young man rolled his eyes ceiling-ward. We all laughed yet it was a frightening tape. How could you be told what and what not to think? Imagine someone telling people not to use their —

Father ‘I am your thinker. I am your brain.’

Lectures: Have no give and take with negative thoughts.

It suddenly wasn’t so funny. Change the accent a little and —

The young man nodded when I looked up at him with this realization spilling out of me. The room was filled with people. Such a small room, so many conversations like a cocktail party. No one noticed the crucial understanding in that exchanged glance. It didn’t matter. In the Family everything had to be noticed, examined, accounted for and nothing belonged to me. It was always public knowledge, any private thought. This understanding was for me alone, accountable to me, a me exists. In the Family everything was given equally ultimate significance. Things do have different values. So no one noticed me. So what.

I was resting my head in my mother’s lap and she stroked my hair distractedly. She was engrossed in a conversation with Doug. Jill and Sara were laughing about something in the corner. The others were getting up to go into the kitchen. The young man from the Indian cult stretched out between my mother and the wall.

Why hadn’t Father told us about these other groups — so many of them? Sara had read me the testimonies of people I thought were all ex-Family members. Turns out they were from several other groups. All else aside, Father should have explained to us the truth about cults and mind control for our own sake.

‘Would you like to go out with me sometime?’ The young man had a nice smile.

I laughed. ‘Under the circumstances, that’s a very tempting offer.’ The escape I had wanted. I was surprised when I found myself telling him to call me at my mother’s house to arrange a date. Would I be living there?

‘Wherever you are, I’ll find you. All the employees where I work are going to Disneyland for an evening, you know, when they close the park down for a private party. Would you like to do something like that?’

Be anonymous again? Be a part of life with no one looking over my shoulder? Laugh at simple things?

How had it happened? It seemed that as soon as I entertained the possibility of something other than Principle, my prison vanished. I was free. Confused but free.

What about True Parents? I loved Father and could see him accusing me of being Judas. I pictured the photos from the locket. I visualized the image of Parents deep inside me. They would stay there until I dealt with them later. I would deal with everything later.

Before I fell asleep, Jill came in. She sat down where I was snuggled under the covers. ‘Know what I did the other night? I went down to the ocean. I kicked off my shoes and walked along the shore. I found a place to sit and I just sat there feeling the wind on my face, listening to the waves, smelling the salt air, letting the feeling of the sea surround me. I thought to myself: I am free. I can think anything I want.’

I was jealous of her. How wonderful to go to the sea. To sit at the shore and belong to no one. That most sacred and private place between me and me had been violated. I wanted the salt air to cleanse me, renew me.

What do you do when a huge section of your life is spliced out and the two ends fit neatly back together as if that time had never been — when you wonder where that lost time went but you’re still in it like a phantom — when you wonder who that other person in the time spliced out was but at the same time realize that that other person is the most familiar core of what you are made of — when you are relieved to the point of euphoria and terrified at the same time (both for no apparent reason and for endless reasons) — when you can’t go back to being that old self at the past end of the splice and certainly aren’t the self you haven’t been yet at the future end — and the reality of the matters at hand is so crushing that it requires the equivalent of a session of parliament in your brain to decide if you want a cup of coffee and when none of that really matters because everything emanates a calm like the warbling of birds after the bombing has stopped and you know the bombs will never fall again.

Another good night of sleep. In the morning we breakfasted and talked. I was aware that I no longer had any opinions about anything. I was blank. The blast had taken everything out by the roots. I was amazed that Danny and Doug disagreed on various things. The outside world was now my world and it was not united. Doug was talking to me about switching over from my absolutist frame of mind. He said that the doctrine wasn’t so important but the way I thought. Not which things were painted black and which were painted white, because these varied from cult to cult. All ex-members, he said, had to get away from thinking in black-and-white terms and start looking at the shades of grey. I was miles ahead of him. I was dealing with technicolour. Let out of a dark hole into the blazing sunlight, the eyes of my mind winced closed.

I didn’t want to leave the deprogramming room for the time. I didn’t feel deprogrammed. I was to learn that deprogramming only starts the mind thinking again, asking questions. It doesn’t provide the answers.

I was brought into the living room. The team was relaxed, limbs draped over the furniture, every comment followed by a soft round of chuckles. The world had never looked so wholesome, so inviting. It seemed that milk and honey, or sunlight or some tangible substance of peace was flowing out of everything.

Dana and his wife stopped by. They were on their way back to France. Dana told me a little bit about the concerts he was doing. His wife told me about her dress when I admired it. Alice showed me pictures of her children. Tears still formed in her eyes when she looked at me and several times she put her arm around me to say what she couldn’t find words for. She promised me that I would have a wonderful life. I hoped I didn’t look to her like someone who needed a glass of warm milk. The drifts of conversation carried jokes and casual swearing I found offensive. It was all too much for a mind that was racing nowhere fast. I wandered back into the deprogramming room and curled up on the floor with the pillow. Danny followed me in and plunked himself down.

‘Wanna talk?’

‘Sure.’

I didn’t, really. I just wanted to absorb the racing.

‘Spit it out.’

It wasn’t a matter of spitting, it was a matter of running to all the vast frontiers of my brain at once with a sieve to catch evaporating thoughts. It came out something like this:

‘Dan, I want you to watch me. I think I might be too clever, like I might be fooling you — or me — or something. I want to be deprogrammed or not deprogrammed. Maybe you know what I mean.’

‘Sorry, lady, I know what you’re going through but I can’t help you. You have to do this one alone. The ball, as they say, is in your court.’

‘What did you do after you left the Children of God?’

‘Why, so you can do the same? Sorry, I ain’t gonna be your new messiah. Besides, I don’t think you’d want to do what I did. When I found out that Moses David wasn’t the end-time prophet, I got sick. I just started to vomit. I was in bed shivering and sweating and Sara stayed up with me. It was a long time before I could go back and understand what had happened. I floated a lot. Floating means when you snap back into your programme. You’re probably not far enough out to snap back into it but when you do — it’s an eerie feeling —’

‘Like being back in the cult but not being there? Like phantoms?’

‘Like phantoms.’

Danny stood up and moved for the door. ‘Piecing things back together takes a long time. You have to learn to be patient with yourself — like when you get your leg out of a cast, you can’t run on it right away.’

I could hear the others laughing in the living room. I stared at the carpet. My senses were like bees out of the hive. I could see the carpet. The blue was so intense I could almost hear it. I could take the feel of it under my hands. I could feel my heart beat. A few moments, a few precious moments of awareness. I would have a lifetime of them. Cradling myself I thought no one, no one can ever take this away from me. Yet hadn’t someone already done that? Yes, I would have to have patience even to find the place to begin again.

‘Honey?’ My mother was standing at the door. ‘Can you come here for a minute? We want to ask you something.’ In the next room Chuck was sitting on the bed. Mom shut the door. The floor was piled high with a tangle of clothes spilling out of half-open suitcases. My mother sat on the edge of the bed, choosing her words gingerly.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Like Lazarus. Whatever the question, the answer is probably going to be “why not”?’

‘Erica, we have to decide what you’re going to do now. You know that you have all the time in the world and that we’re always here for you but Sara thinks it would be a good idea for you to go home with her for a while. Some time to rest and learn some more. She has answers we simply don’t have. There is so much more you have to sort out for yourself.’

The thought appealed to me. Of course, just like the ladies in nineteenth-century novels who took a cruise or sojourned at an auntie’s when they were grieving. But on the heels of this came an image of Sara’s house. So many new things to cope with. She would have friends visiting. The thought of having to face anyone new was staggering. Of having to fill my time. If only I could hide away, but where? I didn’t want to see anyone I knew, not even my sister, until I was better. Before I could finish the thought, a tidal wave of tears tore everything loose. They were not tears of self-pity, frustration or grief. They were not tears of relief. They were tears I was born with. I wanted to cry to the bottom of them so I would never have to cry again. I don’t know how long we were there, Mom and Chuck crying too before Sara poked her head in the door.

‘Mind?’ she abbreviated.

Mom and Chuck exited. Sara curled up on the bed.

‘Enough clothes for the first six months, eh? I’ll say. It’s been what, two or three days? You sure don’t travel light ’ I found a sleeve of something to mop my face with.

‘Coming to New York with me?’ Sara never cut any fancy footwork, never introduced a subject. She searched my face. The invitation was sincere.

I grinned. ‘When do we leave?’

pages 228-236

2

When you hurt yourself somehow, fall down or get in a fight, you walk away thinking you’re feeling pain until you wake up the next morning and the soreness has set in and you puff up and turn every colour of the rainbow. I was going along for a while thinking, jeez, there’s not much to this when the shock wave returned from its journey of reverberation and smacked me. I was so bottomed-out physically that I didn’t get to the mental problems for a long time.

Most of the first month I slept I’d get up at ten and be back in bed by three in the afternoon. It was hot and humid. I shared Sara’s bedroom, a converted attic. There were windows at both ends under the eaves and the heavy summer wind passed through the room. Whenever I closed my eyes and put my head on the pillow, I felt I was falling into a thick darkness with such a strong force that there was no way to hold back. Sleep locked me into a blackness violently swarming with images. I would wake up screaming or imagining that I had screamed. No matter where she was in the house, Sara would hear me make the slightest stir and would appear at my side to put on the light, smooth down the covers and listen to me until I was quiet again.

It was during that time that I became familiar with a nightmare that recurred for years. A black ocean devoid of life. No matter how far inland I was, the waves would find me and suck me out to the depths. It was not the water that frightened me because I could breathe in it. It wasn’t a fear of sharks or sea monsters. Not even a microbe lived in the sterile inkyness. It was the power and vastness of it.

I was extremely sensitive to light and sounds. Crowds made me dizzy; the faces would blend and I’d grow faint. My memory and attention spans were useless. I couldn’t read or converse for more than a few minutes without getting completely worn down and needing a rest Reading a newspaper article could take an hour. How would I ever catch up on the world since my Rip Van Winkle sleep in the cult? I even had to learn about the things I’d not been isolated from but merely blanked out of my perception like the changes in clothing styles.

Sara had to keep reminding me to think for myself, to not look to her for opinions, to not soak up whatever I heard. But she had little trouble getting me to try new things. Boating, skating, concerts, dancing, water-skiing — but not all things came easily. Remembering how I had served Kadachi-san and all the guests at headquarters house soft drinks and had never been allowed to drink something so fine myself, I swore I’d drink the stuff until I burst In the cult I had served from bottles and didn’t know that drink cans had since changed and were manufactured with pop tabs. I saw the cans in the fridge and balked. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to open one and didn’t venture to try for several months. I never knew when I would excel and when I would fail, when the next step would be on rotten floorboards or on no floor at all. I glossed over with what I hoped was a sophisticated appearance by remembering things from the old Erica.

Sara read me as if I had neon signs flashing what I needed. When something needed to be resolved, she never hesitated to draw me into discussion but dancing the polka at Polish weddings, sitting on the front stoop eating watermelon, taking a martini break from a shopping spree, washing the dog and chasing each other around the yard with the hose — these did more for me than years of psychotherapy ever could have.

I shuddered to think if I had been institutionalized instead of deprogrammed I would have been in a hospital for years getting worse. Sara knew what she was doing. She had first gotten involved when her brother fell prey to a nomadic cult and disappeared. He got arrested hundreds of miles away and when they went to claim him, they found a total stranger who spoke in Bible verse, wore a long robe and had been surviving by scrounging food from garbage tins. After straightening him out, handling a Moonie was a piece of cake.

She took me out to meet people — seemed like she knew everyone in the whole state. We gave talks about mind control. We’d pull into a small town, talk to the school kids, the local paper, the service club luncheon and then have the whole town turn out in the evening to hear us speak at the church. What a welcome to the Fallen World! Total strangers listening to me with tears in their eyes, pinching my cheeks, giving me their addresses in case I ever needed them for anything. The warmth and attention were wonderful but I started to feel like a circus exhibit.

Sara started doing deprogrammings at home. It was my turn to say: I’ve been in your shoes. Every time I watched a deprogramming, another huge burden was lifted. They didn’t all break out of mind control in the same way. Kara from Ananda Marga let out screams that shook the house and Billy from The Way calmly balanced his Bible on his knee, took off his spectacles to wipe them and observed, ‘Well, it certainly appears that I’ve been deceived.’ Some said nothing but flushed in stunned silence. It was always miraculous to see the real person suddenly rush into the robot shell.

We worked together on floating until each person learned to handle it alone. We recognized the symptoms in one another instantly and instinctively. Sometimes the eyes would glaze over or the person would drop out of conversation. My own mind was like a minefield. I never knew when I’d trip an explosion. Sometimes I’d catch it like a contact high from one of the others, sometimes a phrase, a snatch of a song, maybe an unresolved bit of doctrine and always parking lots. Going to stores was a trial. I’d automatically check the lot for the flow, for the clues from Spirit World. If no one else was around, I’d work myself into a panic. I’d think what if, what if. If they are right, I’ve been deceived by Satan. My mind would start pacing and sniffing its old haunt, Purpose/Fall/ Restoration, and I’d snap back, or only half snap back and be spread between here and nowhere.

The thing to do was trace the floating back and resolve the problem that had triggered it In the cult they told us to cut off doubt Sara encouraged it Challenge, weigh, delve, decide. In the cult they told us that everything about the other world was evil. Sara told us not to destroy our good memories and benefits from the cult, people we loved, things we had learned and overcome.

Floating was only the punctuation, not the constant

The constant was exhilaration. The intensity of it was sure to illuminate the rest of my life. Every time I encountered something, I considered it as if I had never known of it before. There is an essence one can sometimes feel for a quiver of a moment when he looks at the stars. I felt that all the time. The smallest thing was not without its glory. Being able to sit down without permission, without guilt Buying a postage stamp with my own money and being able to send a letter of my very own thoughts to anyone. Feeling the wind, seeing the buildings, smelling the earth, letting my imagination run free. And being able to say no.

This expanding, more than anything else, combated floating. I simply could not fit back into that narrow mental slot. When I realized that, I knew that even though I was not completely healed, it was time for me to get back into the world.

I was prepared to enter society at the bottom rung, having been used to meeting handicaps that I never knew I had until I found myself in a situation for which I was not equipped. It took me a long time to realize that part of my handicap at this stage was being too advanced. By having met my weaknesses and shortcomings I had become stronger and wiser than most people who simply refused to admit to human frailty. I kept thinking I was wrong because I didn’t fit in but it was still the same old world that didn’t make sense.

There were practical problems that hit me left and right How to explain that blank in my resume when applying for a job. Say that I was off on independent study in some remote place or tell the truth and risk losing out on the job? Getting a driver’s licence, opening a bank account, getting references to rent a flat — meeting new people, especially dating, I always wondered if I should tell the story or not If I didn’t tell it, I would remain a stranger and if I did, I’d have to tell the whole thing knowing that when I’d finished, the person was not likely to have changed his view that cults are harmless groups of people who are better off where they are. When I was speaking to groups in New York, the people had been friendly because they pitied me. Now I was learning that no one really understood.

One of my old friends invited me to a high school reunion party. I mingled: a singer, a local politician, a craftsman, a journalist One woman arrived late. The talk quieted down as she made her entrance and hellos. ‘Sorry I’m late, guys. You’ll never believe what held me up. I stopped at a gas station and some Moonie came up trying to sell me flowers!’

The whole room burst into laughter. I looked down at my drink. The girl I’d been talking to turned to resume the conversation. ‘And what have you been up to since I last saw you, Erica?’

The thing that got me most upset was when people asked why I had become a Moonie and then didn’t notice at all how uncomfortable I was in answering. They’d never think to ask in casual conversation, tell us about how you became a quadriplegic in your motorcycle accident or tell us about watching your best friend get blown to bits in Vietnam and, oh, pass the chips, won’t you?

I found out that my brother had tried to foil the deprogramming. He thought my mother was over-reacting and shouldn’t treat me like a baby by bailing me out of trouble. He thought it was a fad, a phase I’d pass through. He wanted to phone me at the camp to tip me off to get out before she came to get me. Luckily, he wasn’t motivated enough to follow through. When I saw him, I asked him about it He scoffed at the idea that I had been brainwashed. Okay, big brother, what if you are right and I had just happened to, say, be into self-mutilation and your little plan had worked? He was unmoved. According to him, my great failing was that I just hadn’t been cool, hadn’t been doing the in thing, something I was still guilty of. I decided, after a time, to put my thoughts to him in a letter. The letter came back to me. He had scrawled across it ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue ...’ from the rhyme we used to taunt each other with as children ‘… anything you say bounces off me and sticks to you’. Welcome home, sis.

Surely someone would understand. I went to speak to a rabbi who reduced me to tears by ridiculing me for having toyed with Christianity and then to a minister who said I would have never become a Moonie if I had studied Christianity better. Father Peter was too embarrassed to discuss it I was barking up the wrong tree. It wasn’t a religious problem but a psychological one.

I finally came across a lukewarm article on the subject in an obscure publication and wrote to the author. He referred me to the only person he knew who had any knowledge of cults. I went to see this professor and gladly consented to having our talk taped for use in his book. A totally misleading sliver of one of my remarks later appeared in a Moonie PR book. I then heard that this professor was on Moon’s payroll as a functionary at the annual international conference that a Dr Moon with eyeglasses hosts for eminent scientists.

After the Jonestown tragedy, an informational hearing was called in Washington, DC. The Moonie campaign to have the event cancelled did not succeed but they pressured enough that the Moonie president was called to testify and ex-members were not.

Hundreds of Moonies had the place mobbed by dawn. A friend, fearing for my safety, got me into the hearing room before the doors were opened to the public. First the press came in, bright lights, scuffle, equipment being set up, the sound of people filling up the room behind me and then a peculiar and familiar stench. That smell I could never get rid of on the fundraising team. I turned around and saw the entire hall filled with Moonies. As people stood in turn to give their presentations, the Moonies jeered, stomped their feet, hurled insults. Security guards, panelists, press all stiffened at the unpredictability of this confrontation. Wasn’t it the right of a governing body to gather information after the assassination of a congressmen and the death of over 900 others? How many were the Moonies willing to sacrifice to protect themselves? One of the ex-cultists prevented from testifying who had lost her tiny son in the suicide-massacre shook like a leaf when the Moonie president spoke in her stead. The Moonies rose as a man with a deafening cheer.

I wasn’t going to hang around. I pushed my way through the knotted crowd towards a side exit. Almost there but someone was blocking my path. I tapped his shoulder to move him aside. He spun around and faced me. Baum.

‘Erica, it’s-so-good-to-see-you, we’ve-been-so-worried-about-you.’

Yeah, so worried you’ve been losing sleep thinking what deprogrammed fundraisers will do to Moon’s bank account. I tried to step past He kept talking so fast he was spitting.

‘Listen, Sister, I-know-that-you-think-I’m-possessed-by-evil-spirits and we-think-that-you’re-possessed-by-evil-spirits, but-that-doesn’t-mean-that —’

‘Bob,’ I luxuriated in the heresy of addressing him like that and putting my hand on his shoulder, ‘I don’t believe in evil spirits.’

‘What?’ He took in a sharp breath and seemed to grow visibly larger with disbelief and indignation. ‘Well... don’t you believe in God?’ He had on a red and white pinstripe shirt that had an odd optical effect of making him seem to vibrate all the more.

‘You mean a person can’t believe in God without believing in little invisible things running around that make people open their wallets and fall asleep on the highway?’

I still love you, Bob, but not in a way you could understand. Not because doctrine says I must, not to show how super-spiritual I am.

‘I know you weren’t one of those jeering and stomping your feet You were always dignified and knew to turn the other cheek.’

His smile caught me off guard. Then I checked the eyes. They were blazing. ‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’ His head bobbled. ‘Things have changed. The time has come. The course has changed from a passive one to one of aggression. We’re on the offensive now.’

All the times Moon had spoken about military aggression. All the times we listened with our lids fluttering closed, as he droned on in his hypnotic way, punctuating with militaristic words, of battle, of enemy, of charging and crushing, defeating, subjugating, annihilating, of taking over the government, the United Nations, the whole world. Baum had me by both arms. I looked toward the door, searching wildly for a face I knew. Two friends spotted me. They flanked me and moved me through the door into an empty corridor. Baum ran after me, shouting, dancing to himself, trying to pry one of the men loose.

‘Leave her alone, Baum, can’t you see she doesn’t want to talk to you?’

‘Never mind that. You have to answer to a few things, Erica. What about this article in Newsweek? Why did you lie, Erica? Why are you saying things about us that you know aren’t true? You can’t do that, you can’t get away with it.’ He had his lips peeled back, lunging forward at every question. What did he intend to do about it? The press had already gone for the story about suicide training in the Moonies, about members being taught how to slash their wrists. Ex-members everywhere were crawling out of the woodwork. I wasn’t the only one talking.

Off the corridor behind one of the endless unmarked doors we stood. We’d ditched Baum. I was shaking. I sank into a chair.

I was shaking because I knew that but for a flick of fate, Baum and I could have traded places.

And by that same fate I had once been a model Moonie, a hard-liner like Baum. Would I not have made a model Nazi? Had not both the victim and the victimizer lived within me? Was I not now cast out forever from the innocence I once enjoyed? Moon had held out the forbidden fruit and my eyes had been opened to know good and evil.

#FFWPU #Family Federation for World Peace and Unification #Moonies #Unification Church #Sun Myung Moon #Erica Heftmann

[whorevader]

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Obi-Wan thinking Anakin was irredeemable, and it’s significance to both narrative and character. Obviously it’s indicative of his Jedi roots, but there’s more than that. It’s a contrast to Padme and Luke, and aligns him, oddly enough, with Leia. And another thing these two have in common is that they’re military leaders - actual Generals, who fight in actual wars, rather than a Senator and a farm-boy turned rebel pilot, both of whom do have experience with combat zones but unquestionably to a lesser degree. Anyways, it doesn’t seem coincidental.

Obi-Wan and Leia are more often exposed to the cost of warfare, and for prolonged periods of time. (You could say they’re overexposed, that they’re saturated in it.) There’s no question in war that you will see your men fall on the battlefield. (And there’s no question that your loved ones will disappoint you, especially in hard times.) When you get shot in the company of somebody like Leia or Obi-Wan, they’re focused on the fact that the enemy is closing in and the other men will still need a leader tomorrow. Every battle has casualties. Generals can’t afford to go back and take your pulse; there’s no point. 

But when you get shot in the company of somebody like Luke or Padme, they focus on the fact that you’re still breathing. They want to save you. They still think they can.

First instinct might be to look at the way that people like Leia and Obi-Wan think and be unnerved, but this clearly is not the result of some moral failing on their parts. It’s different from the detached, unfeeling calculations of institutional leaders like those in the Senate dealing in hypothetical battles and economic equations, or even those on the Council who never commanded troops. Those leaders get to indulge in a degree of separation between the issuing of orders, untouched from a distance, and the actual execution of them. (Not to mention that many in the Republic treat clones as weapons rather than soldiers.)

No, Leia and Obi-Wan don’t operate the same way. It’s different, because they have to decide how their men will risk their lives. Then, during the battle, if they have to retreat, or push forward, or change course, they have to decide who to leave behind. That isn’t to say they won’t try to save all they can. There will be guilt for those they can’t save (you can see Kenobi’s guilt on Mustafar for his inability to bring Anakin back as well). But commanders understand that the future depends on soldiers that can fight. This is the survival mode that people lapse into after being charged with the responsibility of military leadership. It’s a survival mode which requires one take on the care of a cause, and an army, not just oneself.

Luke and Padme have experience with the military to a certain extent (Padme more so than Luke in this regard) but they aren’t ever responsible for what happens on the battlefield, who dies and who lives. Padme has the small amount of control that being a Senator and a diplomat grants her, but again, this is different from being a military commander. Even Luke’s direct military involvement, throughout the series, is kept to being a pilot, and an independent operative, at least as far as I’m aware, and if we keep to the span of the OT. They had happy enough childhoods, with little to no impact from their respective trilogy’s wars, as Padme was an adult by the time the Clone Wars began, and Luke’s residence on Tatooine in the Outer Rim was the least of the Rebellion’s, and I’m sure, the Empire’s concerns. 

In the face of Luke and Padme, and Leia and Obi-Wan, Anakin is an outlier, which aligns with his role as the one who falls rather than the one who reacts. His situation is much closer to Leia and Obi-Wan’s, but in the face of multiple battles and the exile of Ahsoka, he doesn’t exactly show that same mentality. Sure, he’s an important leader who understood the costs of war and acted rationally (as far as he goes) in handling them. But, despite being a general, he never seemed to truly adopt that military mentality of “you can’t save them all” - he literally falls in his attempt to save his family’s lives. And I’d be willing to argue that this is largely because, unlike Obi-Wan, and unlike Leia, Anakin entered the war with a survival mode already installed - that of a child slave.

Speaking of Anakin’s military history and its affect on his character, it also offers a different lense through which to analyse Obi-Wan’s infamous “certain point of view”. After all, Anakin dying a young, Jedi war hero was, at one point, a real possibility. How does this interact with his real-life fall to the Dark Side? Well, you could claim that in both versions, Anakin was a casualty of war and institutional corruption. After all, it was Palpatine who orchestrated both environments, and in both versions, the Jedi Order failed to save him - does it matter much (outside of the OT) if he fell in combat during the war or to the Dark Side after?

It is interesting also to examine Obi-Wan’s claim that it was Vader who killed Anakin. The meaning in this is obvious - it’s discussed outright in the OT. There’s no need to go over it. However, it does hold implications, upon further inspection, to something crucial in Obi-Wan’s perspective about his former padawan’s fall. Anakin, as Obi-Wan knew and cared for him, was dead, and while Darth Vader may have finished him off, is it so unreasonable to suggest that it was General Skywalker who had chipped away at him for so many years? This is a metaphor that Kenobi could never have used with young Luke, for obvious reasons, but it is, if nothing else, something to contemplate further. Did Obi-Wan consider Anakin’s fall a decline or a sudden drop? Did he consider it inevitable or did he factor in the stresses of the war? Of dealing with Jedi culture? Of being born into slavery?

It’s so easy to forget, in the context of the films, and what we’re shown, that Anakin and Leia were generals before reaching their twenties, that Ahsoka Tano was taken from her home and raised a child soldier, that Obi-Wan was tasked with the responsibility of raising a child that he later had to watch be turned into a weapon for the powerful and unburdened, twice. It’s even easier to miss exactly how much impact their histories have on their characters and relationships. It’s brilliant though, and I suppose the point is that Star Wars, like all important works of media, is chock-full of fascinating characters with histories and behaviors that mirror the real world that we live in, and it’s a shame to see anyone reduce them to anything less.

#anakin skywalker meta #obi-wan kenobi meta #leia organa meta #luke skywalker meta #padme amidala meta #star wars meta #sw meta #anakin meta #obi-wan meta #leia meta #luke meta #padme meta #obikin #obikin meta #anidala meta #anidala #star wars #meta #mine #ahsobi-wanakin #my meta #it's not really obikin or anidala but it's definitely applicable so i thought it might go in the tag anyway #this is a lot btw

[wearejapanese]

According to the 2010 census conducted by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), there are approximately 190 million people living in Brazil. Of these, approximately 1.5 million are Japanese or descendants of Japanese, or less than 1% of the country’s population, according to data from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Center for Japanese-Brazilian Studies. In quantitative terms, therefore, the Nikkei is part of a minority.

According to an evaluation by the Brazilian Association of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transvestite and Transgender (Abglt), approximately 20 million Brazilians are homosexuals, corresponding to 10% of the population. This is another minority group.

By “minority”, it is not just about statistics; there is also a factor of ignorance and prejudice that, in one way or another, begins to be discussed in Brazilian society. In the case of homosexual Nikkei, then, it is a group that constitutes a minority within a minority.

In Brazil, the Nikkei still suffer some kind of prejudice, manifested mainly in the form of stereotypes. Consequently, Nikkei homosexuals may also be a target of it. “I think we have been given an extra burden of prejudice. I’ve heard several times that ‘I’ve never seen a gay jap’, which shows a lot of our invisibility and how people suppose that I am this or that due to my race,” says Aryel Murasaki, 29, occupational therapist and a fourth generation Japanese Brazilian (Yonsei).

However, for Ricardo Nakase, 33, Sansei, there is no such extra charge. “Even though, in general, Asian homosexuals are very discreet. Many, fearful of society or even of the reaction of family members, do not assume it. This is not an exclusivity of the Asian homosexuals. In general, prejudice comes in a more or less standardized order. Observing society as a whole, we can see that prejudice comes according to the degree of divergence or detachment from the ‘normality’ that is believed to be right. So if the person is gay, the first thing people will point out is this feature. If someone is gay and fat, they will first point out that he is gay and, in the background, that he is fat. Understanding the degree of prejudice of the society is very complex,” he says.

Another form of prejudice is fetishization, a subject that targets Nikkei hetero and homosexuals in a similar way. Yet, this prejudice also comes from non-Eastern descendant homosexuals.

“Within our physical traits and customs, which people have a very shallow knowledge, there is a mysticism, fascination and consequent fetishism. I have never been in a situation in which I was not seen as an exotic fetish, whether for an Asian or non-Asian. I realize that the Asian man or woman is seen as a fetish rather than as an individual. There were friends who came to me and said ‘introduce me some jap friend of yours’; until then, I did not even have Asian friends in Sao Paulo. Do you understand how prejudice is subtle, but it does not cease to exist? When I ask ‘why do you have all that interest for Asians?’, The answer is usually ‘oh, I do not know, I like it because it’s different’. Then I noticed that I am rarely seen as an individual; I am a stereotype for everyone’s eyes. I had partners who said about Asians being better or comments like ‘you don’t look Japanese’, that I am too voluptuous to be Japanese. It’s really complicated,” says Kiyomi, 26, a makeup artist, Sansei.

“I’ve been to dates when I felt like an object; the person already made assumptions about me, including about sexual preferences, and when I did not meet certain expectations, I heard things like ‘but aren’t you a jap?’” says Aryel Murasaki. “I have been dismissed by several people for being a descendant, often with phrases like ‘don’t like Asians’. On the other hand, there were people who wanted to stay with me simply because I was an Oriental, because they had never been to or because they liked them. In many moments, I felt like an object. Today, I handle this in a better way, but before I got very upset.”

There are slang words that express some of these fetishes. In general, the term “yellow fever” is attributed to a non-oriental person who is attracted to Asians, both homo and heterosexual. “Rice Queen” refers to a gay man who prefers Asians. Both, depending on the situation, may have a pejorative meaning for the Asian side of the relationship.

Stereotypes against gay Nikkeis have an aggravating effect: an image of a man with delicate, effeminate features, soft skin, hairless and necessarily sexually passive is made, which does not always match reality.

“Ethnic issues cause a frisson. Always permeated by clichés and labels. I feel extremely objectified. [Non-Eastern homosexuals] think of us as ‘power bottoms’ and ill-endowed. Jokes are always a recurring motive of these stereotypes,” says Jan Kumagai, 23, student, Sansei.

Psychologist Flavio Murahara, 34, sansei, compares the prejudice among homosexuals to racism against Orientals in general. “It follows the same logical rules of the society, the ideal of male beauty to be white, tall etc. The Asian enters as a subclass in this classification. Although I had experienced innumerable situations of different severities, I remember an specific former date who told a mutual friend that he was not satisfied with the fact that I, the Asian, had ended the relationship, because he, the white person, that was supposed to decide the future of the relationship. At other situation, someone said to my partner at that time, with me present, that he should not be jealous because he was not attracted to Asian. It is very strange in the sense that these are not phrases usually listened by white or even black people in the same situation, as it would sound extremely racist. So, I think there is racism against Asian people that is totally accepted in Brazilian culture, it is a issue that goes beyond the prejudice suffered by homosexuals, something that must be discussed widerly”, Flavio states.

That question How did you find out you are homosexual? - is a question that frequently figures in lists of those that “homosexuals are tired of hearing”. With a little clarification, it’s easy to see why it is unnapropriated.

“If you ask me, I would not be able to define an answer immediately. I have always been,” says Ricardo. “Now, if you ask how I have assumed myself as gay for the society, the answer will be different and you will have a story about acceptance, family conflict and prejudice.”

“I think ‘tired of listening’ is related to how often we listen it. I do not consider this an annoying question, but I know many people who do. So we repeat it over and over again during our lives, but people do not ask ‘how did you find out you were straight?’,” points out Aryel.

“In the case of LGBT people, this question often refers to the suffering of the ‘discovery’ of sexual orientation, such as doubts, fears and anguish. It’s very intimate. If we look at these ‘lists of questions’, most are usually biased or offensive. But they are questions that also exist in other minority communities, for example, with the physically disabled, when someone treats them as if they were children,” adds Ricardo.

Family

Family relationship is still a delicate point, a very personal one indeed. The decision to tell family members is often the beginning of a process of transformation.

“I decided to tell my family that I was homosexual because it was causing me so much suffering. I felt that I could not be who I really was, I made a lot of effort to disguise all the little things, not only hide what I did outside the house, even tried to control my gestures to not look feminine, invented stories, lied. I had a feeling that I was cornered, trapped, and at any moment someone could discover the truth and expose me. I was very scared. Being in the closet is a very bad feeling,” says Aryel.

“At first, I did not understand what was happening. First came the stage of the self-blame: ‘Why am I different?’, ‘What will people think?’, among many other doubts. At 18, I had my first involvement, and at that time I told my family. It was chaos,” recalls Ricardo. “Today I understand the side of everyone, especially my mother, whom I’m very attached to. After this first episode, there were some family problems, unrelated to my situation, which made me give up my life for a few years. When I came back to life, I got involved with another person. I was already much more self-assured and had already passed the acceptance phase. I took on my new relationship and, unlike the first time, I was very well accepted by my family. I do not deny that there were new dramas, doubts and embarrassing situations, but all these is part of one’s process of evolution.”

“The fear of coming out to my family was accompanied by many insecurities, mainly because I was economically dependent on my father. I was afraid of being expelled from home or living in such an unpleasant situation that cohabitation would no longer be possible. It was at this point in my life that I understood the importance of assuming my sexual orientation to my family, which was the need to be truthful, to be whole. Having to omit part of my life was something that bothered me too much,” says Flavio. “What enabled me to make this revelation was to discover this inner certainty that, regardless of my father’s reaction [Flavio’s mother died when he was a child], I would have the courage to face whatever the consequences might be. After telling him that I was gay, I realized that this should not be a question experienced only by the young person who lives all these prejudices, but the family also has to face it. My brothers also had to deal with the prejudice of other people. Two of my closest brothers tell about the daily life of how it is to tell other people that they have a gay brother. As if homosexuality was a ‘problem’ only of that youngster and not a social responsibility of the family that can also take on the task of deconstructing prejudices.”

“The outing has led me to learn a lot from Facebook groups, academic texts, other people’s reports, and other information about various LGBTQ+ issues that have given me enough insight to find myself,” says Jan.

“Within the Nikkei community, there is some ‘veiled acceptance’. Because it is a very discrete culture when it comes to private life, I did not suffer any kind of prejudice from my relatives. It’s that ’everyone knows, but no one comments’. I know that in part this is due to my personal commitment. When you respect yourself and respect people, there is no way others won’t accept as you are. Within my family, both on the paternal and maternal side, I was the first grandchild to graduate from a college and the only one to get involved in the activities within the Nikkei community,” continues Ricardo, whose job is bank clerk; he is also a singer and performs at many events in the Nikkei community.

“I have not lived with them [family members] for seven years. I have not yet told them I am bisexual; I feel it is an issue that is in the air, but everyone ignores it. I understand that it is comfortable for them that way, so I leave it that way. Homosexuality is like a ‘slap’, and not talking about it explicitly would be a softer one,” says Kiyomi. Among his closest relatives is his grandfather. “I have never spoken explicitly to him, because he wishes from the bottom of his heart that I am happy, and bisexuality is not an easy path. In every story, there is the moment when the protagonist needs to choose the right path, and that path is never easy.”

#Nikkei #Nikkeijin #Nipo Brasileiro #Japanese Diaspora #LGBTQIA #Brazil #Brasil #Discover Nikkei #Acceptance #Prejudice #TW Slur Word #Japanese Brazilian

[l-in-c-future]

A pair of Kazakh couple who returned to live in the oil capital city of Kazakhstan Atyau:

“We responded to the urging calling from our Kazakhstan President to return home about a decade ago. We made jokes that whether or not we lived in China, we still work for China’s petroleum State Owned Enterprises.” 

They used to work for one of those SOEs in NE of Kazakhstan, yet the project had stopped. They have to find new jobs in the Western Kazakhstan. They didn’t know their work was related to the OROB until TV media from China came to shoot documentary.

They experienced that China did not provide many employment opportunities to local Kazakhs except those low skills and low technological levels jobs. China State Enterprises only hired their technical and engineering staff from China without demonstrating any intention to train up local people to acquire higher level and therefore higher paid jobs. China’s SOEs tend to bring their own teams of people in thousands to work in all infrastructure projects.

Increasing protests in capital city: 

Increasing incidents of protests in Astana were noted as more and more people are frustrated and angry about their lands being leased to foreigners on very term long bases. They worried that their government would lease their lands to China. e.g. The Kazakhstan government had leased a piece of land to a China petroleum SOE for 5 years, China wanted another 25 years, local people don’t wanted to see this as a standard pattern.

“It can’t say that there is no benefits brought by foreigners but we have to be truly mutually benefited. Our government shouldn’t lease all the lands to foreigners for long term like 25 or 30 years but should renew the leases on say every 5 years. We should not allow massive influx of foreigners as well.”

“We are afraid because they, the number of Han Chinese influx, are too many, many local people don’t feel comfortable.”

“I don’t think everyone should only live on the Road and Belt.” “Even though there may be good policies intentions made by both governments, I don’t see any solid progress, we cannot sit here to wait in vain.”

A HK migrant (Chris) married to a Uyghur-Kazakh mixed family living in Kazakhstan for 20 years

“My wife’s maiden family don’t know what is One Road One Belt, China means daily needed goods sold in the markets for them. From time to time, I am being questioned that why the inconsistent standards of China made goods. I don’t think the poor quality China made goods has anything related to me but I am careful in choosing the goods.”

In the Eastern part of Kazakhstan where it bordered with China’s Xinjiang Province, the Uyghurs living at two sides of the borders belong to the same ethnic clan. They empathize their fellow ethnic members who suffer under China’s oppressive policies. Their impression about China is based on how China treats the Uyghurs. They don’t have good impression about China.

“The Uyghurs here resent Chinese Han people a lot. Many of my friends and neighbours frequently tell me how much they hate Chinese privately.They don’t understand why China always persecute their fellow ethnic members. Some years ago there were violent riots in Xinjiang, some Uyghurs who lived in the capital city here echoed their supporting voices as well. Even though people are separated by border lines, that don’t cut off their natural ethnic bonds.

China attempts to buy political and diplomatic supports from neighbouring Central Asian countries’ leaders to support, echo or even assist their highly oppressive policies against the Uyghurs to curb the Xinjiang independent movement through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China tirelessly frame the ‘terrorists’ threats caused by the Uyghurs as an excuse to justify ethnic persecution. 

Now with One Road One Belt, China pushes an economic card to buy or bait further sympathy from the neighbouring countries regarding its Uyghurs policies. While China may be able to orchestra deals with the elite leaders who were their former fellow communist leaders in the Soviet Union or who are governing similar authoritarian regimes like China, it is much harder to buy the hearts of local people, especially many of the ethnic people in Central Asian countries also have their fellow ethnic clan members living in Xinjiang. For example, Kazakhs is the second largest ethnic group population, following Uyghurs. 

China doesn’t considerate the resentment coming from their neighbours who witnessed the drastic colonization by Han Chinese in Xinjiang in the past several decades had resulted in significant dilution and marginalization of the original demographic compositions. A result of putting them in very disadvantaged and discriminated positions. They share deeply the same worry and fear of what may happen to them in their own countries under China’s increasing dominating influences. Will their future will be a Xinjianization.  

“Even though China has replaced Russia to become Kazakhstan’s major trading partner, the old political tie with Russia is still strong and close. Many Kazakhs consider this relationship superior to they have with China. Many of them have prejudice against China. Even though both Russia and China are communist country, Kazakhs perceived that those happened in Russia and in their country were through ‘genuine’ revolutions while the Communist Party in China gained power through civil war and power seizures.”

“I observe China is trying to increase its recognition and appraised from other countries through cultural exchange. What China thinks the Confucius and calligraphy as important essences of culture may not be equally seen by other people because every place, every nation, every tribe has their own unique beauties and goodness in their own historical and cultural heritages. If China only wants to spread its own culture to other people single sidedly with an aim to make others follow the China model, I don’t think it is a successful way. Cultural exchange should be conducted on equal basis.”

China tries to increase her ‘soft power’ through cultural exchanges but many times the “cultural exchanges” come with economic packages and the content of the ‘culture’ is dictated by the Communist Party’s pre-screened ideological views. It is not soft power, it is subtle indoctrination as co-product or by-product of China’s economic exports.

Cultural exchange students from Kazakhstan studying in HK

“We like to come back to HK if we can because HK is very different from China.”

“We do not hear of One Road and One Belt.”

Is it? How much longer HK can be still seen as having her competitive advantage in many foreigners’ eyes when China is increasingly squeezing and wiping out HK’s uniqueness through suffocating HK’s legitimate autonomy and screwing her freedom?

“Kazakhstan’s tertiary education places a lot of emphasis on science and technological training while ignoring human and social science education. In such background, it makes people not resisting China’s economic development driven China model. At the present, many Kazakhs cannot relate how freedom, human rights, and righteous to their daily life. But how about the future? Those students who study overseas who have seen a different society and different lifestyle in other places, they may think it is also something that can be feasible in Kazakhstan as well. They may voice out their demand to fight for a better society. When this happens, it depends on whether and how the Kazakhstan government can accommodate the new civil demands.”

No matter where people live, once they have seen a bigger better alternative world, it is hard to ask them to satisfy in a caged environment in long term. However, China is using all the means to control its overseas students. Even trying to mobilize them in extreme nationalistic behaviours in overseas or using them as extended limbs to intervene academic freedoms in the campuses and classrooms of overseas schools.

Does the so-called “China model” of ‘cultural exchange’ really heartfully facilitate young people in the Road and Belt countries to broaden their worldviews and life experiences or China wants to dupe its even more repressive remote-controlled citizens to other already authoritarian countries?

Is it just another means of China’s ‘soft bait’ to young people in other countries?

Vietnam

Projects in Vietnam had been halted or stopped when Sino-Vietnam relationship is tense. 

“Some projects are suspended because of major industrial accidents, wages not paid to workers and other quality issues. The costs of construction had rocketed from USD 500 million to 800 million. We still don’t know when the sky rail would be completed. The budget exceeded portion will be topped up by Vietnam government, means being ultimately paid by the Vietnam taxpayers.” commented from Dong, a local Vietnamese policy analyst.

Many China capital companies offered very low prices to bid the infrastructure contracts by eying Vietnam’s high infrastructure needs but doesn’t have sufficient infrastructure development funds. There is a concern regarding the quality and safety standards of such cheap constructions.

“Vietnam is stuck in a paradox now.” 

Apart from infrastructures, Vietnam is also heavily relying on China for her supply of daily goods. Some years ago, there was civil opinion discussing and debating how to escape from China.

“We should think how Vietnam can speeds up her own reform development and modernization. Instead of escaping from China, we should think how we can overcome and make ourselves better than China.”  

#One Road One Belt #Vietnam #Kazakhstan

[jaysontaylor7619]

Why should you save?

Let us begin by understanding the need to save. Saving money is nothing but building up a corpus that you can use for various purposes. From attending to an emergency such as a medical emergency to paying for a planned expense such as buying a house, your corpus can help you achieve life goals with greater ease.

There are multiple reasons for goal-based savings. Here is a list of the most common goals for which you should save:

1. For emergencies

Life often throws many surprising challenges in front of you and most of the time, you may find yourself unprepared for them. From your vehicle getting involved in an accident to your mobile phone getting stolen, from your parents requiring urgent hospitalization to your investments suffering due to slow market trends, you can never know what financial challenge lies at the next end. You, therefore, need to save some money and keep it ready for such unforeseen expenses. This is the most important reason why you should get into the habit of saving money each and every month to ensure you have enough with you when you need to address an emergency.

There are multiple factors that determine your emergency corpus amount like:

Average monthly expenses

Nature of your job, whether the government sector or private, whether temporary or permanent, etc.

Your monthly outstanding liabilities like home-loan EMI, etc.

Pro Tip: Your emergency corpus can be any amount from 3 to 18 months of your family’s average monthly expenses. A quick calculation of Emergency Corpus = Average monthly expenses X 6. Must-have products for emergencies, other than your emergency corpus, is a credit card and a health insurance plan for your family.

2. To buy a house

The day you begin working and earning for yourself, you achieve the independence you always wished. The next step is buying a house and for that, you need to save periodically from your salary. Since a home is one of the three greatest requirements of life (along with food and clothing), you need to buy a home at some point in life. Start saving money early on in your career so that you will have a corpus to pay the down payment of your house and be financially capable of getting a home loan as well. This requires a lot of focus and so you should begin working on it without any delays or distractions.

3. To pay for your child’s education

It is every parent’s responsibility to pay for their children’s education. You have to save money for this purpose. Even if you are young and single, you need to think ahead and start saving for years to come when you will be a family person with a spouse and children. Rather than burdening yourself later, start planning and saving right away so that your children get the best education and you can pay for all the expenses without the situation getting too economically burdensome for you.

Read our tips to Financial planning tips for parents

Pro Tip: Education inflation is more than 10% in India and is ever-rising, especially for higher and professional education.

4. To pay for your child’s marriage

Another massive responsibility that you have to fulfill in life is to see your children settle down in life. Apart from their education, you also need to save for their marriage. If your children are young now, begin planning and saving so that you have enough time to build up the necessary corpus. There are some very handy investment schemes such as the money-back child insurance plans, post office saving schemes such as the Sukanya Samriddhi Account, etc. that help you to save for your children’s future needs such as their marriage. Look for such investments and save in a smart manner.

5. To plan for your retirement

You need to save sufficiently for your post-retirement years. Remember, as soon as you turn 60, your income will stop overnight. The pension you receive may hardly be good enough to support your lifestyle. Rather than having to depend on your kids, you can stay financially independent and secure only if you plan ahead. Start saving for your retirement immediately. No matter whether you are in your 20s, 30s or 40s, it is never too early to start saving for this purpose. The earlier you begin, the easier it will be for you to have more money for the twilight years of your life. You can use the money in your retirement years to pay for your daily expenses, for your medical bills or simply to achieve your life goals such as travel.

6. Miscellaneous

There could be various other reasons for which you might have to plan and save ahead of time. The reasons would vary from person to person and can range from sister’s wedding to a foreign trip to parent’s health issues to almost anything. All you need to do is, identify the goal and then save systematically towards the same in a disciplined manner.

These are some of the main reasons you need to save your money. As you can see, some of these require a longer saving-period and some shorter. You need to understand your life goals and then start building the various funds accordingly.

Read: How to manage your debt wisely

Types of financial goals

As mentioned above, people save for various reasons. While some of these are to achieve a dream related to their leisure, others are for practical and sustainable purposes. So while you need to save for a lavish vacation, you also have to save for your retirement years. Financial goals are nothing but targets you set yourself and the monetary arrangements you make to achieve them. Financial goals are usually divided into three groups:

A. Short-term goals

Short-term financial goals are those goals that you need to take care of in the immediate future. Ideally, you need to have a corpus ready for these goals. But you can be disciplined with your expenses and savings and provision for these goals as and when needed. Most of the short-term financial goals are repetitive in nature and you need to address them at regular intervals. The only way to be prepared for these goals is to make a budget and strictly stick to you. You need to have control over your expenses in order to save enough money to fund the short term financial goals and also to save for the mid and long term goals. The most common short-term financial goals are:

a. Paying EMI’s for the various loans you have b. Clearing the monthly credit card bills c. Arranging for annual family vacations d. Getting the best health insurance cover for your entire family e. Indulging in self-care

Tenure for short-term goals:

are usually from 0-2 years.

Top investment products for short-term goals:

can be a savings bank accounts (with 4-7% ROI), Bank Fixed Deposits, Liquid and Debt Mutual Funds, etc.

B. Mid-term goals

Next, we have the mid-term financial goals. These are some of the most crucial goals that you need to provide for. Unfortunately, and rather dangerously, many people tend to deprioritize these goals while they focus on the short term and long term financial goals. Mid-term goals are those goals which you need to meet just a few years down the line. You don’t have to wait until your retirement nor take care of them at the end of the month. The mid-term financial goals are in fact some of the most common life goals we all encounter. You need to build up sufficient funds for these goals to ensure you do not stumble along the way. Some of the common mid-term financial goals include:

a. Getting married b. Having a baby c. Clearing your student loan d. Buying a house e. Starting a business f. Taking care of your parents

Tenure for mid-term goals:

are usually from 2-5 years.

Top investment products for mid-term goals:

can be Bank Fixed Deposits, Debt Mutual Funds, Gold, etc.

C. Long-term goals

A lot has been said and discussed the long-term financial goals of a person. You must have heard many people tell you that you need to save for your twilight years. While retirement is definitely one of the most crucial long-term financial goals, there are other goals that require planning and saving over a long period of time. It is a good idea to start saving early on in life for the long term goals so that you can save in small amounts and still end up with a large corpus. Some of the common long-term financial goals include:

a. Saving for your retirement b. Sending your children to the best foreign university for higher studies c. Buying a lavish villa at a good location d. Owning multiple properties e. Travelling the world f. Buying an expensive car such as a Lamborghini

Tenure for long-term goals:

are usually more than 5 years or so.

Top investment products for long-term goals:

can be Equity Mutual Funds, Real Estate, Direct Equity, etc.

Do read: Complete guide to financial planning

How to save towards your financial goals?

Now that you know more about financial goals and their importance, you need to start saving towards them. Here are some handy tips to help you along the way:

Step #1 –  Set S.M.A.R.T. goals

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound.

Always remember that the life goals you set for yourself will be different from those that your friend has. Life situations vary and no two families are the same. You have your own set of responsibilities. For instance, your friend may be a single person who lost his parents as well. He does not intend to get married and so he is saving extensively for a world tour. On the other hand, you are a father-of-two and have dependent parents as well. Your financial goals would then primarily revolve around the well-being of your family members. Thus, setting specific and relevant financial goals is the first step in the process.

So, you need to identify your goal and then make it S.M.A.R.T. For example, your financial goal could be “Child Education”.

But you need to make it Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound by making it “Child Education Expenses of INR 1 CR after 15 years”.

Step #2 – Segregate your goals and pen it down

As discussed, financial goals are classified into three groups – the short, mid and long term goals. You also need to identify your goals and sort them accordingly. You need to have a fair idea of your goals and by when you need to achieve them. This is a vital step as you need to have different savings mechanisms for each type of goal. For instance, you may depend on a fixed deposit to pay for your annual family vacation and a mutual fund to pay for your daughter’s wedding. It is thus crucial for you to know the timeline and segregate your financial goals to plan better.

Actually penning your financial goals down is one-step towards the same, as it is etched in your mind forever.

Step #3 – Make a monthly budget – Expense Planning

It is extremely helpful to make a monthly budget as that is the point from where you can begin your financial contributions. After all, the savings need to come out of your monthly salary. So you need to make three divisions, one each for your income, expenses and savings. Calculate your monthly household expenses and other payments that you cannot avoid. This would include outstanding EMI’s etc.

Once that is done, calculate the amount of money left. Then, decide the amount of money you want to leave in your savings bank account as an emergency fund and the amount you want to invest. Once you have a plan ready, it will become easier for you to save for your financial goals.

Read: Top personal financial management apps in India

Step #4 – Keep the saved money away from your wallet

Store the money you save away from yourself, in a savings bank account or lock it up in investments. If you have money lying around, you will be very tempted to spend it. Since discipline is important, you need to keep all distractions away and save with complete diligence.

It is also important to note that you need to be responsible with your credit card usage. When you do not have the cash with you, do not simply keep using your credit card to pay for unnecessary expenses. This will defeat the purpose and you will fail to save appropriately for your financial goals.

Step #5 – Invest properly – Choose the products carefully

And finally, you need to invest properly. There are several investment options available to you. While some like fixed deposits are low risk, others such as equities carry some risk. The yields from each type of investment are different. It is extremely important for you to understand the type of investment, its mechanism and return offered. You also need to correlate the investment with your savings needs and see if the returns would be of use to you. If you are not sure, speak to a financial advisor and then choose the correct investment option. Making an error here can prove to be very damaging and can hamper all your future financial targets.

Step #6 – Annual Review of your Investment Portfolio, Goals and re-aligning the same

This is a super important step in your Financial Planning called Review. This needs to be in line with your asset allocation and risk profile.

Only when you Re-view your portfolio, you would be able to analyse the same and check if your portfolio is following the desired path. If not, then a re-alignment of the portfolio might be necessary. Also, goals keep changing and evolving with time. Annual review and analysis of the investment portfolio can be a healthy check on the progress of the same so that there is no shortfall when the goal is near.

What to keep in mind while planning for your financial goals?

To be able to save properly and build up the highest corpus, you need to keep the following factors in mind when saving towards your financial goals:

1. Factor in inflation

Inflation is a factor that you must keep in mind when you save for your future financial goals. Remember, an item that costs Rs 1000 today may cost Rs 5000 in the next decade. If your dream villa costs Rs 2 crore today, it will probably cost Rs 4 crores* in 10 years’ time and so you need to save more. Unless you factor in the inflation, you will not be able to achieve your financial goals in a manner you wish to do so. *In average inflation in India is 7.66% in 2019. (Source: https://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/india/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-india-2019.aspx)

2. Invest according to your asset allocation and risk appetite

As stated, some investments carry a low risk and others carry a higher risk. When you invest, keep an eye out for the risk factor. If you are a conservative investor, choose investment options that are suitable for you. If you are more of a risk-taker, invest in higher-risk instruments. Be comfortable with your investments as only then can you invest properly and achieve your financial goals in time.

Asset Allocation is an allocation of your investment portfolio for portions of debt, equity and other products like real estate, gold, etc. based on an individual’s risk-taking capacity (i.e. risk appetite).

3. Be realistic when setting your goals

And finally, you need to be very realistic about your life goals. Everyone wants the very best of things in life, but the hard reality is that not everyone can afford everything. If you are a mid-level salaried executive, you possibly cannot have the things a movie star has! So be realistic about your financial goals and set achievable targets for yourself. This will help you to save properly and fetch you the goals in a hassle-free manner.

Basically, make your financial goals S.M.A.R.T. and then work towards the same in a systematic and planned manner.

Discipline is the key here. You need to be disciplined and stay focused at all times. If you lose the eye on your goal, you will shift from the path and achieving your financial goals will become a real challenge thereafter. To avoid this, be as disciplined with your money as you possibly can. Keep your eyes on the targets you have set for yourself and achieve your financial goals with ease.

To wrap it up

Goal-based savings are essential and allow you to manage your money properly. As we saw, there are different categories of financial goals. You have the short-term goals, mid-term goals and the long-term goals. The different goals cater to different life situations and needs and must be addressed accordingly. Keep all the points mentioned above in mind and begin saving for your financial goals. Once you are disciplined and focused, you will be able to achieve all your financial goals with ease.

#Financial Wellness Platform #Employees Financial Wellness #Financial Stress #Employee Retention Guide #Financial Planning Guide #Financial Wellness Guide