#uncertainty in politics

[scavengedluxury]

Very British Jobs

#uk politics #uncertainty and scenarios

[eelhound]

"It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to 'being real.' Yet it is a subversive statement.

Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that things are as they have to be. Fantasy not only asks 'What if things didn’t go on just as they do?' but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise — thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are.

So here imagination and fundamentalism come into conflict.

A fully created imaginary world is a mental construct similar in many respects to a religious or other cosmology. This similarity, if noticed, can be deeply disturbing to the orthodox mind.

When a fundamental belief is threatened the response is likely to be angry or dismissive — either 'Abomination!' or 'Nonsense!' Fantasy gets the abomination treatment from religious fundamentalists, whose rigid reality-constructs shudder at contact with question, and the nonsense treatment from pragmatic fundamentalists, who want to restrict reality to the immediately perceptible and the immediately profitable. All fundamentalisms set strict limits to the uses of imagination, outside which the fundamentalist’s imagination itself runs riot, fancying dreadful deserts where God and Reason and the capitalist way of life are lost, forests of the night where tigers hang from trees by the tail, lighting the way to madness with their bright burning.

Those who dismiss fantasy less fiercely, from a less absolutist stance, usually call it dreaming, or escapism.

Dream and fantastic literature are related only on a very deep, usually inaccessible level of the mind. Dream is free of intellectual control; its narratives are irrational and unstable, and its aesthetic value is mostly accidental. Fantastic literature, like all the verbal arts, must satisfy the intellectual as well as the aesthetic faculty. Fantasy, odd as it sounds to say so, is a perfectly rational undertaking.

As for the charge of escapism, what does 'escape' mean? Escape from real life, responsibility, order, duty, piety, is what the charge implies. But nobody, except the most criminally irresponsible or pitifully incompetent, escapes to jail. The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is 'escapism' an accusation of?

'Why are things as they are? Must they be as they are? What might they be like if they were otherwise?' To ask these questions is to admit the contingency of reality, or at least to allow that our perception of reality may be incomplete, our interpretation of it arbitrary or mistaken.

I know that to philosophers what I’m saying is childishly naive, but my mind cannot or will not follow philosophical argument, so I must remain naive. To an ordinary mind not trained in philosophy, the question — do things have to be the way they are / the way they are here and now / the way I’ve been told they are? — may be an important one. To open a door that has been kept closed is an important act.

Upholders and defenders of a status quo, political, social, economic, religious, or literary, may denigrate or diabolize or dismiss imaginative literature, because it is — more than any other kind of writing — subversive by nature. It has proved, over many centuries, a useful instrument of resistance to oppression.

Yet as Chesterton pointed out, fantasy stops short of nihilist violence, of destroying all the laws and burning all the boats. (Like Tolkien, Chesterton was an imaginative writer and a practicing Catholic, and thus perhaps particularly aware of tensions and boundaries.) Two and one make three. Two of the brothers fail the quest, the third carries it through. Action is met with reaction. Fate, Luck, Necessity are as inexorable in Middle-earth as in Colonus or South Dakota. The fantasy tale begins here and ends there (or back here), where the subtle and ineluctable obligations and responsibilities of narrative art have taken it. Down on the bedrock, things are as they have to be. It’s only everywhere above the bedrock that nothing has to be the way it is.

There really is nothing to fear in fantasy unless you are afraid of the freedom of uncertainty. This is why it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who likes science can dislike fantasy. Both are based so profoundly on the admission of uncertainty, the welcoming acceptance of unanswered questions. Of course the scientist seeks to ask how things are the way they are, not to imagine how they might be otherwise. But are the two operations opposed, or related? We can’t question reality directly, only by questioning our conventions, our belief, our orthodoxy, our construction of reality. All Galileo said, all Darwin said, was, 'It doesn’t have to be the way we thought it was.'"

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from her blog entry "It Doesn’t Have To Be the Way It Is," June 2011.

#ursula k. le guin #quote #quotations #fantasy #fiction #science fiction #escapism #sci fi #imagination #asking questions #science #uncertainty #subversion #resistance #politics #leftism #education #critical thinking #books #reading #fundamentalism #neoliberalism #capitalism

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Napalm Death - Uncertainty Blurs The Vision

#Napalm Death #From Enslavement to Obliteration #Uncertainty Blurs The Vision #Release date: September 16th 1988 #Full-length #Genre: Hardcore Punk (early); Grindcore/Death Metal #Lyrical themes: Political unrest Hate Anti-fascism Social issues #UK

[halfyearsqueen]

she’s not a feminist by our standards but her unwillingness to step aside represents a level of that in her world

#like that’s ? recognition that her claim has equal value to her brother’s #and that she shouldn’t NEED to step aside because she can do the job better #and shouldn’t be forced to bc she’s a woman #her relationship with her own femininty is a confidence found through defiance #like ? and given how much shit she’s faced purely due to the fact she’s female #the insecurities of how prevalent male primogeniture and male superiority is through the viciousness of the patriarchy in Westeros #would eat her alive #but she’s also been in politics and been surrounded by politics since before viserys named her heir #she knows how to play the game #and how to act to progress and move throughout court settings #to placate the lords who arent eager to ? lose the power that might not be theirs with absolute primogeniture #when like setting up the foundations of it WAS the plan for her eventually #during jace’s reign as king and hopefully the reign of his daughters #she’s very conscientious of the uncertainty of her position prior to her regency #and how she needs to demonstrate that quiet strength #while also knowing just when to snap in her own defense

[philosophybitmaps]

#philosophy #quotes #Hannah Arendt #The Origins of Totalitarianism #Arendt #future #uncertainty #politics #totalitarianism

[starberry-cupcake]

in the past 3 days we had a small tornado and a huge flood with a power outage of about 20+ hours combined, if the world doesn't collapse tomorrow I'll bake a cookie house for christmas eve because I gotta hang on to something

#finjamos demencia y decoremos para navidad #luly rambles #channeling my uncertainty towards my country's fate both in climate and politically into decorating #we lost some tiles and a few things in the yard but we're fine

[syn4k]

if there is one thing i wish more people understood it is the fact that just because i do not understand something does not mean that i am automatically opposed to it. there are many things that i do not understand for example alloromanticism, the workings and practices of many organized religions, and the existence of white chocolate but that doesn't mean i want to scrub their existence from this earth. i love knowing and comprehending things but theres also some things that i simply cannot understand right now for some reason or another and thats okay. humans are weird, varied, and complex! i'm not the judge jury and executioner of the entire universe and i am very glad i'm not! and anyways imagine how fucking boring knowing everything would be

#ray's tag #sometimes i look at politics and i go can we all just chill as the default. i am willing to work to get to a place where we can chill. #idk i need to get into pajamas this is just rambling #i love things being mysterious!!! i love things being enigmas!!! i love the unknown and i fear uncertainty but love learning!!! #i may not know the core tenets of judaism or how white chocolate exists or what the hell romantic attraction even is but thats ok!!! #those things are not inherently harmful! they just Are! and this goes for when they apply to people too. when you start pointing fingers #at people for what they r capable of doing or what their beliefs are instead of looking at their actions and those beliefs in context #then uve already lost the point maybe

[megatraven]

Alex roommates with Hydra idea in my head rn

#post-astraeus s1 #alex getting help from hydra to hide away #hydra has no problem helping and offering info to mc about monster politics and the like but #keeps alex a secret at their request #and give. the fact that all of the top tier gods were killed… their uncertainty of whether or not they would be killed too is a very real #possibility. and hydra knows alex is one of the better demigods. so decides to help them #something something alex living in hydra’s dumpy little apartment for years #rarely going out unless they’re sure they won’t get seen in order to get info on other demigods and gods and #well to see how mc is doing #etc etc etc I’m on my phone I’m too lazy to say more rn #alex #hydra #astoria #lovestruck

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[fleur-alise]

talked about postmodernism in my anthropological theory course this morning, how it sparked the political right's use of "scientific uncertainty" to deny vaccines and climate change, etc, and how the political left has taken up their affinity for extreme criticism without offering alternatives. and it's like. ah yes. this is why I'm exhausted. the two ends of media and government are in a gaslighting competition and I am Tired.

ps fuck you bruno latour

#i swear to god i am constantly gaslighting myself #bc my stupid little anxiety brain wants to latch onto the cynicism and uncertainty #and my stupid little empathy brain wants to latch onto the criticism of injustices and anxiety of offending or hurting someone by breathing #im TIRED #cultural anthropology #anthropology #politics

[soldier-poet-king]

Spent too long thinking (worrying) abt Les mis politics in my own life and can't work on my hote reread now which like I SHOULD have bc it's cozy and comforting and also still extremely political but in a more bureaucratic internal reform passionately angry librarian kind of way that's abt the radical power of small kindnesses and friendship and like. Realistically. Which of these is attainable by me. Which is going to function with my OCD. Neither will ever have a large impact on the course of the universe, but which will achieve More of The Good etc etc etc

#franposting #im sorry im so fuckin insufferable #im doing les mis letters. rereading HOTE. and rereading nichomachean ethics #plus other non politics flavoured stuff #IM THE WORST NAVEL GAZER IN THE WORLD #BUT I SWEAR I DONT WANT TO BR #im just. obsessive about goodness and right action #and I worry constantly about it and about perfection and mistakes #and what the most ethical choice is in any given situation #thats A LOT OF CHOICES #IN A COMPLICATED WORLD WITH FEW CERTAINTIES OR CLEAR TRUTHS #im a big buyer into small kindnesses make the world go round #but maybe that's COWARDICE #or maybe im right #GAH uncertainty my behated

[belumtidursiang]

Aku bukan orang yang paling religius. Tetapi jika aku mati hari ini, dan aku ditempatkan di neraka yang paling dalam, izinkan aku untuk bertemu dengan para tikus pemangku jabatan. Yang selama di dunia hanya memperkaya golongannya, merampas hak orang lain dan menyengsarakan manusia di dunia. Mungkin pada akhirnya, aku masih bisa tersenyum.

Karena negara ini sudah tidak mampu diselamatkan. Dan hanya akhirat yang menjadi doa bagi mereka yang tertindas, untuk melihat keadilan yang selalu didambakan.

#danpoems #politik #2am thoughts #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #sajak #hell #chaos #dystopia #justice #keadilan #politics #hukum #law #aparat #oknum #neraka #politique #uncertainty #unjust

[lofi9977]

Watch the full movie Uncharted

#united kingdom #us politics #marvel cinematic universe #uncertainty #unchained

[yeahawvampire]

I'm too latino for fanfics that expend an giganoemourd amount of time being overly weird about just having sex. SPECIALLY between friends/strangers (hook ups).

Like they all go this lenght about the characters "are actually in love" and they'd "never would do this 😳" and then there goes all five paragraphs of they being all "i must fight the horniness 😔😭" bro that's a friday night.

That's a party, a carnaval, that's a normal friendly relationship. I'm begging y'all (when you are comfortable with that obviously) kissing fucking and platonic touching friends it's not that big of the deal. And it's actually pretty great.

#the amount of te fics where characters lose their minds about fucking a friend getting i a hook up really caught me of guard #specially the fixation in making friends with benefits romantic #like- like- just put slowburn bro friends to lovers THERE'S A TAG FOR THAT #I complain about being latino and the whole uncertainty (echonomic political social) of it but I woudn't change the liberty of kissing #people when we feel like it #like 'can I kiss you?' 'yeah sure' 'cool' and that's it #pretty neat #pretty simple #pretty good

[philosophybitmaps]

#philosophy #quotes #Bertrand Russell #Political Ideals #Russell #convention #tradition #uncertainty #ideas #change #progress #development

[usnewsper-politics]

President Biden's Memory Struggles: Potential Risks to National Security #aging #Bidenmemorystruggles #cognitiveissues #decisionmaking #demandsofthejob #diplomaticnegotiations #forgetfulness #memorylapses #mentalacuity #militaryaction #nationalsecurityexperts #oldestpersontoserveaspresident #potentialrisks #presidentshealth #publicconfidence #sharpinstincts #transparency #uncertainty

#Politics #aging #Bidenmemorystruggles #cognitiveissues #decisionmaking #demandsofthejob #diplomaticnegotiations #forgetfulness #memorylapses #mentalacuity #militaryaction #nationalsecurityexperts #oldestpersontoserveaspresident #potentialrisks #presidentshealth #publicconfidence #sharpinstincts #transparency #uncertainty