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dwellordream · 3 years

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“The Jewish approaches to breast-feeding were based on Greek medicine and on foundations the Jews shared with their neighbors, Christian and Muslim. From a medical perspective, breast milk was seen as part of the blood system. When women nursed, they often did not menstruate. Therefore, according to ancient medicine, breast milk was menstrual blood that turned into milk, and when a woman became pregnant again, the milk turned back into blood. This idea, as well as the belief that pregnant women could not nurse, were at the foundation of the legal principles concerning breast-feeding. On the whole, the baby’s father and his power are at the center of these discussions. By law, only in exceptional circumstances could someone other than the father decide how his child would be fed and cared for. In Roman society, for example, the father was responsible for employing a wet nurse.

As we saw above, according to Jewish law, the father was responsible for the nursing of his son or daughter. The halakhic principles were meant to protect the life of the infant as well as provide a clear-cut division of labor between both parents. Early Christian law does not contain any discussions of nursing or of who is obligated to nurse. In what some see as one of the great accomplishments of early Christianity, infanticide was strictly forbidden. There were, however, no guidelines concerning nursing such as those found in Jewish sources. Research on the first centuries of Christianity has suggested that many Roman women breast-fed their own children, although women of the highest social and economic status hired wet nurses. Despite the evidence of this social reality in which wet nurses were frequently employed, it seems there was no legislation concerning the social arrangements made, nor was there legislation concerning the remarriage of nursing mothers.

Medieval families shared similar characteristics. In some cases, the mothers nursed their infants themselves, while in other households, especially in the wealthier ones, wet nurses were hired. The medieval compilers of canon law were concerned with nursing mothers in a number of instances, but were mainly interested in the implications of nursing on correct marital relations; hence, they do not discuss the welfare of children or the remarriage of mothers. Rather, they forbid nursing women to have sexual intercourse with their husbands. The reason for this prohibition, however, was not to prevent an additional pregnancy, but rather, because they realized that a nursing woman’s chances of conceiving were not good, and they did not want good Christians to have sexual relations for nonreproductive purposes.

Despite this difference, the social circumstances of breast-feeding in Jewish and Christian societies contained many similarities, as I will demonstrate later in this chapter. The Koran, on the other hand, presents a legal system that is much closer to the Jewish legal principles outlined above. As in Judaism, Islamic law defined twenty-four months as the period of breast-feeding. A woman who was divorced during this period and continued to nurse her child received full support from the infant’s father for the duration. In contrast to Jewish law, however, a widow was not forbidden to remarry during this time. Moreover, Islamic legislation was far more flexible with respect to the sending of an infant to a new wet nurse, even after it was used to its own mother or wet nurse.

Islamic law differs substantially from Jewish and Christian legislation with respect to the implications of breast-feeding. Islamic legislation developed a system of complicated kinship connections defined through wet nursing, that were expressed through marriage prohibitions. Children who were not biologically related but who were the “milk children” of the same woman were not allowed to marry each other. This complex system shows how one of the medical beliefs outlined above was interpreted by Muslim lawmakers. Since milk was understood to be blood that had turned into milk, two children who nursed from the same woman shared this milk-blood. Consequently, marriage between them was understood as a form of incest.

…Although the care of infants was the responsibility of their mothers, in many cases, especially in the cities, the mother was assisted by a wet nurse. The wet nurse’s position in the house varied from place to place and among the different social classes, but she was always an employee bound by contract to her employers. In medieval Jewish society, as in Christian society and according to the Mishna, the wealthier a woman was, the more likely she was to employ a wet nurse. Studies of Christian households have outlined the terms by which wet nurses were contracted. They demonstrate that, although the wet nurse was usually supervised by the infant’s mother, she was hired by its father. In cases in which the wet nurse was married, the contract was made between the infant’s father and the wet nurse’s husband.

…From a legal point of view, there were only two instances in which a woman was responsible for hiring a wet nurse herself—if she gave birth to an infant out of wedlock, or if she was a widow. Otherwise, the father of the infant—whether husband or ex-husband—was supposed to take care of these issues. Research on wet-nursing practices in medieval Christian society has identified a number of guidelines regulating the terms of employment of wet nurses. First of all, wet nurses were hired for a defined period of time and were expected to remain for the full allotted period. In addition, they were expected not to become pregnant until the end of this time. To this end, part of the wet nurse’s salary was withheld until the agreement had been fulfilled.

…Scholars who have studied wet-nursing practices in Christian society have discussed the contracts wet nurses or their husbands signed when taking on new employment. In many cases the agreement was that the wet nurse would lose part of her salary if she left her job before her contract allowed her to do so. Many of the women who left their jobs early did so because of an additional pregnancy that prevented them from continuing to work. One of the ways employers tried to ensure that wet nurses would not leave their employment was by obtaining securities that would guarantee their stay. In other cases, they had the wet nurse, or her husband, swear that she would not break her contract.

We find some mention of this practice in Jewish sources as well, although no contracts from the medieval period have been found. The Mordekhai mentions three different ways of ensuring that a wet nurse would remain with an infant throughout the entire period she was needed or, at least, minimizing the potential damage of her leaving. He mentions vows/oaths, guarantees, and the option of hiring two wet nurses so that at least one of the two will stay on. Other sources provide further details of these practices. Oaths seemed to have been common. Women who swore not to leave their position usually committed themselves not to marry if they were single, and not to conceive, if they were married.

In the case of married women, this promise came under the category of vows by which a woman denies herself something. Since (according to Num. 31:10) such vows may be annulled by the husband, some legal authorities saw this oath as not sufficiently binding. However, it should be noted that in the case of a Christian wet nurse, the Jewish legal authorities were not willing to accept her oaths as valid. The rabbis argued that because Jews feared that gentiles would harm their children, no Jew would risk his child’s life and continue to employ a Christian wet nurse who wished to terminate her contract. Monetary guarantees or securities were another matter. As in Christian society, the wet nurses (Jewish and Christian) often agreed to forfeit a part of their promised wage if they left early. As for employing two wet nurses, this was a costly as well as a risky business. After all, both wet nurses could decide to leave, and then the infant would be no better off.

This point does come up, however, in another Spanish responsum, written by R. Solomon Ibn Aderet (Rashba, thirteenth century). He discusses a case in which two wet nurses were hired, and the question addressed to him is whether one of them may be allowed to get married, as the child is used to nursing from two women, and if one of them cannot continue she may be replaced. In addition to their wages, the wet nurses received clothing and food. Moreover, it seems that it eventually became customary to provide wet nurses with gifts at certain times of the year. The Jewish sources discuss this custom in connection with non-Jewish wet nurses, but it is likely that this was the prevailing custom when employing Jewish wet nurses too, as it was between Christian employers and their wet nurses.”

- Elisheva Baumgarten, “Maternal Nursing and Wet Nurses: Feeding and Caring for Children.” in Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe

#elisheva baumgarten #history #medieval #pregnancy #jewish #Religion #mothers and children

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thecuriouskit · 3 years

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Where and how do I fit in?

To whom it may concern.

As I get older, I’m starting to realise the limitations caused by my autism, and I’m struggling to accept that because of facing a society that does not like it when adults are not self-sufficient, or when they have to deal with a “man-child”. Economically, I am a net loss - I take more than I give financially, and that makes me selfish, both in the eyes of the person on the street as well as bankers and politicians. I struggle to keep my flat clean and make ends meet financially. “Get a job”, “earn a f***ing living” I hear a lot, and I have tried, but my ‘design’ is just terrible because I’m very introverted (and people try to force me into very social situations to be a 'healthy introvert’… in other words, an extravert) and don’t do well in open-plan office environments, which are really the only options today because it allows managers to keep an eye on everyone and, from a practical perspective, is easier when it comes to laying network cables and power conduits, for example. But I get very anxious whenever people are walking around behind me and there’s so much uncontained noise.

Truthfully, I’ve found in the UK, and maybe other countries, that many people really don’t like those who are more intelligent than them. They may say the opposite, but behind their backs (or sometimes in plain sight), they mock specialist interests. Once I was even threatened with outright violence by a so-called friend if I talked about mathematics in front of her, and my own mother agrees that i keep my mouth shut to preserve the status quo and not make people 'uncomfortable’. My father says those on the spectrum are the future, but are we really? To reach our full potential we need the right environment and support group, but who would want to be our caretakers? It’s not fair on them, and I would not want someone to sacrifice their life to look after me like they were a housewife, valet or a servant.

I’m ashamed to say that I generally don’t get on with others on the spectrum because we all have our different interests and quirks, but also our feelings and how we react to things, and what may be fine or beneficial for one person is sensual overload for another. I unfortunately have also experienced situations where the other party doesn’t realise and doesn’t understand that they might have hurt my feelings with something they’ve said or done, and either 'congratulate’ me for identifying past trauma as the reason (which I find incredibly patronising as well as the implication that it invalidates my feelings) or criticise me because, in their eyes, there’s no logical reason for me to feel that way. One person even, in a monotone voice, said “You’re having a panic attack; do you want a beta blocker?” (which was actually illegally obtained). I of course sceamed “no”, which only worsened the situation because now they felt attacked.

As painful as it is, what I once saw as a curse, then saw as a gift, I now see as a curse again. I cannot survive by myself in this modern world, but I’m not friendship nor relationship material because, put simply, I make people uncomfortable and I’m not healthy for them (those were the words one person used). Facebook and other social media tell people to cut out the negativity in their lives, and I fall into that definition. My interests, my quirks… they are abnormal. The whole thing of “be yourself” and “don’t worry about what others think” is a complete farce, because you do that, and you get sectioned, fired, ostracised or just plain ridiculed.

Part of me needs a regimented structure and a person who can be an emotional anchor for me, but even today, emotion is seen as weakness and attention-seeking, but I don’t need so much structure to the point that my very feelings are dictated and I can’t practise being creative (one person I know cannot build Lego without instructions… even when it comes to making their own things, they have to draw plans first and cannot do anything on the fly, which can cause a conflict if I want to experiment, for example).

In a way, I need to be treated like a child, or at least allowed to be a child, but I say that and that will just encourage condescending attitudes towards me and infantilisation like the in-your-face sing-song “hello” or a high-pitched voice that people do with babies all too frequently.

I don’t konw where I’m going with this. I’m just ranting and splurging, spilling out everything that’s on my mind. On Monday I was actually close to suicide because I was asked to drive to my father, who lives about 45 minutes away, and even though I gave myself 70 minutes, I was very late anyway (which meant I couldn’t see a representitive at an insurance company since I’m being ripped off by my current provider) bnecause of three separate traffic jams, one of which was caused by a horserace that crosses a main road (which is closed during that time). I just feel I’m unreliable and poor at planning and organiseation because whenever someone asks me to do something, I either forget something (if not the appointment itself) or fate works against me. My father has taken the view of “it is what it is”, but I cannot abide by that because while accepting there are some things in life you can’t control or predict, just accepting things as they are is what allows corruption to run rampant, whether it’s a manager or director denying the employees promised bonuses during a good company year while buying themselves a new Porsche with the profits, to insurance companies happily charging you three times what you should be paying because they know most people won’t shop around for other quotes or want to go through the hassle of changing (and I easily freak out on the telephone because it’s just a dismembered voice to me) to simply lying and manipulating people for their own benefit. It’s worse with me because I can’t see deceit unless it’s a claim that’s easily disproven. I briefly wanted to end it all because I am a net loss to the economy, I’m friendless and I can’t be relied on. If I die, I’ll be forgotten in a few years as the world goes on like I never existed. It begs the question… what’s the point? I’m not allowed to just live because of monetary concerns and 'considering other people’. Right now, I just survive.

I’m not sure what I need and what I should change about myself. All I know is that trying to fight against my true self just ends up destroying me. I may want to be neurotypical and more extraverted, but I can’t just become those, and “not wanting it enough” doesn’t work in this case because you’re constantly fighting yourself, draining yourself of energy and spoons, and sooner or later, you’ll melt down, and then the police get called and you’re taken to hospital, while neighbours or whoever witnesses the meltdown will ensure you can’t bother them again by collaborating to get you evicted, dismissed from work because you’re creating a 'hostile work environment’ or 'threatening violence’ (I was sacked for that once when I tried to warn people not to manhandle me during a particularly triggering confrontation because then I don’t know what I’ll do… and this was from a company that was meant to specialise in autism).

Where’s the line drawn? When should those on the spectrum learn to adapt to and tolerate, and when should society change for them? When should I be expected to meet the standards and when should the standards change? I don’t have the answer, and through a mixture of my own actions and those of others, I am very much alone where I live… no true friends, no emotional anchor, no personal interaction, nothing (even if I’m in a city around many people, I still feel alone). I’m scared of joining clubs because of past experience with meltdowns and expecting to meet up at set times when my own sleep cycle is chaotic, or I may just not have the energy to go but I’m expected to. Also, one club became psychologically abusive for me, but once again, past trauma that invalidates how I feel.

Speaking of how I feel, I do wish I was more like Mr. Spock where everything is pure logic and I don’t feel anything, but then again, Vulcans and half-Vulcans DO feel, and I just don’t have the strength to suppress my emotions=. Where does that leave me? A group home with no freedom or autonomy? Evidently I can’t hold down a job, and I’ve been out of work forso long that I’ve had employment agents pretty much tell me to stop wasting their time, becaase no company is going to risk paying a finder’s fee for me no matter how good my skills are (albeit very niche nowadays).

The thing is, when somoene enters my house to offer help cleaning it or go through my financial statements to identify unnecessary expenditures, or just go through my stuff in general, I feel violated and incredibly anxious, but I feel I have no right to protest or resist. Besides, as my mother keeps saying… if you’re doing nothing wrong, what have you got to hide? The fear of being judged (and the consequences of that) or the right to privacy don’t seem to be valid answers.

What do I need? I don’t know… sometimes I just want a mother figure, but my actual mother is not an option. What do I want? I want to be useful. I want to belong. I want to be myself. I want to be… free.

#a kit's life #autism #rant

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evien-stark · 4 years

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✧I Need You✧ Chapter 185

Happy went above and beyond, as always. Which you were entirely grateful for. He definitely needed an extra holiday bonus or… maybe- no, definitely, he was the next person on your list with the happy news. If the happy news was still happening, anyway. You were mostly sure. But as Happy took the two starstruck girls on a tour of the Tower and promised to buy them whatever dinner they want, you disappeared into the elevator headed for the Penthouse. ...nervous. But only a little.

Tony knew something about this that you didn’t. The feeling wasn’t that great. It never was. -well, Tony knew lots about everything that you didn’t. But this was a different sort of knowing. And as the doors opened, and you found him waiting for you in the foyer with a glass of full red wine and a feeling of light guilt…

“Just get it over with.” Not able to help yourself. Wanting to cut right to the jump. To rip the band-aid off and just… just get it over with.

His frown, the quick drop of his eyes as you approached, then the lift and the look in them. It told you many things. But not what it was that he was hiding. “Alright. For the record-” Holding your glass up a little higher so you’d take it.

Which you did, taking a loud sip. “For the record…” You held it in both hands, giving him your full attention.

“This was all sort of…” He wheeled one hand over the other. “-grandfathered in.”

You couldn’t help your dry look. “Secrets are secrets. No matter when they happened.” Talking down to him a little. Unimpressed and possibly bracing for hurt.

Mutants. Tony knew something about these supposed mutants. Enhanced kids. This was something you should also know about. So you could better do your job. And maybe protect them if they needed protecting. So if he knew about this and hadn’t told you… it involved you. In some way. Because those were always the things that he hid. Small though they were- in number.

The impacts? ...usually huge.

His eyes drifted again, he pushed out a long breath and then nodded. “Fair point. Alright. Let’s sit.” Putting an arm around your shoulder. There was at least a little bit of casual air about him that eased you. If this was something huge, explosive and terrible he’d be feeling much the same way. Maybe it was something small. For a change.

“That bad?” Trying to find humor enough to tease but you let him lead you over to the couch, sitting carefully, taking another sip of your wine.

Tony put his hands together, head dipped down, thinking. Which was strange. He had had time while you were still in transit to think of how he wanted to say whatever it was he was going to say. Had he not prepared anything? ...maybe that was better. In fact. It did make you feel better. That he wanted to do this so genuinely. Not making ready platitudes and excuses that would have just hurt you more.

Finally, after a moment, “Alright. Do you remember uh- Driving Ms. Daisy?”

Your brow immediately went up. “Huh?”

“The bald guy. And his chauffeur.”

The realization came out from the clouds after a few seconds. “Yeah- that was- ...that was forever ago.” More than a few years at this point, right? ...god, how long had that been? It was hard to tell. You should have had better track of your days- months and years… it was a little startling to realize that events were sort of bleeding together and it was hard to discern when one had happened.

“Three years and change, give or take.” Ah. But Tony knew. And there was a reason he knew.

“Charles.” More of the memory sticking out. “Charles and Ms. Munroe.” Quite a mismatched pair.

“Charles Xavier and Ororo Munroe.” Another correction. Or perhaps a helping hand. You decided to stay quiet and let him work his way through this. “Fury came to me, when he found out Xavier was hasling you.”

Distaste was immediate and you couldn’t hide your expression. It was easy, after that, to fight back. “I don’t know about hasling. He came to drop off some papers and talk about his school and then I never heard back from him again.” Immediately after you finished saying this, Tony’s brows lifted so gently. An implication. You knew why. “...you’re the reason I never heard from him again.”

His lips pressed together and his nod spoke more to that guilt. “Xavier runs a school. For gifted kids, he calls them. What they are- what they’ve decided they are- are something called Mutants. They have a mutated genome.Born with it. Usually doesn’t start causing effects until teenage years. They’re… interesting. But also up against a lot. But. Who isn’t, these days.”

This was almost too much to take in. This was an entire world. Different from yours. Closed off- hidden- from yours. Until tonight. When two of those aforementioned teens had gotten caught in an alleyway. Talk about fate. Before you even realized it, you had begun shaking your head. “Okay. Alright. ...what does Fury have to do with this?”

“He and Xavier have an… agreement. Or they used to. To stay out of each other’s way but… amicably. That changed, when Xavier went to you.” His gaze had stopped straying low and had come to settle on your own.

You looked back at him. “But what would-” The initial thought was that Charles had just been an eccentric man who had wanted funding or… for Tony to talk at his school. He had made a point that he had wanted you to go to the school but… the lightbulb went off. “He thought…” Your stomach churned. “But how would he…”

Charles Xavier had thought you were a mutant. He had come to you to bring you to the school. Maybe to help the kids.

Tony’s shoulders raised in a very light shrug. “Couldn’t figure that one out. Best guess? He leads and owns that school for a reason. Can’t imagine he’s just a figurehead.” So. Charles Xavier was a mutant, Tony was saying- but that was apparently unconfirmed. And he had no idea what sort of mutations Charles had that would make him aware of your status. The thought was slightly terrifying.

You’d always been slightly worried about everyone else finding out. Now you had to worry about other enhanced people, too? It was too much to let yourself get worked up about- and… the pieces finally started falling into place. “Fury told you about Xavier. You went to Xavier. To tell him to leave me alone?”

There was a little twitch of a smile- blinked and you’d have missed it. A single short exhale of amused air left him and he was nodding again. “Too obvious that that would be the play, isn’t it.”

“I just- don’t understand. Why couldn’t you tell me?” Surprisingly you weren’t that hurt. Not yet, anyway. There was always a chance he’d say the exact wrong thing-

“This was before you knew. About. ...everything. The research and… everything Bruce and I had been looking into.” This was closer to hitting that painful mark. But you held on. Watched him carefully. “You aren’t a mutant. That’s why he wanted you, so I told him he was barking up the wrong tree. When he asked to verify, I put him off and instead made him an offer. That he leave you alone in exchange for my help.”

This you weren’t expecting. “What sort of help?”

“Monetary and tech. Their security system at the manor was terrible. And for a guy that’s trying to keep these kids of everyone’s radars, they were in severe need of an upgrade. He thought he was doing alright but. I love to prove somebody wrong.” The way he was talking, you could already see him being snarky to Charles about all this. “I fulfilled my end of the bargain and- as far as I know though feel free to correct me- he left well enough alone.”

Again you shook your head. “I haven’t heard from him.” You hadn’t even thought about him. Not until just now. Three years and change later. Something uncomfortable bloomed in your chest and it made you feel terrible. Tony had confirmed about as much but… you couldn’t help but ask. “You didn’t tell him anything about me?”

“Not a single thing.” He was quick when he answered this but sincere. “I told you. Outside of what SHIELD thought they knew- only Bruce and I had the information. And I meant it.” He was telling the truth. You felt it.

But you also couldn’t help- “JARVIS knew.”

“...alright, and JARVIS.” He took a breath and eased it out in a sigh. “Telling you that I put Xavier off- ...I would have had to lie around why. It was just- ...it was easier to leave it alone.”

It would have been a lie around a different lie. He was right. It would have gotten complicated and messy and god- if you’d found out and put one more piece together that day in the lab- who knew. That might have been the bit that broke everything. This was a lie. Tony had hid something from you. But, as with before, it was with good intentions.

...but that still didn’t make it right. No matter how much you wanted it to. “Did you just forget about him? Charles? It just wasn’t important even after I knew?”

“We got pretty busy after you found out. And… after that we got busy trying to have a life. Honey, please believe me when I tell you I haven’t thought about the guy. I haven’t thought about any of this for a long while. Once I was done with him I was done. Sure- I had JARVIS on the lookout at the time, but that’s why I put it down. And focused on everything else.”

He was worried and guilty and sad. Sad that this had happened. Again. And that it was his fault. Again. No matter his intentions. Reaching out with your free hand, you took his, twining your fingers. “I believe you, Tony.” You let the sentiment breathe between the two of you before saying anything else. “While we’re here- you got anything else you remember? I believe you- and I love you- and I get it. I’m not mad. But I don’t want to do this again. If there’s anything else surrounding… what you and Bruce were looking into that you had to hide because I didn’t know- can you just get it out now?”

A few times over he blinked his eyes. Maybe really thinking about this. Which wasn’t a pleasant feeling. But it was quick, really. And his smile was weak when it arrived. “This is it.”

“If you promise- and you forgot something-”

“I promise this is it.” Firm and sure. “I’m sorry. That this has happened twice now. But this is it.” Even without your powers you would have known he was telling the truth.The softness of his eyes translating the pain of his heart. Always. Always hurting for you- because of his actions. He regretted these things immensely. And… after everything else, and knowing him- you forgave him. Again. Raising your hand up to cup the side of his face. Relief washed over him as he chased you there, holding you against him. “You’re better to me than I deserve. Let’s be honest. And I’m grateful.”

“No I’m not.” Because even now, you still believed Tony deserved the world. And you hadn’t given that to him just yet. “I just love you.” Hopelessly, helplessly, endlessly. “I know you’re sorry. And I know why you did it. And… I love you, Tony.”

“I love you.” Murmured like a prayer as he still held your hand in his, tilting a little more to cradle closer into your palm, eyes going half-lidded. Relieved and, yes, intensely grateful.

If there was more you wanted to say, it was interrupted by the chirp of your phone. Tony sighed with a slightly annoyed noise, not happy to be interrupted. But duty called- and Happy was on the line. When you answered, “You two alright up there?” Only one reason he would be asking that. And it was because he was wondering if he was coming up to a mess.

“We’re perfectly fine. How are the kids?”

“Eager to come up. I could tell ‘em to lodge in the empty Avengers bedrooms, but-”

“Bring them up. They have to call home, anyway.” The thought of speaking to Charles Xavier now made you a little more than anxious, for reasons you weren’t sure of. You stood, putting your glass of wine down on the coffee table, tugging Tony up with you and going to the elevator. It opened sooner than you would have liked and Happy escorted the two eager young girls out of it.

They were already looking around, ready to probably poke into every nook and cranny. Once he was done handing them off, Happy put his hands in his pockets. “Want me to stick around?”

“No. We’re okay.” Reaching for him, you touched his arm. “Thank you. For everything. Especially tonight.”

He warmed, smile giving him away more than anything. “Always. Just doing my job.”

“Doing more than that.” He’d bolted out of the car with you despite the signs of trouble. Held an umbrella for you in the rain and then drawn his weapon when danger had arrived. All unblinking, unflinching. Ready to go to the mat for you. Not because it was his job, although it was. But because you were family. You were glad that he’d gotten over his worries of not being needed because Tony was who Tony was and you were who you were.

You would always need Happy in your life.

His expression could have lit up the whole room. “Any time.” He gave Tony a little wave as he turned. “Good night, boss.”

Tony’s grin was telling. “Good night, Happy.”

You waited, giving him a wave, too, just before the elevator doors closed. When they did, you made a turn around gesture. “Girls, this is Tony Stark.” Delighting in introducing the most well known man in the world at this point. They practically had stars in their eyes. “Tony this is Jubilee and Kitty.”

Putting one hand on his hip, the other he flourished in a raise. “Our current guests, so I hear. Getting the real NYC treatment. Well. Maybe the 70s style treatment. Considering how you wound up here.”

Kitty leaned forward, practically smiling from ear to ear. “It’s so great to meet you, sir.”

Jubilee was a bubble of happy energy. “Yeah. This is so wild.”

Of course it had to be you, breaking up all the fun. “I hate to be a buzzkill, but, we need to call Mr. Xavier.”

Both of them made very strange faces and it was Kitty who broke first into a little giggle. “I’ve never heard anyone call him mister before.”

“Totally weird.” Jubilee was in agreement.

Tony crossed his arms with a little grin. “Honey, the cool kids call him Professor X.”

“Oh, well excuse me.” You sassed right on back. “I’m happy to call Professor X .” Giving Tony a little look as you sassed again. The girls giggled behind upturned hands. “I’ll explain the situation for you. Tony- please show them to their rooms.”

“Now I’m on concierge duty?” He was complaining with a smile.

You leaned up to press a kiss to his cheek. “If they had bags I’d make you carry them.” Said about as saccharine-sweet as you could.

He rolled his eyes but was blossoming with that loving warmth that kept you so drawn to him at all times. Hooking his thumb back behind him, “Come on, girls. At least tell me Happy fed you.” They started following him out of the foyer and down one of the halls.

Their voices started fading away. “-yeah he got us pizza-”

“From Famous Ray’s!”

“That’s almost a fireable offense…”

Even though he was taking them to the guest rooms in the penthouse, you went to your own bedroom for privacy’s sake. To cool yourself off and calm down. Tony knew this guy so… his contact information was in a database somewhere. Once you sat on the bed cross-legged, holding your phone, you finally gathered up enough courage to ask, “FRIDAY can you… can you call Professor Charles Xavier for me?”

LUNA might have the information, but FRIDAY was currently taking over for JARVIS. And JARVIS had definitely known about this, too. Like he knew everything. He’d been on the lookout- watching over you, without you knowing. As usual. “One moment, ma’am.” There had been a little lag in her answering you, probably trying to piece together whether or not you were allowed to access that information.

Either asking Tony if you were or… perhaps deciding herself that it was fine. Who knew.

The line ringing had your palms sweating. Were you scared of this guy? Who knew what he was capable of, really. But if he was protecting these kids… he couldn’t be all bad. It was late- not egregiously so, but him picking up on the second ring had you wondering. “Good evening, this is Charles speaking.” You remembered that pleasant English accent in that low and soothing tone of voice.

It helped your nerves. “Hi, sir.” Introducing yourself quickly after the clipped greeting. And then, “I’m sure you’re just as surprised as I am that I’m calling.”

“Oh, you have no idea.” You could practically hear his smile. “Is everything alright?”

He knew that you knew. It was obvious that he knew that Tony had spilled the beans. Maybe he was waiting for you to ask him about it. But that wasn’t important right now. “I have two of your- err- students.” It was a school and he was a professor- they called him as much. But you still weren’t sure if that was right.

The smiley tone disappeared. “Is that so? Are they alright?”

“I have to look into what happened. They were accosted by a group of soldiers. I’m going to schedule a meeting with Matthew Ellis and find out what he’s up to- they told me he’s backing their group.”

“You protected them.” Saying this so knowingly.

“I did. And I brought them back to the Tower. They’re safe.”

“I’d imagine in your care, there’s no safer place.” Back to warm again.

You weren’t sure how to take this compliment. “I’ll have them back to you by morning.”

“Thank you very much for your help. ...may I ask which students of mine are missing?” There was little point to this, really. He’d find out tomorrow when you brought them back. But it would at least save him the trouble of wondering or checking empty beds.

“Kitty and Jubilee.”

“Hm. Is that so?” He sounded amused. “Well I’m glad they’re safe.”

This was the point where you were going to say goodbye and leave it at that. You didn’t even have to go tomorrow. You could send Tony. But- ...but… “I think there’s some things we have to talk about.”

There was a little pause on the end of his line but finally, “I imagine there are. Shall I expect to speak to you tomorrow, then?” Maybe he was wondering if he was breaking his end of the bargain by allowing this. Or maybe he was curious where it all would lead.

Or both.

“Yes. I’ll drop them off and meet with you.”

“Wonderful. I’ll set t̵̹́ë̷̥͇́a̴̺͎͌̚ for two.”

A needle scratched a record in the back of your brain and without your permission your head twitched almost violently to the side. Like something had hit you. Your jaw tightened. That accent. Talking about-

“-are you alright, Ms.-”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re breathing rather hard.” The genuine concern in his voice helped settle you.

The door of the bedroom opened, Tony’s hand on the knob, standing suddenly in the doorway. Looking at you carefully but questioningly. You must have pinged him. “I’m okay. Thank you for the concern. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“...I look forward to it. Thank you, again. And… take care of yourself.”

You couldn’t manage saying goodbye, instead just hitting the button with your thumb and letting the phone fall out of your hand. Tony had closed the door and come closer. ...he had also set his hand over yours- the one digging around in your own hair. ...you hadn’t realized you’d been doing that. Pulling it in his, he pressed a careful kiss to the back. Helping ease you further down from that high.

Without hesitation he offered, “I’ll bring the girls back tomorrow.” He was welling up with worry and concern. He had no idea what had just transpired- all he knew was that it had upset you deeply. And he needed to fix it.

“No- it’s not- ...it’s not him. He didn’t do anything.” The next thing that hit you was frustration.

When. When were you going to be over this? Such a small thing- such a- ...it was so stupid- and yet-

“Honey.” As he sat down on the bed next to you, he drew you back to earth. Again. Almost like he’d disappeared right in front of your eyes and come back. “You’re alright.” Reminding you. Helping you remember.

You were okay. Tony was there and… ...and that part of your life was over. It had been for a while now. “Kilgrave is dead.” These three words came out of you almost like a promise. Promising yourself that was still true.

Tony was slightly stunned, brows knitting. Not sure, perhaps, what was happening. “He is.” Only at least knowing that he needed to help you by confirming this for you.

This had come on so suddenly. It was… it was unfair. You began shaking your head. “I’m sorry I’m-” Trying to figure out how to apologize for this one. What was it you were apologizing for? -...ah, right- “I’m still a mess.” Still. After killing him. After all this time. After knowing it was over you still-

...somehow still…

“You’re alright.” He murmured again, hand moving up to hold the side of your face. You latched on to the warmth, the anchor-point he was giving you. “I’ll come with you. Tomorrow.” Knowing he couldn’t dissuade you but giving you this. The safety of his presence.

What was it about Charles Xavier that had triggered you like that? A simple English accent and the mere mention of tea? Was that all it took? Or maybe your brain was trying to connect some other dots. You hoped, at least. You hoped there was more to this than two meager things.

Whispers came and went. You remembered the first time you’d met him. “At least ť̷̜e̷̱̥̎l̶̤̦̇̂l̴͕̇ ̷͚̳̾m̸̰͛͠ḙ̸̊̍ͅ you’ll consider it.” You remembered now. Being in a fog. When he’d told you to do something. And you remembered-

“Yeah- ...yes, sorry. I’ll take a look-”

You’d done as he’d asked. Without hesitation. Almost like-

No. No this wasn’t right. Your brain was rewriting memories. Inserting- ...inserting him wherever he fit. Charles Xavier was not a bad man. He had a school that he used to protect kids that needed protecting. He put his interest with you away when Tony had offered even more security. He was good.

...you felt so weak. “I’m sorry.” Apologize to Tony as you craned forward, resting your head against his shoulder. You were so sorry that this still held a dark spot in your heart. Maybe it always would. And for that you were sorry, too.

His hand worked up and down your back in slow slides. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Just breathe. Take it easy. You’re okay. We’re okay.”

Your anniversary was in five days. While you weren’t sure you would make it until then, suddenly, you knew for sure after tonight. You were glad you had this man. Already you knew the next five days would be a struggle. Talking to Charles- and then talking to Ellis to knock some sense into him. But if you could just make it… you would be the luckiest woman in the world to be able to let Tony know just how much you loved him and were thankful to have his love in return.

...just in case he didn’t know already.

Five more days. You just had to get through five more days…

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter One Hundred Eighty Five

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save-the-spiral · 4 years

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3 words?

fossil, structure, treasurer (word generator)

Warnings for Azteca spoilers, suicide implication, genocide, death, apocalypse. I may have accidentally projected a bit, but you can’t blame a guy for it, honest.

Azteca has always been a world steeped in a deep love of itself. To be the origin, the closest one can find to the first true world that was sung into creation, it feels like a responsibility. Every creature born of Azteca will find an intense sense of ownership, an honor in being yet another to carry on that legacy, to carry on a stewardship of their world.

And so tradition carries on as well. They may not have cities of stone and metal innovation, but they have a strong, fierce leader. They have mystics, they have their own small clans of species with their own squabbles. It is the way of life, and it has an order to it like all life does. Unifying all of them is a respect for those who came before them, and a reverence for those who have passed.

They have their own treasure as a world, not in money, particularly. Statues, temples, pyramids. Gold and gems, sure, but their war shields and prized family heirlooms mean far more to any dinosaur, bird, or jungle cat you may come across than any shiny thing with monetary value.

And then Xibalba began to streak across the sky. Plain blue became fraught with purple and indigo, colors of night even in the day, a dark omen of a prophecy finally coming, an inevitable apocalypse. It is the inevitability of it that cripples a proud and honorable people. They all stay, however. Their Spiral Door is long dull of its arcane and eldritch magics, though they do send for help with a lone quetzal. There is still hope.

To even begin to comprehend their own mass extinction, they must cling to hope however they find the means to. Some had children, some turned to their preexisting religion, others made a new one of their coming end. Some became comatose, others took a quicker way out.

No one could be blamed for how they coped, everyone found themself sleepless. There would be crowds in Three Points, sitting out on large woven blankets that were passed from parent to child for generations, now taken from their places of honor on the walls and aired out, laid out on the stone courtyard for their young to sleep upon, to roll up in under the stars. As they drift off to sleep these young would stare up at the new moon in the sky, a purple mass of strange magic and stone that everyone was afraid of, and they would murmur about how pretty it is. They would ask questions and wonder why their parents leave their side, not knowing that it is to silently weep.

How do you tell a child you brought them into a world where they may never become an adult in? They may never have the time to explore and appreciate as you have? May never find love, find passion, find something worth living for? That your failure as a parent is out of your own hands, merely something that was always supposed to come, and you can only stare at the sky alongside your children, and not be able to see the beauty they do.

The children learned quickly to stop asking questions, and found out what was happening anyway. They understood it as children do, taking it in stride as another fact of life that will not be answered, like why older siblings can be so mean sometimes.

After months of stargazing, life seemed to move on, slowly, grating to the soul. People had a lifeless glaze to the eyes, they stared at each other in the marketplace, everyone asking the silent question of why. Why now. Why them.

As many do, they as a people had their own art renaissance. Weaving, painting, sculpting, singing, dancing, story-telling. Songs rang through the jungle, people found new beats to dance to and danced well to them. It became irrelevant whether one learned the trades one took to be an adult. Who cares if one can recite their history if they themself are soon to be a part of it?

So now, now when most are dead, and people are suffering, and they are secluded in their homes, hiding deep in their mines, trapped in and slowly suffocating from the falling debris and meteorites, they turn to the art that was made. They sing lullabies about Xibalba as their children cry. They dance under the flashing, alien light of a skyfull of falling stars until they fall as well. They shout their stories from the rooftops, saying their name, in vain reaching out into the void to search for meaning in all of this suffering, in this genocide exacted by those who benefit from allowing this, inflicting this.

So a people fall. In vain. And a hero leaves, shaking, unable to comprehend the enormity of what they have witnessed, a reflection of Azteca when Xibalba first showed itself. The hero enters the Spiral Door, and knows the people they leave behind will not follow, because they were born on this world, and it is their duty to live on and for it.

And the hero’s only mercy is to let them.

#ask #anon #anonymous #wizard101 #wizzy101 #wiz101 #w101 #Azteca #Writing

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financialconsciousness · 4 years

Text

Quantum Leap To Financial Consciousness: A Spiritual Call to Bitcoin for a Metaphysical Mass Awakening to Alchemically Shapeshift Humanity out of the Collective Unconscious Poverty Framework and into Cosmic Awareness

“The greatest form of control is when you think you are free when you are being fundamentally manipulated and dictated to. One form of dictatorship is being in a prison cell and you can see the bars and touch them, the other one is sitting in a prison cell and you can’t see the bars so you think you are free. What the human race is suffering from is mass hypnosis.” – David Icke

The Duality of Wholeness and Fragmentation – Coherence in a Clashing Universe

As conscious beings that contain the oneness of the cosmic universe inside every single one of us, we must oppose the illusion of separation and work together collectively to find resolve. E pluribus unum, the concept that out of many comes one, is no different than out of the billions of individuals on mother earth forms a single human race. It is through duality that we gain a better understanding of the physical and metaphysical, seen and unseen, known and unknown, light and dark, fragmentation and wholeness, and can begin to fill in the gaps that are often hidden by the void of nothingness and on the other side of fear. The dollar says “In God We Trust” and only in trusting the dollar do we know what poverty is, and only in knowing god do we know what gratitude is.

We must merge mass critical thinking and collective consciousness amongst the cryptospace to find borderless coherence and resolution on how systematic monetary order can be found amongst a state of intentional disorder and entropy caused by powerful institutions that have applied insufferable soul loss on millions of lives for centuries. This is a challenge to humanity to collectively find a resolution to cure poverty, create unity, end institutionalized oppression, increase freedom, and to give humanity an altruistic and utilitarian sense of cohesive purpose through the creativity and production of a consistently reliable store of value. We must purge away the old that no longer serves us, and shift into a new paradigm that will increasingly benefit each and every user equally in a decentralized protocol that is free from nepotism, crony economics, corrupt law enforcement, and any form of discrimination based on gender identification, ethnic background, sexual preference, familial status, disability, and socioeconomic status.

The universe is expanding faster every day since the inception of the big bang. I often wonder how does such an organized implicit order emerge from the chaos of a massive explosion, the big bang. How can the planets go around the sun so perfectly? How can the water cycle be so intelligently designed? How is mother earth so organically conscious in the creation of the billions of lifeforms on earth? Why do plants breathe in what we breathe out in reciprocity? When the universe was created, the explosion of matter and consciousness formed the cosmic organization of billions of stars, suns, planets, galaxies, lifeforms, and conscious beings that are all connected through the oneness and wholeness of the universe. We were given the two precious gifts of matter and consciousness. The divine evolutionary impulse of consciousness gives us the ability to create sustainable life through procreation and the ability to use our creativeness to maximize productivity as knowledge workers and content creators. Creative consciousness is a divine gift that the universe and god used to create us through it. We continue to let the universe and god create through us because we are in god and the universe, as the universe and god are in us. It is only in deep meditation and in the flow state can we find enlightenment. The goal of many institutions is to keep you from focusing and prevent the self-discovery of your sense of Self. This constant state of unconsciousness and mass hypnosis is largely responsible for overflowing prisons, homelessness, and poverty.

Wake Up! You Are Unconsciously Operating Old Patterns

Most people are unconscious in their daily patterns and routines. We are creatures of our environment, conditioning, and circumstance. These three items largely dictate what will emerge and unfold in our lives from both the explicate and implicate order. When your environment, conditions, and circumstances are institutionally controlled by a higher power of systematic mechanisms that are designed to break you down methodically and have you succumb to the Collective Unconscious Poverty Framework that has already been planned for you to follow, then you have no other choice than to succumb unconsciously, and unwillingly conform to institutionalized oppression. Prediction is a powerful management tool, and when the centralized institutions control the circumstances, they can also predict how you will behave. Institutions create the culture, culture determines behavior, and behavior drives performance. How will you perform? You will perform how they want you to through the intelligent design of conformity.

In addition to this invisible control that is being exerted, you are stuck constantly working and laboring endlessly while in a frame of mind that intentionally focuses on the primordial illusion of a brighter future and keeping you stagnantly in a constant state of distraction chasing a dream that only fades away the more you pursue it. This elusiveness is not only mystical and metaphysical, but it gives you a sense of higher purpose and meaning as you unconsciously operate on this pattern that was imprinted on you early in life through institutionalization and socialization. As you exercise the avoidance of consciousness, experience soul loss, and continue to chase this dream in a state of entropy, more and more time is stolen from you as you remain unaware of the trade-off between your most valuable asset, the irreplaceable asset of time, and the value of money in which you are compensated today for your hard labor that will be worth less in value tomorrow. As time is stolen from you because you have to labor more to offset the devaluation of your money, you get closer and closer to death and further from the retirement dream since you have no store of value to place your money free from depreciation or risk. Thus, making it that much tougher to pass on any generational wealth to your children and solidifying your lineage in a state of generational poverty.

Shine the Giant Spotlight on the Darkness of the Collective Unconscious

The dysfunctionality of unconsciousness and the manifestations that emerge through our unconscious operate like the law of attraction and magnetism due to the constant conditioning and repetition of living a circumstantial life of lack, thirst, and want. The quantum entanglement and synchronicity of generational trauma being passed down over and over again from one generation of humanity to another is one that must be moved from the shadows of the collective unconscious and into the awareness of the collective conscious. Only through a mass awakening and increased awareness of this dark void could we then shed light on the shadows of the collective unconsciousness and end the generations of trauma that have emerged and unfolded throughout humanity.

Human nature tends to gravitate towards and attract what is familiar to us. Unfortunately for our ancestry, that translates to constantly attracting poverty and trauma for centuries. It is imperative that in the search for Self we do the inner work to move the unconscious patterns hidden in our shadow into the conscious light and increase our awareness. Removing these chains and breaking free will create wholeness for humanity, mass self-actualization, mass kundalini alignment, mass equanimity, and purge any hindrance in the way of humanities growth that will not allow us to move swiftly through spacetime and timespace unopposed.

As we seek a joyous life of abundance, it is only through being present, increasing awareness, and ultimately reaching the enlightenment of consciousness that we will then have the ability to exercise discernment in our decision making through the setting of firm intentions. By setting firm intentions, reaffirming those intentions, and making the best decisions in our own way, we will open ourselves up to be empowered and to receive all the goodness that wants to unfold and emerge in our journey through life. We often forget the universe is working for us and not against us. We must be open to the gifts of the universe and exercise gratitude and servitude as a form of receivership. How can we expect to receive thanks and services if we are not willing to provide the reciprocal of giving thanks and service? When we are closed off and unopen, the universe cannot give us what it cannot do thru us. When mentally complex people are in their own head, opportunities will walk into their lives and they do not recognize them because they weren’t open to receivership during their mental state of unconsciousness.

“Whoever has gratitude will be given more, and he or she will have an abundance. Whoever does not have gratitude, even what he or she has will be taken from him or her. If you are grateful, I will give you more; but if you are ungrateful verily my punishment is indeed severe.”

Do not disempower yourself with the disease of living in the illusion of the future or the illusion of the past. Looking into the future causes anxiety as you wait an extended amount of time to get there. Waiting for the future also signals to your mind body connection that you are dissatisfied with the current moment in your life and unhappy until you reach your destination. Looking into the past causes depression and also signals to your mind body connection that you are unhappy with the present moment. We must be fully present and know that there is only one place in time we can be, and it is here and now in this present moment. The sequencing of each moment creates the sense of time, but only in the present moment is where we can discern the best decision making for ourselves and for humanity.

The Grand Illusion – Financial Rabbit Holes, The Giant Pyramid, & Erosion of Money

This Grand Illusion is largely driven by crony capitalism and an immoral financial system that mechanistically keeps people indebted for all of perpetuity by forcing the use of a currency that is a poor store of value, the constant coerced spending to maintain the velocity of money, the intelligent design of the college-debt paradox (pay for college to get a job, get a job to pay for college), property taxes that will penalize you for perpetuity if you are a homeowner, and the continuous increase of rents for renters. The constant inflation and devaluation on currency reduces your purchasing power and reduces your payment power on long term loans while simultaneously increasing the cost of living.

The constant income tax, sales tax, gas tax, personal property tax, and real property tax continues to dwindle and erode your hard-earned money as well. Not only are you pressured to make quick unconscious decisions on massive purchases before the cost is driven up by inflation, but you also have to make a quick decision before the interest rates go up. This forced personal spending serves two purposes. First, it maintains the economies velocity of money to prevent a recession and facilitate continuous spending. Secondly, it ignites the personal fear of future price increase on the purchase price, fear of the rise of interest rates, and subsequently is combined with a relentlessly devalued currency that increases the cost of goods. I must say this is the most intelligent pyramid scheme ever designed because it keeps the masses busy laboring away at work and fully under control of the institutional policies and procedures that determine how people will culturally behave while stealing their time and dwindling their money thru taxes, interest, debt, inflation on the cost of goods, and the constant devaluation of their money.

When interests on large debts and endless taxation are combined with the increase in the cost of living that continues to rise as the value of the dollar decreases, you will find yourself stuck in a vicious cycle of mechanisms meant to defeat you until you succumb to poverty and the unconscious pattern of long hours of labor. These are the mechanisms that keep the wealthy bourgeoisie rich and the proletariat’s poor slaves forever. These perennial patterns that are taught to us at a very young age through the mass farming of schools are leaving a lasting imprint on our personalities and they subconsciously dictate our future. This is the root of generational poverty and generational trauma. Institutional oppression is a powerful omniscient mechanistic form of bureaucratical organization that is shielded by favorable laws on money, banking, and politics. These institutions have exercised the concept of the collective unconscious to create an everlasting pipeline of poverty, pain, and suffering for the masses from one generation to another.

The Collective Unconscious Poverty Framework is designed to have the masses conform. The implementation plan is readily prepared before people are even born and keeps a steady pipeline of constant unconscious drifters entering the system as each new person is given the gift of life. This antiquated form of control operates from dogma and archaic processes that have worked well in the past in redlining blacks, discriminating against women’s careers, and ensuring Hispanics are not equal. This generational consciousness has been optimized to keep institutional oppression, racism, poverty, inequality, and injustice alive for centuries and perhaps millennium if we continue on this path. This imprint hypnotizes the masses and is a cumbersome determinant in how our life will unfold before we are even born. It steals a piece of our soul, spirit, freedom, time, and hard-earned money. With no place holder for the store of value, there is zero incentive to save your money. You are then coerced into a dichotomy of decision making to either increase the velocity of money by spending on a cash producing asset to hold your value in hopes of appreciation that will allow your money to break-even as the price of the asset goes up against the devaluation of the currency over time, thus resulting in a break-even exchange after taxes, interest, and liquidation fees, or you can allow the dwindling of your purchasing power in your savings account by saving money knowing it will be worth less in the future than it is in the present moment. Investing your money into a cash producing asset that could incur risk in the market seems like a great idea to make some gains against a currency that is intentionally being devalued, until the market has a dramatic correction like in 2008 or 2020 and the rug is pulled out from under you and you take a massive loss. Saving your money seems like a good option as well, until your purchasing power is dwindled over time and saving money actually translates into losing money as the value of the dollar is decreased. This pattern will continue on for perpetuity unless the masses are awakened from this 1984 dystopian dream and find an altruistic ethos for an investment vehicle that considers utilitarianism, freedom, and the opportunity to store value for labor worked. It is important that humanity exercises the oneness and wholeness of the collective consciousness to protect the individuality, individuation, freedom of choice, and freedom of consent of each individual person.

Human nature is a metaphysical phenomenon that can be reduced to theories on the causation of our behaviors, but some mysteries of the universe are not meant to be fully understood, like matter, consciousness, and creation. The unconscious people have many names such as drifters and sheep to name a couple. They do not even know it, but they have become a slave to their unconsciousness and have been taken possession by a foreign spirit. The problem is, as we look inward through introspective reflection and meditation, that possession ends up being ourselves. Our shadow and our dark side thrive in the void of darkness and are less visible when compared to our identities and personas. Regardless of the archetypes and patterns we are running on, we must be awakened from the socialization process that has been imprinted on us and break free of all the metaphysical chains that have coerced us to into conformity and taken away the most basic liberties and freedoms that are inalienable like our personality and right to individuality.

Can Bitcoin Ignite a Mass Awakening from a Mass Hypnosis?

Many of us would do anything to support our families, even if that means we spend a large portion of our life unconsciously operating the hamster wheel through spacetime going back and forth to an unpleasant career. The constant state of survival mode is bad for your physical and mental health, and deviates many from the individuation process, causing them to live with a cognitive dissonance between their sense of Self, their identities, and their personas that developed in response to their need to adapt and conform to societal pressures for fear of being outcasted financially from the workforce and banking systems that lend money for homeownership. Many will inevitably endure an adolescent crisis, midlife crisis, and a late crisis because the freedom of their personality has been suppressed into conformity. Suicide, violence, and trauma are often associated with poverty and the inability to cope with conformity from the lack of freedom and autonomy in their way of life, state of being, and state of becoming. From conformity and poverty often comes pain and suffering. The human experience is one of many emotions and there is not a single person that is exception to the challenges the human experience brings us in this unpredictable life.

Though the human experience brings pain and suffering, we have the conscious intelligence and cosmic awareness to look inward into self-discovery and find our inner-peace through our sense of Self. Matter and consciousness are two cosmic mysteries that are at the center of the physical and metaphysical dimensions as we know it. We can each find our way just as Siddhartha, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and Miyamoto Musashi have done before through introspection. Whether it is alchemy, spirituality, mysticism, psychology, religion, oneness, wholeness, holiness, enlightenment, transcendence, redemption, salvation, occultism, heresy, self-actualization, kundalini alignment, equanimity, shamanism, quantum consciousness, or cosmic awareness that keeps us centered we must be open to new concepts on the forefront of consciousness. Could the freedom of Bitcoin ignite the latent inhibitions, the dormant space in the mind, the collective unconscious, the primitive instincts of survival mode, and inspire a mass awakening of all the conscious beings that are oppressed through fragmentation and unite them into a oneness so powerful it will purge away the old paradigms and ignite a paradigm shift into a modern state of becoming for the masses of humanity.

A Call to Servant Transformational Leadership and Decentralized Quality Management

The golden rule “he who has the gold, makes the rules” is very much applied in society today. Money and power are synonymous palindromes that are universally understood in every culture around the world. A common misnomer is belief that increasing control moves the status quo. The problem with this philosophy is that as the driving forces for control are increased, the resisting forces increase their resistance. This creates a lot of wasted energy and still ends up keeping the status quo the same. How do you rid of resistance? You take back control and optimize a decentralized protocol that serves a freer purpose for humanity. Those who make the rules of the game decide how the game is played. Bitcoin maximalists and cryptospace enthusiasts have a chance to rewrite the rules to the game and solidify a coined phrase (no pun intended).

“In Blockchain We Trust”

Systems thinking argues that the problem lies in the system and not in the people operating the system. By taking blame away from the politicians and institutions that have stolen the wealth of millions of people for centuries, and applying focus on the pragmatic view of optimizing practicality and what actually works. We are able to collectively and consciously discern the creation of a blockchain system that leverages freedom, reduces oppression, and is amoral when it comes to politics, institutionalization, and the human factor influence on property ownership, sociology, and both the physical and cognitive elements of crony capitalism. As conditions change and new challenges emerge it is adamant that we call on our servant leaders, transformational leaders, quality managers, system managers, empaths, indigos, crystals, rainbows, starseeds, lightworkers, and knowledge workers to anchor these systemic changes into the new paradigm and status quo. Epistemology and knowledge management is not only important for the information age, but it is vital to the mass transfer of individuals from collective unconsciousness into collective consciousness. The meeting of human intelligence and the utility of blockchain is where the rubber meets the road.

Freedom and Store of Value

The word freedom is an ontological sociological phenomenon that is often talked about, yet is hard to find. Maximalists are beginning to have a strong argument that they discovered freedom and the true meaning of value. How is it that Bitcoin is the only store of value that is exception to the rule that “things of high value have little to no use?”

“Blockchain Is Freedom and Freedom Is Blockchain”

“Things of high value have little to no use and things of high use have little to no value”

The intelligent design of Bitcoin and blockchain optimizes the many uses of the cryptocurrency to be an asset, currency, technology, information, store of value, investment vehicle, method of transfer, bank, decentralized finance, and much more than an antiquated currency that was developed before the industrial, technological, and information ages. With the need to dissolve the old paradigms and shift into a new paradigm we must consciously discern how the world has evolved and how the concepts of productivity and utility have changed. We need a currency that is high in utility and can keep up with the velocity of the interconnectedness of computers and the internet. This will lead us to a new level of consciousness and new state of being.

A New Level of Consciousness

The law of impermanence argues that nothing is permanent and the attachment to these desires will cause suffering. As a human race we must ask ourselves if we are so codependent on the old paradigms that we would induce suffering on the masses to ensure a life of mediocrity or are we willing to step into the unknown towards a life of abundance? As we let go of the old, create space for the new, and make our transition into the future, we must consider the new concepts that will unfold and emerge like the lotus that radiates out of the mud.

To put it simply, the way of being as we know it will evolve tremendously. The cryptospace will create a climate of shared power and the philosophy of dealing with groups that are trustworthy and competent at problem solving. This new approach is unheard of in our schools, governments, and organizations. Most organizations suffer great discomfort in giving up any power to the individual and groups within. It is typically the philosophy to exert power over others to control them. In religion we are not trusted because of sin, in government we are not trusted due to laws, and in psychology people are considered unconscious. The human experience has gotten us this far and it is something amazing to see. The invention of cell phones, computers, spaceships, airplanes, and so much more that has evolved from working together in wholeness. We must unleash the untapped human potential that mankind has to offer. We are the answer and we are enough. We must transcend each other to a higher level of consciousness and shine the light on our unconscious missteps to create awareness as we move into the future. There is a new level of human awareness that is emerging. The development of the metaphysical, mystical, and supernatural powers of the evolutionary impulse and consciousness that are in each and every one of us is a driving force for creative change. Harmonic rhythm and oneness are the answer to the fragmented world we are living in.

I walk down the street, there is a deep hole

I fall in, I am lost, I am hopeless

It isn’t my fault, it takes forever to get out

I walk down the same street, there is a deep hole

I pretend not to see it, I fall in again

I can’t believe I am in the same place

It isn’t my fault, and takes a long time to get out again

I walk down the same street, there is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I see it this time, I still fall in, It’s a habit, but I am aware

It is my fault, I get out quicker

I walk down the same street, there is a deep hole in the side walk

I walk around it this time

I walk down another street this time

#bitcoin #psychology #spirituality #quantum #finance #meditation #alchemy #metaphysical #empath #indigo #money #cryptocurrency

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agardenintheshire · 5 years

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“The Wisdom of the Crowd: Internet Memes and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by Michelle Markey Butler

hi tolkien fandom! did you know there’s an essay dealing with memes and the first hobbit movie?? now you do! bless my uni for having this essay. i thought it’d be fun to give you some of the best bits from the essay

without further ado........let’s go (on an adventure!)

(i will make a TLDR post about this and link it, but i just wanna get it out there after spending like 5 hours typing this dkfksdfjlsfjs)

(Boldened is my own emphasis!)

“The Wisdom of the Crowd: Internet Memes and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by Michelle Markey Butler

[...] Harry Potter, the Game of Thrones, and Twilight do appear regularly in memes. But the works of Tolkien, despite being decades older, hold their own with them in the cutting-edge culture of memes. [...] My handling of memes deals with their rhetorical functions. Among these, as I have argued elsewhere, is crowd-sourced literary criticism. This essay will argue that memes are a vehicle through which a broad community thoughtfully engages with and presents nuanced criticism of Jackson’s films.

[...] Of course, not all Lord of the Rings memes participate in crowdsourced literary analysis. Indeed, many do not. Some are merely humorous, or employ LOTR elements for other objectives such as social critique. A rough estimate would be that one in ten engage in literary analysis of Lord of the Rings. But those LOTR memes that do carry the function of literary analysis by and large do so through the method of comparative consideration of the book and Jackson’s film versions.

In contrast, memes about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey have thus far focused almost exclusively on the movie. Memes that appeared before the film was released express anxiety about its potential handling of the book and question why the book was adapted into three movies. One meme, for instance, unfavorably compares Jackson’s strategy for adapting The Hobbit with his approach to Lord of the Rings.

The meme is arguing that while adapting three books into three movies is a reasonable artistic decision, adapting one book into three movies is not. The real reason for this decision, the meme asserts, is financial, making this claim of financial motivation using the Aliens meme, a choice which allows the meme to imply that a monetary incentive for a three-movie adaptation of The Hobbit is as crazy a notion as the claim that aliens might have visited the earth. Anxiety and skepticism about the upcoming Hobbit films are evident.

[...]

Within hours of the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in December 2012, memes drawing upon images of the film began to appear and indeed, evaluate the movie, functioning in essence as crowd-sourced critique. The earliest and most prevalent of these memes - I’m Going on an Adventure, Majestic Thorin, and Never Have I Been So Wrong - focus upon moments and elements of the movie that engender strong reactions, either positive or negative, and analyze those reactions.

Snippets of the I’m Going on an Adventure scene had already been revealed in a trailer released in September in 2012. Yet while the image that is the basis for this meme was present in the trailer, memes featuring this moment did not appear until after the movie’s release. The meme community became interested in this line when it appeared in the context of the movie, rather than in the relative isolation of the trailer, as would be expected if memes function as crowdsourced analysis of the larger work. Unlike the two other pervasive memes that emerged following the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I’m Going on an Adventure memes are overwhelmingly positive in their characterization of the scene.

[...] The juxtaposition of the first two images suggests that getting new video games feels just as exciting, just as much as the beginning of an awesome adventure, as Bilbo setting out with a group of dwarves to steal treasure from a dragon. However, the second and third images critiques the actual experience of those games. Whereas Bilbo in fact goes on an adventure, playing the videogames leads nowhere, but sitting on the couch in your underwear. Not exactly the same as [Bilbo’s adventures]. The meme makes an argument about the limitations of virtual entertainment through (perhaps ironically) comparison with a fictional (albeit presented as real) adventure. [...]

Similarly, let’s consider a second example of a meme that depends for its meaning upon a positive view of the “I’m Going on an Adventure” moment:

The meme implies that the narrator believes that as an adult, he should take a level-headed, even casual approach to travel, but in reality he sees it like Bilbo sees his journey - an exciting adventure. [...]

On most meme sites, anyone can create and submit memes, but not all memes are featured by the websites. Most have a voting system that factors into determining which memes become featured (often called “making the front page.”). [...] Memes, then, funcion as crowdsourced literary criticism (among other rhetorical purposes, as discussed above) both due to the open submission format and because successful memes are those chosen by the community. Memes are, thus, peer-reviewed.

The popularity of “I’m Going on an Adventure” memes carries several interesting implications. First, the widespread interest in such memes, both creating and choosing them, suggests that movie audiences indentified this moment as one to which they had an intense response. For images or moments to become memetic, they must be immediately recognizable - important, meaningful, or in some way striking enough to have formed an accessible memory in the viewer’s mind. The widespread presence of the “I’m Going on an Adventure” meme thus suggests that this scene was indeed such a moment. Secondly, the handling of the scene in the meme suggests that audience reaction was in general a positive one. [...] The film clearly intends the scene to be a moment of high emotion and engagement (witness the film techniques employed as well as the swell of the musical score). From the evidence of the memes, we would have to conclude that it was successful.

While meme communities’ responses to the “I’m Going on an Adventure” scene were positive, other elements of the film did not fare as well. “Majestic Thorin” is a meme that points up the mixed results of the film’s adaptation of the characterization of Thorin. In the book, Thorin is a middle-aged dwarf whose overriding character trait is pomposity, most clearly seen in his tendency towards long-winded speeches filled with big words. Like most elements of the book, Thorin is not taken entirely seriously; at times his pomposity is played for humor. Nonetheless, the book handles that aspect with a light touch, never undercutting Thorin so much as to disable his ability to be seen as a courageous, albeit flawed, figure. We take his status as king seriously, we regret his bad decisions, we applaud his repentance, and we mourn his death, none of which would be possible - or at least would be considerably different - if the book presented him purely as a figure of humor.

The movie, in contrast, portrays Thorin as young, good-looking (”hot” would be more accurate), laconic, and most importantly, intensely serious. Perhaps too serious, the memes suggest.

The movie clearly intends to characterize Thorin as a “chip on his shoulder”, “tough as nails” dwarf prince out for revenge - a “badass”, in internet parlance. But memetic attention to this element is not necessarily positive. Nor is it overwhelmingly negative. “Majestic Thorin” memes question the portrayal, not utterly condemn it.

One problem with it, the memes suggest, is that the difference between the characterization of Thorin in the book, and, perhaps more importantly, the rest of the dwarves in the movie, might be too wide. Consider, for instance, another Majestic Thorin meme.

The meme’s argument is that Thorin is so much more awesome than even his closest dwarf competition that Kili is often reduced to tears of frustration at his inadequacy.

The situation is similar in nearly all Majestic Thorin memes.

As with the example above, this meme argues that the gap between the movie’s attention to and characterization of Thorin compared with its presentation of the other dwarves is too extreme. The movie lavishes Thorin with markers we are to understand that he is the only really important dwarf, that he has legitimate grievances to avenge, that we are to give our full sympathy to him. None of the other dwarves, even Kili, come close. This particular meme takes a bonus swipe at the movie’s presentation of Kili, noting that he lacks the most definitive of dwarvish characteristics, a beard.

A final example of Majestic Thorin demonstrates how extreme the meme community finds the characterization to be.

This meme is particularly effective at making the argument that the movie goes to far in elevating Thorin above the other dwarves. It picks up on Thorin’s characteristics gesture throughout the movie of staring into the middle distance, clearly brooding upon the injustices he’s experienced and how he intends to get vengeance. The meme argues, though, that this is not the reason for his continual middle-distance contemplation. Rather, he looks away from the other dwarves so much because he’s too majestic for their presence and can’t stand to look at them, even to the point of ignoring his nephew Kili, who beg like to a child to be notices. Everyone loves a brooding good guy intent on punishing those who wronged him, the meme argues, but The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey goes too far in trying to make Thorin the sole dwarvish object of our affections. We love the other dwarves too (especially Kili) and would prefer to feel as if we do so because of the movie’s presentation of them and not despite it.

Unlike most memes [Note 12: Intriguingly, it is also a rare meme that can be traced to a particular source, a discussion of tumblr by users mistlethalia @monsterthalia and @jackietastic in December 2012] “Majestic Thorin” does not have a dominant image, instead making use of numerous stills from the film. This variation suggests that the meme is indeed about the overall portrayal of Thorin, not simply how he appears in a particular scene. Majestic Thorin memes consistently draw attention to the potentially over-the-top characterization of Thorin, but do not (at least not yet) mercilessly mock that characterization. In addition to suggesting that the characterization gap between Thorin and he other dwarves is too wide, the memetic attention of Thorin also questions whether Thorin’s majesty is problematic not because it is his most defining characteristic but because it is largely his only characteristic. By focusing upon Thorin’s majesty, the meme suggests that while viewers did not necessarily dislike the characterization of Thorin, they came away from the film with concerns that the brooding, appearance-based presentation was limiting, ultimately resulting in a nice-to-look-at but underdeveloped character.

An underdeveloped portrayal of Thorin might go a long way towards explaining memetic communities’ ambivalent response to a later scene in the film. Far and away the most prevalent meme deriving from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is Never Have I Been So Wrong/ I Have Never Been So Wrong. Thorin’s actual line in the movie is “I have never been so wrong in all my life, “ but versions of the meme exist using both the shortened real line and the variant phrasing, “Never have I been so wrong.” Quotations have an observed tendency to distill or distort as they become widely known. In this instance, it is interesting to note that the change makes the phrasing more formal, arguably more consistent with the film’s characterization of Thorin as aloof and proud, bordering on arrogant. Inverting his words gives the phrase a more formal, more archaic, and more elevated feel.

The Never Have I Been So Wrong meme nearly always employs the same template, a juxtaposed pair of images. In the first frame, we look over Bilbo’s shoulder at Thorin. In the second, we look over Thorin’s shoulder at Bilbo as they embrace. These images derive, of course, from the climactic scene near the end of the film in which Thorin changes his mind about whether bringing Bilbo along was a good idea - after we see Bilbo risk his own life to save Thorin.

As with the “I’m Going on an Adventure” scene, the film clearly intends this scene to be a moment of high emotional engagement for the audience. Unlike the earlier scene, it is not at all certain that the scene succeeds in being so; indeed, the consistent irreverence with which the scene is handled in memes suggest that it does not. Whereas “I’m Going on an Adventure” memes nearly always reference the scene positively, “I Have Never Been So Wrong” memes employ the scene at best ambivalently, and at worst, mockingly. For instance, we see examples of the meme using the typical images but with the following captions:

The widespread popularity of the “Never Have I Been So Wrong” meme seems to result from at least two elements. The meme is highly adaptable, lending itself to commentary about a wide variety of topics, as the examples above show. While that is demonstrably true, it seems insufficient to explain the meme’s popularity and longetivity. Within that flexible meme resides a core of commentary about the movie - that An Unexpected Journey aims to bridge the lighter, more playful world of the Hobbit book with the more solemn and dangerous world of LOTR, both as text and as movies, but is not entirely successful - a conclusion that viewers arrived at not long after the film’s release and about which they have not changed their minds.

Never Have I Been So Wrong is the most common Hobbit movie meme to emerge, most likely because the scene in many ways encapsulates the film as a whole, and audience reaction to this moment is representative of viewer reaction to the movie as a whole. This scene, like the movie itself, aims at a serious, high-concept reaction from viewers but does not fully succeed, resulting in a moment that partially deconstructs itself, teetering on the edge of self-parody. That teetering is what Never Have I Been So Wrong memes draw attention to. We react strongly to this moment, but we’re not certain how or why, or whether our reaction tracks with what the film meant to provoke. When Thorin confronts Bilbo, the seeminlgy-intended seriousness does not entirely hold together; the moment does not ring fully true. It is this partial failure of dramatic persuaiveness that memes have picked up on, the moment that almost, but not quite, travels into unintentional self-satire, and employs it repeatedly for precisely that purpose - mocking partly serious, partly ludicrous, situations. Of which, it turns out, we encounter many in our lives, hence the meme’s continued vibrancy.

As much as audiences wanted to like The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, they struggled to do so. There was concern and skepticism about the decision to adapt the book into three movies, and memes reflected this, but there was also goodwill towards the films and a profound hope that they would turn out well. Parts of An Unexpected Journey were well received, as we can see from the emergence of the I’m Going on an Adventure meme and its favorable handling of the scene. Other memes, however, suggest that while audiences recognized the filmmakers’ goal of incorporating The Hobbit into a more developed and darker world of LOTR, that goal has been incompletely met, at least evidenced in An Unexpected Journey. The desire to make Thorin a more serious character came at the expense of him being a more fully realized character, as the Majestic Thorin meme’s insistence upon drawing attention to the movie’s portrayal of Thorin as a laconic, brooding badass, and only that, suggests. Most crucially, what is clearly meant to be the film’s climactic scene of repentance and redemption is so unsuccessfully rendered that instead it becomes a meme for critiquing moments that are half-serious and half-ridiculous. Each of these issues were raised either implicitly or explicitly in the memes themselves and demonstrate how the broader meme community engages in thoughful, nuanced critique of Jackson’s films. With this in mind, it will be interesting indeed to watch the meme communities when The Desolation of Smaug is released, to see what memes emerge and what they’ll tell us about viewers’ analysis of the film.

Sources:

Butler, Michelle. “The Wisdom of the Crowd: Internet Memes and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”. The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Mythology, edited by Bradford Lee Eden, McFarland &Company, 2014, pp. 222 -231.

Picture Sources:

https://michellemarkeybutler.com/academic/hobbit-memes/

#personal #uh how to tag this?#the hobbit an unexpected journey #an unexpected journey #thorin #majestic thorin #also i'm sorry for everyone on mobile this is such a long post ahhh oh no #long post

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hellenicprayercircle · 5 years

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ah thank you! i’m just struggling with finding ways to honour Mnemosyne, as almost all information was lost on her aside from her being the mother of The Muses. do you have any advice on how i could find ways to strengthen my connection with Her if i don’t even know what sort of offerings to give? thank you so much

Hey, I did some fun and sexy research for you using JSTOR and SciHub. @illusionofmyself

So: Things you may not know about Mnemosyne!

If you are familiar with Asklepios and curative incubation, Mnemosyne was honored at the Asklepieia. One author believes her presence was requested to aid in recalling the encounter with Asklepios after the patient woke up, “represented the capacity for ordered thought (akin to her function in epic poetry) which allowed for the transformation of the ritual experience at the Asklepiea into sacred literature” and to help memorialize the divine intervention of Asklepios, which would “[bolster] the fame of Asklepios and the status of his sanctuaries”. [[A quick summary of incubation: Asklepios is a healing god, the son of Apollo. Patients in Ancient Greece would go to the Asklepieia, which was a healing temple. Incubation is the process of receiving divine advice through dreams--patients would sleep at the temple, Asklepios would visit them in their dreams and tell them how they were to be cured. When the patient awoke, they would tell the priests, who would perform the cure.]] So Mnemosyne helped the patient recall the dream, and therefore give the full advice to the priests from Asklepios.

The sacred texts from the Pergamon Asklepion has a bit more detail... The preliminary rituals at Pergamon included offerings of meat and cake to various gods and an offering of a suckling pig to Asklepios at the main altar, along with the monetary offering, but this was not the last offering for most supplicants. At nightfall, three more nine-knobbed round cakes were to be offered, one each on the outside altar to Tyche and Mnemosyne, and one to Themis within the incubation chamber. ... [I]n Piraeus, Mnemosyne’s offering probably preceded the offering to Asklepios before incubation. In Pergamon, the offering to Asklepios happened after the meat and cake offerings to the other gods and before the offerings to Tyche and Mnemosyne just outside the sleeping chambers and to Themis just inside the sleeping chambers. So, the offering to Mnemosyne happened right before incubation. Threnheim’s point about the importance of remembering the dream certainly accounts for the timing of the offering to Mnemosyne. Presumably one would want to invoke Mnemosyne as closely as possible to the actual incubation... Mnemosyne is one of the two gods (along with Apollo) that can be found at the Epidaurian, Pergamene, and Piraean sanctuaries. [[This is significant because there were up to 11 different gods honored at each of the 3 sites, but only Asklepios, Apollon, and Mnemosyne were mentioned at each one. She was clearly VERY important.]]

...

So what was the significance of Mnemosyne? At the most basic level, her gift of memory was necessary for the cult of Asklepios to work properly, since everything hinged on the incubant remembering the dream and attributing the cure to the god. But the process of remembering a dream vision is no simple matter, let alone interpreting it in a sensible way. Mnemosyne’s presence was a way that ancient people thought they could ensure accurate recollection of a dream vision of Asklepios.

...

Mnemosyne also could have helped make logical sense of the nonsensical images remembered in dreams—sort of a second order of intellectual activity beyond that of remembering. Diodorus goes on to say, “Of the female Titans, they [the Cretans] say that Mnemosyne discovered the power of reason [λογισμούς],” a power that allows humans to account for phenomena and think through their various dimensions in a logical and orderly manner (5.67). Diodorus explains that Mnemosyne also “prescribed the determinations of names for each of the things that exist through which we also explain each and every thing and converse with one another” (5.67.3).24 So, it is not simply the internal intellectual powers of reason that were attributed to Mnemosyne, but also the power of human knowledge of the world through which humans could then interact intellectually and culturally. For without knowing the names of “everything that exists,” humans would not be able to communicate with each other in any meaningful way. Mnemosyne is credited with reason, human knowledge, and one of the basic tenets of human culture: meaningful verbal interaction.

...

As mother of the Muses, Mnemosyne drives what comes at the hand of the Muses. The following inscription captures well the relationship between the Muses and Mnemosyne in ancient Greek culture. It comes from a statue group of the Muses; the Muse Polymnia is speaking: “It is fitting that I, Polymnia, daughter of Mnemosyne, am the researcher of everything; for all history comes from memory.” 31 So, when the epic poets invoke the Muses, Mnemosyne must also be considered as the grounding for what results.

[[The author also notes that communicating the glory of the gods was a role of the Muses, and therefore is attributed to Mnemosyne.]]

...If the ritual effects of Mnemosyne’s presence in the Bacchic mysteries were to remember, order the mind, and stave off the possible madness that an encounter with a god might produce, ...

Conclusion:

She provided the ability for supplicants to remember the somnolent encounter with Asklepios; she could logically order the muddled memories of the dreamer; she could help articulate their thoughts clearly in order to act on it individually or by telling it to temple officials; and she could inspire the temple officials to create a narrative of the dream and construct a literary collection of the accounts that made famous the deeds of Asklepios. This whole process could be thought to be driven by the powers of Mnemosyne, and if this was the case, it is not surprising that she was present in the Asklepieian rituals at the sanctuaries. In addition, Mnemosyne could have made it possible for other humans not present at the Asklepieion to glorify Asklepios, which attests to the complexity of the religious system at play in the Asklepieion. This was not simply a mutual exchange between one god and one supplicant solely for the purpose of procuring a divine favor. Instead, the rituals and actions that took place in the Asklepieia were imbued with a variety of divine significances all working together to highlight the proper interaction between human and divine worlds. In this system, the gods cooperated with one another and with supplicants to enact meaningful and efficacious rituals that empowered humans to comport themselves in a sacred way by offering pleasing sacrifices, purifying themselves properly, processing, praying, singing, dreaming, remembering, articulating in narrative, inscribing, posting in the sanctuary, using the inscriptions as reminders of divine benefaction, retelling the stories, and so on. 57 Mnemosyne plausibly played a key role in this process, the removal of any part of which would have jeopardized the ebb and flow of proper divine-human relations at the Asklepieia.

sci-hub.se/10.1086/675272

Image of Mnemosyne at the Chapel of the Muses in San Francesco at Rimini. Her daughters are all depicted as well, but she is the only one who wears a veil.

sci-hub.se/10.2307/751273

She may have been more important in pre-literate Greece than later, for memory is a vital skill in oral literature vs written. sci-hub.se/10.2307/283194

The other articles I wanted to read, I could not get to open, sorry.

So my advice is to use her gifts in ways she would approve of.

You will, of course, need to contact her directly in order to discover what exactly that means. I have never communicated with her, so please take my ideas with a grain of salt.

Dream Recall: pray for the ability to remember significant parts of your dreams, and for the ability to interpret them. This may aid you in shadow work or other psychological pursuits, as dreams can be a gateway to the subconscious and your higher self. You can also pray to another deity to receive messages in your dreams to help you be a better person, or give you advantages in your life.

Employ Logic and Reason: Whether it is for school or for your own education, learn about critical thinking and employ those skills. When you read a piece of news, ask yourself these questions: “How does this fit into the context of what I already know? What are the historical influences? What are the future implications of this piece of news? Where could this lead? What is most likely to happen next?” Write down your thoughts. I would follow a blog that did this, that’s for sure.

Employ Logic and Reason by practicing Discernment: You may have already heard about discernment, but it is a vital skill for anybody on this type of spiritual path. You can even become more attuned to the spiritual forces at work around you, by practicing discernment, and more easily notice divine influence, thereby allowing you to thank them properly for their blessings.

Memorize things that are useful to you: Of course, a great thing to memorize would be prayers and poems to the gods. Depending on your line of work and social circle, there may be other topics that come up a lot that you would do well to memorize. When I worked with a lot of Muslims, I memorized certain things about Islam and terrorism so that when I encountered ignorant people, I could gently educate them and challenge some of their more unfortunate beliefs. (This happened more often than you’d think.) You can also memorize epithets and proper pronunciation of the names of the gods.

Learn how to tell a good story. When you capture people’s interest with the stories you tell, give quiet thanks to Mnemosyne and her daughters.

#hellenicpolytheism #hellenism #hellenismos #mnemosyne #mousai #muses #dodekatheism #titans #titanai

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norristownnews · 4 years

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What Is the Cheapest Way to Get Into the Legal Profession?

"What is the Cheapest way to get into law? " Entering the legal profession is without doubt one of the most expensive job options apart from becoming an airline pilot. It involves investing thousands of pounds in education that may or would possibly not lead to a position at the end of the road. Unfortunately there is no simple answer to which is the cheapest way to get in because there are actually all sorts of implications as to the different paths you choose to go down. The Legal Executive route is the cheapest option. Several people go down this particular route following on from an undergraduate degree, whether law or otherwise, or upright out of school. The Legal Executive route in terms of monetary cost is considerably cheaper than the Graduate Stage in Law/LLB degree and the Legal Practice Course (the solicitor route). We did a bit of research along with the current cost in 2013 to complete both parts of the Legal Executive training (Part 3 and A part 6) is about £6, 500 (course fees, exam fees etc .. ) The current cost of the Legal Exercise Course at the University of Law is £11, 000-£13, 000. If you combine the Graduate Diploma with Law (GDL) and the Legal Practice Court (LPC) the overall cost is about £18, 000-£20, 000. If you blend the Legal Practice Course with the cost of completing a law degree then the usual overall charge is around £25, 000 to £30, 000, which is gradually creeping up to around the £40, 000 mark since law schools start to capitalise on the willingness and ability of potential lawyers to pay. In the past people are generally down the vocational course route or alternatively the New York Attorney route, but these are options which were now in the past because, as we understand it, the Law Society still require you to complete the LPC and a exercising contract or training contract equivalent, which makes it senseless to plan to do either of these two in order to become a legal representative. So if you look at the different options, the cheapest one by far is the route through the Institute of Legal Executives and to become chartered legal executive before then either moving on to being a solicitor simply remaining a legal account manager. The various borders between all the different types of lawyer (legal executive, paralegal, solicitor and Barrister) are becoming distinctly unreadable. Solicitors can now do work that was exclusively reserved for barristers. Barristers can see clients directly. Legal middle management can gain the Rights of Audience that solicitors and barristers previously exclusively enjoyed. Legal Middle management can now become partners of law firms and so can barristers. Solicitors can practice as Advocates without truly needing to take instructions from clients themselves. However one thing remains very clear and that is that in the minds involving lawyers themselves there is still a hierarchy in terms of both fee income and status. At the bottom of the pack is a paralegal and this is very unlikely to change for a good few years yet simply because paralegals have no rights in any respect in terms of advocacy, and similarly cannot practice on their own without another type of lawyer being with them. Second in the bin are Legal Executives who are starting to enjoy more status in recent times but similarly hold lesser standing inside legal profession as a whole than solicitors and barristers. It is partly because of the old-fashioned view that most people who have end up legal executives are former secretaries trying to work their way up. this is still very much the case for a lot of and perfectly understandable as a very easy way in. After all, being a solicitor requires you to do quite a bit of instructional study at some point or other whereas becoming a legal executive is mostly something you can do on the job with a few times a week at night school or weekends at doing distance learning spread over a considerable length of time. Second from the prime are solicitors. Make no mistake, in the legal professional solicitors are definitely considered second rate by just about absolutely everyone including themselves, even when they are commercial lawyers earning considerable sums of money and more than the Barristers people instruct. Solicitors are seen more as wheeler-dealers and go-getters than actual lawyers, and the profession itself after a while has determined effectively that solicitors are the monkeys to barristers' organ grinders. At the top of the pile are definitely the barristers. The vast majority of barristers I suspect would class themselves as upper class. They are often very sharp, really intelligent, usually residing in exclusive villages or streets reserved for premier league footballers, doctors and older businessmen and with cars to match. Barristers see solicitors as a necessary evil as traditionally the solicitors get hold of clients for the barristers and the barristers did their best for them even though they usually have not met the client before the day of their first hearing and have absolutely no interest at all in their welfare or personal situation. Barristers are 100 % pure law at the end of the day and are not interested (quite understandably) in their clients' welfare or wellbeing. These are typically traditional views on the legal profession and the way it is structured. How you choose to interpret the above article can be a matter for yourself, but it is based on my own experiences in law, whether as a lay person undertaking cases average joe or as a qualified solicitor working with barristers and other solicitors. The reason I put this level of detail straight into this article is to show you that if you decide to go in the cheapest way into the legal profession there is always a catch, together with at the moment the catch is that your status for the remainder of your time in the profession will be diminished by the decision you cash in on now. Once a legal executive always a legal executive. The lawyers recruiting you at the moment are constantly "pure" solicitors. They will hold your status as a legal executive against you and probably for the the rest of your career. Your salary will often be affected as solicitors traditionally believe that legal executives are worth less of your budget than qualified solicitors. I would estimate that over the time of your career remaining you will lose around £5, 000 to £10, 000 per year at the very least through your decision to go down the Legal Executives route, at the least up until you have been in a solicitors job for 5 years min. Furthermore, certain doors will be closed to you from then start. If you qualify as a legal executive you very often have to qualify into a space where legal executives are used and practice. This invariably means debt recovery, some types of employment -- usually contentious, crime, family, conveyancing, wills and probate and sometimes commercial property. Whilst some of these may not be known to be too bad in the long term - commercial property and wills and probate are not too badly payed off at the moment - it does mean that the majority of commercial law for example is going to be outside your remit. It is very difficult to advance from one field to another once you have specialised in one particular area of law. So for example if you qualify as a suitable executive undertaking crime work and have 5 years' experience you cannot then use your legal executive condition (or indeed your solicitor status) to move across and practice in corporate finance. If you are an able scholar or graduate with excellent grades then you should almost always make an effort to go down the solicitor or barrister journey. Going down the solicitor route is not as expensive as people think it is. For example you do not need to pay the College associated with Law or BPP to do the Legal Practice Course or the Graduate Diploma in Law. There are actually far cheaper alternatives and regardless of what the more elite institutions tell you, the vast majority of law firms don't care two hoots where you do your LPC because most qualified lawyers view these courses as burning hoops to help you jump through in order to qualify than any sign of your ability. Employers are always interested in your basic degree. For the rest of your career. Forever! They are also interested in your A level grades. Forever! This plus your A- Level grades will determine whether you are a student or graduate with excellent academics. If you have straight A's at A Level or AAB or possibly ABB then you will be an excellent student to come into law. If you have some sort of 2: 1 Degree in anything other than pop music or country dancing (my first degree has been pop music), then you stand a very good chance of training and becoming a qualified solicitor. If you have less than this then this life as a lawyer will be considerably harder to start out with. The Legal profession do not view 2: some degrees as being something that entitles you to practice as a lawyer. It will go against you for the remainder of your position and there is no way round it. I suspect that if you are sat there reading this with a 2: a pair of degree you have been badly misinformed by anyone who has told you to go into the legal profession. It is not impossible - I have trained and coached many students and graduates who have 2: 2 degrees (sometimes even a 3rd) and they have gone onto enjoy rewarding careers as lawyers in some capacity. However , their road towards law has been considerably harder as a result of their inability to obtain a 2: 1 degree. So getting back to this statement that if you have excellent academics you should always consider becoming a solicitor so as not to damage your career in the long term just by going down the Legal Executive route. If you do not have excellent academics then you should always consider alternative options then one of these will be to go down the legal executive route. However I would not recommend paying to undertake a genuine executive course until you have legal work experience, you are able to use in the longer term to secure yourself a superb legal career. By this I mean that if you are a student or graduate you should definitely not go straight down to the Institute of Legal Executives and sign up for any legal executive course. If you are going down a nonconventional route into law then academic study once you have completed an undergraduate degree or your A-Levels is utterly immaterial. Experience is what matters and nothing else will do. Legal work experience is the key so that you can gaining a successful start into law. You cannot skip this, circumvent or navigate round it as a lot of people try every year. This is why academic institutions have been bought out by overseas companies looking to make a quick money. There are a lot of people out there undertaking postgraduate and undergraduate courses with no hope at all of ever finding a occupation in the profession they are going into. Furthermore, there are lots of people out there who have the academic qualifications but lack any succeed experience or activities or interests who similarly are very unlikely to ever get ahead in regulation or get through the easy way. No careers adviser will give you this advice, but the main thing to do to get into law may be to get experience, more experience and even more experience. This may cost money in itself, and you may say that I have your fees to pay and I have to live. This gets me to my point that if you want to invest in your job then spending money on academic qualifications is not the way to go. Getting experience is and this in itself will cost you money. To give you a simple example, as I write this a vacancy has come in from one of our central London law firms. They are buying fee earner to go and assist for a month or two with a load of admin work. They will pay properly for this, and it is a job probably most suited for an LPC graduate. I have one in mind. It is not an LPC masteral with a 2: 1 law degree or good A levels. It is not an LPC graduate with an LLM from a good university or some sort of summer school academic qualification. It is an LPC graduate with corresponding experience to that the firm are seeking. The firm will not give two hoots what the LPC scholar has in terms of additional qualifications but they will study the LPC graduate's work experience to date to decide with certainty if to take them on for this particular role. It is so important to understand this that when somebody says what is the cheaper way into law that there is no easy answer. You cannot just take a decision now that will affect the rest to your career simply on the basis that it may cost one or two thousand pounds more to go one way into the lawful profession rather than another. You will notice that so far I have not mentioned anything about barristers. This is because in my experience guidance to be a barrister is almost always a complete waste of your money and time. You would probably be shocked to hear the following and perhaps put it down to my natural bias against barristers having been a solicitor myself. I would grudgingly accept that probably I am a little biased against barristers having run around courts for them, I've taken care of some pretty awful ones over the years (as well as some absolutely fantastic ones) but the barristers' follicle of the profession is pretty much tied up and it is very important to understand this. The word nepotism could almost have been devised for this part of the profession. Let me give you an example. Back many years ago when I had just qualified as a solicitor our practice used a local chambers which had a very good reputation in the area and was probably the top number of barristers by a considerable distance. I cannot remember any of their barristers being unsuited or incompetent and a lot of being incredibly talented advocates. At some stage in my first year after training I remember that they advertised for two scholar barristers to join them. There were a considerable number of applications, as you would expect because this was a top quality set of chambers, superior reputation with quality work coming in, in an area where there are not many barristers' chambers. I do not have a clue how the recruitment process occurred but I do know that the two pupils selected were children of one of the person barristers in chambers and one of the more junior barristers. I am afraid that the barristers' profession can discuss diversity and equal opportunity to their hearts content but when recruitment like this occurs in a chambers of this size it is completely irrelevant. It is always going to be the case that if chambers at that level recruit their own personal then anyone else will either have to set up rival chambers or alternatively work for a lesser standard of chambers. It may be that the two children of the barristers already in practice were the best suited for the role, and Seen they went on to be absolutely outstanding barristers but the point is these two people gained their pupillages using chambers to which they were already affiliated through their parents. Without any sort or recruitment process that will eliminates this (and after all why should it - I would have done exactly the same myself as a barrister when my children wanted to practice as barristers! ) then this is not a strand of the profession to go directly into unless you have family or extremely good friends who are able to assist you in your search or pupillage. The vast majority of people who comprehensive the Bar Professional Training Course do not end up as barristers. They end up working as paralegals or non-qualified attorneys with a views to taking the Legal Practice Course at a future point in their career, costing much more money. This is a false economy because the cost of completing the Bar Professional Training Course and the Legal Put into practice Course is verging on the ridiculous for the returns that you will get at a later stage in your career. So summing up I recommend anyone coming into the profession to do one of two things. 1 . If you have excellent academics and the ability to increase legal work experience to your CV to bolster this then go and try and qualify as a lawyer. Do not go down any other route. 2 . If you do not have excellent academics do not go down the route of determining to be a solicitor. You can go and get work experience and prove me wrong (and I hope you do) but you would be better suited to a life as a legal executive with a view to cross-qualifying at a in the future stage by competing the Legal Practice Course or simply being happy doing what you are doing for a legal executive. Always think - why are you going into law? What do you want to get out of it? How much how about to earn in order to get what you want out of life?

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blogabdullahkhalid · 4 years

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Political Engagement

Political engagement can be in various forms which includes an individual voting, supporting their party or leader in monetary terms or even working for the campaign. According to PEW research center of United States, attending a campaign event is also measured as political engagement. That’s the definition of political engagement but the question that comes to mind is whether politics is just about governing people or is it more than that?

In order to understand this topic, we will focus on Pakistan and the political issues and engagement it is facing since the new Prime Minister Imran Khan was elected. When we talk about politics with today’s youth most of them don’t have enough knowledge of what’s going on as they are too busy with other activities or its too boring. Pakistan possesses one of the largest populations in the world and out of 180 million individuals, 59 percent is below age 24.

According to United Nations Development Program (UNDP), youth participation in politics is the backbone of one society. Since Imran Khan was elected as the new Prime Minister, there has been a significant increase of 46% in youth engagement in politics as this was his moto to engage and make the youth believe in the system once again. However, the youth today engages in politics in a totally different manner which is by utilizing social media at its peak by tweeting, uploading status on Facebook, going live via social media platforms and this is what is to be considered as a positive approach by the leaders or individuals with high power. A study conducted by Dean (2004) in Pakistan originate that Pakistanis as a nation have a few factors which makes them engage in politics which are sharing a common culture, being patriotic about their country due to the uprising issues with the neighboring countries and sharing a common religious identity.

One of the rising issues in the country is due to the amendment of Article 370 which confers special political status on Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcating the State into two Union Territories. The majority in Kashmir is Muslims however passing this law allows power to Hindus over Muslims which the youth refers as “holocaust”. Imran Khan at this stage gave a speech at the United Nations (UN) to wake up and fulfill their purpose and requested Donald Trump to engage with India as both countries are nuclear power, and this have a negative result on the rest of the world.

References:

Yusuf, M. (2011). Youth and the future, in Cohen, S. Pakistan’s future. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Dean, B. L. (2004). Pakistani conceptions of ‘citizenship’ and their implications for democratic citizenship education.

#political engagement #MDA20009 #week5

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i-chaoticcollectorballoon-m-blog · 5 years

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Dowry System in India

Dowry System In India

The endowment framework is a social malevolence predominant in India till date which each subject needs to battle against. Every one needs to take up this battle by making mindfulness in the family, networks and society on the loose. Steady and ready activities against individuals rehearsing this malicious will gradually help in disposing of this abhorrence completely.

Settlement framework is one of the social shades of malice that wins in the Indian Society.To destroy this shrewd endowment framework from India,it requires continued and solid endeavors the correct way.

Endowment framework in Indian Society: Origin, effect and cures

Among the social wrongs that win and torment Indian culture, the settlement framework assumes the most obliterating job. It has spread out its arms far and wide in the general public influencing pretty much every area of the general public.

Root of Dowry:

The arrangement of settlement had its source in the Vedic time frame which started just as a formal ritual in the organization of marriage.

At the end of the day amid Kanyadan type of marriage, the groom must be given something in real money or kind which comprise Varadakshina.Thus Kanyadan type of marriage moved toward becoming related with Varadakshina,i.e the money or blessings in kind to be paid by the guardians or gatekeeper of the lady of the hour to the spouse. Accordingly Dakshina or Varadakshina was offered out of friendship and did not establish any sort of impulse or commitment or thought for the marriage. It was a deliberate demonstration or practice followed in those days to consent to the stipulations urged in Dharmasasthra with no coercive hints.

Be that as it may, over the span of time, the deliberate component related with Varadakshina amid Kanyadan marriage has vanished and the coercive component has sneaked in. It has taken profound roots in the wedding service as well as stretched out to the post-conjugal relationship.

Along these lines what was initially expected as a token Dakshina for the spouse has now left extents and has accepted the cutting edge terminology ‘endowment’. Considering its implications and the effect it made in the general public, the share framework has developed into a ravenous beast, which is always paying special mind to hapless preys particularly from female sexual orientation.

The effect:

Resulting to the huge development of endowment framework, it has turned into an integral part of the foundation of marriage. As it were, without settlement no marriage is solemnized. In the position ridden Hindu society, the best three ranks and its sub stations constantly pursue the endowment framework. Indeed before settling a marriage or commitment, settlement is requested as a precondition. At the point when the interest for share isn’t acknowledged, a contradiction is come to and the proposition to be engaged gets thwarted even at the starter arrange. The identity of a lady or groom, their eagerness for the proposed marriage and so forth which are regularly considered as the fundamental requirements of a marriage take the backstage.

Another remarkable component of the settlement framework is that it is constantly connected with the status of the gatherings to the marriage. Specifically, in the orchestrated relational unions, the groom’s folks request a total in real money or in kind, as gems, material things like family unit articles, vehicle and house and so forth. The incongruity is such requests are made befitting the monetary status of the spouse’s family or the position held by the groom or the real sum that he gains as pay or in his business or calling. In the event that the concurred measure of money or kind isn’t paid before the marriage, it even prompts the end of the agreement of marriage and the marriage isn’t solemnized.

The arrangement of settlement has likewise turned into an essential wellspring of post-conjugal debate. At the point when the concurred measure of settlement isn’t paid or it is mostly paid and incompletely guaranteed, a few times the marriage is solemnized and even fulfilled. At the point when the lady of the hour’s family can’t satisfy the guarantee of endowment because of destitution, the hardship starts at the conjugal home, in which the whole relatives of the husband is hollowed against the lady of the hour. Going further, the lady, for no blame of her, is verbally manhandled in a vituperative dialect, struck or savagely beaten by her significant other, in outrageous cases the lady is choked to death or put to fire utilizing petroleum or lamp oil. The lady of the hour isn’t saved notwithstanding when she is pregnant or a mother of a child.

Powerless to satisfy the share requests of the conjugal home, the lady is for the most part determined back to her parent’s home. By one way or another or other, the ladies guardians ought to satisfy the requests for settlement, in order to guarantee a superior future for their girls at their conjugal homes. In the outcome, the lady of the hour’s folks turn out to be intensely obliged and suffer from neediness or battle to have their the two closures meet for a mind-blowing duration.

In the advanced days the Dowry Prohibition Act, explicitly makes the demonstration of requesting or taking just as giving share amid the marriage, a wrongdoing. Therefore, there is a long line of hapless ladies remaining before the ladies police headquarters just as the courts to lean toward a grumbling against the individuals from their conjugal home. At times, provocation for endowment results in passings of ladies prompting an extended trail against the individuals from the conjugal home.

In some cases, hapless men are being pestered by ladies abusing the arrangements of Dowry Prohibition Act, leaning toward false objections against their spouses. Thus, courts have started to consider such cases thoughtfully and even issued guidelines in like manner. In the event that a lady lean towards a grievance against her better half on the ground of badgering for share, the police specialists require not naturally capture him except if an at first sight case is made out on enquiry.

In this manner the settlement framework makes a bedlam in the general public, by advancing savagery and hardship among the individuals from the families and along these lines dismantling the families.

Cures against the share framework and its shrewd consequences for society:

As right on time as 1939, the shades of malice of the endowment framework were felt. Sporadic State enactments were not do to keep the generally common endowment framework. Ensuing to freedom, the Government of India started to establish enactments engaging ladies in India.

1) In the Hindu Succession Act, 1955, a lady was put on equivalent balance with men, qualifying them for have property rights. The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, attempts to get rid of the arrangement of endowment by announcing that both taking and giving settlement as a wrongdoing. It stipulated disciplines as long as 2 years for endowment badgering and as long as 10 years of thorough detainment for passings brought about by settlement provocation. Absolutely, these institutions go about as an obstruction against the arrangement of share. Nonetheless, all things considered still the arrangement of endowment wins and the guilty parties go without scot since no body approaches to favor a grievance against them.

2) It requires concrete and continued endeavors to crusade against the arrangement of endowment and kill it unequivocally from the general public:

I) It should start from the schools and universities in which the understudy network ought to be legitimately instructed against the disasters of endowment framework and they ought to try and take a promise that they won’t plus or minus settlement from their imminent life partners.

ii) Promoting love relational unions from one perspective annuls the rank framework and then again it discards the share framework into the residue canister.

iii) Spreading the message against the share framework by directing periodical lawful guide camps and offering advising to the exploited people just as the overall population will spread the mindfulness among them against the settlement framework.

iv)Creating progressively stringent arrangements in the endowment forbiddance act like granting a higher discipline to the individuals who take or give or even interest share. Forcing disciplines like detainment to the individuals who cause the demise of the injured individual by settlement provocation is a method for giving stringent discipline.

v) The main driver for the presence and continuation of the settlement framework is that guardians of the lady of the hour regardless of being poor consent to the preposterous requests for share made by the guardians of the spouse. Thusly, they should make it an approach that they will never concur or make any bargain on the issue of giving or taking settlement, to what extent their little girl may stay unmarried.

It expects promise to annihilate the arrangement of settlement. Maybe an entire age may need to endure to dispose of this underhanded framework. Rather than experiencing share provocation or losing your valuable lives, it is smarter to stay unmarried for a typical reason and to assist the family.

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remedylegal-blog · 5 years

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What Is the Cheapest Way to Get Into the Legal Profession?

"What is the Cheapest way to get into law?"

Entering the legal profession is without doubt one of the most expensive career options apart from becoming an airline pilot. It involves investing thousands of pounds in education that may or may not lead to a position at the end of the road.

Unfortunately there is no simple answer to which is the cheapest way to get in because there are all sorts of implications as to the different paths you choose to go down.

The Legal Executive route is the cheapest option. Quite a few people go down this particular route following on from an undergraduate degree, whether law or otherwise, or straight out of school. The Legal Executive route in terms of monetary cost is considerably cheaper than the Graduate Diploma in Law/LLB degree and the Legal Practice Course (the solicitor route).

We did a bit of research and the current cost in 2013 to complete both parts of the Legal Executive training (Part 3 and Part 6) is about £6,500 (course fees, exam fees etc..) The current cost of the Legal Practice Course at the University of Law is £11,000-£13,000. If you combine the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and the Legal Practice Court (LPC) the overall cost is about £18,000-£20,000.

If you combine the Legal Practice Course with the cost of completing a law degree then the usual overall price is around £25,000 to £30,000, which is gradually creeping up to around the £40,000 mark as law schools start to capitalise on the willingness and ability of potential lawyers to pay.

In the past people have been down the vocational course route or alternatively the New York Attorney route, but these are options that are now in the past because, as we understand it, the Law Society still require you to complete the LPC and a training contract or training contract equivalent, which makes it senseless to plan to do either of these two in order to become a lawyer.

So if you look at the different options, the cheapest one by far is the route through the Institute of Legal Executives and becoming a chartered legal executive before then either moving on to being a solicitor simply remaining a legal executive.

The various borders between all the different types of lawyer (legal executive, paralegal, solicitor and Barrister) are becoming distinctly blurred. Solicitors can now do work that was exclusively reserved for barristers. Barristers can see clients directly. Legal executives can gain the Rights of Audience that solicitors and barristers previously exclusively enjoyed. Legal Executives can now become partners of law firms and so can barristers. Solicitors can practice as Advocates without ever needing to take instructions from clients themselves.

However one thing remains very clear and that is that in the minds of lawyers themselves there is still a hierarchy in terms of both fee income and status.

At the bottom of the pile is a paralegal and this is very unlikely to change for a good few years yet simply because paralegals have no rights at all in terms of advocacy, and similarly cannot practice on their own without another type of lawyer being with them.

Second in the pile are Legal Executives who are starting to enjoy more status in recent times but similarly hold lesser standing in the legal profession as a whole than solicitors and barristers. It is partly because of the old-fashioned view that most people who have become legal executives are former secretaries trying to work their way up. this is still very much the case for some people and perfectly understandable as a very easy way in.

After all, being a solicitor requires you to do quite a bit of academic study at some point or other whereas becoming a legal executive is mostly something you can do on the job with a few evenings a week at night school or weekends at doing distance learning spread over a considerable length of time.

Second from the top are solicitors. Make no mistake, in the legal professional solicitors are definitely considered second rate by just about everyone including themselves, even when they are commercial lawyers earning considerable sums of money and more than the Barristers they instruct. Solicitors are seen more as wheeler-dealers and go-getters than actual lawyers, and the profession itself over time has determined effectively that solicitors are the monkeys to barristers' organ grinders.

At the top of the pile are the barristers. The vast majority of barristers I suspect would class themselves as upper class. They are often very sharp, extremely intelligent, usually residing in exclusive villages or streets reserved for premier league footballers, doctors and senior businessmen and with cars to match.

Barristers see solicitors as a necessary evil as traditionally the solicitors obtain clients for the barristers and the barristers did their best for them even though they usually have not met the client before the date of their first hearing and have absolutely no interest at all in their welfare or personal situation.

Barristers are pure law at the end of the day and are not interested (quite understandably) in their clients' welfare or wellbeing.

These are traditional views on the legal profession and the way it is structured. How you choose to interpret the above article is a matter for yourself, but it is based on my own experiences in law, whether as a lay person undertaking cases myself or as a qualified solicitor working with barristers and other solicitors.

The reason I put this level of detail into this article is to show you that if you decide to go in the cheapest way into the legal profession there is always a catch, and at the moment the catch is that your status for the remainder of your time in the profession will be diminished by the decision you have made now.

Once a legal executive always a legal executive. The lawyers recruiting you at the moment are usually "pure" solicitors. They will hold your status as a legal executive against you and probably for the remainder of your career. Your salary will often be affected as solicitors traditionally believe that legal executives are worth less money than qualified solicitors. I would estimate that over the time of your career remaining you will lose around £5,000 to £10,000 per year at the very least through your decision to go down the Legal Executives route, at least up until you have been in a solicitors job for 5 years min.

Furthermore, certain doors will be shut to you from then start. If you qualify as a legal executive you very often have to qualify into an area where legal executives are used and practice. This invariably means debt recovery, some types of employment - usually contentious, crime, family, conveyancing, wills and probate and sometimes commercial property. Whilst some of these are not known to be too bad in the long term - commercial property and wills and probate are not too badly paid at the moment - it does mean that the majority of commercial law for example is going to be outside your remit.

It is very difficult to move from one field to another once you have specialised in one particular area of law. So for example if you qualify as a legal executive undertaking crime work and have 5 years' experience you cannot then use your legal executive status (or indeed your solicitor status) to move across and practice in corporate finance.

If you are an able student or graduate with excellent grades then you should almost always make an effort to go down the solicitor or barrister route. Going down the solicitor route is not as expensive as people think it is.

For example you do not need to pay the College of Law or BPP to do the Legal Practice Course or the Graduate Diploma in Law. There are far cheaper alternatives and regardless of what the more elite institutions tell you, the vast majority of law firms don't care two hoots where you do your LPC because most qualified lawyers view these courses as burning hoops to jump through in order to qualify than any sign of your ability.

Employers are always interested in your undergraduate degree. For the rest of your career. Forever!

They are also interested in your A level grades. Forever!

This plus your A- Level grades will determine whether you are a student or graduate with excellent academics. If you have straight A's at A Level or AAB or possibly ABB then you will be an excellent student to come into law.

If you have a 2:1 Degree in anything other than pop music or country dancing (my first degree was pop music), then you stand a very good chance of training and becoming a qualified solicitor.

If you have less than this then your life as a lawyer will be considerably harder to start out with. The Legal profession do not view 2:2 degrees as being something that entitles you to practice as a lawyer. It will go against you for the remainder of your career and there is no way round it. I suspect that if you are sat there reading this with a 2:2 degree you have been badly misinformed by anyone who has told you to go into the legal profession. It is not impossible - I have trained and coached many students and graduates who have 2:2 degrees (sometimes even a 3rd) and they have gone onto enjoy rewarding careers as lawyers in some capacity. However, their road into law has been considerably harder as a result of their inability to obtain a 2:1 degree.

So getting back to my statement that if you have excellent academics you should always consider becoming a solicitor so as not to damage your career in the long term by going down the Legal Executive route.

If you do not have excellent academics then you should always consider alternative options and one of these will be to go down the legal executive route.

However I would not recommend paying to undertake a legal executive course until you have legal work experience, you are able to use in the longer term to secure yourself a good legal career.

By this I mean that if you are a student or graduate you should definitely not go straight along to the Institute of Legal Executives and sign up for any legal executive course. If you are going down a non-conventional route into law then academic study once you have completed an undergraduate degree or your A-Levels is completely immaterial. Experience is what matters and nothing else will do. Legal work experience is the key to gaining a successful start into law.

You cannot skip this, circumvent or navigate round it as so many people try every year.

This is why academic institutions have been bought out by overseas companies looking to make a quick buck.

There are a lot of people out there undertaking postgraduate and undergraduate courses with no hope at all of ever finding a job in the profession they are going into.

Furthermore, there are lots of people out there who have the academic qualifications but lack any work experience or activities or interests who similarly are very unlikely to ever get ahead in law or get through the easy way.

No careers adviser will give you this advice, but the main thing to do to get into law is to get experience, more experience and even more experience. This may cost money in itself, and you may say that I have my fees to pay and I have to live. This gets me to my point that if you want to invest in your career then spending money on academic qualifications is not the way to go. Getting experience is and this in itself will cost you money.

To give you a quick example, as I write this a vacancy has come in from one of our central London law firms. They are looking for a fee earner to go and assist for a month or two with a load of admin work. They will pay well for this, and it is a job probably most suited for an LPC graduate.

I have one in mind.

It is not an LPC graduate with a 2:1 law degree or good A levels. It is not an LPC graduate with an LLM from a good university or some sort of summer school academic qualification. It is an LPC graduate with similar experience to that the firm are seeking.

The firm will not give two hoots what the LPC graduate has in terms of additional qualifications but they will study the LPC graduate's work experience to date to decide whether or not to take them on for this particular role.

It is so important to understand this that when somebody says what is the cheapest way into law that there is no easy answer. You cannot just take a decision now that will affect the rest of your career simply on the basis that it may cost one or two thousand pounds more to go one way into the legal profession rather than another.

You will notice that so far I have not mentioned anything about barristers. This is because in my experience training to be a barrister is almost always a complete waste of your money and time. You would probably be shocked to hear this and perhaps put it down to my natural bias against barristers having been a solicitor myself. I would grudgingly accept that probably I am a little biased against barristers having run around courts for them, I've dealt with some pretty awful ones over the years (as well as some absolutely fantastic ones) but the barristers' strand of the profession is pretty much tied up and it is very important to understand this.

The word nepotism could almost have been invented for this part of the profession. Let me give you an example.

Back many years ago when I had just qualified as a solicitor our practice used a local chambers which had a very good reputation in the area and was probably the top set of barristers by a considerable distance. I cannot remember any of their barristers being unsuited or incompetent and most being incredibly talented advocates.

At some stage in my first year after training I remember that they advertised for two pupil barristers to join them. There were a considerable number of applications, as you would expect because this was a top quality set of chambers, outstanding reputation with quality work coming in, in an area where there are not many barristers' chambers.

I do not know how the recruitment process occurred but I do know that the two pupils selected were children of one of the senior barristers in chambers and one of the more junior barristers. I am afraid that the barristers' profession can talk about diversity and equal opportunity to their hearts content but when recruitment like this occurs in a chambers of that size it is completely irrelevant.

It is always going to be the case that if chambers at that level recruit their own then anyone else will either have to set up rival chambers or alternatively work for a lesser standard of chambers.

It may be that the two children of the barristers already in practice were the best suited for the role, and I am sure they went on to be absolutely outstanding barristers but the point is these two people gained their pupillages with chambers to which they were already affiliated through their parents.

Without any sort or recruitment process that eliminates this (and after all why should it - I would have done exactly the same myself as a barrister if my children wanted to practice as barristers!) then this is not a strand of the profession to go into unless you have family or extremely good friends who are able to assist you in your search or pupillage.

The vast majority of people who complete the Bar Professional Training Course do not end up as barristers. They end up working as paralegals or non-qualified lawyers with a views to taking the Legal Practice Course at a future point in their career, costing even more money.

This is a false economy because the cost of completing the Bar Professional Training Course and the visit here Practice Course is verging on the ridiculous for the returns that you will get at a later stage in your career.

So in summary I recommend anyone coming into the profession to do one of two things.

1. If you have excellent academics and the ability to add legal work experience to your CV to bolster this then go and try and qualify as a solicitor. Do not go down any other route.

2. If you do not have excellent academics do not go down the route of qualifying to be a solicitor. You can go and get work experience and prove me wrong (and I hope you do) but you would be better suited to a life as a legal executive with a view to cross-qualifying at a later stage by competing the Legal Practice Course or simply being happy doing what you are doing as a legal executive.

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debtreview · 3 years

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Know the Three Important Facts about Debt Review

The modern-day consumers tend to invest in debt review without realizing the full consequences of doing so. Also known as debt counseling, the procedure is certainly beneficial, but it can very well turn to a noose around the neck if one ends up with a bad company or provider. Even if you appoint the best in your locality, debt review is legally binding and has a couple of implications.

1. You Must Look Out for Consent Orders

The experts providing the best debt review in South Africa said they at times send proposals to the NCT (National Consumer Tribunal) so they can be delivered as consent orders.

The Act claims that if a debt reviewer finds you are not indebted too much but are suffering from or may suffer from monetary problems down the road, it may suggest you to come up with an arrangement with your collectors. The NCT will confirm the arrangement as a consent order without any evidence.

But in case you do not have the consent of all your creditors, your case will be referred to the Magistrate. Remember, this only applies to the consumers whose debt is still more or less under control.

Several modern-day individuals had applied for the annulment of the consent orders by the NCT because even when a counselor thought they were not over-indebted, they actually were.

2. You Would Need Court Order

If the debt counselor do find out that you are excessively indebted and that send out a proposal to the creditors for the re-arrangement of the debts, you will receive a court order. This is because only judicial insight can confirm your situation.

A debt reviewer or counselor has a statutory obligation to refer or recommend your case to the magistrate court. The magistrate’s responsibility is to closely analyze the proposals made and not merely passing them. They would take a wide range of factors, including your income, into account before arriving at a decision.

Court orders confirm that the installments are alleviated, and the repayment terms are lengthened. This protects both you and your creditors, ensuring transparency in what you owe, how it must paid back, and where the review ends.

3. You Cannot Just Exit

According to the experts providing the best debt review in South Africa, one cannot slip in and out of the procedure when they want. The NCA just does not allow it. There are only two ways - pay off the obligations in full or pay the short-term debts, catch on any sum unpaid on the home loans, and come back to original installments.

Only after that, a debt counselor can offer a clearance certificate and formally release you. Once the certificate is issued, the credit bureaus will wipe your status clean!

Now that you know what you can expect from debt review make sure to look for a proficient, experienced, and credible professional. Prior to scheduling an appointment, please do chalk down all the financial goals you wish to accomplish and the financial problems you are currently experiencing. Do not rush. This is an important decision - take as much time as possible.

#best debt review in South Africa

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theattainer · 3 years

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The Most Amazing Books People Found in a Dumpster

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https://theattainer.com/the-most-amazing-books-people-found-in-a-dumpster/

The Most Amazing Books People Found in a Dumpster

I spent a long time thinking about whether I really wanted to write this post. A very common misconception about old books is that you can divide them up into two categories: 1) rare and valuable books, and 2) everything else. The first category needs to be given special attention, preserved, and protected; the second category is literally trash. You often encounter this dichotomy in online discussions of old books, and even many of the professionals embrace it uncritically. To give an example, there is an apparently popular TV show about searching for antiques at yard sales, which regularly regales its viewers with a quiz titled “Dumpster or No Dumpster;” the implication being, of course, that if a certain item isn’t fit for Sotheby’s, it can safely be thrown away.

I worried that by focusing on a select few items that somebody had trashed and that turned out to be valuable, I would just be feeding this misconception. If everyone is aware that a tiny percentage of old books can be very valuable, this might get people to research their books more carefully before trashing them. However, once the appraisers predictably discover that 99% of their books have little value, they will nonetheless proceed to throw these books out. While better than nothing, this is not exactly a huge improvement of the status quo.

Pictured: The 99%.

If my readers forgive me for stating the moral of this post in advance, I would like the post to instead help inculcate a deep agnosticism with respect to second-hand books. Yes, some items are obviously very valuable, but even for most books that seem unimpressive at first glance, there is a collector somewhere who is searching for this exact copy. Even when the book itself is common, the signature, library stamp, marginalia, or merely the level of preservation can make it very rare or unique, and even if nobody is interested in it now, somebody might covet this exact copy 50 years from now. Hence, please be nice, help preserve old books even if AbeBooks says they aren’t worth much, and don’t be the person whom future collectors will curse. Well, now that I’ve stated it, without further ado:

1. Tartars in the Library

To get an overview of the insane stuff that can be found among the trash in rich countries, there is probably no better resource than Garbage Finds. This Montreal-based blogger earns a living from the stuff he finds in his city’s trash cans, with the most interesting pieces being posted online. From the dumpsters, he regularly hauls jewellery, gold and silver items, antiques, valuable art, as well as bags of (still valid) coins and rolls of (still valid) banknotes. There doesn’t seem to be a single item out there that would be too valuable for people to throw into the garbage. And while one could use this as an excuse to sneer at Canadians, there is no particular reason to expect Americans, Germans or Japanese to behave much differently.

Our blogger regularly finds books as well, though only the most impressive items make it into his posts. Perhaps the record-holder here is a book he casually mentions in one of the posts, tucked between a spate of other antiques he found in a single dumpster, among them pre-Columbian pottery and a number of 19th century photographs and art. The author of the post is no book expert, so he guessed that the volume might be from the late 19th century as well, but his commentariat quickly set him straight and explained that the year 1610, printed on the last page, is very likely genuine.

It’s hard to be certain based on the pictures that were included into the post, but it seems that the leather-bound volume found in a Montreal dumpster includes at least two separate works which were bound together not long after being printed. The first is a historical work printed in 1610 and dedicated to the elector John George I of Saxony. Since the title page is missing, so is the title, but the last page says that the book was printed in Leipzig by the printer Henning Grosse Jr.

The second book was printed at the same location in 1611, and this time the title page is present. The book is a German adaptation of the travels of Marco Polo, or Chorographia Tartariae, as the book’s Latin name is spelled. At least one map is present, depicting the island of Rhodes, which definitely increases the value of the book. Of special interest to me, however, is the dedication immediately after the title page. Even though the work was printed in Saxony, it is dedicated to Hans Jakob Khisl and Karl Khisl, two members of a Carniolan noble family that was of paramount importance for Slovenian history.

Left: title page of Chorographia Tartariae. Right: coat of arms of the Khisl family and the dedication to Hans Jakob and Karl Khisl.

The Khisls gave their name to Khislstein castle in the centre of Kranj, and they played a major part in the Reformation movement in Slovenia, during which time we got our first printed books. Of interest to book history, they also opened the first Slovenian paper mill at Fužine near Ljubljana in 1579. Next to the former mill, there still stands a castle which used to belong to the Khisls and now houses the Museum of Architecture and Design. I regularly pass by the castle on my strolls down the Ljubljanica River. Fortunately, the castle is too big to fit into a dumpster.

The entrance to Fužine castle. Above the portal is the Khisls’ coat of arms.

The reason why the book was dedicated to the Khisls is that the translator got to know them well during his career. Hieronymus Megiser was born in Swabia and studied at Tübingen, but he spent a big part of his life in Carniola and Carinthia, where he became well acquainted with the Slovenian language. He put this knowledge to good use and brought out the first Slovenian dictionary of all time – more precisely, a huge German-Latin-Slovenian-Italian dictionary – in 1592. Apart from Slavic cultures, he was also interested in lands further east, which led him to compile the first ever Turkish grammar in German. It’s thus no surprise that he was also the first person to translate Marco Polo into German – in the 1611 volume that ultimately ended up in a dumpster.

Megiser look as angry as you’d expect from someone whose books are getting trashed.

In the end, our blogger sold the book to a friend-of-the-blog for 30 dollars, which is a very modest sum even considering the missing pages. However, the whole point of my writing is that when looking at old books, one shouldn’t focus on their monetary worth. Hence, if the book arrived into good hands, then the founder of Garbage Finds did the right thing. I checked online and there doesn’t seem to be a copy of this edition of Marco Polo in any Slovenian library, despite the Megiser-Khisl connection. I know that our National Library looks out for interesting Slovenian books being offered by foreign booksellers, and occasionally buys them for its collection. Maybe it would be a better idea to establish relations with foreign dumpster divers and buy interesting books from them. A lot more could be acquired that way, and for much less money, too.

This particular example bothers me even more than all the others below, and the reason isn’t just the book’s historical importance or its Slovenian connection. I guess the main reason is that (ironically?) I’m kind of thinking like a librarian. Preserving old books isn’t a passive process that just happens, you need to actively make it happen by safeguarding the books from damp and insects and dirt and little children, year after year after year… When you look at a book that’s 400 years old, what you’re looking at is the effort of over a dozen generations to preserve the book against an onslaught of calamities that could easily turn a volume into dust in a matter of days. That alone should give every booklover pause when handling a truly old item. But at the end of all these centuries, some idiot had to come along and chuck the book into the trash. If you’re reading this, f**k you.

2. 1812 All Over Again

There are two factors which make the following story unique: 1) the absurd importance of the salvaged books and 2) the fact that one of the first places where it was announced was Reddit. Just like electronic media have slowly supplanted printed ones as the primary means of record-keeping of our age, they are in turn being replaced by social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit. Perhaps 22ndcentury historians will have special citation styles for Tweets and Facebook posts, just like we now have special styles for journal articles and conference abstracts.

Back to the story. It doesn’t say whether Max Brown often dumpster-dives for antiques, but at least on one occasion in 2014, he was distracted by a bunch of old cassettes lying inside a dumpster near his California home. Thank God for those cassettes – under them turned out to lie a bunch of old books. Brown pulled out a handful of these, but then, according to the story, it started to rain, so he packed up what he could – 15 books altogether – and headed home.

Once he was home, he took a better look at these books and found out that they were in fact really old, dating to the 18th century and even earlier. What especially caught his attention, though, was an inscription in one of the books, “From the Library of Thomas Jefferson.” I don’t know what went through his head at that moment, but my guess is that it was a feeling not unlike drunkenness. Each collector dreams of such moments, and Brown, if not perhaps a collector, found his.

Left: the inscription on the book’s inner flyleaf. Right: title page of the book in question, On Wisdomby Pierre Charron.

He contacted antiquarian booksellers, who at first told him that the inscriptions connecting the books to Jefferson were not authentic. Not entirely convinced, Brown did some additional research of his own, tracing down the owners of Jefferson’s books after the death of their famous owner. Jefferson, an inveterate collector of books from an early age, had offered his library to the US Congress after the original Library of Congress was burned down during the War of 1812. After some wrangling and debate, Jefferson’s offer was accepted. However, after the transaction was finalized and the books were transferred in 1815, Jefferson’s collecting did not grind to a halt, so he continued to acquire new books for himself until his death in 1826.

This second library of Thomas Jefferson was dispersed after his death. Brown checked out the 19th century sales catalogues of Jefferson’s books and found the same titles that he had recovered from the dumpster. He sought a second opinion about the books’ provenance, and this time, he was told that the inscriptions were genuine. In the meantime, however, Brown had been strapped for cash, so he sold most of the books for 8,000 dollars; not a small sum, but probably only a fraction of what the books would have fetched at a major auction.

Jefferson as a pensioner in 1821. He probably never had more time to read in his life – the biggest distraction were all the tourists who had already started flocking to his Monticello home.

The story, as Brown and the journalists who interviewed him eventually pieced it together, is as follows: one part of Jefferson’s library ended up in the possession of the Kellogg family soon after Jefferson’s death. The ownership of these books can then ultimately be traced down to a descendant of the family by the name of Violet Cherry, who died in 1976. After that, the trail officially goes cold, but it seems that Brown also figured out who the subsequent owners were. Unfortunately, he isn’t sharing names. All he divulges is that they are themselves descendants of Ms Cherry, that they threw the books away during a remodelling in 2014, and that, extremely ironically, they are historians by profession. I hope he changes his mind and makes their names public one day. The very least these people deserve is a proper public shaming.

As the story is presented online, it still leaves a few unanswered questions. How is it possible to have such a priceless book collection at home and not know it? If I had Thomas Jefferson’s books in my collection, there’s no way my kids, or anyone else I know for that matter, would be able to not be aware of this. The descendants of Ms Cherry might have hated books, but it’s really hard to imagine that someone would prefer to throw these books away than to exchange them for a Mercedes.

Also, how many books did Brown leave behind him in the dumpster? It’s possible that the other books inside were not from Jefferson’s library (he also salvaged some old photograph albums of the Kelloggs), but it’s also possible that the story is ultimately a very tragic one. I can’t really understand how one could find such beautiful books and then be put off from rescuing them by the rain (even if one didn’t yet know whom exactly these 18th century volumes belonged to), but let’s give Brown a break here. I’m sure he has had enough moments of remorse as it is, and the next time he comes across a pile of discarded old books, he’ll know what to do.

Perhaps the saddest part is that the story was only reported by a handful of regional media. If these same books were stolen from a library or an auction house, I’m sure that the story would hit the headlines the next morning, and scores of policemen would be assigned to the case. When reporting about major book thefts, journalists often stress that the perpetrators had assaulted our common cultural heritage, and should consequently be given be given exemplary, harsh punishments. But when books of equal value are literally destroyed, nothing happens. Whoever threw these into the trash does not need to fear any sanctions.

3. What does Montaigne know?

Most stories about amazing garbage finds never become public, so the only way to come across them is by word of mouth. I can only guess at what the most valuable thing is that anyone ever found in the trash. We know about this present story only because the finder told it to his friend, a blogger, who in turn wrote a post about it, titled “What Can Be Found in the New York Trash.”

Both the blogger and his friend are Russians living in New York. One day, the friend was going from his house to the store and passed by a large open dumpster which was evidently filled with the contents of someone’s apartment, covered with a layer of snow. There was plenty of furniture and clothes, but also a lot of books, many of them quite old. The passer-by filled a box with books and other items that grabbed his attention, and once he was home, he had a better look at them.

One of the books was an edition of Montaigne’s Essays, printed in 1957 and illustrated by the “great American artist” Salvador Dali. What’s more, the book was a bibliophile edition, produced in 1000 numbered copies that were signed by the illustrator. Even though the outside of the book was scratched, presumably a consequence of having lain in the dumpster, the inside seemed to be very well preserved. When copies of the same edition reach the market, they tend to sell for 1000-2000 dollars, though this one might fetch a bit less due to its imperfect condition.

The inside of Dali’s ilustrated version of Montaigne’s Essays.

Our blogger heard about the amazing find from his friend that same day, and rushed to the dumpster to see for himself what lay inside. He took a number of photos, in which we can see the gigantic dumpster in question, about as long as two of the cars parked next to it. The blogger also took plenty of photos of the finds that he himself brought home, which included paintings, vintage clothes, different paper ephemera, as well as a number of books. He didn’t find anything as valuable as Montaigne’s Essays, but he did salvage several well-preserved turn-of-the-century children’s books. It’s unlikely that our blogger, or anyone else for that matter, managed to get to the bottom of the dumpster and inspect all of its contents. Hence, it’s hard to say whether Dali’s book was indeed the most valuable object to have lain inside.

The dumpster from which Dali’s Montaigne was rescued.

For the first two stories I presented above, we don’t know what the dumpsters in question looked like, or how many people passed by them. In this case, however, we can see clearly from the photos that the dumpster was located at the side of a main street, that plenty of cars and people passed by, and that any pedestrian could see that the container was filled with books. Judging by the layer of snow on top of the books, it also seems that they were left standing inside for quite some time. If a few random people throw valuable books into the trash, this can be shrugged off as an aberration, but when hundreds of passers-by do nothing about it, then that is worrisome. If it weren’t for two Russian immigrants, nothing would remain of the cultural heritage packed within this NY dumpster.

4. Accio Rare Book!

The previous three stories suggest that if a book is old(ish), it might also be valuable. This is not a necessary condition, though, and dumpsters can also yield valuable books of a more recent date. In this last story, a book that would at first glance appear to be the most common item in the world turned out to be as rare and as precious as very few other bibliophile gems. The story also illustrates that it’s not just dumpsters in front of mansions that one should be attentive to.

The book in question is a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which came out in 1997 in a tiny print run of 500 copies, around 300 of which were bought up by libraries. Given what a success Harry Potter became afterwards, this is probably the most sought-after modern first edition of all, with even tattered library copies fetching significant sums. It’s great that libraries support fledgling young authors by buying up their books, but it would be even better if these books weren’t ultimately trashed.

This one was thrown out, along with a few other (less rare) Harry Potter first editions, by a school in Buckinghamshire, which unfortunately remains unnamed, in 2008. The occasion for the trashing was an incoming visit by Ofsted, the school-inspection body of the UK Department of Education. Apparently, the school wanted its library to look pristine for the inspection, and plenty of other items had found themselves in the dumpster. If Ofsted has a policy that libraries aren’t allowed to carry rare and valuable books, then I hope the inspectors never find their way to Oxbridge colleges…

The battered first edition of Harry Potter recovered from the trash (center), along with two other early Harry Potter editions.

The Harry Potter books were taken by a then-teacher at the school, who apparently had to fish them out of the dumpster. Sometimes libraries will at least offer these sort of discarded books to employees before trashing them, but apparently this institution has an uncompromising policy of destruction. As it happens, the teacher brought all of these books home, but at first didn’t consider that they might have any particular value – she simply wanted to have them around for her children and grandchildren to read.

About eight years later, her son noticed that the books, especially the first edition of Philosopher’s Stone, might indeed be valuable. He offered them around to antiquarian sellers, who offered to buy the books on the spot for several thousand pounds, but he figured that the books’ real value might indeed be much higher, and resisted the temptation. Finally, he contacted the Hansons’ Auctioneers auction house, where Philosopher’s Stone went up for auction in 2020 and reached the sum of £33,000, despite being an ex-library copy with significant damage to the spine.

The saddest part of this particular story is probably that when the unnamed teacher was interviewed about her finds, she sounded almost apologetic for having rescued the books from the trash. She explained to the journalist that “it just seemed awful to throw them away” and that taking them home for her grandchildren was “better than seeing them go to waste.” Perhaps the biggest problem, when it comes to books in the trash, is that people are so squeamish about dumpster diving. Even the few who salvage books from trash bags often later feel the need to ask forgiveness for their good deeds.

***

When Rebecca Rego Barry wrote her Rare Books Uncovered: True Stories of Fantastic Finds in Unlikely Places, she included 52 stories into the volume, gathered from fellow collectors and book dealers whom she had gotten to know over the years. Of all these stories, however, only one involves a book that was literally found in the trash. Even then, the book in question, a rare 1920s driving manual for New Yorkers, is not quite as “fantastic” as many of the other highlighted finds.

I was rather surprised by this omission, and I would like to use the opportunity here to publicly invite Ms Barry to focus a future volume entirely on books found and rescued from the trash. I’m certain that there are many stories similar to the four above that haven’t yet been published anywhere, in print or online. Admittedly, most antiquarian dealers are probably too haughty to sift through the trash themselves, but I’m sure each of them has now and then acquired a rare book that, according to the seller, had come from a dumpster. If such a collection of stories helped motivate some of its readers to take up dumpster diving, then that would be the biggest service to book collecting I can think of.

At the end of all this, the reader might ask whether I also have any similar stories of dumpster finds of my own. I definitely do, and at least one of them can compete with the four I have selected for the present post. However, I’ll probably use these stories for blog posts of their own – and I can’t post everything at once. Stay tuned!

Sources:

Что можно найти в нью-йоркской мусорке. January 24, 2014. Accessible at: https://samsebeskazal.livejournal.com/292125.html

Armitage, Stefan. Teacher sells first edition ‘Harry Potter’ book for $40,000 after finding it in school’s trash. May 21, 2020. Accessible at: https://vt.co/lifestyle/teacher-sells-first-edition-harry-potter-book-for-40000-after-finding-it-in-schools-trash

Cutler-Tietjen, Jordan. He found 15 books in a Sierra dumpster. Then he found out they belonged to Thomas Jefferson. July 29, 2018. Accessible at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article214992280.html

Rego Barry, Rebecca. Rare Books Uncovered: True Stories of Fantastic Finds in Unlikely Places. Beverly: Voyageur Press, 2015.

So I found these books in the dumpster while taking out the trash…August 27, 2018. Accessible at: https://www.reddit.com/r/BookCollecting/comments/9ar8vf/so_i_found_these_books_in_the_dumpster_while/

The enigmatic dumpster. February 11, 2015. Accessible at: https://garbagefinds.com/2015/02/11/the-enigmatic-dumpster/

What do you think?

#All #Books

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