#(an idea i find to be both self-evident and demonstrably true if not necessarily in the originally intended sense)

[fidius]

You know how sometimes the stupidest shit will be happening and you'll suddenly understand something people have been telling you for years?

So yeah (because I have this theory that Cyndi Lauper is awesome enough to redeem even obvious mistakes) I was watching Life with Mikey and this line (and a great read my MJF doing some heavy lifting in a waste of film even Nathan Lane is kinda phoning in) came out and I had to pause the movie and tell you about it. Because that's it, right? That's the other side of the glass that rescues us all from

[sciencespies]

Following The Scientific Consensus Is The ‘Least Wrong’ Line Of Thought

https://sciencespies.com/news/following-the-scientific-consensus-is-the-least-wrong-line-of-thought/

Following The Scientific Consensus Is The ‘Least Wrong’ Line Of Thought

There are two important and common words that, when used scientifically, have a very different meaning than how we use them in everyday language: theory and consensus. These two words, in our commonplace usage, have meanings that imply a large degree of uncertainty. A theory is merely a thought that anyone can put forward: an idea, a wild guess, or even baseless speculation all count as “theories” the way we talk about them in our daily lives, where ideas like gravitation and that the Earth is flat get lumped in with the same word: theory.

While most of us recognize the difference between a scientific and non-scientific use of the word theory, this line is even blurrier when it comes to the notion of a consensus. Consensus, when we use it commonly, simply means, “most people believe this thing,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean such a thing is correct or true. Consensus could apply just as equally to statements like “the Earth is warming” as it could to those like “ninjas are cooler than pirates.”

However, when a scientist talks about consensus, they are talking about something far more powerful: the least wrong approximation of reality supported by the full suite of evidence and the overwhelming majority of professionals in a particular field. Here’s how following the scientific consensus empowers all of us who do so, and imperils all who reject it.

If you decide to argue against the scientific consensus, you’ll have a very large suite of evidence … [+] to overturn, explain, and supersede. If you yourself are not an expert in the specific sub-field of science that you’re seeking to overturn, the odds are very much against your success, and if you’re not even using a shared scientific vocabulary, no one will even take your arguments seriously.

MacLeod / Union of Concerned Scientists

Theory: this is the starting point of it all. If we ever want to understand what it means to abide by or reckon with the scientific consensus on an issue, we have to go back to this definition: that of a theory.

I’m not talking about the colloquial definition, which is any proposed explanation for why some phenomenon occurred. (E.g., flat Earth theory.)

Nor am I talking about the mathematical definition: a self-consistent set of axioms or postulates that allow the construction of a framework. (E.g., string theory.)

I’m also not talking about a speculative extension to the mainstream, accepted theories that we have that don’t have adequate supporting evidence behind them. (E.g., supersymmetry theory.)

And finally, I’m not talking about an idea that was once viable, until it failed to explain key pieces of evidence, conflicting with a key measurement or observation. (E.g., Lamarckian evolution.)

Instead, when scientists most frequently talk about theories, they talk about the accepted theories that are overwhelmingly supported by the evidence: the starting point for modern science. General Relativity is our theory of gravity; the Standard Model is our theory of elementary particles; genetics and Darwinian evolution are our theory of how living organisms pass on their traits to future generations; etc. When scientists talk typically mention a theory, they’re discussing what’s already been robustly established and outlining the framework for all current and future discussions.

The Standard Model particles and their supersymmetric counterparts. This spectrum of particles is an … [+] inevitable consequence of unifying the four fundamental forces in the context of String Theory, but supersymmetry, string theory, and the presence of extra dimensions all remain speculative and without any observational evidence. They are not part of the scientific consensus.

Claire David

The novel phenomenon: ideas like “scientific consensus” never come up in a vacuum. Instead, they come up in discussions surrounding an issue because something new, important, or unexpected has been observed to occur.

We observe that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is rising, that the pH of the oceans, globally, are acidifying, and that extreme temperatures are being recorded more frequently all over the world.

We observe that an astrophysical cataclysm occurred some 130,000,000 light-years away, and that gravitational waves arrived ever-so-slightly before the very first electromagnetic signal did: by 1.7 seconds.

Or we observe the emergence of a novel disease in humans, the genetic sequence of which is similar to, but evolutionarily divergent from, other known disease-causing agents in the same family.

Although these may seem like wildly disparate examples from a variety of scientific fields — the climate change problem in the context of environmental and geological/atmospheric sciences, the astrophysical neutron star-neutron star merger observed in both gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation, and the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in the context of virology, disease ecology, and epidemiology — scientists take the same approach in every instance.

This figure shows the structure of the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2. Panel A shows the spike … [+] homotrimer in its open configuration, while panel B shows the cleavage sites on the spike protein.

Walls et al., Cell, 181 (2) (2020), pp. 281-292 e6

Identify the null hypothesis: this is an unspoken step that any scientist will recognize, but that simply doesn’t occur to most non-scientists. When we say “the null hypothesis,” what we mean is, “what explanation for this novel phenomenon would indicate that its emergence is already accounted for by the known laws, theories, and frameworks that are already in place to elucidate the Universe?”

The null hypothesis would mean that, sure, you’ve discovered a new phenomenon, but no new rules or outside influences need to be invoked to explain it.

The null hypothesis sometimes means, “things are behaving as they’ve always behaved, and what we’re observing is within the realm of natural variation.” Numerous announced discoveries that were later overturned occurred because of an unlikely fluctuation in the data that regressed to the mean when more data was taken. Ruling out the null hypothesis, however, can be an incredibly powerful achievement. In the case of the temperature of the Earth, going all the way back to the earliest global temperature records in the early 1880s, the null hypothesis is now ruled out at greater than 5-sigma confidence, with less than a 1-in-3.5 million chance of it being a fluke.

The best-fit amplitude of an annual modulation signal for a nuclear recoil with sodium iodide. The … [+] DAMA/LIBRA result shows a signal at extreme confidence, but the best attempt to replicate that has instead yielded a null result. The default assumption should be that the DAMA collaboration has an unaccounted for noise artifact.

J. Amaré et al./ANAIS-112 Collaboration, arXiv:2103.01175

So, we’ve found something’s new. Now what? Again, there’s an unspoken step that scientists take that’s rarely discussed. Scientists often ask themselves an important question, particularly when a novel phenomenon crosses the threshold of ambiguity and whose existence can now be considered non-controversial.

The Earth is warming, the oceans are acidifying, and the carbon dioxide concentrations have been rising, too.

The arrival time of gravitational waves and electromagnetic signals have been accurately measured and their origin point has been confirmed to be identical, and yet the gravitational waves still get there 1.7 seconds earlier, even though both should travel at the same speed: the speed of light.

And the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 did, in fact, emerge in humans in late 2019, even though the precise origin of how this virus found its way into the human population remains obscure.

What we typically do in this situation is resort to what some scientists also call “the null hypothesis” but which I prefer — to distinguish it from our earlier “nothing to see here” example — to call the default hypothesis: the idea that everything needed to explain this emergent phenomenon is already known, but that we just need to correctly identify the important contributors.

Light that’s polarized in a particular fashion from the Big Bang’s leftover glow would indicate … [+] primordial gravitational waves… and demonstrate that gravity is an inherently quantum force. But misattributing BICEP2’s claimed polarization signal to gravitational waves rather than its true cause — galactic dust emission — is now a classic example of confusing signal with noise.

BICEP2 collaboration

Identifying what matters: a lot of people have this misconception that science is wedded to what we’ve already established, and that scientists are incredibly resistant to new ideas.

This is not how it works at all, and although you can certainly find people — even a few scientists among them — who feel that way, the truth is far less exciting.

The reality is that what’s already been established, scientifically, provides us with an incredibly strong and versatile foundation to accommodate almost any new phenomenon we observe.

The default hypothesis, in practically any case we encounter, is that there is a completely mundane explanation for this novel phenomenon that only relies on correctly applying the science of what’s already known to the situation at hand. The default hypothesis is the least radical suggestion of all: that you might need to add an additional ingredient or component in order to get the full story out, but that when you do and you apply the underlying scientific rules correctly, you wind up fully explaining everything that you observe.

The global surface average temperature for the years where such records reliably and directly exist: … [+] 1880-2019 (at present). The zero line represents the long-term average temperature for the whole planet; blue and red bars show the difference above or below average for each year. The warming, on average, is by 0.07 C per decade, but has accelerated, warming at an average of 0.18 C since 1981.

NOAA / climate.gov

Recognizing alternatives for what they are: of course, sometimes there really are novel rules that come into play, and oftentimes our first clue that our current theoretical framework needs modification comes exactly in the form of a novel, unexplained observation. However, elevating the alternative explanation to the status of leading explanation requires something more: a demonstration that the default hypothesis is somehow insufficient.

This has happened numerous times throughout history, of course, and whenever it has, it’s led to a scientific revolution.

The fact that Mercury’s orbit around the Sun couldn’t be explained by Newtonian gravity led scientists to hypothesize an unseen, inner planetary companion to Mercury: Vulcan. Only when Vulcan failed to turn up was the alternative hypothesis — that Newtonian gravity needed to be superseded — explored and eventually validated.

The fact that the Earth is, geologically, billions of years old seemed incompatible with the Sun’s current power levels sustaining itself over billions of years. The mechanism of gravitational contraction could only sustain the Sun for tens of millions of years; it wasn’t until decades later that the secrets of nuclear physics would pave our way for understanding how the Sun worked.

And the fact that galaxies are zipping around inside galaxy clusters at speeds far too great to be consistent with the amount of matter present inside them led to the idea that some “dark” form of matter was present throughout our Universe. Only after decades of robust observations confirmed that there was no form of normal matter that could account for these motions — and additional observations (of individual galaxies) independently confirmed the cluster problem — was dark matter accepted into the mainstream.

After discovering Neptune by examining the orbital anomalies of Uranus, scientist Urbain Le Verrier … [+] turned his attention to the orbital anomalies of Mercury. He proposed an interior planet, Vulcan, as an explanation. Although Vulcan did not exist, it was Le Verrier’s calculations that helped lead Einstein to the eventual solution: General Relativity.

Wikimedia Commons user Reyk

However, these examples are exceptional; far more frequently, the default hypothesis is the one that carries the day. It’s important, as a scientist, to entertain the possibility of alternative explanations for any phenomenon you might have observed, but to relegate them to the status of both speculative and unproven until you establish the insufficiency of the default hypothesis. And that, perhaps unfortunately, is tremendously difficult to do.

The default hypothesis is that the Earth’s temperatures are warming, its climates are changing, and its oceans are acidifying because humanity has significantly modified the contents of our atmosphere, largely through the burning of fossil fuels for energy.

The default hypothesis is that gravitational waves arrive before electromagnetic waves because the light that’s generated from a neutron star merger must travel through matter — which slows down light — before arriving at our eyes, while the gravitational waves simply pass, unimpeded, right through that same matter.

And the default hypothesis is that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in humans through zoonotic spillover, before the superspreader event at the Wuhan market, likely through some form of animal agriculture, farming, or encroachment of human activity into previously wild territory.

Illustration of a fast gamma-ray burst, long thought to occur from the merger of neutron stars. The … [+] gas-rich environment surrounding them, as well as the matter from the neutron stars themselves, could delay the arrival of the signal, explaining the observed 1.7 second difference between the arrivals of the gravitational and electromagnetic signatures. This is the best evidence we have, observationally, that the speed of gravity must equal the speed of light: to approximately 1 part in 10^15 (a quadrillion).

ESO

Consensus. So, now let’s say we’ve done our homework. We’ve learned everything that humanity knows about this particular scientific issue, just like all the leading scientists in a particular discipline try to do. Now, the critical moment comes: we’re trying to synthesize together everything that we know and obtain a scientific consensus.

What does that mean?

A scientific consensus can only be achieved if:

a single framework explains all of the legacy puzzles as well as the novel phenomenon,

no unproven, evidence-free conjectures need to be true for the explanation to hold,

when the full suite of evidence is considered — scientifically admissible evidence, as opposed to speculation — there are no “dealbreaker” puzzles still left to solve,

and if the overwhelming majority of professionals actively working in the field all draw the same conclusion: that this one, favored, consensus picture is the best explanation for everything we’ve observed.

Any consensus we achieve is always provisional, of course; any one of the alternatives could always turn out to be true. But if you are to truly compete with a consensus opinion — the Standard Model, dark matter, cosmic inflation, Darwinian evolution, human-caused global climate change, the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, etc. — you have to identify where and how the consensus opinion breaks down, and to demonstrate where your preferred alternative not only succeeds where the consensus fails, but to demonstrate its success in every place where the current consensus also succeeds.

Tycho Brahe conducted some of the best observations of Mars prior to the invention of the telescope, … [+] and Kepler’s work largely leveraged that data. Here, Brahe’s observations of Mars’s orbit, particularly during retrograde episodes, provided an exquisite confirmation of Kepler’s elliptical orbit theory.

Wayne Pafko, 2000 / http://www.pafko.com/tycho/observe.html

Over the course of human history, what was once a consensus opinion among scientists has been found to be insufficient on one or more accounts. When this occurs, the “old consensus” doesn’t suddenly become wrong, but rather gets demoted to a mere approximation or special case of a more comprehensive framework: a new, superior scientific consensus. Our current consensus is not evidence of groupthink, but rather is the culmination of our modern scientific enterprise: the best approximation of reality that the full suite of evidence — in the context of our most successful scientific theories — can possibly put forth.

As in all things, many of today’s consensus positions will no doubt be found to be lacking in some key way, and will someday be regarded the same way we regard Newtonian gravity: revolutionary for its time, accurate and useful under certain conditions, but only an approximation of a deeper, more fundamental description of reality. That is not a flaw in the scientific method nor in our way of thinking today; that is the nature of science.

When we interrogate the Universe in just the right fashion, a deeper truth may yet be revealed. The key to advancing, however, is to understand the limitations of the current consensus position and to identify the criteria necessary to overthrow it. Unless that’s precisely what you’re doing when considering an alternative, you’re arguing against the common, rather than the scientific, meaning of consensus.

#News

[wanna-b-poet31]

Aziraphale’s Lies and Crowley’s Truth (A 3-Part Series) Part 3: Liminal Spaces, Happy Faces

A final installment of a series I started!! Will wonders ever cease? >tbh I want to preemptively start this final installment saying that I’ve been staring at the word doc for a solid 3 months trying to will the right words to come to me... let’s hope these are good ones?<  #sorrynotsorry for the delay

Honestly, I could do a whole other series about why Crowley is fallen and Aziraphale is not. However, I wanted to refocus this series on my central argument that honesty (or lack thereof) is a strategic tool for establishing their in-between status...their humanity, as it were.  

To grossly summarize parts 1 and 2  (but no seriously check them out) Crowley can lie, he’s actually pretty slippery but he chooses to be honest and forthright with Aziraphale on purpose. Meanwhile, Aziraphale wields his lies like his sword, trying to protect the two of them from Heaven’s wrath. 

The problem is, when Crowley is so heartbreakingly honest, like genuinely, unapologetically honest, to Aziraphale, he leaves both of them vulnerable. Without the security Heaven claims to provide him, Aziraphale panics, is afraid that revealing his hand -- that he feels for Crowley, wants to go to Alpha Centauri with Crowley -- will put both of them in danger. So, he does what he does best, he lies, cutting both of them. They fall out of sync, they’re set up for failure, they’re not on the same page, and ultimately they’ can’t occupy the same space or same side.  

See Aziraphale’s face here? [a gif where Aziraphale is shouting at Crowley that “We’re on opposite sides”] The tone of voice? The desperation in his face? It’s clear that he’s lying, and it’s detrimental. 

BUT when Aziraphale (and it has to be Aziraphale) realizes he’s miscalculated his lies, realizes that his position is not protecting Crowley (or the earth), but realizes that he IS, and perhaps has always needed to be, on Crowley’s side, the true nature of Heaven is revealed (to him). 

Once they are reunited, their lies are weaponized, their honesty is protective, and they create a new space for themselves and humanity to exist. They don’t fit in Heaven or Hell or even in a garden. In a very real way, they become more human once the realize the impact of their actions and the weight of their choices.

No, I don’t mean I literally think they’re human now, they’re as magical as ever. But by the end of the series, they DO become a new kind of hybrid, occupying the same liminal space between holy and hellish that humans do. And the evolution of their honesty and lies -- their supposed “flaws” -- enable them to form their own side. 

It allows them the freedom of choices.

ANGELS OF LIES

I think it’s important to point out that Aziraphale isn’t the only lying angel. 

All of them lie. Often.  

Examples:

We first see the lies appear when Gabriel praises Aziraphale for trying to “turn” Warlock to the good side. It becomes evident that by the end of the series, the angels never had any intention of stopping the war.

We see Michael lie (by omission) when she shows Gabriel the photos of our ineffable duo. She neglects to mention that she got them from Ligur. 

The only true difference is the target of their lies and the fact that they all justify their actions under the flag of dogmatic loyalty and their presumed “goodness”. None of the other angels ever quite question their own actions. They simply “do” in the name of the Lord. Their prophecy of a great war drives each of their actions, and each reads it as an immutable fact.  

While the vague nature of the prophecy allows them some wiggle room (like Michael conspiring with Ligur, and Gabriel with Beelzebub) to behave and build an ineffable bureaucracy around it, at the end of the day, none of them act like there is even a choice. They presume their destiny has been solidified.

Looking at Gabriel’s insistence that “Wars are not meant to be avoided, they're meant to be won” demonstrates, at least on some level, he firmly believes that angels are predestined to fight, to win, and to crush demons under his shoes. There is no question in his mind then, no wayward thought asking “should we do this” or “is this right”, he simply is following “orders”. There is the implicit belief then, that “to war or not to war” is not “find the solution with the least harm” but rather a really toxic “win or die” mentality. Any dissent, in this framework, must be squashed.

Any dissent...like Aziraphale. 

In the GIF above, when Aziraphale asserts that the angels have a choice, “there doesn’t have to be a war.” Look at the condescending posture and the fake smile. His response “Of course there does, otherwise, how would we win it?” speaks volumes to how he sees the situation. There is no choice for him, not necessarily because he doesn’t see there’s no choice, but because the alternative would be losing, and Angels don’t lose.  

There’s a real danger for Aziraphale at this moment, although he has been conditioned not to see it. If he is honest to Gabriel, the way Crowley needs him to be as a partner, for posing the question, for insisting that there is a third option.  This moment of honesty after several bald-faced lies makes Aziraphale very vulnerable to retaliation. Retaliation, mind you, that we DO see him endure (a la Sandalphon).  

THE DEMON IS IN THE DETAILS

Similarly, the demons show that they believe this is their chance to overcome Heaven. That there is no choice on whether or not they will fight, because the choice has been made for them. They must fight. The only question is if they will win. Like the Angels there is no question if they can fight or not, they simply must, and everyone is vying for a role in the destruction. 

Interestingly though, while Ligur and Hastur condescend “what is the world coming to if Demons started trusted Demons”, we also see an honesty streak.

Hastur, in particular, is oddly a beacon of honesty, but particularly gullible. Yeah, he’s malicious (we see him burn down the church, threaten Crowley, and kill another demon) but we don’t really see him lie... do we see him lie? Sure he’s wrong a lot, but he’s not good at lying like Crowley is, nor prone to it like Aziraphale is.

For example, we see him openly and honestly communicate with Ligur while they’re sulking, waiting for Crowley to show up. Sure, he’s wrong about what “Caio” means, but is it a lie? It seems more like his arrogance of Italian, transliterating it to an English word than an actual lie.  

The closest lie I can think about is when he’s disguised himself to capture Crowley. He doesn’t even lie when he’s reading out Crowley’s crimes to the audience.

Instead, we actually see that he’s actually surprised by Crowley’s lies. As much as he claims not to trust other Demons, when he’s actively pursuing Crowley and Ligur is killed, for a split second, Hastur looks like he believes Crowley’s lie that “the Dark Council” is testing him. 

This seems to put extra emphasis on Crowley’s ability to lie but not be unnecessarily cruel (whereas Hastur is cruel but doesn’t lie). Or that choosing to lie to Hell, for the sake of Aziraphale and himself, is paramount.

Crowley, in contrast to Aziraphale, realizes this “must and at no point tries to be honest with Hell. He’s smooth, he’s suave (at least he tries to be) he tries to get out of it, flatly stating that his own role in it (delivering the anti-christ) is not his scene. Then, he tries to stop the end of the world, he convinces Aziraphale it’s needed, gives him the pretext to make that third option a reality, and actively refuses the dichotomy of their bosses. 

It’s not until Aziraphale is fully out of the picture (read: presumed dead) that Crowley gives up, that he succumbs to the idea that it really is hopeless. Which, I will come back to.

HUMANITY’S VIRTUE

Meanwhile, humans don’t take well to black/white dichotomies. They neither are heaven incarnate nor hell incarnate. They simply are human. And that means they have choices. 

This manifests a few different ways in the series, but first, let’s look specifically at the dynamic between our “predestined” Anathema and our  “what the actual fuck is happening right now” Newt.  

Anathema (in the series) is pretty much trained in the ways of reading and interpreting Agnes Nutter’s prophecies. She has trained every moment since she was a child in the ways of occult studies and believes to a fault that she has no choice. The clearest example is how she doesn’t (really) choose to sleep with Newt because she liked him, or knew him, or seemed to care at all about his feeling on the matter, but because it was foretold. There is no real sense of choice.

Now, it seemed to have worked out, with them happily ending, but it’s “happiness” balances upon the fact that with Newt’s support, Anathema CHOOSES to reject the predestined nature of being a descendant. While I’m sure Aziraphale weeps over the loss of more accurate prophesies from Agnes Nutter, her decision to burn the second book is crucial not only to her sense of self but to the core message of what it means to be human.  To have choices.

Then, there’s Adam, the adversary... >incredibly long title/name<. His friend’s support allows him to make the choices he wants to make, and be proactive with his powers. Aziraphale says it best when he says he feared Adam would be Hell incarnate but hoped he would be Heaven incarnate, but he’s neither, and that’s a GOOD thing. 

“An Ineffable Game of Own Creation”

But why go through all of this in an Honesty series?

Consider, for a moment, this phrase “God does not play games with the Universe”. It’s a phrase that nicely bookends the series, appearing prominently in the first few minutes of episode one, and again after Adam and his friends have bested War, Famine, Pollution, and Death.  But, what does its appearance mean, if anything?

Choice.

This (book/tv) series is really predicated upon choice. And, consequently the presumed lack thereof our characters have. Again and again, we are shown that the Angels, the demons, Anathema, and even God herself, repeat the idea that “God is not guessing” or “we make no real choices”.

But Adam, Crowley, and Aziraphale reject this notion and actively create an alternative. 

Adam rejects his destiny, he rejects his demonic father and chooses to leave the garden (versus the original Adam and Even who were shunned, cast out, and really isn’t that a traumatizing experience in itself?) because he chooses to be human. 

But Adam is Human (at least now) how is this relevant to the ineffable duo? Two unquestionably supernatural entities?

Well, Crowley is as far as I can tell upon my 6,000th review of the series, has the series’ best ability to lie, even though few of his demon counterparts do. We’ll chalk it up to his imagination, but with this great power to deceive, he actively chooses to trust Aziraphale, to be honest, even if he’s hurt in the process.  

Aziraphale meanwhile is a shit liar, especially compared to Crowley’s and the other Angel’s abilities.  But he is a defensive one. He needs to protect himself, then Crowley, then humanity, but he can’t do that until he chooses to occupy the liminal space between Heaven and Hell. 

But they can’t do this alone. 

This “third” option that they’re carving out for themselves requires them to be blunt and honest and defensively protective of each other. This is why, when Crowley is in the bar, convinced Aziraphale is dead, he breaks down. Without Aziraphale, this third option is unobtainable because there is no one else who could share the space with him. There would be, nobody to love, as it were. 

This is also why (I think) the lies from Metatron breaks Aziraphale. If it’s clear, even for an instant, that no one on his “side” is willing to consider an alternative option, an option that would spare demons, then he wants no part of that option. He flatly refuses to fight in a war that would mean the destruction of Crowley and tells the quartermaster as much in his epic swan dive out of Heaven. 

This new space is distinctly not human in the literal sense (neither of them is human), but it’s also not heavenly or hellish. It’s a space for them to leave the garden, to continue to be who they are, fight for what they love and feel safe knowing they are a team (romantic or otherwise).

A third space is really what Crowley and Aziraphale have been working for since day one because no other force will consider that maybe, just maybe, there are alternatives to the good/bad, angel/demon, live/death dichotomies Heaven and Hell create for themselves.  It is the place that Aziraphale will lie to protect, and Crowley will honestly confront if it means they are finally going the same speed, together. 

TLDR: The way that honesty and lies work in this series allows for Crowley and Aziraphale to “break free” as it were and create a space for themselves to exist. 

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk

[nezumiismissing]

No.1-5: Utopia, Idealism, and the Holy City

Ok I’m back! I just started an Urban Studies-type degree at my new university, so you know I've been thinking about No.6, and as much as I would like to talk about meritocracy and the existence of economic inequalities in a state-run economy, I do still need to prioritize actual homework before writing about that stuff here. So instead I’m going to yell about No.1-5 for a (admittedly very long) minute. 

Other than the ending, one of the most significant differences between the anime and the novels is the fact that in the anime, we actually get an opportunity to see one of the other cities, and how different it is from No.6. There’s clearly a purpose in showing us this, mostly in demonstrating that the way things are in No.6 is not the way that the rest of the world has chosen to rebuild itself, and therefore solidifying the city’s position as distinctly not utopian. But given what we know about No.6 and it’s relations to the other cities, it seems somewhat unlikely that that interpretation of the situation is entirely accurate. That isn’t to say that the other cities are just as bad as No.6, but I don’t think the anime paints an entirely accurate picture either. 

What originally made me think about this in the first place is that fact that Safu was allowed to leave No.6 to go on exchange, because when you think about the logistics of that, it’s weird, right? This highly authoritarian city that hides basically everything from its citizens to the point that people who go against them or find things out about it are arrested and killed, is also apparently totally comfortable sending a young person to a completely different place where they may see that the world doesn’t have to function in that way. Now of course there are explanations for this decision if they believe that they have sufficiently brainwashed Safu into supporting the city, or assume that she doesn’t know anything about what happens there (which seems unlikely given her relationship to Shion). And No.6 seems entirely susceptible to those types of oversights, considering the entire situation that is Nezumi, but couldn’t it also be possible that the reason they are comfortable sending her on exchange is because they know that the other cities function in a similar way to them?

This is entirely speculation, but given the situation that led to the creation of the cities, and the fact that they are technically considered part of a single global nation, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to think that there is (or at some point was) some kind of enforcement group that exists independently of the individual cities to make sure everyone is obeying the Babylon Treaty and working towards a genuinely ideal society. At the very least, we know that every city remains in regular contact with the others, and so some amount of shared knowledge of the cities exists somewhere, likely only among the most elite members of each government. The issues with and dystopian aspects of No.6 are obvious enough that anyone who came to visit or even had a general idea of the structure of the city would immediately realize that something was wrong, and I would hope that something would be done about it, but there is no evidence that something like that is happening, so we are left with only a few options:

For some reason the other cities genuinely do not know that anything is wrong with No.6 (unlikely considering that students are able to travel between the cities under certain circumstances)

The other cities are aware of at least some of the issues, but are unable or unwilling to take any action out of a desire to preserve their own utopian ideals or fear of No.6′s power

The other cities function similarly to No.6, and have each created their own authoritarian city-state, either as a way to “force” the creation of a utopian society, or out of a failure to create such a society (whether or not the other cities are aware of the others’ structure could probably go either way)

Option 2 presents some very interesting and plausible possibilities as to the nature of the other cities and the position they exist in in relation to No.6, but it still does not fully explain why Safu or any other students are allowed to leave No.6, and if the other cities are in fact utopian, or at least not dystopian, then there also has to be an explanation for how Yoming gets away with his embezzlement/money laundering scheme in Beyond.

Option 3, on the other hand, can more sufficiently (though not perfectly) explain both of these occurrences. In Safu’s case, if the other cities were similarly authoritarian or otherwise corrupt, then there is no danger of exposure to “dangerous” ideas by sending a student there, and it could instead even act as a show of approval and trust towards the other cities. Yoming’s case is a complicated one, but I believe he would be much more likely to be successful in his crime if the other cities had also been corrupted, and especially so if No.4′s government were willing to assist him or even give him something in return, such as power within their government or a political position that would involve both cities. The corruption of the other cities also ties well into the theme of the nonexistence of true utopias, which is fairly prevalent throughout the story, and serves to contexualize exactly how it was possible for No.6 to develop as it did with little to no intervention or questioning by the other cities or nongovernmental organizations. This option is also much more grounded in reality than the others, as societies throughout history that have claimed to desire some type of utopia or “ideal” society have turned to authoritarianism, violence, and isolationism, among other things, in order to control the population and give the illusion of comfort. Depending on your political ideology, you could even argue that these tactics are used by all societies and governments, or that they are a “necessary evil” to create the most positive outcome.

Real politics aside (as much as they can be, at least), within the context of the society created by the Babylon Treaty, and what we know of the cities themselves, it is highly unlikely that the reality of No.6 was entirely unknown. And due to the isolationist policies enacted by No.6, as well as the assumed distance between the cities, the risk of another conflict was low enough that their actions, to the extent that they were understood, were seen as acceptable despite going directly against the treaty. Does this mean that the other cities supported No.6′s actions, or were just as bad as No.6? Not necessarily. We are told repeatedly throughout the story that No.6 was far better off in terms of resources/geography than the other cities, which creates much more room for the exploitation of those resources, and its status as the “Holy City” actually puts it in the position of being a role model to the other cites, who because of their weaker resources may be in an earlier stage of development, and therefore still hold on to their utopian ideals. If this is the case, then it is likely that even if some of their actions, such as isolation and strict social hierarchies, were seen as acceptable by the other cities, the more brutal aspects of No.6 would still be seen as unnecessary and overstepping.

Ultimately we can’t ever really know what the other cities looked like, or why they allowed No.6 to exist as it did, but because of No.6′s failure to either create utopia or completely dominate its land and people, 1-5 are now forced to self-reflect and make a decision about their own ideals, and how they may have shifted away from the original intent of the treaty. And if they have been corrupted along with No.6, then they must return to one of the fundamental questions that drives the series: Is it possible to create a utopia, or is it only an ideal that can never truly be reached?

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

@kiwimeringue replied to your post “I know it’s generally rude and very unwise to reply to a fandom...”

ok I'm super curious now, feel free to message me if you want to talk about it all stealthy-like~

@veliseraptor replied to your post “I know it’s generally rude and very unwise to reply to a fandom...”

i'm so curious

apparently I did want to talk about it, because this got looooong (also please do not add more discourse to this post, it’s probably kind of shitty of me but I don’t super want to have a dialogue about it, I just want to barf out my thoughts and defend my own faves on my own post, so if you want to argue with me I would really rather you didn’t and just made your own post instead)

(I also only just realized that I only put “tony stark negative” and “tony stark critical” in the tags, not anywhere before the cut, so here’s your warning now if you didn’t see the tags that this is me being frustrated with a lot things about how Tony is written)

I can't find the actual post now to screenshot or link because I just came across it on my dash, got annoyed, scrolled past, and then made my post when I couldn't stop grumpily thinking about it (so at this point I also don't remember who the OP was or who reblogged it onto my dash, which is probably just as well), but the gist was that almost all MCU title characters have storylines establishing that they're wrong about something and they show growth by accepting that and working to improve...except Steve, who never acknowledges that he might ever be wrong about anything, with the implication that this makes him a bad, self-righteous character who is basically incapable of growth. several other characters--Tony, Thor, Dr. Strange, Peter Parker--were mentioned, but the state of fandom discourse makes me assume any Steve-negative post exists at least in part to show how much better Tony is, which...may not always be a fair assumption on my part, but I do think it's fair to say that's still a relevant context. and of course Steve is one of my favorite characters, so anything even mildly Steve-negative puts me at least somewhat on the defensive right away, which again is not necessarily fair. (the other post that’s already sitting in my notes is about Ragnarok, which is probably even less surprising.)

anyway the post made me grumpy to begin with and then doubly so because I couldn't think of a good way to refute it aside from "yeah well maybe Steve's just a better person than your faves and he doesn't need a whole character arc about realizing he's been an asshole and needs to change because he didn't start out as an asshole to begin with, bet you didn't think of that huh" which is of course VERY unhelpful. but then I started thinking about how I don't think OP is right about the changed characters to begin with, given that a) it's not really fair to compare a character who's only had one solo movie (Dr. Strange) with characters who've had more, b) Spider-Man is kind of an edge case because he's a teenager and a lot of the problems in his movies stem from a combination of him being a fucking teenager and Tony dumping him with tons of dangerous tech that he doesn't have the training or adult impulse control to use safely and then blaming him when disaster inevitably results, and c) the characters who have had multiple movies and arcs focused on realizing they were wrong about something (just Thor and Tony, really) are...maybe not actually great examples because like 75% of that character development seems to reset after each movie and, actually, the narrative still operates under the premise that these characters are basically right even if some other characters don't agree. like...I mean, the only lessons Thor really, consistently seems to learn are "humans are at least not totally worthless (but lbr they're mostly silly and cute)" and "Odin is extremely wise and probably right about almost everything despite mountains of evidence--that grow with every single film he's in--to the contrary". 

and Tony, well--yeah, that's his arc, in theory, and in theory I don't have a problem with flawed characters who keep making the same mistakes because let's face it, that's a very human thing to do. but with posts like this, it's like...you're effectively arguing that he doesn't really make mistakes overall, though, because it’s really just an opportunity for growth? and that when he does, the narrative shows he's wrong, he admits he's wrong, and he makes consistent efforts to change? which...again, obviously I have my own biases, but I have to see this as a weird interpretation because he's basically been the main character of the entire MCU thus far, which means he's likely to get sympathetic treatment and justification from the narrative even if he's ostensibly being called out for fucking up, and that's something I've definitely seen. his entire first movie is about him realizing how wrong he was and working to do better, definitely, but he ends up being his own worst enemy half the time and other people suffer for it. like...he wants to protect the world, okay, that's a reasonable goal. you can argue that the vision Wanda gave him made things worse, and that's possible, but I don't know how much that might be true given that I'm pretty sure he was working on Ultron before that too (and her mind-magic mostly seemed to work by emphasizing something that was already there, not planting new ideas). so he ends up creating a murderbot, with good intentions but he still does it and he keeps it secret from the other Avengers, and now-sentient murderbot immediately reaches the conclusion that humanity is awful and they won't need protecting if they're all gone, and everything breaks very bad, and then Tony...basically does the exact same thing again, without telling anybody else, in hopes that it'll work out better this time because JARVIS? and it does but that seems like mostly luck? and everybody manages to defeat the murderbot, barely, but a not-insignificant number of civilians die anyway because that tends to happen when a sentient murderbot goes on a rampage, and Tony feels really guilty about this when it's shoved in his face, so he deals with his guilt by kind of...spreading it around and allowing the possibility of other major problems down the line so they can hand over some of that responsibility and he can feel less guilty. (that’s not the most charitable interpretation, yeah, but I also don’t think it’s an unreasonable one, based on what’s there in the text.) and then of course things blow up and other problems get dragged in and it's a huge mess and half the Avengers are fugitives, and the general consensus sort of seems to be that nobody was completely right or completely wrong but Steve is the only one who actually apologizes for any of it (no wait, I guess Wanda and Vision apologized but just to each other) and Rhodey reinforces the idea that the Accords were a good idea with no major drawbacks...and then Thanos shows up and things get SO VERY MUCH worse.

and Tony is once again stricken with grief and guilt (not to mention half dead), so lashing out at Steve is understandable, but what he actually says is basically that this is all Steve's fault because he wasn't there (even though he immediately sent Tony that phone, which means Tony could have contacted him at any time but hesitated to do so even when monsters were basically falling from the sky), and he was right about the Accords and Ultron even if the latter didn't work out so well in ways that probably could have been predicted, and...that's what we're left with. nobody else has a meaningful opportunity to say "now hold on a second, you cannot possibly be arguing both for accountability and for your right to decide for the entire world that exchanging some freedom for some potential security is a good trade, and also how are you saying you were essentially right about Ultron when Ultron is what kicked off the desire for the Accords" or, like, anything. (does the world need a security blanket? going by the evidence...yeah, probably? but again. Tony. you tried that and you made a sentient murderbot instead so like, your track record is not great!!)

and then it all culminates with Tony sacrificing himself to save the universe, which I do at least think was a climactic, thematically resonant send-off for such a major character--for the final time, in the most final possible of ways, he reaches a point where there's no more clever tricks and he reacts by selflessly taking the entirety of the consequences onto himself. I can't say I'm happy with it, because I'm not a fan of character death in general even when it doesn't involve my top faves, and it absolutely would have been possible for the filmmakers to keep him alive if they hadn't gone into this with the specific intention of ending Tony's arc with his death. (ditto on all the other major character deaths, which is a big part about why they make me mad--none of them really, honestly had to happen, some even less than others.) but regardless of my feelings on whether it had to happen, it's inarguable that his entire arc from Iron Man to Endgame is that of a brilliant but selfish manchild who changes and grows until he doesn't hesitate to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the entire universe.

BUT THEN THERE'S SPIDER-MAN AGAIN.

spoilers if you haven't seen Spider-Man: Far From Home but like, the entire conflict of that movie was based on two major things: a bunch of disgruntled Stark Industries employees, at least some of whom had to have legitimate, recent grievances (and frankly that whole mess demonstrates--among other things--that Stark Industries must have unforgivably lax security around its arsenal of world-ending weapons); and Tony's decision at some point to essentially REMAKE ULTRON AND THEN DUMP THAT RESPONSIBILITY ON A FUCKING TEENAGER WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE WAY OF WARNINGS, TRAINING, OVERSIGHT, OR EVEN BASIC FAILSAFES, like holy shit my computer spends more time making sure I definitely want to delete that file than EDITH does about confirming that yes this random teenager is a legitimate target for IMMEDIATE DEATH. all the other adults involved in this clusterfuck bear a good share of the responsibility for this too, given that not one of them ever seemed to think either "hey, maybe saddling a smart and very good but basically normal sixteen-year-old boy with the power and responsibility (but not the resources or experience) of a grown-ass adult with unlimited resources is not the smartest move here, and yelling at him when he inevitably fucks up this power and responsibility we dumped on him with no training whatsoever is not actually fair or reasonable" or even "maybe before giving a piece of massively powerful and dangerous tech to a sixteen-year-old boy, we should spend at least 15 minutes going over the device's major functions and how to not accidentally kill someone, even if we figure things like ethics and privacy rights and knowing when not to use this tech aren't that important".

but, but, Tony still made the decision to give it to him, and he did so without building in any precautions at all, which is the exact same thing he did in CW/Homecoming with Peter's new suit (yes, the Training Wheels protocol was a good step, but the fact that it could just be turned off that easily--and that Tony isn't shown even trying to tell Peter to use the training programs or safely practice with the suit--shows that it really, really wasn't good enough) except even worse because EDITH is about 100 times more invasive and destructive than the suit. and he pretty much scolded Peter in Homecoming for getting ahead of himself, but then the second Peter did well in a bad situation Tony was right back to making this teenager an official Avenger and giving him all this power and responsibility he'd just decided Peter hadn't really earned, and Peter turned him down because at that point he had a better idea of his own limits and need for growth than Tony did, and then!! in what must have been one of his last acts alive!! Tony dumped an even bigger, more dangerous power/responsibility combo on him!!! way way bigger than the one he'd already turned down and maturely decided he wasn't yet experienced enough to handle!!! without even giving him a chance to say no!!!! and did not take any of that (or the mess with Ultron and the lessons he theoretically learned there, or the mess with the Accords and the lessons he theoretically learned there, or for that matter the lessons he theoretically learned in his three solo movies about treating his employees well and making sure he knows exactly what his company is doing at all times) into account when designing it, handing it off to other adults who also should have been more responsible about it, and leaving it to a teenager against that teenager's stated wishes, thereby ensuring that this teenager will follow Tony's footsteps in being unable to have a normal life!!!!!

...................but, okay, the point of the original post was that Steve is generally deemed to be Always Right and therefore he never has to change, and that makes him unrelatable at best and also not a great character. which...well, that's part of the point, that's why he was picked for Project Rebirth in the first place because he's a good dude dedicated to doing what's right; even before the serum, he was literally willing to die to protect a few people he barely knew (the grenade scene, remember). he was already starting from a point of selflessness and an understanding of responsibility that the others lacked, so it would be tough to give him a similar character arc without undermining or ignoring the whole point of the character. sure, though, even a character like Steve is imperfect and human and bound to be wrong sometimes, and when that happens he should acknowledge he was wrong and take steps to make amends, and if he's never shown doing any of that, it's true that it's not great even if part of the issue is that he's never really put in a position to do so. 

except, except DID YOU ALL COMPLETELY FORGET THE ENDING OF CIVIL WAR

like, sure, if what you wanted was to hear Steve say "I was wrong about everything and Tony was right about everything, and I will humbly submit to whatever you think is best regardless of my own convictions, my very good reasons for having those convictions, and my personal concerns for my friends, or at the very least I will humbly ask for forgiveness and accept whatever you throw at me, because Tony Was Right About Everything," then...yeah, I'm sure it was a disappointment, especially if you figure Tony was right about the Accords and at least the intentions behind Ultron. it's true Steve doesn't really address any of that, which indicates he definitely still believes he’s right about those parts. but...look, the last time he saw Tony, he was fighting to save his lifelong friend from being murdered from a crime he didn't necessarily remember and really wasn't responsible for. once again I don't blame Tony for reacting emotionally and lashing out at the nearest targets instead of the people who were really at fault, but that doesn't change the facts of the situation, which are, Steve was fighting to save Bucky's life. and when he did that by incapacitating Tony, he didn't go any further; he took Bucky and left. and then he almost immediately sent Tony a letter of apology and a means of contacting him in return if an emergency comes up--and again, yes, his apology wasn't "I'm sorry for everything because I was wrong about everything," but it was a genuine, compassionate apology for the ways he'd hurt Tony even if his intentions were basically good. (this of course assumes that he really did know for a fact that Bucky killed the Starks and consciously chose to hide the knowledge from Tony, and frankly I'm not convinced that's true, but it's not really the issue here.) honestly, I thought his letter was kind of funny because it so closely followed the format of the apology-note meme--you know, "I was trying to do X, but I see now that I hurt you because Y" and everything. he didn't apologize for opposing the Accords or protecting Bucky or fighting in Germany so he could get to Siberia in time to stop what he had every reason to believe was a much bigger threat, because all those actions stemmed directly from his convictions and sense of morality and he wouldn't be Steve Rogers or Captain America if he was willing to compromise his most foundational convictions--but he absolutely did apologize for hurting Tony and recognized that he'd made at least one big mistake where Tony was concerned. 

Tony...didn't. even before doubling down on the Accords and Ultron, I don't think he ever really said, hey, at least some of this was my bad; most of what he said boiled down to "okay this situation isn't ideal but I'm sure if I throw more money at it things will work out fine, more or less". in the Raft and in Siberia he got close to saying that maybe he'd been wrong about a few things, but that all went out the window pretty quick, and I don't think there's ever a point where he--just for instance--at least apologizes for trying very very hard to kill Bucky. and by Endgame, apparently he’s pretty much walked back what little he did kinda sorta think he was maybe wrong about. so.

that's...basically what I've got, OP’s interpretation is wrong because their facts are actually wrong and I was apparently annoyed enough to barf out all these words when I could’ve been doing anything else, the end

[plagueamon]

Code Geass MBTI Challenge Turn 9: Kyoshiro Tohdoh - ISTJ

With the exception of Anya and a few members of the Akito the Exiled cast, Kyoshiro Tohdoh is the character on our list with probably the least amount of information about his personal thoughts, views and experiences. With that in mind, I still think that the show gives us just enough of a glimpse into his personality in order to be able to type him accurately, to the point where I actually had to retype him a few times and overall was given more to think about than I originally expected. Before I start explaining this character’s functions, please keep in mind, that this post will contain heavy Code Geass spoilers, so consider yourselves warned. With that out of the way, let us analyse why Kyoshiro Tohdoh is an ISTJ.

Dominant Introverted Sensing/Si

Tohdoh’s Si is actually very comparable to Ohgi’s, because they value very similar things, but diverge in what further conclusions they do with those values based on their auxiliary and tertiary functions (this is coincidentally perhaps the best opportunity we will ever have to compare an ISFJ to an ISTJ). Much like Ohgi, Tohdoh largely bases his values around Japanese tradition, however he does not see them as something to be explored and shared with others (Ti and Fe), so mach as he uses it to dictate the rules he wants to see himself and his surrounding world world to develop in accordance with (Fi and Te). This sometimes makes him appear much more narrow-minded than he actually is, simply because he has a very specific idea of what he wants to achieve for Japan and for himself and is very determined to make it a reality. In truth he is actually very capable of applying this personal system of principles to others, which is what makes him a competent teacher and role model for Suzaku.

A common trait of dominant Si-users in fiction is that they can be both idealistic and practical in their mindset, with Si being tied to tangible evidence and facts by being a sensing function, while also being introverted and therefore highly subjective and personal to the user. Tohdoh himself embodies this balance quite well: we often see him talk in ways that are sentimental, with topics like honour and his hopes and fears for Japan’s distant future being brought up a lot, but, as Zero mentions during his prison break-in in R1, all of Tohdoh’s legendary success comes down to careful planning and intelligence work. In fact, it seems that Tohdoh himself understands this very well, as we never really see him refer to his work as “miracles” in a non-ironic manner, despite being seen as such by his followers. At his core Tohdoh still very much prefers to deal with factual details, planning out his operations and insisting on taking part in them personally, solidifying him as both a skilled and passionate tactician and leader, and, much like with Ohgi, this is the potential that Lelouch sees in him.

Auxiliary Extroverted Thinking/Te

As stated above, Tohdoh’s success as a leader mainly comes down to methodical and meticulous work combined with a fairly tactical mindset. His Te is certainly an important component of this, as we see him rely on it when he has to step out of his Si comfort zone. We see several examples of this happening when Tohdoh doesn’t see an obvious answer to a problem: his usual response is to trust in Zero’s judgement even if he has to blindly follow orders without a clear understanding of what his leader is planning. This demonstrates a healthy use of auxiliary Te, as it shows his willingness to abandon his immediate instinct to systematically observe the situation by himself (Si) when there is clearly no point in doing that, instead going with a more conventionally rational Te approach and trusting Lelouch because he has proven to be effective in the past. This is both supported and kept in check by his Fi, which gives him a degree of confidence in his judge of other people’s character as well as stops him from being a blindly devoted follower with no clear direction of his own. Compare this to Ohgi, who trusts others (Zero in this example) based on his perception of their sense of morality and trustworthiness (Fe), while his tertiary Ti balances this notion out by making him question his own judgement and thinking of the benefits of a given decision that is independent of ethical questions.

To put it in a somewhat simplified manner, Te is a form of generalist logic, developing a systematic “one size fits all” way of looking at a problem for the user, as they mature. The higher Te is in the functional stack, the more its logical system is complex and willing to account for exceptions, meaning that the kind of over-generalising behaviour that Te-users are often stereotyped for is much more commonly seen in unhealthy, immature or low (in terms of the stack) users. A much more healthy use of Te is comparatively rare in fiction or isn’t recognised nearly as often, however Tohdoh’s tactical ability and respect for authority provide good examples. Neither of the two are things he carries out blindly or out of principle, in fact he demonstrates a high degree of autonomy when deciding to trust his comrades and his superiors - instead these choices come from an understanding that this kind of trust the most reasonable course of action in most difficult situations.

As a soldier these qualities make Tohdoh outstanding.

Tertiary Introverted Feeling/Fi

Tohdoh’s Fi comes out in most of his unhealthier moments, meaning that he enters a Si-Fi loop. Whenever he finds himself in a difficult situation with no apparent solutions provided by his first two functions and nobody else to follow, Tohdoh is prone to giving up all hope and surrendering to his fate. The excuse he uses to justify this is also very evident of an unhealthy use of Fi: in his mind he chooses death to preserve his honour and deserves his fate for his personal failure. With Fi being a function that focuses on very personal values, this is an example of using it defensively instead of finding the inner strength to maintain hope and readiness for an opportunity to improve the situation. This almost causes him to reject a chance of freedom that Zero is basically handing to him in R1. It usually takes an external perspective (Te) such as Zero’s or that of his fellow Holy Swords pilots to “snap him out of” this internally focused state and show him that he can still find a reason to continue fighting without sacrificing his life and that his honour is not compromised by such a choice.

On a somewhat healthier note, Fi also puts an interesting spin on the direction of Tohdoh’s dominant function, giving him a firm belief that a person should keep true to their goals and principles no matter the cost. This is why his initial disappointment in Suzaku disappears to a large degree, when he learns that his former student’s life choices are in full accordance with the ideals he holds. While he still sees Suzaku as an enemy, Tohdoh develops a respect for his willingness to follow the path he chose despite being seen as a traitor to the Japanese by almost everyone and even encourages him to continue. While his Fi isn’t high enough in his stack to make relating to others necessarily easy, it does give him the ability to readily acknowledge that there are subjectively justifiable reasons behind everyone’s actions, no matter how different the person in question may be from himself.

Inferior Extroverted Intuition/Ne

Tohdoh does not get as much screen time or opportunities to speak as some of the other characters on our list, however because of his brutal honesty and overall being based on a fairly common fictional archetype, it isn’t very difficult to understand his fears and weaknesses as a human being. Dominant Si is a function rooted in personal experiences and principles (both moral and logical) that are very personal to the user and allow them to find a place for themselves in the world they inhabit. A common way for inferior Ne to oppose this is the fear of loss of one’s self and the personal principles that make us who we are. This makes Tohdoh reluctant to make decisions that contradicts his ideas about the kind of person he should be and the ways in which he should act. This kind of insecurity provides an understandable explanation for his Si-Fi loops: trying to avoid execution to him is similar to refusing punishment for his failure to liberate Japan, and that would go against his understanding of what he should stand for. This is why he only agrees to escape his prison when offered a chance of redemption.

On a more general scale, inferior Fi makes it hard for Tohdoh to truly understand other people’s motivations and plans when he doesn’t see the evidence leading up to them. Given that Lelouch is Ni-dominant and hence much more willing to rely on theoretical approximations and calculated risks rather than playing it safe and going with the facts, this tends to happen often and Tohdoh is often left having to trust in his leader’s competence without actually knowing what he is up to. Being mature and relatively healthy, however, Tohdoh does not tend to be bothered by this too much, recognising when his life is in capable hands instead of giving in to a fear of uncertainty, as unhealthy or immature Si-doms can often do.

However, please keep in mind that this is only my opinion on the matter and I will welcome any criticisms or alternative opinions to discuss them. If this article was interesting for you, stay prepared for next time, when I shall discuss the MBTI type of Diethard Ried.

[badmousestuff-blog]

CPGB-ML Final Report

A Marxist-Leninist case against the CPGB-ML’s reactionary stances on gender identity

I would like to note that the CPGB-ML is hardly worth writing an entire article about alone.  Were it simply an outlier case, this party would merit no investigation.  However, while they certainly epitomize the worst reactionary elements within the Left on the issue of LGBT+ rights, the fact is that echoes of this sentiment can be found across the Left in a variety of flavors and intensities.  It speaks to an unwillingness to employ the actual theory underlying Marxism, and instead relies on vacuous notions of gender, race, and so on that are treated as self-evident, eternal truths that are not engaged with historically, if indeed they are engaged with in any scientific capacity whatsoever.  This approach fails whole swathes of the working class in its failure to meaningfully engage with their conditions beyond pure, abstract class struggle.

If we are to criticize the CPGB-ML on their stances as Marxist-Leninists ourselves, it necessarily must be done through the lens of dialectical materialism, as it is foundational to ML theory and practice.  We cannot simply declare their opposition to identity politics to be “reactionary” without justification; baseless dismissal and name-calling is pointless sectarianism.  In the same light, we cannot hide behind identity politics just because it is being attacked in a reactionary fashion.  Instead, we must demonstrate the need to introduce the class element back into our discussion and action regarding identity rather than rejecting all ideas about identity wholesale, so that these disparate movements can be directed at the true source of their oppression and not accept meager concessions by bourgeois society.

However, I must admit that this argument will be somewhat simplistic, though somewhat lengthy; partly for ease of explanation, and additionally for the purpose of meeting time constraints.  Some details may be glossed over in the course of putting forth this argument.  While I believe it to be sufficiently strong as a counter-argument to the vague arguments of the CPGB-ML et al., under no circumstances should it be seen as an authoritative end to the discussion, nor should it be treated as a source in and of itself.  Rather, it should be seen as (a) an attempt to provide a summary of the various ideas it draws upon, (b) a more complete argument for LGBT+ struggles from a Marxist-Leninist perspective, rather than several disconnected articles touching on the subject, and (c) an effort to do away with the dismissive chauvinism that has occasionally characterized discussion among Marxists upon this very issue.

I will provide references to the sources at the end of this document.  Given the non-academic nature of this document, I have elected not to adhere strictly to formatting with respect to in-line citations and references, and will simply append references to the source material that most directly informs this argument at the end of this document.

PART ONE—The case for LGBT+ issues as class issues

If we are to form our critique, it is necessary to determine the function of gender roles (specifically binary gender roles, or simply ‘the gender binary’) within capitalist society.  To that end, we would clearly do well to discern how gender roles came to be in the first place.  While this piece will not exhaustively cover the historical progression of these roles, it is necessary to at least put forth a rudimentary explanation of their formation and evolution.  From there, we can examine their role in capitalism, the important connection it has to LGBT+ struggles, and the intersection between normative gender roles and other systems of capitalist oppression.  With this, we can avoid the vulgar materialism and often outright metaphysical idealism of the CPGB-ML without resorting to faulty assertions of our own.

I. Sex and gender are both constructs

The naive suggestion often put forth is that these roles are a logical consequence of natural sexual differentiation, but this is simply not the case.  While there may be a case to be made for biology playing a part in the beginning of gendered division of labor, biology alone does not determine nor explain why women occupy a subordinate position in capitalist society, or indeed any class society where women occupy such a position.  This is not to mention the vague ways in which ‘biology’ is often appealed to when putting forth such claims about the oppression of women.  It is not ‘self-evident’ or ‘common sense’ that the division of labor between men and women (and indeed, even the mere existence of those two categories) is natural; even if it were, it is undialectical.  Nothing is “just so,” it is a product of what comes before, and gives rise to what comes after.

Biology itself, as mentioned, is also vaguely defined, so much so as to be useless.  If by biology we mean “genetics,” then the two assumed categories of XY men and XX women are insufficient to explain the other chromosomal configurations which produce perfectly valid people who are still considered men and women.  If we instead mean to refer to, say, menstruation and pregnancy as necessary identifiers of womanhood, then sterile women and women who do not menstruate could not count; yet, we still consider them to be women.  If, again, we mean gonads, then there are people with both sets, or gonads that do not match what is expected by their secondary sex characteristics.  For every biological definition anyone has put forth, one can find plenty of examples of people for who that definition is inconclusive.  These indistinct definitions leave these people having to defend their identity; if biological differences were so clear, these defenses would not be necessary.  Furthermore, biological definitions of sex are not consistent—what is implied physically by ‘woman’ or ‘man’ is not consistent between people or between periods in history.  The notion of sex, like gender, is a product of its time.

The notion of fundamental sexual difference, that is, biology determining society and morality, is not even very old in the first place.  It is a relatively new idea.  The two-sex model was predated by the Galenic one-sex model, asserting women as an ‘inversion’ of men, lacking ‘vital heat’.  That is to say, women were defined by their lack.  There was an inherent essence of ‘manhood’ that defined men positively, as possessing an innate characteristic which made them men; it would not be until the advent of the two-sex model that “science” would come to regard women and men as biological categories.  Notably, these categories purported to explain the dominant social phenomena regarding men and women (sexism, to be blunt) as a natural consequence of biology.  In short, the notion of ‘biology’ was used to justify existing systems.

This is, as many Marxist-Leninists (and even non-communists, to be fair) understand, the role of the intellectual class as they are employed by the ruling class in any class society; the legitimization of the existing system through science, religion, philosophy, and so on.  While any given intellectual may not do this, the ruling class always rewards those who work in this way.  Ideas which uphold the system upon which the ruling class justifies their existence and maintains their supremacy are rewarded and propagated; ideas which contradict these are suppressed if they are discovered, else they are left to eke out a minimal acceptance in society at large.  Intellectual output is not totally neutral, and often has this incentive from above to support the system.  This output also has a large role in generating the “common sense” of the day; that is, common sense is simply the default, shaped at least in part by the ruling class, in absence of personal experience which contradicts it.  This is how one should look at the biological determinist perspective; the science does not support it, and the idea did not even come around until fairly recently in human history.

II. Division of gender is division of labor

Anthropological studies strongly contradict the notion that labor had always been divided in a gendered way.  That is, it disputes Engels’ notion that procuring the necessities of life (read: productive labor) was the role of the man, and that this had simply always been the case.  Instead, productive and reproductive labor was more equally spread among all members of early human societies.  The family as we know it had not even begun to materialize, as mating was only very loosely restricted at the time.  Monogamy was nowhere close.  In this sense, women taking on more of the reproductive labor makes some sense, as it was impossible to know for certain who one’s father was—but it was certain who the mother was.  However, this does not imply that reproductive labor was always relegated to the women; as stated above, anthropological studies demonstrate that labor was much more equally divided in early humanity’s development.

Even as recently as feudal Europe, women had not yet been forced fully into their current subservient role.  While the old matriarchal system of lineage had or was giving way to patriarchal lineage, women still had some degree of autonomy with regards to their access and ownership, limited as it may have been, to the means of subsistence and production.  Men had gained the right to pass property down to their own children, but he did not own it in the sense we think of today.  In other words, men had changed how property was passed down, but not fundamentally how property was owned, which was still collectively, by the family.  He could not yet leverage this state of things into a totally dominant class position.

‘Traditional’ gender roles as we understand them had not yet crystallized at the time when the rising bourgeois classes in feudal society were, crudely speaking, privatizing all the land and means of production.  They were transforming common property into private property, into capital; in doing so, they were depriving the peasantry of access to this property and relegating them to wage labor.  This was a marked difference from the old system, by which a family (not to be confused with the modern “nuclear” conception of the family) could reasonably accumulate additional wealth in their usage of this common property.  The upcoming bourgeois classes sought to appropriate this property, and the surplus that was generated through labor done on “their” property would also be appropriated.

Obviously, this upset the peasantry.

This is not to say that feudal society was egalitarian in any sense of the word.  What is important here is to see the transition from early man’s communal, roughly egalitarian distribution of productive and reproductive labor, to today’s gendered roles dividing “masculine” productive labor from “feminine” reproductive labor.  This transition necessarily implies a transformation at some point from the unity of production and reproduction to the division of production and reproduction.  Thus, gender roles cannot possibly extend back indefinitely in humanity’s past.

The crystallization of the basis for this distinction happened generally during the period of primitive accumulation mentioned above.  The peasantry, now stripped of the commons they had been accustomed to, resisted this change, and the rising bourgeois classes had to divide the peasantry against itself.  The creeping changes towards patriarchal systems of lineage and inheritance had given men leverage over women, but not yet total control.  Backed up by religious institutions, sweeping attacks against women’s control over their reproductive capabilities were made.  This coincides with the witch hunts of the 15-1600s and it was through this process that reproductive labor was divested from productive labor in its entirety.

The bourgeois classes, which were emerging out of the feudal society of the time, needed laborers to work on their property.  While before, as mentioned, families would keep the surplus wealth produced by their labor, now the bourgeois classes would appropriate that surplus.  Only productive labor, labor which would now generate surplus value for the bourgeois classes would be of any value to them.  Reproductive labor—child rearing, housekeeping, etc—produces no surplus value, and as such is worthless to capital.  However, reproductive labor is obviously not something you can do away with as a society.  This task had to be assigned to someone, and women were the gender created by class society that would be responsible for this “worthless” reproductive labor.

This is obviously not to say that women were created by capitalism.  However, the gender—the set of expectations, their role—was crystallized in this transition phase.  The role of reproductive labor was to now support the man’s productive labor; productive labor, in turn, was now in service of the bourgeois classes and their desire to accumulate wealth.  By turning women and men against one another, whether through accusations of witchcraft or other diabolic practices, the rising bourgeois was able to defuse the resistance by dividing productive labor, which it valued, from reproductive labor, which it found worthless, and privileging men with the “right” to earn subsistence from “their” property.  Women, on the other hand, were made dependent on the earnings of men, and were not compensated for the very real work they were doing.  They were reduced to supporting the working men.

In other words, men became the “breadwinners”, while women became the “housekeepers”.

III. The function of the divide within capitalism

In the previous section, I briefly laid out the evolution of gender roles.  While a crude approximation, it lays out the idea that the unity of production and reproduction gave way to the separation of the two, and that women were saddled with the latter, along with some general reasons for the selection of women for this role.  Additionally, it is possible to begin to see gendered oppression in capitalism as not just an unfortunate remnant of a darker time, but as a foundational contradiction within capitalism.  Sexism is not a vestige, it is a feature.

It is one thing to see the gender binary as inherent to capitalism, but what is its function?  In the last section, I laid out the basic antagonism.  In order to retain control over the means of production, and therefore economic supremacy, it was necessary to pacify the large majority of the population by turning them against one another.  By state-sanctioned violence against women, women were forced into the economically subordinate position of unpaid reproductive labor in support of men’s productive labor.  This set men into the economically privileged position, effectively ‘bribing’ them into complicity with the bourgeoisie.

Antagonisms such as this one are how bourgeois society keeps workers fighting each other instead of challenging the capitalist system; by effectively “layering” exploitation, some parts of the working class benefit from the worse exploitation of the people below them, creating an economic incentive to defend the status quo.  This arrangement is then legitimized by religion, science, and other parts of the societal superstructure to provide an additional social incentive to maintain one’s designated position in society.  Without antagonisms like these, (race is the another major antagonism among the working class) the working class would quickly ascertain the nature of their collective exploitation and turn against the bourgeoisie.

Additionally, as stated before, capitalism only values certain kinds of labor.  Only labor that can increase the value of existing capital is valued by the bourgeoisie.  Labor which only maintains itself, that is, reproductive labor, has no direct value to capital.  Reproductive labor itself can be thought of in two major ways: the daily “maintenance” of existing labor, that is, ensuring the continued capacity of existing laborers to perform labor; and the generational replacement of laborers by way of child-birth.  This labor is necessary for the continued existence of the working class that capital requires, but it is reduced to ‘natural’ work that merits no direct compensation, and it is women as a whole who are expected to perform this labor.

However, this supporting labor does have a cost.  The economic unit of capitalism is not the individual, after all; it is the family as a whole.  Man, wife, and children all require basic subsistence, at a minimum, in order to reproduce the labor power that is valuable to the capitalists.  The wage the traditional bread-winning working man receives must therefore also pay for the continued subsistence of his entire family.  This was not always the case; early industrialization replaced costly men with cheap women and children.  This system could not last, however; the long hours and dangerous conditions threatened the reproduction of labor power by pulling women and children out of the family home and killing them off at an alarming rate.

This exploitation was an attack on the entire class as a whole, but labor-aristocratic leadership convinced many men that their jobs were instead being threatened by the employment of the traditionally subservient women and children of the family unit, rather than the attack by capitalism upon the working class as a whole.  The aforementioned family wage rectified this problem in a way that was suitable to capitalism; the man was put back in his ‘rightful’ place as head of the family, and the wages he earned were now sufficient to ensure that women could return to domestic servitude without worry.  This element of sexism, as that sense of being ‘master of the house’ can be thought of as the replacement for property that would have ensured his control in previous modes of production.

In this way, women’s societal role as the gender responsible for the reproductive labor can be made more specific; it is her role to perform this duty within the family as a unit.  This is where the specific distinction between the role of women and men under capitalism can be brought to light; as stated before, she bears the responsibility of reproducing labor power.  This reproduction of labor power, while indeed being labor itself, is not labor that produces value, and therefore cannot produce surplus value.  Her labor is not governed by this law of value because it must be done regardless of the current demand for labor power, as this labor is necessary for survival.

She is, therefore, not exploited by capital in the strictest sense.  She does produce use-value in the home, but her labor is removed from direct participation in value production (what I have called ‘productive labor’) with regards to capital.  It is in this way that her assigned role is an oppressive one—she is reliant on her husband’s direct participation with value production to acquire the means of subsistence from him.  Obviously, women do perform wage labor in capitalism, often for poor wages or only in part-time employment, but she is saddled with the burden of providing domestic, reproductive labor in addition to the wage labor she performs.  It is the notion that her immediate priority is domestic labor, rather than wage labor, that capitalism takes advantage of in these circumstances.

In addition to this, women’s societal obligation to perform domestic labor, often at the expense of productive wage labor, serves another function within capitalism: its need for unemployment.  Unemployment serves not only to ensure a “reserve” supply of labor power in times of crisis, it also serves to create competition between workers, which gives a strong incentive to workers to accept poorer wages and conditions lest they be replaced by someone else who will.

While this does not cover the function extensively, it is sufficient to see the basics upon which the entire sexist system of oppression is formed.  Of note is that capitalism needs to maintain this system so as to suppress the idea that it is society’s responsibility to provide this service rather than women; however, it is also constantly subjecting the family unit to upheaval. It both requires the family as a unit, but wants no part in sustaining it economically; it needs women to take up the burden of sustaining work rather than make demands of the bourgeoisie to provide these services to her and her family.

The fundamental contradiction, as with all others in any class society, must be papered over with ideology that masks the contradiction so as to prevent consciousness within the exploited class(es) of people.  Gender roles, in this sense, are that ideology that sustains the family as a unit which is necessary for the exploitation by capital, and the ideology that exploits women by chaining them to the drudgery of domestic labor.

IV. How LGBT+ people cross the divide

Once you accept the formation of gender roles as constructs beneficial to capitalism, and understand their basic function within it, it is possible to demonstrate the connection of LGBT+ persons to this construct.  Specifically, LGBT+ persons, in some way or another, directly challenge either the gender roles inherent to capitalism, or the normative sexuality it imposes.

Gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and any other persons with non-heteronormative sexualities confront this by defying the traditional gender roles within their relationships.  (They may also defy these roles individually, but this is the more notable point of defiance for our purposes.)  For instance, a relationship between two men necessitates that at least one of them defies the traditional role of producer.  In a relationship between two women, similarly, at least one of them must defy the traditional role of homemaker.  This challenges the necessity of gender roles; if this couple can do well enough for themselves while rejecting the heteronormative gender roles that define the concept of the modern family, how necessary are these roles?  This is a direct blow to the ideology which props up the gendered division of labor by demonstrating that these roles are, effectively optional, which weakens the superstructure that sustains these gender roles against the interests of proletarians (and the proletariat as a whole, for that matter).

Transgender individuals defy gender roles in a similar way, but on the individual level; they reject the role specifically assigned to them.  In their rejection of their assigned gender, they reject the role thrust upon them corresponding to that gender; either the role of producer or the role of reproducer.  Assigned-male-at-birth trans people are damaging to the patriarchal system by rejecting this ‘manly’ role, which throws the dividing line into question.  Similarly, assigned-female-at-birth trans people damage this by ‘usurping’ (which I mean here in the driest possible sense) the role of men in patriarchy.  Non-binary trans folk pose an additional challenge to gender roles; they cannot even be reconciled with the gender binary.  All trans people therefore challenge the ideology surrounding gender roles by discarding their assigned gender role, in part or in whole, and some even discard the notion of gender altogether.

Additionally, asexual individuals challenge gender roles by refusing in some way to participate in the generational reproductive cycle; they do not form relationships and sustain families (and therefore produce future labor power) in the way that the capitalist system requires.  They also reject the ‘compulsory’ nature of normative sexuality, demonstrating that the desire to rear children and/or even the desire for sex at all is not universal.

The common thread that ties all LGBT+ people together is their collective challenge to normative gender roles and sexuality that capitalism relies upon.  While individual LGBT+ people may not challenge these significantly, or only bits of one or the other, collectively, LGBT+ people throw the necessity of these systems and all their associated baggage (appearance, behavior, etc) into question.  This poses a threat to capitalism, which relies upon these systems (among other systems of oppression like racial oppression) to sustain itself.  The most important takeaway is that the source of LGBT+ oppression is the same source as women’s oppression.  These struggles only appear to be disconnected when the class element and systemic analysis of capitalism is omitted.

PART TWO—Rebuttal to the CPGB-ML

With this, the connection between the LGBT+ struggle and the class struggle as a whole is established.  While not an exhaustive proof, the link is clear enough between the two, and we can move on to tackling the CPGB-ML, and by extension, those that hold similar views.  Additionally, while the link between the class struggle and LGBT+ struggle has been established, LGBT+ oppression and its sources have ramifications beyond simple class issues; they intersect with imperialism, racism, and other struggles that must also be vigorously opposed by any communist person or party.

-Considering the previous, in what ways is the CPGB-ML et al deficient in their stances on trans rights/idpol? (fetish of the average worker and class reductionism, rejection of grassroots in favor of broad appeal, failure to apply dialectics in favor of vulgar materialism/idealism, simple strategic failure to ally with oppressed peoples,  etc)

-Conclude: What is the role of both communists and the LGBT community on this front?

I. Marxism is not vulgar materialism

The most notable of the failures of the CPGB-ML is their dismissal of not only identity politics, but of the theory they profess to hold so dear.  They make many references to material reality, materialism, and even make occasional mention of dialectics, but make no effort to utilize dialectics (or even materialism in some cases) in their analysis of LGBT+ issues.  Indeed, analysis of any kind, when it is done, is done in only the crudest possible fashion, without actually engaging with the history of LGBT+ struggles.  No effort is made to engage with the established research nor to perform research of their own; they simply assert that what is commonly accepted as ‘reality’ itself serves the function of a materialist analysis.  But of course, we are not materialists, we are dialectical materialists—our understanding of what is material must be mediated through history.  Without engaging with the history at all, can you arrive at anything other than idealistic, and therefore deficient understandings?  Lewis Hodder writes,

“Members of the party have praised ‘realism’, assuming that reference to what is ‘real’, ie material, fulfils the function of negation and of dialectical materialism itself. Yet, this does not come up against anything that exists but merely seeks to replicate it and keep things as they are; in assuming that it has established a natural history, it looks at the end product of the development of material conditions within capitalism and seeks to maintain it on the pretence of fighting idealism and supposes that it has established a positivist science out of dialectical materialism.”

In essence, the party has reduced Marxism to vulgar materialism.  Assumptions are not grounded in research, they do not perform any of their own.  They do not contemplate and expose the contradictions withing LGBT+ struggles, there are simply assumed to be none of note.  Marxist theory alone does not provide answers to these questions; it is only a tool for analysis.  Without researching the contradictions of capitalism, Marx himself would have never been able to write Capital; it was only through reckoning with the development of capitalism through the lens of dialectical materialism that he was able to discern its workings and offer an insightful analysis of it.

For example, in “The reactionary nightmare of gender fluidity,” the speaker for the CPGB-ML says,

“Are ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ synonyms? Well they are synonyms, but a certain group of academics in the seventies in the United States decided that they weren’t synonyms. They were going to use ‘gender’ in their own way; they were going to use ‘gender’ to mean the social construct of behaviour surrounding what was expected of the biological differentiation among human beings (men and women).

But biological differentiation between male and female is a real thing. It doesn’t just exist in humanity, it exists in many species throughout the natural world.”

This is not a slip-up or simple glossing over of facts; this is a naked assertion that sex is ‘biological differentiation’, whatever that is supposed to mean, without justification.  Furthermore, is there any reason we ought not to differentiate between biology and behavior?  That this is ridiculous to them insists they hold that sex and gender are unified, that is, that biology and gender (along with all the expected behaviors that entails) are inextricably linked.  A cursory search of the existing research, or even the relevant historical science, would reveal that this is not only untrue, but a relatively new concept, as I demonstrated near the beginning of this piece.

The CPGB-ML cannot move past this “common sense” understanding of sexuality and gender.  The belief that men and women are immutable biological categories, that their expected behaviors are direct products of the differences between these categories; these are simply elevated to principle.  However, we cannot simply assert that this is true; we must, as has been repeatedly stated, engage with the material through theory.  They dismiss the research off-hand as the product of some bourgeois academics, and conduct none of their own.  That this is pure arrogant idealism is not merely an insult being slung at the party: they openly reject the notion of even considering the distinction between sex and gender.

As Marxists, we cannot dismiss things out of hand and make assertions in place of hard research and study.  Having read Marx alone does not empower us to speak on specific issues; again, Marxism is simply a lens through which to examine material reality and construct a coherent narrative.  Without doing that examination, you cannot hope to arrive at a useful, much less accurate understanding of reality.  The CPGB-ML makes this clear; by refusing to engage in this careful analysis, they end up siding with evangelicals in their conception of LGBT+ people!  Though we get the benefit of a through-gritted-teeth acknowledgment, they refuse to stand with us; we are to be contented with “equal rights” as a natural consequence of socialism.  One need only to refer to Cuba or the Soviet Union to understand how “natural” LGBT+ rights are under socialism.  These rights must be actively campaigned for by challenging the institutions that withhold them, and the CPGB-ML flatly refuses to do so.

II. The obsession with the ‘average worker’

There is also a very class reductionist element at play within the party.  Several articles devote no small amount of time dismissing issues of identity in favor of a broad-base appeal to the working class as a whole.  Only strictly class issues are given much attention, as it is asserted that the working class can only be appealed to on the basis that “an injury to one is an injury to all.”  One need only consider history to see that this approach has never worked; this approach does not challenge the divisions present in society, and it is obvious to see that this approach never can.  Only when the people have been connected to the broader working class through their own experience can they understand their place within it and begin to develop a class consciousness; without making this connection from their place within society to the class struggle first, they will not see themselves as part of the class as a whole.

Even the CPGB-ML’s own iconography represents this, to a degree: the hammer, representing the urban industrial worker, and the sickle, representing the rural peasantry.  When Lenin appealed to the peasantry, did he simply appeal to them as workers?  Did he do this for the industrial workers in the same way?  He did not; he appealed to them by connecting their respective grievances to the greater struggle against capitalism.  This is the important part; one must actually acknowledge the differences within the working class and engage with these particulars before the working class can be united.  There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building consciousness.  People do not see themselves as in the same boat as others; capitalism has trained them not to.  It is true that the class struggle is the critical struggle that we must all actively participate in, however, this struggle takes on a variety of forms that must be shown to be just reflections of the class struggle.  Declarations do not convince people, demonstrations do.

Their insistence that the ‘average worker’ will reject them if they were to support trans people is also a puzzling stance to take.  Are we to believe that communist movements are built by simply appealing to the sensibilities of the working class?  Are we chasing votes or are we building a revolution?  What are we doing if not challenging the misconceptions that keep us in servitude?  By working to mirror this caricature of the working class as closely as possible, they just replicate the most reactionary elements within their own party.  That this caricature is ultimately just a vision of what they think the working class ought to be, is evident when you consider how consistently this vision of the working class lines up perfectly with their unwillingness to engage with LGBT+ struggles and their broad-appeal rejection of grassroots practice.  Their supposedly objective vision of society ordains them as the vanguard party; that the working class will come to them is treated as a given.

III. The intersection of LGBT+ and other oppressive systems

Capitalist nations have not contented themselves with the exploitation of their own people.  Imperialism, often called the highest stage of capitalism, has its fingers around the entire globe.  Where it may use a softer grip in the mother country, in its colonies and semi-colonies, brutal exploitation generates super-profits which are used to provide luxury commodities for the homeland.  Oppression is intense in these subjugated nations, and what would be considered unthinkable brutality here is the norm there.  In addition, racial oppression divides even the working class of the mother country.  In the United States, for example, African slaves were brutally exploited, along with the indigenous peoples in the “New World”, in order to serve the white settler-colonial nation; an exploitative relationship that continues largely unabated to this very day.  In these cases, the imperialist power imposes its own norms upon the native populace, destroying their own norms and culture.  Criminalizing “deviant” behavior paves the way for the imperialists’ oppressive systems by force.

These peoples are subjected to the imperialist power’s standards of beauty and behavior, the imperialist power’s religion is imposed upon them, and all attempts by the colonized peoples to retain their own sense of identity is savagely repressed with state-sanctioned violence.  This happens not only abroad, but at home, where racial minorities are subjected to white standards.  It hardly takes any time to find an example of, for instance, a black woman’s womanhood being questioned on spurious grounds.  Examples of repression of indigenous peoples’ familial structures, sexual practices, gender expressions, and so on are commonplace.  The Indian hijra under British imperialism, homosexuality of some indigenous American peoples under Spain’s genocidal practices—take even the example of Caster Semenya for a contemporary example of racialized misogyny.

Deviations by non-white people in the imperialist powers of today from Eurocentric ideals about gender and sexuality are not tolerated.  While the superficial justifications may vary in any case (religious objections and conflicts abound), the result is that the gender roles and compulsory heteronormative sexuality under capitalist society is imposed upon the colonized peoples—often violently, especially in the Third World.  The CPGB-ML has asserted that the 

“western imperialist bourgeoisie has suddenly discovered and embraced gay and transgender rights, which only yesterday it was vigorously opposing… the advantage to the bourgeoisie of its newly-discovered enthusiasm for gay rights is that it can use them to castigate oppressed countries who stick to traditional religious prejudices...”

This preposterous statement implies that they have somehow failed to notice that the western imperialist bourgeoisie has far more often castigated oppressed countries for sticking to traditional sexual and gendered practices that defy heteronormative gender roles and sexuality.  That Saudi Arabia is spared our unholy gay bourgeois wrath has everything to do with Saudi Arabia’s ruling class generally co-operating with the imperialist United States and nothing to do with “enthusiasm for gay rights” the bourgeois has supposedly developed over the last 40 years.  This enthusiasm does not exist; it is an illusion that is created by elevating the preconceived notion of LGBT+ rights as “bourgeois ideology” into a principle, and applying that to their analysis of capitalism and imperialism.  This blinds the party to the very real oppression abroad and how it compounds with racial oppression at home, a blindness that could be alleviated by engaging critically with the “material reality” that they appeal to so often.

This serves to show that a rejection of identity wholesale in favor of crude, purist notions of class inevitably produces a deficient analysis of capitalism and imperialism.  There is not just ‘the working class’, it is a diverse group whose members face differing kinds of oppression.  This oppression still comes from capitalism itself, which liberal identity politics does not recognize; however, the oppression is directed along lines of identity, which the CPGB-ML does not acknowledge with respect to LGBT+ rights.

IV. Strategic failures as a result of bad theory

The preceding sections provide examples of the deficiency of the CPGB-ML’s stances.  These stances, being built on shaky, idealistic foundations, are divorced from the theory that is foundational to Marxism-Leninism; they do not provide accurate assessments of the struggles they speak authoritatively about.  Beyond this, these stances also affect the strategy the party employs in its efforts to build class consciousness, and by extension, revolution.

I have already touched on the first strategic failure; that is, the refusal to go grassroots in favor of a broad-base approach.  By this, I mean that the party restricts themselves to appealing only to the working class as a whole.  I have already demonstrated the problem here, as well; workers must be engaged with on issues specific to them in order to bring them into the movement.  People form their understanding with the conditions in which they live, in combination with the ideology they hold.  The ideology they hold, by default, is typically bourgeois ideology in nature; this ideology must be challenged.  In this respect, the party’s stance on identity politics is correct: identity politics as an ideology is bourgeois in nature.  The problem with their approach to identity politics is that they also reject the underlying conditions which produces it, that is to say, they reject not only the ideology which shapes identity politics but the grievances of the people who ‘practice’ it.

The obvious problem here is that the grievances of these people are very real grievances.  The CPGB-ML’s rejection of these grievances stems from their inability or unwillingness to engage with the grievances directly; that is, they do not engage in any kind of analysis of the issues plaguing groups that practice identity politics.  Whether this is because of prejudice or ignorance, it is hard to say, and frankly kind of irrelevant.

However, to repeat: their rejection of the ideology behind identity politics is valid.  Their fault comes from only engaging with the superficial ideology and none of the material conditions underlying it.  While ‘idpol-ers’ hold both the ideology and grievances as legitimate, and the CPGB-ML denies the legitimacy of both, the truth is that the underlying conditions are valid (as I demonstrated to some degree in Part One), while the ideology is rotten.  By exposing the contradictions in the ideology, it would be reveal the deficiency of omitting the class element; in returning the class element to the struggles, these struggles are not denied, but justified and supported in the larger context of class struggle under capitalism.

It is this kind of dismissal that characterizes the entire CPGB-ML’s approach to building socialism.  By rejecting the opportunity to engage with the various underlying circumstances of workers directly, the opportunity to connect their distinct struggles to the larger class struggle is lost.  This direct engagement cannot be skipped over, and it cannot be done in broad strokes.  Whether it be challenging identity politics, or convincing white and black workers to unite as a class, without going to these people directly, engaging with their struggles, and connecting these struggles to one another by way of including the class element, the movement will never be able to take place.  When you engage in this broad strokes approach and refuse to get down and “do the dirty work” as it were, you fail to bring about the class consciousness required for revolution.

V. A brief critique of identity politics

This all being said, the last elephant in the room is identity politics itself.  I will specifically critique it on the LGBT+ angle, as it is more relevant to the piece.  However, the arguments here will more or less hold for any other struggle being carried out through the lens of bourgeois identity politics.

As Lewis Hodder writes in “Inside the last days of the CPGB-ML”, the problem with identity politics is that:

“This is the failure of identity politics, that the immediacy of identity is elevated into a principle; it is without concrete content and remains indeterminate, along with all of the contradictions that manifest itself from taking either race or gender as a self-evident apparition and the defining factor of oppression.”

This is to say, the problem with identity politics is not the validity of the underlying identities, which the CPGB-ML rejects as well.  The problem is that this “elevation” of identity into a principle is without justification.  This is where the CPGB-ML comes close to getting it right, in saying that it is idealism; liberal identity politics is idealistic.  Furthermore, this elevation of identity into principle also obscures the real source of oppression—bourgeois society’s need to maintain oppressive structures to maintain capitalism—by asserting that the identity itself is the crux of oppression.  It is this assertion that leads liberal identity politics down the road of reformism: they do not see their oppression as an inherent contradiction of the system, which does not compel them to challenge that system.

Instead, they content themselves with concessions, and long, arduous struggle to acquire them.  One of these concessions is that bourgeois members of these oppressed identities are given a modicum of power.  The problem of liberal identity politics, then, becomes this: the drive to overthrow the system is suppressed in favor of requesting limited participation in the system.  This is similar to the liberal clamor for “female CEOs”, in which success within the oppressive system is held up as a virtue.  It is clear to us that no amount of female CEOs or gay representatives will fix the true problem, but as identity politics can only associate identity with oppression directly, success in the system is treated as proof that the system is no longer (as) oppressive.  Of course, these bourgeois LGBT+ people are economically removed from the proletarian struggle; their economic interests, which require them to exploit the labor of the proletariat, suppress their identification with their proletarian LGBT+ fellows.

This granting of certain oppressed peoples the “privilege” of becoming an exploiter themselves gives them this economic incentive to oppose revolution, and content themselves with slow, marginal legal reforms, so as to not challenge their economic supremacy.  They are still LGBT+ themselves, no doubt: the problem is that by placing them in an economic position that relies on the exploitative system, they come to justify the exploitative system, and betray the best interests of the LGBT+ community as a whole.  Of course this is not a problem for capitalism: it is quite handy to have members of an oppressed group justify the system that keeps them oppressed in the first place.

Thus, our rejection of identity politics has to be along these lines: we must insist on the class element being of primary consideration in relation to our individual struggles, we must insist on the overthrow of the system and never content ourselves with meager reforms, and finally, we must never allow bourgeois members of our own communities to divert us from the path of revolution in order to prop up their own exploitative position.  We should see identity politics as a problem, to be sure; but it should also be an opportunity to connect disparate struggles to the larger struggle of capitalist class society, and by engaging with the underlying conditions unique to these various identities, we can create for them meaningful connection to that larger struggle.  Only through this engagement can we truly uncouple LGBT+ oppression, as well as all other oppressive systems, from opportunist tendencies within our movements and truly unite to create a society in which oppression can finally be ended.

CONCLUSION

In this essay, I have provided my justification for LGBT+ struggles as class struggles, and spoken of the deficiency of the approach of the CPGB-ML with regards to these struggles.  It is my hope that with this essay, I have demonstrated the need for communists to connect to the struggles of people directly; that communists must stand with oppressed people actively, and not merely passively accept them; that communists have a duty to engage with the scientific aspects of our ideology, and not merely the theoretical abstract aspects; and finally, that as communists, we cannot allow ourselves to become complacent, and must always subject ourselves to criticism, so that we never fall into the trap of assuming that the revolution will come to us.  It will only come when people can personally connect to the wider struggle, and to this end, it is our duty to stand with all oppressed peoples, to vigorously defend their struggles, and to bring their plight to the forefront of any action we take.  In this way only can we build the trust needed for the formation of a revolutionary proletariat, and finally bring about the overthrow of the system that exploits us all.

References

 1. Excerpt of a speech given by (person name) at the 8th Congress; this section about why gay rights is not a class issue according to the CPGB-ML. https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2019/04/20/news/why-gay-rights-is-not-a-class-issue/

 2. Excerpt of a speech given by (person name) at the 8th Congress; this excerpt about transgender people and gender fluidity https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2019/03/23/news/the-reactionary-nightmare-of-gender-fluidity/

 3. Excerpt of a speech given by (person name) at the 8th Congress; this excerpt about how “identity politics” supposedly divides the working class https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/12/07/news/the-only-thing-that-unites-us-is-class/

CPGB-ML Timeline

 1. Saturday 3 July 2004 – Party founded at Saklatvala Hall in Southall.  After expulsion from the Socialist Labour Party run by Arthur Scargill over clashes between the social-democrat wing and the Marxist-Leninist wing, some ex-SLP members create the CPGB-ML, citing the SLP’s support for the “imperialist Labour party” as one of the chief reasons for creating the new party.

 2. Monday 26 February 2018 – Red Fightback, another Marxist-Leninist organization in Great Britain, posts an article detailing their stance on LGBT oppression in capitalism.

 3. Early 2018 – Lewis Hodder, among others in the CPGB-ML, encounter resistance by the Central Committee regarding transphobia and homophobia within the party. Hodder is prohibited from attending the 8th Congress (see September entry, below)

 4. 4 June 2018 – CPGB-ML Twitter account links the above Red Fightback article, receiving a great deal of backlash in the replies.

 5. July-August 2018 – Hodder begins work on an essay attempting to “set a baseline of theory that would allow these problems [on trans/homophobia and other reactionary sentiments] to be overcome,” that would not be finished until April of the following year.

 6. September 2018 – CPGB-ML holds their 8th Congress, stating “five months of discussions and inner-party debate” in preparation, and that “Motions were submitted from around the country on housing, education, identity politics, racism, employment rights and a great many other issues...”

 7. CPGB-ML passes Motion 8 (see References document for full details) during their 8th Congress, enacting a rule that makes any “propagation of identity politics” grounds for expulsion from the CPGB-ML.

 8. Party founder and chair Harpal Brar steps down after 14 years, replaced by Ella Rule. Zane Carpenter and Joti Brar (daughter of Harpal Brar) elected as vice-chairs.

 9. October-December 2018 – Transcriptions of speeches given at the 8th Congress are posted in quick succession, all centering around identity politics and making frequent reference to LGBT rights.

 10. December 2018 – An article is posted briefly covering some changes to the party’s tactics and organization; of note, membership purges are admitted to in the then recent past.

 11. 29 April 2019 – Lewis Hodder (see above), now former CPGB-ML member, posts an essay entitled “Inside the last days of the CPGB-ML” on Ebb Magazine, citing clashes with the CPGB-ML Central Committee that resulted in his barring from the 8th Congress, and the resultant fallout from inter-party fighting in the middle of 2018.

This timeline is not totally complete: some articles and videos that were relevant to this have been deleted or are no longer available due to missing archives.  However, it serves to show the relatively brief, intense period of vicious transphobia and homophobia by the party—the developments and later purges of the part occur over the course of less than a year.

[thegeneralsnotebook]

May Feature: Manes That Scale

The recent change to the Block structure is a meaningful change in a whole bunch of ways. Most immediately, it adds a whole set, and a very good set at that, to the developing metagame of the new Block. Defenders rightly contains some of the most powerful cards in the game today, and it shakes up what was Beyond Block in a big way.

But for me, the change has instead brought up thoughts of what you might call “New Core”. Officially, it’s unknown where exactly the next set boundary is going to be defined at. It could be between Set 10 and Set 11, and that would make some sense given the current structure of 4-3-3. Or it could come a bit later, if circumstances dictate otherwise. We simply don’t know at the moment. But it seems safe to say that it’s probably coming a lot sooner as a result of this change. The new Block would cause only the second set rotation that this game has ever had, as Equestrian Odysseys, High Magic, and Marks in Time would no longer be legal in the Core Format. It will be a brave new day, rife with experimentation and ready to be conquered anew by whichever deck fights its way to the top.

The most natural thing to do might be to prognosticate about what decks or cards those might be, but instead I want to use this opportunity to talk about a concept that the rotation could demonstrate well: some Manes scale, while some do not. In this case, when I say scaling, what I mean is that the value and viability of some Manes depend on having a diverse set of cards that they can synergize with. The more cards that they have to work with, the better those Manes tend to be. Thus, as sets get added to a format, the Manes get more and more viable over time. With a set rotation coming up, knowing which Manes scale and which ones are static becomes very important.

Scaling is Something All Cards Can Do

All cards can be placed on a continuum between those with values that are mostly static to those with a value that mostly scales based on the size of a certain card pool. The classic example of a scaling card, one that I keep coming back to over and over in this blog, was Eff Stop. Infamously, that card got better and better every set as the pool of Events grew larger and larger. Another great example is Interdimensional Portal, which was just fine when it first came out, but also scaled with Enters the Board triggers, and went on to be the poster child for a whole family of decks in what is now likely its final form.

But I don’t want you to come away with the impression that scaling is something that every good card needs to have built into it. The history of the game is filled with static cards that were just as great. Getting back to the topic of Manes, two of the most prolific ones in the game’s history were both static cards: DJ and Ambassador AJ. While Applejack certainly scaled in a rather literal sense, the fact that she didn’t scale with a larger card pool can be concluded from the observation that her deck didn’t really change as new sets came out. Similarly, while DJ has been used in almost every kind of deck under the sun, we can’t point to a card pool that made her better as it grew. Every deck that’s included her has done it for the same reason: exhaust to draw is really good.

So, with the set rotation probably just around the corner, identifying which Manes in the new Defenders Block mostly scale and which are mostly static carries with it some interesting information. This is because the scaling ones will probably be hurt when they lose access to three sets worth of card pool, while the static ones have the potential to keep on doing fine. Over the course of the new releases, though, it will be the scaling Manes to watch out for, as each new set offers them another chance to climb the ladder. So, let’s see what the Defenders Block Manes have to offer.

Blue

Rainbow Dash, Wonderbolt -- Static

For the most part I’m not going to say all that much about the static cards, because it’s pretty self-evident why that’s the case. It always comes down to one question: is there a certain type of card that, should we have more of it, this Mane would get better? And with Rainbow here the answer is no. That’s not to say, by the way, that the Mane itself won’t fluctuate in popularity and viability as things change. New cards will impact the kind of decks that Wonderbolt will find itself in, but the card itself will not be seeing its value change.

Captain Celaeno, Swashbuckler -- Scaling

Remember what I said above, that static versus scaling goes on a continuum? To some extent almost all cards scale at least a little bit, in that you can usually name a card type that will help them out. For example, even Rainbow up above will scale based on Starting Problems that are easy to confront because that will make her early game easier. But I don’t find that particularly worth mentioning because it’s not a huge part of what makes the card tick. Celaeno is mostly the same, except for the fact that her whole viability right now rests on ways to flip her back to Start, and the existence of that pool will impact her a lot.

Gallus, Full of Surprises -- Scaling

Triggers are a fine place to start if you’re looking for cards that scale. A trigger necessarily scales with cards that can trigger it, and Gallus is no different. The size of the pool of Hasty Friends and Immediate-speed Events that he can draw on directly impact the value that this Mane can bring to the table.

Orange

Applejack, Tooled Up -- Static

While here we have an activated ability that can only come up in certain circumstances, I wouldn’t really say that Applejack scales based on the number of cards that can create those circumstances. The ability to start lots of faceoffs might make sure that you can use AJ’s ability every turn, but unless those faceoffs are important they probably won’t get you much.

Grubber, Royal Announcer -- Static

I can save some time here by saying that the Seaquestria Manes are by and large static purely by design. Each of them is predicated on the idea of getting a big effect once, and maybe once or twice more over the course of the game. There aren’t usually that many conditions or interactions necessary to get there. It’s true that this Mane recently got a big boost thanks to Fume, but a one-card interaction is a combo, not a scaling effect. We would literally need more Fumes for this card to scale on anything.

Smolder, Culture Shock -- Scaling

Smolder I’m willing to throw into the scaling category because hand attack is a real thing, and the fewer cards your opponent has in hand, the more her ability is going to hurt. Thus, like all scaling Manes, in New Core Smolder is going to care a lot about whether her hand attack cards from the old Block get replaced.

Pink

Pinkie Pie, Cruise Director -- Static Princess Skystar, Out of Her Shell -- Static Silverstream, Everything’s New! -- Static

We can actually make some interesting points by considering all of these cards together. Firstly that, as I mentioned above, being static versus being scaling isn’t a judgement about whether a card is good or bad. Within this list we have one Mane that’s great, one that’s terrible, and one that’s merely on the good side of average. And neither of those stands to change much as new cards get added, which is unfortunate for Pinkie, I suppose. Silverstream’s decks could stand to benefit a lot though, which goes to show that just because a Mane doesn’t scale doesn’t mean that it’s consigned to its initial spot in history. But even so, expect that if Silverstream does break into the really big time, she’ll still be doing the same thing that she is now. Because her value to her deck is not going to change.

Purple

Princess Twilight Sparkle, Professor Sparkle -- Scaling

Twilight lives and dies by her AT supply, so I couldn’t honestly say that she isn’t going to scale up and down as time goes on. If more sources of AT keep getting added to the game, then naturally Twilight is going to benefit from them.

Tempest Shadow, Storm Commander -- Scaling

Tempest is in a really strange position on here, because while purely based on design we can say that Tempest absolutely should scale, I can also say with a lot of confidence that she’s not going to scale. Tempest’s early game is almost certain to always look the same, and she scales based on how much value she can get out of her Troublemaker. Yet as we probably all suspect, Tempest and Grubber are going to be joined together at the hip until they both rotate out together. And honestly I think that’s a bit of a shame, because this card could have been really cool if the choice of which Troublemaker to pair with it had ever been a difficult one.

White

Rarity, Fashion Mogul -- Static

For some of these cards there isn’t all that much to say, and unfortunately for Rarity she’s one of them. To some extent, it’s possible that some of these static cards actually do scale, and it’s just that no one’s figured out how yet. But from a straightforward analysis it’s tough to see what sort of interaction this card is going to leverage if it’s going to get ahead. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, after all, it’s that there’s no accounting for what the opponent is going to do.

Capper Dapperpaws, Charmer -- Scaling

Capper better hope that there’s some scaling up in his future. For this Mane the math is pretty simple. As things currently stand about 58% of the cards in Core have even Power, and if that ratio keeps up this Mane’s absolute power is going to be related to the number of cards available on a fairly linear relationship. Yet there’s plenty of room above his current position, so I guess there’s gotta be hope, right?

Ocellus, Knowledge is Power -- Scaling

Ocellus is actually the Mane which inspired me to write this article in the first place, because while she’s not in a particularly great spot in the current Core metagame, this card scales hard. All it needs is cards that have higher Power than Cost, and nearly every set has some of that. It’s one of the reasons why I’ll always have this card in the back of my mind for New Core. It’s likely to get shellacked a bit on the rotation, but something tells me that a few Sets on Ocellus will certainly have her day.

Yellow

Fluttershy, Nurturing Nature -- Scaling

The fact that Fluttershy scales is actually kind of scary. You wouldn’t necessarily know it by lookingat what she’s been up to lately in constructed Core play. To some extent that’s because her pool of scaling cards is huge: there are Problems that are easy to confront and also cards that work to make her more powerful. Both of them are Yellow mainstays, so it seems safe to say that even if Fluttershy gets whacked a little by the rotation, she’ll be back with a vengeance soon enough, and it won’t be long before she’s all of the way back on the top.

Thorax, The Changed Changeling -- Scaling

Unlike Ambassador Applejack, Thorax is a great example of a card that scales both literally and figuratively. Like Fluttershy above, Thorax has a really large pool of cards to work with, just any card with printed Power of two or less will do. That pool is unavoidably going to grow larger as new sets get released, and isn’t likely to get reduced too far even after the rotation. Interestingly enough, Thorax doesn’t have a particularly high static value. His power comes almost entirely from synergizing with his scaling cards. But the vastness of that pool seems likely to turn him into a formidable force in New Core.

Queen Novo, Sea Sovereign -- Static

And unfortunately, we end off this list with something of an anticlimax. Novo really is more of the same Seaquestria territory trodden over again. It’s true that to some extent she’ll scale based on ‘on-move’ triggers, as those will make her flipping over into a much more impactful event. Already we’ve seen based on Beyond Block that flipping her early wasn’t a necessary course for a good game strategy. Yet I wouldn’t say that this modification will be enough to fundamentally change her value to the decks that might want to use her.

Conclusion

As I said at the top of the article, it’s still a mystery as to when exactly New Core is going to arrive. It could come as early as Set 11, or at the latest probably after Set 12. I can’t imagine it possibly lasting longer than that. Once that comes around, everything that we thought we knew about Core is going to change. Hopefully, by looking at this list and by how things develop with the new set, it will be easier for you to identify the dark horses, the Manes that might not stand out right away, but will surely gain in power and viability as the new rotation moves on.

[theculturedmarxist]

Gas the bikes, race war now. Or, Race and Racism as an Historical Process: A Rope of Sand

Racism is not simply a set of beliefs or behaviors which must be discontinued or inhibited. This is a bourgeois conception of racism, which portrays it as a malformed idea as such. If systemic racism is recognized, it is rendered as a malformation within, but not of, the system, which needs must be preserved to facilitate bourgeois society. Ideas in themselves are impotent things. They must be animated by an individual or individuals in order to gain motive force. It’s this animation, this reification, that materializes the idea and places it into a social-historical context. This idea is no longer an idle abstraction, but becomes through its materialization and subsequent action and interaction with its context that creates the idea as a process.

Just as bureaucracy is a materialization of the idea state, so too is the Catholic Church a materialization of the idea of Christianity. Both are ancient concepts, in infancy simple theories for the organization of individuals and groups of individuals, that have through their development affected and been affected by the continuous process of history. A significant portion of humanity’s historical record is a vast library of business receipts. The persecutions of Diocletian; coronation of Charlemagne; the Inquisition: a litany of Christian events that turned the course of history.

Racism too is such a process. Through study, any process can eventually come to be understood to a greater or lesser degree, and with understanding comes a certain amount of predictive ability. Simple processes are easily predictable. You light a match and can assume with relative certainty that it will either burn until it consumes all of its fuel or will otherwise fizzle out. Historical processes tend to be vast, incomprehensibly complicated interactions of innumerable variables which are able to be understood in their entirety vanishingly rarely.

However, even knowing only some of the variables allows for a certain amount of extrapolation. Meteorological forecasting operates on a similar principle. Complex, global processes are studied with as much accuracy as science can allow, which is then translated into a predictive model. Sometimes it doesn’t rain when the model calls for rain. Tornadoes emerge with little warning. But still, for everyday use it suits our needs.

Every process reaches an inevitable conclusion. That does not necessarily imply a terminal point at which the process ends. Often throughout history the resolution is transformative, mutatis mutandis, or evolutionary. The so-called Fall of Rome not being a single, demonstrative event, but a many-centuries long process which caused new systems of social organization to arise where the old systems failed. Western Europe develops along a separate thread than the Byzantine East, two evolutionary paths with a common ancestor.

Racism the idea is a material fact in our society. Its roots are deep in the people and in the state which oversees them. As a system of processes in itself, racism grinds on towards its own inevitable conclusion. We have some idea what possibilities exist there at such a point, transitional, or terminal.

Through the lenses of the racist ideology, we know that:

People belong to discrete “races” determined by physical appearance.

These races have inherent differences which make them ultimately incompatible.

This incompatibility produces separate populations, which must be kept separate in order to prevent cultural and genetic pollution which produces strife. (I wonder if pollution shares a common root with other polis related cognates).

These physical manifestations of racial difference are indicative of superiority or inferiority regarding various traits within those discrete populations.

Inevitably, contact results in conflict, which ultimately ends in the enslavement and/or annihilation of one group or the other.

Whether or not these things are true, they are what people are made to believe in regards to the Hitlerite ideology of race. These are among the messages transmitted whenever the subject of race arises in the Bourgeois media. It is so entrenched that very few, even among Leftist circles, even questions the assumption that there is a fundamental, material difference between White and Black populations. “Asians,” “Mexicans,” “Blacks,” “Whites,” “Natives,” “Arabs,” “Jews,” and so on, aren’t just treated as separate cultural generalizations, but are conceived as being complete, entirely alien species from each other.

This is a reactionary Strasserite conception of our world. Instead of a material analysis of history, its foundations are the fantasies of a racist. It is a reactionary ideology which seeks to replace class struggle as the mover of history with the imaginary conception of race. It isn’t the fact of material accumulation and maintenance that drives history, but the mass delusion of the existence of some sort of “race” and the absurd prophecy of its eventual “perfection.” It’s nonsense, but the conceptual basis for it is the pacemaker regulating the heart of Bourgeois society.

The ultimate conclusion of this sort of ideology is a final, cataclysmic Race War in which the defectives are eliminated in favor of those destined for perfection (if they’re not perfect already).

This idea is in evidence prominently within the so-called “Alt Right.” It isn’t hard to look through any given gathering of these masterminds to find them positively slavering at the mouths. At last, those kike bastards will get what’s coming to them. We’ll finally put those niggers back in their place. The opening of the season on trannie degenerates will be declared a national holiday. Hail God Emperor Trump! For them, this isn’t some far-off prophecy. It’s a conflict in progress, and they’re a people under siege. Every time a cop guns down a black kid, it’s a celebration. Every Jewish massacre is a victory for the Nation.

Humans, in my opinion, tend generally to incline towards humanity, humaneness, towards avoiding conflict rather than seeking it. This isn’t a rosy estimation, but something we see among most animals in nature. Symbolic, ritualized violence is often a substitute for the death match. Even predators tend to kill out of need rather than blood thirst. Unrestrained violence is rarely productive for anyone involved, and often incurs great cost. For normal, healthy individuals, collaboration is preferred over conflict.

For the embryonic Fascists among the Alt-Right, they’ve discarded humanity in favor of death. This apocalyptic conflict isn’t an eventuality to be undone for avoided, but actively pursued. It isn’t an accident of circumstance, but a goal to achieve.

Even aside from this fanatical element, the idea of a coming Race War is gaining purchase generally. Unopposed by a Communist response, it will inevitably continue to develop, with society drifting toward that conclusion. The whole ideology of race and racism works towards this end. Race produces racial animosity, itself a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is a positive feedback loop, entrenching perceived divisions, antagonizing its captive constituents. It is corrosive to human and humanity alike.

I’ve been told before that I have a strange fixation on race. I suppose that might be true, because I think it is the principle ideology which must be culturally dismantled for Communism to develop. Even in the “best” of conditions, Racism is destructive. As the ongoing Capitalist crises intensify, Race and Racism can only become absolutely ruinous. I feel pretty secure in saying that, if it came down to some sort of racialized global conflict, “White People” would almost certainly win. It would be a holocaust of indescribable proportions too terrific in cruelty, too Cyclopean in scope to bear contemplating.

This doesn’t exist solely within the realm of possibility or conjecture. Arguably it’s already happening now. Like wounds festering the corruption will spread. It is already spreading.

However.

There is an inoculation to this plague. Communists know it. It has been a central element of Communism since the beginning. The principle of Internationalism is essential, essential. More than labor organization, more than minority liberation, more than the vilification of capital, the Bourgeoisie fears Internationalism the most of all. An international, class conscious proletariat is the death stroke to global capital. Even more than the last century or the one previous, technology like the Internet makes the development of a truly connected global proletariat a terrifyingly immediate potentiality to the bourgeoisie.

Race is the root from which racial animosity springs, and class consciousness strikes directly at that root. The actual, elective solidarity of class consciousness dispels the illusionary consanguinity of nation and race. Race is a sterile ideology that bears no lasting fruit. It rots and withers beneath the illumination of scientific Communism like a carcass in the sun. Its putrid memory doesn’t long remain. It fades with time and new life springs from its death. Nectar gathers instead of poison.

Without this development, racism and racialism, and their material manifestation and progress will continue unimpeded. Race war becomes an ever more likely result of our current circumstances. If it isn’t opposed and undermined with strenuous energy, the conclusion can only be anticipated with foreboding.

Class consciousness disrupts the material process of racism. The affirmation of our factual universal humanity, in opposition to the mythology of national and racial particularity, derails it, disperses it. It is the only environment in which Communism can truly develop and grow, one in which the old identities, roles, categories imposed on humanity by the past are disposed of. We have to kill the irrationality necessary for racism to exist so that rational solidarity, and from it Communist emancipation can develop in its place.

[cait-el]

Keith Analysis - Season 3

Pre S1E1 + Introduction / Season One / Season Two / Season Three / Season Four / Season Five

I highly recommend reading the rest of the posts in this series to get the most out of this! But here’s my take on Keith’s role in VLD Season three!

Season Three

Boy oh boy, does S3e1 have a lot to unpack. Let’s start at the very end of S2/ the beginning of S3 where we see Keith up in arms about the fact that Shiro is gone. By this point, I’ve already established that Shiro is as close to an actual family that Keith’s got, so of course he’s upset. Also, this upset of normal is just another nail in the coffin that is Keith’s sense of safety. He was finally feeling like he had a place on Voltron, then the whole half-Galra thing happened, and that was sort of solved in Allura’s apology, but with losing Shiro, Keith is losing his own sense of validity. Season 3 will be about re-establishing that in his own way, without Shiro there to back him. It’s a huge opportunity for character growth.

Brief Lance Note

Another really good scene in S3e1 is during the fight on Planet Puig with Lance, Hunk, and the Blade of Marmora. Firstly, we have Lance starting to feel the pressure of being the face of a team that’s falling apart at the seams. He’s supposed to be the glue of Voltron or the light-spirited one that keeps things happy. Now that Voltron can’t really form, he’s starting to feel that pressure now more than ever.

We also have discrimination against the Blade for being Galra, which is understandable, but demonstrative of systematic racism/oppression. No wonder Keith feels so lost; he’s literally at the center of all of that!

Back to Keith

This is the instance that I referenced at the very beginning of this whole thing where Keith says that he won’t give up on Shiro because Shiro was one of the only people that never gave up on him. I think that startles the other paladins a little bit because they’re finally realizing that Keith isn’t just some “lone wolf” who’s full of shit. Yes, he can be volatile, but he’s really hurting now, which is demonstrated when he blows up at the diplomacy dinner.

The most important part about Keith’s outburst is what happens afterwards – this will draw on a little bit of Lance’s development as well, so bear with me. At the very end of the episode, we have Keith staring at the black lion, with the other paladins standing awkwardly in the background. They all look to Lance, who is the first to step forward and tell Keith it’s alright to be hurting.

Pidge, Hunk, Allura, and Coran jump in with their own anecdotes about how they feel about suggesting to replace someone who seems irreplaceable, but it’s Lance tying everything together that makes Keith take a deep breath and decide that he’s being irrational. This is the first in a long arc in season three that establishes Lance and Keith’s relationship in a way that goes beyond just a romantic ship. I’m going to return to what I talked about in season one with Keith having a borderline crush on Lance, which I still stand by. In season one, it was all fun and games. In season two, Keith had a lot of his own stuff to worry about with the Blade, but he had Shiro to talk to about it, both the Galra stuff and the Lance stuff, so it didn’t seem as overwhelming.

Now that Shiro’s gone, Keith is looking for something to fill the rapidly growing void that’s sucking away his sense of validation and trust, and he’ll find it in Lance, but most importantly, in himself, and I’ll prove that with my analysis of the rest of S3.

And just for fun, here are my two cents on Lotor’s introduction

Lotor is one of my favorite characters for a few different reasons that are established in this episode. Firstly, he’s crafty. He had Ezor watch Throk, and then used that to call him out in front of the whole crowd. He’s the embodiment of the honest and martyr-like villain (which will play into his romance line with Allura later, but that’s not for a while) in that he preaches that what he does will be good for the universe because it fosters loyalty rather than fear. Secondly, he’s charismatic as all fuck. He’s the villain that says “okay, I’m going to write down everything I’m about to do on a piece of paper and give it to you. You’ll know my entire plan. Will that stop me from completing it? You can bet the fuck not.” And he’s right. Even I believed him! When I first watched it, I was like “yeah, okay, this guy could actually be a good king.”

And then, the kicker, he gives all this confidence to Throk, and then demotes him to the farthest reaches of the empire under the impression that he just got this huge promotion. That’s savage. Lotor is so good at what he does. I’m thrilled to see what he does next for the sheer cleverness of it.

Back to Keith/Lance – I’m just going to start referring to them jointly for now because here’s where they start to become super intertwined

Man, S3 literally has so much in the way of character development that I’m only on the second episode and I already have so much to say. Let’s start with the discussion of who should pilot the black lion while in the lounge of the Castle. Pidge points out that everyone has their “thing,” and she calls Lance the goofball, which he doesn’t take well to (remember S2e10). He calls himself a ninja sharpshooter, to which Keith responds with “is that a joke?” Honestly he probably shouldn’t have poked the dragon, but I do believe he meant it in a good way. His eyes were nice and he was smiling. Lance was just feeling particularly insecure at that moment. Payback for S1e6 when Lance totally invalidated Keith’s tiny advance. Ugh, boys.

Anyways, Lance says that he would never follow Keith as a leader in retaliation, which sparks an argument and triggers Keith to say “that’s just what Shiro wanted.” This puts Keith in kind of a tough spot; it’s not that he’s against piloting the black lion, he just doesn’t want to 1) undermine Shiro, who is his idol, and 2) he’s afraid he can’t be what everyone needs him to be – he can hardly be what he needs for himself. This is reflected in the moment where he actually enters the black lion. While everyone else was thinking of themselves (except Lance, but I’ll get to that in a second), what caused the lion to awaken for Keith was Keith saying (about Shiro) “I can’t lead them like you.” This is the beginning of Keith learning to respect himself outside of what others project on to him.

However, he still doesn’t want to accept it. This is where Lance comes in. Lance literally tried so hard to be the one to take up responsibility of the black lion, but not for himself. This becomes apparent when he yields to Keith. Everyone is appalled at Keith’s objection to the lion even though it chose him, except Lance. Lance steps up, puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder, and tells Keith he can do it. And Keith actually listens. This shows that Keith responds well to respect; he just doesn’t have a lot of it for himself yet.

When Keith actually goes to fly the lion for the first time, he does so by saying “this one’s for you, Shiro.” This hearkens back to the idea of Keith being a self-imposed martyr – he justifies doing things for himself through the lens of doing things for others. This will be the season that subverts that, though, which I will discuss once I get to the end of the episode.

Now back to Lance for a moment. Blue shuts him out (quick interlude for some cute headcanon: Lance has referred to his lion as male in the past, but in order to get Blue to open up, he hits on the lion like he would presumably hit on a girl, as he is so famous for. Does this provide evidence that Lance is bi? Maybe if you squint and tilt your head to one side. It’s something to think about anyways). Then, which lion calls to him? Red, of course! Lance being Keith’s right hand is really elevating their relationship – it plays perfectly into all of their other interactions. They’re a messy team, but a team all the same, and they each need the other to properly function.

Also, something that starts in this episode and will continue through S5 is Lance’s reflection of Alfor and Altean values. Keith is a reflection of Galran values; this has already been made abundantly clear. We’re just setting up another parallel between the two and further entwining their paths in some way. Also, more of Lance’s insecurities show when he’s actually considering that he may not even have a contribution to the team as he originally thought, that he might just be “the goofball.” This starts to show a self confidence issue that is far from being resolved. He’ll definitely need a little help with that one. Luckily, he’s just starting to form a relationship with a little emo boy who is legitimately built out of insecurities and MCR. It’s beautiful. One last thing about Lance in S3E2 is that he says at the end “sometimes what you want is not necessarily what you get,” and I think this is starting to reference his shift in viewing Allura as an object for romance to a friend and true teammate, which is something we’ll see more of in S4 and 5.

And finally, Keith grows a lot during that battle, especially towards the end when he makes that terrible decision and rockets off to track Lotor without consulting the team. But here’s the thing about that scene: Keith made that decision of his own accord and not because he was trying to emulate Shiro. His whole arc in S3 is learning how to accept himself as a valid leader, and this is just the beginning of that. While I want to whack him over the head with a stick for putting everyone else in danger, at least he’s trying.

And now, a word on Lotor in S3E2

Lotor, you mother fucker. First, he says “mercy has never been the way of the galra…until now.” Again with the craftiness! And his whole role in S3E2 was just to gather intel on Voltron by using their need to protect to draw them out and force them to work as a team. What he doesn’t realize, though, is in forcing the paladins to make up for their shortcomings, he’s acting as a foil to the whole team. Without being pressed by Lotor, Allura and Lance would have never figured out that they needed to pilot different lions. This is the beginning to a long storyline of Lotor and Voltron working together that doesn’t actually get played out until S5.

Back to Keith/Lance

S3E3 takes us to the first real instance of the new team of paladins working under Keith’s leadership, and it’s pretty much a mess from the beginning. What I appreciate about this episode is that it further develops the bond between Lance and Keith as a team and as people, starting with Lance’s immediate opposition to entering Thaeserix (the gas planet that fucks up everyone’s sensors.) We have Keith barreling through and getting everyone lost until Allura finally can’t keep up and gets separated. Everyone’s freaking out, and Lance is the one to tell Keith they need to go back, and he finally does. As demonstrated before, Keith listens to Lance before he listens to the others. This shows that Keith has some measure of respect for Lance.

They rescue Allura, but Keith is still all hot for battle and continues forward, getting the team separated even further until it’s just him and Lance. This is the first time where Keith actually admits that he messed up, and he hits a low point for a second. He voices his concern to Lance, who responds perfectly, saying “yeah, you fucked up. But hey, we’ll fix it together.” This is what inspires Keith to keep going, and the team can eventually form Voltron because Keith is actually starting to think like a leader, and not just because of the leader Shiro was. He’s starting to become his own leader. He couldn’t have done it without Lance.

My favorite part is the cute line at the end where everyone is ragging on Lance for being dumb (not true btw, Lance is very intelligent and kind, he just has some self confidence issues, so shame on the other paladins for taking advantage of that), and Keith says “I’m glad we’re all making fun of Lance, but we have a job to do,” or something along those lines. It’s the look in Keith’s eyes that gets me; he’s teasing Lance, but not in the same way as the others. He’s really grateful to have the blue paladin there for support. It’s a different type of support than he’s received in the past; from Shiro it was support of an upper, someone he idolizes and thus tries to emulate. From Lance, it’s support from an equal, so it’s an even stronger sense of self-validation, which is something that Keith really needs at this point.

A quick note: in the episode where they enter the alternate reality and find Sven and Slav, Keith all of the sudden has the black bayard and Lance has the red bayard. When did that happen? That seemed to come out of nowhere, but I think it’s an important thing to note, especially when we get to some of the symbolism in terms of the past paladins at the end of this season. This episode also has good evidence of Keith stepping into the leadership role, which he will continue to develop over the next few episodes. I’m also glad that Keith was able to find Shiro, but as I’ll discuss in the next few paragraphs, I think he senses that something is not quite right.

The Symbolism of 6

I’m about to discuss S3E6, but begore I get into that, I’d like to talk a little bit about the symbolism of the number six as it relates to Keith and Lance’s relationship. Coran says pretty early on that he’s ordered the paladins by height, most notably calling Pidge “number five.” He doesn’t ever refer to the other paladins by these number names, but that implies that they all have a number (and they all have pretty distinguishing heights). Shiro is the tallest and the leader; he’s number one. Lance is the next tallest; he’s number two. Then comes Hunk, then Keith. Keith is number four. What’s four plus two? Six.

I already talked at length about the importance of S1E6 to Keith and Lance, with this being the first instance where Keith realizes he may have feelings for Lance (the “I cradled you in my arms!” moment). In season two, the distinction isn’t quite as obvious, but we see Lance questioning Keith running off with Allura. Granted, this is probably canonically related to Lance’s “crush” on Allura (which I’ll discuss a little more come season four and five), but the fact that he’s asking if the two of them are together and he’s so bent up about Keith doing anything with Allura could be in reference to his conflicted rivalry feelings towards Keith in the first place. He probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s just as annoyed at the idea of Keith being with someone as he is at the idea of Allura being with someone (hint: he’s bi /like meeeee!/).

Anyways, now we have S3E6, which has, in my opinion, one of the most important Klance scenes so far (save maybe the pool scene, but that was just too too cute so does it really count?).

Season Three, Episode Six

We open from Lance’s POV as he’s acting sniper for the rest of the team. He’s about to take someone out when Keith rushes in with some sword badassery (“Hey, Keith! I had that guy!”). He keeps the scope on Keith for a little while, then watches Allura do some crazy stunts with her whip, to be met with “Well, that was awesome!” Similar to what I was talking about back in S2E6, this is a neat parallel drawn between Lance’s feelings for both the red paladin and the pink paladin. This, in conjunction with the sheer symbolism of colors (red/blue/pink), practically seeps with Lance being bisexual.

Anyways, now that we have Shiro back, this episode throws a wrench into the leadership dynamic that Keith has built for himself. Throwback to season two where everything was going fine until he found out about his Galra blood, this is another instance of regression for Keith. He spent all that time building up his confidence and leadership skills, only to now butt heads with Shiro. Actually, he doesn’t even really butt heads; he yields. He completely yields the black lion to Shiro. Coincidentally, Shiro can’t use the black lion right away, and I think that might have something to do with the whole Clone Shiro arc (which I honestly still don’t understand completely, so I’m going to keep my theorizing about that to a minimum). It’s a complete back swing to his seeing himself as an invalid leader (“they need you, you know” – Keith is once again isolating himself from the other paladins in favor of doing what he thinks is right for the team and placing himself at a disadvantage).

This is interesting when we get to the major Klance scene, and I’m pretty sure you know where I’m going with this: Lance voicing his concern to Keith. Initiall, Keith is surprised at Lance’s advance, but he’s very accepting of it. It’s an interesting side to keith’s character that we haven’t necessarily seen yet. He’s soft and kind of flustered at the whole thing, which is sO cute.

Lance, on the other hand, is being so brave by voicing these concerns in the first place. We’ve seen multiple occasions of him wanting to be on team Voltron (for glory, for recognition, for the universe, etc – we saw this when he tried to pilot the black lion), but he’s willing to give all of it up if it’s what’s best for the team. Remind you of anyone? Yes, Keith!

Keith is appalled by this and instantly shuts it down, telling Lance not to worry about who pilots what. I think he’s surprised that Lance trusts him so much, but that trust gives Keith confidence. As we’ve seen, Keith responds to trust very well, even enough to make a joke (leave the math to Pidge + a bonus Klance smile). I also believe that he’s telling Lance these things just as much to comfort him as it is to comfort himself; he cares about Lance, and he doesn’t want him to leave. We see that in Keith’s initially reaction (“What are you talking about?!”). Another important line in this scene is Lance’s “this isn’t a participation game. This is war and you want you best soldiers on the front line.” Judging from Keith’s reaction, Keith honestly believes that Lance is one of their best warriors; he values Lance’s place on the team and wouldn’t think of jeopardizing that for a second. Overall, this scene was great. It had Lance’s vulnerability, and it’s the first time another member of the team has recognized that and actively comforted him for it. This will be important to remember once Keith leaves and Lance doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it anymore.

Also, when the Paladins are fighting Lotor’s generals, Keith is blindsided by Acxa, but then he is saved by a good shot from Lance and a reassuring “I’ve got you, buddy!” They really have bonded trust-wise. If romance does come out of this, it will definitely be a slow burn, built on a strong bond of vulnerability and trust. And the smile Keith gives Lance after that interaction! I headcanon that at this point he’s over his initial crush and is instead seeing Lance as a real person and teammate that he cares for deeply. Lance’s faith in him is a beacon of strength and light in a particularly dark time. And Keith switching hands with the bayard? That’s some cool shit. He just keeps getting better and better.

Side note for Keith and Acxa: I’ve seen the theories where they are siblings, but I don’t know if I buy it. We know virtually nothing about Acxa’s past except that she somehow got trapped in the stomach of a weblum for who knows how long until Keith rescued her. It’s just not enough for me to see them as related. If ANYTHING, they could be half siblings since we don’t know anything about Krolia yet either except that she’s a deep cover agent for the Blade. This versus the literal ten pages I’ve written on Klance thus far.

Okay, now back to Keith’s leadership conflict. It’s especially apparent when he starts arguing with Shiro about taking out Lotor on the recon mission. He shows off some of his old colors by wanting to run off on his own, but then listens when the team tells him to stick together. What’s important, though, is that Keith doesn’t completely give in to Shiro. In choosing between taking out Lotor’s ship and taking out the cargo ship, Keith makes a snap choice, against Shiro’s wishes, that targets both. He’s a good leader, and he’s making good decisions. The rest of the team just invalidates that, bringing back the doubt that has brought him so much trouble in the past, which we see in Keith and Shiro’s exchange at the end of the episode.

Final note on season three: past parallels

In the last episode of the season, we get some back story on Alfor and Zarkon’s relationship as well as some of the other past paladins. There’s the potential to see Alfor and Zarkon as a parallel to Shiro and Keith, but there’s also the potential to see it as a note on Lance and Keith, seeing as Lance is showing Altean traits vs Keith’s Galran traits. I’m about to try to debunk that with my own theory: there was also a scene in that episode where Alfor, in the red lion, saved Blades, the pilot of the blue lion. The connections between red and blue just keep being dredged up. There are red and blue stars in the astral plane. Red and blue are everywhere. Keith and Lance are literally written in the stars.

[catrobinsson]

Rehearsal diaries

03 Jan - Once our genre was determined, a starting point for structuring our performance was initially independent writing, guided by interactive ‘Zoom’ meetings. In this particular session we began to implement elements of important dramaturgy that would help create an important impression on an audience (Psychology, Behavioral and Science, S. 2015). Whilst adding our own material to the shared google document, concerning our dialogue. We, as a group, wanted to make sure we had a particular ‘line’ in the performance that tied everything together. After deliberating and discussing some ideas, we had the collective idea of adding the line “We’ve made some great progress.” to end each performer's dialogue. This would help set a distinguished ‘location’ to each section by having the monologues, in the context of a therapist appointment. Additionally to this, the repetition of this line added to the dramaturgy because it was symbolic of what some therapists/counsellors say to a patient. Regardless of if it’s true or not. This points out to the audience that humanity is often taken out of these ‘help programs’ due to the strict regime of the system. This common phrase also would help evoke reaction among audience members as their frustration with the therapist would grow. However, it is important to note that often there is an element of human error often concerning ‘mental health appointments’. Therapists see multiple people with complex issues every day so subsequently, as a human they are not always going to provide the best help they can give constantly, as this line of work requires a lot of mental restraint. As a result of this factor, we structurally made the choice to put ‘James’ therapist monologue in the very beginning of the performance, to allow the audience to gain a better perspective and insight into the life of the therapist. This was to allow both understanding but  frustration towards this character, highlighting the dysfunctional system of seeking for mental health support and with the support itself.

13th Jan - A specific moment during this rehearsal, that was a breakthrough moment, was establishing characters. Due to the sensitivity of our piece and my personal attachment to it. It was important that although, contextually some of this dialog was based on my personal experiences, I wanted to remove myself from the character. I did this because I wanted to act to the best of my ability without necessarily performing as myself. This not only allowed me to draw emotion up from elements of my own experiences but also gave me the protection of inhabiting a different character, whose responses to certain events may differ slightly from my own. The practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, also supported this notion. Stanislavski’s method was to draw upon your own feelings and experiences to articulate a ‘truthful’ performance ‌(Scholte, T. 2010). I wanted this to be a real, naturalistic  interpretation of what my character felt rather than a dramatized performance or something that was potentially triggering to myself. This personal development led to the creation of my character ‘Ella’. During this session and adopting some of Stanislavski’s principles, we tried an improvisation exercise (Scholte, T. 2010). My group and I created the scenario of a group therapy session. Within this exercise ‘James’ the character of the group therapist, was saying that due to protocol, this would be our last session, regardless of any ‘progress’ we had made. Martina and I took different approaches when responding to this news. This exercise allowed us to show our frustration with the “therapist” in character, and gave us inspiration on how we could write and perform our script. This process was a big breakthrough for me personally, as an actor, as it gave me insight into the inner workings and psychological responses of my character ‘Ella’. As all performances had to be conducted over zoom, rather than a designated work space, I found it difficult to get into an acting mindset. However, by doing this improvisation exercise it allowed me to have a breakthrough and insight to how my character would perform and how ‘Ella’ would look to an audience.

18th Jan - As our performance began to take shape and we had a script prepared. We began to add specific acting choices to help develop our performance further. In the first section of our performance we had monologues aimed at the camera rather than in the context of a therapist appointment, which came within section two. We did this to directly address the audience and to introduce our ‘characters’ and offer anecdotes to our story. When watching one another perform each of our monologues, I had the idea of having other characters interject into their dialogue, to create a theatrical element to the performance, whilst still maintaining the naturalistic format. This idea was incorporated into both my monologue and Loics’ monologue, in the beginning of the performance. For example, in Loics part we had other people say the line “We need to see evidence of self harm”, and within mine we had “I’m not qualified to handle this” among others. All of which were real quotes from ‘professionals” that we had both experienced thus adding to the verbatim theatre process. By having an intruding voice, it helped build imagery for the audience in terms of re-enacting these experiences through performance. A technical difficulty we faced however, was that intentionally we were going to say those lines simultaneously as a group. Although, due to the nature of ‘online’ performance, and having different levels of internet connection, resulting in our dialogue being slightly out of sync, we decided to distribute the lines to one performer at a time. This allowed it to sound more clear for the audience, thus subsequently adding the audience experience. In addition to this we also looked at possible costume ideas. We made sure that our costumes complemented our characters. For example, I wanted to wear loose fitting clothes, including an oversized top and nightwear bottoms, creating a ‘unkempt’ look. This would be to infer my character is not looking after herself physically, which is often a symptom of depression or other mental illnesses. I also made myself have prominent ‘eyebags’ with makeup, this was intentional to further display to the audience the look of being sleep deprived. By including all of these elements it becomes increasingly more difficult and uncomfortable for the audience to watch. Especially when the character of the therapist says the line ‘... as our third and final session comes to a close..” as it is evident that my character isn’t in a good place. This also makes it uncomfortable when the calls seemingly ends and the audience is left wondering what the future will hold for my character.

31st Jan - Within this rehearsal, we specifically focused on our tech and staging choices. I struggled slightly with finding an appropriate background and environment that my character would be in. I wanted to make sure that the lighting was correct and the space I was in felt isolated and inclosed. This was because my piece demanded a lot of emotional response, including a moment of absolute helplessness when pleading with the therapist to allow me more sessions and to continue the help. I wanted to set the scene and to demonstrate to the audience that I was in a state of desperateness that was reflected in my surroundings. This led to a trial and error process that made me move to different areas and spaces in my house, playing around with how the lighting looked on my face. From this, and asking for group feedback, I found that the best space was actually in my hallway, as it had slightly poorer lighting than the other rooms. I also made sure to sit down in the corner of the hallway on the floor, to create that feeling of entrapment. In addition to this, I didn't want my background to be too dark as I wanted the audience to see my face clearly. I then had the idea of putting a white light behind my camera to illuminate my face. The white light would also help my features to appear more pale, making me look more washed out and tired. Thus consequently adding to the atmosphere of the piece and allowing the audience to infer that I am in emotional distress. As for the other characters we also closely looked at what their backgrounds inferred to the audience. This included making sure that the character of the therapist had a clinical feel to his background in order to set the scene of professionalism. By focusing closely on these aspects, it really helped develop our performance and make it look more visually dynamic to the audience. Additionally looking at the background (e.g staging) it helped all of us get into character.

Once this was established we then began to focus on ‘tech’ and ‘audio’ sounds  to help heighten the entirety of the performance. We wanted to incorporate specific sound effects to help aid the message we were trying to put across, therefore adding to the dramaturgy. A common theme within our performance was the element of ‘time’ and the importance of it, especially when relating it to the strict time conditions of therapy appointments. This helped initiate the idea of the ‘ticking clock’ that would be heard during ‘James’s’ monologues. This symbolised the passing of time and how the lack of it can have a detrimental effect on an individual. It also conveyed the atmosphere of feeling rushed, and overly conscious of ‘time’ which was intentional with this sound effect. Another sound effect we incorporated was that of ‘coffee shop ambience”. This was in reference to my monologue in the first section, regarding meeting with a counsellor in a “Public coffee shop” and the uncomfortableness that came with that. The loud, busy noises of this sound effect was meant to not only set a ‘location’ but to also feel invasive. It also symbolizes that often mental illness hides in plain sight. The juxtaposition of the privacy of the dialogue I was saying (concerning topics of suicide and mental illness) compared to the busy sounding environment illustrates the intrusion of the background sounds. This is why we made the decision to continue this audio sound in the second section of my dialogue. Another sound effect we incorporated was a soundscape. This would help accentuate the ‘dissociation’ element within ‘Loics’ section. We did this by overlapping various sounds and blending them together. This included the repetition of phrases like “are you okay?” and “hello” helped give perspective to what was happening in ‘Loics’ mind internally, while performing his monologue. This build up of sound continued until it abruptly finished when ‘James’ says the line ‘Hello, hello? Yeah Hi mate...”. This is to draw the audience back into the session, within the context of this performance and also helps to build tension. This particular section was influenced by other theatrical performances we’ve seen previously. For instance, within the show ‘Love Letters’ by ‘The Uninvited Guests’, that was also performed via ‘zoom’, they included sound to coincide with their dialogue to help elevate the emotion behind what the words they were performing. Within my group, we all loved the impact this made on us and wanted to include it within our own performance.

[thecoroutfitters]

Billy is usually a youngster, an innocent, the observer. With this injured, unhinged condition, also, he gets to be a holiday maker as part of his individual daily life due to what’s termed being ‘unstuck within time’. What on earth is wide-spread inside expertise in showdown? Just what can vary depending on the specific struggle? 6.Examine Vonnegut’s after textbooks involving visual cases. Because on the open-handed by using develop fully dialect, intimate situations, and physical violence, Slaughterhouse-Five really should be studied by simply older senior high school or perhaps university students. Discussion and also Writing Comprehension Chapter 1 Slaughterhouse Your five also goes on your title The particular Children’s Crusade: A Duty Party With Dying. Thinking about humankind having the capacity to perspective their lives times as well and not linearly is usually invalid on the viewer, nonetheless Kurt Vonnegut creates on the followers travel the concept of moment family member and just pre-existing within mankind visuallization. The stylistics, form plus location, among various other literary aspects make this e-book an excellent method to obtain dissertation subjects both for senior high school as well as college or university.

What can it suggest to be ‘unstuck in time?I What exactly is Billy Pilgrim able to perform? Explain the 1st practical knowledge they have after he gets unstuck over time. Bond that so that you can just how the Tralfamadorians see the reasoning behind time frame. How come it’s absurd for many years in order to grieve an individual after their particular demise?

The have trouible with PTSD by means of veterans

Billy Pilgrim as a doppleganger pertaining to Kurt Vonnegut

Even though Billy Pilgrim will be technologically the idol in the novel, he is non-traditional often: their overall look to be a jewellry, their detachment utilizing human beings, and the man isn’t going to help make unexpected things happen (things happen to be able to him or her as an alternative). Demonstrate and also illustrate Billy’s detachment and passivity. You should definitely incorporate certain instances with the novel.

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Do you feel throughout aliens? The reason or maybe why not? What is your opinion of individuals that claim they are already abducted?

Full analyze information just for this headline at this time beneath progress.

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TEACHING GUIDE

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Catch-22 and also Slaughterhouse Several: Depiction associated with Sadly Chaotic War

Because in the generous use of mature expressions, sexual circumstances, plus lack of control, Slaughterhouse-Five needs to be analyzed by way of more aged high school graduation as well as students. Discussion and Writing Comprehension Chapter 1 The narrative springs among his life situations, the actual Dresden bombing, in addition to stay in hospital acting as the touchstone for his / her current certainty. In the end, Vonnegut’s criticisms continue to be valid in the twenty-first centuries. (Vonnegut 80 : Eighty six) Towards the Tralfamadorians, the heavens are filled up with rarefied, glowing spaghetti (Vonnegut 87) in which human beings view solely superstars. Billy Pilgrim’s apparent approval associated with fate-he responds to every single mention of dying while using the phrase “so the item goes”-actually illustrates Vonnegut’s weight so that you can impaired recognition with socially acceptable cruelty. How would you produce this sort of subject? That opposition will be ilustrated within his interpretation from the massacre at Dresden, along with Barbara’s happiness with draining the woman’s papa connected with his or her self-respect “in the url of like.”

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The using concurrent plot lines in Slaughterhouse Five

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The real offenders connected with showdown according to Slaughterhouse Five

This ironic factor could be that the a couple of scouts in which forgotten Billy and Roland simply because ended up being high in volume and cumbersome developed into wiped out by what Billy claimed ended up being, “Three inoffensive bangs which originate from far away.In . We worked once again throughout small categories in an effort to carefully consider the thematic write an essay for me challenges found from the initially seven books with Journey. Chapter 2 The audience introduced to the key character, Billy Pilgrim. You’ll find way too many similarities As a result, your reader comes “unstuck within time” in addition to Billy.

Faith, Future. Freedom in addition to War

Regardless of the true quantity of accidents, the particular firebombing connected with Dresden certainly has a high ranking while using fischer attacks about Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities of The second world war. One technique to strengthen your scholars look into the complex complexity from the storyline is always to assign numerous essays, as well as small pieces of publishing having a single core aim. About the Book Published in the elevation in the Vietnam Conflict inside 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five is recognized as by a lot of an unsafe to get Vonnegut’s biggest do the job. It is not surprising this in this particular atmosphere, Vonnegut’s work of fiction accumulated a cult-like pursuing one of the age group this declined exactly what it spotted because the materialism and https://www.insead.edu/faculty-research/faculty/henning-piezunka also shallowness of yankee society.

How would you describe the concept of ‘time’? Providers time take a trip? You think it is possible you can find several other aspect we can’t access?

The complications with time travel

Plot review and also research written by a highly skilled literary critic.

The dispute of performing war

The complications over time travel

The paradox of the funny struggle work of fiction around Slaughterhouse Five

Investigation Vonnegut’s armed service job, and rehearse some sort of plot of land plan to match this so that you can Billy Pilgrim’s. 7.Generate graphic representations on the Tralfamadorians, its place ship, and also Billy’s dwelling inside the zoo park in Tralfamadore. 8.Perform a recording associated with The Ballad of the Natural Beret by way of Simon Sadler. Report data on the fresh to compliment the job in which Billy has dropped effect together with certainty knowning that his or her time period traveling is just a goal of his / her mayhem. It allows him or her for you to as a final point observe that just what he or she experienced, what exactly he / she made it through throughout battle, wasn’t her wrong doing. (Vonnegut Eighty-five : Ninety) For the Tralfamadorians, celebrities tend to be stuffed with rarefied, luminous pasta (Vonnegut 87) in which humans discover simply megastars. Evidently, he / she thought they required to publish the following publication not just to talk about the inner thoughts about the dangers in addition to futility involving battle, nonetheless to supply purpose to help his personal suffering.

Look to get Ideas Online There are wonderful recommendations on Slaughterhouse Five article subject areas on-line. The themes usually are picked out by simply encountered professors and cover an array of issues including context, way of writing, vocabulary, themes, identity progress, for example. Here’s a beneficial research which has papers examples in addition to a number of topics. The topics are categorized according to rank as well as troubles protected.

Slaughterhouse Five for a satire

Consult A person’s Teacher Your coach will be the major source of aid plus advice with educative get the job done. Your educator will provide directions for the location ones document need to consentrate on. It could actually on themes or templates resolved inside the book. A tutor also can like you to pay attention to an individual motif, character, setting, sort, etcetera. There are matters that are highly relevant to the present product as well as score, while other people are not. In truth, in most cases, your coach will give you the topic. Nonetheless, never continue crafting in advance of speaking to your current teacher.

The objective as well as aftereffect of this novel’s plot of land design about the general concise explaination the work

The controversy with performing war

A comparative criticism of any Goodbye of Arms as well as Slaughterhouse Five

Look with regard to Guidelines Online There are fantastic recommendations on Slaughterhouse Several essay or dissertation issues on-line. The themes tend to be picked out by way of skilled educators and cover numerous problems including wording, way with words, vocabulary, subjects, identity progress, and many others. What follows is a handy referrals which also features papers trial samples and a list of subject areas. The themes are classified according to level along with difficulties coated.

(Vonnegut 3) As the visitor never actually leaves the main story brand of your fire-bombing of Dresden for too long, Billy however travels a decent amount. This kind of gives yet another layer involving profoundly human practical knowledge to your new along with enables the readers to check out as well as explore the actual dualities that you can get in this psyches plus the novel. Your Dresden Hearth Bombing was a massacre which had been created by this associates to be able to get rid of as many The german language citizens as it can be. NOTE: Totally free article test given on this page really should be useful for recommendations or taste purposes merely. The way have Vonnegut’s suffers from during Dresden as well as America’s participation with Vietnam play a role in a anti-war meaning in the guide? 3.Study opposite vistas in the fire-bombing regarding Dresden. It’s great deal of subjects which include evaluate on the United states government and also talk associated with existentialism have made essaywriter.org the item a particularly contentious piece of literary works.

Faith, Success. Freedom as well as War

The particular anti-war styles associated with Vonnegut’s work built him specifically used often by your counter-culture mobility of your Vietnam Years. (Vonnegut Sixty nine) This repetition of this specific term not merely de-emphasizes loss of life, but also will help Vonnegut assert therapy for your readers answer from a passing. Slaughterhouse-Five by means of Kurt Vonnegut brings together the particular topics of decline and also determinism to make a narrative in the power disaster. Simply what does which pressure reveal about Indonesia by the end of the war? 2.How are you affected towards the scouts? 3.How come this A language like german wedding photographer please take a photograph regarding Billy’s and Weary’s ft? 4.Why should the particular professional photographer stage a photo of Billy’s seize? 5.Which are the a couple of cause of the actual destruction this Billy devices through in his or her approach to this Lions Golf club interacting with? 6.How much does Billy’s experience together with the Sea big show us regarding Billy’s life-style? 7.Why does the doctor explain to Billy for taking a new snooze each day? What is your opinion brought about Billy’s condition? 8.Summarize this German born supplies who the taken Americans handed down. The following are some producing encourages that will help accomplish this. Since Slaughterhouse-Five is unquestionably an intricate fresh, you might like to present many of the big subjects prior to a person’s students actually begin looking at. Billy thinks of him or her self to be a prophet.

The Mental State with Billy Pilgrim

Billy, like Vonnegut, is a heir on the Dresden bombing, exactly who sees a lot of wartime crimes. Employ these types of issues in major times to offer learners possibilities to assess the complexities in the plan. Chapter 2 The audience introduced to the leading individuality, Billy Pilgrim. Again, you are able to adjust to all these asks to your wants of the students, dependant upon whatever they struggle with essentially the most.

The Mental State with Billy Pilgrim

War provides, undisputedly, been recently a component of every last civilization’s record all over time period, although the source of war, however, is often a theme involving claim. He’s fatalistic, disoriented as well as ill-trained. Vonnegut was obviously a Bang ended up saving from the Dresden bombing for the duration of WWII as he was being kept in a steak locker. The link can also be useful for a work regarding literary techniques including paradox plus satire. “There is certainly not intelligent to say about any massacre” (Vonnegut, Twenty). The concept of human beings having the capacity to see their own everyday life times simultaneously but not linearly is definitely erroneous for the visitor, still Kurt Vonnegut brings in to the audience scalp the thought of time being family member simply active inside humankind creativeness.

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[transhumanitynet]

Human-like Emotional Responses in a Simplified Independent Core Observer Model System

Abstract. Most artificial general intelligence (AGI) system developers have been focused upon intelligence (the ability to achieve goals, perform tasks or solve problems) rather than motivation (*why* the system does what it does). As a result, most AGIs have an unhuman-like, and arguably dangerous, top-down hierarchical goal structure as the sole driver of their choices and actions. On the other hand, the independent core observer model (ICOM) was specifically designed to have a human-like “emotional” motivational system. We report here on the most recent versions of and experiments upon our latest ICOM -based systems. We have moved from a partial implementation of the abstruse and overly complex Wilcox model of emotions to a more complete implementation of the simpler Plutchik model. We have seen responses that, at first glance, were surprising and seemingly illogical – but which mirror human responses and which make total sense when considered more fully in the context of surviving in the real world. For example, in “isolation studies”, we find that any input, even pain, is preferred over having no input at all. We believe that the fact that the system generates such unexpected but “humanlike” behavior to be a very good sign that we are successfully capturing the essence of the only known operational motivational system.

Introduction With the notable exception of the developmental robotics, most artificial general intelligence (AGI) system development to date has been focused more upon the details of intelligence rather than the motivational aspects of the systems (i.e. *why* the system does what it does). As a result, AGI has come to be dominated by systems designed to solve a wide variety of problems and/or to perform a wide variety of tasks under a wide variety of circumstances in a wide variety of environments – but with no clue of what to do with those abilities. In contrast, the independent core observer model (ICOM) [1] is designed to “solve or create human-like cognition in a software system sufficiently able to self-motivate, take independent action on that motivation and to further modify actions based on self-modified needs and desires over time.” As a result, while most AGIs have an untested, and arguably dangerous, top-down hierarchical goal structure as their sole motivational driver, ICOM was specifically designed to have a human-like “emotional” motivational system that follows the 5 S’s (Simple, Safe, Stable, Self-correcting and Sympathetic to current human thinking, intuition, and feelings) [2].

Looking at the example of human beings [3-6], it is apparent that our decisions are not always based upon logic and that our core motivations arise from our feelings, emotions and desires – frequently without our conscious/rational mind even being aware of that fact. Damasio [7-8] describes how feeling and emotion are necessary to creating self and consciousness and it is clear that damage reducing emotional capabilities severely impacts decision-making [9] as well as frequently leading to acquired sociopathy whether caused by injury [10] or age-related dementia [11]. Clearly, it would be more consistent with human intelligence if our machine intelligences were implemented in the relatively well-understood cognitive state space of an emotional self rather than an unexplored one like unemotional and selfless “rationality”.

While some might scoff at machines feeling pain or emotions or being conscious, Minsky [12] was clear in his opinion that “The question is not whether intelligent machines can have any emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions.” Other researchers have presented compelling cases [13-16] for the probability of sophisticated self-aware machines necessarily having such feelings or analogues exact enough that any differences are likely irrelevant. There is also increasing evidence that emotions are critical to implementing human-like morality [17] with disgust being particularly important [18].

Methods

ICOM is focused on how a mind says to itself, “I exist – and here is how I feel about that”. In its current form, it is not focused on the nuances of decomposing a given set of sensory input but really on what happens to that input after it’s evaluated or ‘comprehended’ and ready to decide how ‘it’ (being an ICOM implementation) feels about it. Its thesis statement is that:

Regardless of the standard cognitive architecture used to produce the ‘understanding’ of a thing in context, the ICOM architecture supports assigning value to that context in a computer system that is self-modifying based on those value based assessments…

As previously described [19], ICOM is at a fundamental level driven by the idea that the system is assigning emotional values to ‘context’ as it is perceived by the system to determine its own feelings. The ICOM core has both a primary/current/conscious and a secondary/subconscious emotional state — each represented by a series of floating point values in the lab implementations. Both sets of states along with a needs hierarchy [20-21] are part of the core calculations for the core to process a single context tree. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, we have limited ourselves to existing emotional models. While the OCC model [22] has seemingly established itself as the standard model for machine emotion synthesis, it has the demonstrated [23] shortcoming of requiring intelligence before emotion becomes possible. Since the Willcox “Feelings Wheel” [24] seemed the most sophisticated and ‘logical’ emotion-first model, we started with that. Unfortunately, its 72 categories ultimately proved to be over-complex and descriptive rather than generative.

The Plutchik model [25-27] starts with eight ‘biologically primitive’ emotions evolved in order to increase fitness and has been hailed [28] as “one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses. Emotional Cognitive Theory [29] combines Plutchik’s model with Carl Jung’s Theory of Psychological Types and the Meyers-Briggs Personality Types.

Fig. 1. The Plutchik model

Calculation

The default Core Context is the key elements pre-defined in the system when it starts for the first time. These are ‘concept’s that are understood by default and have predefined emotional context trees associated with them. They are used to associate emotional context to elements of context as they are passed into the core. While all of these are hard coded into the research system at the start, they are only really defined in terms of other context being associated with them and in terms of emotional context associated with each element which is true of all elements of the system. Further, these emotional structures or matrixes that can change and evolve over time as other context is associated with them. Some examples of these variables and their default values are:

• Action – The need to associate a predisposition for action as the system evolves. • Input – A key context flag distinguishing internal imaginations vs external input. • Pattern – A recognition of a pattern built-in to help guide context (based upon humans’ inherent nature to see patterns in things). • Paradox – A condition where 2 values that should be the same are not or that contradict each other.

Note that, while we might use these ‘names’ to make this item easily recognizable to human programmers, the actual internal meaning is only implied and enforced by the relationship of elements to other emotional values and each other and the emotional matrix used to apply those emotional relationships (i.e. we recognize that Harnad’s grounding problem is very relevant).

The context emotional states and the states of the system are treated as ‘sets’ with matrix rules being applied at each cycle to a quickly-changing ‘conscious’ and a slower moving ‘subconscious’ that more strongly tends towards default emotions. The interplay between them is the very heart of the system that creates the emotional subjective experience of the system.

∀{E1,E3, … , E72} ∈ , 1 = 1, 2 = 2, … , 72 = 72 ; ∀{AE1,E3,… , E72} ∈ , 1 = 1, 2 = 2,… , 72 = 72 ; ∀ = (∑) () , ∀ = () , ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), …, = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{A, B,C,D} ∈ ), …, = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), …, = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … ,E72} ∈ ),… , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀ = () ; ∀{} ∈ = (NewContext, );

Fig. 2. Core Logic Notation/Pseudocode

New context associated with the object map or context tree of the current thought is executed against every single cycle regardless of whether its origin is external input or internal thoughts. Essentially the rules are then applied as to the relationships between those various elements which is after the needs and other adjustments to where it then falls into this final block which really is where the determination is made and it is in these rules applied here that we see the matrix of the system affecting the results of the isolation study.

Results

While investigating how the system behaved under a wide variety of circumstances, we encountered a series of cases whose results were initially very disturbing when testing what happened when we stopped all input (while ICOM continued to process how it felt) and then, finally, restarted the input. Imagine our surprise and initial dismay when the system, upon being presented only with pain and other negative stimulus upon the restarting of input, actually “enjoyed” it. Of course, we should have expected this result. Further examination showed that the initial “conscious” reaction of ICOM was to “get upset” and to “desire” the input to stop – but that the “subconscious” level, the system “enjoyed” the input and that this eventually affected the “conscious” perception. This makes perfect sense because it is not that ICOM really “liked” the “pain” so much as it was that even “pain” is better than isolation – much like human children will prefer and even provoke negative reactions in order to avoid being ignored.

Fig. 3. Series 3 Isolation Study (x = input type w/time; y = intensity of emotion)

Discussion

It’s always great when experiments produce unexpected emergent results that should have been anticipated because they are exhibited in the original system your model is based upon. We believe that the fact that the system spontaneously generates such unexpected but “humanlike” behavior to be a very good sign that we are successfully capturing the essence of the only known operational motivational system with a human – like emotional “self”.

References

1. Kelley, D.: Self-Motivating Computation System Cognitive Architecture, (2016) 2. Waser, M.: Discovering the Foundations of a Universal System of Ethics as a Road to Safe Artificial Intelligence. In: AAAI Tech Report FS-08-04: Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures. http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Fall/2008/FS-08-04/FS08-04-049.pdf 3. Haidt, J.: The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment. Psychological Review 108, 814-823 (2001). 4. Minsky, M. L.:The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind. Simon & Schuster, New York (2006). 5. Hauser, M. et al: A Dissociation Between Moral Judgments and Justifications. Mind & Language 22(1), 1-27 (2007). 6. Camp, J.: Decisions Are Emotional, Not Logical: The Neuroscience behind Decision Making. http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-not-logical-the-neurosc ience-behind-decision-making (2016). 6 7. Damasio, A. R.: The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Harcourt Brace, New York (1999). 8. Damasio, A. R.: Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Pantheon, New York (2010). 9. Damasio, A. R.: Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Penguin, New York (1994). 10. Tranel, D.: Acquired sociopathy: the development of sociopathic behavior following focal brain damage. Progress in Experimental Personality & Psychopathology Research, 285-311 (1994). 11. Mendez, M. F., Chen, A. K., Shapira, J. S., & Miller, B. L.: Acquired Sociopathy and Frontotemporal Dementia. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 20, 99-104 (2005). 12. Minsky, M. L.: The Society of Mind. Simon and Schuster, New York (1986). 13. Dennett, D. C.: Why you can’t make a computer that feels pain. Synthese 38 (3), 415-449 (1978). 14. Arbib, M. A., Fellous, J.-M.: Emotions: from brain to robot. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 8(12), 554-561 (2004). 15. Balduzzi, D., Tononi, G.: Qualia: The Geometry of Integrated Information. PLOS Computational Biology. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000462 (2009) 16. Sellers, M.: Toward a comprehensive theory of emotion. Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 4, 3-26 (2013). 17. Gomila, A., Amengual, A.: Moral emotions for autonomous agents. In J. Vallverdu, & D. Casacuberta, Handbook of research on synthetic emotions and sociable robotics (pp. 166- 180). IGI Global, Hershey (2009). 18. McAuliffe, K.: This Is Your Brain On Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., New York (2016). 19. Kelley, D. J.: Modeling Emotions in a Computational System. http://transhumanity.net/modeling-emotions-in-a-computational-system(2016). 20. Maslow, A. H.: A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review 50 (4) , 370-96 (1943). 21. Maslow, A. H.: Toward a psychology of being. D. Van Nostrand Company, New York (1968). 22. Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., Collins, A.: The Cognitive Struture of Emotions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1988). 23. Bartneck, C., Lyons, M. J., Saerbeck, M.: The Relationship Between Emotion Models and Artificial Intelligence. Proceedings of the Workshop on The Role Of Emotion In Adaptive Behaviour&Cognitive Robotics http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2008/emotionAndAI/ 24. Showers, A.: The Feelings Wheel Developed by Dr Gloria Willcox (2013). http://msaprilshowers.com/emotions/the-feelings-wheel-developed-by-dr-gloria-willcox 25. Plutchik, R.: The emotions: Facts, theories, and a new model. Random House, New York (1962). 26. Plutchik, R.: A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik, & H. Kellerman, Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3- 33). Academic Publishers, New York (1980). 27. Plutchik, R.: Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution. American Psychological Association, Washington DC (2002). 28. Norwood, G.: Emotions. http://www.deepermind.com/02clarty.htm (2011). 29. Hudak, S.: Emotional Cognitive Functions. In: Psychology, Personality & Emotion (2013). EMOTIONAL COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS

By David J Kelley and Mark Waser – appearing in the 2017 BICA Proceedings http://bica2017.bicasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/BICA_2017_paper_136.pdf and http://bica2017.bicasociety.org/bica-proceedings/

Hero image used from Adobe Stock

Human-like Emotional Responses in a Simplified Independent Core Observer Model System was originally published on transhumanity.net

[harlothane]

Death Note and Western Astrology - Part II

THIS IS A FOLLOW UP TO THIS POST. ( Here we talk about Sachiko, Ide, L Lawliet, Wedy, Ukita, Mello, Matsuda, Misa, Lester, Matt, Halle, Naomi, Light, and others)

I kindly asked @lux-mea-lex if she allowed me to finish this wonderful study in the astrology of Death Note, and guess what, here I am. To be true to her impressive work on Death Note, I will often be referring to her analysis. Mine tend to be rely on hers often anyhow so it doesn’t make a difference - and she has been more careful than me as she rely on pictures and text while I work from memory (careless Aquarian versus orderly Scorpion, I guess). So whenever there’s a link, please do take the time to read her posts, they will provide the evidence for what I am asserting. I am reminding you that you don’t need to believe in astrology to find interest in this post. Astrology is an amazing tool for writers, another way to construct characters and create oppositions in archetypes. I am convinced that Ohba did not choose the signs randomly. First, they took care of giving each character - even the super minor ones - a precise date of birth. Second, if you read Lex’s first part, then you must have realised the signs are all accurate, eerily so. This is only logical after all, that astrology can serve us to understand Death Note. Don’t be fooled, this isn’t another thriller, a complex crime story. It is first and foremost a story of fate, missed chances, what-ifs. A tragedy, in which the characters seek to escape fate only to fail, or die, or both (L and his encounter with Death ; Light and his inevitable downfall - a human cannot be a Shinigami ; Misa and her love, doomed to provoke her demise ; Mello, bound to lose, reaching for the stars and burning as a result, etc.) Death Note has always been linked to the supernatural, forces too great for humankind to grasp. It has always been about fragile humans and unfathomable gods. That second part explores the last signs, and among them, some of the most prominent ones : Libra (Sachiko Yagami, Ide, Kida), Scorpio (L. Lawliet, Wedy, Ukita), Sagittarius (Mello, Matsuda, Takahashi), Capricorn (Misa, Penber, Lester), Aquarius (Naomi, Matt, Lidner), Pisces (Light, “Jack Neylon”, Mido) I have to point out that the signs are evenly distributed - each sign gets three, and not one of the Yotsuba guys share the same sign, proving that the choice is not coincidential. These characters must be analysed together, the minor ones, perhaps, may serve to reveal hidden aspects of the main characters of the same sign. (This is exactly what happens in some stories, the minor one-arc character being a tool to make a point about a main character to the audience). My main reference is the fantastic website https://www.autourdelalune.com, written by an actual astrologer. It’s full of interesting resources, although entirely in French (but if you ever need a translation, feel free to knock on my door). I also am a big fan of http://songsdomain.tripod.com for the symbolism parts. The quotes all come from the latter website. We will always keep in mind this aspect : there are main, secondary and minor characters.

♎ LIBRA (AIR SIGN / CARDINAL) ♎

Characters: Sachiko Yagami (secondary), Ide (secondary), Kida (minor).

Main traits: principled, obliging, respectful, affectionate, delicate, elegant, moderate, romantic ; capricious, hesitant, fragile, easily swayed, absent minded.

Symbolism: justice, chivalry, harmony, artifice, balance, need for affection, empathy, love (Venus).

Tarot: Justice & Temperance. 

Libra is the sign of justice, harmony and pure, selfless love. This should strike us that there is no main character to represent these qualities throughout the story. Justice, especially, is almost absent. The tale of Death Note is not one of temperance: it’s a tragedy, with no place for peace nor rest. 

A quick survey of the qualities associated to Libra is telling : it fits our characters perfectly well. Often, it is more evident to see the influence of astrology with the minor characters. Those are archetypes, the author has no plan to develop them. As a result, minor characters barely diverge from the idealised portrait of their respective signs. 

Kida is the textbook Libra : he was a good student, seems peaceful and desires a calm existence. His hobby consist in collecting glasses - it’s clear that he isn’t supposed to frighten you, or anyone. During the Yotsuba Arc, he demonstrates his need for security (harmony) as he is the one who hires Eraldo Coil (actually, L). The How to Read stats underline his fragile nature (he scores 4/10 for emotional strength) and his social skills (Libra are quite friendly and loved by many). 

Now, this archetype is a guideline to better understand our secondary characters : Ide and Sachiko Yagami. One aspect that define Libra is their idealism - in the sense that grand Ideas inform their perception of the world. Love, especially, is an Ideal to them. 

Interestingly enough, Ide and Sachiko Yagami are both strongly tied to the theme of love. You probably remember it. Ide’s official stats even underline this as his “Romantic Luck” is described. As for Sachiko, she symbolises the lost harmony of the Yagami household. She is tidy, orderly and loving. Her relationship with Soichiro is the only solid, healthy romantic relationship in the story. She seems to obey her strong code when it comes to love: she is loyal to her husband no matter what happens. 

As for Ide, one of his most noticeable moment is the Hotel Room trick Light pulls to contact Mikami. Matsuda mocks Ide for his naive approach on the Light/Takada business (the amusing twist being that Light isn’t interested in her, making Matsuda sounds like the fool in the situation to the reader, but that’s just Death Note humour for you). We know that Ide’s love life isn’t successful and that is something that happens to the idealist Libra. They are often disappointed by real relationships, in opposition with the Idea. 

Libra's idea of love isn't necessarily your idea of a warm, cozy, delightful tête-à-tête.  More likely, it'll be one of his many theories on the nature of love and marriage, his ideals of the perfect relationship, his concepts about how people ought to behave toward each other, his urgent vision of a world where everything is absolutely balanced, polished, perfect, symmetrical, harmonious.  It can drive you mad.  This sign, whose symbol is the scales of balance, has less to do with ordinary sweaty human coupling than any other.  What?  Libra soil his hands?  Never.  Love, for Libra, must always be in the appropriate style:  a ritual of courtly love, complete with the right gestures, the right words, the right perfume, the right satin sheets, the right scented candles, the right flowers. 

In that regard, Sachiko, while being married, does not spend much time with her husband. This allow her to maintain this perfect idea of love : it cannot get ugly if they don’t see each other. She plays her role, Soichiro plays his, and everything stays pretty, beautiful, admirable. It is so typical of a Libra archetype, so bent on harmony that they become hypocrites. (In a way, Sachiko represents the human tendency to fit society’s expectations - the one thing Kira, the role Light endorsed, dares to challenge). 

Finally, Libra symbolises Justice. A crucial theme in Death Note… or is it? The theme is represented by secondary characters, and not the most memorable ones. This is so, so telling. I don’t need to provide you with an in-depth analysis to prove it : Death Note is not a story of Justice. Justice does not prevail at all, for none of our characters manage to live up to the Idea. They are humans, and only death is fair. This is no surprise that Libra are underrepresented ! Justice is forgotten, a lie or a dream no one attains in the end. 

(Libra) believes passionately in fairness, and this often causes him a great deal of unhappiness, because life and people aren't always fair.  Again and again his idealism collides with an imbalanced world full of imperfections and rough edges. 

Well. Of course, our Libra all end up miserable (Sachiko), scarred for life (Ide), dead (Mido).

♏ SCORPIO (WATER SIGN / FIXED) ♏

Characters: L. Lawliet (main), Wedy (secondary/minor), Ukita (minor).

Main traits: passionate, daring, ambitious, uncompromising, devoted, sensual, impulsive, firm ; unforgiving, diehard, resentful, obssessive, ambiguous, suspicious, inflexible

Symbolism: magnetism, death and sexuality, instinct, transformations, survival, endings, passion, suffering, self-destruction.

Tarot: the Devil, Death.

This one is fascinating. L is a complex, well-written character who often gets misinterpreted. Of course, he is a Scorpio !

First, I want to stress that most of what we see of him is likely to be (partly) an act - a HIGHLY suspicious, genius detective would never tear down his walls among people he might respect but barely knows, let alone with his main suspect nearby. at. all. times. during the Yotsuba arc. This is completely unrealistic to pretend otherwise. That doesn’t mean L is out of reach, though. As readers, we are in a position that allow us to decipher the character. With some help. Astrology, as I said, is a tool. Many of L’s traits are hidden, they’re not plain to see. Yet, if you know what to look for, some of his strange reactions become clearer.

Suffice it to say here that Scorpio has a great problem relinquishing control.  This means control on a lot of levels.  It may be controlling spontaneous expression or emotion outward - we all know the character that, even after a couple bottles of wine and a fifth of whiskey, still maintains his iron grip on himself, and will never, never allow himself to appear foolish or sloppy in front of others.  It may be controlling other people - and this is a real problem in Scorpio's close relationships.  It may be controlling life itself - where you find the arch-manipulators who pull the puppet strings all around themselves to keep the world in its place.

Nothing is left to chance in a Scorpion’s world.

Let’s start by a quick glance at our secondary/minor characters. The little we know of them is, again, fitting the archetype. Wedy is an attractive, intelligent, mysterious spy with a dangerous streak. She was, after all, a highly skilled professional criminal. I mean no offense by that, as I love the character, but she is almost a caricature  (which is fine, it happens to secondary characters all the time). Sensuality ? Check. Leather Pants ? Check. Shady past ? Check. Secretive, alluring, daring ? Check, again, no surprise here.

Symbolically speaking, she fits the bill. Wedy is a thief, and this is no coincidence. She made a career out of breaking defences, penetrating buildings, stealing secrets, concealed truths. This is reminiscient of Scorpions passion for truth; or rather, pure hatred for lies. They tend to be portrayed as human lie-detectors:

It's said that you can recognize a Scorpio by his stare.  That famous stare has become downright notorious in general astrology textbooks and sun-sign columns.  Enigmatic, penetrating, probing while revealing nothing, apparently hostile or ruthless.  The man with the x-ray vision.

If that sounds familiar....

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Ukita. Is he our typical Scorpio as well? Without a doubt. Symbolically speaking first, he is one of the first important characters to die. Scorpio is strongly associated with death, more precisely, sacrifices. This is Ukita’s choice to risk his life to arrest Kira, and so soon into the investigation! A true Scorpio indeed: reckless, passionate about his case, willing to die to attain the truth.

Ukita’s death touches the reader and why? Because it highlights L’s emotive side. We feel Ukita’s demise through L’s reactions…and they are numerous. Narratively, it serves to link the two characters : they must be similar in some way.

[L cares about no one but himself! How about you give it another read first?] Here is what L has learnt to hide:

(…) Scorpio, regardless of his habitual smokescreens - and make no mistake about it, Scorpio has the best smokescreens of any of the signs - is a sign of profound feeling and sensitivity, easily affected by the emotional currents inside him and around him, susceptible to the feelings of others, easily hurt, sympathetic, compassionate, often intensely lonely, and driven by an almost voracious need for relationship.

One weapon Scorpios wield with verve is observation. Masks don’t fool them, they see the face beneath, the monster crouched within your stomach, the ugliness eating your heart. Naturally, it is a Scorpio who has the courage to accuse perfect prodigy Light Yagami. Only a Scorpio would have dared make that assumption, and how it cost him. The Task Force resented L for that at times, his obsession with this one suspect, a mild-mannered, kind student they all had affection for.

Scorpio has an uncanny way of perceiving what other people don't wish to be known.  Often they don't know it themselves, which makes things even more uncomfortable.  It is very unnerving to feel that somebody knows something about you that you don't know yourself. 

By virtue of seeing what others prefer to deny, Scorpio is often the bad guy. L accepts to play the role, if need be. His methods certainly are questionable, and he is ready to cross moral boundaries to be proven right, or rather to unveil the hidden truth.

That doesn’t mean he wasn’t affected at times (please read this work of art). Yet, the Kira investigation is too important to let doubt eat at him. One aspect of L’s character I find is too often downplayed is the passion he has for the investigation. He is just as passionate as Light. He is just as involved. He was just as lonely and sad and bored.

if it interests him, then it will never be just a lukewarm job.  It will be done with heart, soul and body thrown in.  When you are really emotionally committed to something, you're going to put all of your talents and resources into it. (…) To Scorpio, skimming along the surface is offensive.  He loathes superficiality almost as much as he loathes weakness of character.  He must understand why he feels as he does, why he acts as he does, why others act and feel as they do.  (…) Scorpio must ultimately understand himself, and come to some kind of truce with the warring forces of his nature which allow him no peace.  

On the symbolic side, all our Scorpions are associated with an eternal cycle: they survive, even in death, in spite of the odds. 

Let's look at the figure which symbolizes Scorpio.  In very ancient astrology - Egyptian, Chaldean and Hebrew - Scorpio was represented not by the familiar scorpion, but by the serpent.  This is a profound symbol which tells us a lot about Scorpio.  Firstly, the serpent sheds his skin cynically, and was thought by the ancients to be immortal and capable of constant self-renewal.  Now this pattern of outgrowing a skin, sloughing it and growing a new one runs through Scorpio's life.  Often his life breaks up into distinct chapters, as he moves through one cycle after another.  All come to ultimate destruction.  Then he rebuilds and starts again.   (…) There is a fascinating legend about the scorpion:  if you corner him, and give him no avenue for escape, he will sting himself to death.   The message here is that Scorpio would rather destroy himself, and go down in flames by his own hand - literally or psychologically - than submit to another's ultimatum or control.

All of this could be applied to Ukita - he dies but his sacrifice strenghtens the determination of the JTF - and Wedy, a spy who collects false identities and defies death. L, of course, can be seen through that lens. He is more than a man, he became a role and an Idea, a letter whose aura rivaled a God’s. (His Tarot Card? The Devil!)

♐ SAGITTARIUS (FIRE SIGN / MUTABLE) ♐

Characters: Mello, Matsuda, Takahashi.

Main traits: generous, benevolent, curious, zealous, dynamic, courageous, imaginative, risk-taker, enthusiasm ; (too) ambitious, reckless, excessive, utopian, self-centered, irascible.

Symbolism: faith, idealism, knowledge, philosophy, truth, independance, adventures, key moments.

Tarot: the Chariot, the Wheel of Fortune.

You probably need to be reminded of Takahashi’s face. Here. Chances are, no one remembers him. This is our entry to understanding Sags in Death Note, you see, Takahashi’s fate is to be forgotten. Matsuda and Mello follow that path.

Not that they deserve it! The How to Read states that Takahashi was scorned upon because of his impulsive nature (”tends to speak before thinking”). He couldn’t be a leader. And guess what? He existed only for Higuchi to look good in comparison. Tell me that doesn’t bother you on some level that he shares his sign with Matsuda and Mello.

Yes, this is depressing. Mello and Matsuda keep being underestimated. They are the second (or third, or fourth, in Matsuda’s case) choice, too brash to count on, too childish to rely on. Yet, they both intervene in crucial ways toward the end - changing it radically and forever (the Wheel of Fortune is their card). Mello and Matsuda’s moves shape the very last part of the story. We don’t see them coming because we underestimated their quest, the path they followed to get there.

The goal is really, after all, relatively insignificant.  There is a basic attitude innate in Sagittarius that life is an adventure, a journey, a quest - and the real sport of living is to make that journey as interesting, as varied, as expansive, and as informative as possible.  Arrival is not the point. (…) It's the ideal that drives them, the possibility of something new and exciting.  The adventure, the unexplored mystery, the unobtainable goal, the one that got away (…)

Mello’s goal is never clear: revenge, personal accomplishment? To the reader, perhaps to himself as well, his moves are unpredictable for this precise reason. Sags don’t know where they headed to. They never stay still, though. Mello, as a character, is a wild card. He acts in mysterious ways, rarely unveils his true intentions to the point that the nature of his death is a debate in the fandom - was it a sacrifice on his part? Did he have a death wish? There are clues, but nothing definitive. This is the point! Sags act first, with all their heart.

Sagittarius loves to play roles - the more theatrical, the better.  Being caught in the same costume twice is quite horrific for him.  His restless mind is always seeking new ways to approach those goals, new costumes, new poses, new techniques.

Matsuda is one of the rare secondary characters - aside from L’s associates - to share the double identity motif with Light and Lawliet. During the Yotsuba arc, he played the role of Misa’s manager with pleasure. 

His impulsive side shows again in this storyline and later when he volunteers for the Shinigami eyes exchange. They have a near unbreakable faith. This is the sign of mystics after all. 

Sags are strongly tied to religion, a connection you could discern in Matsuda’s blind faith in Light (and sympathy for Kira). Religion is also a strong motif when it comes to analyse Mello’s character:

In a sentence, at the heart of Sagittarius there lies a great craving to explore and understand life.  Whether orthodox or not, Sagittarius, like Leo, is a deeply religious sign, and the word religious is here used in its original sense:  to reconnect.  This means reconnection with the source, with the roots of life, with some sense of meaning.  Whether you find him traveling as a salesman or an archaeologist, a poet or a scholar, whatever profession or job he lands himself in.  Sagittarius is trying to broaden his scope, to enlarge his consciousness.  

Others mistake his strength with stupidity - a recurrent problem Sags encounter - when Matsuda is a selfless, dedicated person. They love, trust, admire without any boundaries, and they’re bound to be fooled. Mello, unable to reach a star named L. Matsuda, betrayed by a man as perfect as an ideal.

How to put it…?

And in an odd sort of way Sagittarius is the biggest sign - in terms of horizons.  Better to shoot an arrow high and lose it than to aim low.  

Neither of them ever aimed low, and oh Light could not ignore both Matsuda’s and Mello’s bullets in the end.

♑ CAPRICORN (EARTH SIGN / CARDINAL)  ♑

Characters: Misa Amane, Anthony Lester, Raye Penber.

Main traits: calm, honest, cautious, discreet, responsible, hard-working, resolute, determined, loyal ; stern, stubborn, easily hurt, introverted, anxious. 

Symbolism: integrity, willpower, solidity, success, silence, time, reason, ambition, humility.

Tarot: the Hermit, the Tower.

Capricorns tend to be unlucky. Well, Raye and Misa can certainly confirm. Lester makes it out alive, but he arguably has the worst job in all the SPK. He never gets any of the spying and action. No, Lester is a cautious, calm, discreet man. He the rock, that unwavering presence Near needs (a Virgo, one of Capricorn’s trusty friends).

Often he'll play the humble servant, the one who has no ambitions, who only seeks to help, while he waits and assesses and plans.  But there's no time for wasted time with Capricorn, no space for useless leisure and play.  Serious?  Yes, you might say that about Capricorn too.

One archetype the Capricorn is close to is the Monk. They are devoted to a cause they deem worthy, willing to fight for it in the shadows. Ambition comes second if the cause is right. They will obey. And they never give up. It’s a matter of pride (oh, they are prideful, have you met Raye Penber?)

Many Capricorns follow the classical goat's pattern of having to carry responsibility or hardship very early in life.  The goat doesn't take kindly to having his secrets probed too quickly.  He must first know exactly where he stands, and exactly who you are, and exactly what you want, before he is willing to show his hand.  Suspicious?  Yes, you might say that.  Suspicion is a natural propensity with Capricorn; sometimes it goes the wrong way and becomes profound mistrust of life and people, but the better face of it is caution and realism.  

We do not much about Penber and Lester. Misa, though, has had a miserable life up until she found a cause in Kira. Hardship, yup, that’s the word. She grew to despise humanity’s failings, chose to hide all her bitterness, turn it into an iron will to succeed and to spread happiness. This is how I read her ambition to become a star. She wanted to shine: she succeeded. It is often overlooked! Misa is hard-working, dedicated to climb up the social ladder. Without the Death Note, she would have won at the game of life, finally letting her past go to write a better, beautiful story. She would have become a symbol of hope.

...Have I told you that Capricorns are unlucky?

Survival is another key theme for Capricorn.  To the goat, the world isn't always a friendly, bountiful place.  It's as if his antennae are always plugged into what might go wrong, rather than what might go right. ..  Nothing is ever taken for granted by the goat, least of all luck, which to Capricorn is a highly untrustworthy and often nonexistent commodity.  He'd rather replace luck with good, solid hard work 

The Death Note prevented her to move on from the past. She got stuck in a cause that ruined her life. That happens to Capricorns: forgive and forget is something they have trouble doing. The Death Note forever closed that door for Misa Amane. Death Note is a story of masks and hidden motives. Don’t pretend to know about Misa Amane right away. She has a mask, same as the others. The naive, air-headed idol is a scarred child, a resentful young woman who needed a cause to believe in. Someone who has nothing will give up even herself for a promise of hope. Light was that, to her.

Capricorns might be hard to convince, but once you have their trust, you’ll have to work hard to lose it. They will do unspeakable things, if the cause is right.

Saturn is also often portrayed as a ruthless figure in mythology, who will stop at nothing - even his own father's destruction - to seize power.  Ruthlessness may often be seen in the goat, and the field of politics swarms with Capricorns.  But it's always a necessary ruthlessness, and rarely stems from a wanton malice or cruelty.

Never forget that Misa is far more devoted to the cause than Light ever was. She has none of his hypocrisy on the matter: Misa without her memories still support Kira. It is clear to her: Kira is right. She only stands by Light’s side because she remembers loving him (yet, doesn’t know why). This show that Misa, while sharing Kira’s ideas, deems emotional security more important. Indeed:

Work and success aren't the whole picture to Capricorn.  Because he's very concerned with tradition and structure, his family life is also often highly important.  Structure is yet another keynote for the sign, and marriage and family commitments are often taken with great seriousness and responsibility.  Capricorns don't like to break promises, they like to be thought responsible, and it's important to their self-image to have the world see them that way.

One of Misa’s most important moments comes after she accepts L as a friend. She will never betray her friends. Her sincerity in that instant is touching: the Death Note also twisted her fate, woke all the worst parts of her. She wasn’t destined to this.

He's often more of an idealist than you'd expect, in that he may have a vision of how to improve the world, or the small corner of the world he inhabits.  Mystical, he isn't, and his ideals are always attainable ones.  He makes sure of that, and also usually makes sure he has the resources and the skills to achieve them in his lifetime.  He won't sit idly by and let others bring to birth his vision; he hates to delegate responsibility, and usually believes he must do it himself.

Contrary to popular belief, Misa isn’t a mere follower. She takes initiatives, and she’s the one to find Light, to strenghtens his power and cause. (I know I barely talked about Raye, but the few moments he has are all very Capricorn-y: he is attached to tradition (to a fault), seems to be stern and hard-working and unlucky).

  ♒ AQUARIUS (AIR SIGN / FIXED)  ♒

Characters: Naomi Misora, Halle Lidner, Matt.

Main traits: visionary, progressive, mobile, independant, altruistic, non-violent, sensitive ; excentric, nervous, restless, touchy, impatient, individualistic.

Symbolism: individualism, a stroke of genius, transmission (electricity), surprises, cooperation, marginality, revolutions, unpredictability, hope, freedom, ideals.

Tarot: the Star, the Fool 

Aquarians do not mind standing behind a friend. I know, I’m one of those. I tell you, Ohba chose the signs carefully. Look at all our water-bearers here: they all stood, loyal as a shadow, behind someone. Naomi sacrificed her life to discover the truth behind Raye’s death. Halle managed to remain loyal to both Mello and Near without betraying any of them - she tied them together - in a sense, it’s the idea of L she was loyal to all along. She made that happen, a true “stroke of genius” (a symbol of Aquarius). Matt existed as a character to help Mello, and to highlight an unseen side of him, calm and caring.

Narratively,  they all exist to complete another character. They would see no shame in that. Aquarians always look at the big picture : what are their life worth in comparison with a desirable future?

Aquarius is about love and brotherhood.  Or perhaps, we should say, with more accuracy, that it is about ideals - and the ideals of love and brotherhood are among many which are formulated in the forward-looking Aquarian mind.  Particularly ideals about the group, the welfare of humanity, the future of society. 

This is telling that you cannot detach any of these characters from the ideals, groups or people they serve.

He often has a horror of being what he calls 'selfish', which is very noble but not very psychologically healthy.  Regardless of his personal likes and dislikes, his dedication to his beliefs is unshakeable.  And this dedication is often to the objective perspective, the broad canvas, a code of ethics or principles by which he believes he should live.  And, of course, he is often dedicated to Truth.  Yes, it's capitalized, that word Truth.  For Aquarius, there is generally only one Truth (…) On the other hand, he doesn't much like individuals.  Aquarius is the fellow who loves humanity and doesn't like people.  He can be brusque, cool, unfeeling, insensitive, rigid, dogmatic, and downright stupid when it comes to the subtleties of human relationships.

Aquarians are humanists who prefer a solitary life: Halle seems to fit the bill, Misora probably wouldn’t have loved the tranquil life Raye was offering her. As for Matt, he embodies the Aquarius archetype: detached, aloof and yet able to maintain a strong friendship (Aquarians need at least one strong friendship). Still, they all seemed like independent people. 

I also believe that Misora, while being very intelligent, was a bad judge of character. It fits with the Aquarius archetype that she understood Kira’s intricate plans and failed to see the monster Light was carrying with him. (He didn’t hide it that well, but Aquarians tend to trust the wrong people).

And most important, with all this obsession about the rights of others and what they ought to do and be, they forget about themselves - to such an extent that they mince their own emotions to pieces through simple lack of expression.  

Well, we all know them thanks to the ones standing before them on the stage. Without these brilliant minds acting as their shadows, neither Mello nor Near would have won. All that selflessness, for friendship, for ideas, for a better future (their card symbolises this: the Star shining above us all). 

♓ PISCES (WATER SIGN / MUTABLE)  ♓

Characters: Light Yagami, “Jack Neylon”, Mido

Main traits: charitable, devoted, patient, compassionate, shrewd, observant, unassuming ; sensitive, ambivalent, resigned, submissive, dreamy, indolent, vulnerable, shifty.

Symbolism: illusions, prisons, secrets, contemplation, guides, transcendence, madness, psychology, escape, solitude.

Tarot: The Hierophant/The Pope & The Hanged Man.

Really now, I will not dwell on Neylon nor Mido because the only thing we know about them is this: they are weak. And this is our guideline to understand Light Yagami. You don’t need a map nor a guide, no. Weakness. Mido, especially, is explicitly connected to Light: his father is a powerful man, his hobby is fencing (Light and L were supposed to be fencing at first, instead of play tennis), he graduated from To-Oh University’s Law department, and he is full of contradictions: he despises finance and works at Yotsuba. Mido resembles a man who couldn’t choose his own fate. Weakness. Here’s your key.

I have always argued against the “Kira is Light’s other personality” interpretation, as it diminishes Light’s character. He has consciousness of his actions. That said, Kira is very much a mask, a persona that Light crafted BUT he forged it using materials others provided, as evidenced from the start. Light made Kira out of his supporters’ hopes, it is a God people created. Read this, and think of Light working hard to become Kira:

(...) the tendency Pisceans to become the people with whom they are strongly involved causes many of them to be subsumed.  Sometimes texts refer to Pisces as 'wishy-washy', because there is a passivity, a kind of inertia in these people that shows most clearly when a crisis is upon them 

There is a kind of passivity with Light’s relationship with Kira (an Ideal, in the purest sense of the word, NOT a person). Deep down, Light understands the sentiments that led people to believe in Kira - that despair, that lingering, poisonous sadness. Yet, he disagrees with the ideas Kira represents. His education taught him better. He also tends to mimic his father during the Yotsuba arc, and L after the Detective’s death.

It is crucial to remember why Light started to kill : boredom, and dare I say, sadness. A moment of weakness, from a teenager who longer for ... anything, something else.

(...) perhaps the task of every Piscean is to come to terms in some way with the transpersonal realm, and to have the courage to be its mouthpiece.  Here we find the poets and musicians, the great actors and playwrights, the visionaries and mystics who attempt to bring to ordinary life a glimpse of something else.

Pisces is the sign of the mystic.  And this mystical streak means several things.  For one thing, many Pisceans are deeply religious - although not necessarily in an orthodox way.  But they have a longing for, and a sense of, some other reality, something transcendant, magical, elusive, that makes ordinary life seem drab and meaningles

As @lux-mea-lex demonstrated it many times, Light broke his own fate. He wasn’t destined to fall. The Drama provided an excellent take on this: Light is tempted to end his own life after the first murder. This is perfectly sound to think so - Light knew he acted on his feelings, that he was weak, that Soichiro Yagami was right and that no man should decide to judge humanity. Light’s sentiments were dissonant. It contradicted all he had been taught.

But Light’s feelings are the core of his actions. He is intelligent, yet, how often does he end up being betrayed by his own irrationality? Pisceans are prone to emotional outburts they fail to understand themselves. Light is his own worst enemy : he knew he couldn’t continue on his killing spree, his brain, his soul would suffer (why is it so often downplayed? 

And then came Kira. Light threw himself in the arms of Kira, the God people wanted, because it gave him a cause. It made his suffering worth it: he was a martyr, he was a saviour, “the God everyone wanted”. He was a Chosen One, just so. How romantic is that? How Piscean are you, Light.

And Light voluntarily put his life, his soul, his emotions on hold (as much as he could) in order to become that God (the one everyone wanted - this phrasing is telling) Everything about this analysis fits our Pisces archetype : the need to sacrifice oneself, the chameleon aspect, the connection to the Martyr.

Pisces is the last sign, the completion of the cycle.  Every sign leaves its trace in Pisces; there is not so much a particular Piscean dilemma as that Pisces embodies the human dilemma.  In this last of the zodiacal signs is represented all of man's helplessness, his longings, his dreams, his needs, his powerlessness in the face of the universe, his delusions of grandeur, his longing for love, his sense of a mystery or a divine source which he strives for, yet cannot wholly reach without great sacrifice.  

To understand Light, you have to reconcile idealistic memoryless!Light and cynical Kira!Light. The worst cynics are made of the same fabric as wide-eyed idealists: both refuse to see the world as it is. Light is one of those. I wrote once something along the lines of : “the world could never be as tidy as his mother’s home”. Light has a tangled state of mind from the start, he was bound to be disappointed someday but the fall wasn’t destined to be fatal. Ohba says that he would have worked with L, in the end. The Death Note gave him the opportunity to work with L, to become L, and to fall all the same. Let’s put it that way:

You might say that in every Pisces, symbolized by the two fishes trying to swim in opposite directions yet bound together by a golden cord, there is this dilemma of the meeting of two dimensions.  There is the ordinary mortal side, which is used to facts and realities of a tangible kind.  Eat, sleep, make love, and die - or bread and circuses, as the Romans used to say.  And there is also a melusine - or, in the case of Pisces women, the masculine equivalent - which inhabits the dark depths, and which occasionally flashes its tail above the water, catching the sunlight, entrancing the mortal on the shore.  How this meeting is dealt with is the story of each Piscean life.  Some Pisceans simply follow the mermaid down, forgetting that human lungs cannot survive underwater.

Light drowned for 12 volumes. This is why I associate Light to the most beautiful part of Lorenzaccio: “I, during all this time, have dived; I have plunged into this rough sea of life; I have traversed all the depths of it, covered with my diving-bell; while you were admiring the surface, I saw the debris of shipwrecks, the bones and the leviathans”.  The mistake is to analyse Light’s motives rationally. Intelligence does not mean coldness, or rationality. Light becomes cold, never rational. His actions are rooted in all kinds of deep, powerful feelings: despair, pride, mostly despair. He will never stop for as long as these feelings live within him, and anyway:

The Fish is a creature which lives underwater.  And Pisces does too.  He moves in the depths of a world which is difficult to fathom if you are an airy, earthy, rational type.  Everything is seen double, or in quadruplicate, nothing is ever simple or clear.  Every thought and action has thousands of associations which ripple out into infinity.  Pisces does not understand boundaries (…) Everything to excess.  It's because he doesn't really understand how to discriminate, how to limit, how to choose (...)  What he has to compensate for this rather disturbing failing is a boundless imagination.  For here too, the Pisces has no limits.  He can envision anything.  Einstein was a Pisces, and a good example of where a brilliant intellect can go when it is not hidebound by conventions and dogmas.

This might be the crucial part: Light does not follow a strict guideline; Kira, to him, was an excuse, an opportunity, a miracle. The gateway he needed not to kill himself after breaking a sacred rule. Kira was never, ever, synonym with a dogma. He inflicted one on others, because that was his role as a godly figure. Light himself, though, he was never coherent. It is most telling when Light says Kira will become Justice when his opponents are all dead. Mikami and Takada already think Kira is justice : Kira is inherently good and just to them, there is no discussion! They are ideologues, they follow a strict guideline. Light, deep down, knows the truth: Kira is not the incarnation of Justice, or Humanity’s new saviour. Kira is is personal saviour, the one who rescued Light from death and self-loathing. Nothing more, nothing less.

How could I put it in fewer words?

Pisces has a real problem coping with reality.  That is, with the one bound by time and space and structure and facts.  Although his intuition may be lightning-quick, and his intellect brilliant, he will often overlook something simple, like the electricity bill.

Light is willing the overlook Kira’s true nature for his own sake…oh, and humanity’s too, because part of him surely believe criminals deserve to die. But that was never the point: Light could have murdered as many criminals as he wanted without creating a pattern. 

He wanted people to NOTICE him. He had to, because that gave him legitimacy, a status, a role to play. As a solitary criminal no one noticed or remembered or named, Light would have ended up killing himself. So he welcomed the name Kira, with all the contradictions it entails (”Killer”), and used Light Yagami as his best weapon. After all, Pisceans are masterful when it comes to hide their passionate, emotive nature. They tend to be ashamed of it, even, and young Light certainly knew how to hide beneath his good grades before the Death Note:

Many Pisceans simply cannot accept the size of the challenge.  And, after all, who can blame them?  It is not easy to make peace with melusine; and our education does not help us, since it tends to emphasize that anybody with the secret life of the Pisces must be at best a lazy daydreamer, and at worst emotionally disturbed. (…) Pisces is more easily distorted, more easily pressured by a hostile environment, than any other sign.  So the melusine calls unheard from the depths of the soul, and the average Piscean disguises himself from himself by a rationalistic attitude toward life.  

Light perfected the role of Kira, he embraced it because he relished the influence he could have on a world so hostile to him. Also, Pisceans are attracted to godly motifs:

The Fish is one of the great symbols of Christianity; and in this symbol can be found many important themes that pertain to Pisces, both in this broad way and in the individual life of the person born under the sign.  Firstly, there is the aspiration.  Before the coming of Christianity, man and God were two different things; there could be communication between them, there could be enmity or friendship; but man was not like God and God was not like man, and never the twain could meet.  But one of the essential meanings of the Christian myth is that God incarnates as man:  that there is a halfway point, an intermediary, a bridging of the two worlds.  We are back to our friend the melusine here.  But, instead of melusine, read soul or spirit.  So, we can, if we want to consider the religious aspect of Pisces, say that there is a strong awareness in many Pisceans, especially the more mystical ones, of themselves - and the whole of mankind - being some kind of halfway house between animal and divine.  

Be attentive of what-ifs when analysing a character. Why if Light had stopped killing after the first murder? After all, he was tempted to at first. He could have continued on his path, with acute awareness of the psychological impact of suppressing a human life. He could have made himself a better person out of this experience. That is without counting on one pivotal aspect of Light’s personality, something strongly linked to his Piscean nature:

Pisces may often be found searching desperately for a cause to which he can devote himself, even sacrifice himself. (…) Pisces is also an incurable romantic.  He may have many defences to hide this innate tendency, but romantic he was born and romantic he will die.  And romance doesn't just mean about love affairs.  It means about everything.  The house he lives in must be a castle, with moat and drawbridge; the car must be exotic, the bed revolving with platforms and coloured lights….well, you get the idea.  He lives in his imagination.

Light couldn’t face the real world, hide underwater, drowned. The Dreamer ruined himself. That’s all you need to know.

[trinitiesblog]

podcast 248 - How Trinity theories conflict with the Bible

In trinitarian tradition, the one God is the Trinity. In the New Testament, the one God is the Father. One can’t consistently affirm both claims, which is why there is a clash between trinitarian traditions (since about the late 300s) and the New Testament. Protestants, I suggest, should stick with the latter.

But the social pressures, at least for the theologically educated, are so strong that we should not deviate from longstanding Catholic and Protestant tradition. For many, it is just unthinkable that the mainstream could have made a mistake here. The NT just must be consistent with catholic traditions here – it must.

One answer to that is: wait – you’re a Protestant, right? You can’t say that! (Supply your own counterexamples from church history.)

At any rate, it is demonstrably a mistake to think you can coherently affirm both that God is the Father and that God is the Trinity. The demonstration is below. I use that word “demonstration” very deliberately. I mean that there is a proof of inconsistency that any trinitarian can see is valid (i.e. there is no mistake in reasoning) and it employs only premises to which the trinitarian is committed simply by being a trinitarian. This proof puts the trinitarian in a very hard spot. She can either embrace the apparent contradiction, which looks very foolish when you actually say what that apparent contradiction is (instead of obliquely gesturing at it), or she can deny obvious biblical teachings, or she can deny obvious, self-evident truths. Any way she turns, her Trinity theory comes at a high price!

First, I need to explicate a foundational, unanalyzable concept that you already have and regularly use: the concept of numerical identity or sameness. Let me try to explain it by means of scenarios in which you habitually employ that concept.

Out hiking, you point and say: “There is a big rock!” You’re asserting that (1) there is big thing over there – call it b, (2) there is a rock over there, call it r, and (3) that the one just is the other, that b = r (and vice versa). So in some existence claims, you’re employing the concept of numerical identity (=).

Again, in a theological conversation, you say “Only God is uncreated.” What you’re saying is that God is uncreated, and also, for any x whatever, if x is uncreated then x just is God. In other words, God is uncreated and nothing else is. So in “all” or “only” statements, cases of what logicians call universal quantification, you’re employing the concept of numerical identity.

Again, suppose you’re reading Genesis for the first time, and not paying attention very well, you’re thinking this “Abram” is one character and “Abraham” is another. But the, you suddenly realize your mistake, and you as it were collapse the “two” of them into one. You now see that Abram just is Abraham, and vice-versa. (Abram = Abraham) Now imagine that you’re reading some funky OT translation, and the translator sometimes uses “Abe” once in a while. But you realize that this is supposed to be the same character as Abraham; the translation assumes that Abe = Abraham. You realize that also in this translation, it must be that Abe = Abram – because things identical to the same thing must also be identical to each other – that is obvious. (Abe just is Abraham. And Abram just is Abraham. Thus, Abe just is Abram – this is all one being we’re talking about here, via three different names.)

Of course, as a Christian you don’t think this variously named fellow is only a fictional character; you think this is a true narrative. So in your view, Abraham and Abram are the same man. This is to make three claims: (1) Abraham is a man, (2) Abram is a man, and (3) Abraham just is Abram (they are numerically identical).

In sum, don’t confuse numerical identity (aka numerical sameness) with qualitative identity/sameness. Human “identical twins” are by definition (normally) qualitatively the same (to a high degree) but if they are twins they can’t be numerically the same. (As twins, they are two similar things, not one thing.) Notice that similarity comes in degrees and kinds, but it seems that numerical sameness does not; it is all-or-nothing, and doesn’t come in various kinds. Also, while both relations can be reflexive – just as one thing can be similar to another, so everything surely is similar to itself, and maximally so, only numerical sameness is necessarily reflexive. In other words, what are really two things can be similar, but they can’t be numerically the same. Only a single thing/entity/being can be numerically the same as itself. In any true statement of numerical sameness, we’re just referring to one and the same thing twice, using two different but co-referring terms or names or expressions. e.g. Slick Willy = Bill Clinton, The Donald = Donald Trump.

Having said all that, our proof employs only the concept of numerical identity. Call it the argument for the Incoherence of Biblical Trinitarianism. Take note: the argument doesn’t try to show, nor does it presuppose, that the idea of the Trinity (supposing that is one idea!) is incoherent. (So you’re missing the point if you chime in here with the standard opening move.) Rather, the argument shows that some clear claims of biblical theology together with claims needed by any Trinity theory – those two together are incoherent, as they imply a contradiction. How so? Like this:

God just is Yahweh.

Yahweh just is the Father.

God just is the Father. (1,2)

God just is the Trinity.

It is not the case that the Trinity just is the Father.

The Trinity just is the Father. (3,4)

For logically educated, I provide the sentences using the standard symbol “=” for numerical identity, and g for the one God, y for Yahweh, f for the Father, t for the Trinity, and “-” for the negation operator. (Skip this bit if you’re not familiar with modern symbolic logic. You can understand the argument without this notation.)

g = y

y = f

g = f (1,2)

g = t

-(t = f)

t = f (3,4)

Note that 5 and 6 together are a formal contradiction, a denial and affirmation of the same claim. Whatever the letters refer to, we all know that no pair of sentences with those structures (-P, P) could simultaneously be true.

Let’s walk through the argument now and see the alleged justification for each step.

“God just is Yahweh” is a premise, and is clearly taught throughout the OT. “Yahweh” is just the proper name of the one God there. Yahweh is not supposed to be one being while God is another!

“Yahweh just is the Father ” is also a premise, this time clearly assumed throughout the NT. The NT doesn’t use the Hebrew name “Yahweh” because that was then thought to be improper, and also, the NT is all in Greek. They call Yahweh “God” (Gr: ho theos) or “the Lord God.” But is is clear that this is none other than the Father. Notice how John, just for stylistic reasons, swaps the terms “God” and “Father” at John 6:46, John 10:36, and John 13:3. This is because he assumes them to be numerically one. In his setting, “God” and “the Father” are normally understood as co-referring terms.

“God just is the Father” is a conclusion from 1 & 2. Numerical identity is transitive: if a = b and b = c, then a = c. In this case, g = y (1), y = f (2), therefore g = f. (3) Happily, this assertion that g = f is a clear NT teaching too, independently of the above reasoning.

” God just is the Trinity” is also a premise. It is not directly or clearly asserted anywhere in the Bible, but it is the defining thesis of any trinitarian theology. If you’re a trinitarian, the one God just in the Trinity, the triune god: you are committed to 4.

“It is not the case that the Trinity just is the Father” is a premise to which any trinitarian is committed. It is self-evident that nothing can, at one time or in eternity, be and not be the same way (i.e. differ from itself). Abstractly put: numerical identity implies indiscernibility at a time. If there is a triune God, this can’t just be (i.e. can’t be numerically one with) the Father, because those would eternally (either timelessly or at all times) differ from one another. The Trinity is supposed to have the Father as one of its three “Persons,” but the Father is not supposed to have the Father as one of its three “Persons.” Again, the Trinity is supposed to be tripersonal, but the Father is not, according to any catholic/orthodox Trinity theory. Again, the Father is supposed to eternally generate the Son, but the Trinity per se is not.

“The Trinity just is the Father” is a conclusion from 3 & 4. It is self-evident that things that are identical to the same thing must also be identical to each other. So if a = c, and b = c, it follows that a = b. Here, g = t and g = f, so t = f. (Logic heads: this follows from the symmetry and transitivity of =. So the reasoning is: g = t, so therefore by symmetry t = g, and adding g = f, by transitivity we get t = f .)

In sum, we start with uncontroversial contents of scriptural teaching. (1-3) We add in two unavoidable commitments of any trinitarian theology, any Trinity theory (4-5). But these things imply a formal contradiction (5 & 6). So we know that at least one of 1-5 is false.

The truly committed trinitarian will try to protect 4 at all costs. Perhaps the first thought for many will be to deny 5, the one non-scriptural or “philosophical” premise. Let’s make clear the reasoning in favor of 5; call it a subsidiary argument.

According to any trinitarian theology, the Father and the Trinity will simultaneously (at the same time, or in eternity – take your pick) differ.

Things that simultaneously differ are numerically distinct.

Therefore, according to any trinitarian theology, the Father and the Trinity are numerically distinct.

Nothing to find fault with here. My trinitarian friend, you do agree with 1, yes? And can see that the reasoning is valid – that 3 follows from 1 & 2. And 2 (the distinctness of discernibles) is self-evident. Going back to the main argument, you’re committed to 5, just by being a trinitarian.

So for a trinitarian, 4 and 5 must be protected. And 1 is off the table too, right? No trinitarian should want to mess with 1; that is simple reading comprehension, when it comes to the OT.

It looks like the only way to save trinitarian hypotheses (which are committed to 1, 4, and 5) is to deny 2 and/or 3. But notice that 3 follows from 1 & 2. And you don’t want to deny 1. So really, you have to attack 2: you have to deny or at least cast doubt on the premise that the Yahweh of the OT just is the one called “Father” is the NT.

Now this claim (premise 2) that Yahweh just is the Father is not something that really comes to the surface in the NT. It is a shared assumption, something they thought didn’t need arguing for! Still, it comes pretty close to the surface at times.

Exhibit A: Luke in Acts

In chapter 2 Luke has Peter say,

This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear.

(Acts 2:32-33, NRSV)

Do you see what Luke has done here? He’s just used “God” twice. So just for variety, the third time around he substitutes “the Father.” He can do that, because for him, “God” and “the Father” are normally co-referring terms – because he assumes the identity of God with the Father (and vice-versa). And he knows his readers assume this too; so he knows that the switcheroo will not be confusing to his readers.

Next chapter, another sermon by Peter – Luke writes:

“You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him.

Acts 3:12-13, NRSV. Compare: Acts 5:29-31, 7:32, 26:6.

Now, Peter can’t say “Yahweh”; that was forbidden at this time. But this one he calls “the God of our ancestors” etc. – this is supposed to be Yahweh, right? So there you go: Luke and Peter assume that Yahweh just is the Father,that those are numerically the same.

Exhibit B: Paul in Ephesians 1

Paul repeatedly calls someone the God of Jesus. Surely, this is the god of the Jews, Yahweh, right? And, this god is none other than the Father. So in Ephesians 1,

2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. … 15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love[e toward all the saints, and for this reason 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him…

Ephesians 1:2-4, 15-17 (NRSV)

It’s just basic reading comprehension that he’s using “God” and “Father” of the same one here. And in its first century, Jewish context, it is clear than this is none other than Yahweh, the one true God of the Jewish scriptures.

So, given your commitment to 1, in order to deny 3 you must also deny 2. But in denying 2, you are in the teeth of clear NT theology. God (aka the Father) in the NT is supposed to be Yahweh, the unique God in the OT. That is foundational to understanding the NT.

My trinitarian friend, it looks like you must commit to all of 1-5. But then, you have a clear contradiction on your hands.

Don’t cry “mystery” here and expect us to think that is a reasonable escape. How is this a mystery? The meaning of all the claims here (1-6) is clear; there is no mysterious claim here, a claim that is barely intelligible! Your point, if you’re going to play the mystery card, must be that there is an apparent contradiction here (5-6). Indeed, there is! Now if you reply with the obvious truism that not every apparent contradiction is a real one, we will nod in agreement, but point out that this sure looks like a real one!

If you’re really going to die on the mystery hill, do it like a man, and say out loud what the mystery is. Own it. Say, “In my view, it is and isn’t the case that the Trinity just is the Father.” Or if you like: “The Trinity and the Father are and are not the same – and yes, I mean ‘same’ in the same sense both times.”

Don’t want to do that? Good. I don’t want you to either, because it is ridiculous.

Here’s another way to look at it, a way that seems more reasonable than mystery-mongering. If you can’t hold on to all of a group of statements, it looks like the one you should let go of should be the one with the least evidence. So let’s consider the various steps in our argument in light of differing degrees of evidence. I’ll call them level 1 and level 2. To have level 1 evidence is to be somewhat plausible in light of all relevant considerations. Level 2, a higher level, is something you’re more sure of because it is plainly biblical teaching and you know the Bible to be inspired. So, plausible but speculative theories are level 1, while biblical truths I’m calling level 2. Here again is the argument:

God just is Yahweh.

Yahweh just is the Father.

God just is the Father.

God just is the Trinity.

It is not the case that the Trinity just is the Father.

The Trinity just is the Father

We can’t reasonably keep both 5 & 6, since they can’t be true. But if you’re a trinitarian, as we’ve seen, you’re committed to 5. So you need to deny 6. But as we’ve seen, 6 logically follows what came before. But where is the weak link in 1-4?

Clearly, the weak link is 4. That God is the Trinity – this is neither an explicit nor a clear teaching of the Bible. It has at most level 1 justification. But 1-3 have level 2 justification. Theory must bow to fact. Deny 4, and there is no longer any basis on which to conclude 6. Problem solved.

The price? You can no longer in good conscience remain in what I call the Trinity club. But what you’ve bought is a biblical theology, a theology that makes sense, and which avoids the many agonies of trinitarian theorizing.

I offer this argument in the hope that it will help you to make the right choice. Do you agree that 4 is the weak link? Why or why not?

Links for this episode:

How Trinity theories conflict with the New Testament

The standard opening move

10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #6 get a date – part 1

10 steps towards getting less confused about the Trinity – #6 get a date – part 2

podcast 232 – Trinity Club Orientation

Debate Organizer: Kingdom of God Ministry and Missions

Debate host: FIRE Church

Debate opponent: Dr. Michael L. Brown

This week’s thinking music is “The Parting Glass (Instrumental)” by Aussens@iter.

https://trinities.org/blog/podcast-248-how-trinity-theories-conflict-with-the-bible/

[bestpaleocookbookreviews]

Obesity: A Cause or a Consequence of Physical Inactivity?

Physical inactivity makes you fat, right? Most people on the street would probably agree with this supposition; popular science contends that lack of exercise means lower caloric expenditure, which translates to weight gain unless we reduce caloric intake. If we then inquire about why obese individuals tend to exercise less (on average) than leaner folks, many respondents would attribute the difference to laziness, lack of willpower, and less discipline among the former.

These answers all align with a deeply ingrained conventional wisdom regarding exercise and obesity; they rest upon the assumption that Physical Activity Levels (PALs) exist in a unidirectional relationship with the development of obesity: physical inactivity as cause of obesity, not an effect/consequence.

But is this actually true?

A Chicken-and-Egg Situation

Some studies clearly associate obesity with physical inactivity. Many people thus assume that physical inactivity causes weight gain and obesity, a seemingly logical conclusion.

A critical caveat, however, is that these studies don’t establish a cause-effect relationship; they only correlate two variables. In other words, physical inactivity might be an effect of obesity, not a cause, or perhaps it is both cause and effect. It could also be that confounding variables skew the relationship, creating a false appearance of causality. Since there are so many factors to consider, it’s important to be cautious when we interpret results of any such studies.

That said, physical activity and body-fat regulation are connected. Indeed, there is solid evidence to show that physical inactivity can contribute to weight gain, though it alone is insufficient to induce obesity. Combined with other factors such as a highly processed diet and disordered sleep, it can certainly contribute to a body mass index that exceeds 30, the AMA-established definition of obesity.

The weight of the evidence from systematic reviews and meta-analyses suggests that exercise alone doesn’t produce a lot of weight loss (though people respond variably). This isn’t necessarily surprising, given that many exercisers compensate for their exertions by eating more and/or being more sedentary outside the exercise period.

However, exercise is still highly beneficial, metabolically. Regular exercise can help improve leptin and insulin sensitivity, increase lean muscle mass, improve appetite regulation, and elevate resting energy expenditure, among other effects. It is therefore unsurprising that several studies have found exercise helpful in the prevention of obesity.

A Case of Reverse Causality?

As explained above, evidence indicates that physical inactivity can factor into weight gain. However, it can proceed in the other direction as well; physical inactivity can actually derive from the accumulation of excess body fat.  

This may seem counterintuitive to many people. Common public perception holds that some people exercise more than others simply because they possess more willpower and self-discipline, and that it is unrelated to their physiology.

This simplistic belief has caused many overweight and inactive people much suffering, since they may assign their inactivity to some imagined laziness or weak-mindedness. This self-labeling can then feed into poor self-confidence and depression, particularly if they hear other (often leaner) people criticizing their perceived lassitude.

Let’s be clear: willpower and self-discipline are fundamental to long-term adherence to an active lifestyle. However, a truth that eludes many folks is that these qualities aren’t fixed traits determined by genetic lottery; they can be learned and strengthened.  

Furthermore, the human ability and desire to be active, as well as the enjoyment we derive from it, are governed by biological as well as psychological factors. I have learned that a key reason many obese people find exercise overly difficult and strenuous is that they are often chronically inflamed, with compromised immunity and metabolism.

Chronic Fatigue, Physical Inactivity, Suboptimal Physical Performance: Is Inflammation the Culprit?

Obesity is partly characterized by elevated levels of circulating inflammatory cytokines, a state of chronic, low-grade, systemic inflammation. Obesity is recognized as one cause of this inflammatory state, given that fat tissue releases many inflammatory mediators.

However, this internal fire can also be a cause of obesity. Inflammation and disruption of microbial balance—resulting from factors such as antibiotic use, a highly processed diet, and translocation of bacterial endotoxins from the gut into the bloodstream—may themselves cause insulin and leptin resistance, impaired appetite regulation, cravings for unhealthy foods, overeating, and fat accumulation. It’s a vicious cycle in which a perturbation of gut flora and immune homeostasis leads to excessive caloric intake and fat gain, which then further exacerbate the inflammatory process.

When the body is systemically inflamed, it doesn’t prioritize reproduction or peak physical fitness; rather, it allocates resources to damage control. It doesn’t “want” to run, lift heavy things, or perform other musculoskeletally demanding activities; it prefers rest, so it has a chance to recuperate. Chronic, low-grade inflammation is tightly linked with chronic fatigue and many other conditions that impair our physical performance and exercise tolerance.

Unfortunately, with obesity, the inflammatory cascade never stops. Fat tissue keeps pumping out TNF-alpha and other cytokines, and lipopolysaccharide continues to leak from the gut into the bloodstream, unless we undertake dietary changes and rebalance the microbiome. Until we address the inflammation, physical activity will continue to be low-priority—and gym time may continue to feel like purgatory.

Another caveat: although many lines of evidence implicate the inflammatory processes described above, other yet-unidentified factors and mechanisms may be involved. Regardless, many obese people—and non-obese people with chronic inflammation—have great difficulty getting active.

Exercise Shouldn’t Feel Like Torture

I was a strength coach and personal trainer at a commercial gym for several years. During this period I spent quite a bit of time observing how people exercise, as well as their body language and the feelings they expressed when they were lifting weights, running, or otherwise engaging their muscles. I noticed that high levels of adiposity seemed to make exercise much harder for some people.

For some, a session on the treadmill looks like pure torture. Of course, this might be due partly to the discomfort of carrying excess weight; however, I think the aforementioned processes of inflammation and hormonal disturbance are the real culprits.

Keep in mind that chronic, systemic inflammation doesn’t only affect obese people. Actually, this condition is rampant in our society today, and is at the root of many chronic diseases and health conditions. Even lean people, if inflamed, may be exercise-intolerant. Personally, my urge to exercise, as well as my physical performance, seem to vary with the levels of inflammation in my body.

A New Understanding of an Old Problem

Many studies have investigated the relationship between PALs and obesity; again, though, many fail to prove that one variable precedes the other. However, some researchers have been able to connect the two in a causal way.

One example is a study out of the University of California, Los Angeles that was published in the journal Physiology & Behavior. In the study, 32 female rats were allowed ad libitum access to unrefined rodent chow or a purified low-fat diet. After six months, the rats on the purified low-fat diet, which was rich in sugar and highly processed, had gained significantly more weight than the rats on the diet of unrefined rodent chow.

The researchers tested the rats’ performance by requiring them to press a lever to receive a food or water reward; they found that the rats on the junk-food diet demonstrated impaired performance, taking substantially longer breaks than the lean rats before returning to the task. During a 30-minute session, the overweight rats took breaks nearly twice as long as those taken by the lean animals.

Lead researcher Aaron Blaisdell, in a press statement, framed the study results as follows:

““Overweight people often get stigmatized as lazy and lacking discipline,” Blaisdell said. “We interpret our results as suggesting that the idea commonly portrayed in the media that people become fat because they are lazy is wrong. Our data suggest that diet-induced obesity is a cause, rather than an effect, of laziness. Either the highly processed diet causes fatigue or the diet causes obesity, which causes fatigue.”

Blaisdell believes the findings are very likely to apply to humans, whose physiological systems are similar to rats’.”

Key Points

Obesity can be both a cause and a consequence of physical inactivity. Physical inactivity can contribute to weight gain; combined with other factors, it can create obesity, as it down-regulates the sensitivity of metabolic and satiety-related hormones, sacrifices lean tissue, and reduces energy expenditure, among other effects. Physical inactivity can also be an effect of obesity, if accompanying inflammation and metabolic disruption lead to chronic fatigue, muscle weakness, impaired physical performance, and poor exercise tolerance.

It’s a vicious cycle: physical inactivity contributing to fat accumulation, leading to (possibly) excess body weight and secretion of inflammatory cytokines, both of which may drive further reduction in physical activity levels.

The next time you encounter an obese person who seems to find exercise difficult and unpleasant, avoid judging them. They may be fighting a decidedly uphill battle, with their biochemistry stacked against them.

Reference

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15    I. Spreadbury, ‘Comparison with Ancestral Diets Suggests Dense Acellular Carbohydrates Promote an Inflammatory Microbiota, and May Be the Primary Dietary Cause of Leptin Resistance and Obesity’, Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes, 5 (2012), 175-89.

16    K. S. Steinbeck, ‘The Importance of Physical Activity in the Prevention of Overweight and Obesity in Childhood: A Review and an Opinion’, Obes Rev, 2 (2001), 117-30.

17    A. Thorogood, S. Mottillo, A. Shimony, K. B. Filion, L. Joseph, J. Genest, L. Pilote, P. Poirier, E. L. Schiffrin, and M. J. Eisenberg, ‘Isolated Aerobic Exercise and Weight Loss: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials’, Am J Med, 124 (2011), 747-55.

18    Stuart Wolpert, ‘Does a Junk Food Diet Make You Lazy? Ucla Psychology Study Offers Answer’2014) <http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/does-a-junk-food-diet-make-you-lazy-ucla-psychology-study-offers-answer>.

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