#Intolerance in India

[massivelyspeedyobject]

The real story of prosecution of minorities by Hitler & the resemblance

Credit: quora The prosecution of minorities under Hitler’s regime, particularly targeting Jews, is a dark chapter in history. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party implemented policies of systematic discrimination, persecution, and ultimately extermination of various minority groups, most notably Jews, but also including Romani people, disabled individuals, homosexuals, and others. The persecution…

[secular-jew]

if you get to talk about how islam ruined the levant, i get to talk about how islam ruined south asia. im indian and seeing so much of my culture as well as the cultures of indigenous pakistanis/kashmiris/afghans get erased by muslim invaders is ridiculous. they pretend that they're oppressed everywhere but in reality, they've been doing so much of it. i feel solidarity towards jews because we understand how much islamic colonialism hurts us. even in kashmir, the indigenous hindus were murdered and forced to leave in the 80s and 90s, and now, the story's been twisted so that the kashmiri hindus are the bad guys and we're the ones who want to kill all the muslims when it's the opposite. it's so frustrating.

Islam absolutely ruined Southeast and South Asia. I FEEL FOR YOU MY FRIEND. I feel TOTAL solidarity with Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs and Zoroastrians -- with all Indians and Malaysians and Indonesians and Africans as well. Islam is now ruining Europe and trying to destroy North America.

[nickysfacts]

Protesting is and will always be a important part of American identity, as we were born from it and continue to use it as a rallying cry for change to this very day!🪧

🇺🇸☕️🇺🇸

[atheostic]

[suvarnarekha]

i hope the makers of caliphate netflix will sued the kerala story producers and why you defend the kerala story, do you know Vipul Amrutlal Shah was supported bjp, i know you will furious but you need understand that shah is making money for bjp and you need find real truth on kerala because you are north indian, you will visit kerala to show real side

What do the creators of Caliphate have to do with The Kerala Story? Both are raising the same issues which should be brought to the limelight but the respective makers are not intersected in any ways whatsoever. What reason would they have to sue any people associated with any film ecosystem?

Now; our prime minister, along with the BJP, did uplift the movie in Karnataka. So? What's the issue with that? AK often tweets about movies, rates them and even makes some of them tax free in Delhi whenever he wishes. So, if the country's leader himself is appropriating the masses by mentioning such important ventures, then what exactly is so horrifying about that?

It might come as a shock to you, anon, but the background activities done by the creators of the film is of the least concern to me unless they harm our Nation and its integrity. Plus, do you have any substantial testimony of the allegations you are putting on Vipul Amrutlal Shah? From where exactly did you get this information? Why will I believe a supposed claim coming from a completely unreliable source? Hand over the authentic sources, I will happily believe them.

"because you are north indian" What precisely is that supposed to mean? I live in north India so I am completely ambiguous about the ongoings of the other regions? What you need to get a-fix in your mindset is that one does not need to visit a state to know the reality. Because unlike you, dearest anon, some of us do our due research. We do not believe cockamamie conspiracy theories spewed on the internet.

It's deranged how you think I would get furious when you clearly cannot stand anything that is said against your judgement, anon. You want evidence about the girls converted and sent to ISIS from Kerala?

Fathima (pre-conversion name : Nimisha), Mariyam (pre-conversion name : Merrin Jacob), Ayisha (pre-conversion name : Sonia Sebastian. Yasmin Zahid, who recruited many youths from Kerala and sent them to Afghanistan, is now sentenced to jail.

I'm sorry but the "real side of kerala" you kindly mentioned is right here. Aforementioned and open. A little advice, anon? Say whatever you want, but believe what you see. These myriad victims might just be statistics for us but they are suffering. This is an ongoing process. And it'll only begin to decline when we acknowledge this.

[indizombie]

The one statistic that sets Assam apart, which may explain the sudden adoption of “zero tolerance”, is that of religion. As per NFHS-5, while the proportion of underage marriages among Hindus in Assam at 23.5 per cent is close to the national average (23.2 per cent), the figures for Muslims (45.8 per cent) and Christians (23.8 per cent) are much higher than their respective national averages of 26.4 per cent and 15.2 per cent. All India figures show that early marriage is strongly concentrated amongst the poorest classes, and this is even more so in Assam, with 42 per cent underage marriages in the poorest 20 per cent poverty class. Poverty and minority religious community identity are closely linked — while 51 per cent Muslims are in the poorest poverty class, only 31 per cent Hindus occupy the same.

Mary John, ‘Assam’s crackdown on child marriages is driven more by politics than concern for women’, Indian Express

[insightfultake]

Bangladesh’s Crisis of Conscience – A Mirror to History

The political and social fabric of Bangladesh is once again unraveling, revealing troubling echoes of its tumultuous history. Born out of the ashes of 1971, with India’s crucial military and humanitarian support, Bangladesh emerged as a beacon of freedom. Yet, as recent events starkly highlight, gratitude has long faded into indifference, and, worse, antagonism.

Bangladesh’s Hindu minority, constituting around 8% of its population, faces an existential crisis. Reports of arson, desecration of temples, targeted killings, and the systemic displacement of Hindu families paint a grim picture. Since July, following protests against Sheikh Hasina’s government, communal violence has surged. Hindu homes in districts like Jashore and Bagerhat have been torched, forcing families to seek refuge in India, much as they did during 1971. The exodus is a grim reminder of the unresolved issues of minority rights in the country​....Expand to read more

[manojnaironline]

A rich and diverse heritage

Ancient cultures, like India, possess a rich and diverse heritage. India, is home to cities that have been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, with family lineages that can be traced back through the centuries. My home state of Kerala exemplifies a remarkable blend of cultural and religious harmony. Hinduism has thrived here for millennia, and in 52 AD, the first church in India was…

[ankurahospitalvijayawada]

Lactose Intolerance in Infants and Children in India, Hyderabad - Ankura Hospital

The human body has a miraculous mechanism of digesting and assimilating food. Various enzymes and digestive juices work together at the molecular level during the process of digestion, helping us gain the necessary nutrients. The absence of smaller enzymes or chemicals can lead to intolerance of specific substances. Lactose intolerance is a very common condition where infants, children, and even adults are not able to digest lactose, a very common form of sugar.

What is Lactose?

Lactose is a type of sugar that is found in milk and milk products.

What is Lactose Intolerance?

Lactose intolerance is the inability of the body to digest lactose.

Yes! You read it right! Some people including babies and children are incapable of digesting this simple sugar lactose found in milk and milk products.

What happens when someone suffers from Lactose Intolerance?

In a normal scenario, whenever we consume products containing lactose, it reaches the small intestine where it is broken down into smaller pieces by an enzyme called lactase. These products are then absorbed as nutrients and give us energy. In lactose intolerance, the body doesn’t make enough lactase and thus the lactose is not digested. This lactose which remains undigested in the small intestine, then passes to the large intestine- the colon, where it sits and accumulates. In the colon the lactose is broken down by the bacteria, resulting in gas, bloating, stomach ache, etc.

What are the symptoms of lactose intolerance?

Anyone who has lactose intolerance experiences the symptoms below after consuming products containing lactose.

Bloating or distention of the abdomen- This is a feeling of fullness or tightness in the belly

Pain abdomen- Due to undigested lactose, one experiences cramps and pain in the stomach region

Burping- While one may experience burping normally after eating a good meal, burping in case of lactose intolerance is excessive

Excess gas- One may notice this as an excess burp, fart, or stomach ache

Diarrhoea- Loose stools which may be accompanied by nausea are also a symptom one may experience

In lactose intolerant infants, excessive perianal excoriation (painful red skin around anus) can develop due to acidic stool. This may lead to excessive irritability and pain while passing stool.

Besides the above, there may be a sudden urge to use the toilet after consumption of lactose, and one may also be able to hear loud bowel sounds.

The above symptoms can vary in severity and presentation depending on the amount of lactose one has consumed.

Can babies be born with lactose intolerance?

Though lactose intolerance usually shows up later in life, very  rarely some infants are born with lactose intolerance.

Primary lactase deficiency-

Babies who have lactose intolerance at birth can have primary lactase deficiency. This means that due to genetic abnormality, these babies do not produce lactase enzyme at all. In this case, they have to be fed on special lactose-free baby formulas. This is a rare, easily treatable but life-threatening disease if diagnosis is delayed. What are the other types of lactose intolerance?

In individuals who have adequate lactase at birth, its production can be affected by factors such as infection, disease and age.

Secondary lactase deficiency- In this type of lactose intolerance, the small intestines stop producing lactase due to infection or disease. This is the most common type of lactose intolerance in small children and infants and is temporary. Viral/bacterial infections and diseases such as Celiac and Crohn’s disease (an immune-mediated gastrointestinal disorder) can lead to this type of lactose intolerance. Early diagnosis

by a pediatric gastroenterologist can help in regaining lactose tolerance in such cases.

Since children commonly develop viral infections and other infections of the gastrointestinal tract, secondary lactose intolerance occurs in most kids. Diarrhoea and pain in such cases is a common cause of concern for parents and thus this requires to be identified and addressed at the earliest.

Acquired lactase deficiency- Adults may also get lactose intolerant with age. This is due to a reduction in the enzyme lactase with age.

How can a parent confirm if their baby is lactose intolerant?

Parents should look out for the symptoms listed above to know if their baby can be lactose intolerant. In case of doubt, they should consult a pediatric gastroenterologist at the earliest, as lactose intolerance can lead to painful symptoms and can affect the growth of your child. Most of the times diagnosis can be made clinically, however, your doctor may ask for few tests in case of doubt.

Hydrogen breath test- Suspected lactose intolerance is confirmed by a simple breath test. The doctor introduces lactose in the child after overnight fasting and checks for rising hydrogen levels in the breath by making the child exhale in a bag. The symptoms of lactose intolerance if occur are also confirmed during this test which requires 3-4 hours. This test is not commonly performed very commonly, and may not be required in simple cases of lactose intolerance.

Stools tests:Your doctor may also employ other tests as stool tests if required.

In severe cases, when the diagnosis is unclear, endoscopy as performed by a pediatric gastroenterologist can help in getting a biopsy of the small intestine and the lactase levels can be measured directly.

Your child has to be kept on low  lactose or lactose-free diet in case they develop lactose intolerance.

Which are products that contain lactose?

Lactose may be a part of many products. Some of these include:

-Milk (All types including breast milk)

-Cheese and Butter

-Yogurt and Curd

-Ice-creams

-Custard

-Milk chocolates

-Bread and pancakes

Additionally, lactose may also be a part of many other processed foods. One is suggested to check the label of the food mentioning nutrition facts to know the presence of lactose in it.

In most of the children where symptoms are not very serious, only decreasing lactose content of diet, or opting for low lactose containing foods may help. In case of uncontrolled symptoms, your doctor may advice for complete cessation of lactose containing food.

What are the alternative foods a parent can offer their child in case of lactose intolerance?

If a child is lactose intolerant parents may worry about the nutrition of the child. Below are some foods that can help in providing your child with adequate calcium:

Lactose-free dairy products, including lactose-free milk, cheese, etc.

Plant-based milk alternatives- These include almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk

Calcium-rich foods- Dark green leafy vegetables, and nuts such as almonds, beans, and fish are some foods with good calcium content

Fruits and vegetables- Ensuring your child consumes fruits and vegetables makes sure they get adequate minerals and vitamins

Please note, that for babies less than six months of age, only lactose-free or minimal lactose-containing milk formulas are suggested, and should be taken as advised by your doctor.

In case of need, your doctor may also provide your child with calcium supplements. Discussion of a detailed diet plan with a dietician and pediatric gastroenterologist helps parents make sure that their lactose-intolerant child is receiving adequate calcium from other sources.

Is Lactose Intolerance treatable?

Most cases of lactose intolerance are temporary, due to infections and take 3-4 weeks to resolve. Your doctor diagnoses and treats the child of the primary infection, which helps in the resolution of lactose intolerance in them. If it’s due to a disease like Celiac and Crohn’s disease then too with the right diagnosis and treatment this condition is resolved.

In rare cases when the disease may be due to primary intolerance, it may require a lifelong change in diet.

Is Lactose intolerance the same as milk allergy?

No. Lactose intolerance is the inability to digest lactose and does not lead to the symptoms of allergy. The two are different conditions.

Though lactose intolerance can be a common cause of concern, with timely diagnosis it can easily be tackled. Parents should stay aware, to help their little children deal with lactose intolerance.

[hindulivesmatter]

Why Gandhi is a piece of shit and you should hate him.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has been established in our history as a "Mahatma" which means "great soul"

This man is anything but that.

He is EVERYWHERE. He's on our currency, he's revered as a hero who saved India, and we have a mandatory holiday on October 2nd in honor of him.

If you didn't know, now you're going to get to know why he was a horrible human being. Let's begin.

This man managed to fool people Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela (among many others) into thinking he was a good person.

Here is some of the shit he's done:

In 1903, when Gandhi was in South Africa, he wrote that white people there should be "the predominating race." He also said black people "are troublesome, very dirty, and live like animals."

 Refused to have sex with his wife for the last 38 years of their marriage. He felt that in order to test his commitment to celibacy, he would have beautiful young women (including his own great niece) lie next to him naked through the night. His wife, whom he described as looking like a "meek cow" was no longer desirable enough to be a solid test.

Believed that Indian women who were raped lost their value as a human.

During Gandhi's time as a dissident in South Africa, he discovered a male youth had been harassing two of his female followers. Gandhi responded by personally cutting the girls' hair off, to ensure the "sinner's eye" was "sterilised". Gandhi boasted of the incident in his writings, pushing the message to all Indians that women should carry responsibility for sexual attacks upon them.

He argued that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honour. 

Gandhi also waged a war against contraceptives, labelling Indian women who used them as whores.

He believed menstruation was a "manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality".

On 6th April 1947, he gave a speech where he said, “ If the Muslims are out there slicing through Hindu masses to wipe out the Hindu race, the Hindus should say nothing and peacefully accept death”.

He hated the great Hindu rulers, especially Shivaji Maharaj. To please the Muslims, he banned the book named ShivBhaavani which correctly depicted Islam’s intolerance and fierce fundamentalism spread by it.

Refused his wife life-saving medication (for religious reasons), but those religious reasons all of a sudden no longer applied to him when he was in a similar position.

Started a fast unto death when Ambedkar asked for separate electorates for Dalits.

Gandhi left his ailing father on his deathbed, to sleep with his wife. The child born out of this copulation died in infancy. According to Gandhi, the death of this infant was the result of this evil karma.

Gandhi, even when he claimed to be the angel of non-violence, made no efforts to prevent the British from deploying Indian troops at various locations during World War II.

Kashmir was invaded by Pakistan in 1947, the brutal Pakistani army committed heinous crimes against Kashmiri Pandits including mass rape and mass killings consequently many Pandits were forced to flee to Delhi and other places. In one incident Pandits took refuge in an abandoned mosque in Delhi. Infuriated, Gandhi threatened to fast to death if the Pandits didn't leave. The Pandits were slaughtered in a communal riot as soon as they abandoned the mosques.

Criticized the Jews for defending themselves against the Holocaust because he insisted that they should have committed public mass suicide in order to "shame" the Germans instead of fighting back. His exact words were, "But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from the cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions."

And this is all from a simple Internet search compiled here. I wonder what else is hiding if I do a deep dive.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[certified-yapper-guy]

Why were the Mughals (and British) able to rule over India for centuries?

The answer is the so called saviours of dharma, upper-caste hindus. A simple google search would literally list all the available historical sources that state this.

The truth is, they ruled for centuries because they didn’t disrupt the existing social structure

Upper-caste Hindus gladly submitted to the Mughal crown as long as they could keep exploiting the lower classes.

The reason so much land in northern India is still controlled by Rajputs and Jatts today is a direct result of the Mughal strategy of governance through regional alliances. The Mughals focused on securing tribute and allegiance rather than directly dismantling the existing social systems, which let these elites continue exploiting lower-caste and landless people.

Even though he was intolerant, Aurangzeb was the Mughal emperor who had the MOST Hindus serving in his court. Undeniably under him places of worship of other faiths were destroyed and he killed rebels, but guess what? Pretty much all of the well-known Hindu kings of India have all done the same throughout history.

And let’s not forget—throughout Indian history, it’s the upper castes who have betrayed the people. Even during the revolt of 1857, there was no real support from them.

This whole image of the upper castes being the "saviours" of dharma is a lie.

Even today, many of you sanghis are letting politicians use your religion to incite violence against minorities while the country falls apart. Social and economic inequality is killing people; infrastructure is crumbling; pollution is deadly; and there’s tax terrorism, but you let them justify all this in the name of faith. Just know, history will never forgive you for letting this happen, you will never be the 'heros' you claim to be.

[massivelyspeedyobject]

The real story of prosecution of minorities by Hitler & the resemblance

Credit: quora The prosecution of minorities under Hitler’s regime, particularly targeting Jews, is a dark chapter in history. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party implemented policies of systematic discrimination, persecution, and ultimately extermination of various minority groups, most notably Jews, but also including Romani people, disabled individuals, homosexuals, and others. The persecution…

[manorpunk]

“Dashiell! Nice to meet’cha. You’re the GLN suit who’s going to tell me what to do, right?” Sunny said with unexpected enthusiasm, her hologram standing proudly in front of the Oval Office desk with her right hand extended for a shake.

Dashiell Redacted attempted to return the offer of a handshake, but his hand phased right through Sunny’s hologram. A tingling feeling lingered in his hand, like pulling statickey clothes out of the dryer. Sunny flashed him an intolerably smug grin.

“That’s a very uncharitable way to describe it,” Dashiell responded as he flicked his hand to shake away the tingling feeling.

He was, in fact, the GLN suit who was there to tell president Sunny Roosevelt what to do. The Global Logistics Network, or GLN for short,  was a world-spanning empire of shipping and infrastructure: as they spoke, the world was blanketed in GLN ships, trains, and trucks, driving on GLN-built roads, docking in GLN-run ports, drawing power from GLN-owned solar farms. Everyone, from corner stores to billion-dollar semiconductor factories, had to deal with the GLN.

“Really? What’s the charitable version, then?” Sunny shot back.

Dashiell attempted to stare pensively out the window, but the only windows in the Oval Office were directly behind Sunny, so he turned and stared pensively at the fireplace instead.

“On the twentieth of March, in the year 1602, the Dutch East India Company was formed,” he began.

Sunny slumped her shoulders and sighed, sending a little white mushroom-shaped puff of air out of her mouth. “I knew I shouldn’t have asked.”

Dashiell told the long and winding story of rise of the Dutch East India Company, or VOC for short: how they were the first multinational joint-stock company; how they swept the world in a typhoon of blood, gold, and spices; how they became a pseudo-government maintaining their own army, conducting their own diplomacy, minting their own currency; how their wealth and power dragged the world away from the outmoded and sclerotic principles of feudalism into the new principles of capitalism.

“Just as the VOC dragged the world from feudalism to capitalism,” Dashiell continued, his voice sharpening as he approached the denouement, “the Global Logistics Network will now drag the world from the clutches of capitalism into something newer and better. But to do that, all of the antiquated and parochial notions that still orient society must be swept away. Religion must be swept away. Culture must be swept away. The family must be swept away. The human subject will be shaped into a frictionless, standardized unit of labor and consumption, mass-produced in exo-wombs and raised to adulthood in purpose-built dormitories."

“Neat,” said Sunny.

Dashiell turned and glared pointedly at her. “And the GLN’s plans will not be derailed by a vtuber shilling her body pillows.”

Sunny leaned away defensively, the edge of her lip curling upwards in a nervous smile. She raised her hands to head height, as if surrendering. “Whoa, hey, jeez! Who says I’m working against you? I’m totally on board with the new world order. I’m ready and willing to sell out the Usonian Union on your behalf. Heck, I’ll even do your freaky initiation rituals. You want me to kill a goat? I’ll kill a goat. You want me to have sex with a goat? I’ll-”

“Miss Roosevelt,” Dashiell interrupted, his left eyebrow twitching slightly, “your enthusiasm or loyalty were never our concern, but a project of this scope and complexity requires a certain…” he trailed off.

Sunny put her hands on her hips and leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “Oh, I see what’s going on. You think I’m too dumb to be a puppet for the new world order, is that it? Bring me the goat, I'll show you.”

“There are no goats involved in this process,” Dashiell said through gritted teeth.

Sunny narrowed her eyes and stared ferociously at him. “Bring. Me. The goat.”

[imustbenuts]

some stuff about cows in japan

-there are species native to japan, but are not what we consider to be wagyu beef today. some were imported from korea and china to do farmwork early on.

-beef is taboo in Buddhism. kinda. technically all killing of animals and meat consumption is a no no and was even written into law. japan legally turned to veganism at one point, since consumption of meat was considered religiously bad from both shinto and buddhism. this did NOT completely stop people from eating cows still bc hunger and malnutrition is a bitch. and also did not stop the upper echelons from creating rules for thee not for me ways to consume meat still. (ritual preperation or some such lmao)

-milk consumption is a ??????. some estimates put the population to be about 19% lactose intolerant. it strongly depends on how much milk is consumed for the tummy to rumbly though, so its not as if milk = instant ded.

-shinto and buddhism was meant to be seperate religions but at some point it began mixing together on some level. when prior shinto gods were more vindictive if not properly worshipped, became more humanized over time bc buddhism is big on the whole 'gods are just trying to get out of the samsara cycle like us humans too :)'. so the shinto priest began chanting buddhist sutras to their gods at some point. (buddhism began in india as a counter culture(?)/relgiion to caste system and hinduism jsyk. beef is super taboo in india.)

-cows are overpowered for being able to plough the lands super well so they kinda had a point in keeping moomoos around for farmwork. food wise these breeds didnt have too much meat so labour it was. (and fertilizers whee) also again: did not fully stop people far outside the reaches of the state to consume beef if they really wanted/had to.

-the first cow slaughtered was on Buddhist temple grounds (gyokusen-ji) bc some guy named Townsend Harris wanted to eat beef and drink milk in japan in 1866. its a power-dick move thing bc he was part of the gunboat diplomacy open up the country people. said temple was also the grounds for negotiation with the western world/traders after sakoku/isolation. (it is possible this was also done to weaken the influence of Buddhism bc they wanted an emperor god king scenario with shinto at one point. shinto and buddhism was going through redefining + split in this era.)

-today we have wagyu. wagyu when directly translated means Western(wa) Cows(gyu/ushi) and were originally imported from the west somewhere. see above. these wagyus are not native to japan, but rather 4 selected breeds after they went crazy cross breeding them.

-the main reason for the intense breeding was partially for $$$ economic reasons to get japan up into the global political stage.

cows

[firthbetterorfirthworse]

Bride & Prejudice (2004)

OH. MY. GOURD.

THIS WAS SO FUN. Everybody go watch it now. DO IT Colorful! Musical! True to character!

Mrs. Bakshi to her husband: "Have you gone crazy, old man? This is Jaya's chance to win him once and for all. And he'll get to see her in a swimsuit!"

About Kohli (Collins): "Try eating with him. It's like looking at a Jackson Pollock painting."

And of course, Darcy is a rich American who at first seems above the local culture, and is here to look into purchasing a hotel. The conflict between him and Lalita is real: "You want people to come to India without having to deal with Indians. Isn't that what all tourists want here? Five star comfort with a bit of culture thrown in? I don't want you turning India into a theme park. I thought we got rid of Imperialists like you."

Good news, they got this Darcy wet in a dream sequence:

Of course, they're thrown together due to Balraj and Jaya plus Darcy acknowledging his feelings, even though Johnny Wickham showed up to be his usual smarmy self. There's no sudden proposal in this one, but he takes her out to dinner and there's a whole montage of them doing date things!

But his sister Georgie admits that Darcy and Balraj quarreled after he saved him from a gold digger, and when Darcy says "I love you!" it's worse somehow because she has fully admitted feelings for him: "When I first met you, I thought you were rude, arrogant, intolerant and insensitive. But over the last few days I thought maybe - MAYBE - I made a mistake. But I was right. You're the last person I'd ever want to be with."

I don't want to ruin every moment, but trust me when I say it's absolutely wonderful. (and currently streaming on a free service, at least in the US)

[dailyanarchistposts]

The power of joy

To emphasize joy, in contrast to happiness, is to move away from conditioned habits, reactions, and emotions. Bubbling up in the cracks of Empire, joy remakes people through combat with forces of subjection. Joy is a desubjectifying process, an unfixing, an intensification of life itself.[20] It is a process of coming alive and coming apart. Whereas happiness is used as a numbing anesthetic that induces dependence, joy is the growth of people’s capacity to do and feel new things, in ways that can break this dependence. It is aesthetic, in its older meaning, before thinking and feeling were separate: the increase in our capacity to perceive with our senses. As Mexican activist and writer Gustavo Esteva explained in his interview with us,

We use the word aesthetic to allude to the ideal of beauty. The etymological meaning, almost lost, associates the word with the intensity of sensual experience; it means perceptive, sharp in the senses. That meaning is retained in words like anaesthesia. Comparing a funeral in a modern, middle-class family and in a village in Mexico or India, we can see then the contrast in how one expresses or not their feelings and how joy and sadness can be combined with great intensity.[21]

Esteva suggested to us that sentipensar still carries this meaning in Spanish: the conviction that you cannot think without feeling, or feel without thinking. As the feminist scholar Silvia Federici explained when we interviewed her, joy is a palpable sense of collective power:

I like the distinction between happiness and joy. I like joy, like you, because I think joy is an active passion. It’s not a stagnant state of being. It’s not satisfaction with things as they are. It’s part of feeling power’s capacities growing in you and growing in the people around you. It’s a feeling, a passion, that comes from a process of transformation. And it’s a process of growth. So this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be satisfied with your situation. It means that again, using Spinoza, that you understand the situation, and you’re active in a way that you feel that you are comprehending and moving along in accordance to what is required in that moment. So you feel that you have the power to change and you feel yourself changing with what you’re doing, together with other people. It’s not a form of acquiescence to what exists.[22]

This feeling of the power to change one’s life and circumstances is at the core of collective resistance, insurrections, and the construction of alternatives to life under Empire. Joy is the sentipensar, the thinking-feeling that arises from becoming capable of more, and often this entails feeling many emotions at once. It is resonant with what the Black poet and intellectual Audre Lorde calls the erotic:

For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.[23]

Lorde makes it clear that this capacity for feeling is not about fleeting pleasure or contentment: following its line requires responsibility and pulls one away from comfort and safety. It undoes stuckness. It makes stultifying comforts intolerable. In our interview with writer and activist adrienne maree brown, she emphasized that joy is the capacity to be more fully present with ourselves and the world:

I feel very fortunate that my mother read The Prophet by Khalil Gibran to me many times. There is this whole thing on how your sorrow carves out the space for your joy, and vice versa. That has helped me a lot. In recent years I have been on a path to learn somatics, how to be in my wholeness, with my trauma, with my triggers, with my brilliance. It’s all about being present, being awake inside your real life in real time.[24]

In this sense, joy does not come about by avoiding pain, but by struggling amidst and through it. To make space for collective feelings of rage, grief, or loneliness can be deeply transformative. Empire, in contrast, works to keep its subjects stuck in individualizing sadness: held in habits and relationships that are depleting, toxic, and privatized. This stagnation might be held in place by the pursuit of happiness, and the attempt to numb or avoid pain. To be more fully present, in contrast, means tuning in to that which affects us, and participating actively in the forces that shape us.

This tuning-in might be subtle and tender, or it might be a violent act of refusal. Sometimes these shifts are barely perceptible and take place over decades, and sometimes they are dramatic and world-shaking. For Deleuze, thought begins from cramped spaces where one is hemmed in by the forces of subjection. It is not an act of individual will, but a scream that interrupts unbearable forces, opening space for more active combat.[25] This is why so many movements and struggles begin with a scream of refusal: NO, ¡Ya Basta!, Enough!, Fuck off. They interrupt Empire’s powers of subjection and make new practices and new worlds possible. One spark of refusal can lead to an upwelling of collective rage and insurrection. In this way, joy can erupt from despair, rage, hopelessness, resentment, or other so-called “negative” emotions.

Similarly, in a nihilistic vein, the anonymous authors of the queer journal Bædan unpack jouissance as something that exceeds simple enjoyment or pleasure, conceiving it as an ecstatic rupture in the social order imposed by Empire:

We should analyze this distinction between pleasure and pain as being an inscription of the social order into our bodies. And in the same way, it is the mundane and miniscule pleasures produced through contemporary power arrangements which keep us dependent on those arrangements for our well-being. Jouissance, in abolishing both sides of this distinction, severs us from pain as a self-preservation instinct and from pleasure as the society’s alluring bribe. It is the process that momentarily sets us free from our fear of death (literal or figurative) which is such a powerful inhibitor. We can locate this jouissance in the historic moments of queer riot: Compton’s cafeteria, Dewey’s, the White Night, Stonewall, and countless other moments where queer bodies participated in rupture—throwing bricks, setting fires, smashing windows, rejoicing in the streets. But more to the point, jouissance is located in precisely the aspects of these moments (and of others unknown to us) which elude historians, the ones which cannot be captured in a textbook or situated neatly within narratives of progress for queer people, or of rational political struggle for a better future.[26]

Jouissance is difficult to pin down because it is movement and transformation itself. By breaking the divide between pleasure and pain, it undoes habits that hold subjects in place. We are not suggesting that there is some hidden unity behind queer nihilist jouissance, the notion of the erotic in Black feminism, or the Latin American concept of sentipensar. But we do think that these and other currents resonate with the Spinozan concept of joy: a process that is transformative, dangerous, painful, and powerful, but also somewhat elusive. A paradox of joy is that it can’t be described fully; it is always embodied differently, as different struggles open up more space for people to change and be changed. In fact, to grip it, to nail it down, to claim to represent it fully would be to turn it into a dead image divorced from its lively unfolding. The way to participate in joyful transformation is through immersion in it, which is impossible if one is always standing back, evaluating, or attempting to control things.

Another part of why joyful transformation is difficult to talk about is because of the inheritance of a dualistic, patriarchal worldview in which “real” change is supposed to be measurable and observable, and “intelligence” is the capacity for a detached engineering of outcomes. Even the capacity to live otherwise and reject parts of Empire is often presented in patriarchal ways: the subject of revolution is the heroic, strong-willed individual who has the capacity to see past illusions and free himself from mistakes and errors of the past. As feminist, queer, anti-racist, and Indigenous writers have pointed out, this is a vision that falls back on the detached, masculine individual as the basic unit of life and freedom.

Rather than trying to rationally direct the course of events, an affective politics is about learning to participate more actively in the forces that compose the world and oneself. This is what Spinoza meant by intelligence. Supporting joy cannot be achieved through a detached rationality, but only through attunement to relationships, feelings, and forces—a practical wisdom that supports flourishing and experimentation.[27] This is how organizer and militant researcher Marina Sitrin put it when we spoke with her:

I am so excited for this project. It all resonates deeply with things I have been thinking, witnessing, fearing, and dreaming. The role of joy, in particular in the way you describe it, is often absent—though not entirely—from our conversations and constructions in the northern part of the Americas and Europe. It is both a fairly large and abstract concept, and at the same time a very simple, direct, and emotive one. How do we feel when we participate in a movement or group? What are our relationships to others in the group? Does it feel open? Caring? Social? Is there trust? Why do we come back to assemblies and actions? Are people open to one another?[28]

These questions are not just about whether people feel good. They are about how spaces and struggles affect us, and about the potential of becoming more alive, open, trusting and creative. Practices that seem to resemble each other might be vastly different, in terms of what they enable affectively (or don’t). Depending on the context, the relationships, and the way things unfold, a tactic like a strike or a street demo might be based on a dismal conformity to habit or duty, or it might be a profound experience that connects people in new ways and opens possibilities for creativity and movement. It might also be a messy mix of stale routines, reactive containment, and transformative potential.

As we explore in the next chapter, transformative power might look like a dramatic break from the relationships and life paths that have been offered by Empire, but it might also involve more subtle work of learning to love places, families, friends, and parts of ourselves in new ways. It entails deepening some bonds while severing others, and enabling selective openness through firm boundaries. What could it mean to be militant or fiercely committed to all this? Is it possible to be militant about creativity and care? Can militancy be something that is responsive and relationship-based? Can people be militant about joy?