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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 months ago

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In 1972, in the Democratic primary, we had our first Black woman presidential candidate, “unbought and unbossed” Shirley Chisolm, who knew that she was only running a symbolic campaign, a protest campaign, that America was not going to elect a non-white person or a non-male person, let alone someone with the temerity to be both at the same time—of course she didn’t get the nomination. When she ran, Barack Obama was going on eleven. Kamala Harris turned eight later that year. I doubt anyone was telling them they could grow up to be president.

I was so moved by how Kamala Devi Harris was received when she became our presidential candidate in July of 2024, 52 years after Shirley Chisolm, how much more enthusiasm and respect and how much less racism and sexism than I anticipated from Democrats and progressives. It made me feel like I lived in a better country, a country that had somehow invisibly, incrementally, moved forward, in those ways too slow and subtle to measure until a milestone like this is reached. Somehow something as subtle as values, consciousness, norms had changed through the work so many people were doing in so many ways, the feminists and antiracists, the slow process of decentralizing power just a bit from the long grim era when only white men ran and won and governed.

Things are changing. Last week, President Biden went to the Gila Reservation in Arizona to apologize for the Indian boarding schools and other genocidal acts toward Native Americans. He said in a tweet:

Today, I’m in Arizona to issue a long overdue presidential apology for this era—and speak to how my Administration has worked to invest in Indian Country and our relationships with Tribal Nations, advance Tribal sovereignty and self-determination, respect Native cultures, and protect Indigenous sacred sites. We must remember our full history, even when it’s painful. That’s what great nations do. And we are a great nation.

A few decades ago, Native people were largely ignored by the non-native mainstream, and what the US government had done was justified when it was not just ignored. We live in the impossible world, the world that no one quite imagined, in which things happen—marriage equality, the possibilities brought by solar energy, a Black woman presidential candidate—that were inconceivable not long ago.

I think of all the land-back happening around the West, of the four dams coming down on the Klamath River under the stewardship of the several Native nations there, of the salmon already swimming more than a hundred miles up that river to Oregon after more than a century of being shut out, of this presidential apology that acknowledges 532 years of colonialism. Biden’s tweet strategically rebukes Trump and MAGA and all the fragile white nationalists by insisting that this country is already great, and that greatness means remembering and taking responsibility for the wrongs of the past, including this genocidal racism.

That this country is polarized is often deplored, but the backlash against the progress on human rights, equality, inclusion, environmental protection, and acknowledging the US’s often-brutal history, is no reason to give up or cave in on that progress, though it’s a reason to reach out to try to convey that we all benefit from it.

What’s also been moving to me since this election really picked up momentum a few months ago is to see how much people care about something beyond narrow and immediate self-interest, to see that we care about public life, about the fate of the nation, about the rule of law, about the survival of the most vulnerable. To see that we are idealists, we are dreamers, we are citizens in that sense not of nationality but of membership in the greater community. Something striking this time around is to see men speak up for reproductive rights to a degree and in a way they mostly have not before.

We love so much more than the narrow version of who we are acknowledges: we love justice, love truth, love freedom, love equality, love the confidence that comes with secure human rights.

So many powerful forces conspire to try to convince us that we are basically selfish animals, that all we want is the the goods of private life, some safety, some sex and personal love and family, some nifty possessions. That’s the story of human nature we get told the most. But in fact most human beings are altruists and idealists, which is to say we want a lot more, we care about a lot more, we need a lot more to feel right with the world. We want justice and peace, want to live in a society that supports these things, want a relationship with nature, and we want that nature to be protected and thriving.

We want a world that reflects our values, we feel injured by things that may not affect us directly, whether it’s a wildfire or a loss of rights. Of course they’re not all the same values, and yeah some people believe they need to persecute immigrants or trans youth to have their happy world, some people still think nature is so vast and immutable we can keep trashing it without consequences. But mainly what I’m trying to say is that most people care about a lot beyond the usual definition of self-interest. We’re bigger than that.

You can see that by how much people care about the outcome of this election, whether they’re sitting home refreshing polls as if the polls tell us what will happen or doing the work that decides what will happen. Someone said to me a week or so ago that people over 70 shouldn’t be allowed to vote because they had no self-interest in the future. I rebuked him, because across the political spectrum most of us vote our broad values, not our narrow self-interest, unless our values are that we’re just our self-interest (and that’s a core belief of the right).

Most of us are idealists. There’s been a lot of exclamation in recent years about right-wing working-class voters who vote against their self-interest, often portrayed as baffling, as a sign of ignorance or confusion. What’s really going on that they’re more committed to their values than their practical self-interest. So are we (though you could also argue that the recognition that we are inextricably connected to each other and to nature means that self-interest and the well-being of the whole are not separate).

I used the word care, but let me clarify: what we care about is what we love. And we love so much more than the narrow version of who we are acknowledges: we love justice, love truth, love freedom, love equality, love the confidence that comes with secure human rights; we love places, love rivers and valleys and forests, love seasons and the pattern and order they imply, love wildlife from hummingbirds to great blue herons, butterflies to bears. This always was a love story.

Part of what gives our lives meaning is the confidence or at least hope that these good things will persevere beyond us.

What I learned from studying how most human beings respond to disasters (for my book A Paradise Built in Hell) is that they’re brave, generous, creative, acting in solidarity with those around them, and that those experiences of immediacy, of community, of care, of connection and meaningful work, are often so profound that people speak up with joy even amidst the devastation and loss. Because we want meaning and meaningful work so much, we want connection so much, we want hope, we want to believe in ourselves and the people around us and humanity in general.

I’m hearing so many stories like that from the survivors of the climate-intensified hurricanes that trashed western North Carolina, coastal Florida, and other parts of the Southeastern USA. From the victims of a climate-intensified catastrophe that has wrecked whole towns and torn out roads, flattened forests, washed away homes and put parts of Asheville underwater. I don’t want any more disasters like that, and I’m a climate activist to try to keep nature from getting more violent and destructive, which it will if we keep being violent and destructive toward the climate. But I do want us to know who we are, and how hungry we are for meaning, purpose, and connection, and sometimes disaster lets us see that.

When it comes to the climate we want faith in the future, we want the symphony of life to continue with the harmonies, the beauties, the integration of the parts into one harmonious whole to continue. Part of what gives our lives meaning is the confidence or at least hope that these good things will persevere beyond us, that there will be bison grazing the prairies in the year 2124, that there will be whales migrating in the oceans, that wildflowers will bloom in spring and pollinators will come for the nectar and leave with the pollen, that the people we love who are one or six or seventeen or their grandchildren will have a chance to enjoy some of the things we have, that there will be joy and beauty and possibility in the year 2074 and after.

Polls offer the false promise of knowing what is going to happen, but what is going to happen in this election is what campaigners, activists, and the electorate make happen. It is not yet decided. We are deciding it with what we do, as voters, as organizers, as voices for truth, justice, inclusion, the reality of the climate crisis and the importance of acting on it. In June, I got to meet one of my heroes, Congressman Jamie Raskin when he gave a keynote for the Third Act chapters in DC, Virginia and Maryland. (Third Act is a climate group founded by Bill McKibben for US people over 60; I’m on its board.) He gave me his memoir of prosecuting the impeachment of Trump after January 6, right after his beloved son Tommy had died by suicide, and there’s a dazzling passage in it that reminds us of the power of participation.

He writes that, during his first campaign, there was an article in a local newspaper quoting a pundit who described my chances of victory as “impossible”; and nine months later, when we got 67 percent of the vote, there was another article, in the Washington Post, quoting a pundit who said my victory was “inevitable.” So we went from impossible to inevitable in nine months because the pundits are never wrong, but as I told Tommy, we showed that nothing in politics is impossible, and nothing in politics is inevitable. It is all just possible, through the democratic arts of education, organizing, and mobilizing for change.

We’re here to make the victory of democracy and the defeat of authoritarianism not just possible but actual. We’re here to make history. We’re here to get out the vote. For the climate, for the children, for the continuance of this experiment in democracy, imperfect as it has been.

_____________________________

This is a version of a talk given to Third Act Nevada as part of a rally for people getting out the vote in that swing state.

Rebecca Solnit

Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of twenty-five books on feminism, environmental and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. She co-edited the 2023 anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Her other books include Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and in 2022 launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).

#Rebecca Solnit #not too late #lithub #election 2024 #women #women's rights #human rights #environmentalism #activism #Shirley Chisolm #women's history #vote

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canyouhearthevoices · 2 years ago

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ATEEZ Theory Tidbits Episode 14: HALATEEZ? TREASURETEEZ? THE WORLDTEEZ? FEVERTEEZ?

Aka, Casper struggling with the ATEEZ storyline.

You know, I like to say that TXT’s storyline has DID. And if TXT’s storyline has DID, ATEEZ themselves have DID. Although they were introduced to us in very normal terms through TREASURE, the arrival of Zero to One and HALA HALA changed that - there was an alternate version of ATEEZ, likely from a different universe/timeline, who seemed able to possess the original members. They were darker, self-destructive, and more than likely traumatised. When they appear, ‘original’ ATEEZ describe feeling like they’re going to explode, or fire imagery. And also going crazy.

And then FEVER happened. And we all thought that they were HALAteez, as they had been dubbed. But then there were suggestions that they weren’t. And then the same thing happened again with THE WORLD. So what in the name of Namjesus is going on? Only Hongjoong knows. And let’s be honest, even the people who seem sure of their interpretations of the storyline are probably completely wrong. Because ATEEZ are like that. And I’m not here to be certain about the storyline. I’m here to stare reaaaaaally hard at Hongjoong’s armband and talk about media history and the random things that noone else talks about. And that’s okay.

So, let’s talk about the four current versions of ATEEZ - who the hell are they? What are they about? Are there four versions? More? Who is HALAteez? Does HALAteez even exist? And what do I wish was the case?

All of that is below the line.

What I wish would happen

You know how in the Diary Film, they talked about the universe splitting in 8? I would absolutely love it (and think it would be interesting and poetic) if there were 8 versions of ATEEZ, one for each member/fragment of the universe. So, who is which one?

Well, to be honest I don’t know. The only one I would put down for certain is HALATEEZ being from Hongjoong’s section - they are what we all generally consider the actual original version of ATEEZ, thus it makes sense that they are the product of the Captain. They’re also the traumatised ones - remember ‘Precious,’ which most people consider the HALAteez version of ‘Treasure,’ where Hongjoong is left alone with the Treasure, the rest of the members dead. I mean, I could potentially go on. But I feel like it’s a natural conclusion to come to. Especially since HALAteez seem to communicate with Hongjoong the most, Hongjoong is the one who understands what’s going on in the storyline, and I am a big fan of the insane Hongjoong messing up the universe theory.

As far as the other ones?

I like FEVER as Yeosang - he’s the one who is arguably the main character of the segment - a contender for the author of ‘Dear Diary,’ and with a continued story throughout the series, from INCEPTION to Deja Vu, The Real, and Turbulence. Not to mention how he was highlighted in that era - got a lot of ending fairies and centre time in ending poses.

TREASURE - I’m thinking Yunho, Mingi or Jongho - Jongho is the maknae and thus by default is considered more innocent than the others. TREASURE is the era where the group is new to the world - thus why it is the era we were introduced to them in. They are discovering things like the Guardians, HALAteez, other universes, and more. Jongho by default would match this description. But I like more evidence than just age. And if I had to pick someone else, it would probably be Yunho or even Mingi. Both Yunho and Mingi have roles in the storyline based on directing the other members towards their goal - while YUnho is ‘pointing’, Mingi is the one who keeps the pace. TREASURE was about travelling a lot, both literally and metaphorically, and they are the members who best represent this. There could be arguments for either, although, with how hard Mingi was pushed as a rapper and an intimidating, cool member, and how he had centre parts in songs like ‘WAVE,’ he probably has more evidence in his favour.

THE WORLD - well, I’m feeling a pretty solid Seonghwa. We were introduced to THE WORLD after the end of FEVER through the transitional single ‘Don’t Stop,’ which showed Seonghwa leading the group in Hongjoong’s absence. Although we haven’t had much THE WORLD era content, Seonghwa has been highlighted in the storyline - both in ‘Guerrilla’ and ‘Halazia’ through the styling and cinematography. He literally starts ‘Halazia’ with Hongjoong and gets multiple killing points in the choreographies of both songs, including directing the group in ‘Halazia,’ and being the one in the MV to get arguably the coolest and most memorable set. Not to mention he’s the one who has the Jesus allegory - a literal leader and saviour? Sure, ‘Halazia’ and the Spin off album aren’t an actual part of THE WORLD - that’s why it’s a spin off. But I would consider it a peripheral part of the THE WORLD era, the same was I would consider Don’t Stop the bridge between FEVER and THE WORLD, and ‘Dreamers’ part of FEVER. So yes, we have indeed been seeing a lot of First Mate Hwa lately.

Interesting things about the above;

This would also suggest that Yeosang and Yunho’s dimensions are connected, as Hongjoong has said that FEVER and TREASURE are in the same universe. Although goodness knows where he/KQ are going with that.

Hongjoong says we only have less than half of the storyline released, so this fits the idea that there will be 8 versions of ATEEZ, one for each member. First, we know that the number 8 is hugely important to the group. It is also highly likely that each album series follows a different version of the group, so makes sense that we’ve seen four of eight, and thus a bit less than half of the storyline.

And now that I’ve looked through all of this and come up with Hongjoong, Yeosang, Yunho, and Seonghwa as potential candidates, I wonder - if they are going in rough age order?

I mean, goodness knows where ATEEZ are actually going with their storyline, but it’s interesting to look at.

So, what do we know about each of the groups so far?

TREASURETEEZ

Aka what most of us consider the ‘original’ ATEEZ, although they probably aren’t, chronologically.

Introduced in; ‘Pirate King’ and ‘Treasure.’

Key tracks; ‘Intro: Long Journey,’ ‘Outro: Long Journey,’ ‘WAVE,’ ‘Say My Name,’ ‘WONDERLAND,’ ‘ILLUSION,’ ‘UTOPIA,’ Answer,’ ‘Treasure,’ etc.

Characteristics; Sand, the flying pirate ship, friendship, the phases of the moon, dreams and illusions, utopia, time travel, phases of the moon, water and fire, wonderland, Peter Pan/Alice in Wonderland/other classics, the Treasure, good vs evil, names and ATINY etc.

Summary; It’s ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ but mixed with both fairy tales and old, deeply disturbing, Gothic media. Pretty much summarises ATEEZ’s storyline as a whole.

TREASURETEEZ are, as I said, what most people consider the ‘original,’ since they were the version of the group we were introduced to first. But that’s the only reason. Actually, in the storyline, it seems that TREASURETEEZ come in only in the middle, or towards the end. They seem more ‘bland’ than the other versions, mostly out of necessity of introducing the fandom slowly to the complexities of ATEEZ’s storyline. But they do have their own unique aspects. For instance - the flying pirate ship, which has only been seen in ‘Don’t Stop’ since the TREASURE era. Or the idea of the search for the Treasure, which has been an underlying theme of the whole story, but which was especially key to TREASURETEEZ. Additionally, their concepts of travelling (shown through the many locations of their MVs), fantasy, and utopia/illusions/dreams, while important to the other groups, were far more heavily emphasised for TREASURETEEZ. Partially due to their originality and being the first, they remain super iconic and laid the groundwork for the other groups to follow. But honestly, we haven’t really heard from them in at least a year, so it’s interesting but also kind of sad to think about them now...

HALATEEZ

Introduced in; ‘HALA HALA.’

Main/key songs; arguable, but I would say ‘Desire,’ ‘From,’ ‘Precious,’ ‘HALA HALA,’ and ‘Answer: Ode to Joy.’

Actual name: Suicide Squad

Characteristics: Black pirates, the fedoras, chains etc (the Gothic pirate outfit that is mandatory ATEEZ concert atire), masks, gloves, the box, conflict with the Guardians, showing up and helping the other versions of ATEEZ, explosions, fire, insanity, self-destruction and harm, the Cromer, illusions and dreams, chaos and imprisonment, etc

Summary: They are literally Mr Hyde, but... weirder.

HALATEEZ, as they have been (incorrectly) dubbed were introduced as Jekyll-and-Hyde-type villains for TREASURETEEZ in their second comeback. They showed up randomly, seemingly caused a whole bunch of conflict and killed some people, and skedaddled again. We saw glimpses of them in ‘ILLUSION’ and ‘WONDERLAND,’ in different forms, and they returned in full in ‘Answer’ to seemingly make a truce with TREASURETEEZ and to help them fight the Guardians. Since then, we have seen them in all ATEEZ eras and in most albums/releases, especially alongside the Guardians. They are mentioned continually in the Diary entries and have appeared in other media like the FEVER eXtended edition and the Diary Film. In FEVER, we see them a few times, mostly in ‘Deja Vu,’ as the Guardians also seem to be chasing versions of ATEEZ across time and space (cue Dr Who theme). They even show up in THE WORLD, both being mentioned as a kay aspect of the world but also being characterised as some long-gone Jesus-type saviours who have literal shrines in their honour, and where the ATEEZ of THE WORLD are turning into a new version of the Black Pirates on their journey to free the world from oppression.

They have also been seen helping every different version of ATEEZ - KINGDOM was a great way for them to demonstrate this - we saw HALATEEZ helping the ATEEZ in WONDERLAND, Awakening of Summer, and Answer: Ode to Joy, where they sacrificed themselves to help that version of ATEEZ (possibly FEVERTEEZ???) defeat the Guardians.

So, it’s a pretty easy conclusion to come to to say that HALATEEZ are arguably the most important version of ATEEZ - another reason to associate them with Hongjoong.

FEVERTEEZ

Introduced in; INCEPTION

Main/key tracks; ‘Dear Diary,’ ‘INCEPTION,’ ‘THANXX,’ ‘Deja Vu,’ ‘Eternal Sunshine,’ ‘Turbulence,’ ‘The Real,’ etc

Characteristics; boyhood, dystopia, coming of age, grunge, graffiti, day of the dead imagery, fire and water, dreams, memory loss, inspiration from movies, mad max (maybe maybe not), gloves, etc

Summary; Everyone is sad, especially Yeosang, and the world may or may not be real.

FEVER was an interesting era. I’m still not entirely sure how or why we decided it, but we collectively, as a fandom, decided that FEVER is a prequel to TREASURE. I think a lot of this came from the Diary Film, which shows the origin of the members in their world, and shows Hongjoong being given the Cromer - since the group have the Cromer in TREASURE, them being given it would obvously come before. It also came with the idea that FEVERTEEZ were HALATEEZ - this is also an obvious conclusion - ‘fever’ was a word often used to describe the feeling the members had when they were being taken over by HALATEEZ, and FEVERTEEZ and HALATEEZ have many common themes, such as dystopia, 1984 inspirations, associations with fire, using gloves and masks, etc etc. But looking at the storyline as it is now, I don’t think this is the case. For starters, HALATEEZ (mostly Hongjoong) actually show up in FEVER - which either suggests time travel (admittedly a key part of the storyline), or that they are different people. It’s more of a ‘ohh look at Hongjoong being the subtle villain of the story’ than it is a circular section of a cyclical storyline. I think we as a fandom have perhaps just gone a little far with how nonlinear ATEEZ’s storyline is. To be fair, I may be completely wrong, but we can at least agree that the storyline is so nonlinear that ATINY have gone a bit crazy and just run with it.

But, removing FEVERTEEZ from HALATEEZ, what do we know about them? They seem to live in a semi-dystopian world (like the world of THE WORLD, but less drastic), and have a big concept of rebelling against society. Their storyline is explicitly inspired by a host of Korean, English, and American movies, such as Inception and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Their view of their world seems to become more sober/less idealistic over time, going from relatively normal but a tiny bit off in INCEPTION and THANXX, to on fire in Fireworks, to a 1984-espque world in ‘Deja Vu’ and a tragic loss of self in ‘Turbulence.’ This connects to the dream state that they experience, which, speaking of - the duality of water and fire is associated with this - water as a symbol of the dream state and fire as the real world. This can be applied to the rest of the storyline, as we know the group is in a dream in ‘WAVE,’ where we see a lot of water, but in WONDERLAND and Don’t Stop, where they are awake, we see fire. This also further connects to utopia, as utopia is associated with water, but water for ATEEZ is a dream, just as the utopia isn’t real. Whereas fire is hellish and chaotic, but also associated here with the real world - showing the actual, horrific nature of the world they live in.

However, FEVER era also introduced the Diary versions of the albums, which, interestingly, seemingly discuss the world of THE WORLD. The fact that they are associated with FEVERTEEZ through the virtue of literally being part of their albums suggests that the ATEEZ of THE WORLD and FEVERTEEZ are the same - they even have the same hideout and same events of the Guardians invading the hideout. But Hongjoong also says that these two albums come from different universes, which suggests that they are different groups... so why did the FEVER albums discuss the events of THE WORLD? What is going on? Are they parallels of each other but in slightly different versions of reality where THE WORLD has gone even further into the 1984 world?

Anyway, until we have more content of THE WORLD and I have done a more thorough analysis of the Diaries, we can only really assume that they are separate but similar groups, and that, by virtue of contributing mostly to the following era, FEVER is a very interesting but generally lower quantity of contribution to the storyline.

THE WORLD...TEEZ?

Omg I hate calling them THE WORLDTEEZ. Can we call them 1984-teez or something?

Introduced in; arguable - ‘Don’t Stop,’ ‘Awakening of Summer,’ or ‘Guerrilla,’ depending on your opinion of the storyline.

Key tracks; Awakening of Summer, Guerrilla, Sector 1, Propaganda, Halazia (maybe) etc

Characteristics; Literally 1984, human rights, oppression, suppression and rebellion, technology, human nature, etc

Summary; I don’t think they can be described in a better way than ‘literally 1984.’

The most recent version of ATEEZ to be revealed. They exist in a world where the government has decided that the best way to develop humanity further is to get rid of all emotions, art, and music. There is still some legend of the Black Pirates, who literally have a shrine to them. Anyway, let’s just say that. although we don’t know a huge amount yet, we do know that ATEEZ are fighting against the loss of creativity in this world and may or may not be pushing for a world of anarchy. This is also a world that may or may not be the origin of the Guardians, but is certainly one they are present in.

Conclusions

So what the hell is going on? We as a fandom seem obsessed with HALATEEZ. Every time a new album series comes out, we seem obsessed with the idea of them being HALATEEZ - Treasureteez clearly just had DID. But then FEVERTEEZ clearly WERE HALATEEZ. But wait, the ATEEZ from THE WORLD have more similar concepts and worlds to HALATEEZ than the other previous versions. So, it must be them.... right?

Well, yes and no. Because I am indeed, firmly of the opinion that HALATEEZ are the main characters of the storyline, yet will only ever remain in the background. We saw this especially on KINGDOM - the members of HALATEEZ were seen helping the other versions of ATEEZ but were never the centre of attention.

So, what’s even the point? Why am I bothering running this blog? What is life, death, why do we even exist?

I guess we just have to wait and see. This is less of a theory post than laying out the facts that we have - although, as expected with ATEEZ, these details are all up to interpretation. But I do think I have a decent case for the 8 universes-8 versions of ATEEZ theory (although the circular reasoning of it being based on my own pet theories may be a bit dodgy).

#not too late #happy atiny day #ateez theories #treasure #fever #the world #theory tidbits #ateez theory tidbits

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