#There could be and historically was a great deal of overlaps between these concepts; they could bolster or even lead to the other; etc

[wonder-worker]

"My analysis is predicated on a distinction between the medieval concepts of authority, defined as the legitimate right to act, and of power, the ability to impose one’s will on others. By the High Middle Ages, inherited authority was associated with a fief, granting individuals the right to rule in a certain region according to certain prescribed regulations. While authority typically implies a chain of command, power, a more elusive quality, is defined abstractly as the ‘‘ability to act effectively on persons or things, to make or secure favorable decisions which are not of right allocated to the individuals or their roles.’’ According to this definition, power is much more elusive, based on personal effectiveness and influence rather than on sanctioned right to command. This distinction clearly operated in the Middle Ages, where the two concepts were related but not synonymous. Authority was associated with hereditary [or granted] titles and offices. However, while the possession of authority legitimated one’s actions, it did not guarantee their effectiveness. Conversely, while individuals who lacked authority could impose their will on others by force or influence, their actions would not have been considered legitimate. Although they are often used interchangeably by modern authors, authority and power referred to distinct attributes in the Middle Ages."

— Erin L. Jordan, "The "Abduction" of Ida of Boulogne: Assessing Women's Agency in Thirteenth-Century France", French Historical Studies, Volume 30, Issue 1 (Winter 2007)

[enlitment]

I recently read a fascinating book chapter in which the author makes a compelling case for defining a subset of historical despressive conditions specifically related to the struggles of queer men (he calls it "homodepression", which is not a very elegant word to my ear, but it gets the point across). He mentions that, at the time of writing, there was no comprehensive survey of depression and related conditions for the 18th century – but, since you've just written a thesis about it, that might have changed! Do you happen to have some reliable resources you could share on the topic?

For interest, the chapter is Rousseau, G. (2003). “Homoplatonic, Homodepressed, Homomorbid”: Some further genealogies of same-sex attraction in western civilization. In Love, Sex, Intimacy, and Friendship Between Men, 1550–1800. Palgrave Macmillan.

Thank you for the ask!

Firstly – let me just say that I'm kind of obsessed with the chapter's title, kind of a love-hate situation. I'll definitely give it a read once I get home! (It is especially interesting for me since I'm convinced that a queer reading of my primary text is possible. I haven't brought it up because academia in CR still can be quite conservative sometimes but I've definitely danced around the subject a bit. I may post more about it here after my defence to get it out of my system?)

Regarding your question – I mostly centred my analysis around few selected philosophical texts in my actual thesis, but I should have a folder on my laptop from back when I did background research. I can definitely look into it once I get home!

I can also ask my supervisor, he's bound to have much more resources than I do and I feel like I need to refresh my memory about the historical context before I defend anyway. I'll be sure to let you know!

Right now, without the access to my laptop, the one thing I can say that could potentially help is that like so many things, it may be an issue of language.

My research is technically about 'hypochondria'. That can be confusing because the meaning of the word has shifted quite a bit from the 18th century, but I've made a case that there's a great deal of overlap between hypochondria and the current understanding of depression, based on the current diagnostic criteria for depression. The word 'melancholy' was also sometimes used to refer to a similar idea. If can get quite blurry though, authors are often playing a bit fast and loose with the concepts.

So, searching for a review of either melancholy or hypochondria in the 18th century could (hopefully) yield some interesting results! I'll get back to you with links to potentially interesting articles once I get home/talk to my supervisor.

[sexytiime]

Shulamith Firestone on Marx & Engels

From the first chapter of The Dialectic of Sex: The case for Feminist Revolution: 

“      Before we can act to change a situation, however, we must know how it has arisen and evolved, and through what institutions it now operates. Engels’s ‘[We must] examine the historic succession of events from which the antagonism has sprung in order to discover in the conditions thus created the means of ending the conflict.’ For feminist revolution we shall need an analysis of the dynamics of sex war as comprehensive as the Marx-Engels analysis of class antagonism was for the economic revolution. More comprehensive. For we are dealing with a larger problem, with an oppression that goes back beyond recorded history to the animal kingdom itself.

In creating such an analysis we can learn a lot from Marx and Engels: not their literal opinions about women – about the condition of women as an oppressed class they know next to nothing, recognizing it only where it overlaps with economics – but rather their analytic method.

Marx and Engels outdid their socialist forerunners in that they developed a method of analysis which was both dialectical and materialist. The first in centuries to view history dialectically, they saw the world as process, a natural flux of action and reaction, of opposites yet inseparable and interpenetrating. Because they were able to perceive history as movie rather than as snapshot, they attempted to avoid falling into the stagnant ‘metaphysical’ view that had trapped so many other great minds. (This sort of analysis itself may be a product of the sex division, as discussed in Chapter 9.) They combined this view of the dynamic interplay of historical forces with a materialist one, that is, they attempted for the first time to put historical and cultural change on a real basis, to trace the development of economic classes to organic causes. By understanding thoroughly the mechanics of history, they hoped to show men how to master it.

Socialist thinkers prior to Marx and Engels, such as Fourier, Owen, and Bebel, had been able to do no more than moralize about existing social inequalities, positing an ideal world where class privilege and exploitation should not exist – in the same way that early feminist thinkers posited a world where male privilege and exploitation ought not exist – by mere virtue of good will. In both cases, because the early thinkers did not really understand how the social injustice had evolved, maintained itself, or could be eliminated, their ideas existed in a cultural vacuum, utopian. Marx and Engels, on the other hand, attempted a scientific approach to history. They traced the class conflict to its real economic origins, projecting an economic solution based on objective economic preconditions already present: the seizure by the proletariat of the means of production would lead to a communism in which government had withered away, no longer needed to repress the lower class for the sake of the higher. In the classless society the interests of every individual would be synonymous with those of the larger society.

But the doctrine of historical materialism, much as it was a brilliant advance over previous historical analysis, was not the complete answer, as later events bore out. For though Marx and Engels grounded their history in reality, it was only a partial reality. Here is Engels’s strictly economic definition of historical materialism from Socialism: Utopian or Scientific :

“Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes of the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another.” (Italics mine)

Further, he claims:

“...that all past history with the exception of the primitive stages was the history of class struggles; that these warring classes of society are always the products of the modes of production and exchange - in a word, of the economic conditions of their time; that the economic structure of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical, and other ideas of a given historical period.” (Italics mine)

It would be a mistake to attempt to explain the oppression of women according to this strictly economic interpretation. The class analysis is a beautiful piece of work, but limited: although correct in a linear sense, it does not go deep enough. There is a whole sexual substratum of the historical dialectic that Engels at times dimly perceives, but because he can see sexuality only through an economic filter, reducing everything to that, he is unable to evaluate it in its own right. 

Engels did observe that the original division of labour was between man and woman for the purposes of child-breeding; that within the family the husband was the owner, the wife the means of production, the children the labour; and that reproduction of the human species was an important economic system distinct from the means of production. 

But Engels has been given too much credit for these scattered recognitions of the oppression of women as a class. In fact he acknowledged the sexual class system only where it overlapped and illuminated his economic construct. Engels didn’t do so well even in this respect. But Marx was worse: there is a growing recognition of Marx’s bias against women (a cultual bias shared by Freud as well as all men of culture), dangerous if one attempts to squeeze feminism into an orthodox Marxist framework - freezing what were only incidental insights of Marx and Engels about sex class into dogma. Instead, we must enlarge historical materialism to include the strictly Marxian, in the same way that the physics of relativity did not invalidate Newtonian physics so much as it drew a circle around it, limiting its application - but only through comparison - to a smaller sphere. For an economic diagnosis traced to ownership of the means of production, even of the means of reproduction, does not explain everything. There is a level of reality that does not stem directly from economics.

The assumption that, beneath economics, reality is psychosexual is often rejected as ahistorical by those who accept a dialectical materialist view of history because it seems to land us back where Marx began: groping through a fog of utopian hypotheses, philosophical systems that might be right, that might be wrong (there is no way to tell), systems that explain concrete historical developments by a priori categories of thought; historical materialism, however, attempted to explain��‘knowing’ by ‘being’ and not vice versa. 

But there is still an untried third alternative: we can attempt to develop a materialist view of history based on sex itself. 

The early feminist theorists were to a materialist view of sex what Fourier, Bebel, and Owen were to a materialist view of class. By and large, feminist theory has been as inadequate as were the early feminists attempts to correct sexism. This was to be expected. The problem is so immense that, at first try, only the surface could be skimmed, the most blatant inequalities described. Simone de Beauvoir was the only one who came close to - who perhaps has done - the definitve analysis. Her profound work The Second Sex - which appeared as recenlty as the early fifties to a world convinced that feminism was dead - for the first time attempted to ground feminism in its historical base. Of all feminist theorists De Beauvoir is the most comprehensive and far-reaching, relating feminism to the best ideas in our culture. 

It may be this virtue is also her one failing: she is almost too sophisticated, too knowledgeable. Where this becomes a weakness - and this is still certainly debatable - is in her rigidly existentialist interpretation of feminism (one wonders how much Sartre had to do with this). This, in view of the fact that all cultural systems, including existentialism, are themselves determined by the sex dualism. She says:

“Man never thinks of himself without thinking of the Other; he views the world under the sign of duality which is not in the first place sexual in character. But by being different from man, who sets himself up as the Same, it is naturally to the category of the Other that woman is consigned; the Other includes woman.” (Italics mine.)

Perhaps she has overshot her mark: Why postulate a fundamental Hegelian concept of Otherness as the final explanation - and then carefully document the biological and historical circumstances that have pushed the class ‘women’ into such a category - when one has never seriously considered the much simpler and more likely possibility that this fundamental dualism sprang from the sexual division itself? To posit a priori categories of thought and existence - ‘Otherness’, ‘Transcendance’, ‘Immanence’ - into which history then falls may not be necessary. Marx and Engels had discovered that these philosophical categories themselves grew out of history. 

Before assuming such categories, let us first try to develop an analysis in which biology itself - procreation - is at the origin of the dualism. The immediate assumption of the layman that the unequal division of the sexes is ‘natural’ may be well-founded. We need not immediately look beyond this. Unlike economic class, sex class sprang directly from a biological reality: men and women were created different, and not equal. Although, as De Beauvoir points out, this difference of itself did not necessitate the development of a class system - the domination of one group by another - the reproductive functions of these differences did. The biological family is an inherently unequal power distribution. The need for power leading to the development of classes arises from the psychosexual formation of each individual according to this basic imbalance, rather than, as Freud, Norman O. Brown, and others have, once again over-shooting their mark, postulated some irreducivle conflict of Life against Death, Eros vs. Thanatos.

The biological family - the basic reproductive unit of male/female/infant, in whatever form of social organization - is charactereized by these fundamental - if not immutable - facts:

(1) That women throughout history before the advent of birth control were at the continual mercy of their biology - menstruation, menopause, and ‘female ills’, constant painful childbirth, wetnursing and care of infants, all of which made them dependent on males (whether brother, father, husband, lover, or clan, government, community-at-large) for physical survival. 

(2) That human infants take an even longer time to grow up than animals, and thus are helpless and, for some short period at least, dependent on adults for physical survival.

(3) That a basic mother/child interdependency has existed in some form in every society, past or present, and thus has shaped the psychology of every mature female and every infant. 

(4) That the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly to the first division of labor at the origins of class, as well as furnishing the paradigm of caste (discrimination based on biological characteristics). 

These biological contingencies of the human family cannot be covered over with anthropological sophistries. Anyone observing animals mating, reproducing, and caring for their young will have a hard time accepting the ‘cultural relativity’ line. For no matter how many tribes in Oceania you can find where the connection of the father to fertility is not known, no matter how many matrilineages, no matter how many cases of sex-role reversal, male housewifery, or even empathic labour pains, these facts prove only one thing: the amazing flexibility of human nature. But human nature is adaptable to something, it is, yes, determined by its environmental conditions. And the biological family that we have described has existed everywhere throughout time. Even in matriarchies where woman’s fertility is worshipped, and the father’s role is unkown or unimportant, if perhaps not on the genetic father, there is still some dependence of the female and the infant on the male. And though it is true that the nuclear family is only a recent development, one which, as I shall attempt to show, only intensifies the psychological penalties of the biological family, though it is true that throughout history there have been many variations on this biological family, the contingencies I have described existed in all of them, causing specific psychosexual distortions in the human personality.

But to grant that the sexual imbalance of power is biologically based is not to lose our case. We are no longer just animals. And the kingdom of nature does not reign absolute. As Simone de Beauvoir herself admits:

“The theory of historical materialism has brought to light some important truths. Humanity is not an animal species, it is a historical reality. Human society is an antiphysis - in a sense it is against nature; it does not passively submit to the presence of nature but rather takes over the control of nature on its own behalf. This arrogation is not an inward, subjective operation; it is accomplished objectively in practical action.

Thus the ‘natural’ is not necessarily a ‘human’ value. Humanity has begun to transcend Nature: we can no longer justify the maintenance of a discriminatory sex class system on grounds of its origins in nature. Indeed, for pragmatic reasons alone it is beginning to look as though we must get rid of it. 

The problem becomes political, demanding more than a comprehensive historical analysis, when one realizes that, though man is increasingly capable of freeing himself from the biological conditions that created his tyranny over women and children, he has little reason to want to give this tyranny up. As Engels said, in the context of economic revolution: 

“It is the law of division of labour that lies at the basis of the division into classes. [Note that this division itslef grew out of a fundamental biologival division.] But this does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.”

Though the sex class system may  have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed. On the contrary, the new technology, especially fertility control, may be used against them to reinforce the entrenched system of exploitation. 

So that just as to assure elimination of economic classes requires the revolt of the underclass (the proletariat) and, in a temporary dictatorship, their seizure of the means of production, so to assure the elimination of sexual classes requires the revolt of the underclass (women) and the seizure of control of reproduction: not only the full restoration to women of ownership of their own bodies, but also their (temporary) seizure of control of human fertility - the new population biology as well as all the social institutions of child-bearing and child-rearing. And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality - Freud’s ‘polymorphous perversity’ - would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strenth would be compensated for culturally. The division of labour would be ended by the elimination of labour all together (through cybernetics). The tyranny of the biological family would be broken. 

And with it the psychology of power. As Engels claimed for strictly socialist revolution: ‘The existence of not simply this or that ruling class but of any ruling class at all [will have] become an obsolete anachronism.’ That socialism has never come near achieving this predicated goal is not only the result of unfulfilled or misfired economic preconditions, but also because the Marxian analysis itself was insufficient: it did not dig deep enough to the psychosexual roots of class. Marx was on to something more profound than he knew when he observed that the family contained within itself in embryo all the antagonisms that later develop on a wide scale within the society organization, the bioloigcal family - the vinculum through which the psychology of power can always be smuggled - the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated. We shall need a sexual revolution much larger than - inclusive of - a socialist one to truly eradicate all class systems. 

I have attempted to take the class analysis one step further to its roots in the biological division of the sexes. We have not thrown out the insights of the socialists; on the contrary, radical feminism can enlarge their analysis, granting it an even deeper basis in objective conditions and thereby explaining many of its insolubles. As a first step in this direction, and as the groundwork for our own analysis we shall expand Engels’s definition of historical materialism. Here is the same definition quoted above now rephrased to include the biological division of the sexes for the purpose of reproduction, which lies at the origins of class:

“Historical materialism is that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historic events in the dialectic of sex: the division of society into two distinct biological classes for procreative reproduction, and the struggles of these classes with one another; in the changes in the modes of marriage, reproduction, and child care created by these struggles; in the connected development of other physically-differentiated classes [castes]; and in the first division of labour based on sex which developed into the [economic-cultural] class system.”

And here is the cultural superstructure, as well as the economic one, traced not just back to economic class, but all the way back to sex: 

All past history [note that we can now eliminate ‘with the exception of primitive stages’]  was the history of class struggle. These warring classes of society are always the product of the modes of organization of the biological family unit for reproduction of the species, as well as of the strictly economic modes of production and exchange of goods and services. The sexual-reproductive organization of society always furnishes the real basis, starting from which we can alone work out the ultimate explanation of the whole superstructure of economic, juridical and political institutions as well as of the religious, philosophical and other ideas of a given historical period.

And now Engels’s projection of the results of a materialist approach to history is more realistic: 

The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man and have hitherto ruled him now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real conscious Lord of Nature, master of his own social organization.  

“

[ganymedesclock]

tell me about any of the lorn gods but specifically the ones you feel you haven't gotten the chance to ramble about as much

I'm gonna choose Tema specifically for this!

Tema in some ways out-of-universe was defined by the other characters. I had a vague concept of a plant/nature god before her but that figure arguably became the prototype for Sivi, which left me scratching my head for a great deal of time on what another god could be that wasn't overlapping with Sivi, since 'stone' and 'wood' are often conceptually united under earth. This ended up really fitting for her character, because she's steeply younger than the elder trio, and kind of trying to be her own god in their shadows more than any of them had to exist 'in the shadows' of the others considering they were fairly close in age and both Garu and Dena spread out heavily as children.

I'm a really big sucker for white mage/cleric type characters explored in unorthodox directions, since I think many fantasy stories have a bad habit of characterizing the healer as the most modest, restrained, unthreatening person, or at minimum someone who superficially comes off that way such that it's shocking or comedic if they aren't.

A big thing I tend to think of with gods in particular is that 'a god' to me is not merely a Being Of Great Power- they are also defined to some degree by a social role. Real historical pantheons are staffed by what mattered to the humans at this time- to the people of ancient Egypt, the yearly flooding of the Nile was vital to survival, so Isis- who was kind of a big cheese- was a goddess of the Nile and its floods.

It's also significant that the color gods go in sequence- they have a strict birth order and in some ways the ideas they embody commentate off each other. Dena in some ways embodies the raw promethean 'clay' that shaped the earth- molten rock- and when that cools, it becomes stone, Sivi's domain- just as Sivi's sense of foundations and civilization can't be born first without the raw, chaotic creation that Dena connects to. And likewise, Sivi's ordering of man and nature, the notion of not merely village but commonwealth and country- paves the way for Garu, a god of outcasts, rebels, and others who defy or are rejected/abandoned by an order.

So Tema in turn is shaped by all three of her older siblings, but particularly by Garu, even if she gets along better with Sivi. Compared to Aeon and Ilvi and their dramatic birth, Tema is superficially the "uncomplicated child" of the three younger gods, so that kind of made me think of her as the good girl who's trying hard to not be so needy at a point her older siblings are so busy and so worried. This tied well with one of the few surviving traits from the original concept- that she's quite bossy and pushy, the way that a growing tree might churn or throw things around with its roots, and plants can split foundations that lie underneath them.

This all came together into a life god- and one of my favorite ideas about life is how when you say "life god" the typical image is either a little girl or a motherly woman all with flowers in her hair, surrounded by beauty and grace- Persephone and Demeter.

But Tema isn't just life- she's a life who came as the fourth child after Garu- god of pestilence, hunger, dissatisfaction, anger, and frustration. The gnawing, furious, desperate thing that drove us to the first revolution of the stone age.

Life is... relentless. It seethes. It boils. Watch kudzu overtake a field or the concept of wolf trees- that devour so much from the soil nothing can grow around them- and for all the ways that fertility and vitality have been sought-after prizes for us, there is a "family resemblance" between Tema and her big brother, even when she doesn't like him- in particular because she doesn't like him. He's not the one she wants to be like- she wants to be like Sivi, all-beloved, all-adored.

So, Tema is all of that restlessness, all of that seething, bone-chewing, blood-drinking life that is born from successful predation. When windfalls blow in the right direction, when fortune smiles and the vicious work of Garu's domain pays off... it gives way to a different direction to that energy. The hunter-gatherer becomes the forest-tender, or the field-tiller; seeds are sown, weeds are pruned. Custodianship, symbiosis, and diligence. Living things, far more than anything else, have a contrast between if they're wild or tamed.

Tema, like Sivi, has an animal motif that is a domesticated creature, something whose nature changes when it is known by humans. In her case, it's a sheep or goat- ambitious climber and boundless energy. An angry goat isn't quite as destructive as a charging bull, but goats and sheep aren't beasts of burden that often- mostly they're valued for their coats.

Lambs are also seen as a symbol of innocence which comes back to that contradictory nature of Tema, that she is a wild thing, like climbing ivy or a goat on a mountainside- even if she is further from "the mother sun" she is ambitious enough to try and reach for that idea of All-Color anyway. But also, that ambition ironically makes her covet order- she's trying to be the bellwether herding everybody into place. So she thinks of herself- presents herself- as the sweet shepherd-child leading people back into order, diligence, "just till your field and be happy with it, good things will follow, prosperity is reliable and you don't have to gamble or hurt others" after Garu and before the truly untameable aspects of Aeon-

...but in practice, there is something pretty ungovernable about Tema herself. Every peaceful grazing herbivore will fight to defend itself and will resort to opportunistic meat-eating if food grows scarce. For the field to stay flourishing, its appetites must be sated.

So Tema, out of the gods, is probably the one who is simultaneously wild and tame, and has the biggest conflict with it. She has widely celebrated and welcomed healing magic, but that magic can also cause a body to run wild very easily. The truly-terrifying deathless abominations, ever-shifting, that she's given rise to in desperation to fix problems, are a testament to how powerful the 'little sapling' truly is- and how uneasily her power bends itself to being tamed or pruned into shape. Cut a bud off a tree and it will grow new ones as long as it has the resources to do so; the act of keeping a bonsai or a farm field is a continuous effort against a force that cannot tire.

And when the closest sibling to her in age is Aeon- the great pelagic force of destruction and entropy that rages so untamed as to be feared by their other siblings, this doesn't settle Tema's conflict at all, but exacerbates it. Her need to have power, to stay in control, drives her wild side at the same time she covets tameness for it- she is a good little girl, and she is loved by mortals for being a good little girl, daughter of paddocks and fields, priestess of honest work and princess among sovereigns- and she is a thing terribly, terribly afraid of growing up, because once she leaves this flowerpot, she suspects she will not be nearly so lovely to the mortals who don't see her family resemblance.

[mary-tudor]

~HENRY TUDOR: A SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION.~

Today, I'll be discussing a character who left his mark in History, fathering a dynasty whose most proeminent members were his (second) son Henry VIII and his granddaughter Elizabeth I. Often overshadowed by his descendants, Henry's own deeds as a king and as an individual of his own days have been neglected until recently, when efforts from British historians have been working hard to change that. 

The reason why I decided to bring him here was not only due to personal affections, though they certainly helped it, but because there are aspects overlapped in social structures that shaped him. In other words: what's Henry Tudor as a sociological individual? Can we point him out as a constant foreigner or someone whose socialization process were strongly marked by the addition of two different societies? 

Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke, located in Wales, in January 28th 1457. His mother was Margaret Beaufort, a proeminent lady whose grandfather John Beaufort was the son of John of Gaunt, son in turn of King Edward III of England. The duke of Lancaster fathered four ilegitimated children (who were legitimated in posterity) by his (third marriage to his then) lover Katheryn Swynford, amongst whom John Beaufort was the oldest. Therefore, Henry was  3x grandson. to the duke and, despite what some might argue when Henry IV became king, in great deal to inherite the throne. Well, it's not my intention to deepen the discussion as to Henry's legitimacy or the Beauforts. 

Though his father's ancestry, Henry's blood led him to the royal house of Valois. His paternal grandmother, Katherine de Valois, was the sister of Isabella, who had been the second wife of the ill-fated king Richard II. She was also descended of Louis IX and his spanish wife, Blanche de Castille. Henry was also a royal man from the Welsh lands, as Owain Tudor, his grandfather, was related to several princes of Wales. By all these I said, the first thing one might think (considering 15th century and it’s nobility) Henry would receive a proper education due to his status. However, this would not happen in the strict sense of the word. Let us not forget that England was collapsing by the time of Henry Tudor's birth and his childhood. Why am I using the word 'collapse' to qualify the civil war we know named as wars of the roses?

Émile Durkheim, a french sociologist, would write several centuries later, about how a society is formed: he compared it to the working of a human body. If the head, the brain of our body does not work well, what happens? The body will not work well, certainly. Neither would the head work well if other parts hurt somehow. Although if you did break a leg, you could still make use of your brain, but as a whole how limited wouldn't you be? He'd also say that when the human body, or as he called, the society was sick, it was because of the social structures which imposed the human being to the point where there would be no individuality, no matter of choice. 

Such created social facts that were completely external (althoug well internalized through means of a process we call socialization) but coercitive. If they are not working, what does this mean? That soon another social facts will be replacing the former one. But between one and another, we have a "very sickly" society. Taking this understanding back to England's 15th century, it is not difficult to see what Durkheim was talking about. 

The king was the head of the English body. If we have here two kings fighting over one crown, fighting over the rule of an entire body... Well, then? We have the collapse, a civil war that lasted for the next 30 years. Here, it's less about discussing who started what but why they did what they did, and the explanation for it. Power is power. It's crystal clear, and a statement that, however simple might it sound, points to the obvious. Factions that fought for power intended to dominate others, using the concept very well developed by sociologists as Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias. This domination is a large field, a concept that embrace all sorts of it. Looking back to England's latter half of the century, domination was peril. The head was about to explode. The society was ill... and dominated by it.

What were the values? What was the racionalization proccess of social action led by individuals that were not only individuals but a group? How would all of this affect Henry Tudor? It was not about merely blaming the capitalism, because such coercitive system wasn't present yet. But Henry was, directly or not, linked to the royal house of Plantagenets, whose eagerness for dominating one another and by extension the rest of the country would include him in the game. 

"Game." For Durkheim, this would imply an agitation, like a wave of sea, from which no one could escape from. Let's not forget that Institutions created ideas, renewed them, shaped them to the practice whether to dominate the weaker or to defeat the stronger. Whatever the purpose, we here have the Church, not the religiosity, but the precursor of ideas would subdue individuals to share (or manipulate to their own goals anyways) values in order to keep determined mentality to it. But also, monarchy was too an institution which held control over the lives and deaths of thousands of people. A monarch, as we know, is never alone regardless of how "absolut" they could be in different times and contexts. They were not above the law, either. At least where the socialization process is concerned. For the monarch embodied the content which was the law back then. He was literally the law. 

Furthermore, Henry's education would foresee this fighting, which I'm not merely referring to custody going from his mother to another, before finally staying under his uncle's responsibilities, as well as the civil war itself. (Anyone remembers Warwick executing Herbert before the boy?) 

See, we all know and comprehend today what trauma are capable of doing to someone. Such experience is the main responsible for shaping ideas, values and even costumes. Now, a society which is very much sick by it's own values and moral costumes (a point here must be made: the public consciousness always preached for a warrior, strong king, but has no one thought how this "common sense", validated by a general expectation towards the head of society, was what led it to... well, for the lack of better word, suicide itself? 

For it's widely accepted that weak kings do not last long. But that is when we deal with a good deal of expectations that, when turned to frustrations, bring awful results. If England's society was ill in it's very extreme sense of the word, was because the values they created turned against themselves and that would leave it's mark in a boy as Henry. And until the age of 14, he was still absorbing these concepts, these morals, values, costumes from institutions (let's not forget that a monarch shares such with the nobility that surrounds him, as was the case of House Lancaster,f.e) before he was casted out to Bretagne and, in posteriority, to France. Now, I believe you all know what was done whether in England or with our king during these 14 years spent outside his own country before he became king upon the victory settled on the battle of Bosworth field.

I am not interested in discussing historical facts. At least not now, as we are finally dealing with Henry Tudor as a social actor

----/-HENRY TUDOR: A FOREIGNER? AN EXILED? OR AN OUTCAST?--

These questions mobilized me as I came to read a text written by 19th century sociologist named Georg Simmel. He wrote an essay (pardon by any mistakes in translations done from here on) entitled "The Foreigner", in which he brings a sociological question at why  foreigners are seen as strangers who are never entirely immersed in the society they attempt to be part in. 

Here's an excerpt translated by me in which he explains it:

"Fixed within a determined social space, where it's constancy cross-border could be considered similar to the space, their position [the foreigner's] in it is largely determined by the fact of not belonging entirely to it, and their qualities cannot originate from it or come from it, nor even going in it." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1.)    

Furthermore, he adds:

“The foreigner, however, is also an element of the group, no more different than the others and, at the same time, distincted from what we consider as the 'internal enemy'. They are an element in whose position imanent and of member comprehend, at the same time, one outsider and the other insider." (SIMMEL, 2005: 1).

Here's why Henry, as Earl of Richmond, was not well seen by the Britons and the French, in spite of being "accepted" by them. Never forget that he would still be seen as an outsider by his own fellows. As Richard III would call Henry a bastard, one could understand this accusation with sociological  implications. English back then detested these foreigners and by the concept brought here by me from Simmel we can understand why. But we could also see being called a bastard as a way to point out Henry's localization. Where can the Earl of Richmond & soon-to-be king be located?

I have pointed this far the structures which were raised and caused a collapsed society to live broken in many, many ways and how this affected Henry this far. Seeing how foreigner he was, nonetheless, he did not belong neither to England (at first) nor to the Continent.

On that sense of word, says Simmel (2005: 3): 

"A foreigner is seen and felt, then, from one side, as someone absolutely mobiled, a wanderer. As a subject who comes up every now and then through specific contacts and yet, singularly, does not find vinculated organically to  anything or anyone, nominally, in regards to the established family, locals and profissionals”

Even though we find a dominant group of foreigners in France, as we are talking about of nobles displeased with the Yorkist cause and supporters of the Lancastrian House, they were not majority. Where can we locate Henry, then? We don't, because he was not a French and however well he could speak the language, it was not his birth language. The French culture was not passed nor naturalized by him through the teachings of a family or the church by the institutions: monarchy, church, family, parliament, etc; he would have been defeated a long time. But that he did manage to, using this popular expression, put things together and become the first king to die peacefully since Henry V, it tells us a lot. Not rarely an immigrant is accepted by a society whose demands are forced upon him, most of the times in aggressive ways. But it's not often either that we see a king occupying such place in society. 

Indeed, one might say that kings as Henry II and the conquerors before him were too foreigners, but not in the sociological way I'm explaining. Because the social structures were different. Henry's government were settled in a more centralized ruling, far more just and peaceful, more economic and less concerned with waging wars than his antecessors. The need to migrate was not 'forced', neither 'imposed' and even back to the 11th and 12th centuries were motivated by different reasons. That's to accentuate how English society evolved throughout the centuries. And I used again and again Georg Simmel to prove my point about casting a sociological light towards Henry VII not as a historical character so distant of us and who remains an object of controversial discussions, but a man of his times who was forced to deal with expectations that placed him in social positions nearly opposed to one another to fulfill each role whether as king or as a man. For some reason, the broken society shaped Henry as an immigrant, but as history shows us, it was this immigrant who helped shape medieval society, directing it towards the age of Renaissance and in posteriority to Modern Age.

Finally, to close this thread I leave here another quote (translated to English by me) found in the text written by Simmel: 

"The foreigner, strange to the group [he is in], is considered and seen as a non-belonging being, even if this individual is an organic member of the group whose uniform life comprehends every particular conditioning of this social [mean]. (...) [the foreigner] earns in certain groups of masses a proximity and distance that distinguishes quantities in each relationship, even in smaller portions. Where each marked relationship nduced to a mutual tension in specific relationships, strenghtening more formal relations out of respect to what's considered 'foreigner' of which are resulted." (SIMMEL, p 7). 

Bibliography: 

AMIN, Nathen. https://henrytudorsociety.com/

DURKHEIM, Émile. "The Division of Labor in Society”.

KANTOROWICZ, Ernst H.”The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieavel Political Theology.”

PENN, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England.

SIMMEL, Georg. The Foreigner. In: Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Berlin. 1908.

[montagnarde1793]

Ribbons of Scarlet: A predictably terrible novel on the French Revolution (part 1)

Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Q: Why is this post in English? Isn’t this blog usually in French?

 A: Yes, but I can’t bypass the chance, however small, that someone in the book’s target audience might see and benefit from what I’m about to say.

 Q: Why did you even read this book? Don’t you usually avoid bad French Revolution media?

 A: My aunt left the book with me when she came for my defense last November. I could already tell it would be pretty awful and might not have read it except that I needed something that didn’t require too much concentration at the height of the Covid haze and I — like most people who insisted on finishing their doctorate despite the abysmal academic job market — have a problem with the sunk cost fallacy, so once I got started I figured I might as well find out just how bad it got.

 Q: Don’t you have papers to grade?

 A: … Next question.

 Q: Aren’t you stepping out of your lane as an historian by reviewing historical fiction? You understand that it wasn’t intended for you, right?

 A: First of all, this is my blog, such as it is, and I do what I want. Even to the point of self-indulgence. Why else have a blog? Also, I did receive encouragement. XD;

 Second, while a lot of historians I respect consider that anything goes as long as it’s fiction and some even seem to think it’s beneath their dignity to acknowledge its existence, given the influence fiction has on people’s worldview I think they’re mistaken. Besides, this is the internet and no one here has any dignity to lose.

 Finally, this is not so much a review in the classic sense as a case study and a critical analysis of what went wrong here that a specialist is uniquely qualified to make, not because historians are the target audience, but because the target audience might get the impression that it’s not very good without being able to articulate why. To quote an old Lindsay Ellis video, “It’s not bad because it’s wrong, it’s bad because it sucks. But it sucks because it’s wrong.” Or, if you prefer, relying on lazy clichés and adopting or embellishing every lurid anecdote you come across is bound to come across as artificial, amateurish and unconvincing.

 This is especially offensive when you make grandiose claims about your novel’s feminist message and the “time and care” you supposedly put into your research.

 I also admit to having something of a morbid fascination with liberals creating reactionary media without realizing it, which this is also a textbook example of (if someone were to write a textbook on the subject, which they probably should).

 With that out of the way, what even is this book?

 The Basics

 It’s a collaboration between six historical novelists attempting to recount the French Revolution from the point of view of seven of its female participants. One of these novelists is in fact an historian herself, which is a little bit distressing, given that like her co-authors, she seems to consider people like G. Lenotre reliable sources. But then, she’s an Americanist and I’ve seen Americanists publish all kinds of laughable things about the French Revolution in actual serious works of non-fiction without getting called out because their work is only ever reviewed by other Americanists. So.

 Anyway, if you’re familiar with Marge Piercy’s (far superior, though not without its flaws) City of Darkness, City of Light, you might think, “ok, so it’s that with more women.” And you might think that that’s not so bad of an idea; Marge Piercy maybe didn’t go all the way with her feminist concept by making half the point of view characters men (though I’d argue that the way she frames how they view women was part of the point). It’s even conceivable that if Piercy had wanted to make all the protagonists women her publisher would have said no on the grounds of there not being a general audience for that. It was the 1990s, after all.

 Except the conceit this time is they’re all by different authors, we have some counterrevolutionaries in the mix, and instead of the POV chapters interweaving, each character gets her own chunk of the novel, generally about 70-80 pages worth, although there are a couple of notable exceptions. We’ll get to those.

 It’s accordingly divided as follows:

·      Part I. The Philosopher, by Stephanie Dray, from the point of view of salonnière, translator, miniaturist and wife of Condorcet, Sophie de Grouchy, “Spring 1786” to “Spring 1789”; Sophie de Grouchy also gets an epilogue, set in 1804

·      Part II. The Revolutionary, by Heather Webb, from the point of view of Reine Audu, Parisian fruit seller who participated in the march on Versailles and the storming of the Tuileries, 27 June-5 October 1789

·      Part III. The Princess, by Sophie Perinot, from the point of view of Louis XVI’s sister Élisabeth, May 1791-20 June 1792

·      Part IV. The Politician, by Kate Quinn, from the point of view of Manon Roland, wife of the Brissotin Minister of the Interior known for writing her husband’s speeches and for her own memoirs, August 1792-(Fall 1793 — no date is given, but it ends with her still in prison)

·      Part V. The Assassin, by E. Knight, which is split between the POV of Charlotte Corday, the eponymous assassin of Marat, and that of Pauline Léon, chocolate seller and leader of the Société des Républicaines révolutionnaires, 7 July-8 November 1793

·      Part VI. The Beauty, by Laura Kamoie, from the point of view of Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe, a young aristocrat who ran a gambling den and who got mixed up in the “red shirt” affair and was executed in Prarial Year II, “March 1794”-“17 June 1794”

An *Interesting* Choice of Characters…

 Now, there are some obvious red flags in the line-up. I’m not sure, if you were to ask me to come up with a list of women of the French Revolution I would come up with one where 4/7 of the characters are nobles/royals — a highly underrepresented POV, as I’m sure you’re all aware — but fine. Sophie de Grouchy is an interesting perspective to include and Mme Élisabeth at least makes a change from Antoinette? And though the execution is among the worst (no pun intended) Charlotte Corday’s inclusion makes sense as she is famous for doing one of the only things a lay audience has unfortunately heard of in association with the Revolution.

 Reine Audu is actually an excellent choice, both pertinent and original. Credit where credit is due. Manon Roland and Pauline Léon are not bad choices either in theory, but given the overlap with Marge Piercy’s book, if you’re going to do a worse job, why bother? The inclusion of Sophie de Grouchy, while, again, not a bad choice, also kind of makes this comparison inevitable, as another of Piercy’s POV characters was Condorcet.

 But Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe? I’m not saying you couldn’t write an historically grounded and plausible text from her point of view, but her inclusion was an early tip-off that this was going to be a book that makes lurid and probably apocryphal anecdotes its bread and butter.

 The absolute worst choice was to make Pauline Léon only exist — at best — as a foil to Charlotte Corday. (It turns out to be worse than that, actually. She’s less of a foil than a faire-valoir.)

Still, why does no one write a novel about Simone and Catherine Évrard (poor Simone is reduced to “Marat’s mistress” here, not just by Charlotte Corday, which is understandable, but also by Pauline Léon) or Louise Kéralio or the Fernig sisters or Nanine Vallain or Rosalie Jullien or Jeanne Odo or hell, why not one of the dozens of less famous women who voted on the constitution of 1793 or joined the army or petitioned the Convention or taught in the new public schools. Many of them aren’t as well-documented, but isn’t that what fiction is for?

Let’s try to be nice for a minute

There are things that work about this book and while the result is pretty bad, I think the authors’ intentions were good. Like, who could object to the dedication, in the abstract?

This novel is dedicated to the women who fight, to the women who stand on principle. It is an homage to the women who refuse to back down even in the face of repression, slander, and death. History is replete with you, even if we are not taught that, and the present moment is full of you—brave, determined, and laudable.

It’s how they go about trying to illustrate it that’s the problem, and we’ll get to that.

For now, let me reiterate that while I’m not a fan of the “all perspectives are equally valid” school of history or fiction — or its variant, “all *women*’s perspectives are equally valid” — and there are other characters I would have chosen first, it absolutely would have been possible to write something good with this cast of characters (minus making Charlotte Corday and Pauline Léon share a section).

The parts where the characters deal with their interpersonal relationships and grapple with misogyny are mostly fine — I say mostly, because as we’ll see, the political slant given to that misogyny is not without its problems. These are the parts that are obviously based on the authors’ personal experience and as such they ring true, if not always to an 18th century mentality, at least to that lived experience.

Finally, there are occasionally notes that are hit just fine from an historical perspective as well. The author of the section on Mme Élisabeth doesn’t shy away from making her a persistent advocate of violently repressing the Revolution. Manon Roland corresponds pretty well to the picture that emerges from her memoirs even if the author of her section does seem to agree with her that she was the voice of reason to the point of giving her “reasonable” opinions she didn’t actually hold.

I should also note that while the literary quality is not great, it’s not trying to be great literature and in any case, on that point at least, I’m not sure I could do better.

Ok, that’s enough being nice. Tune in next time for all the things that don’t work.

[geopolicraticus]

Permutations of Post-Agricultural Civilizations

Industrial, Technological, and Scientific Formations

Having recently written about scientific civilization through the lens of comments by Jacob Bronowski and Susanne Langer, I have been doing more research on the idea of scientific civilization for further posts in the series. This has brought additional material to my attention, but it has also raised questions. Why focus on scientific civilization? Does scientific civilization have a special place in the future of civilization, or ought it to have a special place in the future of civilization?

In particular, what relationship does scientific civilization have to other forms of post-agricultural civilization, or what we might also call modern civilization? One can find ��industrial civilization,” “technological civilization,” and “scientific civilization” used synonymously, which raises the question as to whether these ideas are subtly distinct or not. Is there a reason to distinguish between industrial civilization, technological civilization, and scientific civilization, or should we regard them as different names for the same thing?

One way to distinguish these three formations of modernity, and yet show them in relation to each other, is by way of what I call the STEM cycle, which is a tightly-coupled loop of scientific research, technological applications, and industrial engineering which characterizes civilization today. A STEM cycle has long been present in civilization, but in the past the STEM cycle was loosely-coupled, often with generations passing between each stage in the cycle. The combined effect of the scientific revolution and the industrial revolution served to transformed the loosely-coupled STEM cycle of agricultural civilizations (which make intensive use of specialized agricultural technologies, though often in a highly traditional context that discourages innovation) into the tightly-coupled STEM cycle of modern civilization.

There are, of course, many technologies that came about not because of science, but through mere tinkering. It seems that James Watt’s steam engine was the iterated result of the tinkering of many men over a long period of time, so that the central exhibit of the industrial revolution seems to defy my characterization of technology. If one wanted to take the time to carefully select one’s examples, one could assemble a history of technology that almost entirely excluded the contribution of science. I concede this point, but at the same time, I could write a history of technology that was entirely based upon technologies that emerged as a direct result of the dispassionate pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Selective histories aside, all of the most difficult and demanding technologies—nuclear energy, spacecraft, computing, DNA therapies in medicine, and so on—are the result of extensive scientific research, including pure science (Rutherford was doing pure science, but his pure science ultimately made nuclear technologies possible) performed with little or no interest in practical application. This also appears that it will hold good in the future, and the role of tinkering decreases and the role of scientific rigor in the advanced of technology increases. There are thresholds beyond which tinkering cannot pass.

Similar criticisms can be made of each section of the STEM cycle: scientific instruments that advance scientific research that do not come from industrial engineering, and industrial engineering developments that do not come from technology. All of these criticisms are valid, but they do not invalidate the idea of the STEM cycle generally. Also, the definitions of science, technology, and engineering need to be refined considerably in order to consistently make distinctions among these sections of the STEM cycle, which will inevitably have broad areas of overlap. As with my analysis of the institutional structure of civilization, the STEM cycle is an abstraction for use in the analysis of the economic infrastructure of civilization, and any actual processes will be far more complex that this idealized simplification.

For more on the STEM cycle, I have written several posts that examine this idea in detail, including:

The Industrial-Technological Thesis

Industrial-Technological Disruption

The Open Loop of Industrial-Technological     Civilization

Chronometry and the STEM Cycle

The Institutionalization of the STEM Cycle

Secrecy and the STEM Cycle

Given a tightly-coupled STEM cycle as characterizing modern civilization, we can differentiate scientific civilization, technological civilization, and industrialized civilization as each being civilizations that emphasize section of the STEM cycle over the other sections of the cycle. In each, all sections of the STEM cycle are present, but in scientific civilization, for example, the section of the STEM cycle that predominates is scientific research.

Coming at this problem from another angle, given my analysis of the institutional structure of civilization, I can formally identify these three formations of modern civilization as follows:

A scientific civilization is a civilization that takes science as its central project

A technological civilization is a civilization that takes technology as its central project

An industrial civilization is a civilization that takes industrial engineering as its central project

The above formulations are, in each case, what I call a “proper” civilization, with other permutations of these formations following from science, technology, and engineering playing different roles in the institutional structure of civilization. This gives us a way to formally distinguish these three formations, but as I have pointed out in other posts, there are a great many different ways in which a civilization might take science as its central project, so there is room for a great deal of variation even among any one of these formations.

These formulations are entirely consistent with the above formulations that distinguish scientific, technological, and industrial civilizations in terms of an emphasis on one section of the STEM cycle: in each formation, there is a tightly-coupled STEM cycle, but in each formation one section of the STEM cycle either serves as the central project of the civilization, or is integral with the central project of the civilization.

The above formulations, then, allow me to integrate my definition of the institutional structures of civilization with the idea of the STEM cycle characterizing modern civilizations. This degree of integration of the two concepts strengthens both. However, I am lacking an intuitively perspicuous way to differentiate scientific, technological, and industrial civilizations. One way to address this deficit would be to formulate a great many scenarios (i.e., thought experiments, with possible real-world exemplifications, but not necessarily tied to actually existing civilizations in the historical record, which record is very shallow for modern civilizations) that highlighted distinctively scientific, technological, and industrial central projects, and then proceed inductively from these scenarios to generalizations that cover all tokens of the type.  

I am not yet in a position to delineate an exhaustive description of the possibilities for scientific, technological, and industrial civilizations—this would a project for a lifetime, or for a scientific research program with many contributors—but I do have a few telling examples that can shed some limited light on the possibilities.

In Tinkering with the Mind (and the sequels Tinkering with Science and Addendum on “Tinkering with Science”) I discussed the possibility of innovations derived from high technology tinkering without a scientific basis. Such high technology tinkering could only come within an economic infrastructure built up by a tightly-coupled STEM cycle, but in the case of technologies derived by tinkering, the scientific element in the production of the innovative technology in question would be in the background, while technology and engineering would be in the foreground. In the event that a civilization emerged from the proliferation of such technologies of tinkering (another example would be Shawyer’s EmDrive), we could call this a technological civilization or an industrial civilization, but it clearly would not be a scientific civilization.  

Another possibility that is not far from our present economic infrastructure would be a civilization focused on industrial engineering design, to the point that the technology and the science were far in the background, while the design became the focus of interest and development. Here, practical application would run ahead of actual scientific and technological innovation—though “run ahead” might be misleading in this context. Let me explain. Computer technology has been advancing so rapidly over the past several decades that those who use computers have been playing a game of catching up to the most efficient uses of the technologies available. The result has been a number of suboptimal operating systems that all of us present for the computer revolution have passed through in stoic and pragmatic determination. It hasn’t always been enjoyable. Suppose the technological innovations came to an end. One scenario that I have discussed in other contexts would be the collapse of modern civilization leaving a few industrialized enclaves. These enclaves would probably not be large enough to produce new innovations in semiconductor design, but they might be able to keep existing computational infrastructure functioning. Under these circumstances, there would be a strong motivation to use available technology as efficiently and effectively as possible. A real premium would attach to better software applications that could derive better performance from the same hardware.

We have an actual example of this in the Voyager spacecraft, far from us in outer space, indeed, having passed out of the solar system, but engineers on Earth have reprogrammed the spacecraft several times since their launch in order to obtain better results from hardware that cannot be changed. A civilization in which such conditions became the norm could be considered a civilization in which industrial engineering was in the foreground, while technology and science were distantly in the background, being maintained but not improved. If this particular example is to be taken as representative, it may be the case the industrial civilizations sensu stricto only come about after science and technology have faltered, that is to say, in the twilight of scientific civilization or technological civilization. But a generalization of this sweeping kind would require much more study of the problem.

[fatehbaz]

“Urban Ecology and Animism in the Landscape of the Great Lakes”: An interview on decay, restoration, bioregionalism, and “ecological citizenship” in the Midwest

From 26 December 2018, Belt Magazine. Excerpts:

Authors Matt Stansberry and Gavin Van Horn recently published books on the urban wildlife of the Great Lakes region (Rust Belt Arcana: Tarot and Natural History in the Exurban Wilds by Belt Publishing, and The Way of the Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds by University of Chicago Press, respectively). In this wide-ranging conversation, Stansberry and Van Horn discuss the overlaps in each other’s books and the progress, challenges, and joys of living with and writing about nature in the industrial Midwest.

GVH: Some of the book is about holding on to what remains, trying to live in a way that allows others to live (such as when you write about box turtles or salamanders). But there are also expressions of hope in the book, particularly when it comes to meeting people who are hard at work on restoration projects. I’m thinking here of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s work at Mentor Marsh, and also the lessons you glean from Tim Jasinski of Lights Out Cleveland. Could you tell us a little bit about those projects? And perhaps the strides you see in the Rust Belt to respond with care to the land and water, which you call “holy work”?

MS: Those two chapters show different approaches to dealing with our impacts on wildlife. The first chapter you reference, “Temperance,” explores the effort needed to restore one of Lake Erie’s largest wetlands back into a functioning ecosystem. It’s inspiring because of how daunting the task must have seemed—to try to remove hundreds of acres of nearly impervious invasive reeds. After years of sustained, systematic effort and investment, we are seeing a return of biodiversity to this site.

-

GVH: You end with “The World” card and reflections on what E.O. Wilson has called the “Age of Loneliness” (the Eremozoic Era). After detailing the historic superabundance of biological life in Ohio, you say, “I want to leave you with the impression that our home has a potential to be one of the wildest, most fecund places on the planet… I tell you these things to repeat the names, so that you know that they are there. …There is still plenty of time to roll in the dirt in a forest. Stare out at Lake Erie. Listen to the wind. Don’t live separately from the world. Don’t despair.” What kinds of practices would you recommend for connecting to the magic of the everyday? 

MS: So you mention a bunch of good ideas right there. Roll in the dirt. Stare at the lake. Since finishing the book, I’ve read The Enchanted Life by Sharon Blackie, and it’s full of so many brilliant ideas that I’ve been trying, ways to make myself more grounded in the place where I live. We can learn the myths of our home regions, draw big maps of the places we live and hike, plant gardens with native species, craft objects and food out of the plants around us, name the species of birds, start re-enchanting the landscape.

I see a lot of overlaps in our work as well. For example, both of our books center around the study of urban wildlife, animals in the city. You write: “When the city presses in upon me, coyotes remind me of the vitality that weaves its way between the buildings. Humans may often disregard, displace, and disrupt other kinds of animal life, but the anima of what we now call Chicago is not gone. The coyotes keep it flowing; they keep going along, beckoning us toward greater fidelity with our non-human kin. Lead on coyotes. Show what a city can be.”

Engaging with urban wildlife is not something you expected to be doing, and not something historically that has been of interest to the science/naturalist community. What do you learn from studying city creatures that you don’t learn in more rural or wild environments?

GVH: A city constitutes one portion of a landscape continuum. Occasionally in the book, I venture outside of city limits, acknowledging that many species don’t do well in smaller patches of habitat and with human presence (hell, I don’t do well with continual human presence). Yet my focus is on “ordinary” and close-to-home creatures as amazing expressions of life, worthy of our fascination and attention. Familiarity need not breed contempt. Familiarity can be a portal into our most intimate and meaningful relationships. Several essays feature ecologists and biologists who are turning back toward the city with curiosity and scientific rigor, seeking to counter the story of urban nature as less-than-worthy. I suppose I’m doing something similar with my writing.

MS: In one of my favorite essays, “De los pajaritos del monte” you marvel at your friend’s lifelong connection—physical, familial, cultural—to a landscape. You’ve moved around the country, the same way I have, and seem to struggle with that rootlessness. I think we both envy what your friend has with his home landscape. Can you write your way into place? Is even one lifetime enough to get rooted?

GVH: One lifetime, so far as I know, is all we’ve got, so I hope that’s enough to actualize one’s ecological citizenship. As you know, this book was part of my own process of adapting to life in an urban area. Writing is a way to further deepen the bonds of memory, to invite others (and perhaps yourself) to see the world from a fresh perspective. It’s an alchemical process—to transform experience into ink, and then for readers to permit those words to conjure new worlds in their imaginations. And the hope is that those stories, then, shape how a person moves through the landscape and the way they value it.

But the question of roots is one that haunts me a bit, in all honesty. I’m a person that has lived in many places. Some of us are more nomadic in spirit; some landscapes make our hearts sing more than others. What if a person feels displaced—like a plant outside of the microbiome to which it is most suited—and no amount of spiritual equanimity or sheer amount of time spent in a place can create a sense of at-homeness? (...)

MS: You have a chapter exploring Aldo Leopold’s concept of the numenon of the north woods, the ruffed grouse. You suggest Chicago’s numenon is the Night Heron? What’s a numenon and what’s a night heron?

GVH: As one young man who does ecological restoration work on the South Side of the city told me, “It’s a getting better Chicago.” He’s right. A lot of Midwestern cities, like Chicago, are in what is sometimes called a post-industrial phase. (...) [But] the recovery is tangible ...

-

Read more.

[english-ext-2]

Viva Voce (NEW)

Please note exact requirements will vary across schools, and all analysis here is based on the sample assessment/support material from the NESA website 

The Viva Voce is the first formal assessment task, worth 30% of your internal mark. It’s the only assessment carried over from the old course, so some of the information here is recycled from my original post. 

The Viva is a 15-20 minute panel interview where you present your Major Work to your teachers and respond to their questions. It’s basically “selling” your MW and its concept: “hey, look at how great my idea is! This is the form it’ll take, here’s the research I’ve done so far, and this is how I intend to carry it out.” You will also need to submit your Major Work Journal for review. 

According to the sample assessment material on the NESA website, the presentation could include the following:

A thorough explanation of the purpose, audience, context and form of your Major Work

Acknowledgement of the sources you have used in developing the proposal and inquiry question

An outline of your plan to complete the Major Work project including a timeline

References to your journal to assist in explaining choices made and research completed.

Before I unpack the above, I want to briefly address concept. You obviously need to explain to the panel what your MW is about, but concept also underpins your understanding of purpose, audience, context and form. I have other detailed posts on developing a concept, but for our purposes here I just wanted to highlight concept as key to how you explain everything else required of you in the Viva. 

Explanation of purpose, audience, context and form (+ concept) of your MW

While it’s important to explain each of these individually, it’s just as (if not more) important to link them together.  

Purpose: Basically what you’ve set out to do with your MW. At this stage, it should not be something bland like “I aim to entertain my audience” or “I want to make people think”. Literally anybody could say that about their major. What is it that you want your MW to do specifically? What is the “conceptual purpose” of your MW, if you will. You might like to start out brainstorming a list of verbs, or thinking about the messages/themes you want to explore in your major.   

Audience: Who is your Major Work intended for? Which group of people will respond to your major in the way you want them to? Again, broad answers along the lines of “the general public”, “high school students”, or “young people” won’t cut it. You need to delve a little deeper. Running with the last two examples, it’d be more “high school students who are highly active on social media” or “young people frustrated with their experience of the political system”. Specificity! It’s your friend.  

Context: To quote the NESA glossary, context is “the range of personal, social, historical, cultural and workplace conditions in which a text is responded to and composed.” Replace “text” with “major work”, focus on “composed”, and you’ve got the gist. You need to be aware of your context (how your MW links to Advanced and Extension, for example) AND situate your MW in its context, e.g. a critical response on female journalists in WWII would require some knowledge of wartime reporting, government propaganda, censorship, attitudes towards women in journalism, etc.  

Form: Most obviously, what is your form? And why have you chosen it? I’m not sure as to how detailed an answer teachers expect from the second question, but you should have some idea beyond “I like it.” This is where tying form to the other elements becomes important. What makes your form the most appropriate for your concept, purpose, and audience? 

Putting it all together

Running through every permutation of purpose, audience, context and form would take far too long, so I’m going to limit this section to the relationships I personally find to be the most important. Please note that I’ve chosen to pair the elements for simplicity’s sake, but they all feed back into and overlap with one another.  

Form and audience

Let’s say your major is a short story. Your intended audience would obviously not be film critics or even people who enjoy watching films. In other words, your intended audience should be directly related to your chosen form.

But there should also be a consideration of how your concept factors in: for example, why did you choose poetry to explore environmental activism on climate change? It could be because poetry is a strongly emotive form, and climate change is an issue that rouses great passion in your intended audience of green activists seeking new, culturally relevant ways to express their concerns around the consequences of failure to act on this issue.

(Btw there’s no shame in saying that you chose a form because it means a great deal to you personally! Familiarity with and fondness for a particular form is a perfectly legit reason to choose it. Just that it can’t be the only reason.) 

(I pulled that poetry/climate change example from thin air, but turns out it’s a real thing.)

Audience and purpose

Your understanding of one is shaped by the other, the why of your MW informing the who and vice versa. Just as you wouldn’t buy someone a gift you know they’ll absolutely hate, you wouldn’t create a MW for an audience unlikely to appreciate it.

Say your major aims to deconstruct the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in science fiction film and encourage change in the way women are represented in this genre. Film critics and/or cultural studies academics might be interested, but they’re not in the best position to push for change. A better fit would be, say, directors and producers working in the sci-fi genre who are interested in subversive or transformative gender narratives.

Form obviously plays a part here too, since you may have decided a podcast is the best way to reach your affluent and online audience.     

Form and purpose

Why is your form best suited to doing the thing you want your MW to do? Or to quote from the NESA description of the Major Work: “The form of the Major Work must be chosen deliberately to contribute to the authenticity, originality and overall conceptual purpose of the work.”

To go with my sci-fi example from above, deconstructions of popular tropes are very well-suited to critical responses (and academic audiences). But as I noted, the purpose of encouraging change in the film industry demands a more visible platform that you’d get with a podcast. If, however, you were more interested in deconstruction-through-satire, a short story or short film would be the better choice.

Acknowledgement of the sources you have used in developing the proposal and inquiry question

It should be self-evident, but bears spelling out in full: cite specific sources. “I read an interesting article online” isn’t as strong as “I read an Atlantic article about how teenagers use Instagram to debate the news, which informed my thinking about the ability of social media to polarise, and the evolution of news consumption among young people.” Let the extent of your independent investigation shine! Show off the knowledge you’ve accumulated! Own your research, basically. (Also ironic in that you’re acknowledging other people’s work, but you get what I mean.)

It wouldn’t hurt to link those specific sources to your proposal and inquiry question. I don’t know how thoroughly you’ll be expected to explain those links, but something like the following would be a decent example: “This Atlantic article helped to narrow the scope of my inquiry question about the impact of social media on news-gathering behaviour to young people, instead of everyone.” The key thing is to at least mention various sources and show the teachers you’ve actually been doing relevant research.

Action plan outline, including timeline

Hint: structure your plan in relation to the composition process. Obviously, the particulars are going to be specific to your major. But be realistic in your planning. Try to strike a balance between micromanagement and no time management at all: while you don’t strictly need to break the entire EE2 course up into minuscule steps like “week two: write the opening scene”, it’s also not helpful to say you’ll tackle the entire investigating stage in January. To reiterate: the points under each stage of the composition process provide a good guide for your action plan.

Be aware of your own and others’ limits too! If you know you’re a serial procrastinator, can you really crank out a first draft in three weeks? Will you be able to secure feedback from your learning community in the week before an assessment block? You also need to account for any other Major Works you’ve got and remember the workload from your other subjects. How will you fit EE2 around them? There’s nothing wrong in keeping your timeline tight, a kind of platonic ideal to which you aspire, but it shouldn’t be so unrealistic as to be impossible.  

I say it in my guide to the composition process, but remember that your action plan will likely change throughout the year. Life happens! Something might happen in your personal life; you could come down with the flu; maybe a friend is late in getting their feedback to you, and you find yourself falling behind schedule. It’s not the end of the world. You can adjust your action plan as you go - working around obstacles is part and parcel of EE2.  

References to your journal to assist in explaining choices made and research completed

You should be able to point to specific entries in your journal to explain why you made a decision, which is a good time to remind you to keep your journal up to date!! Back-filling entries is a pain but also procedurally unsound, since you can’t return to your state of mind and exact train of thought when you made a decision.

Preparing for the Viva

You’ll be given the questions 15 minutes beforehand, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prepare. Make sure you are familiar with and prepared to discuss your major’s concept, form, purpose, audience and context (particularly links to Advanced and Extension coursework).

If you’re still in doubt, the old English Extension 2 Support Document includes a handy list of starting questions, a sample of which I’ve copied below:

Concept

What concept have you developed for your Major Work? Describe it.

Why are you interested in this concept?

What are your sources of inspiration?

How is your concept an extension of the knowledge, understanding and skills developed in English (Advanced) and (Extension) courses?

Purpose

What are you aiming to achieve during the Extension 2 course?

How are you planning to achieve this purpose?

Form

Have you decided on the form in which you would like to compose?

Why have you chosen this particular form?

Intended Audience

Who is the target audience of your work and why?

The questions you answer in the Viva will be different and/or tailored to your MW specifically, but the list above broadly covers the things you’ll be asked. You don’t need to write an entire essay in response to each question; dot points are fine. The Viva is not a speech, so your language doesn’t need to be as formal.  

Practice, practice, practice

If you’re worried or anxious about fronting up before a panel, I recommend doing a practice run with a close friend. Grab your notes, MW journal, a stopwatch, and someone you trust, then get them to pitch you the list of questions you’ve prepared for. Use the stopwatch to keep yourself within 15-20 minutes. Practicing will build your confidence and familiarity with your notes, as well as help you cut down on any waffle you might be inclined to.    

During the Viva

The preparation is one thing, communicating what you’ve prepared to the panel is another. Of course, a lot depends on who the teachers are, how comfortable you are with them, your own confidence levels, etc. I can’t really help you there. All I can suggest is that you try to convey your interest and enthusiasm to the panel. It’s your project, and you want it to succeed. Channel some of that passion into the way you present your MW. You’re pretty much stopping short of grabbing each teacher by their lapels and yelling LOOK AT THIS FANTASTIC IDEA I HAVE.

The teachers will ask you questions related specifically to your MW, ones which are spontaneous and based on their understanding of your MW as you’ve presented it to them in the Viva. Again, try not to stress. The teachers are not looking for ways to trip you up, they’re helping you to think about the direction your MW could take. One of the most important things you’ll learn from the EE2 course that isn’t mentioned in the learning outcomes is taking criticism. It’s about being able to accept (reasonable) critique of your work and striving to improve those areas, as well as exercising control over your creative process, i.e. not taking absolutely every single suggestion put forward unless you truly believe they’ll all benefit you.    

Post-Viva

When you get your marks back there should be comments as well, like suggestions on what you could be reading, or questions that might help you orientate the direction of your MW. Take these on board, and discuss them with your English teacher(s) as soon as possible. The assessment tasks are certainly there to assess you, but they’re also ways to keep you on track and help you to make your MW better. (Keep in mind what I mentioned above about taking criticism/feedback.)

[grimoiresontape]

Ritual Magic at the Museum of Witchcraft

I returned from the UK at the end of last week after attending the annual Museum of Witchcraft and Magic conference in Boscastle, Cornwall. The conference, which I attended last year, continues to grow from strength to strength. This year's theme was Ritual Magic, and the range of talks delivered really showcased how a great title like this allows speakers to bring a refreshing variety of approaches to such a topic.  This also linked the conference to the current exhibition “Dew of Heaven: Objects of Ritual Magic” running until October 31st 2018.

As always, there is so much to be said, and so I am just going to summarise some of my favourite papers. I apologise to any speakers who feel I have grossly misinterpreted their key points. Any errors or over-emphases are mine and mine alone!

Dan Harms' talk, A Liverpool Cunning Man and his Magical Manual, took us into the eccentric consultation room of William Dawson Bellhouse, a nineteenth-century "surgeon, professor, and astrologer" whose cunning craft was melded with Bellhouse's interest in Galvanism and the potentially therapeutic effects of (hopefully mild!) electric shock treatments. Charting those bizarre overlaps of medicine and entertainment, Bellhouse's magical practice seems a fascinating admixture of the techniques and services of traditional English cunning folk and the instrumentations of the new sciences. Of particular interest to me was the rundown of the library of one technically unnamed cunning man operating in the area whom Harms seems sure refers to Bellhouse himself. The books used by this nineteenth-century practitioner should be very familiar to the early modernist and those interested in this kind of British folk magic: Agrippa's Three Books, the Fourth Book, Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, Hiebner's Mysterium Sigillorum and a whole host of charms only thus far found in manuscripts. Dan ended by sharing an incredibly detailed list of ingredients and instructions for constructing a witch-bottle which - beyond the usual urine and pins - included dragon's blood, "devil's dung" (i.e. asafoetida), and other choice materia magica. You can listen to the whole talk right here.

My other highlight of the first day was undoubtedly Peter Grey's poetic reflection The Shining Land: Ritual Magic in Cornwall. Not content to simply be a report on what makes some kind of "authentic Cornish magic", Grey's narrative exposed the very modern folly of such an attempt at constructing such an authenticity at the expense of the actual storied, cross-sectioned, and re-storied history of that land. More than a summary of all the magical things of Cornwall - and there are undoubtedly many! - it was a profoundly moving and potent meditation on the importance of place and the land in any magical practice. Those familiar with Grey's Apocalyptic Witchcraft should hardly be surprised by this, but the manners in which engagements with terroir were modeled in this piece were especially inspiring. I was personally delighted to discover Paracelsus' work in Cornish mining communities directly fed into his Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and to hear Peter's rendition of the Prayer of the Gnomes - a prayer I use heavily in my geomantic consultations - was a particular treat.

The evening's entertainment came in the form of my dear friend and Golgothan co-host Jesse Hathaway Diaz of Wolf & Goat giving an extended and interactive presentation on Quimbanda. As precisely no-one familiar with Jesse and his work was surprised to discover he effortlessly introduced this Afro-Brazilian witch-cult, grounded it in its historical and social contexts, before going onto explore the influence and contribution of European grimoires to this particular melting-cauldron of a necromantic tradition. There was singing, a lot of laughter, some shocked gasps, and plenty of excited chatter about it all in the bar afterwards. As is only proper.

It is said on this night that candlelight filled the afterhours Museum and the sound of rum-fueled carousing might have been caught on the wind. But who can say...

My two favourite papers delivered the following and already-upon-us final day of the conference were undoubtedly those of Tim Landry and Peter Mark Adams. Anthropologist Tim Landry gave an absolute tour-de-force in his presentation Willful Things: Sorcery and Encountering Ritual Magic in West Africa and Beyond. The task ahead of him - of introducing and contextualising the key epistemological and ontological differences between a European approach to magic and a West African approach to those activities and engagements sometimes characterised as equivalent - was not straightforward. Yet Tim demonstrated both great depth and clarity of analysis in presenting how West African modalities of sorcery impact on everything from basic social provisions to efforts to protect endangered species. Ending his talk on a definite high, Dr Landry posited that to examine this material and these practices responsibly we should move away from considering ritual magic as the manipulation of some emanated symbols in a (Neo)Platonic idealist universe, and towards a recognition of sorcerous potency in that which could be biologically dead but still ontologically alive. That, moreover, we benefit from considering ritual magic less as dealing in symbols, and more in terms of entering into relationships with non-human persons. I could not have applauded harder and more vehemently.

My final favourite was Peter Mark Adams' wonderful presentation on the Sola Busca tarocchi deck. While I have a copy of his excellent Game of Saturn, I must admit I have not worked my way through its entirety: this paper definitely highlighted the broader, deeper, and more practical utilities of his voluminous research into this elite Renaissance Italian Saturnine cult. Adams' work indicating and assessing the history and utility of ritual gesture alone was worth the price of admission, and his case-studies of but a few of the beautiful cards of this deck were so captivating there was an audible room-wide sigh of disappointment that the ride was over when he announced his last slide. Peter's conception of different levels of analysis - the historical, the alegorical and the magical - "trapdooring" down into further levels of each other has certainly given me plenty of methodology to muse on in my own work.

And speaking of my own work, I was very pleased to be able to present my paper on Ritual Magic of Early Modern Geomancy. This essay combined specific and general attitudes. In the case of the former, I sought to make assessment of geomancy's specific sorcery, considering especially the talismanic and semiotic consequences and utilities of Agrippa's assessment that geomantic figures and their sigils fell "betwixt images and characters". In service of the other, more generalist goal of this paper, I attempted to ruminate more broadly on ritual magical interrelations of all forms of divination and operative sorcery: how categories of divination become tools of enchantment, and how the lots of fate can be not simply read but re-written.

Threading these various presentations together like pearls on a tightly woven cord was Judith Hewitt of the Museum staff, framing these talks within an ongoing and unfolding revelation of the relationship between the Museum's founder Cecil Williamson and the work and disciples of Aleister Crowley. Owing to a last minute cancellation, Judith stepping in to fill the dead air and actually got to present and develop some of her own notions and questions of how Williamson considered and used the Museum, and this kind of critical reflexivity upon the Museum's own alchemical and thoroughly magical existence and operation was a perfect conclusion to a wonderful and expertly run conference.

I will continue to recommend the conference to anyone who can get a ticket quick enough! Long may it continue to pull practitioners, scholars, and seekers together under its sign to share their thoughts, their secrets and their rum! Long may it continue selling the wind!

[centaurrential]

The first.

The nice thing about blogging is that one doesn’t need to follow a strict academic essay structure: the issues and concepts I want to write about are always architectures built upon some underlying causal, foundational plot. It would be nice if we could hyperlink the written representations of our thought processes, but alas, that is one domain in which modern technology has fallen short. You might see that I jump around between topics, but I promise there are connections everywhere. So, here we go!

I’ve been hesitant to write about what ignites my passion the most.  

There are a couple of reasons for this.

For one, save for some semblance of a university degree I attempted to put together years ago, I have little in the way of ‘respectable’ credentials. I rely on my own observations of what is happening around me. A high school friend once revealed to me a technique in visual arts that has stuck with me since. “Draw what you see, not what you know to be there.” I have applied this not only to achieve realism in the scant visual artworks I have produced and which have gone unseen by most others, but also to compose a coherent understanding of my world--or in other words, everything I feel. This “motto” of sorts shows that we often ignore details about our experience that are in plain sight. Despite holding this key, I am well aware that I have not necessarily earned any institutional authority to write on the matters that compel me so--yet, as a person who has simply lived and observed, I still feel that I should express myself, for what ever it may be worth.

Second, though my risk of legal and political persecution in some form or another is not as dire as was obviously the case in the past with established thinkers, I’ve felt compelled to dress my thoughts in verse, marching what I think are critical ideas down the runway, letting the audience gently scrutinize the layers of different conceptual fabrics in motion rather than to place what is thought to be controversial on a podium, open to the personalized savagery of modern “progressive” critique. Misunderstanding is a very real fear of mine as I believe it is one of the greatest tragedies of the human condition. I suppose, as a sensitive person who is deeply emotional and deeply invested in my own thought as a means to a better world, my intent up to now has been to create a buffer of some sort between what I theorize and the ideology-driven hate that tends to characterize Internet culture (which, incidentally now, always carries a ‘social media’ component with it). But I don’t wanna hide anymore.

Something I’ve noticed about that very vehicle for thought is how utterly unforgiving it is. Someone uncovers a person’s past involving a stupid, ignorant mistake along the lines of political incorrectness and suddenly all the good they may have recently put into the world evaporates because there is some sort of twisted expectation of social perfection we’ve adopted--even though there is some overlap between this absolutist, impossible approach to other, equally fallible human beings and the tendency to wax poetic about one’s own cathartic emotional experience, along with a new awareness emerging from the remnants of self-destruction, and forcing ‘compassion’ toward oneself in light of one’s mistakes.

The message is that “I” can learn, but “you” cannot. It seems that people are so volatile these days, they’re ready to pounce without really thinking about what a person is trying to say in earnest. And while I believe that we should work hard at our collective and individual duties to skepticism, I cannot condone, to the furthest reaches of any influence I may have, the deadlock of pseudo-critical thinking when it involves scapegoating and self-righteousness.

I sense (and feel) a lot of (justified) anger, and many well-meaning individuals are looking for a place to which they can direct such intensity. The unfortunate thing is that the fire mutates into hostility toward people who don’t deserve it. Shuffle formless anger into boxes designed to look nicely and glamorously radical, and chuck it at those who--excluding the really terrible people in the world--are honest and serious about answering the questions of “how to achieve the maximum possible distance from pain”, and, “what is, essentially”, and you’ve got a problem on your hands. Nothing is ever as simple as we’d like it to be.

And by the way, I find the dismissive “ok, boomer” attitude reprehensible. Like, OBVIOUSLY there are going to be differences among generations in “opinion” and lifestyles and so on. And obviously past generations have made what we now deem to be ‘mistakes’. But just like any individual who may regret past actions, whether personal or professional, one makes decisions supported by the most convincing reasons they can muster, and so they do the best they can with the knowledge they have at hand, at some particular moment. Maybe some visionaries in the past were able to extrapolate from the contemporary and predict what would happen in the future. Even if their equivalents exist in society today, we will not know for certain the downright traumatizing effects current societal mechanisms could force to manifestation in the years beyond, until they actually become fact. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And, there is wisdom that only comes through living life. That, I’m afraid, is not up for debate.

I must say this here, now. I realize I’m walking on eggshells with what I’m about to say.  But, while it is clear that there is a significant degree of ‘white privilege’ in North American society, I’d be careful to declare ‘privilege’ an inherently white experience.  It is an historical reality (and is therefore biased). Not all ‘white people’ are the same; and it is CERTAINLY not the case that it has only been ‘white people’ that enforced slavery, for example. And it is definitely true that different members of different religions and different races and different ethnicities and different cultures and different dialects have, historically, perpetuated evil across many axes. Furthermore, I believe that the explicit and intentional denigration of ‘white people’ MADE BY WHITE PEOPLE THEMSELVES is probably one of the greatest expressions of white privilege. How secure must one feel if they can freely diss their ‘own kind’ and know that nothing diabolical will happen to them? We owe justice through opportunity to people we have marginalized, but that is not the way. I just think that people are either willfully ignorant, accidentally ignorant, or have forgotten that all kinds of people can be villains, and further that a truly corrupt person will even torture people with whom they may have a great deal in common.

I tend to think that ‘intersectionality’ is a seriously important concept and is most empirically aligned with individualism. People move around more, cross-cultural contact happens more; global connection ushers cuisine, rituals and traditions, spiritual beliefs, and languages into landscapes that were previously barren of particular social technologies. The result is a person who may have many characteristics sort of in common with others who share those qualities in a scattered manner, but unless one of those forces was exceptionally prominent in the person’s life, the commonality is negligible.

Emergent from this phenomenon is the serious tension between individual self-actualization and the requirements for so-called proper functioning of the broader ‘community’ to which one feels they belong. The needs of each can often be at odds with one another, and it doesn’t appear to be an easy task to resolve this conflict. I do know that sacrifices will have to be made, as there is always a price to pay; I almost think of that as a universal law.

When I was 19 and took a philosophy of feminism class, I started noticing what problems arise when a mode of thinking is assumed to apply to a particular “community” (loosely speaking), just because its members all share some intrinsic quality. In the particular case I’m talking about, it was “being female”. When someone speaks the word ‘feminism’, it is loaded. You have liberal feminism, eco-feminism, radical feminism, third-wave feminism, black feminism, post-colonial feminism, and so on. The relevance of these various types is stretched so thinly throughout the human landscape that one could legitimately wonder why those theories should even be considered to have anything in common. In other words, how can you possibly come up with an ethic of revolution that applies universally to, I dunno, how many billion people in the world? Here’s a situation: women in the West, particularly in the Deep South, are fighting for their choice to have an abortion. Meanwhile, in some parts of India and China, female infanticide is more common than a decent person should like to admit, and that’s not because Indian and Chinese women want it! Asking someone who is thoughtful in ANY respect if they are a feminist is like asking someone if they believe in God, and that is not, nor should it be, an easy question to answer.

To be clear: what I am talking about is definition, and if you break down the etymological components of that word, you see that it is about deciding what sorts of conceptual boundaries must be drawn (the finiteness)--to determine what is included, and also what is excluded. My belief is that it is actually the interplay between those qualities intrinsic to a person and external forces placed upon us that dictate the degrees of self-satisfaction and happiness we experience.

That pain is to be avoided is generally unquestionable, though the finer details of rational action (because I do see the treatment of pain as an issue of rationality, and as something more fundamental to the exercising of rational action than market economics is) are still up for debate. And, I suppose, that is the case for many injustices that an active, voluntarily thinking society wishes to eradicate. I’d like to return to that topic some time in the future, but what concerns me today is the issue of essentialism.

Essentialism has been a problem for philosophers for a really long time. Often it is conceptualized as “what makes something that thing”, but in my view, Essence seems to lie in the realm of the experiential. In one minor paper I wrote for a metaphysics class, I argued (incompletely) that an object’s ‘essence’ could be partly defined by the function one identifies when they come into contact with said object. For example, because even though chairs can be made up of different numbers of legs, or be of different colours, or be upholstered or not, we place them into a category of ‘something to be seated upon’. But then again, there are many things that can be sat upon, and, on the other hand, one does not look at a real life dog and think of it as an object that innately serves a purpose, let alone is built for one.

So why am I talking about what seems to be an obscure and useless topic?

It is the utility of Essence that gives form to our experience. And for those who believe that we erroneously categorize and judge every single damn thing we come across in our lives, go ahead and try to reverse neurological evolution through time of geologic scale. I mean, this mode of existence came to be before we even defined what ‘values’ were.

Tangentially, my introduction to the study of philosophy started with the great divide between ‘rationalism’ (ie. some inherent structure which creates the capacity to ‘know’ already exists in a person at the time of birth) and ‘empiricism’ (the school of thought where a person only collected knowledge through experience after they were born with a ‘blank slate’ of a mind). I never understood why the distinction between rationalism and empiricism was so important, because it seemed so obvious that our system of moving through the world was a combination of the two. We see now that the belief in one to the exclusion of the other is just plain stupid: genetics, epigenetics, logarithmic counting in BABIES, education, debate, and research, all contribute to an individual’s understanding of the world. (It is this idea, too, that contributes to my belief that free will is an illusion [though a helpful one at that] and that ‘luck’ is an epistemological concept. I will also use this idea to, eventually, communicate my argument that astrology is theoretically plausible, but that involves discussing archetypes and the cyclical nature of our known world...) Note: “Epistemology” is the study of knowledge and how we come to accumulate it. I went on this tangent because I think we need to demonstrate a great deal of respect for both pre-existing neurological realities and the staggering potential of science to teach us about our environments and ourselves. There are some core things about us that we would be wrong to ignore, and unforgivably so if the sound science is right there.

We do not typically go through life coming into contact with objects or people and checking off items on a list that comprise criteria for something being what it is (unless, of course, you’re prone to collect little hints as to whether a potential lover loves you back or not.....). To do so would reduce the fluidity with which we interact with externalities. That being said, I can conceive of a time when one goes outside for a cigarette in the night and watches a creature (as I just did) that may be a cat, or that may be a raccoon, cross the road. You peer at this creature for several seconds, up until the point that you conclude, and are certain, that it is, indeed, a cat. It is then that you can move on with your life. Perhaps what helped you to come to this conclusion was a short list of criteria that separate catness from raccoonness. Obviously that would be more efficient than consulting an exhaustive mental list of “cat properties” and comparing it to a similar list, but of “raccoon properties”. But even so, by the time you’ve witnessed the cat/raccoon, you’ve already filtered out any possibility that the creature might be something else, like a stray dog, or a lizard, or a floating chair. In conclusion, I propose here that context is essential to Essence. And Essence is a fully whole sensory experience, insofar as your sensory faculties work. This is why it is so hard to define.

The social relevance of the concept of Essence is becoming more important with the emergence of identity politics, the crises in feminism, “queerness”, the feminine/masculine dichotomy, and even paradigms in psychological health. Inherent to Essence is continuity, and no one can argue against the notion that we rely on general continuity to go about our daily lives.

But out of continuity develops expectation. Expectation is immensely helpful for the reason I laid out above. Additionally, in public, we rely on a common yet tacit understanding that individual members of the public will behave in a way that is safe and appropriate for everyone. The problem is, if you have experienced a good chunk of your life, well into adulthood, having never seen an unfamiliar and idiosyncratic expression of certain properties, why WOULD you do anything else other than fumble in your acceptance that that is the way something is? Your mind scrambles to organize what you are interacting with in the way that makes the most sense.

I was once accused of being an essentialist because of some remark I made referencing biological differences between men and women. I wondered if the dude was joking because I really cannot grasp why someone would think that the differences are trivial. Lately I’ve toyed with the conclusion that there must be something essential, something bounded, about the way we express ourselves, which matches what we are that isn’t seen by absolutely everyone, including exuding femininity or masculinity. If there wasn’t something essential about these “descriptions”, why would anyone make an effort to look a certain way in the first place? Or, why would anyone have a subconscious tendency to adopt certain characteristics? The point I’m trying to make is that communication in the form of appearance is just as important as a verbal explanation of something, and can in fact be more truthful than what is verbally expressed. Whether one wants to admit it or not, you are offering information that allows others to draw conclusions about you. And it’s not that you merely fulfill a checklist of the sort that I mentioned earlier. It is that, often, though not always, each separate quality supports all the others, forming a sort of “mesh-like” coherence. If there wasn’t something essentially feminine that you identified with, or something essentially masculine that you identified with--if these things didn’t matter--there would be no point in going to great lengths to change your appearance to communicate something. (And I think this holds even in the case of the non-binary person.)

Of course, judgments are made all the time about people, which have nothing to do with being transgendered or cisgendered. A person asks you your age. Why? Because they’re collecting information about you and the particulars in the category of “age” should reveal something about you that you’re not stating explicitly. And this information is only grounded in other information the inquirer has about you. And the only reason this information might be reliable is because a consolidation of an individual’s past experiences tells them that a certain age represents an axis of consistency of mentality and/or behaviour. The deductions we make are not always accurate, but if we didn’t instinctively think of this information as important, we wouldn’t seek it!

I will now apply the above problem to sort out why we are in such a mess, socially. First of all, the person is born into expectation of behaviour. That expectation depends on their sex at birth (assuming the person is not intersex), their social, economic, political class, the levels of education their immediate family members have achieved, their spiritual practices, et cetera. It seems to me that feminism arose in the first place because of the particular kind of anticipation of behaviour that swirls around whether you have a testicle-penis or a uterus-vagina combination. The traditionally ‘male’ realm was the unexplored frontier to many women; it was one of excitement, possibility, and opportunity, and arguably more freedom than the domain to which women were typically assigned: the home. Women can produce babies, and if you could produce babies then you SHOULD produce babies, and you should care for them too. And not only that, but by virtue of the fact that you are a mother you can’t even fathom leaving your babies behind. I haven’t yet come across a proper articulation of why this point is so crucial to understand. The women who have the term “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) slung at them are attacked by people who don’t understand that this fundamental difference in expectation between female-born individuals and male-born individuals is looming in the background, and how damn well important it really is, because it inevitably shapes a person’s perception of the world and quite possibly the expectations they have of other people! And the perception that falls upon you isn’t just something you can shed on a whim. And also, why are people surprised that this is still an issue? Even as advanced creatures we still succumb to evolutionary forces. I don’t think any reasonable person could say that “you aren’t female even if you feel female”, but it’s not about how you “feel”. It’s about what happens between you and people once they figure out a vital fact about you. It’s about the context in which you, a whole being, operate. You want to talk about oppression? I think your self-identity being misaligned with how other people think you should be is pretty high up there in the ranks.

So, to digress a little: the notion of changing yourself and making an impression on strangers, making a difference in the world, is intoxicating. But we enter dangerous territory when visions of child-rearing and home care become afterthoughts. Child psychologists have identified the age range between 2 and 4 to be particularly crucial in socializing children; it is at that age that they are the most impressionable with regard to how they learn to interact with others. That’s not really a huge window to make sure you ‘get it right’. I think the family unit, whatever its configuration may be, is pretty foundational to the rest of society. While many people presently carry harmful opinions about things we don’t understand, and changing those opinions tends to be rather difficult, the most radical, most powerful thing we can do to initiate reform is to make sure the children we are responsible for grow up valuing honour, kindness, and a sense of duty and justice, not just in relation to themselves and their immediate families, but to society as a whole.

People are throwing tantrums because society hasn’t given itself an overnight makeover. I think that anyone involved in politics understands, either consciously or unconsciously, that even though political institutions and bureaucracies were created by real people, they’ve sort of become fragmented away from human life and are entities of their own, floating above our heads like clouds in the higher atmosphere, and which do not have any readily identifiable boundaries. It appears that the various bodies of legislation and bureaucracies have become so bloody complex in correlation with the complexity of human interaction that they seem almost impossible to disentangle. Furthermore, ideas take a long time to die...if they ever even do.

Rather than viewing child-rearing as a burden, I choose to view it as the greatest responsibility and the greatest tool we have for genuine change. I feel, honestly, that sometimes we waste energy trying to convince people of something where there is no convincing possible. We often preach to the choir because they’re the only people who make us feel heard--but our own little choirs already know and believe what we know and believe.

So. I think, once I reviewed what I said above, that I’ve attempted to illuminate a conundrum about simultaneous utility and danger found in the act of expecting. This “study” of sorts is a microcosm of a world where darkness and light are aspects of all things. I’m convinced that the formulation of potential is expressed in binaries, but unlike computers, we are able to interpret ambiguities, and in many pockets of society people are tolerant of self-expression. With so many belief systems up for grabs, and with the world as it is in its ebbs and flows, it is up to the individual to craft their own transcendent values as a way to “orient themselves”, as Dr. Jordan B. Peterson put it. Be mature and do not dismiss nuance. Challenge yourself. And for God’s sake, the next time you’re thinking of buying that innocuous avocado that’s become the symbol for the Millennial generation, ask yourself what is more important: dismantling violent and antisocial Mexican drug cartels, or supporting Mexican farmers who are trying to make their ways through life, just like every. last. one of us.

[ceaac]

Why I like the Past

Apr 16th, 2020

I like history – or at least I enjoy a  particular set of activities in my mind of trying to piece together my own understanding of a historical order (whereby sensibilities can be drawn into question) of events. This has led me to look for  the implications of history on the way people lived at given times. I try and search around for a fundamental property of our collective relationship.

History is a guide, a pointer to bits of events; I am born – start school – make a friend – have various birthdays – I am now at my present event; typing on the computer at 00:17am.

Pretend there is an alternate reality and this is our future; a black hole whirls in ending all life on Earth – the aliens studying us, fly away.

‘Ending all life on Earth’ is used to represent an end of human history so we can imagine it as a big history book, start to finish. The aliens are there to illustrate an outside perspective; an alien perspective. When the aliens open this book they can jump into it at any point. They could read about pre-history and understand early tribal communities, delve into the parts about kingdoms and empires, learn the developments of societies across the world; at any and all points these events took place they could read about it and piece together a picture of humanity.

They may notice widespread ramifications of an event. They may notice the relationships of smaller events, which seamlessly lead up to the same thing.

Imagine a little further that these aliens also had the auto-biographies of every individual person who ever lived. It would be an extensive collection. Then imagine trying to study all the relationships between all the events (large and small) ever recorded. You might go a little crazy, because what is being illustrated is a super-complex interwoven picture of a particular set of activities connected to the circumstances of another’s set of activities, and another’s and so on and so forth. We could go further and suggest that these aliens have video footage of every blade of grass, bacteria, giraffe, mollusc, fish and all the animals that ever lived on Earth. The aliens could even have complex 3.D maps of every point that the atoms of the Earth have traveled throughout this time span, and begin to study the relationships of it all.

Let’s step back for now, and look at what there is; the history books that any one person can delve into at any one lifetime. Comparatively to the aliens, its a slim read – between each person their reading is proportional between other readings. Simply put we can look at events but never the complete picture.

My knowledge of history is a slice. Not least because I haven’t read all the books and T.V. programmes of it all. The same is true for my knowledge of science, art, and in fact everything considered a knowledge for anything – I have access to perpetual slithers. What is knowledge? Knowledge is something refereed and when one come across knowledge it is remembered. When we are born do we know nothing? A great deal of us seem to know exactly how to use our bodily functions; our bodies know how to live. It is the body we use first to engage in the world to understand its properties; a baby’s limbs kick and jerk in order to sense the world. With the body it senses soft and hard qualities of things, making connections with ears and eyes, touch is continuously reaching for our mothers tit or the history book. The body helps us connect to the world, so to me the body is instrumental to the thing of knowledge. Bodies have a genetic history towards human biology, and more presently; you and me. The relationship between the body and knowledge is a deep one.

The process of evolution is on-going and happens as a random occurrence on the individual level; each body (and all the atoms that makeup the genes inside it) evolve (requiring and acquiring knowledge in doing so) with random genetic mutation into environments to be life. Little by little all the animals have found a fit in a moment in time and their understanding in any environment as we continually evolve. Into what, or would it be inter-sectingly through what?

I’m not sure exactly but whatever knowledge really is it needs the body to remember it. As a topic, history is an interest of mine but more accurately all topics are an interest of mine but in varying proportions in time. It just so happens I find a heightened sense of enjoyment and interest with the local and world history my body has access to. So what is it about history that I felt to write this of it?

As I explore the avenues of my mind; I can refer to set of images. Non of these histories are true or false. For me what history offers are bits of information I can pull into view (wound up with other bits in parallel within my ordered pre-conceptions) as I search for another way forwards towards ‘inventive’ ideas. In creative terms; I enjoy mixing up my pasts. However if that is an angle to inform a practice, it must be kept ‘up-to-date’ - to be ‘up-to-date’ of knowledge my body only has access to, I have to choose the readings I do. And in choosing what history to read:

As mentioned I enjoy a certain view of history and piecing together my own chronological understanding of events and the social implications with our relationship to one another. And my view of history is shrouded by the closest (UK elections) and/or most intense (K-T extinction) of events; until my present. It upsets me that more than likely the histories of our earliest past and of the first emerging communities and societies, are hidden only in the fragments of our modern age.

How do we get there? Experimental archaeology is a very interesting field; exposing present-day experimenters to conditions set by their estimations of the past; connections are found. Walking the body through working the structural limitations of building mud houses or testing the limits of replicated armour, archaeologist piece ever finely the historical record. It is a field that overlaps others. Could it be occasionally the archaeologist feels themselves somehow misplaced in one given situation of their experiment?

I can by no means provide any scientific answer, but I can point you to my artistic perspective; by reading history I base my understanding of a creativity I enjoy. Trying to go beyond the superficial readings I interchange with other topics to form imaginings of two points in time. As mentioned, by no means is this accurate as it must bring into question the sincerity of the accounts I have read. No doubt my mind will change in time. However, it is fun to pretend.

Now. If you don’t mind, I have a date with Leonardo da Vinci at the Palace Promenade...

[magickedteacup]

Unfortunately many men still harbor a great deal of resistance when it comes to properly understanding, accepting and recognizing the value of women. In this regard, there is a joke: In a village there lived a deeply spiritual woman who found immense happiness in serving others. She became the area’s first appointed woman priest. Her great compassion, humility and wisdom were appreciated by the villagers. This made the male priests jealous. One day all the priests were invited to a religious gathering on an island, three hours away by boat. When the male priests boarded the boat, to their chagrin the woman priest was already seated. Soon, the boat set off, but an hour later the engine died. The captain had forgotten to fill the tank. There was no other boat in sight, and no one knew what to do. Suddenly, the woman priest stood up and said, “Don’t worry! I’ll get more gas.” She then stepped out of the boat and proceeded to walk across the water. The male priests were astonished, but were quick to remark, “Look at her! She doesn’t even know how to swim!”

Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi) https://journal.thriveglobal.com/the-world-needs-motherhood-e9b174acb82c

“When we put in effort to remove outdated social and religious concepts that suppress women, we will often find support. Until recently, women in India were not allowed to worship in the inner sanctum of temples; nor could they consecrate a temple or perform Vedic rituals. Women didn’t even have the freedom to chant Vedic mantras. But our ashram is encouraging and appointing women to do these things, and I myself perform the consecration ceremony in all the temples we construct. In the beginning, many protested against this. To those who questioned us, I explained that we are worshipping a God who is beyond all differences, who does not differentiate between male and female. In the end, the majority of people supported us. In fact, those prohibitions against women were never actually a part of the Hindu tradition. They were in all likelihood invented later by men in order to exploit and oppress women.”

Amma is pretty much who I consider my spiritual teacher / guru / or person whose teachings I follow. Shiva is the one who I like to metaphorically burble about being in steady relationship with--but to be honest, that’s pretty much directly Amma’s fault too, the way that Shiva snuck into my worship. You know--Before this year, I would have said that I’m basically interfaith, because I my beliefs overlapped a Catholic background and a Hindu-based foreground... but I didn’t really know what it meant to be like--Have that strong sense of burbly, blissful affection for a divine figure like Shiva until it slowly happened to me this year. Last year I barely could have told you who Shiva was, and nowadays it’s like. Wow, this eccentric divine entity snuck in somehow and actually I’m pretty happy about it??? I spend one night staying up all night at the ashram for Shivratri doing the chanting and so forth, and barely half a year later I found myself adoring this fellow and having times when I’d get so happy just thinking about Shiva and it’s like. what happened :’D The ashram doesn’t even particularly focus on Shiva worship. But it ended up that it’s pretty much what fits for me, different people feel attachment to different divine aspects...

But yeah, that ashram is one of Amma’s ashrams in the US. And also the homa fire ritual done that Shivratri was done by a woman, a bramacharini. Which, there are so many things that Amma has said and done over the years that I didn’t realize the enormous implications of until I recently started learning more about India, and it’s various social, religious, and historical concerns.

[xtruss]

Foreign Policy Experts Map Russia’s Plans for 2020

We ask seven experts to predict what Russia has in store for the world next year.

2019 has been a busy year for Russia abroad. For one, the country has continued to cultivate its ties with new partners — including the 43 African leaders who attended the first Russia-Africa forum in Sochi in October — while sparring with major powers like the U.S. (ending a historic Cold War arms treaty).

While growing its influence in the Middle East, the country has also moved to extend its military reach to new frontiers, with the first nuclear bomber flights to South Africa and Venezuela, as well as political and military support for regimes ranging from Mozambique and the Central African Republic to the Libyan rebel military commander Khalifa Haftar.

Closer to home, the relationship with Ukraine has warmed up, as the two countries carried out a wide-scale prisoner exchange and agreed on a 5-year gas deal. Russia, however, has again been accused of destabilizing activities by the EU and other countries, while the future of its vital Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany remains unclear.

What does Russia hope to achieve in 2020? The Moscow Times asked six experts in Russian foreign policy to weigh in with their opinions.

Ramping up Russia-China trade in 2020

Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow and chair of the Russia in Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center

The year 2020 should have been the year when trade turnover between Moscow and Beijing surpassed the $200 billion mark — at least that’s what former Chinese leader Hu Jintao and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proclaimed in 2010. That ambitious target has now been pushed back to 2024. Nevertheless, in 2018 the volume of Sino-Russian trade had finally surpassed the $100 billion mark and working toward increasing that number will be a major goal for the Kremlin in 2020.

Despite the “phase one” U.S.-China trade deal agreed in December, Moscow hopes to increase its exports of hydrocarbons and food products to its giant neighbor. The Power of Siberia gas pipeline launched on Dec. 2, 2019 will start commercial operations next year. Although the pipeline will not reach its full capacity of 38 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year until 2025, next year Gazprom plans to pump at least 5 bcm of gas to China. Meanwhile, Russian oil companies are seeking to cement their dominance on the Chinese crude market and expand shipments, though the volume of trade in hydrocarbons will depend on global oil prices. Moscow is also trying to break through non-tariff barriers on the Chinese side in order to grow agricultural exports to China.

Russian imports may become another driver of trade. Despite anemic growth rates at home, the Kremlin is entering into deeper engagement with Chinese tech giants like Huawei, as Russia tries to decrease its dependence on Western technology and rely more on alternatives provided by China that are viewed as cheaper and less harmful to national security.

Russia needs to show it is a long-term partner in the Middle East

Marianna Belenkaya, Middle East correspondent for the Russian daily Kommersant

The main challenge for Russia in the Middle East in 2020 will be to prove that it has not constructed a house of cards in the region that could crumble at any moment. Russia has built almost its entire Middle Eastern policy on the Syria effect.

But Moscow understands that military presence in that country is not enough, especially given that the emphasis of events there is increasingly shifting towards diplomacy. However, Russia could easily become mired in the very disagreeable process of trying to reach a political settlement.

In 2019, Moscow tried to extend its experience in the Syrian settlement to other regional issues: it mediated for the Palestinians and updated the concept of security in the Persian Gulf based on dialogue between the Arabs and Iran. So far, however, this has not produced any results. Nonetheless, Moscow will try to come up with impressive diplomatic initiatives to reaffirm its image as an influential regional power.

To a certain extent, Moscow has become a hostage of the image it created for itself after the start of the military operation in Syria — namely, that of a strong player who knows how to negotiate with everyone, and who can apply pressure when it is unable to establish a dialogue.

Now the expectation is that Russia will intervene in almost every regional conflict, and particularly in Libya, with a repeat of its Syrian military scenario. Russia has apparently reconciled itself to this role, judging from the fact that Defense Ministry officials met with Libyan Field Marshall Khalifa Hafter.

As for attempts to accuse Moscow of meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, Russia’s policy differs little from the actions of other “great” powers. In fact, Moscow faces its own problem of not having a definite policy with regard to Private Military Countracts and various interest groups that often operate in the Middle East, Africa and other regions of the world in contradiction to the Russian official position. The question remains as to whether Russia has a clear, long-term strategy in the Middle East.

In Europe, pragmatism remains key

Elena Chernenko, special correspondent at Kommersant and member of the board of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy

I don’t have the feeling that Russia has any special “goals” in mind when approaching its relations with the EU in 2020. The reality is that at the moment there aren’t any constructive relations between Russia and the EU as a union.

All the plans that started to develop between Moscow and Brussels before 2014 are still mostly on hold because of the events in and surrounding Ukraine.

For Russia, the EU remains an important partner because of the power of sanctions and the fact that it can make life harder for the Kremlin’s ambitious Nord Stream 2 project. But the Kremlin realizes that almost everything else can be dealt with on a bilateral level.

This year, the EU unfortunately did not make its voice heard during the collapse of the U.S.-Russia INF treaty. The existence of that treaty was in the vital interests of European countries. Now the EU can once again get stuck in the middle of arms rivalry between Moscow and Washington.

When it comes to bilateral relations with EU member states, Russia will continue its pragmatic approach: more trade, more investment, more tourism. Russia has already introduced e-visas for St. Petersburg.

The political agenda is more nuanced: Russia would prefer a less unified and rigid EU on Ukraine. At the same time, it hopes for the EU to take a united and sovereign stance against the U.S.

I don’t, however, expect any proactive steps from Moscow on these issues. Time seems to be playing into Russia's hands so the Kremlin will sit back and see what happens in 2020.

The Kremlin will be hoping for another 4 years of Trump

Vladimir Frolov, political columnist and foreign policy expert

There was a promising start to 2019 for both countries.

After phone calls between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in late April and Secretary of State Pompeo’s visit to Sochi in early May for meetings with Putin, the two sides seemed to have resolved to focus on a range of overlapping interests. In the summer, Putin and Trump had a constructive meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.

By early September, however, John Bolton had been fired as Trump’s national security advisor, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow John Huntsman and National Security Council (NSC) Senior Director for Russia Fiona Hill had resigned and a complaint from a whistleblower had triggered a congressional impeachment investigation focused on the U.S.-Ukraine relationship, eliminating any bandwidth in Washington for dealing with Moscow. The INF nuclear treaty also died somewhere along the way.

2020 may turn out to be much better, however. Barring unforeseen developments, Trump will be impeached in the House and acquitted in the Senate retaining realistic prospects for re-election in November 2020.

Before that, he will visit Moscow in May for the Victory Day celebrations, where Putin will be hosting President Xi Jinping of China and President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has recently allied himself with the Russian leader’s worldview.

In Moscow, Putin and Trump will have their first full summit, which will require deliverables.

With John Bolton and Tim Morrison gone from the NSC, the U.S. may agree to extend the New START Treaty for a few more years, as Russia proposed, giving Putin and Trump their “wins.” The presence of presidents Xi and Marcon in Moscow may help launch a multilateral discussion on the future of strategic stability. Some progress on the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea is not out of the question. If Russia and Ukraine make significant strides in implementing the Minsk agreements under French facilitation, U.S. sanctions relief could even be on the agenda.

Beyond the Moscow summit, not much else in bilateral relations will be accomplished during U.S. election season.

The Kremlin will pursue an international agenda of restraint in order not to undermine Trump’s reelection. Nor will it launch any covert action to meddle in the U.S. presidential election. It doesn’t have to. Four more years of Trump in the White House is more than enough to accomplish Moscow’s goals of ending the U.S. global pre-eminence. Who could ask for more?

Russia will continue probing Ukraine's Zelenskiy in 2020

Andrei Kortunov, director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council.

It appears that there are two points of view among top Russian officials regarding likely developments in Ukraine over the coming year and what they will mean for Moscow.

The first says that Ukraine’s political pendulum has reached its highest point and that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is the best possible negotiating partner for reaching an agreement on the Donbass and, possibly, a wider array of issues.

Under this assumption, any further pressure on Zelenskiy would only make him weaker and could lead to the political resurgence of radical nationalist elements in Kiev. Thus, Moscow should support Zelenskiy and show maximum flexibility when it comes to the Minsk agreements and shows of good will. This could also mean making concessions on gas transit and restoring economic relations with Kiev.

The opposite view supposes that Ukraine’s political pendulum hasn’t reached its high point yet, and that the distribution of political power in 2020 will continue to change in Russia’s favor. Moreover, it says that the degree to which Zelenskiy is independent from Ukrainian oligarch groups is still unclear, as is his ability to control the security forces. Consequently, Moscow should not rush with new initiatives or proposals, especially if they will lead to a revision of the Minsk agreements.

If the first point of view is geared toward achieving a breakthrough in the coming year, the second says that it will be enough to cement the existing status quo by freezing the conflict in eastern Ukraine and postponing any substantial agreements to a more distant future.

Russia will seek further African integration, but the West will be watching closely

Evgeny Korendyasov, Head of Center for Russian-African Relations Studies at RAS Institute for African Studies

The coming year promises to be dynamic and very productive for Russia-Africa relations. It marks the start of the practical implementation of Russia’s new strategy for Africa, announced at the first Russia-Africa summit held in Sochi on October 23-24. Its key goal is to “give Russia-Africa relations a strategic, systemic and comprehensive character.”

No longer will the Russian political and business elite underestimate the global significance of the African continent. Plans call for doubling the volume of Russia’s foreign trade with African countries to $40 billion over the next three or four years. Russian businesses are ready to intensify their efforts to take their rightful place in Africa’s rapidly growing consumer market, which is expected to reach $7 trillion by 2025. In the international arena, Russia and Africa continue to take a like-minded approach to upholding the principles of independence and non-interference, as well as the preservation of national identity and cultural diversity.

Achieving these goals will be challenging and not without controversy. Western countries are strongly opposed to Russia playing a greater role in Africa. In its new strategy for Africa, the United States named Russia and China as its main opponents on the continent. Paris sees Russia’s presence in Africa as having an “anti-French character” that threatens French national interests. The NATO countries are trying to involve African states in the West’s confrontation with Russia. Anti-Russia sanctions extend to Western companies operating in Africa.

This situation will inevitably aggravate trade and economic competition. However, in the context of Africa, such competition runs up against certain limitations or “red lines” — that is, the need for the international community to work in unity to cope with global challenges and threats. Africa is a vast hotbed of terrorism, international organized crime, and criminal emigration. It also suffers from the world’s highest levels of poverty, economic underdevelopment and dangers of mass epidemics — all of which stand in contrast to the humanistic values of modern civilization.

Although Africa cannot cope with these challenges alone, the international community cannot overcome them without broadly engaging the African continent’s potential.

Expect a further industrialized Arctic

Elizabeth Buchanan, Lecturer of Strategic Studies with Deakin University at the Australian War College

2020 will welcome Russia’s updated Arctic Strategy (as the existing 2008 Arctic policy retires, right on schedule). Putin has already signaled the focus will be upon Russia’s industrialization of the Arctic up to 2035. This focus is in line with the fact that the Arctic is seen as the future resource base for the Russian government. Russia’s recent suite of resource project tax cuts further supports the priority of Arctic resource development for Moscow.

Will we finally see the "new" Cold War between Russia and the West in the Arctic next year? I don’t think so.

But 2020 will witness the rebirth of new strategic competition between Arctic stakeholders through a new age of Arctic industrialization. Commercial calculations will drive strategic partnerships in the Arctic — we have already seen this in the converging Sino-Russia relationship in the region.

A relationship originally born out of desperation thanks to Western energy sanctions, it now serves as the basis for necessary infrastructure projects and ultimately, the redesign of global transport corridors and energy flows — at the behest of Beijing and Moscow. In 2020, I expect Russia to also strengthen its insurance clause against becoming China's "little brother" by diversifying its commercial Arctic partnerships further (with Japan, Saudi Arabia and India in particular).

Of course, the securitization narrative of the Russian Arctic will continue — we know militarization garners more headlines. But this is the distraction. It is important to look beyond and focus on the long-game critical infrastructure investments which are been cultivated by the Kremlin. In positing the strategic trajectory of the Arctic, I believe it is crucial to watch Russia’s industrialization program for the region as it begins to take shape in 2020. The gravity of what (economically) is at stake for the Kremlin necessarily means that the current cooperative Arctic environment will be bolstered by Moscow.

I believe it will be, particularly in the lead up to Russia assuming the Arctic Council Chairmanship in 2021.

— By Pjotr Sauer, The Moscow Times, December 24, 2019

[mercerislandbooks]

A Mighty Fine Aspiration: An Interview with Robert L. Tsai

Robert L. Tsai, a Professor of Law at American University, graciously took the time last week to answer questions regarding his new book Practical Equality. Between his busy schedule of TV appearances and book talks, I am grateful for the kindness he showed in answering my questions. Before we get to those, I want to tell you a bit about how reading his book made me feel.

Since graduating from college, I have been burying my head in fiction like an ostrich, giving my brain a rest from brain-stretching academia. Reading Practical Equality reminded me not only how much I love to learn but also how important understanding your country’s legal system is. I had so many “so that’s why this happens!” or “so that’s what that was all about!” moments while reading his book.

Boxing key concepts in the introduction

With a pen in hand, I annotated the first half of the book to track my reactions, important passages I wanted to return to, or questions I had about the material. I remembered that note-taking skills were life skills. Needless to say, I had fun being a student again. The reading experience was enlightening and incredible.

Practical Equality goes over court cases aimed at equality, and how historically  arguments alternative to equality have won civil and human rights cases. As Tsai said in one of his answers, “That’s a mighty fine aspiration, but in reality it’s a very hard promise to keep.” No matter what side of the political line you fall on, Tsai tries to appeal towards all readers dissatisfied with the status of social politics through facts and circumstances.

The most exciting aspect about this book is its scope: while he shares aspirations of a truly equal society, he integrates historical, social, and political contexts into his accounts of various court cases or social issues. He doesn’t shy away from hard-to-swallow pills, but he doesn’t cast anyone as a villain. His easygoing yet knowledgeable tone taught me more about myself through my reactions to the facts.

I found his insight invaluable, hence the hefty set of interview questions below...

Island Books: You use the word egalitarian frequently throughout the book. What does an egalitarian society look like to you? How far are we in America from that ideal?

Robert Tsai: For me personally, an egalitarian society is one that takes seriously the promise that each person living in that society is worthy of being treated with respect. That’s a mighty fine aspiration, but in reality it’s a very hard promise to keep. Some think that all we need to care about is political equality: a handful of rights that are closely associated with citizenship like the vote. Others think that we only need to care about equality among citizens but can mistreat non-citizens whose labor we extract to maintain the American lifestyle. I believe in a certain amount of reciprocity, so even non-citizens who contribute to our society deserve to be treated with respect. I also think that people who commit crimes don’t give up their basic humanity, and, while they are in prison, and especially when they’ve done their time, certain kinds of conditions shouldn’t follow them forever. In my book I spend some time thinking about felon disenfranchisement, which is an abomination in a democratic society like ours.

"The key is the social meaning of an act, not merely how the action is intended but also how it is received.” - Tsai on discriminatory laws.

IB: While you show that there is a way to communicate between conservative and liberal political agents without talking about social morals, you make clear which side of the moral and political argument you fall. Have you received political, social, or general backlash for your book?

RT: I haven’t yet received any backlash for anything I’ve written about the book, but I expect that not everyone will agree with what I have to say! I do hope they give the book a try, though, since I wrote it with an eye toward appealing to a broad cross-section of readers who might not always agree with where we are in terms of social progress. I think that’s a broader lesson when it comes to struggles over equality. We do have to take sides, and that will naturally cause social friction. Sometimes, though, we can shift our arguments slightly and find a more receptive audience. And history has shown that you can’t expect to get everyone on your side, but you do need to convince a handful of people to come your way, especially those in power, if you want to help the most vulnerable in society.

IB: In Practical Equality, you utilize terms such as “fair play," “reason,” etc... in place of the word “equality” to persuade judges to see your argument for equality. Why do you think it is difficult for people to understand that “equality” and “fair play” are one in the same? Do you think that eventually judges will catch on to this as a tactic for helping them understand the importance of equality? If so, do you expect backlash or open arms?

RT: A lot of the alternative arguments I talk about in the book already share some commonalities with the traditional idea of equality. They’re also all deeply rooted ideas in our political and legal culture. But each of them has a slightly different structure and appeals to progressive and conservatives a bit differently. It’s not that these arguments lack morality, but they might emphasize a different kind of morality (for instance, fairness arguments stress procedural morality). One thing I want to point out is that although many of the historical examples in the book are in the courts, a number of my examples are out-of-court battles over equality. And my broader argument is that these arguments can be made to judges, but also to other people who have outsized influence over our lives: principals, teachers, mayors, city council members, legislators, governors. The point I try to make is that you have to build coalitions if you want to get anything done about inequality, but they don’t always have to be massive endeavors. On a three-judge panel, you have to get one judge to slide over and join a progressive judge (if there is one). On today’s very conservative U.S. Supreme Court, you need to convince Chief Justice Roberts, who is already an institutional and social conservative, to join the liberals. At the state level, you might need only convince an attorney general or governor about the righteousness of your cause and, say in the criminal context, a great deal of inequality could be ameliorated that way.

The location of the final say on many of the cases Tsai discusses in his book.

IB: When I first started your book, I wondered if pursuing these other arguments for the sake of justice would be putting aside the work of equality. Though we were still holding to its message, the idea of equality and the moral ground would be left out of the media and the judges’ responses. Many people feel as though the system of justice is not successful unless the offenders are told that they were wrong. How would respond to someone who argued that your book was not doing the moral work of equality?

RT: I try to make clear that accepting my argument about how to do practical equality doesn’t mean giving up one’s closely held moral views about who deserves equality. It doesn’t mean that we should stop arguing, for instance, that people who don’t look like us deserve to be treated like full moral beings like the rest of us. It just means that you need to recognize that conflicts will arise, and that you can’t convince everyone, or even most people, to adopt your moral view of things. I say that we should look into alternative arguments as backups, so we can reduce the suffering of vulnerable segments of society whenever we can, while we continue to have our important moral arguments.

IB: What do you see as the most common method from your book for dealing with justice?

RT: At the moment, arguments about fairness and avoiding cruelty are capable of doing tremendous work. And as I say, sometimes these arguments can help reduce existing inequities even though we aren’t talking about equality in a full-throated sense. These ideas overlap with equality and can have broad appeal even when people disagree over who deserves to be treated equally. Right now, we are going through a trying time as refugees and visitors from Hispanic and Muslim countries are being treated unequally by the Trump administration. We might not all agree in a deep sense that foreigners should be treated exactly the same as U.S. citizens, but many of us think that these populations should be treated fairly, and that abusive conditions must be avoided. The administration is dealing with different migrants and refugees differently, it has separated migrant children from parents, and even plans to speed up asylum applications and deportations. These arguments can do some good in reducing disparities in how people are treated.

To learn more about Robert L. Tsai and his research, join us Friday, March 8th at 6:00pm for a Mercer Island Democratic Association. He will discuss his book and have a Q&A session about the his research and the current state of affairs in America and the world.

-Kelleen

[interfaithconnect]

Glossary of Terms: Pagan Edition

The following are concepts and terms which I will refer to often in my posts. These terms are not necessarily used solely within paganism, and may have slightly different meanings depending on the context - however, this is the way in which I understand and use them. 

This is also by no means an exhaustive list and will be added to over time or upon request. Please send me an ask if there are any other words/phrases you’d like defined or if my definitions aren’t clear enough.

Under a cut for the sake of future edits!

Heathen - an individual who worships and is particularly devoted to the gods of the ancient Norse pantheon. Heathens may describe themselves as Ásatrúar (a follower of the Æsir, similar to the Ancient Greek concept of the Olympians) or Vanatruar (a follower of the Vanir, primarily Njörðr, Freyr and Freyja) depending on the deities they focus their worship on.

Hellenic - an individual who worships the Theoi, or gods of Ancient Greece. Because the Ancient Greek civilization existed for thousands of years and combined its people and culture at different times with those of Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and others, there are many different ways to understand and worship the gods. There are several modern Hellenic groups including Hellenion, which tend to be more strictly recontructionist in nature. Note that this is sometimes confused with, but not equivalent to, Hellenistic.

Hellenistic - refers to a specific period of Mediterranean and Indo-European history following the death of Alexander the Great. During this era, the kingdoms established as part of Alexander’s conquest (including the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt, the Seleucid Empire and Kingdom of Pergamon in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and the Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian Kingdoms in South and Central Asia) engaged in unprecedented levels of cultural exchange and migration.

Kemetic - an individual who worships the Netjeru, or gods of Ancient Egypt. There are several modern religious organizations, the best-known being the Kemetic Orthodox Temple, though most Kemetics are solitary practitioners.

pagan – an individual who considers themselves to be a part of a non-major world religion. Note that this is a personal descriptor which some may choose not to use for a variety of reasons (either because they feel it does not accurately describe their practice, or because of negative connotations sometimes attributed to the word). Some sources describe pagan as “non-Abrahamic”, however this is incorrect as Eastern religions (including Hinduism, Taoism, etc) and indigenous religions and spiritualties (such as those among First Nations and Native American groups) are not considered pagan, and referring to them as such is considered derogatory and offensive unless an individual self-identifies as such.

polytheism – the belief in, and worship of, more than one deity. Not all pagans are polytheists, and not all polytheists are pagan, though there is often overlap between the two terms. Most polytheists believe in the existence of many (or all) deities, but choose to focus their worship on one or a few with whom they feel closest or believe they share values and interests.

reconstructionism – a particular approach to paganism which attempts to bring “dead” religions (such as Norse and Ancient Greek), which were at one point or another replaced by (usually) Christianity, back to life. This approach works to adhere as closely as possible to the way these religions were practiced in antiquity. This is easier for some – for example, we know a great deal about religious belief and practice in Ancient Egypt due to their extensive written tradition, but we know relatively little about the ways in which people worshipped and the specific festivals or holidays they celebrated in places like Gaul and Poland – than for others, and in the absence of written sources we must infer almost everything we do know from archaeological evidence. Reconstructionists usually place a large emphasis on scholarship and the necessity of research, though existing sources vary hugely in accessibility and accuracy. In cases where academic (or ancient) sources are poor or non-existent it becomes almost impossible to accurately rebuild an ancient religion, and as such some polytheists believe that strict reconstruction is either prohibitively difficult and expensive (because books and articles typically aren’t free!) or simply unnecessary in a world which is far different from the one in which these religions originally existed.

revivalism – an approach similar to reconstruction, but generally with less importance placed on the need for complete accuracy. Revivalists may feel that reconstruction and worshipping as the ancients did is not relevant to our modern, mostly urbanized, technology- and electronic-filled lives, especially when so many ancient festivals revolve around agricultural abundance and other themes which most of us don’t deal with in our daily lives. Others may feel that true reconstruction is actually impossible due to incomplete historical records and the fact that many practices changed over time and in different regions (for example, Ancient Greek religion was far different in Sparta than it was in Athens, and neither one was more or less “correct” than the other).

syncretism/syncretisation – the process by which religious beliefs or deities of different pantheons become combined or equated with one another due to their proximity and sharing of similar traits. Perhaps the best known example of this is the Ancient Roman practice of equating their gods with those from other cultures and civilizations they came into contact with – such as equating the Greek Dionysos and the Etruscan Fufluns with the god Bacchus. This practice was also continued by medieval and Renaissance scholars to the point that Greek and Roman gods became virtually interchangeable, and people today often assume that the pantheons were in fact identical or that the Romans “stole” the Greek gods, which is untrue. The practice of syncretisation occurred many other times throughout history, including in Ptolemaic Egypt where Egyptian gods were combined with Greek ones (such as in the case of Zeus-Ammon) so that the new Greek rulers of Egypt could be seen worshipping local gods and thus increase their popularity among the general populace. Syncretisation also took place during the spread of Christianity, with local deities being equated with Christian saints to either help ease conversion or to allow individuals to continue worship of their ancestral gods in secret.