#advanced civilizations way before what's like accepted as the norm now

[hobbitunderthemountain]

thought it'd be fun to watch some history documentaries before bed but it's hitting me in the way of 'im terrified and FASCINATED' and it's not even like terrifying stuff

maybe its the existential dread

[monsooninn]

Berakhot 9a: 22. "The Day After."

There will never not come a day the Mashiach will not be at risk. No matter how significant the change of heart mankind makes, the length of time the earth turns without oppression on its surface, certain locations and varietals of human being will attempt to earn money and power through tyranny rather than sovereignty.

I have been disappointed we could not attempt a lengthy experiment between the two by giving up on war, weapons, and transacting with failed states, but no, not yet.

The government like all societies, organizations and businesses functions using what is called Rolling Life Cycle (RLC). This means there is a blended reality we all share and there are individual realities that begin, evolve, change, and end as the lifecycle proceeds.

We already accept there are standards and norms RLC when we look at a high school for example. A high school has students of various ages and grades. There is a general code of conduct and there are age specific norms for which the school makes adaptations and changes. Every year there are new students, graduations, and changes in grades as the population in the school shifts.

The school principal knows he has a budget to spend on graduating each student and needs to change his budget and allocate the spend on an accrued basis each time there is a change within each age group. The government uses data like these to budget, spend and allocate in the same manner for every citizen in its polity for their entire lifetimes the moment a new citizen is born.

As changes in dynamics and norms occur, periodic adjustments can and should be made, i.e. for inflation, costs of living, cost of food, power, adjustments to housing costs, etc. My point is, one must presume there will not be wars, terrorist attacks, civil rights violations, droughts, floods, volcanoes, or heat domes when planning the lifetime value of a citizen from within the budget.

Every new Day, it is the job of the King, the Queen, the governor, the Senator and the President to ensure none of these abnormal abominations interfere with the normal progression of human life during its journey. Exclusion of these things must be budgeted out somehow.

This is done through a repeated daily commitment to keep these things at bay because they too follow an RLC. That fucking war in Ukraine which should not have happened is not showing typical signs of the onset of a Third World War right in front of our eyes and we knew it was going to do this the moment the invasion of Ukraine began and we did not respond professionally to it.

When PM Zelenskyy came to America for aid he should have been told, "Sister, you came to the right place! Of course we will help you beat the Russians!" But we did not, w did other things with our time and money.

Now we need to introduce certain interventions in order to stave off a problem that is now global and considerably advanced in magnitude. Observance of the Mashiach, "brother to you I turn" would have suggested an immediate and deadly response to Vladimir Putin's aggression on Day 1. The same should have happened after I informed the FBI about Donald Trump's Horror Hotel, where October 7 was cooked up. And still we trifle with this man. He is the crux of it all. Once he is dead, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, all of the Middle East will be free. He is the reason all of this started, he is the reason it will end. We should have killed him when we had the chance but we fumbled it, but it is not too late now.

We know getting ahead of the game before it starts is the way to go. One wins a war by fighting it as hard and as fast as one can, before the cost makes it a pyrrhic victory. In other words, the Mishnah, with its guidance about the Mashiach is correct.

"May God, the Rabbi Eleazar show us great compassion as we try now to win our lives back from the forces of darkness and death:"

22. And Rabbi Eleazar told you: Every "morning" is the first morning.

The Value in Gematria is 3774, גז‎זד‎, "gasped"

The Torah includes several references to breath, including gasping and shortness of breath: 

Exodus 6:9: The Israelites are unable to hear God's message due to "shortness of spirit" or kotzer ruach, which the Medieval French Torah commentator Rashi interprets as shortness of breath. Rashi says that people who are stressed have short breath and can't take deep breaths. 

The prophet Isaiah describes God as a woman in labor, and gasping and panting as ways to manage pain. In this context, Isaiah suggests that God uses gasping and panting to manage the pain of bringing Israel out of exile. 

The final passages of Kohelet describes decay and concludes with the judgment that all is vanity, or "mere breath/vapor". 

Breath is also a theme in other parts of the Torah, including: 

Job 33:4 states that the breath of God is the Spirit of God, and that "the breath of the Almighty gives me life" 

The twice-repeated phrase "Yud Hey Vav Hey" during the Shema implies that the breath that makes no sound is God, or at least where God resides .

We are gasping because we did not start Day 1 of the Mashiach or maintain our lives as if all days were Day 1.

As the Gemara says we need to clear our minds, endure the stress we brought upon ourselves with every intention of giving birth successfully to this New Day the Mishnah brags Jews are so good at pondering and start planning now for the Day After That.

[ausp-ice]

An Edeia who played a significant role in making the world's society what it is. They engineered the start of the age of secrecy and was a key part of the establishment and maintenance of the world's supergovernment. (You can read more about Edeia lore/history here.)

Name: Order Idea: Order Gender: Irrelevant Pronouns: they/any Masterlist: α

TH Profile

Abilities Order can essentially establish order - their presence often subtly compels others to act lawfully, be on generally good behavior, and generally be more cooperative. This is more effective the more orderly the context is - if there is a lawful society with well-understood social policies and well-established laws, their aura of order becomes stronger. This effect is strongest in proximity to them but works on any individual that is part of a society Order considers themself part of, no matter how far. Particularly, the effect works on those that also consider themselves part of the society, act under its rules/laws/norms, and/or interact with the society. For those who only interact with society in brief instances, they are mildly affected during those instances.

Essentially, their ability is a feedback loop - those in their society become more orderly, and in turn it is easier to establish more order. To be clear, this does not restrict free will; this only redirects will to be expressed in a more orderly manner.

They can also focus this ability on a single individual or smaller group, though they strongly dislike doing so. When they do, they can suppress the individual's free will and make them act in a perfectly orderly manner, almost like a machine. This is tiring for them as well, more if the individual is more resistant - though the resistance only lasts until a sort of "breaking point," after which there is no resistance but Order still needs to focus on them to keep them in that state.

Personality As might be expected, Order values order above all else. That said, they do have some morals and ideals regarding the nature of that order - they generally like for others to have freedom of will and expression while acting within the confines of a fair and widely-accepted order. They find that dictatorship, suppression of free will, and cultist mentalities are in poor taste.

They are also more than a little bit of a control freak, and strongly dislike acts that disrupt peaceful order. They are highly organized and prefer punctuality, cleanliness, neatness, lawfulness, and for all things to be well-organized to all. Chaotic individuals often test their patience, and they may threaten to use their abilities on those individuals. It is very rare that they actually do, however. They often just force-teleport the individual away.

History Order Actualized in the ancient ages, sometime after larger societies began to be established. They played a role in the shadows of various societies, though often abandoned them eventually for some reason or another, perhaps disillusionment at the ideals and policies of those societies. Their abilities were weaker then, though they knew what they were capable of in a vague sense.

Over the years, they made contact with other Edeia and began organizing research into their kind. They began to understand much more about their world, their magic, Edeia, and themself. Their abilities grew more powerful as they explored both their identity and their capabilities, and soon, they began to look into ways to establish a unified society.

One day, they sought out Possibility and held it for a significant span of time to see into an infinity of possibilities. It was enough to make Order need a few decades to piece their mind back together, but they came out of it perfectly well and with detailed knowledge of countless choices and how they would affect the future. They determined the best action was to divide the magic from the mundane, separating Edeia and their magic from human society. Order called a large convergence to discuss and plan this out, and eventually the decision was made and the action executed.

Order helped organize the efforts in maintaining secrecy as well as studying Edeia and their magic. They also watched as mundane society developed and flourished with technology and other advancements while falling behind in some other ways. They met Data, who gladly helped them by collecting and analyzing all sorts of information. And then, eventually - the day came that other Edeia as well as Order called another convergence to organize the reunion of the magic and the mundane.

The process was involved and many years passed before society reached a new equilibrium. Order worked alongside various Edeia and humans to establish the supergovernment that unites all of civilization, including mundane society and the magical individuals that chose to integrate with it. Now, they continue assisting the maintenance and advancement of orderly civilization.

[goodnightallwhites]

Globalized Fetish: BNWO By Skiddely

Globalized Fetish: BNWO 

By Skiddely 

Submitted: January 18, 2020 Updated: January 18, 2020 

The story nobody waited for. Stories about the BNWO. If you dont know what that means, dont read it. Seriously. Features a ton of interracial, black supremacy, BLACKED, etc. 

Provided by Hentai Foundry.  

Chapter 0 - Introduction 2 

Chapter 1 - A whitebois life 6 

Chapter 2 - Education in the BNWO 9 

Chapter 3 - Tattoos and their meaning 13 

0 - Introduction 

Thing have changed in the past few years. With the rise of CRISPR/Cas genetic modification of the human race has become commonplace, designer babies, the eye or hair colour, the sizes, Intelligence and even skin colour. Things went normal for a while, single mothers and white couples everywhere would get their perfect aryan children, most of them girls of course. With the rise of estrogen filled products most white males had gone the way of their women, becoming more girly both physical aswell as mentally, which made them more susceptible to their wives or girlfriends wishes. Back in the day, no virile man would ever WANT a daughter, but like I said, things changed. So now there’s a whole bunch of young aryan supergirls making their way into the world, the pussy economy has changed. For every male there’s about 10 girls, each smarter and better looking than the last. Even the parents that decided to go against the grain, that decided not to pursue the aryan standard of beauty, still have beautiful daughters. Red hair, brown hair, black hair, regardless of their race, they’d be the equivalent of supermodels back in the day. 

Things were good for men during those days. Or rather they would have been good, if there were still enough real men to enjoy these pleasures. The effects of soy products really changed the physiology of white men. Further and further they devolved, slowly turning more feminine with every impossible whopper consumed. Erectile disfunction, development of breasts, shifts in voice pitch and more feminine features made them diverge more and more from the beauty standard of the strong, tall intelligent loverboy. Things looked grim for a while as less and less white couples had children, with the women desperate for sexual relief and the men unable to provide it, usually preferring to be penetrated themselves, rather than to engage in sexual intercourse themselves. Already declining birthrates plummeted even further, up to a point where the original white race was heading for extinction quickly. The solution to these would be found in unexpected places. Due to purely socio-economic reasons, the urban population of America and Africa were exempt from the privilege of gene therapy and the damning results of soy products. In the beginning it was still a controversial topic, hushed voices in yoga class talking about their limpdicked white boyfriends while rumors about virile black men with large cocks made their way around. Before too long, the bravest white girls made their way into the ghetto’s of America, trying their best to find the cock they’re really craving. These adventurous few found exactly what they were looking for, well hung black men ready to ravage any hole that was presented to them. Savage and rough gang bang sessions were common for the first few girls, each of them getting fucked by a whole gang of black thugs, confined to their cribs until they were pregnant. This kind of relentless fucking which was akin to those of rabbits quickly gave these women a new nickname. The birth of snowbunnies is still celebrated as a holiday everywhere. 

Eventually most of these pregnant white women would make their way back to civilization, bringing with them news of the incredible mind blowing sex they found in the ghetto. What started slow, quickly turned into a mass exodus of white women. All of them flocking to the darkest parts of the country, leaving their faggy whiteboys alone at home. What came to no surprise to anyone was the fact that even the ghetto’s would be unable to supply enough black dick to these eager snowbunnies, leaving most of them unsatisfied simply because it was logistically not possible TO satisfy them. A solution had to be found. 

It was clear that black cock was the answer to their problems. Black men proved to be stronger, bigger and simply better lovers, their big black cocks being the only thing that would be able to satisfy a modern white woman. But what to do when there’s simply not enough cocks going around? A thinktank was established to find a solution to these problems. With several thousand snowbunnies already pregnant with black children it was clear that the next generation of black cock was already secure, but the bunnies wouldn’t be able to wait this long. The first attempt was atleast a partial success. The sex toy adapted to the new demands of single white girls by establishing the new norm for dildos, vibrators and other toys. Big black dildos became the biggest seller in the adult industry, each of them sporting a minimum length of 9’ making them as close to the real thing as possible. Bigger versions of black dick were also quite popular, with many white women permanently ruining their holes with these large toys, stretching themselves out to the max, limiting their pleasure to only their toys and the largest of black men out there. This shift in the industry served to atleast somewhat satisfy the demands of the snowbunnies out there. It didn’t do the same for the white “men” left out there however, as those few that still retained their ability to achieve and erection would find themselves unable to pleasure even the smallest of white girls out there. These dejected individuals had to cope with the fact that they were not desirable anymore. Many of them eventually found solace in the same toys as their women. Unable to achieve an erection, they usually resorted to anal stimulation in the vain attempt of spurting out their impotent cockjuice. At this point in time, same-race-sex or SRS had become an extreme rarity, most women starting to consider it to be a weird fetish reserved for the outcasts of society. 

While this change proved to be a good start, it wouldn’t be enough for most bunnies out there. They were naturally craving the real thing, which at this point was still considered to be somewhat of a rarity. This gave the porn industry a clever idea. If they cant go out and get the real thing, just give them the real thing back home. The already dwindling genre of SRS would quickly be replaced solely by interracial sex. White women serving black kings in high definition, sucking and fucking on camera for the entire world to see. BLACKED and BLACKEDRAW became names known to every household in the country. Big muscly black men using their fat uncut cocks to breed fertile white pussy would prove to be the most important media of the time, replacing even daytime TV with a ceaseless barrage of professionally made interracial porn. In many ways this new type of entertainment shaped the people, normalizing the worship of black men, creating a new religion of black cock. New shows would air to great acclaim, showing how to best please and keep your black master, displaying how to best rim black assholes, how to maximize the chances of pregnancy and how to properly emasculate your tiny dicked white friends. 

Of course this didn’t just change the life of white women. The minority of white boys would find themselves face to face with unending propaganda displaying their inferiority, aswell as the superiority of the black man. Their minds already closer to those of real women, they quickly accepted this truth for themselves. This however created a new problem, as feminine small dicked white boys would now also be on the hunt for real black cock. A real solution had to be found. And find one they did. All across the country the think tank established new centers for population control. Colloquially only known as “breeding centers”, these places would house thousands of white women interested in getting black bred. Any black man visiting these centers would be provided with as much fertile white pussy as they wanted, aswell as financial compensation for their time. To mark a snowbunny as a member of these high sought after centers, they were provided with a complementary tattoo. A black spade with a centralized Q would mark them as a Queen of Spades, a woman who had dedicated her life to black men. 

These breeding centers proved to be highly effective. More and more white women would find themselves impregnated with a black baby and through the power of gene manipulation, they would find themselves with the highest certainty that their children would be even bigger and stronger than their black fathers. A new generation of big black cock was in the making. Each impregnated woman would receive a spade womb tattoo, signifying to their peers that she did her part. These tattoos would end up being one of the greatest cultural heritages of the times, but we’ll come to that. 

With a new generation of black Kings ready to pop out, the think tank found themselves cornered with a new problem. They would run out of snowbunnies before too long. As it turns out, black seed has such strength and potency, that it was nearly impossible, even with advanced gene therapy, to create more white babies. This was a great problem, seeing as how the few white men still around had become cock sucking sissies worshipping black cock. Once again a solution had to be found. And they did, as ugly as it was, they did find a solution. It was an ugly solution of course, but to get the bunnies, you first have to extract the snow. It was hard to find still find white boys with proper swimmers in those days. Most of them had accepted their inferiority and surrendered to black cock like their women did. Their already reduced sperm count further diminished by their limp dicks, they proved to be useless for anything other than being a cocksleeve for a black master. It took quite some time, but eventually a few whiteboys were found that could still supply the sperm needed to continue the white race. Now it was without question that no snowbunny should ever be forced to actually have sex with their small white weenies, which meant other ways of extraction had to be found. Luckily the experience gained by the breeding centers would prove to be beneficial in solving this problem. 

In these new breeding centers, the white boys were restrained similar to livestock. They were raised, fed and cleaned by their handlers, snowbunnies specifically selected for this task based on their motherly demeaner and simultaneous disdain for their own race. Initially, the whiteboys were milked for their semen by hand, their keepers using their delicate fingers to milk it from their prostate gland. Of course no white woman was ever forced to touch a tiny white dicklet, it would’ve been too insulting, even with properly insulated gloves. However this meant that the slow and methodical milking of the prostate was the only way to gain the whiteboy sperm. With time passed, each milkmaid found their own way to accelerate the process, whether its by stimulating the nipples, stimulating the penis through the urethra with a steel sounding device, or even just by stimulating his insides by inserting her entire arm into his butt, each maid got more efficient by the day. 

All in all it was still a slow process, but the continuous existence of the snowbunnies was guaranteed through the sacrifices of the milkmaids. A special tattoo was created, the spade with a single sperm in the middle signifies their dedication and sacrifice for their black masters. Of course these genuine milkmaids are quite rare nowadays. With the advent of new milking technology the profession lost its necessity for the most part. Of course modern day breeding centers are somewhat different. Restrained whiteboys are now being automatically milked without additional human help. The automatic pistoning prostate stimulator isn’t quite as delicate as a womans fingers, but it does the job and so does the extra small penis suction cup, designed to slurp up all watery semen squirted out by the restrained whiteboys. Anyways, like I said, the problems that were presented had been solved. With snowbunnies supplying an endless supply of superior black men and whiteboys supplying the snowbunnies to serve them, society has changed. 

The balance of power has changed. The time has come for a new world order. A Black New World Order. 

1 - A whitebois life 

The life of a whiteboy is dictated by their black masters and their snowbunny whores. With new laws in place, a whiteboys life has changed considerably. For one, the display of white penises without good reason is considered to be a crime. Furthermore it’s a criminal offense for a white boy to walk around without their tiny cock in chastity and their butthole plugged. The basic role of every whiteboy is to be a servant Afterall. This includes serving their owners during sex, filming it, prepping her black master and cleaning both of them up after they’re done. Lets just take a quick moment to try and immerse ourselves in the life of a whiteboy. As you wake up in the morning, your first thought will be about black cock, the same thing you thought about before going to bed and the same thing you dreamt about as you were sleeping. With your tiny clit locked in a cage, an orgasm is out of the question of course, but you still dream about it. The buttplug stretching your once tight asshole reminds you of a possible black cock as your reward for good work, so you quickly put on your uniform, the miniskirt, kneesocks and shirt that designate you as a sissy whiteboy slave. Your beta of spades tattoo is always visible of course, just as the law dictates. With that done, you make your way to their bedroom just in time, you have to make sure that he begins his day with a good morning blowjob afterall. It took quite some time, but after enough training and painful stretching of your jaw, you finally managed to properly take his whole cockhead into your mouth. Of course that’s still nothing compared to a true snowbunny slut, but it’s a start! 

As you slowly get him hard with your wet, slimy mouth, your mistress begins to wake up, rubbing her pussy to the sight of your head bobbing up and down on his cock. Of course a black king wouldn’t just be satisfied with that, both of you know. With one hand still on her slit, she quickly crawls behind him, ready to give herself an early morning tongue workout. First she plants kisses all around the rim of his asshole, one wet sloppy kiss after the other until she’s circled all round it twice, leaving smears of lipstick all over his ass. It doesn’t take long for him to get even harder with her tongue slowly starting to penetrate his asshole, past the his sphincter, deeper and deeper inside. Round and round her tongue goes, coating the inside of his asshole with her spit. Rubbing herself to her first orgasm of the day, she quickly switches positions with you, forcing your face under his ass as she begins to give his balls a tonguebath. With both his asshole, cock and balls covered in shiny spitlube, she’s ready to properly serve him. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he throws her on her back, spreading her legs apart. His fat black cock looks way too big to ever fit inside of her, but he obviously doesn’t care. As an alpha male, her pussy is his to take. And so he does. In one smooth stroke he forces his entire length and girth into her tight white slit, her eyes rolling in the back of her head as a low guttery moan escapes her throat. As he picks up his speed, you can only try to hold onto him as you slither your tongue as deep as possible into his black ass. With your lips you create an airtight seal around his dark asshole, desperately running your tongue around inside of his rectum, hoping to be a good little whiteboi to your black master. But neither of them really pay any attention to you. You might aswell not exist in their world, neither one of them wasting a single thought on you as they have the raw animalistic sex you’ll never get to experience. All you get is the taste of his ass and the sound of his fat black cock ravaging her tight white pussy. His BBC invading her insides, roughly forcing its way deep inside of her, knocking on her cervix over and over again. With each thrust she gets tighter, gripping his cock with her vaginal walls as it pulls out. 

His big dark hands move from her waist up her body, one gripping the blonde ponytail she always rocks when she goes to sleep, the other gripping tightly around her throat. With her hair as his reins he rides her, pulling her head back, arching her back., each of his thrusts creating a bulge of his fat black cock imprinted on her lithe stomach. Her air begins to run out, hypoxia further amplifying the pleasure of his cock dividing her pussy, ramming it deep inside of her over and over again, claiming her entire being as his own. A powerful orgasm rolls over her, her brain sending electricity through her body, confusing its need for air with the pleasure of his cock. Her entire body tenses, pussy clenching down even harder on his cock, forcing him to use even more force to pull back while her walls are latching onto him. Brain shattering orgasm after orgasm rolls over her until her she goes limp, her body giving out from the lack of blood entering her brain. Another few thrusts into her unconscious body do the trick and his thick nigger seed paints her entire womb, once again proving him to be the master over her body and soul. His hips buck again and again, making it hard to keep latched onto his asshole, but as a veteran sissy of spades you keep a firm hold onto his asshole with your mouth. Having done his duty, he lets go of her throat. As blood rushes back into her brain she regains consciousness, completely cockdrunk from his meaty black member. With her out of order it falls to you to clean his cum and her juices of his BBC. Reluctantly detaching your mouth from his asshole you turn your attention towards his cock again. Finally you get your real reward. You decide to indulge yourself a little and start with his fat salty nuts, still glistening with her spit. You circle both of them with your tongue, before taking each one into your mouth individually, bathing them in the warmth of your mouth and once again giving it a deep tongue cleaning. You take a deep breath through your nose, really taking in the musky smell of his cock and balls. The kind of manly smell that makes snowbunnies wet and little sissy whiteboys drool with their mouth and clitty cocks. 

With his balls properly serviced you run your tongue along the length of his shaft to get the pure taste of their combined juices. You swirls them around in your mouth, your own spit mixed with hers, his cum and her pussy juices, all of them combining to create a divine taste in your mouth any sissy would kill for. Satisfied with the taste you gulp the slimy mix down. Again you take his cock into your mouth, bobing up and down on it to make sure you get it clean as well as you possibly can. With your vacuum like mouth you cheekily suck on his urethra, getting another reward as you suck out the few remains of his semen out of his pisshole. Cleaned good and proper, he leaves for the shower, leaving the both of you behind in bed. Her pussy is now oozing cum and you have to do everything in your power to keep yourself from sucking it out of her used gaping pussy. Sure, cleaning up her creampies is your job, but they’re aiming for another black baby in the moment! You have to make sure that as much semen stays in her pussy as possible, the strongest swimmer has to make it in the end, the strongest obviously being the seed for a strong black male baby and you cant just let a little detail like him pulling out lower the chances of her being bred properly. Quickly you scoop up as much leaking semen and shove it back in her gaping hole. You take another one of those adhesive tapes designed to properly seal her pussy and seal it up completely, leaving no way for the semen to escape. You decide its best to let her sleep out her cockdrunk high. Getting back to your room to change into your slutty maid uniform. Its time for your daily chores after all. Once again you thank your black masters for letting you be a house sissy and not one of those white workslaves they keep locked away, not even getting to see a single white woman get black in their entire lives! 

The thought of such horrifying imagery spurns you on as you clean the house, prepare breakfast, stretch your anus some more so it might one day fit his cock and buy some groceries. 

2 - Education in the BNWO 

Education in the New World is of huge importance. Not only does it teach science, philosophy, music and art to the people, it also teaches them the natural order and responsibility of Black Masters, Snowbunnies and white betas. Early on in life is when the future of every person is decided. Trough the magic of gene therapy, the average IQ has seen a dramatic increase, with each generation already being more intelligent than the one before. Due to this, essentially any person alive today is much too intelligent to actually do unskilled, blue collar work, which raises the question of who exactly is going to be responsible for the work no one wants to do, but still has to be done? Well the answer is fairly simple and didn’t take the thinktank very long to answer. White betas would be required to do the heavy lifting in society. Being the shrimp dick impotent losers they are, they’re required to keep society running, while their black masters are busy breeding fertile, young, white pussy to ensure the survival of humanity. Where limpdick whitebois provide the labour, black kings provide the BBC to keep the country afloat. However there’s still more work to be done. How do you decide which whitebois scrub toilets, clean the streets and your car, which betas go into higher education to make sure snowbunny wombs stay fertile, PAWG pussy stays wet and who pays for the orphanages of white babies? And how do you decide which lucky sissy gets to live the dream life of servicing their black king and white mistress? 

All of these questions are answered in school, through the usage of the new curriculum introduced to enforce the rules of our new society. To make life easier, a caste system was introduced into every school, a system which carries over to the rest of the country. For one, we have the Black men. In school, just like in real life, each black man is a King in his own right. They make up the fewest students, but also make up the highest caste in the system. A Black King gets to essentially do whatever he wants. They’re allowed to come and go as they please, if they wanted to, they wouldn’t have to attend at all, as school is not compulsory for the upper caste. Furthermore they’re allowed to take whatever they want, whenever they want. Members of the lower castes, snowbunnies in training, teachers and at the very bottom of the caste, the beta sissies, are all subject to the BLACK caste. No white cattle is allowed to ever deny the orders of a black king unless it were to interfere with the interest of another member of the highest caste. Aside from that however, anything goes, which means its not unusual to walk into a classroom where a teaching PAWG tries to explain the anatomy and inherent superior of black cock to a class that is mostly busy pleasing their masters, two white bitches sucking black testicles, warming them up, cleaning them with their tongues, while another worships the fat anaconda infront of her face, choking herself on it until her mascara runs down her face and his cum completely coats her, truly enjoying the blessed facial of black semen painting her pale face. Usually at least one other whore, be they sissy or bunny, is busying themselves with an enthusiastic rimjob, tongue slobbering all over his black ass, tongue trying to stimulate his prostate for his amusement. 

With 4-5 black men in one class, this could mean that there’s simply no one left to pay attention to the lesson. This brings us to the next caste, which strictly speaking, cant be counted towards the student caste. The teachers in the new education system are usually the most experienced PAWGs. The ones that have 

taken more black dick than anyone, who have chosen to preach the gospel of BBC to the new generation. These beautiful snowbunnies are quite often pregnant with another black baby, or are simply recovering from another one of countless pregnancies, but already eager for another black bun in the oven. Like I mentioned before, despite being teacherbunnies, they are still subject to the whims of their superiors, which makes a live demonstration of advanced spitroasting a common occurrence in modern schools. In fact, most of the curriculum was taken over by sex education or biology, but that’s something we’ll get into a bit later. The next caste are the future snowbunnies, the snowbunnies in training. All fertile white girls fall into this category. It is the responsibility of every school and every teacher to make sure to instill the values of our new society into these impressionable young minds. All apprentice snowbunnies are taught about the inherent superior of black men and their big black cocks, their superior sperm count and impregnation rates of almost 100%, all the while contrasting these lessons with pictures of small uncaged white weenies. Any snowbunny must come to understand and revile a tiny white cock and that “white masculinity” an oxymoron in truth, was natures mistake. They will eventually come to understand that their tiny clitties aren’t real cocks, that they are simply snowbunnies stuck in the wrong body, destined to serve them and their black gods. School is also where they receive their first tattoos, a black vine without leaves around their throat, running down their arm or down their thigh. As anyone knows, this is an indicator of how many black men they have had sex with, with the receiving of their first leaf indicating their progress into adulthood. To facilitate their position above the white sissies, they are also given a certain degree of freedom in terms of clothing. White a black satin choker with a Queen of Spades pendant is mandatory for all females, they are free to choose from numerous different outfits, ranging from thongs and see-through panties to a fancy garterbelt combination. They are allowed to wear short shorts, boyshorts, miniskirts, revealing dresses and tanktops leaving their belly free to be seen. All this freedom is of course provided to ensure that they are as attractive as possible for their black superiors. 

Last, and most certainly least, are the betas of spades, the sissies, the beta whitebois. These unfortunate creatures are further separated into three castes. Like I said earlier, we have the working class that is further divided into blue and white collar work. These unlucky ones are the worst and best the academy has to offer from a scientific point of view. While the dumbest of them go into menial labor, slaving away with their only reprise being free interracial pornography and access to black dildos, the smartest go into leadership positions, they become scientists and doctors. These are slightly more lucky, being allowed the freedom to watch livestreams of real white women getting BLACKED. Truly the most unfortunate would be the blue collared slaves that have to work around snowbunnies however. Even with their chastity cages on permanently, one can not guarantee the safety of a snowbunny when she is around one of these beta males. Being weak and sissified losers, they’re hardly a threat, but the trauma of being touched by a whiteboi who isn’t their personal creampie cleaning maid? That’s something that no snowbunny should have to experience. Which is why these unfortunates have to be treated differently than the others. Before they are allowed to take up their work for the first time, they’ll be castrated by a qualified nurse or other healthcare provider, all of them being white women who simply want to make the world a better, a safer place. That leaves us with the last third of them. During their entire scholastic career, the whitebois have to take numerous exams, both written aswell as oral. That you can take quite literally, as these exams are atleast partially about how good they are at giving head, eating pussy, rimming black assholes, etc. Only those whitebois that achieve the highest grades at these exams and show the highest affinity for subservience and servitude get to become actual house servants, maids and sissies of spades. Caste wise these would rank below a snowbunny, but above the other whitebois. Truly these are the most 

lucky and usually happiest of whitebois, as they get to experience their white goddess being black bred live and they may even participate in their savage love making by prepping her black master or licking both of them clean of their juices after the act. Now that we got that out of the way, you might ask yourself just what exactly do they actually teach at these schools? 

Well like I said before, there are extensive lessons on biology, especially human sexual physiology. The first lesson any white bitches need to learn is the anatomy of their bull, since only those that understand the anatomy will be able to please them properly. During these early anatomy lessons they go in-depth on why exactly the BBC is able to please tight white pussies, it explains the superiority of the uncut veiny black penis, the intoxicating smell of their fat black nuts and the pheromones excreted, especially when a white nose is nestled deeply in his nutsack between his testicles. Of course they also go in-depth on the superior length and girth of the black monster penis which is able to stretch out any small bitch pussy while reaching all the pleasurable spots in a snowbunnies vagina. Due to these black kings being uncircumcised, they also teach them to properly clean underneath his foreskin with their tongues, an ability which any white whore needs to learn quickly to survive and please in this new world. Once they understood that the BBC is considered the gold standard, they’d of course have to learn what they could compare it to. This lessons is the most uncomfortable for any white girl, as they now have to see pictures of tiny white penises to understand their inherent inferiority. Of course the teachers use this occasion to provide live examples on these comparisons, putting up black students against white betas and comparing their length and girth. In the case of black students, the teachers prep them with their mouth, getting them wet and fully erect, spit glistening on their massive lengths. The whiteboi on the other hand only gets to receive a handjob between thumb and index finger. For this uncomfortable and quite disgusting procedure, the teacher of course resorts to using thick black latex gloves. With both of them erect, the teacher measures their lengths, elaborating on the inferiority of the small white penis and explaining why such a little shrimp would never be able to satisfy any woman. 

The following lessons on anatomy would be about Semen. During these lessons, the teachers would explain what makes black cum so superior, talking about the viscosity, consistency and sheer volume of semen produced by black men, while comparing it to the tiny watery load of impotent swimmers a white boy could still produce. Taste testing during these lessons is of course a mandatory experience for snowbunnies and betas so they better understand the delicious smell, taste and thick consistency of black cum. These lessons usually end with the teacher displaying her amazing ability of swallowing multiple loads of black seed collected on scene from her students. The last set of the early anatomy lessons are of course about black breeding. Of course it is always up to the black man to decide when and where he cums, however these lessons should instill upon these students the importance of getting their white pussies bred by black cum, especially when they’re ovulating. In depth the teacher goes on about the relationship of miss uterus and mister BBC who gets to knock Miss uterus’ cervix over and over until his semen thugs come in, bend her over and rape the fuck out of her precious tiny egg cells until miss uterus is left with a black baby. To drive this point home, these lessons are usually presented by an already heavily pregnant teacher, just so the snowbunnies know what they could look forward to (and the sissies know what they’re missing). 

With the basics of anatomy out of the way, the time comes to put theory into practice. At this point, the class gets split, with the black guys and snowbunnies getting the chance to try black breeding themselves in specially prepared breeding rooms, stocked with everything they would ever need for a 24/7 fuck sessions, while the whitebois are left in the classroom. This time is used to introduce the 

concept of chastity cages to these betas. Using specially made metal instruments, the penis length and girth, aswell as the thickness of the urethra of every bitchboi is measured. Of course the teachers are wearing protective gear during these lessons, so none of them accidentally come into contact with one of these whitebois filthy shrimpdicks. With the measurements completed, the cages are prepared individually for each whiteboys. These are usually the same cages they wear till the day they die. Due to the integrated urethral plugs, these cages are impossible to be removed, unless the person has the proper key. Once each whiteboi is equipped with the proper cage, they are then forced to begin their grueling anal training, each of them having to start stretching their buttholes with progressively sized buttplugs. This training would continue for their entire school time. 

These would be the most important lessons for the students. Of course there are other topics to be talked about, for example the existence of melanin receptors in a snowbunnies vagina, created using gene therapy as a means to keep even the most deviant of women from debasing herself enough to actually think about having sex with a whiteboi. Or tattoo class, where the significance of each different tattoo is elaborated upon. 

But these are topics for another time. 

3 - Tattoos and their meaning 

Back in the day, when interracial relationships were, for the most part, just deep dark fantasies lodged in the heads of every white girl out there. Only few of them ever got to experience the undeniable, raw sexual power of a big black cock, with most white girls being oppressed by their white fathers, brothers and husbands, all of them desperately trying to keep them from finding out the truth. 

BBC is just better. 

But like I said, every story has its heroes. Brave women that stood up against the dictatorship of limp dicked whitebois, unable to please any snowbunny with their inferior shrimpdicks. Naturally these fighters for sexual freedom would find themselves being bred by superior black men. Having experienced the mind blowing, gut rearranging, orgasmic power of black dick, these women would dedicate themselves wholy to the cause of teaching the world the pleasures of nigger cocks. To ensure that black kings could recognize these women with one glance, they created a symbol that acted as an identification for their lovers and a shield from whitebois. The black spade with a centered Q became a symbol of their resistance. In the form of a tattoo they were applied to an easily viewable area, such as the neck, ankle, collar bone or in the most daring and rebellious of them, the face. Some of these newly dubbed “Queens of Spades” opted instead for temporary tattoos, for the times where they were on the prowl for another BBC to suck of black asshole rim. At any other time they could simply remove these tattoos, blending into the white society, ready to stealthily convert many more women and girls to the amazing cause of black superiority. These brave young women paved the way for the tattoo code enacted and elaborated on in the last decade. 

Taking inspiration from these women, our great thinktank invented the standardized tattoo code we all know today. First was of course the classic “Queen of Spades” design which has hardly seen any change in its design in the last few years. This classic is usually the second tattoo a white girl receives, only predated by the black vines, and denotes their coming of age, completely leaving behind any shred of a life not dedicate do servicing black cock. A different variation of this classic is applied to sissy whitebois who have dedicated themselves to pleasuring their black masters. The “sissy” or “beta of spades” tattoo is a declaration of their surrender before superior BBC. But lets get back to the start, not historically speaking, but rather the start of any white girls career as a black cocksleeve. The first tattoo they receive is of course the classic black vine without leaves. This tattoo is usually applied to the upper arm, thigh, throat, over their chest, around their breast or navel, anywhere really. Truly a versatile mark. In the beginning the vine is completely bare, that is until a woman gets penetrated by BBC for the first time. For each black cock taken, anally or vaginally, another leave on the vine is added. Its important to note here, that each leaf means a different partner. Multiple relations with the same partner does not add more leaves to the vine. This of course encourages the spirit of competition, each girl fighting the other to be THE superior snowbunny. Of course for most white women this sort of competitive spirit is dampened when they find the right partner, or partners, however there are plenty women out there adding new leaves each day. In some cases this leads to tattoos so elaborate, that the white skin underneath can hardly be seen anymore, covered by all the fat black cock she has taken in her life. 

Moving on. You probably already wondered what exactly a snowbunny is. Well some people consider it just another word for your average white woman, drunk on black cock, mother to several black children and pregnant with another one. But you’d be mistaken. A snowbunny used to be something a bit more special. What sets a snowbunny apart from any other white woman is their sexual appetite and ferocity. Where a regular woman would be content to be ravaged once or twice a day, a snowbunny needs more. These nymphomaniacs are completely addicted to nigger cock, craving it every second of the day. Their minds are completely focused on getting black bred, constantly thinking of the next gang of black thugs that can rearrange her guts with their massive slabs of dark meat. Essentially, these are the elite version of the average white woman. Or at least they used to be. Nowadays with gene therapy and artificially inflated sexual hunger, its rarer to find a woman that doesn’t qualify to be a real snowbunny. Back in the day the snowbunny tattoo, the regular black spade with a cute bunny in the middle, used to be a sign of respect. Or at least a great lay for black kings. Nowadays most women qualify for this tattoo and quite a few of them do get it, even if it doesn’t have the same societal influence as it once had. 

Now black ownership comes in many different forms. In a sense, all white women in modern society are black owned as designated by the law, but also of their own volition. Because which white bitch could ever resist the temptation of 20 inches of dark chocolate? Semantics aside, black ownership is a definetly a thing as you know. What used to be called “marriage” back in the day is now black ownership. And what better way to celebrate than the beautiful gift of a new black tattoo on pale white skin? Black ownership tattoos come in many different shapes and sizes, they might just be the most versatile of all government mandated tattoos. Some people prefer the clinical nature of the Barcode and spade combination, allowing any law enforcement to instantly trace a snowbunny back to her owner. A little less subtle would be the various forms of writing, varying from block lettered “BLACK MALE PROPERTY” to what essentially amounts to hand drawn scribbles indicating that they are “BLACK OWNED”. 

Another classic would be the queen of spades womb tattoo. They come in all shapes and sizes, some making its way across the whole abdomen, one more intricate in its design than the other, others are small, simple and could be mistaken for a landing strip of pubic hair if one doesn’t take a closer look. Of course you know what these mean. All women that have birthed atleast one black baby are entitled to a womb tattoo, proving their loyalty and dedication to continuing the black race. Another variant of this tattoo is the snowbunny womb tattoo. This one indicates that the woman in possession has graced the world with one or more white daughters, continuing the inevitable cycle of black gods ravaging fertile white pussy. 

As you know, there’s plenty more tattoo designs out there, both official aswell as unofficial. Take the “multiple black masculinity symbols penetrating a single white femininity symbol” tattoo. I know it’s a bit of a mouthful, but as far as I know these don’t actually have an official name. They’re proof of a womans dedication to pleasing multiple black kings at the same time. Two symbols indicating a threesome, three a foursome and so on. Frequent participants in gang bangs tend to have tattoos completely surrounding their fragile femininity with throbbing black arrows. The I <3 blackboys usually go out to snowmilfs or teachers that prefer younger black men, while the “Say No to White Boys” tattoos are basically just fashion statements at this point. Sure they might’ve been relevant at some point in time, back when people actually still debased themselves to letting shrimpdicked beta cucks flop around ontop of them, but thankfully these times are long gone. 

I’m sure there are a few I forgot, but I do believe these should be the origin and meaning of the most important ones. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

If there’s one enduring theme about tyrants in myth, literature, and history it is that, for a long time, no one takes them seriously. And there are few better examples of this than Shakespeare’s fictional Richard III. He’s a preposterous figure in many ways, an unsightly hunchback, far down the line of royal accession, socially outcast, riven with resentment, utterly dismissible — until he serially dismisses and/or murders everyone between him and the throne. What makes the play so riveting and often darkly funny is the sheer unlikelihood of the plot, the previously inconceivable ascent to the Crown of this indelibly absurd figure, as Stephen Greenblatt recently explored in his brilliant monograph, Tyrant.

I’ll never forget watching a performance by Antony Sher of Richard decades ago — playing him as a spider, instinctually scuttling on two legs and two black canes, to trap, murder, and ingest his foes. The role is, of course, a fictional portrait, designed to buttress the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty that followed Richard III and that Shakespeare lived under. But as an analysis of the psychology of tyranny, it’s genius. Like Plato and Aristotle, Shakespeare saw this question not merely as political, but as wrapped up in the darker folds of the human soul, individual and collective.

The background of the drama is England’s “War of the Roses”, the civil war between two regional dynasties from which Richard emerged. And that’s often key in tyrant narratives: it’s when societies are already fractured into tribes, and divisions have become insurmountable, that tyrants tend to emerge, exploiting and fomenting chaos, to reign, however briefly, over the aftermath.

The war seems resolved when the victorious Edward, Richard’s older brother, succeeds to the throne: “For here I hope begins our lasting joy!” And no one thinks the deformed, bitter sibling, of all people, would be a threat. It seems preposterous. But it’s true. And at each unimaginable power grab by Richard — murdering one brother, killing the late king Edward’s young heirs, killing his own wife, and then trying to marry his niece to secure the dynasty — Richard’s peers keep telling themselves that it isn’t really happening. Greenblatt notes: “The principal weapon Richard has is the very absurdity of his ambition. No one in his right mind would suspect that he seriously aspires to the throne.”

But he has one key skill, Greenblatt notes, the ability to lie shamelessly: “‘Why, I can smile and murder whiles I smile, And cry ‘Content!’ to that which grieves my heart, And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, And frame my face to all occasions.’” It’s a skill that serves him well — and there seems no limit to the number of those eager to believe him. His older brother George, Duke of Clarence, told by thugs that Richard wants him dead, exclaims: “Oh no, he loves me, and he holds me dear. Go you to him from me.” At which point the hired goons reply — “Ay, so we will” — and merrily murder him, taking him to Richard as a corpse. (In a good production, that can get a laugh.) One of Clarence’s young sons, told that his own uncle hates him, declares, “I cannot think it.” Others witness obvious depravity but can’t quite call it out. One official receives clearly illegal orders from Richard, and follows them, asking no questions: “I will not reason what is meant hereby, Because I will be guiltless from the meaning.”

Denial. Avoidance. Distraction. Willful ignorance. These are all essential to enabling a tyrant’s rise. And keeping this pattern going is Richard’s profound grasp of the power of shock. He does and says the unexpected and unthinkable in order to stun his opponents into a kind of dazed passivity. It’s this capacity to keep you on your heels, to keep disorienting you with the unacceptable (which is then somehow accepted), that marks a tyrant’s relentless drive. He does this by instinct. He craves chaos, lies, suspense, surprises — not because he’s a genius, but because stability threatens his psyche. He cannot rest. He is not in control of himself. And whenever the dust settles, as it were, he has to disturb it again.

This is what we’ve been dealing with in the figure of Donald Trump now for five years, and it is absurd to believe that a duly conducted election is going to end it. I know, I know. I’m hysterical and over-the-top and a victim of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump is simply too incompetent and too lazy to be an actual tyrant, I’m constantly scolded. He’s just baiting me again. And so on. But what I think this otherwise salient critique misses is that tyranny is not, in its essence, about the authoritarian and administrative skills required to run a country effectively for a long time. Tyrants, after all, are often terrible at this. It is rather about a mindset, as the ancient philosophers understood, with obvious political consequences. It’s a pathology. It requires no expertise in anything other than itself.

You need competence if you want to run an effective government, or plan a regular campaign, or master policy with a view to persuading people, or hold power for the sake of something else. You need competence to create and sustain something. But you do not need much competence to destroy things. You just need the will. And this is what tyrants do: they destroy things. Richard III ruled for two short years, ending in his own death in battle, and a ruined country.

This is Trump’s threat. Not the construction of a viable one-party state, but the destruction of practices, norms, civility, laws, customs and procedures that constitute liberal democracy’s non-zero-sum genius. He doesn’t need to be competent to destroy our system of government. He merely needs to be himself: an out-of-control, trust-free, malignant narcissist, with inexhaustible resources of psychic compulsion, in a pluralist system designed for the opposite. All you need is an insatiable pathological drive to avoid any constraint on your own behavior, and the demagogic genius to carry a critical mass of people with you, and our system, designed as the antidote to tyranny, is soon unspooling into incoherence, deadlock, and collapse.

I’m told he’s been ineffective even as a tyrant, so no worries. To which I can only say: really? Once you realize he doesn’t give a shit about any actual policies, apart from doing all he can to wipe the legacy of Barack Obama from planet earth, he’s been pretty competent. Note how he turned Congressional subpoenas into toilet paper; how he crippled and muzzled the Mueller inquiry; how he installed a crony at the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies and shield him from the law; how effectively he stymied impeachment; how he cucked every previous Republican opponent; how he helped destroy the credibility of news sources that oppose him; how he filled his cabinet with acting secretaries and flunkies; how he declared fake emergencies to claim the power of the purse assigned to the Congress; and how he has reshaped the Supreme Court with potentially three new Justices, whom he sees solely as his loyal stooges if he comes up against the rule of law.

And gotten away with all of it!

In protecting his own power over others, he has been as competent as hell. Imagine where we’d be in four more years. Despite a mountain of criticism, he has not conceded a single error, withdrawn a single statement, or acknowledged a single lie. His party lost the mid-terms, but seriously, what difference did that make? His control of the Republican party, and his cult-like grip on the base, has never been greater than now. Yes, he has said and done racially polarizing things — but the joke is he may yet have more support from blacks and Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016. Think of his greatest policy failures: the appalling loss of life in the Covid epidemic and the collapse of law and order in the cities. Now recall that on February 1 of this year, Trump was at 43.4 percent approval; 200,000 deaths later, and the wreckage from Seattle to Portland to Minneapolis, and his approval today is at 43.1 percent.

This is, of course, not enough to win re-election. And Trump has no interest in broadening his appeal, because it would dilute the tribalism he feeds off. So he has made it abundantly clear that if the results of the election show him the loser, he will not accept them. Simple, really. He said this in 2016, of course, refusing to honor the result in advance. But this year, he has stumbled upon something quite marvelous for his purposes. Because of Covid19, it is likely that mail-in ballots will be far higher in number than before, and, as Barton Gellman has shown in this essential new piece, this gives Trump an opportunity he has instinctively seized. He has been saying for months now that: “MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE … WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR GREAT NATION.” In late summer, Gellman noted, Trump was making this argument four times a day: “Very dangerous for our country.” “A catastrophe.” “The greatest rigged election in history.” He is telling us loud and clear that, if he has anything to do with it, this election will not be decided at the ballot box, but at the Supreme Court, which he expects to control.

If you haven’t, read Gellman’s piece closely. It seems inevitable to me that, unless it’s a Biden landslide, Trump will declare himself the winner on election night, regardless of the actual results. Because most mail-in ballots will take more time to count, and several swing states have not changed their laws to allow for counting before election day, and mail-ins are easily challenged, it is quite likely that much of Biden’s vote will remain uncounted or contested — and could remain so for a long time. And after declaring victory within hours of polls closing, Trump will follow the script he used for Florida in 2018: “The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” he tweeted, making shit up as usual. “An honest vote count is no longer possible — ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”

I’ve no doubt this bullshit will be challenged by the networks, the press, and many of the states, and other sane people, who will urge patience. I’ve also no doubt that many states will do their best not to pervert the process. But I fear the result will be close (I’m underwhelmed by Biden’s near-invisible campaign), which will give Trump a chance. The fanaticism and alternate reality of a base already addicted to conspiracy theories means a hefty chunk of the country will back him. And it’s perfectly possible that Trump’s pre-emptive strike on the election result could prompt a massive revolt across the country from those who want to defend our democracy. (I will be marching in such a scenario myself). Most presidents would balk at anything close to this kind of scenario. Trump can’t wait. Violence? You can almost feel Trump’s hankering for it.

All he wants is chaos, because in chaos, the strong leader wins. Would he incite violence on his behalf if the votes seem to be drifting away from him? You bet he would. Would he urge his supporters to physically prevent ballot-counting? He already has. Would he try to corral Republican state legislators to back him in electing electors? Gellman has sources. Would he take this country to the brink of civil conflict? Way past it. Will anyone in the GOP do anything to stop him? We know the answer to that already. If they cannot condemn him this week, when would they? And he will do all this not out of some strategic calculation or tactical skill but because he cannot do anything else. He is psychologically incapable of conceding anything. And he has no understanding of collateral damage because his narcissism precludes it.

In every Shakespeare play about tyranny — from Richard III to Coriolanus to Macbeth — the tyrant loses in the end, and often quite quickly. They’re not that competent at governing, or even interested in it. The forces they unleash come back to wipe them from the stage, sooner or later. They flame out. Richard III lasted a mere couple of years on the throne.

But in every case, they leave a wrecked and reeling society in their wake. Look around you now and see the damage already done. Now imagine what we face in the next few months. We are tethered to Trump at this point because he is the legitimate president: the man who cannot control himself is in control of all the rest of us. And that’s why I desperately want to appeal to right-of-center readers at this point in the campaign to do everything they can to vote and to vote for Biden. This is not about left or right. This is about the integrity of a system that can give us such a choice. It really is an existential moment for liberal democracy, and its future, not just here but across the world. The next few months are critical.

It fills me with inexpressible rage that we have been brought to this. But there is no way out now other than through. This was always going to be the moment of maximal danger. And we cannot lose our focus now.

[brownstonearmy]

2020-05-01: “Legal” Litter Liberation

July 24 (Friday morning)

On Thursday evening, our team of heroes goes to bed in their respective houses. But the next morning sees each party member wake up in an unfamiliar location. Everyone is in a separate guest room filled with fancy furnishings. Though there are silk curtains on the walls, there are no windows.

Each room is furnished identically, with a comfortable canopy bed, a wardrobe filled with fine unisex robes in a variety of sizes, a dresser containing toiletries, a desk with chair, and an exquisitely crafted chamber pot underneath the bed. No one has any possessions except for what they slept in or kept under their pillow.

Lucky wakes up wearing one of Hilaria's shirts, with no spell focus or material components to speak of. Q, going by Fuego this morning, wears a sheer tunic atop some less-sheer underclothes, suspecting an excess of drink as the reason for waking up in a strange bed for the umpteenth time. Spleenifer's been sleeping in a burlap robe, and managed to show up with her holy symbol and holy book of tithes that she keeps under her pillow for reasons that are known only to her and Lathander. No one discusses what Norm was or wasn't wearing; it's probably for the best. Everyone loots their respective chambers to find something to wear, while Spleenifer goes one chamber looting further and inspects the chamber pot for potential tithes. Sadly, the chamber pots are all spotless.

The scent of breakfast cooking wafts through the air as the party emerges from their quarters. Everyone ambles down the tower steps until they find a woman waiting for them at the tower's base. The human woman introduces herself as Storm Elers, seneschal for the master's manor. Master Yula is quite eccentric, she explains, and indicates that he will soon join them at breakfast to discuss some business matters of great personal urgency. They walk through the house to the dining room, passing a library that contains still-beating hearts adorning the walls, a teleportation circle etched into the floor of another room, and a room whose floor is covered in a dozen fist-sized stone balls (one of which is moving erratically of its own volition).

Everyone takes a seat at the long table and attempts to make sense of the bewildering array of silverware in front of them. A breakfast feast (no, "breakfeast" is the one portmanteau we don't use in this house) of all types of cuisine is soon delivered to the table. Master Yula appears at the end of the table with wild, unblinking eyes. His disconcerting gaze watches everyone with great interest as they try to figure out which of the 30 forks to use for their meals. Much to Yula's chagrin, only Spleenifer grabs the wrong utensil. But Spleenifer is a woman of utility who nevertheless makes things work (even if it is with the squid de-veining spoon).

As everyone begins eating, Yula explains the situation. He has need of adventurers with a particular skill set that overlaps with sanitation. He asks them if they would assist him in building a litter box. The party is understandably wary of this offer, as litterbox construction does not usually require teleportation and a mission briefing. As a show of "good will" he offers the party an advance payment of 100 gold pieces to each character. The coins are contained in four velvet pouches that feel warm to the touch. Something stinks to Spleenifer, but it's not the coins.

Inside the bag are 100GP as promised, but also a large brass coin that Yula describes as a Coin of Obligation. Yula's hard-sell has just resulted in the characters accidentally accepting an infernal contract. But now that the contract has been sealed, Yula gleefully explains what must be done. The party is now bound by an agreement where they are independent contractors to Yula, and the only way to fulfill the contract is to construct a more impressive and expensive litterbox that Yula currently has. Of course, Yula is full of suggestions on how to accomplish this contract.

The most legal and time-consuming way to accomplish the task is to toil in the mines with the slaves in hopes of finding enough sand, gold, and gems to construct the litterbox. But in the name of good fun, Yula suggests a more "straightforward" method: rob the vault where Yula keeps many of his rare magic items and prevent the bank staff from reacquiring the items. The terms of Yula's banking agreement stipulate that he must be reimbursed in gold for the value of the items he lost. Yula gets to keep his magic items and more than enough gold for a new litterbox. It's a winning proposition all around (for everyone except the party members). Another option is just to walk out the front door of the mansion and suffocate in the void that surrounds Yula's mansion in this demiplane.

Spleenifer is tired of this fiendish presentation and brandishes her holy symbol in an attempt to make him flee. Yula dismissives Spleenifer's attempt and proceeds to monologue about infernal superiority, how squishy mortal bodies are, and related demeaning phrases. You know, standard fiendish monologue stuff. Spleenifer doesn't admit defeat, but she does sit back down at the table to plot about how to get out of this unfortunate contract.

During Yula's lengthy speech, Lucky and Norm start stealing silverware from the table. There's like, at least 50GP worth of cutlery at each place; no one's gonna miss a few dozen forks and knives, right? Norm mostly goes for the stabby utensils, but Lucky opts for a quantity-driven approach. She elevates the petty theft to an art form, turning Hilaria's shirt into a giant cutlery purse. Fuego gets in on the action, too, and starts stuffing their cutlery into the bedazzled robe they had chosen to wear to breakfast. Who knew sequins could be so loud?

Yula finishes his speech and escorts the party to view the corpse of his former litterbox. The litterbox itself is a 30-foot square with sides that are encrusted with gold and gems. It's like an ostentatious Japanese rock garden you can poop in. Unfortunately, part of the litterbox got chipped by a trowel during a routine cleaning. You can't even see the chip, but any imperfection means the litterbox is ruined and needs to be replaced. The current litterbox is probably valued at 8,000GP, but a suitable replacement would need to cost at least 30,000GP. Yula excuses himself and allows the party to explore his house until everyone makes a decision as which course of action they will take regarding their contracts.

After Yula leaves, the party is left with more questions than answers. How are they supposed to get materials? Can Yula be killed? Is he just a really big cat? If Anaxilas autographs the box, how much will the autograph artificially increase the value of the litterbox? Can they feasibly teleport back home and coerce Anaxilas to do the autograph? Time to explore the house and get some answers!

Talking to Storm is probably a good first step, but Lucky wants to gather some spell components just in case someone needs a good dose of magicking. She makes a detour through the kitchen to grab some honey. Gum arabic comes from a makeup kit in the dresser of her guest chamber in the tower, and an eyelash is provided by Fuego. With the material components secured, the party finds storm in her office drinking some stolen wine straight from the bottle.

"How was your visit with Yula today? We hope it was as magnificent as you had expected," she says unenthusiastically. Fuego realizes that Storm is just reflexively reciting a script to avoid a shock from her Coin of Obligation. Storm's been here for the past few years and has spent so much time drinking that she doesn't really remember what her original agreement was, but she knows that if she ever acts against her agreement she risks a potentially deadly shock. Storm's memory of the vault is less hazy, though. She mentions that the vault has to have two keys to open, one that belongs to Yula, and another that belongs to the bank president. There's a room that requires following a certain line on the floor to avoid setting off an alarm. The vault they will probably need to rob is Vault 4, and the whole bank is patrolled by guards. Some of the guards are living, but others are nimble clockwork contraptions.

With the information gathered from Storm, Lucky gets an idea. She discusses with the party the mundane equipment that they will need if they are to pull off this heist. Lucky writes this down in a list, and borrows Fuego's coin pouch, splits the seam and stashes her Coin of Obligation in the lining before dashing off to find Yula. She tries to corner Yula into unintentionally making another agreement, this time to nullify their existing agreement. Yula condescendingly concedes that Lucky's approach has merit and nullifies her Coin of Obligation.

Yula makes a big show about it, by summoning the entire household staff and making an announcement that Lucky's contract is hereby nullified. But the rest of the party is still bound by the original agreement. To add insult to injury, Yula amends the agreement by announcing that he is formally prohibiting the future instances of nullification with Lucky's method. That girl's got moxie, which is why she alone could wiggle out of the contract. But even though she's technically free, Yula is under no obligation to provide her with the means to go home, and thus it looks like everyone's best shot at freedom is still the bank heist.

Fuego performs some additional reconnaissance in Yula's litterbox room. What does Yula's poop look like? Presumably it looks like regular humanoid poop, but Fuego leaves a retaliatory present of their own in the litterbox. Fuego makes sure to cover it up, though, because they are a civilized rage-pooper.

Spleenifer comes in a few moments later to collect a tithe of opportunity, but she is not alone in the room this time. As Yula's infernal leavings sizzle in the pages of the holy book, a gnome named Bostvick Humplebumple is taking measurements of the quality of the sand. He's been "hired" in the same way the rest of the party is, though his task is finding sources of gypsum and volcanic sand to fill the litterbox. He also mentions that Yula seems to be having problems with his knees when using the litterbox, and if the party ever comes across a suitably ostentatious chair to help Yula conduct his box business, he might be more inclined to be more generous with his rewards. Bostvick knows where a good source of volcanic sand is, but you have to teleport to get there. He'd be happy to assist in getting there, especially if it helps him get released. Before he leaves, Bostvick warns Spleenifer that it's a risky proposition to come straight back to the mansion after the heist, because it could end badly for everyone involved if the bank people come looking here.

After the meeting with Bostvick, the party does some more reconnaissance with the staff to find out as much as they can about the structure of the bank building. They also come up with a secret backup plan, but we'll have to wait until later to find out what the plan is. Lucky informs Yula that they will attempt to ship themselves to the vault in a big box, and that they are nearly ready to go.

Once the box is prepared, the party seals themselves inside and awaits delivery to the vault. During the journey, Lucky does some fancy magic and casts Seeming to disguise Fuego as Yula, Spleenifer as Storm the seneschal, while Lucky and Norm will take on the disguise of two random servants. It's a bumpy journey down, but the party comes to a stop sometime later nestled in the vast vaults in the belly of the Goldleaf Wealth Services bank. There's a pile of 4,000 platinum coins on one side of the vault, and a trunk containing a meticulously cataloged collection of powerful items.

The adventure concludes for the evening as the party gazes upon the wealth of new tools they'll have at their disposal for the heist that's about to unfold. Stay tuned next time for more!

[bluewatsons]

Andrew Golub, et al., Beyond America's War on Drugs: Developing Public Policy to Navigate the Prevailing Pharmacological Revolution, 2 AIMS Pub Health 142 (2015)

Abstract

This paper places America's “war on drugs” in perspective in order to develop a new metaphor for control of drug misuse. A brief and focused history of America's experience with substance use and substance use policy over the past several hundred years provides background and a framework to compare the current Pharmacological Revolution with America's Nineteenth Century Industrial Revolution. The paper concludes with cautions about growing challenges and provides suggestions for navigating this revolution and reducing its negative impact on individuals and society.

1. Introduction

The “War on Drugs” is not an actual war. It is a metaphor. Metaphors can greatly help in understanding the nature of a problem and its likely resolution. Metaphors allow one to understand a complex problem in terms of a simpler one. The drugs-war metaphor says that the complex drug problem facing the nation can be understood as similar to an invasion by a foreign army like the British in 1812, the Japanese in 1941, and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Once we accept the metaphor as valid, then we continue the metaphor by saying that the solution for the analogy is also the solution for our target problem. Thus, fighting the invader—drugs, drug dealers and drug users—provides a way to resolve the drug problem.

However, metaphors can be a dual-edged sword. Slavish obedience to a metaphor risks accepting an oversimplification of the problem which can place undue hope on a naive solution. We contend the drugs-war metaphor fails on many levels. On one level, we have trouble identifying the enemy. The drugs we worry about today, such as cocaine and heroin, were once accepted by medical practitioners as miracle drugs. Some of the drugs that are popular today, such as OxyContin and Vicodin, are providing great medical benefit to many but also leading to abuse for others. Will these be tomorrow's demon drugs? This paper examines America's extended War on Drugs as well as the larger challenge of drugs and their associated problems. We first trace the history of America's relationship to psychoactive drugs before offering a theory of subcultural evolution and drug use. We conclude by suggesting that America is undergoing a Pharmacological Revolution that in many respects is similar to the Industrial Revolution. This new metaphor allows us to illustrate a potentially more effective approach to developing US drug policy based on a socio-cultural perspective. This paper limits its focus to the US and does not address the varied and inter-connected aspects of a global war on drugs.

2. A brief history of America's drug policy and the war on drugs

America's complex history of drugs and drug policy has been heavily affected by technological advances, population movements, urbanization, and the restructuring of social and economic life. A central issue has been a massive decline in informal social control and an attendant rise in the role of the State with its formal mechanisms of socio-economic regulation. This paper starts with a description of the massive cultural changes during the Industrial Revolution. This serves multiple purposes: first, it lays out the historical context of our ongoing development of drug use and drug policy; second, it presents examples revealing how substance use is intimately tied to a social context that can undergo change when the context changes; and third, it provides insight into the massive cultural changes that took place during the Industrial Revolution which illustrates the magnitude of changes that could result from the current Pharmacological Revolution. We then describe other cultural and substance use changes occurring in the Progressive Era, around the time of World War II, around the Vietnam War and as part of the current Pharmacological Revolution in the Twenty-First Century. Table 1 summarizes the various historical periods and the drugs involved. After the historical review, the paper provides our recommendations for drug policy development based on viewing all of the current drug problems and possibilities. (not just use of those that are illegal) as based in a Pharmacological Revolution rather than a War on Drugs.

Table 1. Key periods in the history of America's experience of drug use.

3. A Drug Eras Perspective

We organize our historical review as a series of drug eras. This framework provides a basis for studying drug use and drug policy within context and helps illustrate how the interplay between drug use and policy are heavily context dependant. Much research has documented that the popularity of different illegal drugs rose rapidly and then fell in the late Twentieth Century, constituting what appear to be distinct eras [1]–[6]. The lead author has examined various drug eras including the Heroin Injection Era of the 1960s and early 1970s [7], the Crack Cocaine Era of the mid-1980s to early 1990s [8] and the Marijuana/Blunts Era starting in the 1990s [9].

Drug eras in the late Twentieth Century tended to include four distinct phases: incubation, expansion, plateau, and decline [10],[11]. A drug era typically starts among a highly limited subpopulation participating in a specific social context constituting an incubation phase. For instance, the Heroin Injection Era grew out of the jazz music scene [12],[13]. The Crack Era started with inner-city drug dealers at after hours clubs [5]. The Marijuana/Blunts Era was based in the hip-hop movement [14].

During the expansion phase, the pioneering drug users or medical advocates successfully introduce the practice to the broader population. In a very broad review of the literature, Everett Rogers [15] identified that when ideas spread they tend to spread with increasing rapidity, whether it involves a new consumer product, fashion, teaching method, or agricultural technique. Mathematically, many aspects of these “diffusion of innovation” processes are analogous to disease epidemics. The primary difference between social diffusions and disease epidemics is what is being spread—an idea or behavior as opposed to a bacteria or virus. People have agency regarding whether they adopt a behavior, such as use of a new drug, and many people choose not to. Regarding drugs, individual susceptibility to use varies greatly according to social networks, social and economic status, societal and structural constraints, and personal identity. It is the rapid growth in popularity during the expansion phase that shocks law enforcement, the media and other social institutions leading them to use and abuse the term “drug epidemic” to arouse concern and serve political agendas [16]–[18]. In this paper, we use the less emotionally charged phrase “drug era” to emphasize the cultural aspects of the phenomenon.

Drug eras eventually reach a plateau phase when everyone most at risk of the new drug practice either has initiated use or at least had the opportunity to do so. For a time, widespread use prevails. Eventually, the use of a drug may go out of favor. This leads to a gradual decline phase of a drug era. This shift can be precipitated by emergence of drug-related problems, the availability of a more desirable or fashionable drug, a policy intervention aimed to curtail use, a general cultural shift or a combination of these factors. During this phase, new conduct norms emerge that hold that use of a drug is bad or old-fashioned. The subsequent new norms and policies then compete with the prevailing pro-use norms. During the decline phase, a decreasing proportion of youths coming of age become users. However, the overall use of the drug generally endures for many years as some users continue their habits. We now use this framework to examine earlier drug eras. What differentiates many of these earlier eras from those of the late 20th century is that usage of the drugs of concern involved medical and social reasons as opposed to counter-cultural activity.

4. Early Industrial Revolution––alcohol and coffee––a focus on productivity

America's war against the consumption of mind-altering substances. (including alcohol) can be traced to Seventeenth Century England and its experience with early industrialization [19],[20]. During the Industrial Revolution, cities grew in both size and importance. Concomitantly, there was a decline in the importance of the extended family as a social and an economic unit. As a result, there was a decline in the informal social controls grounded in family, community, and church [21],[22]. Urban life was increasingly being viewed as disorderly. Government increasingly stepped in to fill the void with laws and mechanisms of enforcement.

During this period, major changes in social and economic structure required changes in substance use norms and practices. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the British consumed alcohol widely and throughout the day. During Britain's Industrial Revolution, alcohol use came to be replaced by coffee which was more consistent with social expectations for being alert, punctual, rational and productive. An anonymous observer in 1674 clearly noted this shift as it occurred [19]:

Coffee-drinking hath caused a greater sobriety among the nations; for whereas formerly apprentices and clerks with others, used to take their mornings' drought in ale, beer or wine, which by the dizziness they cause in the brain, make many unfit for business, they use now to play the good-fellows in this wakeful and civil drink.

Industrialization and the growth of cities brought about significant changes in the organization of social and economic life. Family-based economies and communities that had been self-sufficient eroded as the young experienced a push away from an agrarian lifestyle and toward factory work. Unlike the rural family-based farm economy, at least in the eyes of supervisors, factory work required head work, discipline, and punctuality––all of which could be best achieved through sobriety. Caffeine as delivered in coffee was considered the antithesis of alcohol and beer; its stimulant effects produced good workers, the fuel of industrial capitalism. In this regard, coffee promoted hard work while beer was thought to produce lazy workers and slow the pace of economic growth. Coffee went hand in hand with the new rhythms of industrial work. Indeed, Brian Cowen [23] contended, “Coffee was the Protestant ethic in liquid form.”

New industry-driven labor requirements and expectations of acceptable behavior soon transferred over to the British colonies. As early as 1633, Massachusetts Bay Company Governor John Winthrop discontinued the practice of “drinking healths”. (a toast to one's health) in the colony and stipulated that a Governor's permit was necessary to sell liquor [24]. A century later, Benjamin Rush, who penned his name to the Declaration of Independence, published his now famous An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind. This work heralded the emergence of the early temperance movement conceptualizing chronic drunkenness as an “odious disease” and condemning the practice from both a medical and moral perspective [24],[25]. This shift between an early Alcohol Era into a Coffee Era was quite profound because both substances were extremely popular. Their use was widespread across subpopulations differing by class, race, ethnicity, and gender. Consumption of both substances persists today and for many is integrated into a contemporary lifestyle. Later drug eras tended to affect a more limited segment of the population.

5. Industrial Revolution––morphine, cocaine and heroin––the use of miracle drugs

The Industrial Revolution was also characterized by an increasing pace of technological innovation in all areas, including medicine. The history of those substances most often constructed as drugs of abuse date to the identification and synthesis of a series of miracle drugs that revolutionized medicine in the 1800s—morphine, cocaine and heroin [2],[26]–[29].

Morphine was first isolated, developed, and distributed in the early Nineteenth Century. By the mid-1800s, the use of morphine had become commonplace for the medical treatment of pain. The development of the hypodermic syringe in 1853 allowed more effective delivery and, as a side effect, provided users with an intense morphine high. Morphine as delivered via the hypodermic syringe was used widely during the Civil War to treat wounded soldiers [30]. Dessa Bergen-Cico [27] in her book War and Drugsnoted how America's wars have often been associated with the spread of drug use practices. The medical needs of Civil War soldiers fostered the spread and rapid expansion of the use of morphine. Use continued after the War reaching a peak by 1880. At mid-century, the use of opium was also spreading in various tinctures provided by doctors and patent medicine purveyors primarily to a largely female and middle-class clientele for a wide range of ailments such as headaches or menstrual cramps [30]. By the 1880s there was a wave of addiction among Civil War veterans, middle class housewives, and doctors [30]. This Morphine Era took place over the course of more than an entire century and finally went into decline during the progressive era as these miracle drug came to be thought of as a public menace [31],[32]. Morphine is still widely used in medicine today but is no longer a substance of widespread abuse. Like coffee, the positive use of this substance appears to be well integrated into our contemporary lives.

Two other new miracle drugs followed morphine's trajectory leading to a Heroin Era and a Cocaine Era at the end of the Nineteenth Century [30],[33]. Cocaine enjoyed a variety of miracle medicine and patent medicine uses. It was also used for performance enhancement and outright recreational use. Its use as a stimulant in such drinks as Coca Cola which at the time combined cocaine, caffeine and sugar was widely popular too as a boost to help workers perform the routinized tasks associated with industrial labor or as an effective tonic. Cocaine was removed from Coca Cola in 1903. Heroin was first marketed by Bayer as a powerful cough suppressant and pain reliever in the 1890s. A cough suppressant was a highly desirable and perhaps “heroic” drug at a time when many people were dying of tuberculosis and the cause of this coughing-related disease was still unknown.

6. Progressive Era––a decline phase––institutionalizing formal social control

America's War on Drugs and emphasis on supply reduction took shape during America's Progressive Period at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Around this time, people were developing problematic habits involving morphine, opium, cocaine, and heroin. Additionally, use of these drugs had expanded to new populations including members of the lower classes and ethnic/racial minorities, which contributed to the declining image of these drugs. Users became stigmatized as either hedonists or criminals and the drugs themselves became demonized [20],[34],[35]. These problems and perceptions led to the eventual end of the early Morphine, Cocaine and Heroin Eras through the formal social controls of regulation and enforcement.

Drug abuse control was one of many state-sponsored social engineering programs of the Progressive Period bringing economic and social regulation designed to provide urban infrastructure, social welfare institutions, education, and to enhance productivity. For many, life became more complex in urban environments as new needs arose. The unprecedented growth of many cities outpaced municipal governments' abilities to adequately meet the demand for services. In this pivotal period, city planners and residents increasingly associated urban problems with recent immigrants and migrants as populations of cities became more diverse and less white.

In Progressive America, newly minted experts and professionals engaged the myriad problems thought to be associated with drugs and their use. Medical experts vied with law enforcement to control drug users. In the 1880s, for example, when morphine, cocaine and heroin were considered medicines, users were considered patients. By the early 1900s, doctors were less inclined to prescribe opiates to patients due to the growing acceptance of the “germ theory” of disease and the increased use of non-addicting analgesics such as aspirin for pain [36]. The use of the opiate-based semi-synthetic heroin as well as cocaine for recreation, however, remained widespread and use became largely concentrated in stigmatized populations, especially poorer, urban males [30],[36]. Newspapers began drawing the public's attention to the drug problem with a barrage of drug-war language, such as a 1900 New York Times story which declared a “War on Opium” [37].

Federal drug regulation started with the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act requiring that products containing drugs be labeled with content and dosage. This reduced the widespread promotion of medicines containing strong substances and their inadvertent use. In 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Act effectively criminalized non-medical use of cocaine and opiates. Subsequently, domestic drug convictions and international drug control efforts intensified. During this period the fight against drugs was waged by both the new law enforcement and medical experts both seeking to establish their ownership of the drug problem. A split trajectory emerged by 1930 whereby better-to-do medically prescribed users were treated as patients, in hospitals. Poorer, recreational street users were treated in the criminal justice system [31],[35],[38],[39].

Moving into the Twentieth Century, the law enforcement model with its stigmatized user population became the focus of the War on Drugs. By 1930 the iconic image of the drug user was no longer a Civil War veteran or a housewife but a lower income, minority laborer. Moreover, drug use for non-medical purposes became firmly associated with self-indulgent behavior, which many contemporaries viewed to be characteristic of a larger decline in traditional morality [30],[35]. These shifts illustrate how expanded migration, racism, and class issues colored the escalating War on Drugs.

7. World War II––amphetamine––enhancing productivity again

World War II was instrumental in shaping drug use patterns over the next decades. By the 1930s, a new class of long-acting compounds, amphetamines, increasingly made inroads into American society. Amphetamines were often prescribed by doctors to counter depression and blunt the sense of fatigue. Pep pills containing amphetamines were also widely distributed to soldiers during World War II and the Korean War [27]. Many soldiers became dependant and continued use after the war. Though prescription drug classes existed as early as 1936 and stricter regulation accompanied the Durham-Humphrey Amendments of 1951, many of these prescription drugs were not strictly regulated until the 1965 Drug Abuse Control Amendments. Thus, many veterans continued using the drugs after the wars easily obtaining their supplies. Amphetamines were sold illegally at truck stops primarily to help truck drivers stay alert but also facilitating the expansion of use across the country, flooding cities from coast to coast [40],[41]. An article in the New York Times [42] described how a federal crackdown under way was now targeting the stigmatized pep pills as follows, “Amphetamines, potent stimulants sold commercially as Benzedrine and Dexedrine, have emerged in recent years as a major cause of delinquency…. Excessive use of the drugs causes a breakdown of social and moral barriers.”

Undeniably, the 1950s marked a period of intense effort by state and Federal government forces to eliminate the foreign enemy and the enemy within [2],[38]. New efforts to control American borders and limit the illegal importation of drugs were initiated alongside a series of escalating penalties for drug use, possession, and sales. The 1951 Boggs Act and 1956 Narcotics Control Act carried newly created mandatory minimum penalties for narcotics violations. The fervor for the War on Drugs was advanced as this effort was conflated with America's Cold War against communist expansion. The drug using enemies within were considered especially susceptible to communist propaganda and therefore at risk of becoming spies [32],[43]. Accordingly, advocating for anything other than a full blown War on Drugs called in question a politician's patriotism. In 1954, California Governor Goodwin J. Knight's told the Conference on Youth and Narcotics that, “Dope peddlers…deserve no mercy whatsoever. Remember that they represent a greater and more deadly evil than a man with a loaded gun pointed right at your heart.” [38].

8. Vietnam War––heroin––drug, set and setting

The 1960s and early 1970s were a period of substantial domestic turmoil. Social movements focused on ending racism, concentrated poverty, and the war in Vietnam. American cities were under siege from protests that turned violent. Youths and young adults heralded a period of widespread experimentation with a broad variety of drugs. (many of which were relatively new) including LSD, PCP, barbiturates, amphetamines, heroin and marijuana. In 1971, President Richard Nixon officially responded by declaring a “War on Drugs.” [2],[44],[45]. Nixon's War on Drugs was not a unique new approach nor was he addressing a new problem. Rather, Nixon's War on Drugs represented a simplistic continuation of law enforcement policies toward an ongoing problem. However, the problem was getting more complex, the number of drugs available was increasing, and our understanding of the drug use experience was being challenged by new theoretical insights.

These insights grew out of studies of drug use by soldiers during the Vietnam War [27]. There was widespread concern that the return of soldiers addicted to heroin from Vietnam would continue their use [11],[27],[30]. Systematic research at this time however strongly suggested otherwise. In 1971, Lee Robins conducted a survey of service members in Vietnam and veterans who had returned to civilian life [46],[47]. She found that close to half. (45%) of veterans had used opium or heroin while in Vietnam and 20% said they had been addicted and reported typical withdrawal symptoms. Remarkably, only 5% of the men who became addicted in Vietnam relapsed within 10 months after return home to civilian life, and only 12% relapsed even briefly within three years. Her findings highlighted the importance of context as a formidable factor shaping drug-using experiences. Robins concluded that despite popular rhetoric,

Soldiers in Vietnam had no special vulnerability to narcotics. They used heroin because it was inexpensive, unadulterated, and easily available, alternatives were few, disapproving friends and relatives were far away, and they felt that their war service was somehow not part of their real lives. When their situation changed, most of them had no difficulty giving up heroin, and that should not have been surprising.

Norman Zinberg [48] built upon Robins' insights into the importance of context for drug-using practices. He described how factors operating within three nested domains—drug, set, and setting—affected the substance use experiences. He explained that the action of a “drug” describes the properties that affect an individual's body. Today we understand that much of this effect is manifest across the dopamine pathway. “Set” is a user's psychological expectations or mindset surrounding the consumption of a drug that further influences the experience. A user's set is influenced by their personality and internal states of mind and brings into consideration such elements as depression, happiness, stress, and anxiety. “Setting” includes the environmental, social, and cultural context in which substance use takes place. The substances available and the significance society and the individual come to attach to the substances influence a person's experience or relationship with a substance. In this manner, drug experiences are context dependent. Zinberg suggested that the context or setting is much more than a collection of distal antecedents. It is an organic system with its own internal logic based in a worldview. In this manner, Zinberg challenged the War on Drugs' focus on drugs and drug users rather than contexts that might engender problematic usage patterns [44],[48]. This framework consolidated important insight into drug use and still has a strong influence on research and policy [11]. The perspective stresses that moderate and controlled use of drugs is achievable, more common than previously thought or acknowledged, and most centrally context dependant. This directly challenges older stereotyped notions that any drug use would result in crippling addiction, espionage, crime, and the decline of America—oversimplifications that supported a War on Drugs.

9. The Twenty-First Century––a pharmacological revolution

Historically, we have seen a variety of reasons for taking drugs. Today there are many more drugs, more people using drugs, and numerous reasons to use them. We suggest that it is not the drugs themselves that we need to control, rather it is the misuse of these drugs that is problematic. We further suggest that social policy interventions would be more effective if they took this more expansive view. Reducing misuse involves understanding the reasons people use drugs, their mindset, and the context surrounding use. This provides insight into the underlying basis of our nation's drug problems. The following list catalogues a range of very different reasons for drug use varying from the most personally indulgent and individualistic to the most integrated into mainstream culture, although potentially misguided:

Recreation/Enjoyment

Making Meaning

Medication/Self-Medication

Cosmetic Pharmacology

Performance Enhancement

Typically when we think about illegal drug use we think about people taking drugs to get high as a leisure activity for recreation or enjoyment. However, use of drugs can involve much more than seeking an altered state of conscience. There can be a major element of social identification involved. Drug use can represent a larger affiliation with a group or an idea. Social activities, use by friends, popular images, references in music, myths, availability, potential legal consequences, and youthful rebellion can impart a greater significance to the behavior. In this manner, drug use occurs within a cultural context and is part of the process by which people construct meaning in their lives on their postmodern journeys. Based on analysis of the succession of drug eras in the late 1900s, the lead author developed a theory of subcultural evolution and drug use as a partial explanation of the socio-cultural forces involved [10].

A theory of subcultural evolution and drug use: Drug use emerges from a dialectic of the prevailing culture. (and especially drug subcultures) with individual identity development. Use of a drug is clearly an individual's decision but it is the prevailing drug subcultures and each person's place relative to them that impart a greater significance to the activity. Conversely, individual decisions to adopt, adapt or reject aspects of the prevailing drug subcultures cause the subcultures to evolve as well as lead to the emergence of new ones.

Defining culture and subculture is complex and sometimes controversial [49]. However, understanding the relationship between culture and drugs is essential to the cultural approach to drug abuse control that we seek to promote in this paper. Culture has taken on different meanings for different groups over time. In 1871, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, a leading anthropologist, provided a concise statement of the monumental and comprehensive nature to culture that now represents a classical formulation [50]:

Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.

The classical perspective identifies a larger gestalt to social context that compels individuals to engage in various behaviors and attach significance to them. On the negative side, this older viewpoint clearly downplays diversity within a society and the potential of personal autonomy. A postmodern sensibility emphasizes the multiplicity of prevailing cultural frameworks, the interacting of themes, and the centrality of individual agency [51],[52]. Ulrich Beck [53] described a “reflexive cosmopolitization” whereby individuals build their identities based on multiple affiliations leading to a broad intermingling of ideas and behaviors without reference to national borders. Ann Swidler [54] provided a pragmatic view of culture as a toolkit of habits, skills and styles from which actors construct their strategy of actions and create meaning in their lives. Dick Hebdige [55] noted that subcultural identity manifests in decisions about self-presentation such as clothing, style, language, and use of public space.

There is substantial evidence that for many who become heavily involved with a drug era that their drug use is very much about identity and less about dropping out of society to pursue a leisure activity. Not every user becomes heavily involved with a drug era or the primary drug that comes to define that era. However, focusing on heavy users within an era provides insights into the context in which use becomes problematic and ultimately a window into prevailing culture. Ed Preble documented how many users during the Heroin Injection Era came to organize their daily lives around their habit: performing various hustles, nondrug crimes, a variety of drug sales/distribution roles, chasing the best bag of heroin, locating a safe place to inject, persuading others to share drugs or needles, avoiding police, and finding free food, shelter, and clothing. Drug users often described their heroin habit and associated activities as “Taking care of business,” an activity that provided them with a sense of purpose that for many born into poverty could not have been achieved in conventional society [56]. Similarly, during the Crack Era users attached symbolic importance to their extended efforts to obtain money and drugs during binges of use lasting for hours and even days. They referred to their efforts as missions adopting jargon from Star Trek [57]. Our larger point is that dealing with problems of drug abuse involves more than presenting users and potential users with a cost-benefit calculation of whether they should enjoy the benefits of a leisure activity or not. It is necessary to consider the complex and personal process by which individuals find meaning in life and how.

These first two reasons for drug use—enjoyment and making meaning—represent reactions contrary to prescribed mainstream norms for drug use and are mostly associated with illegal drugs. Other uses for drugs represent efforts to cope with contemporary life, not necessarily escape, and mostly involve drugs that are currently legal with a prescription. Self-medication can be understood as an effort to keep problems in check in order to otherwise participate in mainstream society. Individuals may also self medicate to deal with disorders or pain when they lack the resources to obtain mainstream services. In a sense, this represents a neutral use of drugs—to be normal or be able to operate in light of basic mainstream expectations. However, the use of drugs has raised the question, “What is normal?” Given that improved functioning can be achieved with drugs, it has raised the additional question, “Why settle for normal, when one can do better?”

Indeed, medical and pharmacological practice has clearly been at the forefront of this change. Joe Dumit [58] argued that there has been a fundamental philosophical shift over the past several decades. In the Nineteenth Century, medicine was understood as a cure, often a one-time administration, that returned the body to its normal, otherwise healthy status. Dumit noted a new pharmaceutical worldview that has accelerated since the 1990s that presumes that the body is “inherently ill” requiring maintenance medications. We now have various drugs for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (ADHD) such as Ritalin and Adderall [59]. We also have a variety of drugs for controlling depression and anxiety such as Valium, Prozac, and Xanax [60]. And a proliferation of drugs to improve sexual performance impeded by erectile dysfunction such as Viagra [61]. Treatments have been discovered for conditions and concerns with which people had to learn to cope. This potential has also raised concern that there may be over diagnosis of problems by care providers and drug manufacturers in a cynical pursuit of profits. Direct-to-consumer marketing by pharmaceutical companies adjures viewers to check with their doctor or pharmacist as to whether a new drug may relieve their condition or improve their performance [62],[63]. The implication is that problems or concerns that one may face are treatable through drugs leading to what Peter Conrad referred to as the “medicalization of society.” Overall, there has been a massive increase in substance use, much of which may be unnecessary. There has been an increase in the number and quantity of drugs that can be potentially diverted. There has also been a growing concern with the misuse of drugs by the person for whom they were prescribed including such aberrant behaviors as complaining about the need for more drugs, unsanctioned dose escalation, concurrent use of alcohol, or alternative route of administration such as sniffing or injecting drugs originally intended for oral use [64]. In this way, doctors are losing control over the use of those drugs that are under the prescription system.

For some, preference is starting to replace need as a basis for drug use. Peter Kramer's [60] influential book, Listening to Prozac, raised serious questions about how we decide what are normal feelings for people to experience, what personality characteristics should be considered problematic, and who decides. Kramer reported a variety of curious responses to Prozac by patients such as: “I felt more like myself when I was on the drug than when I was not,” “It was a mood brightener,” and, “My friends liked me better when I was on drugs.” These observations illustrate “cosmetic pharmacology,” the use of drugs to enhance your appearance just as one might have cosmetic surgery to remove fat, reduce frown lines or enhance one's breasts.

For others, drugs have become a way to enhance their performance in order to keep up with the demands of contemporary life. This is especially the case with amphetamines. The question arises as to the extent that Adderall and other stimulants are being used for performance enhancement either with medical supervision, as an aberrant behavior outside of prescribed use, or through diverted supplies [59]. In their book Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports, Mark Fainaru-Wadu and Lance Williams [65] discussed this larger problem with regard to baseball, running and other professional and Olympic sports but especially with regard to Barry Bonds' stellar career and the network developed to help him reach his maximum potential by using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. This raises the concern that once a few athletes take performance enhancing drugs, others can choose not to, but only at the risk of forsaking their career goals [66]. This represents a form of social coercion urging individuals to use drugs to enhance their performance.

Performance enhancing substance use has been common in the military, especially during conflicts, and not just for recreational purposes [27],[67]. In the Twenty-First Century, the U.S. Military has been engaged in two extended conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, referred to as Operation Enduring Freedom. (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom. (OIF). Soldiers routinely take substances such as Dexedrine, NoDoz and Red Bull commonly called “go pills.” As a come down to obtain needed sleep and to suppress anxiety, soldiers routinely take other substances including Ambien and Restoril, commonly called “no-go” pills. To deal with pain while deployed and after returning, many soldiers are taking powerful new opioids including OxyContin and Vicodin. Because of the widespread use of drugs by military personnel and veterans, a New York Magazine article dubbed this, “The Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Effexor, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan, Restoril, Xanax, Adderall, Ritalin, Haldol, Resperdal, Seroquel, Ambien, Lunesta, Elavil, Trazodone War” [68]. Eventually, OEF/OIF veterans need to integrate into the rhythms of civilian life which are generally less intense than combat experiences. This involves possibly reducing the use of go and no-go pills. Many OEF/OIF veterans are also dealing with ongoing use and dependence on opioids.

10. Toward a cultural perspective on drug policy

The Federal administration signaled its interest in moving past the drugs-war metaphor. Gil Kerlikowske, former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy or Drug Czar, commented that “Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them. We're not at war with people in this country.” [69]. Consistent with this promise, the 2011 National Drug Control Strategycontains no mention of a War on Drugs and instead focuses upon drug abuse as a public health concern [70]. This goes back a hundred years returning to the competition between law enforcement and medicine for ownership of the drug problem. However, this viewpoint still misses the larger context in which drug-related problems are generally based. From Zinberg's perspective this is still a focus on the drug and the set. We contend that the greatest advances in resolving our drug-related problems can be obtained by focusing on setting and in particular on how setting is transforming over time.

Our approach to alleviating drug misuse and its associated problems starts with recognizing drugs for what they are. They are technologies! In this regard, our drug problems are similar to problems we face with other new technologies such as cell phones, the internet, microwave ovens, plastic, cars, refrigeration, and nuclear energy. These technologies bring advantages. However, in the process they have changed our world forever, just as the growth of factories reorganized our lives during the Industrial Revolution. We cannot go backwards! Traditional societies like the Amish avoid the problems of new technologies by completely shunning their use. However, in the larger competitive society this is not practical. We cannot declare war on cell phones and eliminate their use. Similarly, a war on the internet appears undesirable and likely futile.

Continuing our analogy, we formally distinguish our current postmodern period as a Pharmacological Revolution. We contend this provides us with a more accurate metaphor for policy development than sustaining a War on Drugs. Based on our analogy, we make three major predictions:

The world will be qualitatively different at the end of the revolution in ways that we could not understand and would not have accepted before the start of the transformation.

This is a very humbling thought. Moreover, there is no simple and obvious path for all to navigate this revolution leading to the next predictions:

There will be pain and hardship during the transition as early adopters struggle with the collateral consequences of using new technologies.

There will be pain and hardship suffered by late adopters and non-adopters as the world around them changes and leaves them behind.

Accordingly, we contend that there needs to be a fundamental shift in how drug policy is developed, a change in metaphor. This new perspective would seek to help individuals find their way through the prevailing Pharmacological Revolution. Towards this end, we make several explicit recommendations:

Study how drug use technologies affect society. Not just from a pathological perspective, but also consider the potential of controlled use, the impact of one's use on others around that person, and the larger impact on society. This would involve increasing research by social scientists into controlled substance use that solves problems and enhances individual lives. Current research funded through the National Institute on Drug Abuse tends to examine pathological concerns and emphasizes biological concerns over cultural and social developments.

View regulations as provisional as drug use and associated consequences play out differently and can vary over time and across locations. Hard and fast regulation and enforcement without an understanding of context impedes orderly change to society. As in the past, our base of knowledge and experience at this time limits our ability to make the best permanent decisions. Accordingly, we need a range of regulatory instruments and monitoring procedures. As we move through this Pharmacological Revolution, policies can be tightened, loosened or otherwise revised with increasing information and experience.

Focus on education that will help individuals make good decisions that lead to healthy, productive, and fulfilling lifestyles. This stands in strong contrast to current drug education programs, public service announcements, and treatment programs that emphasize abstinence only. The next section discusses possible prevention programs further.

Provide culturally sensitive outreach programs tailored to those in need. We need to engage drug-users and the communities they are a part of to understand the nature of the problems they face. This will allow us to best inform and craft interventions that meet the often wide ranging drug-user and community needs, including the provision of treatment, risk reduction measures, and where appropriate, forms of punishment.

11. A cultural view on alcohol abuse prevention

Some of the most suggestive information about the cultural element to our substance abuse problems comes from cross-cultural studies of alcohol. There has been extensive research on the interrelationship between alcohol use, alcohol policy, and cultural norms. This work may provide potential insights for developing responses to the use of other substances bearing in mind their broader impact on society. Alcohol has been widely used over time and across societies. Moreover, there has been substantial variation in cultural relationships to alcohol. David Hanson's texts have explored alcohol history, literature and policy [71],[72]: Preventing Alcohol Abuse: Alcohol, Culture and Control and Alcohol Education: What We Must Do. Hanson pointed out that beverage alcohol has been used for enjoyment as well as medicinal, nutritional, antiseptic, analgesic and religious/spiritual purposes for millennia. But its misuse can be problematic. This has been long understood. Biblical writings point to both the value and danger of alcohol use [73]. St. Paul considered wine to be a creation of God and therefore inherently good. (1 Timothy 4:4), but condemned drunkenness. (1 Corinthians 3:16–17) and recommended abstinence for those who could not control their drinking. The puritan minister Increase Mather stated, “Drink is in itself a good creature of God and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan; the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil.” [quoted in 71].

This line of research holds that the challenge since early times has been to enjoy the benefits of alcohol while controlling the potential problems. This more nuanced concern differs dramatically from the drugs-war metaphor and further suggests that the efforts to prevent substance abuse should focus on cultural issues. Mandelbaum [74], a cultural anthropologist, argued that culture profoundly affects the interpretation of altered states brought as well as the actual physical response itself:

…The behavioral consequences of drinking alcohol depends as much on a people's ideas of what alcohol does to a person as they do on the physiological processes that take place. When a man lifts a cup, it is not only the kind of drink that is in it, the amount he is likely to take, and the circumstances under which he will do the drinking that are specified in advance for him, but also whether the contents of the cup will cheer or stupefy, whether they will induce affection or aggression, guilt or unalloyed pleasure. These and many other cultural definitions attach to the drink even before it touches the lips.

This idea, is consistent with Zinberg's focus on setting. Hanson offered several national case studies that ground experiences of alcohol use and abuse in distinct cultural contexts [71]. He noted that the Irish have high rates of alcohol abuse whereas Italians do not. He attributed Irish alcohol abuse to the traditional separation of males and females and that Irish males are encouraged to sublimate their sexuality and any emotional problems by “drinking it off with the boys.” In contrast, Italian alcohol use is traditionally integrated into family life where men and women and children drink moderately together, especially at meals. A recent World Health Organization report indicated that cross-cultural differences in alcohol use and abuse patterns persist to this day [75]. In Ireland as of 2005, 26% of the population had abstained from use of alcohol in the past 12 months. Among males, 43% had engaged in heavy episodic drinking in the past 7 days. Beer was the most common alcoholic drink consumed. (53%). In Italy, wine. (73%) was the alcoholic drink of choice. There were fewer abstainers. (18%) than in Ireland, yet a much lower rate of heavy episodic use among males. (11%). In both countries females were much less likely to engage in heavy episodic use; even still, the rate in Ireland. (14%) was higher than the rate in Italy. (8%). These findings are consistent with the possibility that the cultural differences in drinking between the Irish and Italians that Hanson spoke of may have persisted into the 21st Century.

Regardless of the localized historical trends in substance abuse he reviewed, Hanson's research continues to have broader implications for the control of substance abuse today. It holds out the possibility that changing the context or influencing individuals' expectations and conceptualizations of use can control the emergence of heavy use and associated problems. Based on his cross-cultural and historical synthesis, Hanson [71] concluded that the following cultural factors are associated with lower rates of drinking problems:

Drinking is prescribed by social norms, not prohibited

Drinking is incorporated within social customs or religious observance

“Proper” drinking behavior is learned at an early age and within the home

Drinking accompanies meals

Drinking behavior is regulated by social norms for controlled use

Accordingly, Hanson [72] argued for alcohol policy and education that follow a sociocultural approach to foster controlled and responsible alcohol use and the avoidance of abuse.

12. Cultural approaches to reducing substance abuse

There is clear evidence of the advantage of taking a cultural perspective with regard to alcohol. We contend that drug abuse control programs incorporating a cultural perspective are also needed during this Pharmacological Revolution to identify and address the evolving contexts of legal and illegal drug use, misuse, and dependence. A key insight is that drug-related problems are not limited to illegal drugs. Use of drugs that are currently legal can result in problems, even when used with a prescription. Misuse of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana, steroids, opioids and other drugs for recreation, self-medication, and performance enhancement represent topics of social concern worthy of further analysis. Unfortunately, our drugs-war metaphor has limited our analysis primarily to pathological use and toxicity of illegal drugs. An understanding that our nation is undergoing a Pharmacological Revolution suggests major changes in which drugs should be studied and how. In particular, it should be recognized that the use of any new drug, like a new technology, has the potential for broad changes on our society. Accordingly, we offer the following recommendation regarding ongoing research:

Research should analyze the ongoing social and cultural impact of new drugs. Currently, drug testing is mostly limited to the analysis of the efficacy and toxicity of drugs that are to become legal that are reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration before a drug is introduced into the nation's pharmacopoeia. Additional funding should be available to social and cultural researchers. (such as anthropologists, sociologists, and historians) for studies into the cultural impact of new drugs. This research should seek to establish how a person's use of a drug changes their life, the lives of others around them, and the impact for society as more people become users.

Research should analyze controlled use. The focus of most drug abuse research has been on various drugs' toxicity and ways to prevent access and use. However, toxic events can be avoided through controlled behavior. Research funding should be available to study the controlled use of drugs over time and in context. This research should involve drugs that are both currently legal and illegal bearing in mind that these distinctions can change over time. This research should also consider interactions with other common substances such as alcohol. For many people, it is unrealistic to presume that if they are taking a drug long-term such as opioids that they will abstain from any alcohol use. This research will provide essential health information regarding which drugs that are currently illegal or limited to prescription use might be made more broadly available and those that are currently legal that might be subjected to further restriction.

Research should analyze controlled use. The focus of most drug abuse research has been on various drugs' toxicity and ways to prevent access and use. However, toxic events can be avoided through controlled behavior. Research funding should be available to study the controlled use of drugs over time and in context. This research should involve drugs that are both currently legal and illegal bearing in mind that these distinctions can change over time. This research should also consider interactions with other common substances such as alcohol. For many people, it is unrealistic to presume that if they are taking a drug long-term such as opioids that they will abstain from any alcohol use. This research will provide essential health information regarding which drugs that are currently illegal or limited to prescription use might be made more broadly available and those that are currently legal that might be subjected to further restriction.

As a society we need to come to terms with our chemical and human potential to help individuals' construct healthy, productive and meaningful lives during this Pharmacological Revolution.

References

Johnston LD. Toward a theory of drug epidemics. In: Donohew DH, Sypher H, Bukoski W, editors. Persuasive Communication and Drug Abuse Prevention. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; 1991. pp. 93–132.

Musto DF. The American disease: Origins of narcotic control. New York: Oxford; 1987.

Hunt LG, Chambers CD. The heroin epidemics: A study of heroin use in the U.S., part 2, 1965-75. Holliswood, NY: Spectrum; 1976.

Becker HS. History, culture, and subjective experience: An exploration of the social bases of drug-induced experience. J Health Soc Behav. 1967;8:163–176.

Hamid A. The developmental cycle of a drug epidemic: The cocaine smoking epidemic of 1981-1991. J Psychoactive Drugs. 1992;24:337–348

Golub A, Johnson BD. Cohort changes in illegal drug use among arrestees in Manhattan: From the heroin injection generation to the blunts generation. Subst Use Misuse. 1999;34:1733–1763

Johnson BD, Golub A. Generational trends in heroin use and injection among arrestees in New York City. In: Musto D, editor. One Hundred Years of Heroin. Westport, CT: Auburn House; 2002. pp. 91–128.

Golub A, Johnson BD. Crack's decline: Some surprises across U.S. cities. National Institute of Justice Research in Brief. 1997.

Golub A, Johnson BD. National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, NCJ 187490. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice; 2001. The rise of marijuana as the drug of choice among youthful adult arrestees.

Golub A, Johnson BD, Dunlap E. Subcultural evolution and substance use. Addict Res Theory. 2005;13:217–229

Bennett AS, Golub A. Sociological Factors and Addiction. In: Shaffer HJ, LaPlante DA, Nelson SE, editors. Addiction Syndrome Handbook.Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2012. pp. 195–210.

Jonnes J. Hep cats, narcs, and pipe dreams: A history of America's romance with illegal drugs. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins; 1999.

Malcolm X, Haley A. The autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine; 1966.

Sifaneck SJ, Kaplan CD, Dunlap E, et al. Blunts and blowtjes: Cannabis use practices in two cultural settings and their implications for secondary prevention. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology. 2003;31:1–11.

Rogers EM. Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press; 2003.

Jenkins P. Synthetic panics: The symbolic politics of designer drugs.New York: New York University; 1999.

Reinarman C, Levine HG. Crack in context: America's latest demon drug. In: Reinarman C, Levine HG, editors. Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice. Berkeley: California; 1997. pp. 1–17.1

Hartman D, Golub A. The social construction of the crack epidemic in the print media. J Psychoactive Drugs. 1999;31:423–433.

Schivelbusch W. Tastes of paradise: A social history of spices, stimulants, and intoxicants. New York: Vintage; 1993. p. xiv, 236

Goodman J, Lovejoy PE, Sherratt A. Consuming habits: Drugs in history and anthropology. Oxon, UK, and New York: Routledge. xii; 1995. p. 244.

Wiebe RH. The search for order, 1877-1920. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. xiv; 1980. p. 333.

Smith CS. Urban disorder and the shape of belief: The great Chicago fire, the Haymarket bomb, and the model town of Pullman. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. xix; 2007. p. 395 p., 324 p. of plates p.

Cowan BW. The social life of coffee: The emergence of the British coffeehouse. New Haven Conn: Yale University Press. xii; 2005. p. 364.

Musto DF. Drugs in America: A documentary history. New York: New York University Press; 2002. p. xv, 574 p. p.

White WL. The Lessons of Language: Historical Perspectives on the Rhetoric of Addiction. In: Acker SWTaCJ., editor. Altering American Consciousness: The History of Alcohol and Drug Use in the United States, 1800-2000. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press; 2004. pp. 33–60.

Faupel CE, Horowitz AM, Weaver GS. The Sociology of the American Drug Use. New York: Mcgraw-Hill; 2004.2

Bergen-Cico DK. War and Drugs: The Role of Military Conflict in the Development of Substance Abuse. Boulder, Co: Paradigm; 2011.

Courtwright DT. Forces of habit: drugs and the making of the modern world. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; 2001. p. viii, 277.

Spillane J. Cocaine: From medical marvel to modern menace. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins; 2001.

Courtwright DT. Dark paradise: A history of opiate addiction in America. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; 2001. p. xiii, 326.

Hickman T. The Double Meaning of Addiction: Habitual Narcotic Use and the Logic of Professionalizing Medical Authority. In: Acker SWTaCJ., editor. Altering American Consciousness: The History of Alcohol and Drug Use in the United States, 1800-2000. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press; 2004. pp. 182–202.

Musto DF. The American disease: origins of narcotic control. New York: Oxford University Press; 1987. p. xvi, 384.

Musto D. America's First Cocaine Epidemic. Wilson Quarterly. 1989;13:59–64.

Courtwright D, Joseph H, Des Jarlais D. Addicts who survived: An oral history of narcotic use in America, 1923-1965. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press; 1989. p. xvi, 399.

Acker CJ. Creating the American junkie: Addiction research in the classic era of narcotic control. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 2002. p. 276.

Schneider E. Smack: Heroin and the American City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; 2008.New York Times. War on Opium. 1990:5.

Bennett AS. The discovery and treatment of juvenile drug use in post-World-War II Los Angeles [Thesis (PhD)] Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University; 2009. p. viii, 253.

Tracy SW, Acker CJ. Altering American consciousness: the history of alcohol and drug use in the United States, 1800-2000. Amherst, Mass: University of Massachusetts Press; 2004. p. vii, 414.

Miller M. History and Epidemiology of Amphetamine Abuse in the United States. In: Klee H, editor. Amphetamine Misuse: International Perspectives on Current Trends. Amsterdam Harwood Academic Publishers; 1997. pp. 113–133.

Rasmussen N. On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine. New York: New York University Press; 2008.

New York Times. Crackdown Aimed at Thrill Pills. 1955. p. 1.

Campbell N. Using Women: Gender, Drug Policy, and Social Justice.New Tork: Routledge; 2000. p. 270.

Kuzmarov J. The myth of the addicted army: Vietnam and the modern war on drugs. Amherst, Mass: University of Massachusetts Press; 2009. p. xii, 303.

Musto DF, Korsmeyer P. The quest for drug control: Politics and federal policy in a period of increasing substance abuse, 1963–1981. New Haven: Yale University Press; 2002. p. xxiv, 312.

Robins LN. The Vietnam Drug User Returns. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1974.

Robins LN, Davis DH, Nurco DN. How Permanent was Vietnam Drug Addiction? Am J Public Health. 1974;64:38–43. 

Zinberg NE. Drug, set, and setting: The basis for controlled intoxicant use. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1984.

Schafer DP. Culture: Beacon of the future. Westport CT: Praeger; 1998.

Tylor EB. Primitive Cultures. London: J. Murray; 1871.

Green MD. The end of identify? The implications of postmodernity for political identification. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. 2000;6:68–90.

Allan K, Turner JH. A formalization of postmodern theory. Sociological Perspectives. 2000;43:363–385.

Beck U. The cosmopolitan perspective: Sociology of the second age of modernity. Brit J Sociol. 2000;51:79–105.

Swidler A. Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. Am Sociol Rev. 1986;51:273–286.

Hebdige D. Subculture: The meaning of style. London and New York: Routledge; 1979.

Preble EJ, Casey JJ. Taking care of business: The heroin user's life on the street. Int J Addict. 1969;4:1–24.

Williams T. Crackhouse: Notes from the end of the line. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; 1992.

Dumit J. Drugs for Life. Mol Interv. 2002;2:124–127. 

DeGrandpre R. Ritalin Nation: Rapid-Fire Culture and the Transformation of Human Consciousness. New York: Norton; 2000.

Kramer PD. Listening to Prozac. New York: Viking; 1993.

Loe M. The rise of viagra: How the little blue pill changed sex in America. New York: NYU; 2004.

Conrad P. The medicalization of society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins; 2007.63.

Crister G. Generation Rx: How prescription drugs are altering American lives, minds and bodies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 2005.

Larance B, Degenhardt L, Lintzeris N, et al. Definitions related to the use of pharmaceutical opioids: Extramedical use, diversion, non-adherence and aberrant medication-related behaviours. Drug Alcohol. 2011;Rev30:236–245.

Fainaru-Wada M, Williams L. Game of shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the steroids scandal that rocked professional sports. New York: Gotham; 2006.

Murray TH, Maschke KJ, Wasunna AA. Performance–Enhancing Technologies in Sports: Ethical, Conceptual, and Scientific Issues.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins; 2009.

Finkel D. The Good Soldiers. New York: Picador; 2009.

Senior J. The Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Effexor, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan, Restoril, Xanax, Adderall, Ritalin, Haldol, Resperdal, Seroquel, Ambien, Lunesta, Elavil, Trazodone War. New York Magazine. 2011

Fields G. White House Czar Calls for End to ‘War on Drugs’ Wall Street Journal. 2009

ONDCP. National Drug Control Strategy. Washington, DC: Office of National Drug Control Policy; 2011.

Hanson DJ. Preventing alcohol abuse: Alcohol, culture and control.Westport, CT: Praeger; 1995.

Hanson DJ. Alcohol education: What we must do. Westport, CT: Praeger; 1996.

Babor T. Alcohol: Customs and rituals. New York: Chelsea House; 1986.

Mandelbaum DG. Alcohol and culture. In: Marshal M, editor. Beliefs, behaviors and alcoholic beverages: A cross-cultural survey. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press; 1965. pp. 14–30.

World Health Organization. European Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2010.

[mustafa-el-fats]

Sacred Texts  Esoteric  Index  Previous  Next 

Cosmic Consciousness, by Richard Maurice Bucke, [1901], at sacred-texts.com

CHAPTER 3.

Devolution.

As in the evolution of an individual tree some branches flourish while others fail; as in a forest some trees grow tall and stretch out wide branches while others are stunted and die out; as in the onward and upward progress of any species some individuals are in advance of the main body while others lag behind; so in the forward march of the collective human mind across the centuries some individual minds are in the van of the great army, while in the rear of the column stagger and fall vast numbers of defective specimens.

In any race the stability of any faculty is in proportion to the age of the faculty in the race. That is, a comparatively new faculty is more subject to lapse, absence, aberration, to what is called disease, and is more liable to be lost, than an older faculty. To many this proposition will seem a truism. If an organ or faculty has been inherited in a race for, say, a million generations, it seems, a priori, certain that it is more likely to be inherited by a

p. 54

given individual of that race than is an organ or faculty which originated, say, three generations back. A case in point is what is called genius. Genius consists in the possession of a new faculty or new faculties, or in an increased development of an old faculty or old faculties. This being the case, it seems to Galton [92] necessary to write a good sized volume to prove that it is hereditary. So far was that from being an obvious fact that even yet the heredity of genius is far from being universally accepted. But no one ever wrote a book to prove that either sight, hearing, or self consciousness is hereditary, because every one (even the most ignorant) knows without any argument that they are so. On the point in question Darwin says, speaking of horses: "The want of uniformity in the parts which, at the time, are undergoing selection chiefly depends on the strength of the principle of reversion" [67: 288]. That is, parts or organs which are undergoing change by means of selection are liable to lose what has been gained by reverting to the initial condition. And again he says: "It is a general belief among breeders that characters of all kinds become fixed by long continued inheritance" [67: 289]. In another place he speaks of the "fluctuating and, as far as we can judge, never ending variability of our domestic productions, the plasticity of their whole organization" [67: 485], and he at, tributes this instability to the recent changes these have undergone under the influence of the artificial selection to which they have been subjected. And in still another place Darwin speaks of "the extreme variability of our domesticated animals and cultivated plants."

But it is scarcely necessary to carry this argument further. Any one who is willing to give the matter a thought will admit that the shorter time an organ or faculty has been possessed by a race the more unstable must it be in the race, and, consequently, in the individual; the more liable will it be to be dropped; the more liable to be defective; the more liable to vary; the more liable to be or to become imperfect—as we say, diseased. And that, per contra, the longer time an organ or faculty has existed in any race, the more certain it is to be inherited and the more certain it is to assume a

p. 55

definite, typical character—that is, the more certain it is to be normal, the more certain it is to agree with the norm or type of the said organ or faculty. In other words, the less likely it is to be imperfect—what we call defective or diseased. This being allowed, it will readily be granted: 1st, That the race whose evolution is the most rapid will (other things being equal) have the most breakdowns; and, 2d, That in any given race those functions whose evolution is the most rapid will be the most subject to breakdowns.

If these principles be applied to the domesticated animals (which have, most of them, within the last few hundred generations, been much differentiated by artificial selection), they will explain what has often been looked upon as anomalous—namely, the much greater liability to disease and early death of these as compared with their wild prototypes. For that domestic animals are more liable to disease and premature death than wild, is admitted on all hands. The same principle will explain also how it is that the more highly bred an animal is—that is, the more widely it has been differentiated in late generations from a previous type—the more liable will it be to disease and premature death.

Taking now these general rules home to ourselves—to the human race—we find them to mean that those organs and functions which have been the latest acquired will be most often defective, absent, abnormal, diseased. But it is notorious that in civilized man, especially in the Aryan race, the functions which have undergone most change in the last few thousand years are those called mental—that great group of functions (sensuous, intellectual, moral) which depend upon, spring from, the two great nervous systems—the cerebro-spinal and the great sympathetic. This great group of functions has grown, expanded, put forth new shoots and twigs, and is still in the act of producing new faculties, at a rate immeasurably greater than any other part of the human organism. If this is so then within this great congeries of faculties it is inevitable that we should meet with constant lapses, omissions, defects, breakdowns.

Clinical observation teaches day by day that the above reasoning

p. 56

is solidly grounded. It presents lapses of all degrees and in unlimited varieties; lapses in sense function, such as color-blindness and music deafness; lapses in the moral nature, of the whole or a part; in the intellect, of one or several faculties; or lapses, more or less complete, of the whole intellect, as in imbecility and idiocy. But over and above all these lapses, and as a necessary accompaniment of them, we have that inevitable breaking down of function, once established in the individual, which we call insanity, as distinguished from the various forms and degrees of idiocy. For it is easy to see that if a function or faculty belonging to any given species is liable for any general cause to be dropped in a certain proportion of the individuals of that species, it must be also liable to become diseased—that is, to break down—in cases where it is not dropped. For if the faculty in question is by no means always developed in the individual—if it quite frequently fails to appear—that must mean that in many other cases in which it does appear it will not be fully and solidly formed. We cannot imagine a jump from the total non-appearance of a given function in certain members of a species to the absolute perfection and solidity of the same function in the rest of the members. We know that species do not grow that way. We know that in a race in which we have some men seven feet high and others only four that we shall find, if we look, men of all statures between these extremes. We know that in all cases extremes presented by the race are bridged (from one to the other) by full sets of intermediary specimens. One man can lift a thousand pounds, another can lift only a hundred; but between these are men the limit of whose strength fills up the whole gap between the hundred and the thousand pounds. One man dies of old age at forty years, another at one hundred and thirty years, and every year and month between forty years and one hundred and thirty years is the limit of some man's possible life. The same law that holds for the limit of faculties holds also for the solidity and permanence of faculties. We know that in some men the intellectual functions are so unstable that as soon as they are established they crumble down—crushed (as it were) by their own weight—like a

p. 57

badly built house, the walls of which are not strong enough to sustain the roof. Such are extreme cases of so-called developmental insanity—cases in which the mind falls into ruins as soon as it comes into existence or even before it is fully formed; cases of insanity of puberty and adolescence, in which nature is barely able to form or half form a normal mind and totally unable to sustain it, the mind, consequently, running down at once back into chaos. The hopelessness of this class of cases (as regards recovery) is well understood by all alienists, and it is not difficult to see why such insanities should and must be practically incurable, since their very existence denotes the absence of the elements necessary to form and maintain a normal human mind in the subjects in question.

In the realm of insanity, properly so called—that is, excluding the idiocies—these cases occupy the extreme position at one end of the scale, while those persons who only become maniacal or melancholic under the most powerful exciting causes, such as child-birth and old age, occupy the other end. That is, we have a class in whom the mind, without a touch, crumbles into ruin as soon as formed or even before it is fully formed. Then we have another class in which the balance of the mental faculties is only overturned by the rudest shocks, and then only temporarily, since the cases to which I refer recover in a few weeks or months if placed under favorable conditions. But between these extremes the whole wide intermediate space is filled with an infinite variety of phases of insanity, exhibiting every possible condition of mental stability and instability between the two extremes noticed. But throughout the whole range of mental alienation this law holds, namely: that the latest evolved of the mental functions, whether intellectual or moral, suffer first and suffer most, while the earliest evolved of the mental and moral functions suffer (if at all) the latest and the least.

If the mind be likened to a growing tree, then it can be said that the lesser onsets of insanity shrivel its leaves—paralyze, or partially paralyze, their functions for a time, the leaves standing for the later formed and more fragile emotions and concepts, and

p. 58

especially for the later formed combinations of these; that deeper attacks kill the leaves and damage the finer twigs; that still more profound disturbances kill the finer twigs and injure the larger; and so on, until, in the most profound and deep-rooted insanities, as in the developmental dementias, the tree is left a bare, ghastly trunk, without leaves or twigs and almost without branches.

And in all this process of destruction the older formed faculties, such as perception and memory, desire for food and drink, shrinking from injury, and the more basic sense functions, endure the longest; while, as has been said, the latest evolved functions crumble down first, then the next latest, and so on.

A fact that well illustrates the contention that insanity is essentially the breaking down of mental faculties which are unstable chiefly because they are recent, and that it rests therefore upon an evolution which is modern and still in progress, is the comparative absence of insanity among negroes.

It has been said that the large percentage of insanity in America and Europe depends directly upon the rapid evolution in late millenniums of the mind of the Aryan people. Very few would claim that the negro mind is advancing at anything like the same rate. As a consequence of these different rates of progression we have in the Aryan people of America a much higher percentage of insanity than is found in the negro race.

When the United States census of 1880 was taken it was found that among forty-three millions of white people there were eighty-six thousand insane—exactly one in five hundred—while among six and three-quarter million negroes only a little more than six thousand were insane, which is a proportion of only about one to eleven hundred. Doubtless if we had statistics of other backward and stationary peoples a similar state of matters would be found—all such facts as we have leading to the conclusion that among savages and semi-savages there exists comparatively little insanity.

In conclusion the results arrived at in this chapter may be summed up as follows:

p. 59

1. The stability of a faculty in the individual depends upon its age in the race. The older the faculty the more stable it is, and the less old the less stable.

2. The race whose evolution is most rapid will be the most subject to breakdown.

3. Those functions in any given race whose evolutions are the most rapid will be the most subject to breakdown.

4. In the more progressive families of the Aryan race the mental faculties have for some millenniums last past developed with great rapidity.

5. In this race the large number of mental breakdowns, commonly called insanity, are due to the rapid and recent evolution of those faculties in that race.

Next: Part III. From Self to Cosmic Consciousness

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

A theory.

Wacky comic book theory but here we go.

One way or another we all talk about representation these days and the ways in which it can be done well or badly, etc.

And when those discussions happen more broadly usually they boil down to representing 4 groups.

Females, People of Colour and queer/non-homosexual people, and trans people. Of course there are others too. Gender fluid could be counted as it’s own thing and frankly I see not much talk as far as disabled representation is concerned, be it physical or mental. But for the sake of argument let’s stick to those four.

As far as comic books are concerned female and characters and poc (especially black and Asian) characters are comparatively the best covered whereas queer characters ain’t. It doesn’t help that sometimes creators forget some characters aren’t straight or else the fact that they aren’t is such a minor point that people honestly don’t know (see Felicia Hardy).

But as poorly represented as queer characters are (off the top of my head, and I’m sure I’m forgetting people, Harley Quinn, Deadpool, Ice Man and America Chavez are just about the only queer characters headlining their own series right now), trans characters really are non-existent.

Which brings me to those pictures of Superman, Wonder Woman and Black Panther up there.

See I have a theory that for certain under represented groups in comic books (at least superhero comic books) what is needed is a sort of ambassador character, specifically one in the form of a stone cold power fantasy.

Now you could argue ALL superheroes are power fantasies to one degree or another, but if you think about those three characters they are taking the notion of being power fantasies almost as their core concepts.

I don’t buy Superman or most superheroes as on some level inherently MALE power fantasies for various reasons, but Superman was certainly a potent HUMANIST power fantasy.

Human beings are animals and as such we innately have a drive to survive which takes the form of self preservation and preservation of our species. Preservation mostly boils down to ensuring our bodies can function properly and also avoiding injury.

If you look at the myths and legends of cultures across the world and all eras of history you find figures that speak to these innate instincts. You find human or human like figures who have abilities beyond those of mere mortals. In Western culture the most famous examples of these types of figures are of course the Greco-Roman Heroes like Herakles/Hercules. A man with God’s blood in his veins who’s strength, stamina and resistance to injury dwarfs normal people. And he uses that to slay monsters to plague the land or perform feats that kick the natural order of nature in the ass like descending into the Underworld and emerging unscathed, or surviving terrible poisonous injuries for days and days or moving mountains, fighting off Titans from the Realm of the Gods themselves. 

Superman though maybe not intentionally came from EXACTLY the same innate human instincts to be more powerful than we are s we can survive threats and protect our fellow species. He’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall building in a single bound, he can survive ten exploding shells and later he can even defy gravity itself. And he uses those powers to protect the innocent and take down the bad guys who’d hurt them. Replace gangsters and citizens with the Hydra and the village folks and you essentially have the same thing as Hercules.

And we all know how Superman consequently ushered in...well literally the entire superhero genre.

Superman was a gateway character who opened the door to everything else and he did it in large part because he inherently embodied an indulgent wish fulfillment fantasy.

And Wonder Woman did the same thing except instead of being a humanist power fantasy she was an indulgent FEMALE power fantasy. Put aside how its a matter of record that her creator was deliberately aiming for that end goal, just look at her character. She comes from an island exclusively of women. That society is morally and technologically superior to the rest of the world, the rest of the world labelled as ‘man’s world’ which by default makes Paradise Island ‘woman’s world’ if you like. The Amazons were created and guided by the GodDESS Aphrodite, who is associated with (rightly or wrongly) stereo typically female qualities like love and beauty and elegance, traits she then gives to her Amazons. There’s a lot more to dive into but I won’t for now.

Wonder Woman opened the door to ALL consequent female characters after her. But it wasn’t MERELY because she happened to be female and come first. She did it an managed to endure into the silver age revival of superheroes when most of her peers didn’t BECAUSE she had substance to her and that substance stemmed from her being explicitly a power fantasy for a specific group of people.

And then Black Panther did the same thing, except instead of being a humanist or a female power fantasy he was an indulgent BLACK power fantasy. Sure he didn’t get launched as a headliner but that wound up working in his favour as he showed up and kicked the asses of (at the time) THE premiere Marvel superheroes. Obviously that will that automatically convey this guy as powerful just in general, but that isn’t really what made T’Challa resonate, nor was it merely the fact that he happened to be black.

For T’Challa being black was as vital to his character as being female was to Diana’s. He was someone ethnically native to the AFRICAN continent. He came from a country in Africa that had NEVER been colonized by anyone and was 100% autonomous, not answering to any larger organization nor in a submissive alliance with a more powerful nation. He drew his powers from traditions native to his African nation, which were tied up with an animal that was literally black and also native to the African continent. Shit, he even had BLACK in his name. 

Those traditions co-existed with a civilized and technologically proficient society. In fact it was MORE technologically advanced than America and the citizens (at first glance anyway) seemed far more content and at well provided for than America with it’s variety of social problems. It’s technological advancement came from a special natural resource EXCLUSIVE to T’Challa’s nation, no one else had it or had managed to take it from them. In fact when one evil white guy (dressed in stereotypically colonial clothes) TRIED to take it he was defeated. And if all that wasn’t enough Black Panther was not just a superhero who could own the F4 and came from this fantastic African nation...he was straight up it’s KING.

As much of a black power fantasy as Luke Cage was/is...T’Challa was on a whole other level pretty much from day one.

And whilst there had been black characters before him, T’Challa was the guy who really cemented the idea of black (and other poc) superheroes as being legitimately a thing. No T’Challa no Luke Cage, Miles Morales, Blade, Jon Stewart, Storm, etc. 

So what’s my overall point with this?

If Marvel and DC really want to make queer and trans heroes a thing like female and poc heroes are then they NEED to present a legitimate queer and trans power fantasy.

I’m not saying introduce a new gay hero or trans hero who can instantely own all the Avengers or anything. Even the Fantastic Four rallies around and managed to defeat T’Challa, and he was shown to have to really plan ahead to get as far as he did.

But I am saying introduce for example a trans character who exudes physical power and confidence and is a formidable fighter, not a hero in training learning the ropes. Somone who shows up on the scene already knowing how to kick ass. Then in ways I am not really qualified to speak to, make being trans inherent to not just their general life and personality, but their core concept, the source of their awesome powers. Make them someone who comes from a  fantastical advanced, society where being trans isn’t merely accepted it’s the inherent norm and part of the societal structure. 

But do it in a way that isn’t on the nose condemnatory towards cis people. Black Panther wasn’t ever implying white people are inherently bad or inferior to black people, hence why the Fantastic Four and Black Panther quickly become close friends and allies. Wonder Woman wasn’t explicitly saying men are bad or American society was bad. Steve Trevor and other male characters were portrayed as good guys and Diana herself as a patriotic ally to America, in fact in the stories America was held up as a bastion for women and their rights. Now...that was bullshit of course and I’m saying you have to go that far at all. But I guess make the story and series celebrate being trans without playing it as a put down to cis people or else something intended to directly challenge their thoughts about society.

That’s something to be done down the line once the wider audience has accepted a trans superhero character. If this hypothetical trans character is T’Challa then down the line you can pull out a Luke Cage type of character who does more directly challenge that sort of stuff and critically is FROM America, not a black power fantasy country. 

Whilst you can say we already have queer characters, their success rate is spotty at best and a lot of them were originally intended to be straight. So I think  gay, bisexual, etc characters would benefit from this approach as well.

And the best part (especially as far as trans characters are concerned) is that this is legitimately untapped potential. Marvel and DC can both grab the the MASSIVE historic claim of creating the first (major) trans superhero ever and make some real money off of it. Everyone’s a winner.

Bottomline: Create ambassador power fantasy characters for various groups if you want to make them stick around. 

[humbleoaks]

Independent Study 2020: Childhood in the Information Age

This paper focuses on suburban childhoods of the late 20th and 21st centuries. Though many of the children raised during this time are entering adulthood, my conclusion remains that each of us has an inner child that can be fed and healed through nature’s experiences.

It is important to note that mental health will be discussed heavily. While it remains a serious and legitimate concept, this paper focuses on the development of anxiety and depression disorders through seemingly superficial causes. There is a level of privilege that comes with these stressors and situations. Therefore, I am viewing the stressors, both spatial and inter-personal, and their effects as something that can be treated or alleviated. This is a critique on the structure of modern society and not on the legitimization of mental health disorders.

The situations described within inspired my writing today. It is important to note that these following situations predominantly affect white, upper-middle to upper class families. A level of privilege must be recognized in the terms of home ownership, location of said home, ownership of electronics, internet connectivity, and familial structure. 

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. Spatial Relationships

III. Inter-Personal Relationships

IV. The Undisclosed Side Effects of the Information Age

V. Nature’s Benefits and Where to Find Them

Bibliography

 “Man’s unhappiness is due to his having first been a child” -Descartes

 I. Introduction

Youth is a timeless concept. It stretches and snaps like elastic throughout a lifetime. Moments are found of pure bliss and contentment, like that of a child, until human’s mortality butts its head. There is a time of adolescence where this peace of mind is fostered in the comfort of the homestead before the norms of society are imposed on the ever willing yet defiant juvenile. It is within this period of true biological youth that one learns the basic foundations of what it means to be part of something larger, whether that be the relationship to earth and its roots or to others and community.

Throughout human history, the structure of childhood has fluxed across time and culture. Surely there has always been responsibility for the child to care to, and it is up for argument if those responsibilities are more or less intense compared to those of today. Yet those responsibilities were almost always tied in one way or another to nature. The field, the cow, the crop, the fawn had dominated the landscape in which the child works and plays. Their connection to the earth was strong and respected. It brought peace, instilled tolerance, taught patience, and empathy. Today, that connection has been lost to many children of Western civilizations either to fear or apathy. Nature has turned itself over in concept, and it is worth it to question where those values will be instilled in new generations if not with the help of nature’s order.

Stimulation of the mind once came slower and simpler for youth than what is seen in our modern technocratic society. The time period beginning in the late 20th century where technology changed the course of human life, called the Information Age, is responsible for this sensory overload. The mind had time to recover and regenerate before moving onto a new frontier. Now, from the moment of birth, children are exposed to multitudes of stimulants either from technology itself or the societal structure it has helped to create. They are supplied a constant dose of input from which it seems there is no end.

The Information Age’s impact both benefit and depress the human condition. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution and advanced by world wars, Western society has molded into a completely new form where technology has become omnipresent and nature a secondary place of life. Subconsciously it has influenced the decisions of economy, land use, community and family. It is tethered to the idea of comfort, advancement, freedom and ingenuity. This society has seen great joy and connection come from the Information Age. However, this era of history has just yet begun, and its impacts on the child just starting to surface. The way we have come to define childhood in the unspoken name of advancement may hold deeper, more sinister effects on the next generation than originally considered. An era of information and electronics, the Information Age’s impact on the structure of spatial and inter-personal relationships has caused an unprecedented spike in adolescent mental health issues. Reconnecting the child to nature can both alleviate and regenerate a prosperous mental state.

II. Spatial Relationships

The reconfiguration of spatial relationships for the child of the Information Age must be traced back to the 1960s. The post-WWII era brought a flourishing consumer economy, veteran benefits that allowed private vehicular and home ownership, and an accelerated movement of white flight from the urban landscape. While Americans yearned for a sense of normalcy, a baby boom occurred leading to an increased emphasis on the nuclear family and the ideal of the quarter-acre lot. Thus, suburban land planning surged and put forth the values of transport and ownership throughout the United States. The dominant landscape for child rearing became stretches of asphalt and green grass lawns, an antithesis of the streetscape in which community and play took place before, but in perfect alignment of the patriotism Americans held. Lawns provided a narrative of unity and civic responsibility. Although children amply sought out play within this context, it was limited in opportunity and could be viewed as a void in which the child applies play onto rather than fully participating with the landscape. At the same time, the move towards the indoors for the child was increasing as products rolled out yearning for their attention and that once familiar streetscape became a place primarily for travel.

Still, children were not totally bound to the indoors. But what was increasing in prominence were landscapes specifically designed to instigate play. The boundaries of childhood began to shrink as play became a structured concept built into the spatial relationship of suburbs on account of planners and developers. “Where is this vital activity to be carried on if every part of the child’s environment is spoken for to meet the economic, social, and cultural needs of the adult community?” (Nabhan, 1994, pg.27). For example, play became a controlled notion through the heavy use of sports fields and playgrounds. These set the narrative as to how and when play should be performed instead of allowing a flow of interaction to naturally occur between children and end on their autonomy. “It is a loss that so many playgrounds have become dominated by machine-like recreational equipment, structured games, and paved-over areas… play has become too domesticated” (Nabhan, 1994, pg.8-9). While natural ecosystems, bountiful with creases and crevices for the imagination, were being erased, a strict new order was quietly unfolded for the child to accept.

Today, 52 percent of Americans live in suburban landscapes (Bucholtz et.al, 2018) and these spatial restrictions have concreted themselves through cultural normativity, or folkway. These limitations go unquestioned for families child rearing in such communities. This provides the foundation upon which the Information Age amplifies the cultural control over childhood in which inter-personal relationships have evolved or degraded in a sense as the child spends more and more of their developmental years indoors and in touch with screens rather than companions.

III. Inter-Personal Relationships

Just as the home landscape became increasingly structured in disregard to the child’s will, the education system in more recent decades has also pushed to confine the limits of the child’s lifestyle. In 2001, President George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act in which state standardized testing was enacted along with Common Core standards beginning as early as preschool (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.188). In order for public education systems to maintain federal monetary support, grades of students must meet a set national standard. According to Greg Lukianoff (2019), “Today, kindergarten is much more structured and sedentary, with children spending more time sitting at their desks and receiving direct instruction in academic subjects ‘drill and skill’ style.” (pg.188). This means that increasing pressure to perform is put on children as early as age three and continues throughout their educational journey. Comparatively speaking, reference the drastic change in checklists for entry to first grade from 1979 to 2011:

Is Your Child Ready For First Grade? (1979)

·         Does your child have two to five permanent or second teeth?

·         Can he repeat an eight to ten word sentence, if you say it once, as “The boy ran all the way home from the store”?

·         Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?

Source: Whitley, 2011

Checklist from St. Theresa’s in Austin, Texas

·         Identify and write numbers to 100

·         Interpret and fill in data on a graph

·         Form complete sentences on paper using phonetic spelling (i.e. journal and story writing)

Source: St. Theresa’s Catholic School, 2012

In order to keep up with demand, schools sacrificed play in the form of recess at an increasing rate. According to Richard Louv (2008), “In the USA, as the federal and state governments and local school boards have pushed for higher test scores in the first decade of the twenty-first century, nearly 40% of American elementary schools either eliminated or were considering eliminating recess (p.99).  This means that children lost time to build social and emotional skills within their school environment and their chance to enhance it on their own as homework assignments stacked up. As information intake is pushed in favor over character building, children spend more time isolated from others and bound to books or computers when instead they should be enjoying the freedom and exploration of early development.

The restrictions from the educational environment are emphasized by parents. The same ‘concern’ that government agency has for students has been normalized in the household as well. Many parents of upper-middle or upper-class households not only want to meet standards for education but also mold their child to get them ahead in a competitive world. This practice of parents cultivating their children’s talents by way of adult-guided activities, lessons, and closely monitored experiences is called concerned cultivation (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.173).  Whether it be organized sports, music lessons, debate teams or math tutoring, the child’s after school time is dictated towards the enhancement of a feature to their personality instead of their development as a whole. It seems increasingly that the autonomy of the child and their right to decisions made about their life are overlooked for the benefit of information intake. They may be yearning for free play, the spontaneous connection with others their age, more than they can express. Even then, does the child understand the comparative value of free play and socialization with peers versus the structured activity presented to them? It may be that the generation held to high standards from the start are beginning to completely lose out on what it truly means to be a child. The forcing of maturity is starting earlier and earlier. Children soon may be trained to only perceive a life of organized activity just as the limitations of their spatial reality have become normalized. And even still, the newfound technology of social media may forever alter the way in which these children believe inter-personal communication to be normal.

According to Pew Research Center, in 2018, 95% of teens reported them having a smartphone or access to one. “These mobile connections are in turn fueling more-persistent online activities- 45% of teens now say they are online on a near constant basis” (Anderson & Jiang, 2019). Whether it be for schooling purposes or social, the increasing rates at which youth are consuming some form of media from technology-based sources is overwhelming. This trend spiked dramatically around 2007 to 2012 when the most popular social media platforms were founded, such as Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.147). At first social media was just a small addition to the typical social life of a teenager. Then, like a snowball effect, the concept of the virtual-self appeared. Today that version is just as valid as the real self and is used in placement for conversation. Pew again cites that teens are more likely to report their social interactions with friends happening online, about 60%, in comparison to the 24% that spend time in-person with friends at the same frequency (Anderson & Jiang, 2019). One of the major reasons for not meeting up in person is due to the overwhelming amount of schoolwork and concerned cultivation that these teens face. Children born after 1995, for example, spend 18% more time in school and 145% more time doing homework than the youth of 1981 (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.185). It makes out that this may be the only way for teens to truly get to know each other. But is this the equivalent to in-person communication? Not close. Verbal cues, facial expressions, and body language cannot be transferred across a screen and therefore limit that amount that two people can truly begin to know each other. Would this matter anyway to a generation where childhood was increasingly solitary the way it was?

It should also be noted that the primary goal of social media companies has shifted since turning into conglomerate monopolies. The ideal is to get users, in this case teens, to stay on the site as long as possible. Users are continually guided down rabbit holes, thus creating distractions away from the original concept of connection with friends and towards what could be called empty information intake. And since social media is universal, it’s entirely possible for teens to follow or view the pages of complete strangers. The constant bombardment of seemingly perfect virtual selves again enforces the competition factor in the adolescent’s life. Not only is pressure to succeed coming from school and home, but also now from the sites they divert to in order to get away from it all.

The constant bombardment of digital information crosses generations in the Information Age. Media consumption has also affected the parents of adolescents, especially in the form of the 24-hour news cycle. The drive to push excitability and sensationalism to news viewers, predominantly to viewers over the age of 30 (Mitchell, 2016), means that increased fear over the safety of children is yet another restricting factor in the child’s life. The trend to fetishize safety and over-estimate the danger children are in means that parents are less likely to teach their children to accept risk, even in low doses.

Another look back to the late 20th century is necessary to understand the current news programming and its effects. In the 1980s, an increased movement to protect American kids from strangers led to the beginning of missing children’s photographs on cartons of milk (c. 1984) and crime shows like America’s Most Wanted to be broadcasted to the general public (c. 1988). “Many parents came to believe that if they took their eyes off their kids for an instant in any public venue, their kid might be snatched. It no longer felt safe to let kids roam around their neighborhoods unsupervised” (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.166). These parents, growing up in the 1960’s, may have experienced a giant crime wave either personally or from the news. After decades of bombardment from media sources that the threat carried on, even if they had practiced escapism from the urban atmosphere, parents grew weary of letting children roam free. In 2004, 85% of mothers said their children do not play outside as much as they had when they were the same age. 82% cited safety concerns and fear of crime as the primary reason (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.186).

These fears are unfounded, especially within the suburban setting. Nation-wide, 91% of missing children are runaways and less than 1% are abducted by strangers (National Center). The news media is made to promote these ideas just as much as social media is made to keep their users hooked. If it pulls ratings, it will be broadcasted, even if the truth is skewed. What this push for concern does promote is not the actual safety of children but the concept of safetyism, or an obsession with eliminating threats both real and imagined. “Safetyism deprives young people of the experiences that their antifragile minds need, therefore making them more fragile.” (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.32). The media these parents are intaking inadvertently affects their parental habits, making them more inclined to produce behaviors and rules that restrict the independence of the child in favor of protecting them from any possible threat of danger. According to development psychologist Allison Gopnik (2016), “…By shielding children from every possible risk, we may lead them to react with exaggerated fear to situations that aren’t risky at all and isolate them from the adult skills that they will one day have to master.” The mental growth of children becomes stunted as they inherit the notion that the world at large is against them with possible threat around every corner. Not only are children then more restricted in time span for play outdoors, but it becomes a concept that is equivalent in danger with the likes of abduction. Parents carry their fear and hesitation of exploration to the child’s mindset. This is inherently bad as exploration enhances self-discovery and allows children to become steadfast in the face of adversity. As adolescents mature, their lack of exposure to stressors disables them from becoming productive with new peoples and ideas. The introversion of the mindset, now both spatially and personally confined on a multitude of fronts, takes a deep toll on the mental health of these people as they age.

IV. The Undisclosed Side Effects of the Information Age

The stressors facing modern adolescents are bombarding them on all fronts, maintaining a daily cycle. For them there is seemingly no escape as the stressors are tied to a form of technology or tech-influenced societal structure in which they must partake to be a fully participating citizen. The pressure of advancement leads them towards a mindset where taking breaks could change the course of their whole lives. What could the effects be from these stressors on the mental health and social ability of the children of the Technological Revolution?

First, we must introduce iGen, the generation of children born from 1995 and onwards. These children grew up just at the beginning at which information technology was becoming a staple of the middle-and-upper class lifestyles. The childhoods of the oldest iGen members held a healthy mix between outdoor free play and technology use as the first iPods and Play Stations rolled out. Screens may have been a part of their educational environment, but not the largest role, and standardized testing was not yet a large part of their formative learning environment.

These people, now well into their 20’s, have witnessed the exponential growth of social media and entertainment as well as the use of electronics throughout their lifestyle, even so much as to into their love lives. The generations born in the 21st century, however, are more likely to have grown up with technology already a norm of daily life and social interaction. Children born after 2010 learn motor skills at the same pace as they learn to navigate iPhones. Regardless, all people born within this time span have been mentally impaired by the explosion of the Information Age, even if at varying degrees. iGen suffers from far higher rates of anxiety and depression than did Millennials at the same age- and higher rates of suicide (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.30).

There are a number of social and emotional trends that go hand-in-hand with the diagnosis of mental illness among iGen, all stemming from the previously stated stressors as well as the continuing disconnect children have from the natural environment. First is the concept of cultural autism, the tunneling of the senses and feelings of isolation and containment as experience opportunities narrow ((Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.64-65). The world is viewed within a continually narrowing window by iGen youth due to the multiple restrictions on their lifestyle. Yet the world seems overwhelmingly large, given the amount of information constantly available to them. This develops them to have a ‘know it all’ state of mind as almost every bit of information that can be conveyed visually or linguistically is at their fingertips. However, there is also the loss of primary experience, or when all senses including touch and smell are enacted. Descartes viewed primary experience as a major cultural force in the world, yet it increasingly is lost to screen time and isolation. Therefore, this ‘know it all’ mindset is unfounded, and the child may be existentially aware that they are truly missing out on the full human experience- their window to the world is narrowing. Does the dread that comes with this existential binary lead iGen to having greater mental health issues?

Even if iGen does realize their loss of a primary experience, the way the Information Age has wired their brains leads them to believe the outside world, nature, is inherently boring due to their normalization of instant gratification. Technology is fast-paced and almost anything can be loaded within seconds for the iGen member to intake and move onwards. However, other tasks that require more critical thinking and imagination may seem too daunting or exhaustive for them to take part in, whether it be navigating in-person social interactions or conjuring up a play experience in a field. They tend towards frustration and surrender rather than pushing onwards, their brains are no longer wired to explore the context outside of their slight vision of how the world works as most things in life have been dictated to them or on behalf of them. “They can’t make their own entertainment. They have to bring something with them” (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.12).

iGen has normalized their limited personal boundaries and restrictions thrust upon them from the outside world and in turn have retreated to the realm of the internet to act out their lives. As noted before, much of their free time is now spent indoors behind a screen. Lianna George (2008) states that too much technology in these formative years stunts to maturation of a normal frontal lobe and ultimately freezes the brain in “teen mode… unable to learn, remember, feel, or control impulses.” This is in part because of the psychophysiological stress recovery theory in which responses to stress are located in the limbic system and need a rapid recovery to prevent damage and exhaustion. Constant bombardment of the senses that iGen undergoes from schooling to leisure time does not allow for this recovery to occur. According to Raemond DeYoung (2002), Associate Professor of Environmental Psychology at the University of Michigan, the inhibitory process tires and reduces mental effectiveness, increases irritability, impatience, and distractibility. Where once generations past could find solace in the outdoors to mitigate stress response, iGen no longer has such an ample opportunity due to inherited hesitation. In fact, iGen children are more inclined to suffer from a nature-deficit disorder. First introduced by Richard Louv (2012), nature-deficit includes “atrophied awareness, a diminished ability to find meaning in the life that surrounds us, whatever form it takes” (pg.11). The shrinkage of the opportunity and increasing sensory demand results first in non-scientific but social disorders like nature-deficit, cultural autism, and loss of primary experience, then eventually in an increase in diagnoses of anxiety and depression.

 James Sallis of the Active Living Research Foundation cites an indoor, sedentary childhood being linked to mental health problems (Louv, 2008, pg. 32). Kids spending more than two hours on screens for leisure are at elevated risk of depression and suicide-related outcomes (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.152-153). The stressors of the real-world, topped with the social and emotional isolation coming from increased time spent of the internet, is leading kids to be diagnosed at an increasing rate and at younger ages. The rate at which American children are prescribed antidepressants almost doubled in a five years’ time in the early 2000’s with a 66% increase among preschool children (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.49). Assuming that the disorders manifest the same way in a developing brain as in adulthood, between 2000-2003, there was a 49% increase in the use of psychotropic drugs on teenagers (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2019, pg.50). But is this the most effective way to deal with the mental health issues of iGen? At face value the answer appears to be yes. Without looking into the context upon which these mental disorders develop, it may seem as if these issues are due to personal accounts of the world, of the way the individual perceives the environment around them. However, by delving into the structure of this new era one can see that society has set up the youth to fail internally. Children are not smaller versions of adults and it seems as if we have regressed to that mindset yet again. Surely a restructuring is in order for the health and longevity of this generation. Maybe this begins with schooling or parental guidance, but these are large structures upon which most of American society operates. Along this path in the Information Age one can see how slowly but surely the child has become detached from nature, the true homestead, the original caretaker. It could be that reinstating the child’s relationship with nature, even at older ages, could help to promote their mental health and quite possibly save their lives.

V. Nature’s Benefits and Where to Find Them

There is a sense of calm inherently tied to any form of nature. Without input from humans it provides a twinkling of sound, whooshes of fresh air and a stillness that humans have not been in tune to for quite some time. It has been proven, even before it needed to be, that nature has restorative powers. According to Richard Louv (2012), direct and indirect contact with nature can help youth recover from mental fatigue and restore their attention (pg.27). Exposure to parks or patches of ecosystems enhances coping abilities, promotes a more positive outlook on life, and higher life satisfaction. In one study, after a green outdoor walk, 92% of participants felt less depressed; 86% less tense; and 81% less angry (Louv, 2012, pg.59). Mood and self-esteem can be promoted even after five minutes outdoors, especially among the young. But how does this work? Nature is not a traditional therapy session. It does not make a person focus intensely on the issues that plague the mind or the heart. Instead it promotes primary experience, involuntary attention. The user is fully emerged in a landscape that takes one outside themselves and places them into a vast oasis where sensory intake is passive and not active. By not having to actively take in the surrounding context, stress is alleviated in knowing that the landscape is removed from the issues plaguing the mind. It is this primary experience that was stripped from the child in the Information Age. Giving it back to them can enhance their abilities far beyond what school could teach.

We have noted the social and emotional behaviors taught to children of the Information Age: cultural autism, loss of primary experience, fear in face of adversity, etc. But what could nature teach this generation to combat the forces driving them to illness? Within direct, natural experiences lie challenges and stressors. However, these come in low doses and often voluntarily included by children during play. Allowing children to partake in these ‘wild’ landscapes allows them to become friends with fear and develop their responses to danger or difficulty later in life. They will be less afraid and more willing to step up. Spending free time outdoors doing such activities can increase the child’s self-esteem. A higher self-esteem will allow them to partake in social media and inter-personal relationships with greater stride. They can productively engage with people and ideas that challenge their belief system. Time spent outdoors also promotes the concept of biophilia, or ‘nature-loving’ (Louv, 2008, pg.43). Within this state of mind, the child yearns to affiliate with other forms of life, thus learning empathy and social support. This allows adolescents the proper mental platform to build strong friendships and sustain intellectual development. According to The Geography of Childhood, “The endless forms generated by evolution subconsciously reassure us of our own validity. Understanding the difference empowers us to grow and care. The variety of organisms helps to teach tolerance. The land releases us from competition” (Nabhan & Trimble, 1994)

Releasing children from an indoor, sedentary lifestyle is as easy as a walk home, a bike ride with friends, or a wander in a forested path. What is most important though is the identification of nearby nature for each child. Although most of these children do live in suburban landscapes, ecological patches and corridors still exist within them, yet to be touched by development. Children can be allowed outside at first to view and contextualize their homescape. They can identify these edges and remove the conceptualized fear associated with them. Then, parents can play their part by allowing children their autonomy for exploration of these landscapes. Allowing children to turn over logs, dig in dirt or search for bugs on their own will give them a sense of independence and confidence that will foster positive mental habits later in life. If no ‘wild’ nature exists near the child’s homescape, parks work in the same fashion, as long as they are not dominated by jungle gyms or soccer fields. It is important to not under-estimate the imaginative powers of a child- a small space of nature may seem vast and intricate to them. No matter what, the letting go of the standards and structure of the Information Age, even for just a few moments, can let the child once again be whole. Again, youth is a timeless concept. Each one of us has a child inside, brewing with imaginative and empathetic forces. There is no age limit to this exploration, and no bounds to nearby nature.

Nature is the stage in which there is no winner or loser. It is a true equalizer, asking nothing of the child when the world seems to yearn for so much of them. It is both literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air. When the social system promotes the child in nature, it promotes a homecoming that makes for stronger, healthier citizens. It may seem that nature is a far-off concept, but in reality, it is still right outside.

  Bibliography

Anderson, M., & Jiang, J. (2019, December 31). 2. Teens, friendships and online groups. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/11/28/teens-friendships-and-online-groups/

Bucholtz, S., Bucholtz, S., Kolko, J., Kolko, J., Housing and Demographic Analysis Division, & Department for Housing and Urban Development. (2018, November 14). Most Americans Describe Where They Live As Suburban. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/11/data-most-american-neighborhoods-suburban/575602/

Kaplan, S. & R. De Young (2002), Toward a better understanding of pro-social behavior: The role of evolution and directed attention. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(2), 263-264 http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/83666

Downs, R. M., & Hart, R. (1980). Childrens Experience of Place. Geographical Review, 70(2), 229. doi: 10.2307/214444

George, L. (2008, November 7). Dumbed Down: The Troubling Science of How Technology Is Rewiring Kids’ Brains. Macleans.ca.

Gopnick, A. (2016, August 31). Should we let toddlers play with saws and knives? The Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/should-we-let-toddlers-play-with-saws-and-knives-1472654945

Hart, R. A. (1995). Affection for Nature and the Promotion of Earth Stewardship in Childhood. The NAMTA Journal, 20(2), 58–67.

Hart, R. A. (1982). Wildlands For Children: Considerations of the Value of Natural Environments in Landscape Planning. LANDSCAFT STADT, 14(1), 34–39.

Kaplan, R. (n.d.). The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 2/6/20

Louv, R. (2012). The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Louv, R. (2008). Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2019). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. New York City: Penguin Books.

Mitchell, A. (2016, October 6). Younger adults more likely than older to prefer reading news. Retrieved April 28, 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/06/younger-adults-more-likely-than-their-elders-to-prefer-reading-news/

Nabhan, G. P., & Trimble, S. (1994). The geography of childhood: why children need wild places. Boston: Beacon Press.

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. About NCMEC. (n.d.). Retrieved April 30, 2020, from https://www.missingkids.org/footer/media/keyfacts

St Theresa’s Catholic School (Austin, TX). (2012, January). Expectations for incoming first graders. https://www.st-theresas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/1st_Expectations.pdf

Whitley, C (2011, August 1). Is your child ready for first grade: 1979 edition. Chicago Now. http://www.chicagonow.com/little-kids-big-city/2011/08/is-your-child-ready-for-first-grade-1019-edition.

[septembriseur]

I’m not totally inclined to police anachronism in a fandom whose canon founded Georgia ~20 years early (in addition to the naval uniforms).* However, there’s one idea I’ve seen cropping in Black Sails fandom that bothers me a little bit because of what it suggests about the way that we view history— and that’s the idea that slavery was legal in early Georgia, specifically the Georgia of James Oglethorpe. 

From the founding of Georgia in 1733 to 1750, slavery was forbidden. (The prohibition was informal at first, then formalized in 1735.) There are many reasons for this, some nice— Oglethorpe seems to have been opposed to slavery on moral grounds— and most only practical: the trustees of Georgia didn’t want to risk slave uprisings, especially so close to Spanish Florida, and they also wanted to discourage idleness and the accumulation of wealth. (read more here)

When I see people assume that slavery must have been the accepted norm in the American colonies, especially in the South, it suggests to me a view of history in which slavery was inevitably a part of American history. In other words: there is literally no other way to imagine American history than with slavery involved. Aside from the fact that this is obviously incorrect, I would also argue it’s part of a larger narrative of history that sees us as progressing from “less civilized” times towards the “more civilized” era we now enjoy. People in the past, we think, were not as advanced in their thinking as we are in ours; they were less capable of understanding the truths we understand. 

There are many faults with this idea, one being that it equates a lack of civilization with, mostly, an absence of advanced technology (and mostly along the Western lines); at the same time, it equates possession of technology with moral goodness. But it also streamlines history into one continual motion, a sequence of events without any visible struggle. In this sequence, there is only what was always going to happen— never what almost happened, what could have happened, what might have been. Rather than a complex flow of action (even rhizomatic) in which possibilities constantly emerge and disappear, we see only what must have happened, which acquires a kind of exculpatory force. In this example, we think: it’s no use imagining a Georgia that didn’t become powerfully identified with slavery, because it could have happened no other way. In thinking this, we exculpate the colonists who actively chose to repeal the ban on slavery in 1749— and accept that the slaveowners who came after them were just doing what was “normal” and could not be avoided.

Black Sails is, from its initial setting in a pirate “republic” to its (acute) observation that “the empire survives in part because we believe its survival to be inevitable,” a story about imagining resistance— and even more particularly, about imagining what might have been. It is centrally concerned with revealing that the empire was never inevitable. In light of that, I think it’s worthwhile to not take for granted the hegemonic vision of history. 

Sure, there was no Georgia in 1716, so you can do whatever you want with fictional Georgia. But why not imagine a version of early Georgia as interesting as the early Georgia that actually existed? Georgia wasn’t a utopia prior to 1750— on the positive side, the early colonists included a community of Jews, and their first synagogue was organized in Savannah in 1735; Oglethorpe also maintained respectful and friendly relations with the Yamacraw tribe. On the other hand, the colony was still on Yamacraw land, there were no Catholics allowed (mostly out of fear of the Spanish) and no liquor or lawyers were permitted (for better or for worse). It wasn’t necessarily good; It was just a different vision of America, one of the odd forks that insisted on branching against the stalk of the mainstream. What we should learn from it (and from others like it) is that other ways of living are possible. They have always been possible, in their multitudes. Hegemony has always existed only through the active suppression of difference. It relies on rendering unthinkable not only the future without it, but also the before.

*This is a lie, but I keep it to private bitchy emails.

[thechurchillreview]

Contains SPOILERS for Doctor Who and Season 2 of Broadchurch.  

Imy Comic by Irma Ericksson. 

http://www.imycomic.com/the-cartoonist/

Images/Gifs from Doctor Who (2005-), Black Mirror (2011-), Attack the Block (2011), and Broadchurch (2013-2017). The humorous Fem-Agenda List from comedian and late night show Full Frontal host Samantha Bee. Tweets from Johnathan Pyror and Mackenzie Lee. 

I’ve being going through some life-changing stuff. I moved and got a place with roomies. Not done transporting possessions yet. Working somewhere else. Dealt with car issues. A lot has occurred. :) 

Hence why this has taken considerably longer to type, edit, and post than I originally envisioned over a month ago. XD 

On Sunday July 16th 2017,  the long-running BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who starring a time and universe traveling body shifting Gallifreyan Time Lord made the announcement that a woman would play the longtime exclusive to men portrayal character next. Alongside companions, the Doctor is the true definition (not the derogatory kind) of a Social Justice Warrior. The Doctor assists civilizations, helps people, tries to alter certain events in time, and clashes against all types of enemies. The most famous among them being the Daleks, of course. 

There’s been twelve Doctors (Well, thirteen if John Hurt’s War Doctor is counted...Doesn’t seem to be though. Since Jodie isn’t labeled as the 14th Doctor. ) played by men since the series inception back in 1963. The original run lasted until 1989, the revival of the show began in 2005. Doctor Who was created by C.E. Webber, Donald Wilson, and Sydney Newman. Producer Verity Lambert, story editor David Whitaker, and writer Anthony Coburn also contributed to the development of the series that would eventually become Doctor Who. In 1986, Newman wrote to BBC Chairman Michael Grade, "At a later stage, Doctor Who should be metamorphosed into a woman. This requires some considerable thought — mainly because I want to avoid a flashy, Hollywood Wonder Woman because this kind of heroine with no flaws is a bore. Given more time than I have now, I can create such a character."

So, over three decades (839 episodes, one TV movie, four charity specials, multiple specials, and two animated serials) later, Newman’s words are realized under Broadchurch creator and new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall (with the departure of Steven Moffat). At the end of 2017, the current Doctor incarnation actor Peter Capaldi portrays will be replaced by Jodie Whittaker following the Regeneration process. This decision is is merely another form of change: a significant theme pertaining to the Doctor’s character as a whole.

On top of that, in the 1999 Red Nose Day telethon episode Doctor Who: The Curse of the Fatal Death was the first time the doctor was a woman (Joanna Lumley). In the audio drama Doctor Who Unbound Exile which is free from the restraints of continuity  released in 2003 actor Arabella Weir played the Doctor. During the 9th Doctor’s run, it was revealed that the Doctor was bisexual even though the character rejected Jackie Tyler’s advances in “The Parting of Ways”. The Doctor flirted with Jack Harkness, proposing to dance with in the episode “Doctor Dances” whilst promising to give him what Rose Tyler had with Mickey Smith should Jack purchase him a drink. Captain Jack Harkness and River Song are characters both from the 51st century where pansexuality is the norm. Companion Clara Oswin Oswald has been in a relationship with a man but mentions kissing women too. When the 11th Doctor touches his hair following the completion of the 10th’s Regeneration process, the character says, “I’m a girl. No, no. I’m not a girl. And still not ginger.” This suggests that a the Doctor could be a woman. In the 2011 episode “The Doctor’s Wife” Neil Gaiman wrote from over six years ago, the Time Lord Corsair is mentioned and it is divulged that Corsair had a Regeneration that switched him into a her. In the 2013 mini-episode “The Night of the Doctor”, the Sisterhood of Karn (first appearance was in The Brain of Morbius that aired in 1976) asks the Doctor what Regeneration is desired (“Fat or thin, young or old, man or woman?” “Fast or strong, wise or angry, what do you need now?”): ultimately Paul McGann’s 8th Doctor wishes to be a “warrior” and is transformed into the War Doctor (portrayed by the late and incredibly great John Hurt). Since the show’s 2005 revival, an infamous Time Lord villain known as The Master went from being solely men into a woman named Missy (Michelle Gomez) after an off-screen Regeneration took place.  

Change is important for the purposes of bringing a fresh angle to an established accepted formula whilst having potential narrative merit, symbolizing growth, modern day relevance, and validation to something existing. How change is navigated, utilized, or coped with is equally as important. Each Regeneration leads to viewers, writers, showrunners, and cast members  having to accept that a previous version of the Time Lord is gone. “No more.” Their look, personality, memories, relationships, mannerisms, and whatever else gets scrambled into something entirely different post-Regeneration.

Likewise, the companions of the Doctor go through switcheroos often as well. Some leave us furious. Sad. Perhaps even glad.

My point is that we’re resist to change. Struggle with it. Less of a fan as a result. Which is understandable. However, when a certain demographic has been catered to for decades, altering this comes with a price. To be candid, I find the reactionary backlash a tad odd and chuckle-inducing. As if the time-traveling alien Doctor was ever defined by masculinity before. If that’s your chief defining attribute of the Doctor then I legitimately feel sorry for you. The Doctor represents more than a man or a woman and that’s why this beloved character has obtained a prestigious status among fictional creations. 

This is the inherent beauty of science fiction. Close to infinite possibilities at one’s creative fingertips are there. That’s why Daisy Ridley’s Rey being a protagonist and an in training Jedi (General Leia Organa never got this despite her mighty connection to the Force) within the new Star Wars flicks is a big deal. Nichelle Nichols’ Lieutenant Uhura from Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek was historical by being the first African-American not to play a servant on American television. Did you know that Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. asked her to remain on Star Trek when she thought about leaving in the late 60s? “For the first time on television, we [people of African descent] will be seen as we should be seen every day, as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing and dance, yes, but who can go into space, who can be lawyers and teachers, who can be professors — who are in this day, yet you don’t see it on television until now." Nichols would further influence Dr. Mae Jemison, the first black woman to fly aboard the Space Shuttle, directly cited Star Trek in her decision making. Additionally, Nichols’ Uhura would serves as a role model to Star Trek: The Next Generation Guinan actor Whoopi Goldberg ("I just saw a black woman on television; and she ain't no maid!") too. Should I list all of the ways in which Charlize Theron’s Furiosa of Mad Max: Fury Road and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman have contributed to the more inclusive than most genre?

The casting choice of actor Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor bothered me from the get-go. Since Peter Capaldi had already been on the series via the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) episode “The Fires of Pompeii” as Caecilius. Not too long after that Peter would be in the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood: Children of Earth as John Frobisher too. Capaldi took over the role of the Doctor from Smith in 2013. Why the Doctor’s facial appearance is similar to Caecilus was eventually addressed in the 2015 episode “The Girl Who Died”. For whatever reason I’ve been unable to decipher, I’ve just never clicked with Capaldi’s Doctor. On the other hand, I am still grieving a tremendous loss...Which is actor Pearl Mackie’s SDCC announcement she’s leaving the companion position this December. Meaning I do have some level of viewership enjoyment with Capaldi due to Bill’s accompaniment with him.

I’m sincerely going to miss her.

In short, what has been hinted at in the past will become reality this December. No one’s being blindsided, I’d argue. Not about being PC either. These seeds were clearly being planted prior to.

Yes, this a holiday present I’m fondly looking forward to. Especially after seeing Jodie Whittaker’s nuanced performance as Beth Latimer in Chris Chibnall’s Broadchurch. Or Jodie’s role in the Black Mirror (a dark genius sci-fi series courtesy of Charlie Brooker) episode “The Entire History of You.” Psst, the entirety of Black Mirror is on Netflix...There’s even an episode that warned about a candidate like Donald Trump rising to power. I’d be remiss not to type about Whittaker being in the cult science fiction hit film Attack the Block (2011) as well. All of that she’s done deserves to be seen. That’s what I’ve been re-doing in anticipation actually!

With both Peter Capaldi’s and Steven Moffat’s tenures with Doctor Who coming to a personally welcomed close, my ranking of excitement is considerably lofty I must admit. We’ve needed an overhaul for awhile now. The long awaited for revolution of making the protagonist Time Lord a woman next brings a fresh dynamic to Doctor Who. I reckon she won’t be able to coast or take some things for granted like previous incarnations did. The involvement of Chris Chibnall and the inclusion of Jodie Whittaker has me ridiculously psyched for Doctor Who’s future. I believe both of them will positively contribute to the series with their injection of needed new. I even feel compelled to finally watch Doctor Who again in a strangely devoted fashion (something I haven’t done in years) versus sporadic glances at the telly throughout Capaldi’s run.

[just-kept-running]

Time Lord Culture, Language, and Gender

//So I got bored and this is what happened.  Pronouns are a pretty big thing in my life.  I’m non-binary and I use they/them or xe/xir pronouns.  It’s been an uphill battle to get to a point where I’m comfortable with my appearance and even more of one to get people to use the correct pronouns for me.  Even people who mean well.  I’m an anthropology grad student.  I’m in a department full of anthropologists - and when I’m not there, I’m with a whole bunch of ethnomusicologists, who are basically musical anthropologists.  And the very first thing you learn in anthropology is to let go of the rigid boxes society has taught you everything must fit into.  So these are pretty open-minded people.  And it’s still a lot of reminding people and a lot of explaining what non-binary means and how singular they works.

So because I am both non-binary, fascinated by linguistics, and an utter nerd, I got to thinking.  What must Gallifreyan pronouns be like?  And I put this long, rambling thought under a cut so I don’t take up your entire dash.

So you know how the TARDIS translates everything?  And, I mean, supposedly it doesn’t translate Gallifreyan, but hey, you kind of have to assume the Doctor does not actually speak every language ever and at least part of the time he’s probably speaking Gallifreyan.  I cannot see it being otherwise.  I mean, what good is the translation circuit if it doesn’t translate what the Time Lord piloting the TARDIS is saying?  But I digress.

Anyway, I was thinking about this, because I am prone to doing things like that, and I wondered, you know, how do pronouns in Gallifreyan work?  Hear me out on this, though.  So in English, the language of the show, pronouns are relatively gendered.  In English, in terms of pronouns that refer to people, you have he, she, and they.  Now, all of those can actually be singular (and if you want to fight me on this point, you’ll also have to take that up with Merriam-Webster, so have fun with that) but we usually only use he or she if the subject is known.  When talking about an unknown subject, we tend to use they, because we don’t know the subject’s gender.  But there’s an (incorrect) assumption that if the subject is known, then we do know their gender and that they must be either a he or a she.

Not all languages are like this.  Spanish, for instance, is actually more gendered than English.  Pronouns for people in Spanish are el, la, las, and los.  I did include plurals for a reason.  El is he, la is she, las is plural she, los is plural he or just straight plural.  There is no neutral option.  Indefinite subjects like “the secretary” or “the engineer” tend to be gendered based on culturally defined gender roles.  Additionally, there is no truly neutral pronoun like the English they.  The catch-all plural is masculine and there is no neutral singular.  But that’s not all that changes.  Most nouns and adjectives have both masculine and feminine forms.  So you end up changing a lot of things based on the subject’s gender.

I do know there exist languages in which gendered pronouns and word endings really aren’t a thing, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head.  But I do have to wonder, would that not be what Gallifreyan is like?  I mean, as Twelve helpfully points out, “We’re billions of years beyond your petty obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes.”

Time Lords (and I do have to wonder if the Lords and Ladies part of that isn’t also English rather than Gallifreyan) can regenerate as any sex.  As such, their gender is a little bit more complex to suss out than a human’s - and we humans are pretty damn complicated.  But basically, it seems to me that all Time Lords are, by human standards, non-binary.  Now, there are ways that they can control their regenerations, so it is possible that they could choose to always be male or always be female, if that’s what felt more right to them.  But it would seem that they just don’t adhere to the same ideas of gender as humans.

Language is a reflection of the culture it comes from.  It’s sort of circular, actually.  Language is a product of its culture, but the culture is heavily impacted by the language it uses.  This is why people get so up in arms about terminology.  Pronouns, for instance.  The English-speaking non-binary community has made a big push for singular they to be more widely accepted as a personal pronoun because it grants us greater visibility and the way people speak is both indicative of and also shapes their world-view.  So if you have a word for a person who is neither a man nor a woman, you’re more likely to accept that such people exist and are valid in their identities.

So Gallifreyan.  Because gender as per human definitions doesn’t seem to be a thing among Time Lords (although not Gallifreyans as a whole if one wants to include groups like the Sisterhood of Karn), it stands to reason that the language would reflect that.  Oddly, I can think of one instance right off that doesn’t support this.  In the episode “Hell Bent,” the Doctor shoots a Gallifreyan general, forcing the general to regenerate.  This prompts a response from one of their subordinates of, “Are you all right, sir? Oh, er, sorry, ma'am.”  The general then remarks, “Oh, back to normal, am I?” 

On the one hand, if the Gallifreyan language does not have different words based on gender, then there would be no reason for the subordinate to correct himself.  On the other hand, the general doesn’t even seem to notice what sex they have ended up as, although they do go on to comment that the last regeneration was the only time they were ever in a man’s body.  Additionally, Missy changes her name after regenerating into a female body and corrects a Dalek who calls her a Time Lord with the now widely known quip, “Time Lady, thank you.  Some of us can afford the upgrade.”

All of that seems to contradict the Doctor’s assertion that Time Lords are billions of years beyond humans’ petty obsession with gender, as he puts it.  And that’s before we even get into the Master’s snide comment about “Is the future going to be all girl?”  I don’t feel like diving down that particular rabbit hole, though, so we’ll just stick to language.  It does seem overwhelmingly clear that Time Lords are, to some extent, aware of gender roles.  But this seems like it would be a distinctly human thing, and most Time Lords frankly haven’t had much contact with humanity.  Probably the most well known human among Time Lords would be Leela, if I had to guess, because she wound up married to a Time Lord and lived on Gallifrey until her death.  Most Time Lords just aren’t terribly concerned with humanity.  The Doctor, the Master, Susan, and Romana seem to be the exceptions, not the norm.

So I think, honestly, that the amount of attention paid by Time Lords to gender is probably less to do with Gallifrey and more to do with the UK.  Because the people behind the show are not Gallifreyan, they are British.  They are not aliens from a distant and advanced civilization of long-lived shape-shifters, they are humans from 20th and 21st century Earth.  They come from a country whose language, government, and society have all been historically very focused on gender.  And that is very obvious in the show.  If you start with “An Unearthly Child” and work your way forward from there, you can see the shifts in culturally ascribed gender roles.  It’s a very long running series, and a lot has changed in 54 years.

Another reason this whole dissonance between language and function doesn’t make sense to me is that historically, at least in Western society, a lot of culturally ascribed gender roles had to do with the idea of women as mothers and men as providers.  Women were supposed to be nurturing and emotional, while men were supposed to be strong and steadfast.  And while we know at this point that this is bullshit, it has shaped a lot of our culture.  However, that wouldn’t be the case on Gallifrey.  Time Lords are sterile, or were at one point, due to a curse placed on them by the Sisterhood of Karn after the Sisterhood was driven out of Gallifrey.  This is why the Great Houses and the looms exist.  There is also a taboo on pregnancy.  In fact, it’s illegal (or was at one time).  I mentioned Leela earlier, and she’s pertinent here again, because the main reason this even comes up is that that restriction was eased for her and her husband because she was not a Time Lord, she was human.  And even if that weren’t the case, the fact that they can change sexes from one regeneration to the next makes such rigid roles extremely impractical from a societal standpoint.  There would be simply no good way to work that.

But Time Lord society does seem to be, at least for the most part, egalitarian.  It appears to be an attempt at an egalitarian society as written by people who come from a society that is strongly patriarchal.  There are a handful of truly egalitarian societies in the world, and it would be very interesting to see what Gallifreyan society would look like written by an author from one of those cultures.  (Not that it’s likely that will ever happen, given they’re all very tiny and mostly very remote.  Not to mention some of them have begun to be influenced by Westernization.)  I would suppose you would get a very different view on what the language and culture would look like.

But back to the topic of language, because that was where I started with this whole thing.  It really does make me wonder exactly how the Gallifreyan language works.  I can only imagine that the use of gendered terminology for and by Time Lords has more to do with the English of the show and less to do with the Gallifreyan of their origins.  It would really be an interesting thing to expand upon further.

[jellyfax]

Voltron: Legendary [Deeply Flawed] Defender

To be honest, I’ve never been much of a fan of Voltron. I’ve probably seen more parodies of the franchise than I have episodes of the original show or any of its adaptations and spin-offs. Not too long ago, I had regret my lack of fanaticism for the cartoon because, since its release, Netflix’s 2016 remake, Voltron: Legendary Defender (VLD), has received plenty of good press. According to numerous critics and fans, the animated series is a stellar revamp of the original 1984 production. This praise sparked my interest, so I watched seasons one and two (a grand total of 24 episodes) to see what the fuss is all about.

PREMISE

The premise of the series is simple and the 1-hour pilot episode skillfully establishes the world the characters of VLD inhabit. Five young Earthlings (Shiro, Lance, Pidge, Hunk, and Keith) unwitting stumble upon an ancient mech in the shape of a lion and they are jettisoned into a cosmic battle against the Galra Empire, an oppressive alien regime which has colonized much of the universe. After a 10,000-year slumber, two survivors of the Galra’s genocidal onslaught of the planet Altea, Princess Allura and her guardian Coran, are awakened. Now the last remaining Alteans must teach the five Earthlings how to pilot five color-coded mech lions. These lions can combine to form the most powerful weapon in the universe: the giant humanoid mech, Voltron. With Voltron, our heroes are the only ones who stand a chance against the imposing Galra threat.

Given this synopsis, my first concern is: how can Voltron be the greatest weapon in the universe? Now before I tackle this issue, I must say that I’m aware that this claim originates from the 80′s series (it’s titled Voltron: Defender of the Universe for a reason). While this proclamation is a staple in the 1984 Voltron, in the 2016 remake the assertion comes off as outdated and out of place. Let me examine. What may have been an acceptable in-universe motto in the 80′s when general audiences were likely less familiar with the mindboggling scope of space, doesn’t work for viewers nowadays. Audiences of the 21st century are more acquainted with the implications of the universe through three decades of fictional media and scientific discovery. That being said, in the universe of VLD where space is filled with scores of intelligent alien lifeforms, it’s difficult to believe that only the Alteans and Galra have the capability to wield unfathomable interstellar power. The cosmos is immense, and due to its vastness, it can be sensibly assumed that there are people who have designed weapons that are far more advanced than anything either the Alteans or the Galra have produced. After 10,000 years, it’s astonishing that even the Galra are unable to match the supremacy of Voltron. Throughout the series, aliens are represented almost exclusively as peaceful or, more accurately, as people so downtrodden they can’t hope to oppose the Galra Empire. It can be expected that millenniums of subjugation by the Galra Empire would cause many civilizations to become too hesitant to cause an uprising. However, as previously stated, the universe is beyond enormous and there would more than enough people to prevent the Galra from gaining such a tight hold on most of the universe.

Aside from “because the original plot says so,” the series gives us no real justification for why team Voltron and the Galra are the most powerful forces in the entire universe. This assault on the viewer’s suspension of disbelief and deeply contrived storytelling reflects VLD’s inability to truly revive the Voltron franchise. Voltron received a remake not only to appeal to lifelong fans, but also to introduce new viewers to the franchise. The only problem is that the writers of the new series aren’t adjusting aspects of the story’s original premise to the new world they created in VLD; it isn’t enough to add glitzy CGI fight scenes, snarky characters, and edgy redesigns, the original plotline should have been retooled a bit more too. Maybe the whole “strongest in the universe” thing made sense within the context of Voltron 1984, but in Voltron 2016 it makes very little sense in an established universe that’s populated with legions of complex alien life.  Overall, VLD doesn’t fully transform, reimagine, or contest Voltron’s status as the greatest weapon in the universe. Thus, making for a somewhat stale rebooted premise which simply copies the original premise instead of refining it.

CHARACTERIZATION

As the saying goes, a story is only as good as its villain, and if that saying is accurate then VLD is a very flawed story. Emperor Zarkon, the ruler of the Garla, serves as the main antagonist and it’s his motives that genuinely drive the plot. In season two, it’s revealed that he had collaborated with the Alteans to create Voltron and that he manned the lead lion, the Black Lion. In Zarkon’s eyes, Voltron is rightfully his and he is on a mission to reclaim his weapon. And while that may sound exciting, it all plays out as if Zarkon is a jilted lover who can’t stand rejection. Every time we’re confronted with Zarkon, he’s never terrorizing his dominion like a horrible tyrant, because he’s always fixated on acquiring his precious Voltron. He’s not spurred on by xenophobic hate, he’s not a well-intended extremist, or even a demented power-hungry dictator; he’s just motivated by a grudge and he wants revenge. How captivating. Granted, he states that he can unlock Voltron’s potential and conquer the universe, but conquering the universe never seems to be his main goal. After 10,000 years, you’d think Zarkon would move on to bigger and better weapons. Or even want to destroy Voltron more than anything to prove his might, but no he’s just a petty, pathetic, and uninteresting nincompoop. In the finale of season two, Zarkon has the opportunity to kill Princess Allura and effectively destroy Voltron’s headquarters, but he ignores this opening, attacks Voltron instead, and ultimately fails to defeat his enemies. In the end, it’s his singular interest in Voltron that spells his demise. While that might seem like cliché yet reasonable writing, his tactless actions are just an easy way to have the heroes win the battle. In short, Zarkon is yet another case of a villain who’s comedically inept, because the writers can’t be bothered to challenge the protagonists of their story.

Flimsy, out-of-focus characterization is the norm in VLD; characters are bland, one-note, and they don’t really develop over the course of the series. The writers never try to disguise the fact that each character is simply a plot device and nothing more. Although, the characters can be enjoyable at times and some are even quite likable, that’s likely due to the expressive voice acting. The voice performances of the cast are truly excellent with the valiant Allura (Kimberly Brooks) and funnyman Lance (Jeremy Shada) being among the most memorable. The actors do well with what they’re given, but even their fantastic acting can’t save the show.

PACING

The pacing of the narrative is also poor. Generally, a program with episodes that progress naturally, without interruption are fine and VLD is intended to be binge-watched, so it’s only appropriate that it flow so well. Even so, they flow to the point that episodes become indistinguishable and indistinct from another. This isn’t helped by how the writers choose to reveal information about the setting and its characters. Certain reveals overstay their welcome and when this happens the narrative is clearly stalling for time. Oftentimes, the stagnation of revelations only serves to make the protagonists seem like their sabotaging their own mission due to incompetence. For instance, it takes the first several episodes of season two for the characters to accept that Zarkon can sense their coordinates via his mental connection to the Black Lion, a connection they learned about in the finale of season one. Despite knowing this very relevant information, they denied the possibility that Zarkon could track their whereabouts for six, whole episodes! Even without filler episodes, the series still manages to somewhat derail itself.

FINAL VERDICT

It feels as if the experienced writers of VLD are just going through the motions and are simply writing the cartoon in their sleep. All that said, Voltron: Legendary Defender isn’t a bad series, but isn’t exactly good either; frankly it’s mediocre. Although it has highlights, it’s stunted premise, lackluster characterization, and pacing issues prevent it from being anything more than serviceable. Let’s hope that season three amends the follies of its predecessors.

[ruffoverthinksthings]

What do you think the VKs and Aks' sexualities might be?

Thereal answers to this would be “Whoever I want to ship them with atthe moment,” and “sexuality is a very complex thing, that no oneexcept for the person themselves can definitively decide what theirsexuality is.”

Afterall, some people that are seemingly asexual could just be voluntarilyignoring and moving past the sexual impulses they still feel.

However,since that probably isn’t the answer you’re looking for, here aremy guesses:

Mal– Pansexual

Thisis heavily biased as I am a Malvie shipper (among others), but Ican’t imagine Mal to not swing both ways considering that she has avery different worldview and attitude compared to everyoneelse thanks to being half-Faerie.

Whilenot NEARLY as adventurous as Jordan (more on her later), I figurethat Mal would take very little stock into physical attraction andmore in personality—given that she’ll live 300-500 years, therewill be a hot person in every generation but only one of eachinteresting individual she decides to get together with.

Evie– Bisexual

Again,biased, as canonically I wouldn’t be surprised if Evie was straightas an arrow, but there is also the argument that she would beattracted to both genders or is willing to be with people regardlessof gender thanks to her upbringing on the Isle.

Goods,access to luxuries and necessities, and great kissing and sex are notexclusive to one gender, and since pre-Auradon Evie is looking for aneasy, comfortable life more so than anything else, whatever you havedown there won’t really make much difference to her.

Thataside, the boys of the Isle still love themselves a girl who makesout with other girls.

Carlos– Questioning

It’shard to pin down what Carlos might be seeing as he’s never reallyhad time to sort out his sexuality or who he might be attracted to;“it’s hard to get a hard-on when everyone’s got a murder-on foryou,” in his words.

Oncehe’s free from the distraction of constantly having a targetpainted on his back and being abused and used by pretty much everyoneexcept Jace and Harry, and being able to actually talk to people andhave healthy friendships and social interactions, I wouldn’t besurprised if he’d spend a good long while experimenting and seeingwho he’d want to be with, if romance is even for him at all.

He’san intellectual first and foremost, and while it’d be fallacious tosay that extreme intelligence correlates strongly to a complete lackof interest or substantial disinterest in sex (Einstein was awomanizer), solving a difficult problem or making a breakthrough inyour chosen field is usually higher on the list of priorities than“have hot, sloppy make-out sessions with a lover.”

Jay– Bisexual

LikeEvie, this could be attributed to the shitty nature of life on theIsle, the lack of choices, and the fact that his sexuality is as mucha means to survive as it is to enjoy himself.

Jayprobably wouldn’t be too picky about the gender of who he’sflirting with, either, as it all eventually leads to sex or himgetting something he can’t get (read: steal) himself, orpost-Auradon, work for and earn.

Jordan– Omnisexual

Isay “Omni” instead of “Pan” as Jordan is an immortal, adjinn, and operates from a completely different rule set from any ofthe other Descendants characters, and as a result is willing,capable, and does have romantic relationships and interactions withalmost anything that moves, and some that don’t, with the solestandard being that they are considered intelligent enough to consentby Fae standards.

She’sgot all of eternity, and the perception of time only accelerates formortals like humans; five minutes in the dentist’s office passes asagonizingly slowly as it does for her now as it did when she was six,and seeing as she doesn’t need to sleep, eat, or even tire ingeneral, limiting your choices of how to relieve boredom andotherwise occupy yourself is stupid, in her opinion.

Ben– Straight, but currently Questioning

“Straight”in the sense that Ben’s been schooled and raised in a veryhetero-normative environment, where princes go off to marryprincesses, become kings and queens, and produce blood-related babiesfor legal heirs, rather than marrying other princes, having a goodfriend become their surrogate mother, or adopting a child anddeclaring them the legal heir instead.

Auradonis not entirely opposed to such unconventional family structures ingeneral—after all when you have to rub elbows with Ancient Greeksthat had sports drinks before artificial flavouring was invented foreveryone else (Hercules), supposedly mythologicalcreatures walking around and making pop culture references centuriesto thousands of years more advanced than their time (Aladdin,Mulan), and even talking animal people (Robin Hood),the differences between you and “others” stop being a very bigdeal.

However,they are still heavily conservative, and exempting trulyexceptional circumstances on the level of the events of theiroriginal movies (history rather than fairy tales, to them), theywould prefer their rulers to do everything as their ancestors hadbefore them.

Thoughonce the VKs shake everything up and start throwing Tradition out thewindow, and as it tries to climb back in, accidentally knock it backout onto the street because of the chaos and social upheaval thatinevitably occurs, it wouldn’t be surprising to me for Ben to makelike an actual teenager/college student and start to test andexperiment with the boundaries and the specifics of his sexuality.

Ifhe and Mal do break-up in the near-future like I theorize they will,I expect there to be a long string of new royal lovers that takes Benon a real crazy ride through the weird, wild, and draining world ofroyal romance.

Audrey– Straight, but…

Audreyis exactly like Ben, only I figure she wouldn’t even dare toquestion let alone experiment and explore her sexuality.

Thegirl already falls apart at the seams if her back-up singersdon’t show up on time and let her perform her big song numberperfectly. I would SERIOUSLY doubt she would even want to think ofsomething that will completely change her life and throw it intochaos like the realization that she might be gay or not interested inmarrying at all, and ultimately deviating from the “script” of“queen to a king and making beautiful princesses and princesses.”

I’mnot saying she couldn’t be attracted to women, or really anyoneother than through-and-through males, but for the sake of her mentalhealth, she’d just stick to guys just because that’s what she’ssupposed to do.

Doug– No Clue

Dougis difficult to ascertain as we don’t really have much on him ingeneral, and I don’t really consider his relationship with Evie incanon to be worth much as it feels incredibly forced to me, and thecircumstances behind it make me question the legitimacy of it.

There’salso the fact that he’s a half-human dwarf hybrid, and like Carlos,I think he’d have to get over the lifelong social isolation andnever really belonging before he even begins to seriously ponder orexplore his sexuality.

Freddie– Straight

UnlikeAudrey who’s straight because that’s the tradition and what’sexpected of her, Freddie is almost exclusively into guys because ofbeing badly burned by her relationships and interactions with othergirls.

Likethe iconic Mean Girls, the ladies of the Isle’s worst enemyare each other, and they do not hesitate to viciously compete,backstab, and sabotage one another, all while smiling and feigningcivility. “At least with the guys, they have the decency to punchin the face or clobber you on the head, and leave your sense ofself-worth intact,” in her words.

Herinteractions with CJ, which my friend @saveshootingstar theorizes wasas much a romantic partnership as well as a villainous one, doesn’treally help her case.

Shecould eventually decide she’s more of a lesbian, bi, or any othercategory she chooses now that she has a much healthier and saner poolof potential lovers to choose from, but as of now, she’ll probablystick with guys as she’s more comfortable baring her morevulnerable side to them.

Zevon– Straight

Mytheories on Zevon is that he’s straight largely because hisrelationship with his mother is FAR from healthy, even by the Isle’salready loose and terrible standards, and is as much of astereotypical “mama’s boy” as you can get:

Almostentirely dependent; unhealthily attached to his mother and hasdifficulty separating her from any aspect of his life; and projectshis needs and desires for her onto other women—TO BE VERY CLEAR,this is solely the desire to be “praised,” “cared for,” andhave someone that can viciously tear apart his sense of self worthand coddle him in an unhealthy codependent relationship the way onlyYzma can.

There’salso the proven, canonical fact that he is attracted to Mal becauseshe’s vicious, cruel, and in charge, much like his mother.

CJ– Asexual

CJstrikes me as the kind of pirate queen who’s only interested in theburning and the pillaging, and none of the raping bit. Not that shefinds the act of sexual assault abhorrent, but because it and anyother sexual acts just don’t get her blood pumping and herexcitement levels shooting up like swinging from a rope, beatingsomeone into submission, and sailing away with all their stuff.

Shecan get charmingand romantic, but it’s usually just as part of her nefariousschemes.

Chad - Straight

Like Ben and Audrey, Chad has been raised all his life to believe that the heterosexual royal dream is what he should aspire to and what his life’s trajectory is going to be, though for a nice change of pace, Auradon still assures him they will accept a King and his Consort than a Queen.

That aside, Chad’s entire purpose in the universe is to be every single “priveleged straight white boy” stereotype given life, and a means to show the worst of Auradon in a single character, alongside Audrey.

While it would be interesting for him to be gay, bi, queer, or even asexual, in the last case only ever using women to further his own plans and make his life better at their cost, it goes against his purpose in the universe, and feels wrong to me in general.

I’m not saying that a specific personality type leads to a specific sexuality, or that Chad is definitely straight from all his behaviour, but it just doesn’t feel like a good decision to me to make him deviate from the straight and hetero; it feels like you’re just making him queer for the sake of it, or as a gimmick that doesn’t serve much purpose for the story or his character.

Jane - Pansexual

Like Mal, Jane follows a very different rule set, and more-so than her given that she is a full-Faerie and lives for all of eternity, and isn’t bound by mortal limitations like fatigue, sickness, or hunger. She chooses her lovers based on personality first and foremost, though I would imagine she tends towards females more than males.

The traditional, stereotypical “Manly Man of Manliness Male” ideal Auradon has would probably be a HUGE source of bullying, self-esteem issues, and distress to her, and as she can’t ever forget anything, the trauma really is forever, and isn’t likely to change any time soon.

She also strikes me as someone who enjoys soft and warm things in general, and boobs hit both notes.

Allie - Wonderland

Look, Allie is from a place where 2+2=Fish and a heron and the Sky (not someone named Sky, the actual sky above their heads) debate the accuracy of a mathematical theorem that states this formula will produce a pufferfish; the animals and even the objects talk, are animated, and intelligent; and there is apparently a ready supply of potions that can shrink people, among other drugs and alchemical supplies we still haven’t seen.

Shit gets weird, is what I’m saying, and I don’t think we have the vocabulary nor the ability to compherend the kind of kink that goes on down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass.

Lonnie - No Clue

We don’t know enough about Lonnie, and it would be dangerously stereotypical of me to assume that she’s a lesbian just because she’s athletic.

My personal headcanon is that she’s gay, seeing as she was largely raised in a heavily male environment as “one of the boys,” or among very athletic and non-stereotypically feminine girls, and more so, she never really was interested in muscles on guys since as far back as she could remember.

Mulan being an outlier in so many ways herself, it surprises no one that her daughter also breaks numerous norms.

[recycledstars]

I just saw Hidden Figures! (Finally!! Australian release was so late.) And all these thoughts just … haven’t quite coalesced yet but let’s give ‘er a whirl anyway:

When the movie was released in the US I remember seeing a tumblr post + accompanying tags (@bethanyactually​ I think they were yours!) about the scene were Generic White Dude In Charge destroys the coloured bathroom sign. The tags were lamenting the fact that it took someone point out the problem for him to fix it and that we should pay more attention to the plight of others if we’re in a position of privilege. (I agree with this.) But there were follow ups along the lines of “he was just doing what a decent person would do” and “that’s not something to be celebrated.”

Which I actually vehemently disagree with. This story happened in the midst of Jim Crow. This is before Selma. This is before Martin Luther King had a dream. This is right around the time Rosa Parks would not give up her seat on the bus. This is the middle of the Civil Rights movement. Virginia at the time was racist af man. Nowhere in the US fought harder to keep schools segregated than Virginia. The supreme court said segregated schools were unconstitutional and what did the state of Virginia say to that? They said they would close schools rather than allow integration. And they did! They literally just closed public schools in districts that forced the issue. A whole generation was denied an education for some four or five years because the governor of Virginia was so staunchly racist. That shit ran deep.

And by the way, none of this was all that long ago. Most of you probably have parents that remember watching the moon landing live on TV - my dad talks about it and feeling this incredible since of awe at the accomplishment - and if not parents then definitely grandparents that lived through the Civil Rights movement. This is easily within living memory.

Humans are social creatures, we accept social norms because we want to fit into our social group. If, in the middle of Jim Crow, some white dude at NASA had stood up and said ‘there will be no more segregated bathrooms’ that would be a big deal. That would be something to celebrate. Even now. Even after all those attitudes seem outdated to most of us. You know why? Because they weren’t at the time. They were radical. 

And I think that’s important, to view the actions of individuals from within the correct historical/cultural lens. Because it’s easy to be complacent, it’s easy to say “I would have helped Jews escape Hitler” or “I would have supported the Civil Rights movement.” It’s a lot harder to remember that being on the right side of history comes at personal risk and cost and is rarely easy. It involves standing out and that’s discomforting: because we’re social creatures and we want to fit into our social group. 

It’s easy to recognise that yesterday’s leaders should have taken a stand against these things. It’s a lot harder to accept that their struggle is our struggle now. Hindsight is 20/20. Foresight is more like 20/200, but we need to not give ourselves free passes. Celebrating people who were on the forefront of progress - even when that progress is easy to take for granted by modern standards - is an important reminder that change does not come from inside your comfort zone. Not then, and not now.

So yeah, if some white dude had stuck up for desegregating the bathrooms at Langley, that would have been worthy of putting in a movie.

The problem is, that never happened. 

In the book, Katherine Johnson basically says there was no coloured bathroom outside the west campus so she used the regular one and no one ever told her otherwise, so she just kept on doing it. Much like she just kept on asking until she was let into meetings, or putting her name on research reports. Her story is actually a great embodiment of “nevertheless, she persisted.” 

The book talks about a sign in the cafeteria designating the table for coloured computers back in the World War II days and how a black woman called Miriam Mann kept stealing it. It was the black women at what eventually became NASA fighting to get rid of the coloured signs! Not some white guy!

Well, unless you count LBJ, but even then, he was petitioned by early leaders of the Civil Rights movement to sign executive order 11246 (which is like the opposite of every Trump EO so far) that prescribed equal opportunity in federal employment. There was a lot of desegregation around the time the NACA became NASA and yes, the management at what became NASA obviously supported or at least, didn’t hinder that progress despite the policies of Virginia at large.

And yeah, the book talks about how Katherine Johnson’s work eventually spoke for itself, and the team of engineers she worked with accepted her despite her gender and race because of the value of her contributions. She authored research reports and co-authored the research report that pretty much allowed the US to put a man in space and get him down again safely. That all happened.

But there was no character like that of That White Guy in the non-fiction novel on which the movie is based.

There was a white guy who took one of the girls under his wing - Mary Jackson’s mentor, the Jewish man whose parents were killed in a concentration camp? Yeah, that guy was real. That happened. (Not sure on the parents story … but he was Polish.) And she did fight to become an engineer, including going to court to be allowed to attend the white high school for night classes. 

But That White Guy? Not so much.

That White Guy is such a stereotypical white Hollywood intrusion into a black story that solely exists to make a historical narrative more palatable to a modern (white) audience. It surreptitiously allows us to say we would “be like that guy” and not like one of those bad, racist people even though statistically, we’d be the latter. It’s a narrative choice made solely to make white people feel comfortable! And newsflash, this is not a movie that should be about white people feeling comfortable!!

I understand possibly why Hollywood makes decisions like this, because yeah, alienating your audience isn’t great for sales and to some extent getting the story to a mass audience is more important than a historically accurate rendering that no one watches but come on man. Dear (fellow) white people, you SHOULD feel uncomfortable in a period movie about race. You’re not special. It’s your legacy too. Own it. Make up for it in your activism and your choices and how you live now. But you don’t get to just insert a saviour snowflake character to project on and make history more acceptable to you. It’s so fucking offensive. And disingenuous. And a whole bunch of other things which mean I really can’t condone it as a narrative decision.

So yeah, there was Polish guy with a Jewish name who helped Mary Johnson become NASA’s first black woman engineer. That White Guy? Not so much. But who got far more screen time? Not the real Jewish guy. Wonder why that is.

(Not to mention, Kirsten Dunst’s character was inserted and I like that they cast the white woman as the racist antagonist and the white man as the progressive hero. Again, wonder why that is.)

Anyways you should still see the movie because please, support all the movies about women in STEM and black women and black women in STEM. But you should also read the book, which was written by a black woman and doesn’t pander to white people (not that I felt alienated reading it as a white person! actually I felt all nice and warm and fuzzy inside to read about the successes of black women!!!!) and, to quote my review on Instagram:

I was tearing up just in the introduction, out of gratitude for the women who forged paths that made it easier for me and my peers to follow, and out of affirmation. Because women have always been a part of science, black women have always been a part of science. And science and history belong just as much to us and especially our black sisters - #blackgirlmagic ✨ - as they do to white men. 💪🏼💪🏽💪🏾💪🏿

The movie is not a perfect or particularly faithful adaption of the historical account given in the novel, but I’m still very glad this movie exists to give these women the part in history they deserve. I’m glad that when Katherine Johnson sadly leaves us, we will all know her name and celebrate her achievements, deservedly. Truly, she’s someone I admire, someone who has become one of my idols (as a fellow lady scientist and somewhat-still-aspiring math nerd) and I had never heard her name or her achievements before this movie happened.

But y’know, I’m also very glad I read the book and I recommend you do the same. 

Also I’d like to place one (1) order for Hollywood to stop taking history from women and people of colour and making white saviour-y, sexist-ish adaptions of real events. cash on delivery, ty in advance.