#and hold every single person culpable for their roles in the institution

[jonphaedrus]

hamilton this, lin-manuel miranda that, we as a culture have forgotten our historical propaganda whitewashing of american colonial slavehorlders shipping roots

[wuschwusch]

“...I have been angry for a long time.

The shoulder rubs and lower back strokes, running fingers through my hair like I’m your wife or your hooker or your dog. Getting talked over, interrupted, shouted down, called ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie’ in tones dripping derisive and disrespectful, lobbing a pitch that splats unacknowledged only to have a dude say the same thing 15 minutes later to raucous approval like I’m a mute. Like my voice was never there. The hollers from passing cars, men standing too close, rubbing up against me on the subway, not hearing ‘no’ until it’s shouted, then spitting “bitch” out their bruised maw. I could go on and on and on but I don’t have to because for days and weeks and months and years women have been filling your eyes and ears with story after story of all the ways this never ends. We have been telling you and telling you. We shouldn’t have to tell you anymore.

I have been angry for a long time.

It starts on the inside — I must have done something wrong. It’s just me. I’m so stupid. I must be crazy. For some women it stays inward, forever. For others it begins to work its way out — It’s just her, she’s so stupid, she must be crazy. She should have known better. I would have handled it differently. What did she expect? Then there are those of us who get angry enough to rip the blindfold off and realize —

All around us is a civilization that for thousands of years has been built to funnel power to men. It isn’t personal, and it isn’t about any individual, this is the world, functioning as intended. Much of this has been inscribed in laws that we have only begun to dismantle. Marriage was long an economic instrument to consolidate wealth and power among men. Women in the US have had the vote for less than a hundred years. We weren’t allowed to open bank accounts or take out loans with out a man’s cosign until 1972. Marital rape wasn’t illegal in all 50 states until 1993. And of course we’re still legislating women’s access to health care. These are but an amuse bouche of the smorgasbord of institutionalized diminishments of women’s power that have been served to us over the centuries.But if it were only institutional barriers that blocked our path to power, we would have flipped this script generations ago. Our greatest challenge is not changing law or policy, it’s changing the stories we tell and, by extension, our understanding of ourselves.

Stories are empathy machines. Films, novels, television shows, and plays are considered successful when they make us feel, when they take us on a journey with a character. They suggest a path we might walk in a similar circumstance, offer us a road map to move through challenge and adversity. Across thousands of years of western culture we have been relentlessly repeating stories that revolve around men. It all begins with him and it is to him all our empathy flows. From man, woman is made. She supports him or brings him low, but the adventures are his, he is the hero. She is the prize, the conquest, the safety waiting to welcome him home. He is driven by multitudes of wants and needs. She is driven by the need to couple with a man. These stories insist our institutional choices are the order of things, the way of the world, that all this air was already here. But it wasn’t. We dreamt it up, then forgot it wasn’t true. We bent reality around us.

And here we are, still lucid dreaming, convinced we’ve woken up…

By the time I joined the “Halt and Catch Fire” writers room two years ago, my default position with men in professional settings was one of mistrust. These dudes around this new writers room table, genuine as they seemed and as much as I liked them, were bound to disappoint me. I was sure of it. I could write a tome on how wrong I was, but suffice it to say, I now trust those men more than most. How I came to is family business, but everything you need to know is on the screen, in 40 episodes of television, 20 of which I helped craft.

It is a show about five people, Cameron and Donna and Gordon and Joe and Bos, navigating the personal computing revolution, beginning in the Silicon Prairie and ending in Silicon Valley. This, from Laura Hudson at Wired, is the best distillation of the shows themes I’ve seen:

Human beings are the signal, and everything else is just noise. This is Halt and Catch Fire’s most radical message, the one the tech industry would do well to heed as the online world grows more toxic and depersonalized with every passing day. Computers were and are nothing more than tools, boxes of beautiful ideas that are only as valuable as they are human — ones whose connections can destroy us as easily as they can draw us together, if we are not careful. But at their best, they can connect us with the thing that really matters: the people who will stand with us on the precipice of our lives, gazing down at the chasm of the next challenge, and hold our hands as we jump into the unknown.

Ain’t that the truth. What goes unmentioned there is the way in which the women of the show are full, rich and complicated humans who drive the story with wants and needs that have little to do with their relationships with men and a whole lot to do with their relationship with each other — a friendship which is as intimate and important as any romantic relationship. This shouldn’t be radical. This is a reflection of real life. Women want all sorts of things that have nothing to do with men, and our friendships are deeper, and more complicated and interesting than the vast majority of what’s portrayed on TV. Try something for me, list all the female friendships that have been the primary driver of story for three or more seasons of television and never involved romantic conflict over a man. Ilana and Abbi. Patsy and Edina. I didn’t really watch Buffy. Maybe her and Willow? And I can’t think of a single friendship between two women of color that’s consistently driven story. I’m stumped… Now let’s list the buddy comedies and cop shows that have been driven by a friendship between two men.

Cameron and Donna were radical.

The stories we told on Halt were possible because the two men who created the show continuously do the work to acknowledge and overcome all the oblivious, habitual, quotidian ways men diminish the power of women, and they built a writers room where those things didn’t happen. It wasn’t an accident. It was intentional. And it was the best room any of us had ever been in. Somewhere along the way of uncovering the final chapter of these characters’ story, I swept my gaze around the writers room table and my heart got full up with love and gratitude. I realized that after nearly 20 years in this business, I’d let my heart get hard. This experience had softened it. I didn’t know I’d been braced for brawling until I un-balled my fists. So much energy I’d been expending, protecting myself from threats real and perceived. How much better my work was, how much better my life was, when I could make my way unarmed. It felt so good not to be angry.

What more might women be able to accomplish if we weren’t in a never ending struggle to justify our existence and prove our worth? What dreams might we have? What new worlds might we create?

...

It matters what stories we tell ourselves. It matters what stories we tell each other. Stories, repeated relentlessly, become immutable truths. It matters what stories we tell.

...

Because this is on the storytellers. The creators of culture. The weavers of collective imagination. The projectors of the shadows on the cave wall. This is on us, any and all who have access to speakers and screens, keyboards and paper, and a platform to reach a multitude. We are not the pioneers in this field. We didn’t dream up Eve with her yen for a bite of that apple, but we’ve repeated her story relentlessly. Maybe she’s the femme fatale, her power coming from her body, her sex and sin, her ability to destroy, deceive, and ruin. Or maybe she’s a source of life and inspiration, pure and virgin births, a caretaker of men. All About Eve begets Working Girl begets Showgirls. There can be only one. No, it didn’t start with Hollywood, but we are the ones who turned myth making into an economic engine, spreading its influence outside the bounds of our own culture, wrapping the world in our stories. Repeating the same ones over and over and over again. Relentless. To not acknowledge our power, to not take it seriously, to shirk the work of understanding it, to be unconscious in the way we wield it, is to run the risk of doing immense damage.

Of course Hollywood is culpable in Harvey Weinstein’s reign of terror. I’d be surprised if you could find an industry in the world that hasn’t protected a man like that, but there aren’t many industries with as much power as we have to remake reality. We squander this power. Relentless, we repeat the same stories, reinforcing the myriad imbalances that pump injustice into the lives of millions. It is not just women who suffer because of Hollywood’s oblivion of the role we play in people’s psyches and our collective unconscious, every single person who’s not a white dude pays the price.

I used to feel sheepish about discussing the work we do in this way. I was afraid people would find it self-aggrandizing or overblown. But Donald Trump is now president of the United States. And what is he if not the same story, repeated relentlessly, until people believed it to be so. How dare we deny our power now?

...

Fatherhood was likely near the front of their minds when creators Chris Rogers and Chris Cantwell put together the big idea document for the final season. Cantwell’s wife was pregnant with their second kid, and Rogers’s wife was pregnant with their first, so it wasn’t surprising that they wanted to consider the possibility that two of our characters might have a baby together. As they’ve told it, my response was, “No fucking way.” As I remember it, I offered more of a, “I hate it so much and here are all the thoughtful and clearly stated reasons why it would break my heart”. Every woman in the room was in agreement. We debated it off and on for days —

They were drawn to it because it was an interesting story for him. And on that we all agreed. It was something we believed he wanted. And we felt that discovery was surprising and interesting considering all he’d been through. But we also agreed she was definitely not someone who’s ever wanted kids. And we agreed that she probably shouldn’t have them, not at this moment in her life anyway. And that she’s probably not the kind of person to be careless with her birth control but okay, there are ways around that, so let’s say there’s an accident and it becomes a question of whether or not to have an abortion… She could be in a place in her relationship where she’d feel compelled to keep the kid. And if she did, she’d figure it out, like a lot of women do, and of course she’d love it. But would their relationship last? Probably not. And would she be a good mom? Probably not.

Were we really going to end the story of this brilliant, immature but growing, huge-hearted, alien iconoclast with her choosing to have a kid and marry the guy, something she’s never wanted, because it was an interesting story for him? No. Of course not. Cantwell and Rogers didn’t make the choice because it was the best choice for the sisterhood, they made the choice because it was the best choice for the character. Doing right by the sisterhood was the result of a balance of power in the room. It is not enough to have equal representation, the women in the room have to have an equal voice.

I am a middle class white woman from Texas. Donna and Cameron were middle class white women from Texas. Our stories are not nearly enough. We need more stories from all sorts of women — black, white, brown, first generation immigrants from eastern Europe, Navaho from a reservation, Muslims, Jamaicans, Ashkenazi jews, rich and poor, young and old — all thriving in places and roles where they’re not usually seen on screens, but where they do exist out in the real world. We need more stories of women who are driven by rounded and complicated relationships to all sorts of other people, some of whom might occasionally be men. More stories of women in which they build and wield power in unexpected ways. We need more of these stories. Hundreds of thousands of them. Millions. And we need to repeat them relentlessly.

...”

[romancatholicreflections]

15th January 2017 >> 'Being A Witness To Jesus The Light Of Humanity ~ Second Sunday, of Ordinary Week, Cycle A ~ Daily Reflection for Roman Catholics on Today's Mass Readings.

SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ Is 49:3.5-6; Ps 39:2,4,7-10; 1 Cor 1:1-3; Jn 1:29-34 ] In the second reading, St Paul was writing to the Christians in Corinth who were facing internal and external challenges. There was division not just among the Church leaders as some rallied around Peter, Paul or Apollos. At the same time, they had to face the challenges of immorality and worldly living. The city of Corinth was a center for trade and activities. The prosperity of the city, like in most urban cities, also bred corruption of all sorts. Idolatry, prostitution, sexual immorality and cheating were rife. We are living in very challenging times. Not only are we struggling against sin but we are confused over what is sin today! In a world of relativism, with so much information in the mass media, finding the truth is very complicated. We are not too sure what is right or wrong today. Living in this world is rather bewildering because we are swamped with so many opinions all claiming to speak the truth that we no longer know what is the truth and who is speaking the truth or who has the truth. Life in the olden days was easier as society was homogenous. With globalization, all traditional and time immemorial truths and practices are put in question. Even fundamental truths like the nature and identity of human beings, the institutions of sex, marriage, family, the dignity of the human person, the sacredness of life are being redefined. We are not too sure even of the meaning of love. Singles have told me that they would be ridiculed today if they were to tell anyone that they are virgin. On one hand, the Church and all faithful Catholics who seek to live the truth of the gospel are being accused of being rigid, heartless and lacking compassion. Understandably, the pastors are in a dilemma too. If they do not succumb to the relativistic trend of the current world based on contextual theology and situational ethics, they could be accused of being out of touch and even not hearing the voice of God speaking to us. The worst is to be accused of lacking compassion and understanding when pastors seek to be true to the deposit of the faith of the Church passed on in scripture and tradition. Some, out of fear of being unpopular, bend to the wishes of the majority. The day when we say that the Church has been wrong in her doctrines, it means that nothing taught should be held seriously as it might change over time. There is no longer a need to believe and hold common doctrines. When the dogma of infallibility is put in doubt, all other institutions of the Church no longer have any real foundation. When that happens, truth is left to the individual to decide “according to their conscience”. This simple principle is rather ambiguous in itself as there are different levels of conscience, some erroneous, some culpably erroneous. Even then, conscience must be based on objective truth, based on scripture and the teachings of the Church. But some are so paralyzed by the web of information that no decision is possible. When we can no longer say that no objective truth exists but everything is dependent on changing circumstances, then we can no longer say anything is right or wrong because at different times, what is supposedly the truth can turn out to be wrong and what was considered wrong is now acceptable. That is why relativism and subjectivism are the “absolute truths” promoted by the world today. It is within this context that St Paul reminds us that we are being sent. We are called to be apostles of Christ. He was conscious of his call when he wrote, “I, Paul, appointed by God to be an apostle.” By virtue of our baptism, we too are given a special calling from God to preach the gospel according to our charisms and the state of life. Every one of us, regardless of who we are, has a contribution to make in the proclamation of the gospel. Each one is given a role, a job, a ministry to partake in Christ’s mission to the world. This mission can take place within the Church or without. It can be direct or indirect witnessing. But in all that we do, we must be ready, like St Paul, to make available our gifts, resources, talents for His service so that God’s plan for His Church and the world can be realized. It does not matter what we do for God, but what matters is that we do everything for the glory of God and the service of the Church and of humanity. The Lord said to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I shall be glorified.” More than ever in the world today, we need Christians who are courageous in living lives contrary to the rest of the world. We are called to live a life of chastity and fidelity to our state of life. We are called to love faithfully and authentically. The real tragedy among Catholics is that we all live a double life. We are Catholics only in Church but we live a secular life with worldly values in our daily life. The options and the choices we make are basically dictated by the world, whether it is sex, marriage, family, career, entertainment, education and other pursuits. We share the desire for the illusory pleasures and pursuits of the world. So, we are counter-witnesses of the gospel by the way we live our lives. In church, we behave like saints but outside the church we indulge and subscribe to the immoral activities and wisdom of the world. Indeed, like John the Baptist, we must not live double lives. He did not pretend to be the Messiah. Although he himself was a very popular preacher and prophet, attracting large crowds and disciples to himself, he knew when it was time for him to let go and take a back seat. He was always conscious that he was only a voice of the bridegroom. Christ is the Word. When He came, it was time for the voice to fade out. That is why, John the Baptist said, “He must increase and I must decrease.” (Jn 3:30) Such was the humility of John the Baptist, his sincerity and his clarity of his call. He was contented to do what God wanted him to do and let Christ be glorified. This is what true service is all about, the basis for effective ministry, never to bring others to us even if it is through us. Our task is to bring them to the Lord. We must never keep Jesus away from others or take away His limelight. John did not seek popularity but only the truth. This call to glorify God comes in two ways. The call to service in the gospel is both ad intra an ad extra. The Lord told the Suffering Servant, “It is not enough for you to be my servant, to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back the survivors of Israel: I will make you the light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” In other words, we must be a witness within the Church and also to be a witness to Christ in the world. It is a call to re-evangelize the gospel within and to evangelize to the world. We are called to point others to the Lord. There are many people in the world seeking security, peace, love and joy. Our calling is to show them that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is their savior and He is the One whom they are seeking to give them fullness of life. We must not be misled into thinking that faith is a private matter. John the Baptist was ever ready to refer others to Jesus. He said, “Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” The call to mission however must begin from within. St Paul issued a personal invitation to all Christians to be holy. He sent “greetings to the church of God in Corinth, to the holy people of Jesus Christ, who are called to take their place among all the saints.” What a beautiful reminder to all of us that we are called to holiness. A Christian’s universal call is the call to holiness. To be holy is to be consecrated, to be set apart for the glory of God and for His service. We are called to manifest His love, light and presence in the way we live our lives. That is what it means to be called saints because a saint is one who reflects the presence of Christ in his or her life. For this reason, we must first form our Catholics in the right values of the gospel. If we are not evangelized ourselves and are not clear of what the gospel is teaching us, we will not be able to be convinced sufficiently to live them out, much less to share with the rest of the world. The work of re-evangelizing our Catholics, to renew their faith and their personal relationship with the Lord through worship, prayer, the Word of God and formation is of utmost importance. Until this is done, the work of evangelization cannot be properly carried out. Catholics must first be informed in their faith, reignite their relationship with the Lord and fall in love with the Word of God before they can be witnesses. But we cannot accept the teachings of Christ unless we fall in love with Jesus and recognize Him as the Son of God and the Word of God. This can only happen through the Holy Spirit because He is the One who leads us to Jesus. Catholics cannot be evangelizers and witnesses unless they are renewed in the power of the Spirit. This is what St John the Baptist reminds us. He could say, “Yes, I have seen and I am the witness that he is the Chosen One of God”, only because he had encountered the Lord personally. John also declared, “I saw the Spirit coming down on him from heaven like a dove and resting on him.” Only when we confess that Jesus is Lord can we then surrender our lives to Him even though we might not understand everything that the Word of God teaches us. In the final analysis, the power of witnessing lies not in what we say but what we do. If we wish to be true evangelizers in the world, we only need to do His holy will in our daily life. This is what will convince people. With the psalmist, we also must say, “Here I am, Lord! I come to do your will. You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings, but an open ear. You do not ask for holocaust and victim. Instead, here am I. In the scroll of the book it stands written that I should do your will. My God, I delight in your law in the depth of my heart.” Written by The Most Rev William Goh Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved Best Practices for Using the Daily Scripture Reflections Encounter God through the spirit of prayer and the scripture by reflecting and praying the Word of God daily. The purpose is to bring you to prayer and to a deeper union with the Lord on the level of the heart. Daily reflections when archived will lead many to accumulate all the reflections of the week and pray in one sitting. This will compromise your capacity to enter deeply into the Word of God, as the tendency is to read for knowledge rather than a prayerful reading of the Word for the purpose of developing a personal and affective relationship with the Lord. It is more important to pray deeply, not read widely. The current reflections of the day would be more than sufficient for anyone who wants to pray deeply and be led into an intimacy with the Lord.