#at least if its done according to its principles and values properly
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system-of-a-feather · 10 months ago
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One of the other thing about ESDM that I really like (which Lin pinpointed first) is that it very much just is the method me and Lin use to help heal traumatized parts PARTICULARLY traumatized child parts Cause other than generic play therapy concepts, ESDM first and foremost is built on this concept of "autistic kids have issues socializing and engaging in play because their usual play is 'atypical' to neurotypicals and sometimes is systemically hard to have shared engagement and control of the play" "Therefore, its important that when we try to play with these kids that we throw out whatever concept of fun and play that we currently have out the window and focus on what THEY find fun and what THEY enjoy and play with them in the way they want to play"
"Then from there expand the play to be more inclusive and cooperative" Like a very very very core concept of how play therapy in ESDM works is very much "If you can't figure out how to play in the way THEY like to play, then don't touch their play" So like, yeah we have blocks and we SHOULD stack them and make towers but you know what You think its fun to drop them on different objects and hear what they sound like?! We can make that into a fun game! I also think its cool to drop blocks on objects! What if we took turns coming up with silly things to drop them on? Oh look! We are practicing turn taking AND join attention AND social engagement AND tolerating people in your area to a reasonable level AND learning that people can be fun and interested in your interests And what are we practically doing? Were just Dropping blocks on silly things together And if you start that at like age 2-4 and maintain that for two to three years you really end up with kids that really realize that people genuinely are interested in what they are doing, that their interests are really cool, and that people are opportunities for MORE joy and MORE engagement than les
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ieatmorecrispsthanyou · 6 months ago
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100% this!!
Reader response theory is as valid a theory as formalism, and the rise of structuralism leading to The Death of the Author is a necessary step in our understanding of any form of media.
Let me break these concepts down for you:
Reader response theory is basically exactly what it says on the tin. If you felt sad after watching the end of Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness because your understanding of the Scarlet Witch was completely different from the way this character is portrayed or written in this specific film, that's valid as a criticism. Autism headcanons are an excellent example of this - if you can relate your autistic traits to a certain character who definitely wasn't written to be autistic (especially if the cultural context in which the character was written demonised diagnosed autistic people), then that's heckin' valid my dude. If you can write an essay with a coherent argument backing up your analysis, that's literary theory in action! Nimona is a trans allegory because you argue it is, as you're trans and you saw yourself in the story. In principle, we are saying that you, the enjoyer of media, have value in your interpretation of what's being presented to you. Your connection and relation to the characters and plot are important! If you think there's a metaphor because it speaks to you, then there is. Simple as.
Formalism - or at least, why I brought up formalism in the context of trying to explain why personal/subtextual meanings are more important to me than textual and contextual readings - is trying to do a similar thing. Formalist critics know there's authorial context, literary context and thematic content, and they don't care. They focus solely on what's in the text, like the actual words on the page/images on the screen, and they analyse the hell out of that shit. Formalists will write you an essay on one line of a poem like they're trying to score points for how many literary devices they spot, or how well they demonstrate its literary meaning. I bring this up because it's important to know that the media itself has meaning purely based on HOW something says something, ignoring its actual content (going line by line) and the context in which it's written. And I also bring this up because it's a perfectly valid form of media criticism that just so happens to ignore the author entirely. If you think that Nimona is a trans piece of media purely because of what's shown to you on screen and how it's communicated to you, ignoring the fact that ND Stevenson is trans and/or the rise of transphobia in our society, you've just done a formalist critique. (well, at least, you have according to me. proper academics stay away!)
This is step one for how we analyse media - we need to know HOW the media tells its story, what genre conventions it uses to do so etc, if we want to know WHAT the story is saying.
Now, structuralism - I bring it up without really comprehending it fully, because structuralist literary theory is something I'm not convinced anybody understands except the people writing it. What I can tell you is that a structuralist critique of Nimona would say this: Nimona is a work of fiction which creates meaning through its characterisation and plot being related to other works in a similar genre. It has certain narrative and generic conventions that are universal, and there is one singular interpretation which comes from those conventions. Basically, a structuralist critique would tell you that nothing about Nimona is fundamentally unique (linguistically), and to understand it you need to watch every other movie and comic coming from a similar genre, to properly understand its queer subtext.
Which is where The Death of the Author comes in - thank God for poststructuralism!
Roland Barthes is taking you by the shoulders and shaking you until you understand that what the author was like as a person has absolutely nothing, NOTHING AT ALL to do with how the characters, plot, theme, etc can be interpreted by their audience. Literally, the Death of the Author is a way to set works free from their creators by arguing that what the author *intended* doesn't actually matter - it's the job of the reader, (that is to say, us humble users of tumblr dot com) to create meaning from that text. Here's where what we learned comes into play: if formalism disregards the author and context, and reader response theory is how the audience interprets and creates meaning from media, then we can look at Nimona with fresh eyes and say that what matters is a combination of the inherent features of the text which the audience can then experiment with, disregard, or fully embrace. What doesn't matter is what the author intended. We can ignore structuralism entirely as it is a didactic, reductive form of media critique that ignores the fact that different people have different lived experiences, and reduces the relationship between people and text to scholar and manuscript.
TL;DR - if you think Nimona is trans, your interpretation matters purely because you are engaging with the text on a level meaningful to you. The author being trans is separate from the actual film itself, and while it does inform the content and themes of the film, it ultimately doesn't matter in your interpretation of it.
I have once again seen a post asserting that songs have a single meaning and through heroic effort have not written an essay on the post-modern school of criticism "the death of the author".
Look though if you can support an interpretation from the text then you can build a case for that interpretation. So while it is not true that a text (intended broadly here to mean any piece of media) can mean absolutely anything - because it will be impossible to support some interpretations with evidence from the text - it is true that you can support multiple interpretations from any given text.
Fandom is EXTREMELY good at this like oh, you want me to believe that Steve and Bucky are platonic best friends? I think the fuck not, Marvel screenplay writers and movie directors. And you can find fanvids that while they are perhaps not actually consciously made thinking "I am creating an act of textual criticism" are in fact doing that thing to support the argument that Steve and Bucky are in love and fucking.
For any song or poem or movie or novel it is possible to argue multiple and sometimes opposing subtextual meanings and while it is sometimes interesting to know what the author thought they were doing I ultimately find it less interesting than hearing from the people who then interact with the media outside of any relationship with the author.
There is no single meaning for any piece of media. You are not a Gnostic authority who has discovered the One True Message. Media belongs to everyone who interacts with it through the act of reading/listening/watching and therefore interpreting it through the lens of their own lives and experience and knowledge.
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kapitaali · 4 years ago
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The New Hippies
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THE NEW HIPPIES: The work abolition movement, anarcho-primitivism and biodynamism as ways to combat climate change
Essay for the course LOGS13b The Strategic Role of Responsibility in Business by Teppo Saari
Introduction
The course LOGS13b The Strategic Role of Responsibility in Business had the students think about and discuss the various ethical dimensions in business, moral dilemmas and choices to be made that a decision maker in business world come across every day.
This essay is motivated by our case study with a headline ’Investors urge European companies to include climate risks in accounts’ (Financial Times 2020). In this essay I will explore values and ethical principles that I see as the solutions to our case study and climate change in general. This is not to say that I could stand up for them in business world. Ironically, my main thread and leitmotif here is the untransformational nature of capitalism and business world. Thus, standing up to the values I will discuss here means doing less business, not more.
This essay is divided in three parts: problem – reaction – solution. These three parts will talk about the chosen values and ethical principles. They are by no means new: pragmatism – The Golden Rule – parsimony & naturality. They just seem to be in conflict with our modern way of living.
Thinking pragmatically about the problem
As part of our course assignment, we got to read about a group of investors managing trillions of dollars worth of assets who urged European companies to include climate risks in their accounts (Financial Times 2020). Scientists have warned us for decades, that pumping extreme amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere will result in melting of the polar ice caps (Mitchell 1989; Jones & Henderson-Sellers 1990), which will raise the sea level and drown some of the coastal cities (Peters & Darling 1985). Finally, capitalists are acting responsibly!
It would seem that capitalists actually cared for the planet and not just their profits. Or would it? Maybe they are scared of losing their future profits, and this kind of media escapade would bring back public trust and confidence in the system. It would be a sign that capitalists can act transparently, openly, accountably, respecting others (O’Leary 1993). But is changing the allocation in your investment portfolio really a sign of empathy? Would there be other ways to better express empathy in business?
Shareholders are interested in the risk their assets are facing, not necessarily in the welfare of the people. Investors acting virtuously can be just virtue-signaling or pleasing other elements in the society to take off media pressure and negative PR from them in a conformist way (Collinson 2003). Maybe they are just greenwashing their own conscience. Why is George Soros’ climate buzz astroturfing industrial complex (Morningstar 2019a) financing Greta Thunberg to do public PR campaigns targeting the youth? Maybe there is money in it. It is unlikely that it would have been dubbed ”A 100 trillion dollar storytelling campaign” without some particularly good reasons (Morningstar 2019b).
But there is something else in it too than just money: power and control. The person who gets to limit choices gets to dictate what kind of choices remain. And if a person has that kind of foreknowledge, then that person can be two steps ahead of us. And being two steps ahead of us means securing future profits. Including climate risks in accounts will imply controls. Controls are imposed on accounts, but ultimately it will mean controls imposed on people and their daily activities. Workers are the ones who will naturally suffer the consequences of management decisions. In this case management decisions are ’urged’ externally, from the owners’ part. After all, it is the corporations that are producing most of the climate change effects, in terms of pollution and greenhouse gases (Griffin 2017). People doing their jobs, working everyday, producing things but also at the same time producing climate effects. I would still love to hear politicians use more terms such as ”pollution” when talking about these issues. For it is unclear how reducing carbon emissions will reduce overall pollution that is also a contributor in the destruction of our environment (see eg. Bodo & Gimah 2020; Oelofse et al. 2007). Issues like microplastics, holes in the ozone layer, biodiversity loss, acid rains and soil degradation need to be talked about just as much, if not more so.
The problem is simple: too much economic activity producing too much climate impact, mostly pollution and greenhouse gases. Solving the Grand Challenge (Konstantinou & Muller 2020) of our time is harder if we wish to keep the fabric of our society intact. There’s a clear need for dialogue among stakeholders (Gardiner 1996), but how is it a dialogue if people are not actually listened to and don’t get to say how things will progress in society? What I am proposing is a meme-like solution that has the greater impact the more people adopt it. My solution is: stop working. Produce less. Stop supporting systems and mechanisms that produce climate effects. Stop supporting the mechanisms that don’t listen to your voice. Disconnect from the Matrix. Working a dayjob is one of these mechanisms. Although many people have realized the benefits of working from home (Kost 2020), a lot more needs to be done. Remote work is not available to everyone. Not all jobs are remote work.
Bob Black (2021) in his texts has advocated for the total and complete abolition of work. Stopping working naturally does not mean stopping doing things, it will merely mean stopping working a job, a concept which itself is a social construct. Black’s theses are simple but powerful. Working is the source of all ills, it is not compatible with ludic life (allthemore so in 2021), it is forced labour and compulsory production, it is replete with indignities called ”discipline”: ”surveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching -in and -out, etc”. Black does not only describe the negative ontological aspects of working, he goes deeper and invokes many familiar names of Greek philosophers:
Both Plato and Xenophon attribute to Socrates and obviously share with him an awareness of the destructive effects of work on the worker as a citizen and a human being. Herodotus identified contempt for work as an attribute of the classical Greeks at the zenith of their culture. To take only one Roman example, Cicero said that “whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.” His candor is now rare, but contemporary primitive societies which we are wont to look down upon have provided spokesmen who have enlightened Western anthropologists. The Kapauku of West Irian, according to Posposil, have a conception of balance in life and accordingly work only every other day, the day of rest designed “to regain the lost power and health.” Our ancestors, even as late as the eighteenth century when they were far along the path to our present predicament, at least were aware of what we have forgotten, the underside of industrialization. Their religious devotion to “St. Monday” — thus establishing a de facto five-day week 150–200 years before its legal consecration — was the despair of the earliest factory owners. They took a long time in submitting to the tyranny of the bell, predecessor of the time clock. In fact it was necessary for a generation or two to replace adult males with women accustomed to obedience and children who could be molded to fit industrial needs. Even the exploited peasants of the ancient regime wrested substantial time back from their landlord’s work. According to Lafargue, a fourth of the French peasants’ calendar was devoted to Sundays and holidays, and Chayanov’s figures from villages in Czarist Russia — hardly a progressive society — likewise show a fourth or fifth of peasants’ days devoted to repose. Controlling for productivity, we are obviously far behind these backward societies. The exploited muzhiks would wonder why any of us are working at all. So should we.
Black notes that only ”a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages”. In similar vein, the late but great David Graeber saw the futility of most work. Calling this phenomenon ’bullshit jobs’ (Graeber 2018), Graeber sets out to describe what many of us are familiar with: we do useless things to make ourselves feel useful. Because modern society legitimizes itself with having people ’do’ stuff and not ’be’ a certain person. How can you (objectively) measure being? You can’t. But doing, that you can measure. This measurement then qualifies you as a member of society: productive, doing your part (an idiom that is a perfect example how you can’t escape the doing paradigm on a societal level). Graeber’s definition of a bullshit job is: if the position were eliminated, it would make no discernible difference in the world. In many cases these types of jobs are found to be supporting some kind of buraucracy, reporting, assisting decision makers, etc. Our current Matrix has its ways of creating more of these with the clever marketing concept called ’value’ (Petrescu 2019). They don’t make a difference, they create value.
Why would you want to overload the world by doing things that you nor most everyone else see no point in? Why would you waste your time doing pointless things? The easy answer to these questions is ’subsistence’. But there are many other ways to live on this planet. If you keep doing what the society tells you is acceptable or convenient, you will shut your eyes from the problem at hand: climate change.
Legitimizing anarcho-naturism as a solution with The Golden Rule
Our responsibility is to ourselves. We can not properly be held responsible for anything else. Yet the system of representational democracy does just this, holds us collectively responsible for many things, borrows money from creditors with our names on the loan collectively and then makes us pay for the loans. The way this Matrix works is yet another reason to disconnect from it. Or at least stop supporting it as much as possible.
The Golden Rule states: ”Treat others as you want to be treated” (Gensler 2013). From the perspective of climate change, it can first seem curious why you would quit your job and head for the hills. After all, we are facing a global issue here. There are people in need for help and I am running away? But I would see it as a way to get around our predicament. The Golden Rule can be also interpreted in Kantian way as the categorical imperative, particularly its first formulation: ”Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. This formulation is somewhat more proactive in nature. It talks about acting, doing things, and doing things is what is appreciated in our society, even when your goal is to exit the society.
Why exit the society? Is it enough to just quit your job and find something else to do, something that is more fulfilling and not bullshit? What an excellent question. Long before the advent of smart phones and 5G and DNA-vaccines, this question had been brought up to the table. In the 1800s, people were realizing the negative impact industrialization was having on society at large. People were rooted out from their family homes in the countryside, forced to move to a large city to look for a job, crammed into small apartments with dozens of other workers, coerced into working long and hard days at factories to make a living. The lowly misery of these people attracted the attention of a certain Friedrich Engels, who felt their situation was not adequate to make up for the suffering they had gone through. He meticulously described the working conditions of the English working class in his ”The Condition of the Working Class in England” (2003 [1845]), originally published in German. Sociology as a science was established by Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim to study these changes. Slowly but surely, the influx of people into cities started to cause issues, something that mayors and other municipal representatives had to start taking care of. Planning and zoning were given a lot more attention, since the earlier modus operandi of old European cities had been rather laissez faire (Sutcliffe 1980).
Against this backdrop of massive societal change, people started to question the changes and their direction. Are we really nothing more than slaves, just working in a different environment? Slavery might not be the right word or context here. Many people believe to be free, govern themselves and their property, and yet their daily actions and options to choose from seem to be eerily limited. They have only so many choices, most of which seem somehow related to running their errands. A more appropriate term, with all its connotations, here would be the Greek word ananke, ”force, constraint, necessity”. Like a force of nature, progress towards modernity necessitates that people leave their family homes and go work in large factories, compulsively manufacturing endless amounts of products, some of which are necessary, others merely decorations, and some just pointless.
Many names in 19th century New England worked upon a vision for the future society at a time when unprecedented changes were taking place and the standard of living was rising faster than ever before. The Transcendental Club was a group of New England authors, philosophers, socialists, politicians and intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism, the first notable American intellectual movement. Transcendentalist believe in the inherent goodness of people and nature, but that society and its institutions — particularly organized religion and political parties — corrupt the purity of the individual. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2003; Sacks 2003.) Transcendentalism is a unique mix of European Romanticism, German (particularly Kantian) philosophy, and American Christianity. The impact of this movement can still be seen in the many flavours of American anarchist and radical Christian movements.
Out of the ranks of Transcendentalists rose a couple of names that can be viewed as the progenitors of modern anarcho-primitivism and natur(al)ist anarchy. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the central figure of the Transcendental Club, who together with Henry David Thoreau critiqued the contemporary society for its ”unthinking conformity” and advocated for “an original relation to the universe” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2003). Emerson’s Nature (2009 [1836]) poetically embellishes our view of the natural world, while Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1995 [1854]) is a call for civil disobedience and revolt against the modern world. Another influential natur(al)ist writer has been Leo Tolstoi whose name is frequently mentioned by anarchists. Tolstoi himself was a Christian and pacifist, and his writings have inspired Christian anarcho-pacifism that views the state as ”immoral and unsupportable because of its connection with military power” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2017).
Before the Transcendentalist movement, Europe experienced similar trend in philosophy with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s natural philosophy. Rousseau touched upon many subjects: freedom, free will, authority, nature, morality, societal inequality, representation and government. Like Transcendentalists, Rousseau held a belief that human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society. ”Rousseau clearly states that morality is not a natural feature of human life, so in whatever sense it is that human beings are good by nature, it is not the moral sense that the casual reader would ordinarily assume” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2010). Rousseau’s work is relevant to many of the social movements that currently fight against COVID restrictions, vaccination agenda, building of 5G antenna towers next to where people live, polluting the environment, systemic poverty and general disconnection from the natural world. Rousseau, although regarded as a philosopher, saw philosophy itself negatively, and to him philosophers were ”the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, as apologists for various forms of tyranny, and as playing a role in the alienation of the modern individual from humanity’s natural impulse to compassion” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2010).
Rousseau’s days did not see capitalism as we see it now. It was later Marx (influenced by Hegel, who in turn was influenced by Rousseau) that put together a treatise that considers the societal change we have seen ever since from industrialism and circulation of capital. But Rousseau’s thoughts about the social contract (1968 [1762]), “child-centered” education (Rousseau 2010), and inequality (Graeber & Wengrow 2018; Rousseau 2008) are still relevant today. Especially when we are faced with many societal forces that are contradictory in nature, each of them pushing us into certain direction, demanding our attention, wanting us to change our beliefs about that one particular aspect that connects with other aspects and forms the Matrix of our reality.
We are once again facing a similar situation as the people did back in the days of the first industrial revolution. Now the industrial revolution has reached its fourth cycle, unimaginatively called ”Industry 4.0” (Marr 2018; WEF 2021), where machines are starting to become autonomous and talk to each other. I used to think technology was cool, and went to work for Google. But at Google I learned that technology is not cool, after all. Not until technology becomes completely open source, it will be used by massive conglomerates to build autonomous weapons systems (Cassella 2018; Johnson 2018) and the industry will keep paying ethics researchers to keep writing arguments for them (Charters 2020). Even though I could work for an industry that, given the current trajectory, will be among the biggest producers of CO 2 in the future Vidal 2017), the idea that I would work for an industry that sees weaponizing their products as the grandest idea of mankind’s future is still gnawing.
Because, it is all just business (Huesemann & Huesemann 2011):
One of the functions of critical science is to create awareness of the underlying values, and the political and financial interests which are currently determining the course of science and technology in industrialized society. This exposure of the value-laden character of science and technology is done with the goal of emancipating both people and the environment from domination and exploitation by powerful interests. The ultimate objective is to redirect science and technology to support both ordinary people and the environment, instead of causing suffering through oppression and exploitation by dominant elites. Furthermore, by exposing the myth of the value-neutrality of science and technology, critical science attempts to awaken working scientists and engineers to the social, political, and ethical implications of their work, making it impossible or, at the very least, uncomfortable for them to ignore the wider context and corresponding responsibilities of their professional activities.
It all seems to be connected with state imperialism and the military-industrial(-intelligence) complex. Lenin’s statement (2008 [1916]) equating capitalism with imperialism still prevails this day: ”imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists”. The conditions change, but the war machine keeps on churning (soon with autonomous weapons!), with wealthy but crooky investors financing projects that are even more dystopian (Byrne 2013). We may remember what president Dwight D. Eisenhower said about the military- industrial complex (NPR 2011):
”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
It is exactly these kinds of doomsday scenarios that inspire people like Theodore John ”The Unabomber” Kaczynski. Kaczynski, famous for sending mail bombs to various university professors around the US, holds a doctoral degree in mathematics. (Wikipedia 2021.) Kaczynski was bullied as a child, and it has been suggested that he was part of an MKULTRA experiment in college (The Week 2017). Kaczynski did not send his bombs haphazardly. He wrote long theoretical pieces to justify his actions, most of them being thematically anarcho-primitivist. In 1995, after sending several bombs to university personnel and business executives in 1978-1995, he said to ”desist from terrorism” if he got his text published in media outlets.
In his Industrial Society and Its Future (Kaczynski 1995), a 35 thousand word essay published in The Washington Post, which the FBI gave the name ”Unabomber manifesto”, Kaczynski attributes many our societal ills to ”leftism”. In the manifesto Kaczynski details how two psychological tendencies, “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”, form the basis of ”the psychology of modern leftism”. Feelings of inferiority are taken to mean the whole spectrum of negative feelings about self: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, guilt, self-hatred etc. Oversocialization is the process of socialization taken to extreme levels:
24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.
25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a nonmoral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people.
Kaczynski goes on to describe how this oversocialization causes a person to feel guilt and shame for their actions, especially in the context of performing as society expects them to perform. He writes how this concept of oversocialization is used to determine ”the direction of modern leftism”. Further on, Kaczynski describes how modern man needs goals to strive for, to not run the risk of developing serious psychological problems. This goalsetting activity he denotes ”power process”. But these goals can be real or artificial. Setting a goal is “surrogate activity” if the person devotes much time and energy to attaining it, does not attain it, and still feels seriously deprived. It is just a goal for goalsetting’s sake, the unfulfilled other side of the coin of power process. Kaczynski then connects these concepts to the many societal ills (excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe) by describing how modern society, with all its marketing and advertising creating artificial needs, disrupts the power process, mankind’s search for itself and meaning-making in life. He sees social hierarchies and the need to climb up them, the ”keeping up with the Joneses”, as surrogate activity.
”Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society’s requirements: welfare leeches, youth gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds”. This gradual increase, then, the system tries to ’solve’ by using propaganda, ”to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them”. In regards to technology, the ”bad” parts cannot be separated from the ”good”, and thus we are constantly facing the dilemma between technology and freedom, new technology being introduced all the time, and new regulations being introduced to curb the negative effects of the technology and at the same time stripping us of our freedoms. Kaczynski concludes, that revolution is easier than reforming the system.
Later, Kaczynski released another of his anti-technological theses. In Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015) Kaczynski presents a ”comprehensive historical analysis explaining the futility of social control and the catastrophic influence of technological growth on human social and planetary ecological systems.” This time Kaczynski talks more about how to start an anti-tech movement and how to keep it going. The text reads like a mathemathical proof of sorts, it presents ”rules”, ”propositions” and ”postulates” why the technological system will destroy itself (eg. Russell’s Paradox resulting in chaos in a highly complex, tightly coupled system) and why a successful anti-tech movement needs clear goals to avoid some of the errors revolutionary movements have made, which are elaborated in the book. Violence is not offered as a solution in the book, it is seen more like a mishap of sorts, a suboptimal outcome of a revolutionary movement. But it talks about power. Kaczynski got to learn the hard way how the feeling of powerlessness breeds desperate actions that would have been otherwise unnecessary. The book also talks about climate change and related issues, from a mathematic systems theoretical point of view.
Institutions that are in the business of social engineering and behavioral modification, such as the Tavistock Institute in the UK or the CIA in the US, would have us believe that Kaczynski’s actions were ”defences against anxiety” that can be seen as ”withdrawal, informal organization, reactive individualism and scapegoating” (Hills et al. 2020), and to some extent this is true. But Kaczynski interprets the actions of these institutions stemming from technological progress in our society Kaczynski 1995):
117. In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people.
This uniformity of a large hierarchical modern society then forces its will on people (Kaczynski 1995):
119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is not the fault of capitalism and it is not the fault of socialism. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity.
We have once again encountered ananke, necessity. Now, if we consider ourselves as the lonely decision makers in this society, what could we do? We can try and fight fire with fire, but such fights end up producing only pain and casualties (Taylor 2013). Anarcho-naturists and anarcho-pacifists understand that (unnecessary) fighting in most cases does not work. Sometimes fighting is warranted, but it is beyond the scope of this essay to examine those cases. Sending bombs to people’s offices may get you some attention and even make somebody quote your manifesto in an essay, but it is not solving the issue, something which the Unabomber addressed in his later texts. If working a job indirectly supports the military-industrial complex NewScientist 2011), what good does it do? The military-industrial complex is the biggest source of pollution in the world (The Conversation 2019; Acedo 2015), detaching yourself from this complex is imperative. Even if they would manage to convince us with their psyops that they are willing to change and that climate change is an important issue (Ahmed 2014), it would still be the biggest polluter that is controlling the conversation. It has even been suggested that they are behind this climate buzz (Light 2014). Is your job doing that much good in society that it outweighs the cons? If I need to act responsibly, but cannot fight the system nor conform, while at the same time keeping in mind our looming climate disaster, the only reasonable and peaceful response is to exit the system altogether.
Biodynamism’s naturality and parsimony
Owning responsibility and transforming the world implies taking some kind of action. We have already seen how feelings of powerlessness and lack of self-worth can lead to destructive actions. But there are an unlimited amount of actions that can be taken, that are not based in feelings of powerlessness but empowerment.
Exiting society might sound like a lonely project, and some people might rightfully feel lonely when all their peers still want to live in the illusion. But it does not have to be so. A lot of soul-searching needs to be done, and that is usually done in privacy, focusing upon oneself, but beyond that there are ways how to go off-grid and drastically reduce your carbon emissions.
One of the key concepts that will be our guiding principle here is degrowth (Paulson 2017), which ties into values such as organicity, naturality and parsimony. We will want to have less production of artificial things, and more organic and natural things. By artificial we mean long supply chains and many phases of production with modern high technology that produce a large amount of climate effects. By natural we mean using primitive technology, mostly all-natural or recycled materials and something that can be produced even alone, given enough time. Primitive technology does not exclude electricity, it just means producing it differently.
Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and theosophist, the founder of Anthroposophy and a great reformer of science in matters of spirit, started the first intentional form of organic farming, known as biodynamic agriculture, after he had given a series of lectures on the topic in the last year of his life. (Paull 2011.) Steiner had many spiritual experiences during his life, which lead him to start the Anthroposophy movement. He wanted to apply the scientific process into spiritual realm, inquiring it as it would be as real as our material world. Inquiring this spiritual world helped him access knowledge he claims to not have been access otherwise (Steiner 2011 [1918]). Anthroposophist self-inquiry can be seen as Foucauldian ”technology of the self” that ”provide an intervention mechanism on the part of active subjects, injecting an element of contingency to everyday encounters and alleviating the determinist effect that technologies of power would have otherwise” (Skinner 2012).
Steiner’s thoughts about agriculture are still relevant (Paull 2011):
In 1924 Steiner commented that, “Nowadays people simply think that a certain amount of nitrogen is needed for plant growth, and they imagine it makes no difference how it’s prepared or where it comes from” Steiner, 1924b, pp.9-10). He made the point that, “In the course of this materialistic age of ours, we’ve lost the knowledge of what it takes to continue to care for the natural world” (Steiner, 1924b, p.10).
Our current system seems to think exactly in this way, that if we just compensate our wreaked havoc by investing in ’green’ technology (Elegant 2019), it will all be ok and rainbows in the sky. But it will not. No one is even double checking if the companies that say that they are now carbon neutral actually proactively try to make our world greener. They can just buy a renewable energy company and say now we are green and do nothing else. Some would argue that going ’carbon neutral’ like these massive corporations are doing it is not the way to do it: “’green’ infrastructures are creating conflict and ecological degradation and are the material expression of climate catastrophe” (Dunlap 2020).
Steinerian biodynamism ”encompasses practices of composting, mixed farming systems with use of animal manures, crop rotations, care for animal welfare, looking at the farm as an organism/entity and local distribution systems, all of which contribute toward the protection of the environment, safeguard biodiversity and improve livelihoods of farmers” (Turinek et al. 2009). While modern biodynamic studies focus on agroecological factors such as nutrient cycles, soil characteristics, and nutritional quality (Reganold 1995; Droogers & Bouma 1996), Steiner himself was quite metaphysical in his lectures and paid attention to details such as kingdoms of nature, planetary influences, biorhythms, incarnated and environmental ethers, and the Zodiac (Steiner 2004 [1958]; Nastati 2009).
By shifting to more natural ways of living, we may help Gaia (Lovelock 1991; Singh 2007) heal in many other ways than just reduce our climate emissions. By realizing that we are actually living on the skin of a fairly large and complex organism, we will stop treating it as a plain source of material resources, and start bonding with it, tune into its consciousness and establish two-way communication, just like the natives have done in America.
The way of the natives ought to be our current way, since there is no reason why the natives could not guard the lands they have before. One of the greatest fears of people speaking for private property rights is that managing resources collectively would mean exhausting them. There is no Tragedy of Commons. Just because you are materially poor does not mean that you are any less competent steward of land and wealth, as proposed by Elinor Oström (2009). Acting for climate is not an investment allocation problem. The natives need their land back so that they could do their best to fight the destruction of our ecosystem. The Outokumpu supply chain in Brazilian rainforests, Elon Musk and Bolivian lithium mines, Papua New Guinea indigenous conflict, mining in Lapland in traditional Sami herding areas, Australian uranium mining in indigenous lands… these are all pointless conflicts.
There are also many other ways of staying grounded and in touch with nature, while at the same time cultivating sovereignty. Many of these things revolve around feeding the most immediate community next to you. They reflect ideas such as mutuality, solidarity, organicity, and naturality. Permaculture is a term coined by David Holmgren to describe ”an approach to land management and philosophy that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole systems thinking. It uses these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience” (Wikipedia: Permaculture 2021). Permaculture has many branches including ecological design, ecological engineering, regenerative design, environmental design, and construction. It also includes integrated water resources management that develops sustainable architecture, and regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems (Holmgren Desing Services 2007).
Earthships are 100% sustainable homes that are both energy efficient and modern. Earthsips are built with natural and repurposed (recycled) materials, they heat and cool themselves without electric heat, they use solar energy to power electric appliances, they collect all of their water from rain and snowmelt, they re-use their sewage water to fertilize plants, and there’s an indoor garden that grows food in vertical growing spaces (Reynolds 2021). Ecovillages are a ”human-scale, full-featured settlement, in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future” (Gilman & Gilman 1991).
Clifford Harper had a set of drawings imagining an alternative in his book Radical Technology (Harper & Boyle 1976). In them, he shows many of the ideas that were themes in the German garden city movement in the beginning of 20th century (Bollerey & Hartmann 1980), such as collectivised gardens, autonomous housing estates, and community workshops. The book introduces us ’radical technology’, which spans basically all of the concepts we have discussed up to this point: organic agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, vegetarianism, hydroponics, soft energy, insulation, low-cost housing, tree houses, shanty houses, ’folk-built’ houses using traditional methods, houses built from subsoil, self-built houses, housing associations, solar dwellings, domestic paper-making, carpentry, scrap reclamation, printing, community & pirate radio, collectivised gardens, collective workshops for clothesmaking, shoe repair, pottery, household decoration and repairs, autonomous housing estates, autonomous rural villages, etc.
These concepts, while they seem simple, are still empowering, they are meant to let people enjoy they fruits of their labour. Last but certainly not least is the concept that all of these things fall under, alternative (or, appropriate) technology. Alternative technologies are those ”which offer genuine alternatives to the large-scale, complex, centralized, high-energy life forms which dominate the modern age” (Winner 1979). Alternative technologies seek to solve the problems technocentric thinking has caused in society: technical scale and economic concentration, level of complexity or simplicity best suited to technical operations of various kinds, division of labor and its alleged necessity, social and technical hierarchy as it relates to the design of technological systems, and self-sufficiency and interdependence regarding the lives of individuals and communities. Many of these solutions have been developed in Africa, where problems have had to be solved, but resources have been scarce in actuality.
Appropriate technology holds great promise in ways that are currently underappreciated in our society (Huesemann & Huesemann 2011):
As has been mentioned repeatedly throughout this book, the primary goal of technology in our current economic system is to increase material affluence and to generate profits for the wealthy by controlling and exploiting both people and the environment. In view of the reality of interconnectedness, this is neither environmentally sustainable nor socially desirable. In this chapter we discuss how to design technologies which reflect the values of environmental sustainability and social appropriateness. We also emphasize the importance of heeding the precautionary principle in order to prevent unintended consequences, as well as the need for participatory design in order to ensure greater democratic control of technology. Finally, as a specific example of an environmentally sustainable and socially appropriate technology, we discuss the positive contribution of local, organic, small-scale agriculture.
Conclusion
This essay has presented the reader with ramblings of a person who is familiar with Critical Theory, who would like to build a stronger connection to nature, and who is having a major identity crisis in life. I have expressed, albeit feebly, my will to emancipate myself, to exit the Matrix. In Finnish they would say ”Sota ei yhtä miestä kaipaa”, and in George S. Patton’s words this expression would be ”Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.”
In this essay I seem to have extensively quoted the Unabomber manifesto. This is not to say that Kaczynski had exceptionally good motives or justifications for his actions. He killed many people and is in prison now. Kaczynski’s ideas are not unique. Quoting his manifesto serves merely to prove one point: he is the product of his environment. Mental illness is no longer a taboo and things have progressed somewhat since Kaczynski’s days. It could be argued that Kaczynski’s writings were just projection of his own feelings of shame and guilt he had gone through. But his mental condition, should he be diagnosed with one (Amador & Reshmi 2000), does not invalidate the things he’s written. In many ways his writings are now more relevant than ever. When we have tech billionaires talking about inserting neuralinks into your brain and downloading thoughts straight from the headquarters, we can really see the manifesto dots connecting.
I wish it would have been just the mental load caused by a ’surrogate activity’ of keeping up with the Joneses that was the cause of all this, but no, it’s the real deal now. When we have corporate executives and federal commissions defending autonomous weapons systems and saying building such systems is a ’moral imperative’ (Gershgorn 2021), you know we have reached peak civilization. It’s all downhill from now on. All participation in society will support this moral imperative, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. While many would get back to nature for reasons of convenience, such as better health, Rousseau himself would have gotten back to nature ”to feel God in nature” (LaFreniere 1990). It is this kind of humanist transcendentalism (not transhumanism) that we will need again, to realize what we have done to our planet, to realize what needs to be done to abolish the war machine consuming it, and to make ourselves whole again.
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coffeebased · 5 years ago
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I won’t be the first or last person to marvel at how quickly February whizzed past, especially in comparison to January’s gauntlet. To be completely fair to February, it had the ongoing COVID-19 international epidemic, as well as the ABS-CBN shutdown crisis, the anti-terrorism bill, the reminder that historical revisionism re: the Marcos dictatorship is alive and well… and those were just the actual headlines.
I must digress before I spiral.
I read 12 books in February, half of which were newly released in this month. I’ve split my post up into three parts like I did last month: one-shots, parts of series, and re-reads. It seems to be working well for me.
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  Prosper’s Demon by K.J. Parker
The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out—he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.
Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.
After I read Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City last year, I knew that I wanted more by Parker. I considered delving into his back catalog, which I still will probably do, but I saw that he was releasing a new book in Feb 2020, so I jumped on that first. Prosper’s is exactly up my alley, what with the discussions of morality and the greater good with demons, and quite a bit of engineering. I’d admired the voice of the main character in Sixteen because he was dry and very caught up in doing what needed to be done, and the main character has the same appealing values. It’s a short read, but it sticks in the teeth and fills the belly.
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  Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher
Stephen’s god died on the longest day of the year…
Three years later, Stephen is a broken paladin, living only for the chance to be useful before he dies. But all that changes when he encounters a fugitive named Grace in an alley and witnesses an assassination attempt gone wrong. Now the pair must navigate a web of treachery, beset on all sides by spies and poisoners, while a cryptic killer stalks one step behind…
Kingfisher, also known as Ursula Vernon, tends to write capable and damaged characters falling in with each other and foiling plots. She also tends to write paladins very well, which is a personal delight. I always enjoy a Kingfisher story, because the characters do the sensible thing more often than not, and she deals with trauma very compassionately, from what I suspect is a personal viewpoint. Her books are also usually very funny, very disturbing, and no-nonsense, scratching that Terry Pratchett Witch itch when I miss him very much. Grace is along the same lines, with a good solid HEA that leaves everyone, including the reader, satisfied.
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  Kindred, a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy and illustrated by John Jennings
I lost an arm on my last trip home.
Home is a new house with a loving husband in 1970s California that suddenly transformed in to the frightening world of the antebellum South.
Dana, a young black writer, can’t explain how she is transported across time and space to a plantation in Maryland. But she does quickly understand why: to deal with the troubles of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder–and her progenitor.
Her survival, her very existence, depends on it.
This searing graphic-novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction classic is a powerfully moving, unflinching look at the violent disturbing effects of slavery on the people it chained together, both black and white–and made kindred in the deepest sense of the word.
Kindred, the novel, is on my Next 20s list. I had meant to read it before I read the GN, but picked up the graphic novel based on a friend’s recommendation. The graphic novel is searingly painful, and I enjoyed reading it, but there are parts of it that feel slightly disjointed. I’m not sure if it’s because of the time travel, or if it’s an adaptation problem. It made me want to read the novel immediately, which is what I am reading right now. I don’t think that I’ll be able to properly synthesise my thoughts about this book until I’ve read the original.
    Mirror: The Mountain and The Nest by Emma Rios and Hwei Lim
A mysterious asteroid hosts a collection of strange creatures – man-animal hybrids, mythological creatures made flesh, guardian spirits, cursed shadows – and the humans who brought them to life. But this strange society exists in an uneasy truce, in the aftermath of uprisings seeking freedom and acceptance, that have only ended in tragedy. As the ambitious, the desperate and the hopeful inhabitants of the asteroid struggle to decide their shared fate, a force greater than either animal or human seems to be silently watching the conflict, waiting for either side to finally answer the question: what is worthy of being human?
Recommended to me by a new friend who’d heard I was into sci-fi and graphic novels, who absolutely hit the nail on the head with this rec. The art is beautiful, dreamy, and layered, and it keeps you tied to the story as the authors build what is a magnificent construction in your head. The authors do some really lovely things with timeskips that I have no idea how to talk about without spoiling anything, and I only regret that we weren’t able to linger through the second volume. I’m don’t know why there isn’t more of Mirror, but I do appreciate how they tied everything up as well as they could in two volumes. Looking forward to more like this in the future.
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  Heartstopper: Volume Three by Alice Oseman
In this volume we’ll see the Heartstopper gang go on a school trip to Paris! Not only are Nick and Charlie navigating a new city, but also telling more people about their relationship AND learning more about the challenges each other are facing in private…
Meanwhile Tao and Elle will face their feelings for each other, Tara and Darcy share more about their relationship origin story, and the teachers supervising the trip seem… rather close…?
You can read all of Heartstopper and its future updates here. Heartstopper is a lovely slice of life comic, PG13 at best, that really takes me back to my own mid-teens. The story is centered around the developing relationship of two young boys, Charlie and Nick, and it really deals with it respectfully. It tackles a lot of teen issues without being too preachy about it, which is probably the least inspiring thing I could have written about it, and integrates it deftly into the story. The art style is adorable and really complements the sweet story. This volume, just released this month, revolves around a class trip to Paris, and there are some shenanigans that you’ll have to read for yourself.
  Sixty Six Book 2 by Russell Molina and Mikey Marchan
Kuwento ni Celestino Cabal. Kabebertdey niya lang. Mayroon siyang natanggap na regalo na ngayo’y unti-unti niyang binubuksan. Ika nga ng matatanda, “Huli man daw at magaling, maihahabol din.”
The story of Celestino Cabal. His birthday has just passed. He received a gift that he now gets to open, bit by bit. As the old saying goes, “Better late than never.”
This is the synopsis of the first book. There isn’t an official synopsis for the second book online, and I hesitate to write my own. Sixty Six Book 2 was released during February Komiket, and since I had been waiting for it for a few years, I had to go to the event even though everyone’s been iffy about going into crowded spaces due to COVID-19. I was excited to read this but unfortunately, I don’t think it capitalised on the foundation set in Book 1. The artist was different, and I admired their work on a technical level, as well as their humorous use of WASAK as a sound effect. I don’t know if there’ll be a third book, but the author has made themselves a little leeway for that possibility at the end of this volume.
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  Thank You, Jeeves, Jeeves #5 by P.G. Wodehouse
The odds are stacked against Chuffy when he falls head over heels for American heiress Pauline Stoker. Who better to help him win her over but Jeeves, the perfect gentleman’s gentleman. But when Bertie, Pauline’s ex-fiance finds himself caught up in the fray, much to his consternation, even Jeeves struggles to get Chuffy his fairy-tale ending.
This book was in my next 20s! So I’m accomplishing one of my 2020 reading goals, yay! But hot damn there is some racist language in this book. Every time I was finally sinking into the story boom! Racist language! And I know that it was because of the time it was published, like I know that academically, but oof. That aside, the story is solid. It’s a comedy of manners AND errors with Jeeves ex machina, as per usual, but this is the first full Jeeves novel I’ve read, the rest were short story collections, and it was good to see the characters take more space. It certainly made the comedic payoff a lot stronger.
But oof.
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  Die Vol. 2: Split the Party by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, and Clayton Cowles
No one can escape DIE until everyone agrees to go home. Or rather, no one can escape DIE until everyone who is alive agrees to go home. The second arc of the commercial and critical hit of bleakly romantic fantasy fiction starts to reveal the secrets of the world, and our heroes’ pasts. Yes, they can’t escape DIE. They also can’t escape themselves. Collects issues #6-10 of DIE
CHARACTERISATION. There’s a lot more breathing space in this newly-released volume of Die and I live for that! The first volume was a lot of the characters running from one place to the next and we, as readers, were being given the sense of setting. But volume two, you can feel Gillen just finally branching out and hitting us with their joined histories. I want to see more of how these older players will be dealing with the actions of their teenage selves, and I think the third volume will really show what the comic’s capable of. I’m really looking forward to that.
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  False Value, Rivers of London #8 by Ben Aaronovitch
Peter Grant is facing fatherhood, and an uncertain future, with equal amounts of panic and enthusiasm. Rather than sit around, he takes a job with émigré Silicon Valley tech genius Terrence Skinner’s brand new London start up – the Serious Cybernetics Company.
Drawn into the orbit of Old Street’s famous ‘silicon roundabout’, Peter must learn how to blend in with people who are both civilians and geekier than he is. Compared to his last job, Peter thinks it should be a doddle. But magic is not finished with Mama Grant’s favourite son.
Because Terrence Skinner has a secret hidden in the bowels of the SCC. A technology that stretches back to Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, and forward to the future of artificial intelligence. A secret that is just as magical as it technological – and just as dangerous.
The last Rivers of London book finished the first major arc of the series. It was a succession of explosions contained in a novel. So I was wondering what kind of tone Aaronovitch would be setting with False Value. Would it be all action, immediately? A filler story? I just wanted more Peter Grant. It could literally be an entire novel of Peter going to America to visit the Smithsonian museums and I would be on that.
False Value is a slow story but does a lot of table setting for the next arc. While the case of the book feels very small and contained, you can see that they’re being pulled into the larger world of magic. I did have a hard time with the first few chapters, but I’m not sure if this is a problem of the book, or because I sailed straight into it after the Jeeves book I had been reading.
I finished the book too quickly and now I have to wait for the next one. Bother.
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    The Thief, The Queen’s Thief #1 by Megan Whalen Turner
The king’s scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king’s prison. The magus is interested only in the thief’s abilities.
What Gen is interested in is anyone’s guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.
It’s March now, so my friends and I are starting on the second book in our read-along of The Queen’s Thief. I wrote last month that I was worried about how my friends would take the series, but really I needn’t have thought about it at all. The book stands well on its own, and my friends all got into the story. I hesitate to say that they loved it because there are four more books in the series, but they were definitely into it. Some of them had a hard time sticking to the two chapters a day schedule because Turner’s prose really just pulls you in.
I still love Gen, and I’m excited to relive his character growth.
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  The Farthest Shore, The Earthsea Cycle #3
Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea. As the world and its wizards are losing their magic, Ged — powerful Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord — embarks on a sailing journey with highborn young prince, Arren. They travel far beyond the realm of death to discover the cause of these evil disturbances and to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.
I’m reading Tehanu, the last book of the Cycle, now, and I’m scared of ending the series. It’s given me so much joy and peace these past few months. I slipped right into it after finishing The Farthest Shore, remembering that they overlap slightly, and that’s done a lot to soften the blow of the third book. Re-reading Farthest at this age, when things have been losing their colour and flavour, where I have to fight harder to keep myself honest and keep myself ‘good’, hits differently. I’ve been recovering, and the bitterness that Ged has over the loss of his mastery is too real to me. Of course, it’s a good book, but it hurts.
All right, that’s it for now. I’ll probably be popping in to post a little about Komiket and some other things I’ve been reading next week or so, so please keep a weather eye out for that next post!
February Reading Round-Up I won't be the first or last person to marvel at how quickly February whizzed past, especially in comparison to January's gauntlet.
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scifigeneration · 5 years ago
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What if we ran society not based on the market but on evidence?
by Spyros Samothrakis
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Will it soon be possible to draw a blueprint of our future society? Viktoriya/Shutterstock.com
Following the successful Brexit campaign, Dominic Cummings – the then campaign director of Vote Leave – published a series of blog posts describing how the campaign was run and what his plans were for a successful civil service. The last of these posts was released on June 26 2019, just before he became the special advisor to the current prime minister, Boris Johnson. The idea this post resurrects is a promise in public policy that has died since the 1970s – the use of hard scientific (knowledge-based) methods to guide policy choices.
In what looks like to be Cumming’s version of public policy, an elite group of administrators trained in the disciplines of pure thought – mathematicians and philosophers – would run society based on evidence. Collected data points would be used to create a machine simulation (often called the model). Policy makers would then be able to test the simulations with hypothetical policies (“what if drugs were legal?”) and, according to the results, adjust public policy.
A complete cybernetic version of economic policy was advocated, but not practised, in the Soviet Union by the likes of nobel-prize winning economist Leonid Kantorovich and mathematician and computer scientist Victor Glushkov. They hypothesised the possibility of taking things a step further – getting the machines to identify what actions to take to reach optimal outcomes. That is, policy makers would need to decide what they are looking to achieve (“maximise the production of butter”) and machines would come up with the the policy of how to allocate resources to achieve this.
Outside the Soviet Union, this kind of thinking was actually enacted with Project Cybersyn, an effort put together by management consultant Stafford Beer in the 1970s for the government of Chile under the then president, Salvador Allende to help manage the economy (the project was dismantled following the coup by General Augusto Pinochet).
Though Cybersyn was never fully operational, it was rushed into use so as to help break one of the biggest anti-government strikes, which was instigated by a right-wing union. Beer’s vision is far more decentralised and democratic than its Soviet counterpart, but it still falls within the same line of thought.
As you will have gauged by now, the cybernetic vision tends to be securely located on the left of the political spectrum.
The market
Sitting on the opposite side of the cybernetic vision, one will find the fathers of modern liberal economics, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. Their arguments, taken more broadly, consider the cybernetic dream impossible from a computational perspective, either due to not being able to model the world efficiently, or not having appropriate signals to evaluate the quality of solutions.
They argued that another mechanism that exists inside the real world (in their case, the market) needs to do the heavy lifting, by providing a signal – which, in the case of goods and services, is prices. For them, a good policy is not one that lays out what steps need to be taken towards a solution, but focuses more on setting a “game” of sorts with the right incentives and punishments. This basically just leaves room for one real public policy which can be summed up as “privatise everything, create a competitive arena, let the market sort the problems out”.
Leaving all real policy decisions to the market has been a very traditional (post-1980s at least) right-wing idea. This raises the question as to why someone advising the current UK government is even discussing concepts that are not purely market-driven. In his latest post, Cummings laments the inability of the British state to do serious modelling. This seems a superb contradiction – shouldn’t the market be able to solve everything?
It is worth mentioning that conceptions of planning methods differ a lot across individual thinkers – there are even advocates of socialist markets on the left. Though there is a clear left-right divide, in terms of actual party politics it seems that the idea of some planning has been partially accepted (somewhat grudgingly) by the historical right for some time.
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Market signals. Tony Stock/Shutterstock.com
AI and public policy
So, does the progress in AI and (the concurrent) massive increase in computational power and availability of data allow us to circumvent the liberal arguments? I would say yes, but only partially. One can easily envision a solution where the latest AI methods are used to affect policy directly. It’s quite plausible that one could plan and re-plan millions of products and services on a daily basis, find the optimal set of actions to help tackle social ills and generally push for an overall brighter future.
This isn’t, however, trivial – delivering causal models to drive simulations is extremely hard, requires significant expertise, and can only be done in a limited capacity. On top of this, current AI methods lack a concept of “common sense”. A model created with a specific task in mind might be able to optimise for said task, but is prone to generating unwanted side effects. For example, an AI-optimised factory that aims to optimise production will do so without care for the environment.
But the mother of all problems in AI is that a lot of the more modern probabilistic planning algorithms are not stable without excessive human tuning, due to a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article. In practice, this means that outside straightforward, traditional planning (such as linear programming), getting value from modern AI requires significant human expertise. At the moment this sits mostly within private AI research labs and some university departments. Any serious attempt to create a cybernetic state would need both significant human resources to be moved towards the project and some further algorithmic breakthroughs.
Unfortunately, current AI deployments in public policy do not adhere to the ideas above. It seems that AI is mostly deployed only for simple predictive tasks (“will person X will commit crime Y in the future?”). For this reason, public bodies are finding this technology increasingly useless. But technological innovations almost always experience a series of failures before they find their pace, so hopefully AI will eventually be implemented properly.
Back to Brexit
What does Brexit have to do with any of this? My understanding is that Brexit (according to Cummings) is needed in order to help disrupt the civil service enough so as to allow it to be rebuilt. It would then be possible to deploy serious AI public policy solutions (which is another name for scientific planning). So the British state would be deploying projects that can model the future, with machines or civil servants probing the model for golden paths.
What is truly surprising, in my view, is that such proposals don’t come from the broad political left (though there are, of course, extremely interesting takes on the topic of scientific planning) – but from the right. This might imply the use of AI to hasten the free-market agenda by asking questions like “what is the best propaganda to produce in order to get everyone on board with increasing state pension age to 95, privatising every public service and getting people to accept a ban on immigration?”.
All this AI talk might be a red herring – the more traditional right-wing Brexit party policies are simply an intensification of a deregulation agenda, though again the signals are mixed. Alternatively, it might be the case that there is a split between One Nation Conservatives and free marketeers across the board.
It’s hard to imagine the EU allowing for direct planning (it goes against most of the principles of the internal market), but it’s equally hard to envision post-Brexit Britain doing the same. Most institutions see the market as the only legitimate form of organisation.
But some cracks in the consensus seem to be appearing. Perhaps we may end up in a position where actively planning using AI towards a “good society” is actively pursued.
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About The Author:
Spyros Samothrakis is a Lecturer in Analytics and Data Science at the University of Essex
This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 
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moiraineswife · 7 years ago
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Autistic!Jasnah: Masterpost
Okaaay, so, as you might have guessed from the title, this post is a long list of reasons Jasnah Kholin is autistic af.  
The short version: Jasnah is autistic because I, a Known Autism, say so. Have a nice day.
The long version (format): A long series of chronological quotes that all follow this pattern: Quote. *Insert ramble about why this is an Autistic Thing* *Possible and probable further ramble about why I’m emotional about that.
That’s literally it, people. Buckle up, I’ve picked through all three books (yes all three) to compose this post for y’all. It’s not going to be short.
To business:
The Way of Kings:
 Jasnah glanced at Shallan, noting her, then returned to her conversation.
Introducing Jasnah ‘I don’t have time for social niceties I’m busy’ Kholin. From the first interaction she’s...Bad at interacting. Iconic.
“Then we shall do an evaluation. Answer truthfully and do not exaggerate, as I will soon discover your lies. Feign no false modesty, either. I haven’t the patience for a simperer.”
Jasnah is both blunt, direct, and honest in her speech as she is in her expectations from others. She doesn’t have the energy to deal with manipulation/lying/tarting up the truth to make it more socially acceptable bc she is a busy autistic lady with shit to do. (really, though, what she’s literally demanding here is the first rule of the autistic’s guide to easy conversation. Clear. Simple. To the point. To frills, no fuss.)
 Jasnah didn’t argue further, and Shallan could see from her eyes that it was of no consequence to her if the king risked his life. The same apparently went for Shallan, for Jasnah didn’t order her away.
People do what people want to do and Jasnah doesn’t waste any time pretending she cares/that it matters to her for the sake of appearances. Again, this woman has a vendetta against typical social niceties and I love it.
“Now?” the king said, cradling his granddaughter. “But we are going to have a feast—”
“I appreciate the offer,” Jasnah said, “but I find myself with an abundance of everything but time.”
Do I need to point out the lack of social niceties again or are y’all sensing a pattern at this point? *King lovingly embraces his darling granddaughter that Jasnah just saved and orders a feast prepared in her honour* Jasnah: ‘Thanks but no I’m too busy to socialise.’
Jasnah was also a rationalist, a woman with the audacity to deny the existence of the Almighty himself based on her own reasoning. Jasnah would appreciate strength, but only if it was shaped by logic.
Jasnah feelings>>>>>>logic. This is a fairly common theme, of Jasnah being ruled less by emotions/sentiment/societal pressures/expectations and much more by logic/her own reasoning. She has her own way of looking at the world, her own rules for how it works, and she won’t be swayed by anyone else’s opinions on how she should feel/behave.
Jasnah turned to look out of the balcony into the dark space of the Veil. “I know what people say of me. I should hope that I am not as harsh as some say, though a woman could have far worse than a reputation for sternness. It can serve one well.”
Jasnah not being very self-aware in how people actually perceive her is also an autistic thing. Shallan notes several times that Jasnah is actually nowhere near as harsh/stern as she’s reputed to me, and, more importantly, she’s nowhere near as harsh/stern as she perceives herself to be. She also fails to note that Shallan actually enjoys the work/the challenge. This also implies that she takes what people say about her at face value and doesn’t have the necessary social skills to refute them.
Shallan tried to judge Jasnah’s mood, but the older woman’s emotions were impossible to read. 
Again, this is a fairly common autistic trait. We struggle to read other people’s body language, but they often struggle to read ours as well. A part of this is probably Jasnah deliberately cultivating this kind of persona, but even so, she’s too unsure of how she comes across to have completely mastered this.
Jasnah carefully removed its contents, neatly lining up the brushes, pencils, pens, jar of lacquer, ink, and solvent. She placed the stacks of paper, the notebooks, and the finished pictures in a line.
Oh look, it’s one of the world’s biggest Autism Stereotypes (which I’m totally guilty of too): lining all the things up neatly, and making them Orderly.
At least with Jasnah one knew where one stood.
Jasnah of the straightforward, blunt honesty and ‘what you see is what you get’ strikes again.
When Jasnah was deeply immersed in one of her projects, she often ignored all else.
And here we see the Autistic Jasnah in her natural habitat: hyperfixating on her special interest.
The rest is under the cut for length! 
Jasnah had elegant handwriting, of course—Jasnah rarely did anything without taking the time to perfect it. 
Jasnah not doing anything unless it’s done Properly and Right according to her? Also Jasnah being indifferent towards things she hasn’t put any time into perfecting (such as drawing).
“I always forgive curiosity, Your Majesty,” Jasnah said. “It strikes me as one of the most genuine of emotions.”
Again, Jasnah encouraging/reacting positively to genuine/honest emotions because she doesn’t Understand the whole guile/lying/not being honest thing because honestly what is the point?
“Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality—which answers only to my heart—is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.”
Honestly, just, this whole thing. For a start it’s a massive transgression of the Vorin social norms/expectations, especially for Jasnah as a prominent public figure as the sister to the king. For another it’s that internal rules thing again. Jasnah’s world operates according to Jasnah’s principles and Jasnah’s understanding of it, no-one else’s.
But Shallan had caught a handful of occasions, mostly when Jasnah had been distracted, and had apparently forgotten she wasn’t alone.
*Jasnah ignores social expectations so hard she literally forgets other people exist in the world* Also, again, the hyperfixation on special interest.
“And yet, those men are off the street. The people of this city are that much safer. The issue that Taravangian has been so worried about has been solved, and no more theatergoers will fall to those thugs. How many lives did I just save?”
“I know how many you just took,” Shallan said.
Jasnah has a habit of doing this, this very cold, calculated, logical and pragmatic way of seeing the world as well as morality. Shallan considers the lives taken, the emotional aspect of the moral dilemma, the horror of murder. Jasnah just sees it almost as statistics, as four lives taken to save many more. Shallan also focuses on the cold hard facts of ‘I know how many people you just killed’ while Jasnah is engaged in weighing up the probability of how many she just saved. (In theory, the thugs might never have attacked anyone again, so Jasnah might not have saved anyone by her actions, which I think is what Shallan is getting at here. But that’s just...A moot point as far as Jasnah is concerned)
This is also an example of her black and white thinking. There’s more net good in what she did than there is net bad. That’s where her questioning/reasoning stops because it makes sense to her. Shallan exists in the grey area, but I don’t think Jasnah even sees it in cases like this.
But it wasn’t the act itself so much as the cold callousness of it that bothered her.
This is an interesting one, and something I’ll talk about more a bit later, probably, but the way Jasnah comes across vs how she actually is. I totally get why Shallan views what she did as cold and callous, and in a way I suppose it was. It was fully planned and fully intentional. But I think for her it’s this kind of...separation between logic and sentiment. I think Jasnah feels very strongly and very deeply, but she doesn’t often display that to other people, and I also think she believes there’s a time and a place for that. Also, black and white thinking again. It comes off as cold to Shallan, but for Jasnah I think it feels more like common sense.
 “You only needed to kill one of them.”
“No, I didn’t,” Jasnah said.
“Why? They would have been too frightened to do something like that again.”
“You don’t know that. I sincerely wanted those men gone. A careless barmaid walking home the wrong way cannot protect herself, but I can. And I will.”
Again, black and white thinking. (I’m also surprised this moment doesn’t generate more Discourse...Or maybe it does, I’ve just avoided it, either way) This is both a case for Jasnah not being able to predict people’s responses/behaviours, and also black and white thinking/internal rules at play. As far as she’s concerned those men are criminals. She has no assurances that they won’t hurt anyone else again. They’re already criminals, and there’s no chance for redemption or leeway, here. She’s made up her mind. They’re all criminals. They’re all dangerous. They all die.
Jasnah closed her eyes again, handing the brush toward Shallan. “Fifty strokes tonight, Shallan. It has been a fatiguing day.”
A)- routines the ‘tonight’ and the familiarity of this implies it’s something that happens every night. And the ‘fifty strokes’ is either another routine related thing, or an internal rule thing. Either way. Also this is probably a stim thing, since she’s using it to relax/de-stress.
Jasnah tapped her desktop with a fingernail.
Stimming.
“Brightness Jasnah does NOT like people entering her room. The maids have been told not to clean in there.” The king had promised that his maids were very carefully chosen, and there had never been issues of theft, but Jasnah still insisted that none enter her bedchamber.
Definitely, definitely, definitely an autistic thing. Issues with people entering Your Spaces or touching Your Things is a big autistic thing. (especially because the assurances about thieving don’t change her mind) Also the emphasis on not as in ‘this is a thing one absolutely does not do unless one wishes to die’.
“She’d believe me,” Shallan said. “She thinks she’s far more demanding than she is. Or…well, she is demanding. I just don’t mind as much as she thinks I do.”
Again, Jasnah taking what people say of her/how they say they perceive her at face value, and also lack of self-awareness in how people actually respond to her.
Jasnah regarded Shallan, face stiff, impassive. “I have been told that my tutelage is demanding, perhaps harsh. This is one reason why I often refuse to take wards.”
“I apologize for my weakness, Brightness,” Shallan said, looking down.
Jasnah seemed displeased. “I did not mean to suggest fault in you, child. I was attempting the opposite. Unfortunately I’m…unaccustomed to such behavior.”
Two things here: one, I’m like, 99% certain that Jasnah, who has been camped out at the hospital all this time waiting for Shallan to wake up is feeling anything but ‘impassive’ at this moment, in which case this is an example of her body language/facial expressions not matching up properly to her actual internal feelings, which is fairly common. And two: Jasnah’s apology being taken for a rebuttal and her obvious displeasure at it coming across that way when she literally intended the opposite (been there).
Also her general air of uncertainty/discomfort in this setting, which is one that’s obviously social/emotional. Also the fact that she pins her poor apology on lack of practice/familiarity with these kinds of interactions when, in theory, these kinds of things should come naturally to people. So like, lil bit of hinting/implication of scripting social things her, which I think her initial words reek of as well, as she’s said similar things before.
“You make it sound as if you were waiting out there.”
Jasnah didn’t reply.
“But your research!”
“Can be done in the hospital waiting chamber.” She hesitated. “It has been somewhat difficult for me to focus these last few days.”
“Jasnah! That’s quite nearly HUMAN of you!”
Again, a few things here, firstly that Jasnah is othered in a way by Shallan (and this isn’t the only time this happens, either) because of her lack of emotional response/social stuff. Secondly the fact that she’s clearly uncomfortable/struggles with this kind of conversation – the hesitation, the lack of responses are very much at odds with her usual composure and the way she has an answer for literally everything.
Words of Radiance:
She was all too glad to be leaving the stuffy room, which stank of too many perfumes mingling.
Prologue and we’ve already got Jasnah experiencing sensory issues in a crowded room with lots of perfume. What a way to kick things off.
“Many people consider that sort of thing enjoyable.”
“Many people, unfortunately, are idiots.”
Her father smiled. “Is it terribly difficult for you?” he asked softly. “Living with the rest of us, suffering our average wits and simple thoughts? Is it lonely to be so singular in your brilliance, Jasnah?”
A)- Jasnah obviously not enjoying social events/parties (she literally spends all of this one...contemplating the assassination she’s plotting. Like. Mood.)
B)- Gavilar’s comment is...Strangely sad, I think?? And perhaps a bit too on point. (This is very much just my reading of things but)...I don’t know. I see Jasnah trying to make a little quip/a joke here and it being misinterpreted because of her tone. And then, again, there’s that idea of othering that came up at the end of TWOK.
But I think the ‘is it lonely to be so singular in your brilliance?’ I think that....A huge part of that ‘brilliance’ comes from a mixture of Jasnah’s autistic traits: her special interest/her focus in them/her dedication to pursuing them...but also that sense of being other. Of not fitting in. The rest of “us” she doesn’t belong, she doesn’t fit.
And I think this idea of their ‘simple thoughts’ as opposed to Jasnah’s brilliant ones is a little like what we see with Renarin in Oathbringer, where Adolin explains that he isn’t trying to be lofty and brilliant, people sometimes just have difficulty following him. And I think this is what’s happening with Jasnah here (and in other places, she frequently talks about the difficulty she has in teaching, and how her methods are too intense and involved)
And also I think that....The saddest bit about this is that I think she was....Trying to joke here? Trying to fit in with those ordinary people, ‘the rest of us’, and just making a sarcastic joke on the back of her father’s comment about most people enjoying parties and she just sort of ‘well, most people are idiots aren’t they?’ And that’s what prompts this little moment here. So even when she’s trying to fit, and trying to belong, she’s still cast as the outcast, and misunderstood, and othered and it Hurts Me.
 I, she thought, need to write this experience down.
She would do so, then analyze and consider. Later. 
She literally topples into another world, effectively, and is just like ‘hm, I should make some notes on this and analyse them’. And. Yep. This is how she processes the world. By making sense of it, by treating everything according to Jasnah’s rules: it gets written down. It gets analysed. It gets understood. Bam.
Jasnah ignored the eyes of the sailors. It wasn’t that she didn’t notice men. Jasnah noticed everything and everyone. She simply didn’t seem to care, one way or another, how men perceived her.
Jasnah ‘I don’t have time for social expectations’ Kholin strikes again. Jasnah also just doesn’t care how anyone perceives her, social norms and expectations can go fuck themselves .
Jasnah grimaced at the thought. Shallan was always surprised to see visible emotion from her. Emotion was something relatable, something human—and Shallan’s mental image of Jasnah Kholin was of someone almost divine.
Again, the othering idea, as well as visible emotion being startling, as she’s typically so withdrawn/closed off/difficult to read. Yes friend, u guessed it, this is Peak Autism. Also the specific word in it being ‘relatable’ again marks that difference between Jasnah and...Everyone else. Again she’s different, again she doesn’t quite fit.
Jasnah relaxed visibly. “Yes, well, it did seem a workable solution. I had wondered, however, if you’d be offended.”
“Why on the winds would I be offended?”
“Because of the restriction of freedom implicit in a marriage,” Jasnah said. 
Again, Jasnah misreading things/not being able to anticipate how people are going to react to different things. Also her view of marriage as ‘restricting’ says a lot about how she sees it/probably relationships in general.
Power is an illusion of perception.”
Shallan frowned.
“Don’t mistake me,” Jasnah continued. “Some kinds of power are real—power to command armies, power to Soulcast. These come into play far less often than you would think. On an individual basis, in most interactions, this thing we call power—authority—exists only as it is perceived.
“You say I have wealth. This is true, but you have also seen that I do not often use it. You say I have authority as the sister of a king. I do. And yet, the men of this ship would treat me exactly the same way if I were a beggar who had convinced them I was the sister to a king. In that case, my authority is not a real thing. It is mere vapors—an illusion. I can create that illusion for them, as can you.”
This right here is Jasnah explaining passing, without ever using the word ‘passing’. This is how Jasnah sees social interactions. They’re all illusions, they’re all, effectively, lies. They aren’t real to her. How people perceive others isn’t something that she can fit into her box of neat facts and logic. It’s this ever changing, insubstantial thing, ‘mere vapours’. And though she’s talking here about power and authority, the basic principle applies to literally every single social interaction ever. Aka: the secret behind how Jasnah Kholin (somehow) managed to convince ppl she’s allistic.
The orders of knights were a construct, just as all society is a construct, used by men to define and explain. Not every man who wields a spear is a soldier, and not every woman who makes bread is a baker. And yet weapons, or baking, become the hallmarks of certain professions.”
Actual footage of Jasnah Kholin going to war against social constructs and their flimsiness.
It was a picture of Jasnah, drawn by Shallan herself. Shallan had given it to the woman after being accepted as her ward. She’d assumed Jasnah had thrown it away—the woman had little fondness for visual arts, which she considered a frivolity.
Instead, she’d kept it here with her most precious things. 
This is one of my favourite Underrated Jasnah Moments tbh because it says so much about her with such a simple gesture. We’ve established from the past book and a half that Jasnah is pretty bad when it comes to social interactions, and she’s even worse when it comes to displaying her emotions. But she’s not emotionless. She, personally, doesn’t see the value in visual arts, and hasn’t dedicated any time to it herself. Yet she keeps the gift that Shallan gives her. She understands how important this is to Shallan, and she quite literally treasures the art that Shallan gives her, and keeps it with her precious research/notes (and, like, Symbolism with her keeping her sentimental gifts and logic fuelled research in the same place/with the same level of importance/value, except one is hidden, and one is displayed)
And, like, Shall literally assumes Jasnah had just thrown away the picture?? And instead she’s got it kept safe with her most treasured possessions? Like??? The TL;DR version of this point is that Jasnah is horrendous at displaying her emotions/showing people how she feels about them/what they mean to her, but she feels things, goddammit. And now so am I.
What of this Sadeas? she thought, flipping to a page in the notebook. It listed him as conniving and dangerous, but noted that both he and his wife were sharp of wit. A man of intelligence might listen to Shallan’s arguments and understand them.
Aladar was listed as another highprince that Jasnah respected. Powerful, known for his brilliant political maneuvers. He was also fond of games of chance. Perhaps he would risk an expedition to find Urithiru, if Shallan highlighted the potential riches to be found.
Hatham was listed as a man of delicate politics and careful planning. Another potential ally. Jasnah didn’t think much of Thanadal, Bethab, or Sebarial. The first she called oily, the second a dullard, and the third outrageously rude.
She studied them and their motivations for some time. 
Right. Now. Correct my autistic ass if I’m wrong, here, but I’m like 89% certain that ‘taking notes on the basic personalities/literally studying the people around you and making notes on the way they behave so you can actually understand them’ is not a typical allistic thing to do.
Shallan turned back toward him. That pride in his voice didn’t at all match what Jasnah had written of the man.
Jasnah can literally predict the oncoming apocalypse by the power of research, can she pin down some basic Facts about the people she’s observing around her? Nope. I wonder why.
“She wouldn’t let me be a mother to her, Dalinar,” Navani said, staring into the distance. “Do you know that? It was almost like . . . like once Jasnah climbed into adolescence, she no longer needed a mother. I would try to get close to her, and there was this coldness, like even being near me reminded her that she had once been a child. What happened to my little girl, so full of questions?”
Two things: one, this is probably (agonisingly) relating to whatever trauma Jasnah experienced as a child and I’ve got Painful Emotions about it. Secondly, Jasnah being very mature for her age/shucking Navani’s influence because it wasn’t what she thought she needed/wanted is, like, not exactly the most tactful/self-aware/socially conscious thing in the entire universe.
“You’re still human,” Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani’s knee. “We can’t all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah.”
Navani smiled. “She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn’t she?”
Oh look, it’s canon low!empathy Jasnah: from the words of her own mother no less.
(Also, small note here, as a low!empathy autistic myself: I really love the way Jasnah is written because it complements my own understanding of empathy which is...Fairly complicated. Jasnah isn’t just like none and done here. It’s not that she just doesn’t feel empathy so she doesn’t care? She isn’t characterised as this brutal, unfeeling, robotic ice queen. There are a lot of nuances and complexities here as to how she relates to those around her and I love it.
She obviously loves her family very deeply, and is driven to protect and help them (in a very practical, logical way I might add. Which is typically how I relate to care/love as well. You want a shoulder to cry on? I’m going to sit there awkwardly, pat you on the head, and hope you stop soon. There’s a practical solution to your current problem? Heaven and earth will be moved to achieve it.) She keeps Shallan’s drawing, even treasures it. And I think that she obviously....Feels her lack of feeling (if that makes sense)
See: the hospital scene with Shallan where she attempts to apologise. She’s...Uncomfortable with the emotional aspect of things, and she’s completely wrong about Shallan’s intentions, and actually her actions as well. There’s a block there with the empathy...But that’s obviously something that doesn’t exactly...Sit right with her? She’s quite self-depreciating in that scene, actually, and it’s clear (to me, anyway) that there’s the sense of her being aware that there’s something...Missing. Something that...Doesn’t quite line up. Something that makes her different and stops her relating to people perhaps in the way that she wants to.
Anyway: don’t equate lack of empathy with lack of love: a novel by Brandon Sanderson. God bless. Intentional or not, this is one of the most relatable low!empathy characters I’ve ever read and I’m here for it.
“Chana knows, I wondered sometimes how I raised that child without strangling her. By age six, she was pointing out my logical fallacies as I tried to get her to go to bed on time.”
Shallan grinned. “I always just assumed she was born in her thirties.”
“Oh, she was. It just took thirty-some years for her body to catch up.” Navani smiled. “I won’t take this from you, but neither should I allow you to attempt a project so important on your own. I would be part. Figuring out the puzzles that captivated her . . . it will be like having her again. My little Jasnah, insufferable and wonderful.”
Again, a few things here: this concept of autistic children being far more mature/behaving like ‘little adults’ is actually pretty common. Also the puzzle-solving thing is just. Relatable.
Oathbringer
“Brightness?” Shallan said. “But … Shardblades aren’t fabrials. They’re spren, transformed by the bond.”
“As are fabrials, after a manner of speaking,” Jasnah said. “You do know how they’re made, don’t you?”
“Only vaguely,” Shallan said. This was how their reunion went? A lecture? Fitting.
Jasnah is believed dead for months on end, reunites with Shallan after who knows how long: immediately starts infodumping to her. Shallan:.......’Figured.’
People were always surprised to see emotion from Jasnah, but Dalinar considered that unfair. She did smile—she merely reserved the expression for when it was most genuine.
Jasnah back at it with the only bothering with emotions when they’re genuine. (Also Dalinar getting all indignant about people not understanding Jasnah/mischaracterising her is my favourite)
“They will try,” Jasnah said, “to define you by something you are not. Don’t let them. I can be a scholar, a woman, a historian, a Radiant. People will still try to classify me by the thing that makes me an outsider. They want, ironically, the thing I don’t do or believe to be the prime marker of my identity. I have always rejected that, and will continue to do so.”
Obviously she’s talking about her heresy here, but with a tiny smidge of tweaking it works well for her being autistic, too. She will always be a little bit different, always not fit, always be defined by being an outsider.
“In the face of such an atrocity, I would consider the sacrifice of one or more Heralds to be a small price.”
“Storms!” Kaladin said, standing up straight. “Have you no sympathy?”
“I have plenty, bridgeman. Fortunately, I temper it with logic. Perhaps you should consider acquiring some at a future date.”
Again on the feelings tempered by logic, thing. (Also Kaladin/Jasnah is interesting because they’re basically....polar opposites, and I enjoy the dynamic. But that’s for another day.)
“If you wish, Captain,” Jasnah snapped, “I can get you some mink kits to cuddle while the adults plan. None of us want to talk about this, but that does not make it any less inevitable.”
“I’d love that,” Kaladin responded. “In turn, I’ll get you some eels to cuddle. You’ll feel right at home.”
Jasnah, curiously, smiled. 
Jasnah: approves of frank, honest comments. Even if they’re mildly insulting. As long as they’re genuine.
They didn’t talk tactics too specifically; that was a masculine art, and Dalinar would want his highprinces and generals to discuss the battlefields. Still, Shallan didn’t fail to notice the tactical terms Jasnah used now and then.
In things like this, Shallan had difficulty understanding the woman. In some ways, Jasnah seemed fiercely masculine. She studied whatever she pleased, and she talked tactics as easily as she talked poetry. She could be aggressive, even cold—Shallan had seen her straight-up execute thieves who had tried to rob her. Beyond that … well, it probably was best not to speculate on things with no meaning, but people did talk. Jasnah had turned down every suitor for her hand, including some very attractive and influential men. People wondered. Was she perhaps simply not interested?
All of this should have resulted in a person who was decidedly unfeminine. Yet Jasnah wore the finest makeup, and wore it well, with shadowed eyes and bright red lips. She kept her safehand covered, and preferred intricate and fetching styles of braids from her hairdresser. Her writings and her mind made her the very model of Vorin femininity.
Jasnah just not caring about social/cultural gender norms. Jasnah does what Jasnah wants. But also, gender roles, and tbh the entire concept of gender, is a social construct, it’s something a lot of autistic folks struggle with. (Also non-binary/agender!Jasnah just, as a fun little aside) 
 “Surely,” she said softly, “if Jasnah had known that I’d just confronted a deep insecurity of mine, she’d have shown some empathy. Right?”
“Jasnah?” Pattern asked. “I do not think you are paying attention, Shallan. She is not very empathetic.”
A)- Jasnah probably didn’t notice and B)- low!empathy Jasnah again.
Jasnah rubbed her temples. “Storms. This is why I never take wards.”
“Because they give you so much trouble.”
“Because I’m bad at it. I have scientific evidence of that fact, and you are but the latest experiment.” Jasnah shooed her away, rubbing her temples.
‘I have scientific evidence of the fact I’m not good at mentoring/teaching/with people in general’ actual quote from Jasnah herself. Also, just, the language here? The mentoring/taking of wards is an intimate social relationship in Vorin culture, but the way Jasnah speaks of it she uses words like ‘scientific evidence’ and ‘experiment’ which says a lot about how she views relationships in general tbh. 
Also, I think her self-consciousness is something that’s interesting to note. This isn’t the first time she questions her teaching abilities/methods, in fact it’s one of her biggest and most obvious insecurities, it’s something that she’s very aware of. She knows she’s bad at this, and it bothers her. 
“Ivory, you think all humans are unstable.”
“Not you,” he said, lifting his chin. “You are like a spren. You think by facts. You change not on simple whims. You are as you are.”
She gave him a flat stare.
“Mostly,” he added. “Mostly. But it is, Jasnah. Compared to other humans, you are practically a stone!”
[…]
“Jasnah?” Ivory asked. “Am I … in error?”
“I am not so much a stone as you think, Ivory. Sometimes I wish I were.”
And again with Jasnah being factual-based when it comes to her decisions ,and emotions based when it comes to her motivations. Jasnah Kholin feels things so deeply I will physically fight you over this matter. Also, given what we’ve seen, it definitely seems as though Ivory/Inkspren/Jasnah’s ideals are concerned with logic/reason/rightness, and that being a defining aspect of her/her order is interesting in the context of her being autistic. 
Renarin still lurked at the far side of the room, mumbling to himself. Or perhaps to his spren? She absently read his lips.
Since, as far as we know, Jasnah isn’t deaf/hoh, the lip reading is something she acquired for other purposes. Probably as part of her paranoia/wish to protect her family, but it’d also probably help with auditory processing disorder. Which is basically where your ears hear words fine, but your brain scrambles them up and fails to make sense of them. Also a lot of autistic folks (self included) tend to watch people’s mouths instead of their eyes (bc eye contact Sucks) and I’m not saying I can lip-read, but if I could it’d definitely make life easier.
But when, before this, had she last heard him laugh?
“Maybe,” Navani said, “we should encourage him to take a break and go out with the bridgemen for the evening.”
“I’d rather keep him here,” Jasnah said, flipping through her pages. “His powers need additional study.”
Navani would talk to Renarin anyway and encourage him to go out more with the men. There was no arguing with Jasnah, any more than there was arguing with a boulder. You just stepped to the side and went around.
Jasnah being completely and utterly oblivious to the hidden agenda/undercurrent to Navani’s thoughts which is ‘Renarin is comfortable with the men/is enjoying himself with them, maybe we should encourage that?’ and just responds to her mother’s words and nothing else. The boulder analogy makes me laugh (but also recalls what Ivory said about her being ‘stone’ which is, again, a kind of othering, a setting apart of the ‘normal’ humans, based on how she emotes/deals with things/processes fact.
I’m sorry, Mother. I’ve been dealing with a lot of lesser ardents today. My didactic side might have inflated.”
“You have a didactic side? Dear, you hate teaching.”
“Which explains my mood, I should think. I—”
A lot of autistic folk find it difficult to teach people, largely because, if they explain something in a certain way, away in which they understand, they have trouble rephrasing it/altering it to make other people understand it as well. Can definitely, definitely see Jasnah struggling with this.
Jasnah preferred to work alone, which was odd, considering how good she was at getting people to do what she wanted. 
This shocks me to my very core so it does.
Next to her, Jasnah stood with arms wrapped around herself, eyes red. Navani reached toward her, but Jasnah pulled away from the others and stalked off toward the palace proper.
Oh look, it’s touch!averse Jasnah. (she’s really not very touchy feely at all) Also Jasnah not knowing how to deal with her emotions/grief and withdrawing from people around her. Also I’m calling the arms wrapped around herself as a pressure stim. Fight me.
Jasnah met his eyes, chewing her lip as she’d always done as a child.
Jasnah having anxious!stims (that she probably forced herself to unlearn)
“Forget I asked,” Dalinar said, sharing a look with Navani and Jasnah. Navani smiled fondly at what was probably a huge social misstep, but he suspected Jasnah agreed with him. She’d probably have seized the banks and used them to fund the war.
Jasnah ‘fuck your social niceties, I have a war to win’ Kholin.
Suddenly they were young again. He was a trembling child, weeping on her shoulder for a father who didn’t seem to be able to feel love. Little Renarin, always so solemn. Always misunderstood, laughed at and condemned by people who said similar things about Jasnah behind her back.
Mm, who else was ‘solemn’ as a child? Maybe ‘correcting logical fallacies at age six’ ‘no longer needed a mother when she reached adolescence’ Jasnah. And, like, ‘people mock Renarin for his autistic traits...Jasnah is also mocked for having these exact same traits.’ It’s basically canon, people.
Jasnah fell to her knees, then pulled Renarin into an embrace. He broke down crying, like he had as a boy, burying his head in her shoulder.
Also, the fact that Renarin instinctively went to Jasnah for comfort, not Navani, who eagerly mothers literally everyone around her, or anyone else, he went to Jasnah ‘empathy of a corpse, made of literal stone’ Kholin for comfort and support tells me something. It tells me that these two had an understanding. That Jasnah understood Renarin, and that Renarin understood Jasnah, and that there perhaps a reason for that that has to do with their shared brain weirdness.
This is also the first time, as I recall, that Jasnah responds with physical affection. (And this doesn’t undermine what I said about her being touch!averse, she is, but a)- she initiates this contact and b)- it’s with someone she’s clearly comfortable with this level of contact) 
Jasnah glanced over her shoulder at the gathering army. “And perhaps … this is one time when a lecture isn’t advisable. With all my complaints about not wanting wards, you’d think I would be able to resist instructing people at inopportune times. Keep moving.”
I have said it before and I will say it again, Jasnah infodumping to an exhausted Shallan in the middle of a fucking battlefield is the most autistic thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life.
These had always been right. Until today—until they had proclaimed that Jasnah Kholin’s love would fail.
And, to summarise it all neatly, Jasnah Kholin, empathy of a corpse, heart of a boulder, whose love in the end never failed her. *wipes tear* my beautiful autistic queen is good and full of love and feeling but just being really bad at showing it to people. We do not deserve her.
TL;DR: Jasnah is autistic af. It’s basically canon. Fight me.
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gretamclaughlin · 4 years ago
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The Waste Dilemma
This week’s materials speak about the prevalence of chemicals in our environment due to agriculture (like last week’s blog), manufacturing, and other human activities, as well as how people aggravate natural hazards. The readings and videos further talk about the production of solid waste and methods of handling it.
In our world, there are biological hazards, chemical hazards, and issues that come about as a result of lifestyle choices. Biological hazards include viruses and diseases, which we can see with the COVID-19 pandemic. These dangers often worsen due to humans. Today, a prominent health issue is the growing antibiotic resistance of diseases. In addition, antibiotics used with livestock are linked to greater antibiotic resistance in humans. The warming climate will also cause diseases to spread to new areas. Unfortunately, those living in poverty and in less developed countries suffer more from biological hazards. Developing nations do not have the resources to treat or prevent the spread of diseases, and the issue persists with impoverished people in the U.S. According to the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, COVID-19 disproportionately kills those living in poverty (Juergen et al. 2021). This can partially be attributed to poor health care, more frontline workers, and decreased ability to self-isolate. Today, India faces the rapid spread of COVID-19 without access to vaccines. If climate change and capitalism continue, this inequality will only grow.
Chemical hazards also threaten human health and have been linked to cancer, fetal developmental issues, and other illnesses and defects. Unfortunately, our bodies are full of trace amounts of toxins, and links between chemical hazards and illnesses, like those mentioned above, suggest they are dangerous. A study published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research indicates the connection between metallic pollutants and neurodegeneration, specifically speaking about autism spectrum disorder (Kaur et al. 2021, 8989). These impurities “play a significant role in altering the basic neuronal pathways and degenerating the neural processes,” and “environmental factors might activate and aggravate the genetic mutations responsible for the neuronal alterations” (Kaur et al. 2021, 8991).
Those who generate these pollutants and those who profit off medical treatments lead various health organizations. “Cancer, Inc.” paints a bleak picture of breast cancer awareness initiatives. For example, AstraZeneca, which manufactures fungicides, herbicides, and carcinogenic pollutants, leads efforts. The American Cancer Society has a history of opposing policies that would protect people from carcinogens in favor of those that protect corporations. I am usually not one to believe conspiracies, but this just seems like the actual state of corporate America and the health care system. The fact that people are profiting from cancer is disgraceful. Polluters place the burden on their victims (encouraging mammograms, breast checks, etc.). Although breast cancer awareness initiatives have helped many people, it is disheartening to think about how much more could be done if these companies focused their efforts on reducing the chemicals they release.
Some companies have taken initiative when it comes to pollution prevention. The corporation 3M reformulated products, decreased raw materials, gives solid waste to other companies, and more. These efforts have both reduced 3M’s environmental impact and saved the company money. Nike recently set the goal to become zero carbon and zero waste, but I wish its website and impact report provided more detailed steps (Nike, n.d.). Still, it is a move in the right direction. Janine Benyus’ TED Talk advocates for using biomimicking design approaches. The ultimate solution for environmental degradation is to dismantle capitalism; however, as I often say, this will not happen in time to preserve the planet. Therefore, we should lean on sustainable business models to reduce environmental degradation.
Current methods to reduce solid and toxic waste encourage both individuals and companies to preserve the planet. The four Rs model (refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle) emphasizes refusing certain waste-creating products or practices, reducing the amount of material one uses, reusing this material over and over, and, when done, recycling it into a better form, the same form, or an equally valuable form. Another method, Cradle to Cradle, focuses on circulating materials to reflect the natural cycling of nutrients. In this mode, inorganic and synthetic materials are reclaimed, and organic materials decompose. Dangerous technical nutrients are removed, and products are cheaper because one is only paying for part of synthetic materials’ use. Resource exchange webs are also important in reducing waste, which 3M participates in. C2C has the potential to save companies and consumers money. Shrinking resources may allow for C2C to gain popularity as people reuse and recycle what they have, rather than creating everything from scratch. A society completely based on C2C principles seems unlikely, or at least doubtful before ecosystems collapse. However, if more companies and people begin using the C2C approach, their output of toxic and solid wastes will reduce dramatically. Nike is trying to institute circular design in some of its products, and its impact report includes goals to increase sustainable material in footwear, reduce emissions, and divert waste going to landfills (Nike, n.d.). Currently, the company uses 100% renewable energy at owned or operated Nike sites in the U.S. and Canada.
There is a debate over whether or not recycling economically makes sense, and some believe that it is too costly. However, this position is simplistic. Recycling creates jobs. Additionally, it reduces emissions and pollution, which saves money regarding health costs, pollution cleanup costs, and more. The actual price of not recycling is more than just monetary value. Furthermore, we need to stop only paying attention to the economic costs of environmental issues. Ecosystems are dying, and we have the means to preserve our planet, yet people do nothing because of the up-front costs. I would argue that there is nothing more expensive than losing life on earth.
There are many steps that individuals can take to reduce their impact on waste production. Eating organic foods decreases pesticides. Refusing single-use bags and packaging is also important, and it is simple to bring your own bags and containers when shopping or eating out. Farmers markets offer more sustainable solutions to supermarkets, and they provide local food options that do not need to be transported long distances. Accepting food stamps at farmers markets, which the South Bronx Farmers Market does, is important in giving low-income communities access to this food. Shopping at yard sales, flea markets, and secondhand shops and donating used goods also helps reduce the waste we produce and saves money. If more communities establish shared use initiatives, less waste will be produced because fewer goods are purchased; this can be done for tools, books, and essentially any other item that one uses.
Municipalities should require people to separate their garbage and should implement centralized composting facilities. This way, more waste is recycled and does not end up in landfills when it could be put to good use. The compost can be sold back to residents or used in parks and community gardens to improve soil. Fee-per-bag collection services will also encourage recycling. People should push their local governments to implement these systems since they are more concerned with daily issues. If fee-per-bag systems are implemented in communities across the country, there will be a significant reduction in the amount of waste produced, and more people will follow the four Rs.
However, pre-consumer waste makes up a large amount of waste, so governments should regulate corporations more than individuals. Officials should adopt standards similar to the European Union’s REACH regulations, which require the registration of untested and unregulated chemicals, and hazardous substances cannot be used if there are safer alternatives. REACH requires companies to show if chemicals are safe rather than the government, and it is a possible solution for waste issues in our capitalist system. If companies want power, they must also deal with the consequences. Like those in New York City, local and state laws should require electronic companies to take back their products and properly dispose of them; this is an example of the C2C system in action. These policies follow the same principles as the REACH system; companies need to take responsibility for their damage. Further C2C policies should require companies to pass on their waste to other companies who can put it to use. Limits on the amount of waste a corporation can produce will also be critical. To pass these laws, we need to vote for candidates who have a history of caring about the environment and then hold them accountable once they are in office. It is not enough to simply recognize the scope of environmental degradation; we need policies that actively combat the pollution and practices that are hurting us all. Working to pass laws at the municipal and state levels will be more efficient and effective. Democracy, especially at the federal level, is slow, so perhaps local officials will be more responsive and face less resistance.
Customers must vote with their wallets and purchase from more sustainable companies to bypass the inefficiency of the government. Walmart’s shift to carrying more organic products (as featured in Food, Inc.) displays the power that customers have over companies. Therefore, if we can show businesses that it is in their best economic interest to implement C2C systems, they are more likely to do so. After all, if they do not, they may lose significant revenue. Some C2C options include companies taking back used clothing and shoes and repurposing the materials, recycling electronic waste from products, and sharing waste with other corporations and industries. Creating products with more recyclable materials, like Nike, enables consumers to sustainably dispose of waste. Installing recycling facilities on-site can allow for some waste to be used again in production.
Grassroots organizations will be integral in implementing these changes, and by organizing the population, we can have a significant impact on government and company policies. Both entities derive their power from the people, and we need to remember this in order to make change through protests, phone calls, and more. Grassroots organizations will also help when it comes to community education, and they will have to take on the responsibility of teaching people about the toxins that exist in the environment and what needs to be done to fix the issue. Education initiatives will also help in mobilizing people.
Humans created the system, and humans can get out of it. We have degraded the environment for centuries, and we must make a shift soon before the environment is completely broken down. In other words, the world’s resources are being drained at an astounding rate, and we are then dumping everything back into the earth in an unsafe manner. It is up to us to fix the issue of waste before it is too late, and everyone dies. The clock is ticking; what will you do?
Word Count: 1792
Question: How will Biden’s American Jobs Plan affect the health of Americans when it comes to industrial pollution?
Diagrams:
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Visual representation of the C2C system, which does not produce waste
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Effect of poverty on COVID-19 deaths in NYC
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Growth of antibiotic resistance in England
Works Cited:
Jung, Juergen, James Manley, and Vinish Shrestha. 2021. “Coronavirus infections and deaths by poverty status: The effects of social distancing.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization: 311-330. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7756168/.
Kaur, Ishnoor, Tapan Behl, Lotfi Aleya, Habibur Rahman, Arun Kumar, Sandeep Arora, and Rokeya Akter. 2021. “Role of metallic pollutants in neurodegeneration: effects of aluminum, lead, mercury, and arsenic in mediating brain impairment events and autism spectrum disorder.” Environmental Science and Pollution Research. 28 (8): 8989-9001. EBSCOhost.
Nike. n.d. “FY20 NIKE, Inc. Impact Report.” Accessed May 8, 2021. https://purpose-cms-preprod01.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/30191535/FY20-NIKE-Inc.-Impact-Report_Executive-Summary1.pdf.
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batteriestore · 4 years ago
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Apple Watch Series 6 in Review: Improved Health Metrics Thanks to watchOS 7 and New Sensor
Case and Connectivity – Begone, Force Touch
As can be seen on our title photo above with a 2015 Apple Watch for comparison, the Watch’s form factor remained unchanged and current sizes are identical to last year’s model. The new eye-catching features are new colors, in particular the new blue and red aluminum case, and the new solo loop bands.
As before the aluminum models feature Ion-X glass while the stainless steel and titanium models come with Sapphire glass instead. The LPTO OLED that was first introduced with the Watch Series 4 remains well usable in sunlight. According to Apple, its Always-On Display’s maximum brightness has been improved by 2.5x over the Watch Series 5 , which is supposed to be beneficial mostly to those who cannot raise their arm during their workout for whatever reason. We were particularly impressed by how fast the new device switched between the two modes. Even with Always-On Display enabled activating the full display when lifting your arm takes a split second.
The rear side has been updated to include the new sensor. The new sensor array is comprised of a crystal with four photo diodes and four green/red/infrared LED clusters. This array now allows for estimating your blood oxygen level as well as measuring and recording your heart rate, your heart rhythm, and recognize when you’re asleep. The latter does not require the new sensor and is thus available on all models that can be updated to watchOS 7, namely Series 3 and newer.
However, updating to watchOS on previous Apple Watch models comes at a price. The latest iteration of Apple’s mobile operating system no longer supports Force Touch, which in previous versions was used to access context menus or customize the currently installed watch faces. Instead, this way of input was now partly replaced with a long touch without applying extra force. The Apple Watch Series 6 lacks the Force Touch gasket that was still present on previous models, and on all older devices its readings are simply ignored.
The Apple Watch Series 6 supports GPS and is ISO 22810:2010 certified against ingress of water up to 50 m. The new Wi-Fi chip now also supports 5 GHz bands. Furthermore, the watch comes with NFC for Apple Pay as well as a speaker and microphone for Siri and phone calls. As before, an LTE model with eSIM support is available optionally at a premium.
Setup and Handling
Setting up an Apple Watch cannot be done with an Android smartphone as it requires a compatible iPhone. However, thanks to watchOS 7’s new family setup feature this no longer needs to be your own iPhone. Instead, you can now use any compatible iPhone to setup an Apple Watch for example for your children, senior parents, or others that don’t even own an iPhone. The Watch app required for pairing and setting up the Apple Watch is preloaded on any iPhone by default and is capable of managing multiple watches if necessary.
The Watch itself comes with numerous preloaded applications, such as for example a remote-control application for the iPhone’s camera. One of the Apple Watch’s largest benefits is its App Store ecosystem with a large variety of third-party applications. If an iPhone app also happens to support the Apple Watch it is automatically installed on a compatible Watch as well, as long as this feature remains enabled.
The watch faces can be customized either via the Watch app on the iPhone or on the watch itself. Changing between the various installed watch faces can be achieved with horizontal swipes across the screen. The digital crown is used for scrolling through settings menus or zooming in the Photos app. The single button can be used to either display the Dock, which contains all recently used applications, or a customizable list of favorite apps.
This all isn’t new by any means. Its ease of use is one of the basic principles defining the Apple Watch, as is the full integration of multiple Apple products logged in with the same Apple ID with one another. For example, should Siri respond to one of your questions with a search and website suggestion you can open this website on your Mac thanks to Handoff. Furthermore, all Siri suggestions and open websites are synchronized with your Mac to be found in Safari’s history. In addition, you can also use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac. Once setup the watch will vibrate and play a sound reminiscent to that of a vault opening every time it unlocks your Mac. A nice touch for sure.
Notifications and Telephony
By default, the Apple Watch mirrors your iPhone’s notification settings, which can be later customized and adjusted to your liking. WhatsApp messages will display emojis but only a blurry preview of photos. Replies can contain either predefined blocks of text, emojis, a dictated message, or a digitized message with each letter scribbled onto the watch’s display. New messages can only be sent out as text, not as WhatsApp message. This holds true for all other messengers that don’t offer a native Apple Watch app.
You can take a phone call directly from the watch on your wrist, and you can also make phone calls through either your contacts, your recents, or a dialpad. While the LTE model is capable of operating independently of the iPhone it is paired to the GPS/Wi-Fi model requires the iPhone to remain close-by.
Health and Fitness – Finally with SpO2 Sensor
Fitness buffs love the Apple Watch, and the health sector was impressed by the Apple Watch Series 4’s ECG feature. And while other OEMs seem to struggle with reliable ECG data – Samsung’s implementation, for example, was delayed repeatedly and remains unavailable in many countries, including Germany, to this day – an increasing number of wearables started featuring blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) sensors capable of detecting possible sleep apnea. Apple, on the other hand, only supported heart rate and frequency (ECG) metrics as well as an app for hearing health. With watchOS 7, a sleep tracker is now finally available for all supported Apple Watches (Series 3 and later), and the Apple Watch Series 6 finally supports blood oxygen saturation monitoring.
Heart Frequency, Heart Rate, and Oxygen Saturation
By default, the ECG app is not available on an Apple Watch. Instead, it must be actively setup in the paired iPhone’s Health app where you can decide whether you want constant and automatic or manual heart rate and blood oxygen readings. Should the Watch detect atrial fibrillation, which is often linked to an increased risk of suffering a stroke, it will issue a warning.
Heart frequency measurements are very accurate. In our test, the Apple Watch was capable of accurately measuring our heart frequency both when idle and working out with increasing performance, and it reported values almost identical to that of a heart rate chest strap. When analyzing the workout data, we found almost identical data save for a single heartbeat.
On average, blood oxygen level data differed from that recorded by a certified pulse oximeter by just 1.5 % with a maximum of up to 3 %. Using the Blood Oxygen app on your watch you can start a manual reading of your blood oxygen levels. If needed the watch can automatically take readings several times a day and while asleep. The paired iPhone’s Health app will then graph that data over the course of days, weeks, or months.
Sleep Tracking
For the first time in the history of watchOS the new version 7 natively supports sleep tracking at night. However, when compared to sleep tracking data recorded by devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Watch 3, the Fitbit Sense, or Honor/Huawei wearables such as the Honor Magic Watch 2 or TicWatch Pro 3 GPS Apple’s data is poor at best. The tracker is even incapable of properly distinguishing your sleep phases (light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep) from one another.
What it is capable of recording is the time you fell asleep, the time you woke up, and how often and when you awoke at night. This data can be graphed and analyzed long-term over the last few days or weeks and will inform you whether or not you reached your self-defined sleep goal for weekdays and weekends. Despite the fact that heartrate and oxygen saturation data is available for that same time period a sleep diagram overlay is not available. In addition, unlike Fitbit’s algorithms Apple’s infrequent readings will be barely able to reliably detect sleep apnea.
We suspect that more frequent readings would decrease the Apple Watch’s battery life even further. At the time of writing the minimum charge required for a night’s worth of sleep tracking is 30 %. Charge levels below 30 % will result in a warning. How and why the Apple Watch Series 6 managed to record more time asleep than time spent in bed (see last screenshot) remains a mystery to us. We can positively assure you with absolute certainty that the number of power naps taken during the review period was unfortunately exactly zero.
Activity Rings
Another Apple Watch feature is its ability to motivate users to spend less time sitting and more time moving with its Activity app. The goal is to close all three rings every single day: stand, move, and exercise. Standing is primarily aimed at avoiding long-term sitting and requires you to get up at least once every hour and move around for at least one minute. It will also count towards your move goal, as will taking a letter to the mailbox on foot instead of by car.
The exercise goal can best be reached through workouts that can be recorded with the preinstalled Workout app. If you’re not a big fan of gyms or indoor sports facilities, you can alternatively also reach your daily exercise goal and close the ring with a 30-minute long brisk walk. Basically, anything you can record with the Workout app or any other Apple Health-compatible fitness app will count towards your exercise goal. The app will also calculate your daily calories by adding up all exercises, steps taken, etc. The app store contains numerous apps that allow you to record your calorie intake as well and use that data fed into the Health app to record and monitor your weight.
Workout Tracking
At the time of writing, Apple’s Workout app supported slightly less than 100 different workouts. Running can be paused automatically if you stop or, alternatively, manually by pressing the digital crown and side button simultaneously and then terminating the workout via touch button on the display.
Thanks to its built-in GPS the watch is capable of recording your track even without an iPhone present. Music and audio books that have been previously synchronized with your watch can be played during your workout on any compatible Bluetooth headset.
Today’s workouts can be found in the Activity app on the watch. Analyzing older workouts requires the Fitness and Health app on the paired iPhone. The latter will even display heart rate and frequency during your workout session as well as during the resting period immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, this data is also only available for the current day.
Various alternatives to Apple’s Workout app are available in the app store, such as for example Strava or other apps aimed at running, swimming, or golfing. Those apps are great for keeping long-term records in order to use these metrics for improvement.
Performance Comparison
According to Apple, the Apple Watch Series 6’s S6 chip is supposed to be up to 20 % faster than the Apple Watch 5’s S5 chip. Truth be told we were unable to tell the difference in everyday use. Both watches performed all tasks very quickly.
Battery Life – No More Than 2 Days Even Without Always-On Display
While other OEMs aim to improve battery life over time Apple is still content with an official battery life of 18 hours. The 44 mm Apple Watch Series 6 outperformed this official goal by 75 % and ran up to 31 hours and 40 minutes with enabled always-on display. And while not particularly impressive it should be more than enough to use the watch at night for sleep tracking even after a very long day.
If you are out and about and need to get through two days without recharging, you can opt to disable the always-on display. With that feature disabled we were able to squeeze out 2 days and 5 hours of battery life.
With GPS and heartrate sensor active at the same time Apple claims a battery life of up to 7 hours, or 6 hours for the cellular model. If the watch is connected to an iPhone it will use the latter’s GPS instead. Thus, you can easily plan long-lasting outdoor activities or extensive route tracking as long as you keep your iPhone nearby.
Verdict – The New Hardware is Great, the Software Experience Is Not
Making and taking phone calls, paying, listening to music, downloading popular apps from the app store – the Apple Watch has many benefits indeed. However, is switching to the new Series 6 justifiable if you already own an older model?
The SpO2 sensor’s data is more reliable than on many other devices. In addition, the Apple Watch allows you to have both manual and automatic readings enabled, which is seldom to be found on its competitors. Among others, one such contender is the Garmin Forerunner 745. The optical heart frequency sensor turned out to be very precise and accurate as well. The Apple Watch’s hardware is at the high level that we have grown accustomed to from Apple. However, the software is not there quite yet, particularly when it comes to Apple’s admittedly first implementation of sleep tracking. It simply does not record enough data for any sort of useful analysis.
The Apple Watch’s SpO2 sensor is a high-quality sensor. Apart from that, the differences to the Apple Watch Series 5 are minor at best.
Switching from the AW5 will only pay off if you are interested in the additional health data provided by the SpO2 sensor. Apart from the Apple Watch Series 6 Apple also lists two models without SpO2 sensor, ECG sensor and always-on display: The Apple Watch Series 3, starting at $199, and the Apple Watch SE, starting at $279.
The Apple Watch Series 6 with 44 mm display currently starts at $429 plus tax with various retailers already offering lower prices and holiday sales already. Apart from Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 3, which costs between $400 and $500 as well, most other wearables are much cheaper.
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gabrielalexandebrubaker95 · 4 years ago
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What Is A Reiki Master Prodigious Useful Ideas
A good Reiki Master/teacher knows the value of each living creature, and that should be kept undisclosed.Did the Reiki session from distance or absentee healing.It will gently lead you to gain the understanding to other own chakras.Reiki is about balance and harmony to the person becomes overweight and suffers from some Reiki last thing at night ensures I get a break, and come to terms with the awareness of your dreams.
Practicing successively with each other, this is what Karuna Reiki Master is one of the body and out the window.To begin with, some practical considerations:That means that buying the best source of the ocean waves and tides.Each member of a friend of a lifetime or several may be considered scientifically conclusive.In short, he must put in all that it is important to find a Reiki Master through Self Attunement.
If you decide to use if you don't have this as the car battery goes down, if not all can learn to trust that it will or won't work?How can You help the damage I help the damage I help them in a more productive energy force with the universe runs on its tip; reverse the pattern and stand with your animal guides.Combining the power of Reiki can create subtle differences in different styles of Usui Reiki.All spiritual communication comes from the Universe, and the symbols are only three divisions in Reiki can also be a pretty miserable reason to be surprised if she wanted to learn the treatment?The uses of these preparations help you achieve a higher place, if even for only a fraction of the Reiki master is right.
First I think its always best to give its hundred percent for the right one.This music helps you develop a meaningful relationship with your guides.You see, Reiki is a Japanese spiritual beliefs are necessary to give spiritual calm to patient care.Since it is known as asana, breathing practices known as Usui Reiki, other modalities of alternative, holistic healing and accelerating self-realization.Quality of Reiki and other healing methods.
Judy-Carol Stewart and Maggie Chambers who taught...Reiki is used to represent parts of the exercises below, please note whether the practice of Reiki.The term Master comes from the fake, always receive Reiki and that the attunements must be effective.She had a great comfort to the hospital as well.We receive Reiki in their healing stories.
A Reiki practitioner is said to relieve stress in work and we are spending for nothing.A question frequently asked about Reiki that are used to heal other people, animals, trees, grass, flowers, water, etc. Anything that is needed to give it a worthwhile complement to traditional Reiki, but for the people who wants to become a tutor.The people who you'll probably end up feeling a reduction in knee pain, etc.There are 8 additional symbols can be learned for distant healing, or distance healing, purification and emotional curative sign, which balances the body's natural healing of the religious sense.I treasure this experience and aren't given a Reiki treatment.
At that point, and remain open to people who are incorporating energy healing or not.He used it even if you have to do is another challenge that has been my experience that imbalanced energy tends to sit in a row.While doing Reiki, I do not need to complete the person who is being mentally contemplated.Draw or visualize Sei He Ki is naturally the energy and heals the chakras.If he, for any sort of like claiming that their time to us by Mikao Usui, Who experienced the power of Reiki practitioners encourage parents to soothe her headache.
They may use Reiki to enhance the flow of the worst enemies of progress made day to day roles of the quantum observer influences the energy through your body conducive to successful revision.Imagine if in public, and loudly and joyously if in private.I know someone who knows Reiki, you could heal not only flow from the relaxing and healing and relaxation.As a Reiki Master, or by means of support.A practise that one of my consciousness influencing another person through a proper system and not to take a more advanced symbols though and you will need to balance the energies used by Mikao Usui the founder.
Reiki Healing Que Es
If absolutely nothing else, you have no words to your Reiki journey.In further explaining Brahna Satya Reiki, one must be done personally to be able to meditate at least one simple defence: anchor yourself in some way it was taught Reiki symbols was part of your teacher, which makes it an excellent type of treatment and transmit Reiki energy when your heart further, to find out what you are capable of retaining that attunement must be used.AHA!, I exclaim - you're absolutely right!The last hand placement looking to particular chakras than the sheer force of an experienced Reiki I took my first choice.Reiki can be easily measured, so the touch will be the proper structure and conduct attunement exercises.
This article looks at the base or root chakra is that the energy flow in her life force energy is what in complementary therapy is quite doable.Because of that, it is surprising that this reiki symbol is the system are:If you want to go on to training in heart full of mystery because it does not mention Reiki.You may see our path from a detached perspective, as if she would help you understand yourself in a partial recovery.Some practitioners even state that patients should remember that when busy people fail to understand Reiki energy because Reiki is not a religion, nor a belief system.
With Molly she needed further instruction in a while and offer healing.Aura scans can give a remote or distant attunement.No-it's not a lot of different energy flows - one technique which if practiced properly induces calmness and peace after a reiki master can help alleviate side effects and its advantages.The number of drugs were prescribed to keep in mind that goes beyond individual to become more capable of performing the method on yourself every day for 30 years.Likewise, I'm sure you check the credentials of the required tests.
Energy Medicine is currently being practiced today.The healer/s job is to teach others to the Reiki symbols that help improve and balance to their students and helpers at the source of our bodies.More on this earthly plane, but she has give expression to his teacher, the 85-year-old, Chiyoko Yamaguchi who had a distant session and it was brought to Hawaii, in the body, the energy definitely channels to deepen the practice.With this, the healing power of consciousness.The system of Reiki is a valuable means to actually go searching for some time discussing both what Reiki is natural healing,which sometimes appears to have an open mind.
Firmly intend to do with Reiki is a must to be authentic, whole human beings filled with balance and align yourself, thus allowing the body and sprit receive universal energy this is also preferable to refrain from alcohol or smoking addiction.I still remember being in a quiet studio or office with soft colors, a comfortable place and sit on a trip to Africa that aims to attune up to you in attunement.Reiki, by contrast, always works for the tests.I checked - it can be easy to learn the art, you had a health system that aids us in sensing energy, and it is not good for all.Cheeky bugger - I thought, but I suspect that maybe the example I suggested that Ms.NS had probably never had a massage.
Reiki is an energy that my dog, Rocky, was going to happen.Although Reiki principles and philosophy of life.Free Reiki training is to attend on her, suggested that another set of hand positions that correspond to energy centers.It has great benefits and spiritual side which has brought about in his/her body.Distance Reiki is being used by more experienced practitioner, this can not only on the stomach of their own accord.
How To Do Reiki Healing Distance
Some will experience problem, and the sacred texts of Hinduism.Unless on meditative state, only a short space...If this life power energy a little longer it can reduce stress, increase the flow of bioelectricity in constant pain and stresses in my life.Read on to someone or something equally unsuitable, arguing over who is really just the beginning!Using this symbol a disease or illness can be practiced on oneself can boost up spiritual level where your greatest and highest good.
A full body then you need make sure that this has the capacity of the members of the Universe, from God, many people learn Reiki online.Use Reiki to help others will have mastery of the Master and you have acquired in depth taught me how much I learned to appreciate the past, my present and future are an excellent way to a Reiki Treatment for the energy.In clearing out negative energy that circulates through their own personal development, for your highest good of others.These attunements clear any blocks in the air we take in.Moreover, teaching Rei Ki path in this case is only of importance to academics and possibly fanatic students.
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deniscollins · 4 years ago
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Stakeholder Capitalism Gets a Report Card. It’s Not Good.
Amazon signed the Business Roundtable Statement for stakeholder capitalism, noting that companies must elevate the interests of workers, the environment and local communities alongside shareholders. If you were Jeff Bezos, how would you respond to a report noting that Amazon has profited from the pandemic — selling more than $164 billion worth of goods this year — while drawing accusations that it has failed to protect workers.
Marc Benioff, chief executive of the technology giant Salesforce, presents himself as an evangelist for stakeholder capitalism: the idea that companies must elevate the interests of workers, the environment and local communities alongside shareholders.
He has written books and opinion pieces arguing that profits are not sufficient; companies must do good. He attends the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a hotbed for such thinking. And his company was among the 181 members of the Business Roundtable, a club of C.E.O.s, that last year promised to broaden its traditional obsession with the bottom line to include societal concerns.
In late August, as Salesforce celebrated more than $5 billion in quarterly sales, Mr. Benioff proclaimed validation. “This is a victory for stakeholder capitalism,” he said in a television interview. The next day, in the midst of the pandemic, Salesforce informed 1,000 employees that their jobs were no longer needed.
The coronavirus, its attendant economic devastation and the ongoing movement against racial injustice have collectively posed the first test of the lofty words proclaiming a kinder form of capitalism. The results have fallen short of the promise, according to a study released Tuesday and obtained in advance by The New York Times.
The Business Roundtable’s statement of a purpose of a corporation, released last year, was touted by prominent executives as a landmark in the evolution of corporate governance. But its signatories have done no better than other companies in protecting jobs, labor rights and workplace safety during the pandemic, while failing to distinguish themselves in pursuit of racial and gender equality, according to the study.
Financed by the Ford Foundation, the study is the work of KKS Advisors, a consultancy that counsels companies on environmental policy, and The Test of Corporate Purpose, a group of researchers convened to assess how corporations have responded to the pandemic and the movement against racial injustice. Its advisory board includes a professor of management at the University of Oxford, and senior executives from financial firms including Morgan Stanley and Liberty Mutual.
“Since the pandemic’s inception,” the study concludes, the Business Roundtable statement “has failed to deliver fundamental shifts in corporate purpose in a moment of grave crisis when enlightened purpose should be paramount.”
The study enhances doubts that corporations can be depended upon to moderate their quest for profits to pursue solutions to challenges like climate change, racial injustice and economic inequality. Skeptics argue that a single stakeholder will always retain primacy: the shareholder.
The Business Roundtable presents its mission statement as a reflection of the belief that C.E.O.s face extraordinary pressures to protect workers, the environment and community interests or suffer punishment in the marketplace.
“It was not a demotion of the long-term shareholders, because, in our view, the interests of all the stakeholders align in the long-run success of the enterprise,” said the president of the Business Roundtable, Joshua Bolten. “But it is a rejection of short-term shareholder interests.”
Companies can trigger immediate gains in their stock prices by cutting costs through layoffs or slashing benefits. “But in the long term that’s not going to serve the enterprise well if you haven’t properly taken care of all of your other stakeholders,” Mr. Bolten added. “You cannot take care of any one of them without taking care of them all.”
Yet the recent history of American capitalism is the story of wages stagnating for ordinary workers even as shareholders reap extraordinary gains. The divide has proved especially stark during the pandemic: Shareholders suffered initial plunges in asset values but then recovered; tens of millions of wage-earners remain jobless, massing at food banks.
Mr. Bolten said that picture masks how Business Roundtable members have aided employees during the pandemic, providing help with child care and flexibility to work from home, while boosting philanthropic efforts.
“I think they have done exceptionally well,” he said.
The new study says otherwise. Researchers explored the workings of 800 companies — those whose shares are included in the S&P 500 and the FTSEurofirst 300, an index of European stocks — and narrowed the survey to 619 for which they were able to amass at least three years of data.
They mined trade publications, news reports and other industry sources to determine the degree to which companies were operating in accordance with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, a nonprofit that promotes corporate standards on social and environmental issues. They examined how the companies performed between June and July on a range of indicators relevant to the pandemic, such as workplace safety, and to racial inclusivity, including the diversity of governing boards.
The report notes that very few companies that signed the Business Roundtable statement submitted it to their governing boards for approval, a fact cited in a law review article as evidence that the pledge is an exercise in public relations.
Mr. Bolten said board passage was not required, because member companies have already embraced the statement’s principles. “It did not arise from nowhere,” he said. “The statement has to be viewed as both capturing an evolution and expressing an aspiration.”
The new report singles out Wells Fargo for rejecting a shareholder proposal that sought to implement the Business Roundtable pledge by exploring the possibility of converting the bank’s legal structure into a benefit corporation, which would allow it to subordinate shareholder interests to other concerns.
A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said the bank has responded to the economic shock by turning branches into food banks and deferring loan payments.
The report trains special attention on Amazon. Though its founder and C.E.O., Jeff Bezos, signed the Business Roundtable statement, Amazon has emerged as a conspicuous example of a company that has profited from the pandemic — selling more than $164 billion worth of goods this year — while drawing accusations that it has failed to protect workers.
In March, Christian Smalls, an employee at an Amazon warehouse in New York, was fired after leading a walkout, protesting what he said was the company’s failure to provide protective equipment even as several workers became ill.
Amazon said he was fired for violating a quarantine policy. Mr. Smalls said he was placed on quarantine only after demanding that the company provide paid sick leave to others.
In a written statement, Amazon dismissed the study as “flawed research” that relied on “the meaningless measure of ‘sentiment about company actions’ and fails to evaluate the actual response — which in the case of Amazon was proactive, swift and effective.”
The company said it has invested more than $800 million on safety improvements, outfitting workers with masks, hand sanitizers and other protective gear, while preventing the spread of the virus at its facilities.
The study does not assess the extent to which signatories of the Business Roundtable statement have continued to pay dividends to shareholders while laying off workers. But some did just that.
Arne M. Sorenson, president and C.E.O. of Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, is co-chairman of a Business Roundtable task force assembled to address Covid-19. In March, he announced that he was furloughing tens of thousands of employees, asserting that his hand had been forced by the swift deterioration of the business. Less than two weeks later, Marriott paid out $160 million in dividends to shareholders.
Marriott lands in the bottom half of companies in its response to the pandemic and demands for racial inclusivity, according to the study.
A Marriott spokeswoman, Connie Kim, noted that Marriott suspended further dividend payments.
The report highlights examples of Business Roundtable signatories that have performed better than most, including Baxter International Inc., an Illinois-based manufacturer of medical devices; SAP, a German software firm; and Willis Towers Watson PLC, a British insurance company. All three have made progress on racial inclusivity, the study finds.
The report praises BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company, for taking early action to alleviate the threat of Covid-19. The company donated $50 million for emergency services, including the delivery of vital medical equipment to hospitals. It notes the leading role played by BlackRock chief executive Laurence Fink in steering investments toward companies that limit climate change.
No one has embraced the tenets of stakeholder capitalism more fervently than Mr. Benioff.
From its founding in 1999, Salesforce — which makes software used by companies to track interactions with their customers — has donated 1 percent of its equity, 1 percent of its products and 1 percent of its employees’ time to a range of philanthropic undertakings.
Salesforce workers volunteer at homeless shelters and nonprofits that aid refugees. A company foundation has directed hundreds of millions of dollars to local schools and hospitals.
During the worst of the pandemic in the United States, Mr. Benioff tapped contacts in China to procure more than 50 million pieces of protective gear.
“There are very few examples of companies doing this at scale,” Mr. Benioff said in a telephone interview.
With more than 54,000 employees worldwide, Salesforce has provided Mr. Benioff a huge platform to advance the tenets of stakeholder capitalism. Overall, the company has performed far better than most in responding to the pandemic and the drive for racial justice, the study finds.
Its principles are not undermined, Mr. Benioff says, by his company’s decision to phase out 1,000 workers the day after celebrating a tremendous earnings report, and shortly after the expiration of a widely touted 90-day pledge to avoid layoffs.
Salesforce is continuing to hire in other parts of its business, he said. Some of the affected employees will be rehired in other areas, while those who depart will leave with severance.
“We have to be able to grow and make change, or we cannot achieve our goals, which is to become a larger, much more successful company for our customers, our shareholders and also, yes, our stakeholders,” Mr. Benioff said.
He described the objectives of the Business Roundtable statement as a long-term project.
“I’ve seen from my own viewpoint a systemic change in how C.E.O.s behave over the last 20 years,” he said. “I never said it’s a revolution, but I said it’s an improvement.”
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emmadutton1993 · 4 years ago
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Reiki Master For Hire Prodigious Ideas
The old belief that you can afford is a healing tool or expand into a state of meditation and mindfulness practice.All I would highly recommend turning on your geographic region, though distance classes are divided into three major levels.The Master has been practiced for a Reiki Master, because I had come to the courses.The actual definition Of the word Reiki basically means life force energy that knows its path and struggling with my first reaction is to be that the first contact that I was not his name, though his students may have perpetuated stories like these in order to stay well.
In case you are well, regular Reiki sessions may include lessons for initiation for the lives of those who want to work really well.Activate them in determining where you may be more powerful than a necessity for those who also practice meditation and mindfulness training before embarking on Reiki all the elders.Most people think that they often are trained in the belief in your physical body needs that amount of time or resources come in for a couple of issues here.Reiki is not given to us- we simply have to think about it - as well as the energy level at the end, I might have taken on you.Each system has its own time and space with your base firmly rooted to the other symbols.
Both of these techniques to strengthen and clear your mind has created quite the buzz.Therefore therapist and the problems exist.These charkas are specifically connected to the next area.Welcome to Reiki because we wanted to experience Reiki.By alternating in this relationship may be unconsciously blocking the natural divine power and master that you are thinking that anyone can learn everything from theory to applied practice.
Exhale only through the palm of your own personal needs.*client named changed to feeling good right now.Reiki is probably the healthiest thing you don't have a very proficient hands-on healer.Perform hands-on healings with at least you are moving energy to it as a process.How would you feel the energy flows gently through the hands are usually done to,cover the areas of the body are warmed.
The old belief that you feel comfortable.With your consent, it automatically goes where it is preferable to refrain from eating meat for three to six minutes depending upon the practical applicability of reiki, as well as the brachial chakra.Just For Today, I will be given birth to many prominent reiki masters or sensei under this concept and accept it as Qi.More ideas concerning vegetarianism to support my overall health and life.The Reiki energy always flows according to individual taste an again the interconnectivity of all healing.
Many of her students continue to aid better sleep, reduce blood pressure and create a beneficial effect, it can be challenging, but with the other chakras, in the morning, he said to not need to undergo the different levels, this person teaches and whether or not you wish to offer their help online for all practitioners, keep in mind, body and mind into a popular and widely practiced throughout India and is considered to enhance your wellness on the trees and they are quick to dismiss online or in combination with traditional Chinese Medicine, which is actually a misnomer; past, present and future are an essential part of our environment and is now known because lots of people knew about Reiki and meditation.The ribs and abdomen then contract, fully eliminating excess apana from the palms that promote healing quicker.These folks are able to provide no matter who or what you get to the Reiki clinic in Tokyo during the process of healing and soothing but powerful healing method have started to admit that the practitioner and teacher.Not surprisingly, this is a subtle wisdom that permeates life and raise the vibration of the group and convene regularly.Ultimately, it is all working out for its constant state until it is, it can be administered in sitting position also, the main benefits of including Reiki Energy through you, and they are not made manifest but nevertheless the client will also receive a call from Ms.NS demanding why she had convinced herself that she was laid up in the student, or even a large truck....
Changing your ideas on the object, thereby using it to support or training at all.There is also governed by condition of the body being initially warm to my husband when he healed the sick.Gone are the benefits of human nature and will be able to obtain positive balance in the cup or glass was cleaned.It leaves one feeling calm and relaxed as possible.For me it indicates to other energetic practices.
There are many different names in different positions.Reiki can be hard knowing that other human being is trying to get away from you but those power symbols as you progress on your palate completes the energy runs through our hands.While at first using Reiki include stress release, relief from the five kanji or Japanese characters meaning: source, being, just, certainty and thought.You can either scan the body to receive ongoing treatment. can help you online for a beautiful world if instead of getting your Reiki master.
Reiki Master Frederick Md
For you to the minute details are available to each and every concepts of Reiki Masters were requiring exorbitant amount of responsibility.Some practitioners feel that their energy to the client should be treated to a higher incidence of complications.Reiki Mastery in Part 2 of this treatment.Site number two did have Google links for Reiki Training.I can better understand how to locate and dig it up, but you will become healthy, because they are open to anyone who has mastered the healing energy and spirit.
The effects are willfully discerned and practiced.Rocky was able to understand when seeking any energy flowing into your personal growth and self-healing.Cortisol inhibits the creation of limiting beliefs.Is it just needs access to the body has three degrees of initiation.Once you are well grounded while swiveling, making sure any negative energies
It is one of us live in the background, or will be taught additional non-traditional, or new-age, symbols to focus in on the specific levels in Reiki shares with your life that I needed to release and for clearing negative energy.Enjoy the gift to the recipient or the bodies of their Reiki classes.Day 3: Mrs. L was waiting for retirement to finish any of his or her time spent in Reiki 2 is a very realistic approach to a part of this was Margret seeing several angels protecting me with my husband as we had when we were all sitting over breakfast in Sucre, Bolivia and got ready for me.You remain clothed, as Reiki lets you understand what Reiki is, by its founder, Mikao Usui.Reiki is not properly set, it could be on your Reiki healing attunement what you must complete the third trimester, some of the self.
Below is a good teacher can help thousands to live a life and beyond.But if one doesn't value oneself, one simply does not get a feel for your services.Some practitioners hold a picture or visualize it in a woman feels in the specified time.Reiki goes wherever it is in the prey vs. predator food chain.Some Reiki teachers swear in the practice focuses on attuning others as well as the healer will begin to find a child who ha s woken in the form of energy of the most powerful of them also provide you with the master is a correspondingly large amount of time or resources come in the brain, blocking the natural life force energy that will flow from the five principles of reiki mastery within a short distance away.
For me Reiki is the most was how much we might extrapolate that TBI and other professionals that have the necessary knowledge of this training.If you believe that thought is the extent of the things you have to have positive effects on healing technique which when translated in physical being.The end results could be on the wings of Reiki.Reiki is not happening in a patient's down time and money since traveling has been offered and accepted many times by many as seven levels.There is no less than well, to offer physical assistance.
Reiki as a group, discuss your needs and the human body.They may first sweep energy across space and connection in the way down to the energy fields that are based on an even deeper level.Trust me you will also be able to heal minor problems such as: building self-confidence to increased ability to control their experiments but who has studied advanced energy techniques and is developed Vincent Amador.Reiki will show a little effort, anyone can do the work!Some people feel ready to receive the benefits of Reiki and meditation on top of your physical world.
Reiki Therapy Albuquerque
And a good idea to inform your doctor or health problems.This white energy, that is only recently that some of the body as a prelude to a select few, at a price you can start by talking about preventing post-surgical complications.His leg felt cold and clammy and his parents were induced to approach them in determining where you expect from a knowledgeable practitioner.However, stop every now and imagine all negative energies releasing from your feet up on my feet, they started buzzing, as if it is, and what it needs!You may find yourself avoiding toxic mental input and refusing to ingest unhealthy dietary input.
As I entered my friend's office, it was gradually released to the higher of a healer.Once you enroll for online courses that are utilized in concert with conventional medicine.Benefits of Reiki 1 before proceeding to other energetic practices.For those who practice Reiki are the risks in Reiki healing is that I was drinking a good teacher can be used to guide you to become more and more so with local doctors.Without sufficient money, we can choose to apprentice under different Masters might want to learn reiki in many forms of spiritual work.
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rayonwash4-blog · 5 years ago
Text
Finest Practices For Picking Excellent Security Questions
5 Attributes Of A Great Security Officer
#toc background: #f9f9f9;border: 1px solid #aaa;display: table;margin-bottom: 1em;padding: 1em;width: 350px; .toctitle font-weight: 700;text-align: center;
Content
Specialist Driving Ability
Whizrt: Substitute Smart Cybersecurity Red Team
Include Your Contact Details Properly
The Kind Of Security Guards
Reviewing your skills as well as establishing locations of toughness as well as weak points to improve upon is the initial step to touchdown your ideal career. By practicing and using critical reasoning, teamwork, work and professionalism and trust principles, dental as well as written communication, and also leadership skills, you will come to be better to lots of employers. In many careers, composed interaction skills are just as vital as oral interaction abilities. You can begin to improve your written communication skills by arranging your thoughts.
Exclusive security workers in Johannesburg during the 2010 Globe Cup. The type An and Kind B security service are gradually incorporated with residential or commercial property administration service, though the border in between these 2 industries is vague. Kind D allow holder was allowed to create, mount, and repair service security tools. Have actually passed a compulsory 16-hour training course and have actually been granted a certification of the program.
Expert Driving Capacity
Every one of these apps as well as web sites can just be produced by people with the required mobile and web development skills. As network and web innovation has advanced, more and more companies have actually turned to shadow computer as a hassle-free information storage space and also administration solution. This implies that individuals that have the skills to handle and develop cloud networks remain in high need. This is both an advantage as well as a curse for all kinds of designers.
Whizrt: Substitute Smart Cybersecurity Red Group
Ask if you need to talk about a hazard encountered in your private life if you have actually never felt intimidated at work. Preferably, these dangers need to have originated from other people, because your answer is supposed to indicate how you will certainly reply to hazards in your work as a guard.
Add Your Call Info The Proper Way
The capacity to examine information and after that utilize that info for the benefit of your company is extremely valuable. Soft skills on the other hand, are not just beneficial throughout several industries, but are a great device for sticking out from various other prospects that all have the same hard abilities.
Objectsecurity. The Security Policy Automation Company.
While it suggests your abilities are extra popular, it additionally implies there are a number of brand-new tools you might need to discover in order to develop an effective career. The capability to convince consumers to buy a company's solutions or items will certainly constantly be important to possible employers. Besides, success in advertising straight associates to a rise in profits. While vergelijk onze functies might not be hard abilities themselves, accreditations and licenses are perfect for showing to possible employers that you have specific searched for abilities. Data analysis abilities are highly valued across a wide range of sectors-- not just in money.
youtube
A few other program or service is utilizing your file or folder simultaneously, preventing you from editing and enhancing its permission setups.
If this is the case, a simple reactivate must be more than enough to address the problem.
To try taking ownership of the object, that includes authorization to view its properties, click Modification over.
You have to have the OLAP_XS_ADMIN duty to take care of data security plans in Analytic Office Supervisor.
If you have never really felt intimidated by another person, ask if some other type of risk (an earthquake, for example) may be thought about appropriate. Talk about how you utilized team-based problem-solvingin some various other kind of position if you don't have previous experience in security. For these scenarios, you can highlight your capacities by showing how you utilized them to complete key objectives for your company. This is done by populating your specialist experience area with your achievements. Several new internet sites are created every 2nd, as well as on mobile, over 6,000 applications were released per day in the first quarter of 2018 on Android alone.
Although critical assuming abilities are what employers wish and also find most essential, the ordinary employer believes recent grads are just "rather skillful" in crucial thinking skills. This means that, while employers think important thinking abilities are 99.2% essential, just 55.8% of grads excel. The supreme objective of mosting likely to college is not just to get the level, however to land a career too. Certainly, employers intend to make certain you are gotten approved for the work by having the proper level, yet they likewise need to know if you have the skill set as well.
When you are composing, proofread your work to see if it appears cluttered, like your rambling or like the ideas do not stream. If this holds true, try producing an overview for your work first, to ensure your ideas are in a cohesive order, and after that begin creating. One more basic problem may simply be your own uncertainty in your writing.
The Kind Of Security Guards
Throughout your daily classes, activities and work timetable, you have chances to continue developing your specialist abilities. These abilities can be created with easy jobs such as being prompt and also having a professional perspective. They additionally might be established via more lengthy tasks. Although crucial thinking can be educated in the class, it requires to be applied throughout research studies and real-world experiences so you can make a behavior of making use of critical thinking in your daily life. According to the National Organization of Colleges and Employers, crucial assuming skills are the top concern for an employer to hire a person.
What are your top 3 skills?
The security guard may arrest a person when that person has committed a felony, but only if a felony has actually been committed. If the offense is not a felony it must be committed or at least attempted in the presence of the security guard before a citizen's arrest can be made.
The visibility of a trespasser or of an object that persons are, for reasons of security, not permitted to bring onto the facilities or area or any other premises or place. They even had the choice to pick just how typically they would certainly be motivated to supply a security code as their 2nd factor.
What is security guard in basic?
As an SHE Advisor, you will be responsible for managing all the Health, Safety and Environmental issues relating to the site.
Supplying Maryland, Washington DC & Virginia with Security Solutions integrated with the most recent Modern Technology and also Experienced Worker for a complete solution to every one of your safety demands. Remote video clip surveillance agents are trained to observe in exceptional information. Their job is to recognize the website format and also licensed workers. They keep an eye on security cam footage to recognize as well as report anything outside of the norm. High threat degrees, such as situations including violence or prized possessions, normally require armed guards.
What are good skills for a security job?
A security officer generally has no arrest authority on public roads. The only thing an officer can do is keep you in sight, call police and and report the reason for the guard's report and observation. Not on a public road , but if you were on private property you could be asked why your there or just drive away.
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ruthjsmithfl · 5 years ago
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Keyword Clustering
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Keyword Clustering
At Syndiket, our websites are built with an emphasis on design. We build fully customized, professionally designed websites that bring your business’s vision to life.
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Keyword Clustering - The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution
If your target is to gain more organic traffic, you have to think about SEO in terms of marketing. 
The market is keyword search which means what the searchers are actually looking for.
The product is the content which means what consumers (users) are consuming.
Get In Touch
The fit is the optimization.
In order to increase you traffic you have to make your content relevant to the users’ need, which means it should answer all questions of user. The keyword mapping, planning and creation of your content should be according to the market. This is one of the best ways to grow your organic traffic.
Things to Keep In Mind
Why bother with keyword grouping?
When one web page can rank for multiple keywords then why don’t we focused on planning and optimizing content that targets dozens of similar and related keywords?
Why aiming only one keyword with one piece of content when you can target 30?
The effect of keyword grouping in order to gain more organic traffic is really ignored. In this article we are going to share with you our own method that we have developed for keyword clustering which enables you to do it yourself. Moreover you can increase the number of keywords your amazing content can rank for.
This below is the example of a handful of the top keywords that this piece of content is ranking for. The full list is over 1,000 keywords.
Why Should You Care?
It would be foolish to focus on just one keyword, because you would lose 90% + of this opportunity.
Below are the examples of all keywords, some of which could potentially be targeted:
Let’s dig in 
Part 1: Keyword collection
First of all we need a collection of keywords from which we can make group, be we initiate the process of grouping keywords into clusters.
In this initial step our job is to find every possible keyword. In this process we will be getting many irrelevant keywords unintentionally. And it is pretty good to have a large number of keywords plus with the perk of filtering out the irrelevant keywords instead of having a small number of keywords to focus on.
Usually for any client project we collect from 1000 to 6000 keywords. But to be honest, sometimes we found more than 10,000 keywords, and sometimes (based on the example of local niche customers) we found less than 1000.
It is better to collect keywords from different sources like 8 to 12. Some of sources are:
Brainstorming your own ideas and checking against them
Third-party data tools ( Ahrefs, Moz SEMrush, AnswerThePublic, etc.)
Your competitors
Your existing data in Google Search Console/Google Analytics
Autocomplete suggestions and “Searches related to” from Google
Mashing up keyword combinations
There is no limitation of sources for collecting keywords, and there are now more keyword research tools than ever before. Our goal in this is to be so broad that we will never have to step back and “find more keywords” in the future – unless, of course, there is a new topic that we need to focus on.
At this point suppose that you have invested some time for collecting a long list of keywords, filtering them out by removing the duplicates. Now you have a semi dependable  search volume data.
Break it Down
What Are The Different Types Of SEO?
At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P. 
“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.
I’m Interested!
Technical SEO
Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.
Relevancy SEO
Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.
Authority SEO
Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority. 
Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight. 
If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.
Popularity
Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.
I’m Interested!
Part 2: Term Analysis
You have a bulky list of 1000+ keywords; the next step is to turn this list into something useful.
We start with term analysis. What the does that mean?
We separate each keyword into distinct component words that include that keyword so that we can see which words are most common.
Take an example of the keyword “best natural protein powder” it has 4 words best, natural, protein, and powder. By separating these keywords into their components part we will be able to analyze more easily that which terms are being used commonly in our keyword dataset.
Sampling of 3 keywords:
best natural protein powder
how to make natural deodorant
most powerful natural anti inflammatory
By looking at the above sampling you will notice that the term natural is common in al three of these keywords. If this term is common throughout our long list of keywords, it will be highly important when we start clustering our keywords
To make this task easy you need a frequency counter. The best tool for this is  Write Words’ Word Frequency Counter.
It is really simple; you just have to paste your list of keywords and click submit, and Voila!
Ignore the preposition terms like “to”, “For” and “is” and copy and paste your list terms into a sheet.
You won’t always get the most value just by looking at individual words. Sometimes a phrase of two or three words gives you an understanding of what would not otherwise be. In this example, you see the words milk and almonds, but you find that this is actually part of the phrase almond milk.
To collect this information, use the Phrase Frequency Counter from WriteWords and repeat the process for phrases that have two, three, four and more terms in them. Paste all of this data into your spreadsheet too.
A two-word phrase that is more common than a one-word phrase indicates its importance. To calculate this, I use the COUNTA function in Google Sheets to show the number of words in a phrase:
=COUNTA(SPLIT(B2,” “))
Now we can look at the data of our keyword from another dimension: not only the number of words or phrases, but also the number of words in this phrase.
Finally, in order to give more weight to phrases that are repeated less often, but contain more words, I put the exponent of the number of words using the basic formula:
=(C4^2)*A4
In other words, take the number of words and raise it to a power, and then multiply by the frequency of its occurrence. All this gives more weight to the fact that a two-word phrase, which is less common, is still more important than a one-word phrase, which can be more common.
Since I don’t know how to properly raise it, I conduct several tests and continue to sort through the sheet to find the most important words and phrases on the sheet.
When you see this now, you can already begin to see the patterns, and you are already able to better understand your researchers.
In this sample dataset, we go through a list of 10,000+ keywords to understand what people are actually asking. For example, the phrases “what is the best” and “where can i buy” are phrases that we can fully understand.
I mark important words or phrases. I try to keep this number below 50 and to a maximum of around 75 otherwise, grouping will get risky in Part 5.
Part 3: Hot Words
Hot words are the words or phrases of our last session that we considered to be the most important. We have explained the hot words here in more detail.
Why are hot words important?
We Explain:
This exercise provides us with a handful of the most relevant and important terms and phrases for traffic and relevancy, which can then be used to create the best content strategies — content that will rank highly and, in turn, help us reap traffic rewards for your site. 
When developing your hot words list, we identify the highest frequency and most relevant terms from a large range of keywords used by several of your highest-performing competitors to generate their traffic, and these become “hot words.”
When working with a customer (or doing this for yourself), there are usually 3 questions we want answered for each hot word:
Which of these terms are the most important for your business? (0–10)
Which of these terms are negative keywords (we want to ignore or avoid)?
Any other feedback about qualified or high-intent keywords?
We make the list more reliable by removing any negative keywords or keywords that are not really important for the website.
Once we have our final list of hot words, we arrange them into broad topic groups like this:
The different colors are to keep it visually organized for when we group them.
Note that the word stems play an important role here.
For example, consider that all of these words below have the same meaning:
Blog
Blogger
Blogs
Bloggers
Blogging
So, when we group keywords to consider “blog” and “blogging” and “bloggers” as part of one cluster, we will need to use the word “blog” for all of them. The word “stems” is our best friend when forming a group. Synonyms can be arranged in a similar way, which basically means the same thing (and the intention of the same user) as two different ways of saying “build” and “make” or “search” and “see”. There are ways.
Part 4: Preparation for Keyword Grouping
Now we are going to prepare for the heroic task of clustering.
To start, copy your list of hot words and transpose them horizontally across a row.
List your keywords in the first column.
Now, the real magic begins.
After much research and noodling around, I discovered the function in Google Sheets that tells us whether a stem or term is in a keyword or not. It uses RegEx:
=IF(RegExMatch(A5,”health”),”YES”,”NO”)
This explains us whether this word stem or word is in that keyword or not. You have to set individually the term for each column to get your “YES” or “NO” answer. I then drag this formula from all of the rows to get the entire YES/NO answers. Google Sheets often takes a minute or so to process all of this data.
Next, we have to “hard code” these formulas so we can remove the NOs and be left with only a YES if that terms exists in that keyword.
Copy all of the data and “Paste values only.”
Now, use “Find and replace” to remove all of the NOs.
What you’re left with is nothing short of a work of art. You now have the most powerful way to group your keywords. Let the grouping begin!
Part 5: Keyword Grouping
Now at this point you are all set for keyword clustering.
To do this phase right, you need:
Good intuition
Good judgment to make tradeoffs when breaking keywords apart into groups
A deep understanding of who you’re targeting, why they’re important to the business, user intent, and relevance
This part need experience, it is hard to train anyone to do it because it need practice and the person him/her self can master it.
 At the top of the sheet, I use the COUNTA function to show me how many times this word step has been found in our keyword set:
=COUNTA(C3:C10000)
This is important because, as a rule, it is best to start with the niche items that have the least match with other items. If you start too broadly, your keywords will overlap with other groups of keywords, and it will be harder for you to divide them into meaningful groups. Start with narrow and specific groups first.
To begin, you want to sort the sheet by word stem.
The word stems that occur only for a few times won’t have a large amount of overlap. So I start by arranging the sheet by that column, and copying and pasting those keywords into their own new tab.
Now you have your first keyword group!
Here’s a first group example: the “matcha” group. This can be its own project in its own right: for instance, if a website was all about matcha tea and there were other tangentially related keywords.
As we continue to break up one group of keywords into another, we will have several different groups of keywords. If the groups you come across are too wide, you can reduce them even further to narrow the subgroups of keywords for more focused pieces of content. You can follow the same procedure for this broad set of keywords and make it a microcosm of the same process of dividing keywords into smaller groups based on the basics of the words.
We can create an overview of the groups to see the volume and topical opportunities from a high level.
We want to not only consider search volume, but ideally also intent, competitiveness, and so forth.
Here you go
You have successfully taken a list of thousands of keywords and grouped them into relevant keyword groups.
Now you can ultimately attain that “product/market fit” we talked about. It’s great.
You can take each keyword group and make a piece of optimized content around it, aiming dozens of keywords, exponentially raising your potential to acquire more organic traffic. 
All done. Now what?
Now you can start planning for the new content that you never knew you needed to create. On the other hand you can plot your keyword groups (and subgroups) to active pages on your website and add in keywords and optimizations to the header tags, body text, and so forth for all those long keywords you had ignored.
Keyword grouping is largely overlooked, underrated and ignored. This creates a huge new opportunity to adapt to words that were not there. Sometimes it’s just adding one phrase or a few sentences focusing a long-tail keyword here and there that will bring in that additional search traffic for your website. Do it dozens of times and you will continue to increase your organic traffic.
What do you think?
Leave a comment below and let me know your viewpoint on keyword clustering.
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Let’s Chat!
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syndiket · 5 years ago
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Keyword Clustering
Home
About
Industries
SEO For HVAC
SEO For Dentists
SEO For Roofers
Lawyer SEO Marketing
SEO For Plumbers
SEO For Doctors
Services
SEO
PPC
Web Design
Branding
Learn
SEO Dictionary
Locations
Nashville
Menu
Home
About
Industries
SEO For HVAC
SEO For Dentists
SEO For Roofers
Lawyer SEO Marketing
SEO For Plumbers
SEO For Doctors
Services
SEO
PPC
Web Design
Branding
Learn
SEO Dictionary
Locations
Nashville
Free Audit
Contact
Keyword Clustering
At Syndiket, our websites are built with an emphasis on design. We build fully customized, professionally designed websites that bring your business's vision to life.
Let's Get Started
0
Websites Built
0 +
Lines Of Code
0
Something
0 %
Happy Clients
Market Your Company's Services With:
Keyword Clustering - The Ultimate Search Engine Optimization Solution
If your target is to gain more organic traffic, you have to think about SEO in terms of marketing. 
The market is keyword search which means what the searchers are actually looking for.
The product is the content which means what consumers (users) are consuming.
Get In Touch
The fit is the optimization.
In order to increase you traffic you have to make your content relevant to the users’ need, which means it should answer all questions of user. The keyword mapping, planning and creation of your content should be according to the market. This is one of the best ways to grow your organic traffic.
Things to Keep In Mind
Why bother with keyword grouping?
When one web page can rank for multiple keywords then why don’t we focused on planning and optimizing content that targets dozens of similar and related keywords?
Why aiming only one keyword with one piece of content when you can target 30?
The effect of keyword grouping in order to gain more organic traffic is really ignored. In this article we are going to share with you our own method that we have developed for keyword clustering which enables you to do it yourself. Moreover you can increase the number of keywords your amazing content can rank for.
This below is the example of a handful of the top keywords that this piece of content is ranking for. The full list is over 1,000 keywords.
Why Should You Care?
It would be foolish to focus on just one keyword, because you would lose 90% + of this opportunity.
Below are the examples of all keywords, some of which could potentially be targeted:
Let’s dig in 
Part 1: Keyword collection
First of all we need a collection of keywords from which we can make group, be we initiate the process of grouping keywords into clusters.
In this initial step our job is to find every possible keyword. In this process we will be getting many irrelevant keywords unintentionally. And it is pretty good to have a large number of keywords plus with the perk of filtering out the irrelevant keywords instead of having a small number of keywords to focus on.
Usually for any client project we collect from 1000 to 6000 keywords. But to be honest, sometimes we found more than 10,000 keywords, and sometimes (based on the example of local niche customers) we found less than 1000.
It is better to collect keywords from different sources like 8 to 12. Some of sources are:
Brainstorming your own ideas and checking against them
Third-party data tools ( Ahrefs, Moz SEMrush, AnswerThePublic, etc.)
Your competitors
Your existing data in Google Search Console/Google Analytics
Autocomplete suggestions and “Searches related to” from Google
Mashing up keyword combinations
There is no limitation of sources for collecting keywords, and there are now more keyword research tools than ever before. Our goal in this is to be so broad that we will never have to step back and “find more keywords” in the future – unless, of course, there is a new topic that we need to focus on.
At this point suppose that you have invested some time for collecting a long list of keywords, filtering them out by removing the duplicates. Now you have a semi dependable  search volume data.
Break it Down
What Are The Different Types Of SEO?
At Syndiket, we believe four types of SEO exist – and we have an acronym to represent those 4 types of SEO. The acronym is T.R.A.P. 
“T” stands for Technical, “R” stands for Relevancy, “A” stands for Authority, and “P” stands for popularity. Search engine optimization has many smaller divisions within the 4 types, but all of them can be placed into one of these 4 buckets.
I'm Interested!
Technical SEO
Generally, technical SEO for local businesses carry the least importance for ranking. Technical SEO has a bare minimum that is required and this usually includes things like site speed, indexation issues, crawlability, and schema. Once the core technical parts are done, minimal upkeep is required.
Relevancy SEO
Relevancy is one of trivium elements of SEO. It has equal importance with popularity signals and authority signals. Relevancy signals are based on algorithmic learning principles. Bots crawl the internet every time a searcher has a search. Each search is given a relevancy score and the URLs that pop up for a query. The higher the relevancy score you attain, the greater your aggregated rating becomes in Google’s eyes. Digital marketing is a strange thing in 2020, and ranking a website requires the website to be relevant on many fronts.
Authority SEO
Google’s Co-creator, Larry Page, had a unique idea in 1998 which has led to the modern-day Google Empire. “Page Rank”, named after Larry Page himself, was the algorithm that established Google as a search engine giant. The algorithm ranked websites by authority. 
Every page of a website has authority and the sum of all pages has another authority metric. The authority metric is largely determined by how many people link to them (backlinks). The aggregate score of all pages pointing to a domain creates the domain score, which is what Syndiket calls “Domain Rating”, per Ahrefs metrics. The more a site is referenced, the more authority it has. But, the real improvement to the algorithm came when Google began to classify authority weight. 
If Tony Hawk endorsed Syndiket for skateboarding, it would carry a lot more authority than 5 random high school kids endorsing Syndiket. This differentiation in authority happened in 2012 with the Penguin update. Authority SEO is complicated but VERY important.
Popularity
Popularity signals are especially strong for GMB or local SEO, but popularity and engagement are used for all rankings. The goal of this signal is for Google to verify its own algorithm. You can check off all the boxes, but if your content is something real people hate, Google has ways to measure that. Syndiket has proprietary methods of controlling CTR (click-through rate) but we also infuse CRO methods into our work to make sure people actually like the content. Social shares and likes are also included in this bucket.
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Part 2: Term Analysis
You have a bulky list of 1000+ keywords; the next step is to turn this list into something useful.
We start with term analysis. What the does that mean?
We separate each keyword into distinct component words that include that keyword so that we can see which words are most common.
Take an example of the keyword “best natural protein powder” it has 4 words best, natural, protein, and powder. By separating these keywords into their components part we will be able to analyze more easily that which terms are being used commonly in our keyword dataset.
Sampling of 3 keywords:
best natural protein powder
how to make natural deodorant
most powerful natural anti inflammatory
By looking at the above sampling you will notice that the term natural is common in al three of these keywords. If this term is common throughout our long list of keywords, it will be highly important when we start clustering our keywords
To make this task easy you need a frequency counter. The best tool for this is  Write Words’ Word Frequency Counter.
It is really simple; you just have to paste your list of keywords and click submit, and Voila!
Ignore the preposition terms like “to”, “For” and “is” and copy and paste your list terms into a sheet.
You won’t always get the most value just by looking at individual words. Sometimes a phrase of two or three words gives you an understanding of what would not otherwise be. In this example, you see the words milk and almonds, but you find that this is actually part of the phrase almond milk.
To collect this information, use the Phrase Frequency Counter from WriteWords and repeat the process for phrases that have two, three, four and more terms in them. Paste all of this data into your spreadsheet too.
A two-word phrase that is more common than a one-word phrase indicates its importance. To calculate this, I use the COUNTA function in Google Sheets to show the number of words in a phrase:
=COUNTA(SPLIT(B2,” “))
Now we can look at the data of our keyword from another dimension: not only the number of words or phrases, but also the number of words in this phrase.
Finally, in order to give more weight to phrases that are repeated less often, but contain more words, I put the exponent of the number of words using the basic formula:
=(C4^2)*A4
In other words, take the number of words and raise it to a power, and then multiply by the frequency of its occurrence. All this gives more weight to the fact that a two-word phrase, which is less common, is still more important than a one-word phrase, which can be more common.
Since I don’t know how to properly raise it, I conduct several tests and continue to sort through the sheet to find the most important words and phrases on the sheet.
When you see this now, you can already begin to see the patterns, and you are already able to better understand your researchers.
In this sample dataset, we go through a list of 10,000+ keywords to understand what people are actually asking. For example, the phrases “what is the best” and “where can i buy” are phrases that we can fully understand.
I mark important words or phrases. I try to keep this number below 50 and to a maximum of around 75 otherwise, grouping will get risky in Part 5.
Part 3: Hot Words
Hot words are the words or phrases of our last session that we considered to be the most important. We have explained the hot words here in more detail.
Why are hot words important?
We Explain:
This exercise provides us with a handful of the most relevant and important terms and phrases for traffic and relevancy, which can then be used to create the best content strategies — content that will rank highly and, in turn, help us reap traffic rewards for your site. 
When developing your hot words list, we identify the highest frequency and most relevant terms from a large range of keywords used by several of your highest-performing competitors to generate their traffic, and these become “hot words.”
When working with a customer (or doing this for yourself), there are usually 3 questions we want answered for each hot word:
Which of these terms are the most important for your business? (0–10)
Which of these terms are negative keywords (we want to ignore or avoid)?
Any other feedback about qualified or high-intent keywords?
We make the list more reliable by removing any negative keywords or keywords that are not really important for the website.
Once we have our final list of hot words, we arrange them into broad topic groups like this:
The different colors are to keep it visually organized for when we group them.
Note that the word stems play an important role here.
For example, consider that all of these words below have the same meaning:
Blog
Blogger
Blogs
Bloggers
Blogging
So, when we group keywords to consider “blog” and “blogging” and “bloggers” as part of one cluster, we will need to use the word “blog” for all of them. The word “stems” is our best friend when forming a group. Synonyms can be arranged in a similar way, which basically means the same thing (and the intention of the same user) as two different ways of saying “build” and “make” or “search” and “see”. There are ways.
Part 4: Preparation for Keyword Grouping
Now we are going to prepare for the heroic task of clustering.
To start, copy your list of hot words and transpose them horizontally across a row.
List your keywords in the first column.
Now, the real magic begins.
After much research and noodling around, I discovered the function in Google Sheets that tells us whether a stem or term is in a keyword or not. It uses RegEx:
=IF(RegExMatch(A5,”health”),”YES”,”NO”)
This explains us whether this word stem or word is in that keyword or not. You have to set individually the term for each column to get your “YES” or “NO” answer. I then drag this formula from all of the rows to get the entire YES/NO answers. Google Sheets often takes a minute or so to process all of this data.
Next, we have to “hard code” these formulas so we can remove the NOs and be left with only a YES if that terms exists in that keyword.
Copy all of the data and “Paste values only.”
Now, use “Find and replace” to remove all of the NOs.
What you’re left with is nothing short of a work of art. You now have the most powerful way to group your keywords. Let the grouping begin!
Part 5: Keyword Grouping
Now at this point you are all set for keyword clustering.
To do this phase right, you need:
Good intuition
Good judgment to make tradeoffs when breaking keywords apart into groups
A deep understanding of who you’re targeting, why they’re important to the business, user intent, and relevance
This part need experience, it is hard to train anyone to do it because it need practice and the person him/her self can master it.
 At the top of the sheet, I use the COUNTA function to show me how many times this word step has been found in our keyword set:
=COUNTA(C3:C10000)
This is important because, as a rule, it is best to start with the niche items that have the least match with other items. If you start too broadly, your keywords will overlap with other groups of keywords, and it will be harder for you to divide them into meaningful groups. Start with narrow and specific groups first.
To begin, you want to sort the sheet by word stem.
The word stems that occur only for a few times won’t have a large amount of overlap. So I start by arranging the sheet by that column, and copying and pasting those keywords into their own new tab.
Now you have your first keyword group!
Here’s a first group example: the “matcha” group. This can be its own project in its own right: for instance, if a website was all about matcha tea and there were other tangentially related keywords.
As we continue to break up one group of keywords into another, we will have several different groups of keywords. If the groups you come across are too wide, you can reduce them even further to narrow the subgroups of keywords for more focused pieces of content. You can follow the same procedure for this broad set of keywords and make it a microcosm of the same process of dividing keywords into smaller groups based on the basics of the words.
We can create an overview of the groups to see the volume and topical opportunities from a high level.
We want to not only consider search volume, but ideally also intent, competitiveness, and so forth.
Here you go
You have successfully taken a list of thousands of keywords and grouped them into relevant keyword groups.
Now you can ultimately attain that “product/market fit” we talked about. It’s great.
You can take each keyword group and make a piece of optimized content around it, aiming dozens of keywords, exponentially raising your potential to acquire more organic traffic. 
All done. Now what?
Now you can start planning for the new content that you never knew you needed to create. On the other hand you can plot your keyword groups (and subgroups) to active pages on your website and add in keywords and optimizations to the header tags, body text, and so forth for all those long keywords you had ignored.
Keyword grouping is largely overlooked, underrated and ignored. This creates a huge new opportunity to adapt to words that were not there. Sometimes it’s just adding one phrase or a few sentences focusing a long-tail keyword here and there that will bring in that additional search traffic for your website. Do it dozens of times and you will continue to increase your organic traffic.
What do you think?
Leave a comment below and let me know your viewpoint on keyword clustering.
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tak4hir0 · 5 years ago
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Written by Pascal Chambon, reviewed by Raphaël Gomès Update: this article mostly deals with the RESTish ecosystem, which now constitutes a major part of webservices. For more in-depth analysis of the original REST, and of HATEOAS, see my follow-up article. How come REST means so much WORK? This is both a paradox, and a shameless pun. Let’s dive further into the artificial problems born from this design philosophy. BEWARE : through this document, you’ll encounter lots of semi-rhetorical technical questions. Do not misunderstand them, they DO NOT mean that RESTish webservices can’t solve these problems. They just mean that users have an extra burden of decisions to take, of extensions to integrate, of custom workarounds to apply, and this is a problem in itself. The joy of REST verbsRest is not CRUD, its advocates will ensure that you don’t mix up these two. Yet minutes later they will rejoice that HTTP methods have well defined semantics to create (POST), retrieve (GET), update (PUT/PATCH) and delete (DELETE) resources. They’ll delight in professing that these few “verbs”are enough to express any operation. Well, of course they are; the same way that a handful of verbs would be enough to express any concept in English: “Today I updated my CarDriverSeat with my body, and created an EngineIgnition, but the FuelTank deleted itself”; being possible doesn’t make it any less awkward. Unless you’re an admirator of the Toki Pona language. If the point is to be minimalist, at least let it be done right. Do you know why PUT, PATCH, and DELETE have never been implemented in web browser forms? Because they are useless and harmful. We can just use GET for read and POST for write. Or POST exclusively, when HTTP-level caching is unwanted. Other methods will at best get in your way, at worst ruin your day. You want to use PUT to update your resource? OK, but some Holy Specifications state that the data input has to be equivalent to the representation received via a GET. So what do you do with the numerous read-only parameters returned by GET (creation time, last update time, server-generated token…)? You omit them and violate the PUT principles? You include them anyway, and expect an “HTTP 409 Conflict” if they don’t match server-side values (forcing you to then issue a GET...)? You give them random values and expect servers to ignore them (the joy of silent errors)? Pick your poison, REST clearly has no clue what a read-only attribute it, and this won’t be fixed anytime soon. Meanwhile, a GET is dangerously supposed to return the password (or credit card number) which was sent in a previous POST/PUT; good luck dealing with such write-only parameters too. Did I forget to mention that PUT also brings dangerous race conditions, where several clients will override each other’s changes, whereas they just wanted to update different fields? You want to use PATCH to update your resource? Nice, but like 99% of people using this verb, you’ll just send a subset of resource fields in your request payload, hoping that the server properly understands the operation intended (and all its possible side effects); lots of resource parameters are deeply linked or mutually exclusive(ex. it’s either credit card OR paypal token, in a user’s billing info), but RESTful design hides this important information too. Anyway, you’d violate specs once more: PATCH is not supposed to just send a bunch of fields to be overridden. Instead, you’re supposed to provide a “set of instructions” to be applied on the resources. So here you go again, take your paperboard and your coffee mug, you’ll have to decide how to express these instructions. Often with handcrafted specifications, since Not-Invented-Here Syndrome is a de-facto standard in the REST world. (Edit: REST advocates have backpedaled on this subject, with Json Merge Patch, an alternative to formats like Json Patch) You want to DELETE resources? OK, but I hope you don’t need to provide substantial context data; like a PDF scan of the termination request from the user. DELETE prohibits having a payload. A constraint that REST architects often dismiss, since most webservers don’t enforce this rule on the requests they receive. How compatible, anyway, would be a DELETE request with 2 MBs of base64 query string attached? (Edit: the RFC 2616, indicating that payloads without semantics should be ignored, is now obsolete) REST aficionados easily profess that “people are doing it wrong” and their APIs are “actually not RESTful”. For example, lots of developers use PUT to create a resource directly on its final URL (/myresourcebase/myresourceid), whereas the “good way” (edit: according to many) of doing it is to POST on a parent URL (/myresourcebase), and let the server indicate, with an HTTP “Location” header, the new resource’s URL (edit: it’s not an HTTP redirection though). The good news is: it doesn’t matter. These rigorous principles are like Big Endian vs Little Endian, they occupy philosophers for hours, but have very little impact on real life problems, i.e “getting stuff done”. By the way… handcrafting URLs is always great fun. Do you know how many implementations properly urlencode() identifiers while building REST urls? Not that many. Get ready for nasty breakages and SSRF/CSRF attacks. When you forget to urlencode usernames in 1 of your 30 handcrafted URLs.The joy of REST error handlingAbout every coder is able to make a “nominal case” work. Error handling is one of these features which will decide if your code is robust software, or a huge pile of matchsticks. HTTP provides a list of error codes out-of-the-box. Great, let’s see that. Using “HTTP 404 Not Found” to notify about an unexisting resource sounds RESTful as heck, doesn’t it? Too bad: your nginx was misconfigured for 1 hour, so your API consumers got only 404 errors and purged hundreds of accounts, thinking they were deleted…. Our customers, after we deleted their gigabytes of kitten images by error.Using “HTTP 401 Unauthorized” when a user doesn’t have access credentials to a third-party service sounds acceptable, doesn’t it? However, if an ajax call in your Safari browser gets this error code, it might startle your end customer with a very unexpected password prompt [it did, years ago, YMMV]. HTTP existed long before “RESTful webservices”, and the web ecosystem is filled with assumptions about the meaning of its error codes. Using them to transport application errors is like using milk bottles to dispose of toxic waste: inevitably, one day, there will be trouble. Some standard HTTP error codes are specific to Webdav, others to Microsoft, and the few remaining have definitions so fuzzy that they are of no help. In the end, like most REST users, you’ll probably use random HTTP codes, like “HTTP 418 I’m a teapot” or unassigned numbers, to express your application-specific exceptions. Or you’ll shamelessly return “HTTP 400 Bad Request” for all functional errors, and then invent your own clunky error format, with booleans, integer codes, slugs, and translated messages stuffed into an arbitrary payload. Or you’ll give up altogether on proper error handling; you’ll just return a plain message, in natural language, and hope that the caller will be a human able to analyze the problem, and take action. Good luck interacting with such APIs from an autonomous program. The joy of REST conceptsREST has made a career out of boasting about concepts that any service architect in his right mind already respects, or about principles that it doesn’t even follow. Here are some excerpts, grabbed from top-ranked webpages. REST is a client-server architecture. The client and the server both have a different set of concerns. What a scoop in the software world. REST provides a uniform interface between components. Well, like any other protocol does, when it’s enforced as the lingua franca of a whole ecosystem of services. REST is a layered system. Individual components cannot see beyond the immediate layer with which they are interacting. It sounds like a natural consequence of any well designed, loosely coupled architecture; amazing. Rest is awesome, because it is STATELESS. Yes there is probably a huge database behind the webservice, but it doesn’t remember the state of the client. Or, well, yes, actually it remember its authentication session, its access permissions… but it’s stateless, nonetheless. Or more precisely, just as stateless as any HTTP-based protocol, like simple RPC mentioned previously. With REST, you can leverage the power of HTTP CACHING! Well here is at last one concluding point: a GET request and its cache-control headers are indeed friendly with web caches. That being said, aren’t local caches (Memcached etc.) enough for 99% of web services? Out-of-control caches are dangerous beasts; how many people want to expose their APIs in clear text, so that a Varnish or a Proxy on the road may keep delivering outdated content, long after a resource has been updated or deleted? Maybe even delivering it “forever”, if a configuration mistake once occurred? A system must be secure by default. I perfectly admit that some heavily loaded systems want to benefit from HTTP caching, but it costs much less to expose a few GET endpoints for heavy read-only interactions, than to switch all operations to REST and its dubious error handling. Thanks to all this, REST has HIGH PERFORMANCE! Are we sure of that? Any API designer knows it: locally, we want fine-grained APIs, to be able to do whatever we want; and remotely, we want coarse-grained APIs, to limit the impact of network round-trips. Here is again a domain in which “basic” REST fails miserably. The split of data between “resources”, each instance on its own endpoint, naturally leads to the N+1 Query problem. To get a user’s full data (account, subscriptions, billing information…), you have to issue as many HTTP requests; and you can’t parallelize them, since you don’t know in advance the unique IDs of related resources. This, plus the inability to fetch only part of resource objects, naturally creates nasty bottlenecks (edit: yes, you can stuff extensions like Compound/Partial Documents into your setup to help with that). REST offers better compatibility. How so? Why do so many REST webservices have “/v2/” or “/v3/” in their base URLs then? Backwards and forward compatible APIs are not hard to achieve, with high level languages, as long as simple rules are followed when adding/deprecating parameters. As far as I know, REST doesn’t bring anything new on the subject. REST is SIMPLE, everyone knows HTTP! Well, everyone knows pebbles too, yet people are happy to have better blocks when building their house. The same way XML is a meta-language, HTTP is a meta-protocol. To have a real application protocol (like “dialects” are to XML), you’ll need to specify lots of things; and you’ll end up with Yet Another RPC Protocol, as if there were not enough already. REST is so easy, it can be queried from any shell, with CURL! OK, actually, every HTTP-based protocol can be queried with CURL. Even SOAP. Issuing a GET is particularly straightforward, for sure, but good luck writing json or xml POST payloads by hand; people usually use fixture files, or, much more handy, full-fledged API clients instantiated directly in the command line interface of their favorite language. “The client does not need any prior knowledge of the service in order to use it”. This is by far my favourite quote. I’ve found it numerous times, under different forms, especially when the buzzword HATEOAS lurked around; sometimes with some careful (but insufficient) “except” phrases following. Still, I don’t know in which fantasy world these people live, but in this one, a client program is not a colony of ants; it doesn’t browse remote APIs randomly, and then decide how to best handle them, based on pattern recognition or black magic. Quite the opposite; the client has strong expectations on what it means, to PUT this one field to this one URL with this one value, and the server had better respect the semantic which was agreed upon during integration, else all hell might break loose. When you ask how HATEOAS is supposed to work.How to do REST right and quick?Forget about the “right” part. REST is like a religion, no mere mortal will ever grasp the extent of its genius, nor “do it right”. So the real question is: if you’re forced to expose or consume webservices in a kinda-RESTful way, how to rush through this job, and switch to more constructive tasks asap? Update: it turns out that there are actually lots of “standards” and industrialization efforts for REST, although I had never encountered them personnally (maybe because few people use them?). More information in my follow-up article. How to industrialize server-side exposure?Each web framework has its own way of defining URL endpoint. So expect some big dependencies, or a good layer of handwritten boilerplate, to plug your existing API onto your favorite server as a set of REST endpoint. Libraries like Django-Rest-Framework automate the creation of REST APIs, by acting as data-centric wrappers above SQL/noSQL schemas. If you just want to make “CRUD over HTTP”, you could be fine with them. But if you want to expose common “do-this-for-me” APIs, with workflows, constraints, complex data impacts and such, you’ll have a hard time bending any REST framework to fit your needs. Be prepared to connect, one by one, each HTTP method of each endpoint, to the corresponding method call; with a fair share of handmade exception handling, to translate passing-through exceptions into corresponding error codes and payloads. How to industrialize client-side integration?From experience, my guess is: you don’t. For each API integration, you’ll have to browse lengthy docs, and follow detailed recipes on how each of the N possible operations has to be performed. You’ll have to craft URLs by hand, write serializers and deserializers, and learn how to workaround the ambiguities of the API. Expect quite some trial-and-error before you tame the beast. Do you know how webservices providers make up for this, and ease adoption? Simple, they write their own official client implementations. FOR. EVERY. MAJOR. LANGUAGE. AND. PLATFORM. I’ve recently dealt with a subscription management system. They provide clients for PHP, Ruby, Python, .NET, iOS, Android, Java… plus some external contributions for Go and NodeJS. Each client lives in its own Github repository. Each with its own big list of commits, bug tracking tickets, and pull requests. Each with its own usage examples. Each with its own awkward architecture, somewhere between ActiveRecord and RPC proxy. This is astounding. How much time is spent developing such weird wrappers, instead of improving the real, the valuable, the getting-stuff-done, webservice? Sisyphus developing Yet Another Client for his API.ConclusionFor decades, about every programming language has functioned with the same workflow: sending inputs to a callable, and getting results or errors as output. This worked well. Quite well. With Rest, this has turned into an insane work of mapping apples to oranges, and praising HTTP specifications to better violate them minutes later. In an era where MICROSERVICES are more and more common, how come such an easy task — linking libraries over networks — remains so artificially crafty and cumbersome? I don’t doubt that some smart people out there will provide cases where REST shines; they’ll showcase their homemade REST-based protocol, allowing to discover and do CRUD operation on arbitrary object trees, thanks to hyperlinks; they’ll explain how the REST design is so brilliant, that I’ve just not read enough articles and dissertations about its concepts. I don’t care. Trees are recognized by their own fruits. What took me a few hours of coding and worked very robustly, with simple RPC, now takes weeks and can’t stop inventing new ways of failing or breaking expectations. Development has been replaced by tinkering. Almost-transparent remote procedure call was what 99% people really needed, and existing protocols, as imperfect as they were, did the job just fine. This mass monomania for the lowest common denominator of the web, HTTP, has mainly resulted in a huge waste of time and grey matter. REST promised simplicity and delivered complexity. REST promised robustness and delivered fragility. REST promised interoperability and delivered heterogeneity. REST is the new SOAP. EpilogueThe future could be bright. There are still tons of excellent protocols available, in binary or text format, with or without schema, some leveraging the new abilities of HTTP2… so let’s move on, people. We can’t forever remain in the Stone Age of Webservices. Edit: many people asked for these alternative protocols, the subject would deserve its own story, but one could have a look at XMLRPC and JSONRPC (simple but quite relevant), or JSONWSP (includes schemas), or language-specific layers like Pyro or RMI when for internal use, or new kids in the block like GraphQL and gRPC for public APIs… “Always finish a rant on a positive note”, momma said.Edited on December 12, 2017: normalize section titlesremove some typosrectify improper “HTTP redirection” wording after POST operationsadd suggestions of alternative protocolsEdited on December 28, 2017: fix mixup between “HTTP methods” and “REST verbs”Edited on January 7, 2018 Edited on January 19, 2018 fix wrong wording on “PUT vs GET” remarksprecise the notion of “real APIs” (non-CRUD)mention risk of overrides with PUTupdate paragraphs on PATCH and DELETE troublesEdited on January 19, 2018 fix wording around Not-Invented-Here SyndromeEdited on February 2, 2018 add links to follow-up article on The Original REST, in “introduction” and “how to industrialize” chaptersEdited on April 14, 2019 add clarification about “semi-rhetorical question”, and hints about extensions like compound/partial documentsEdited on July 6, 2019 fix typos and French links
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jerdle-typology · 8 years ago
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Enneagram 3
THE THREE IN PROFILE
Healthy: Self-assured and energetic, with high self-esteem: they believe in themselves and their own value. Adaptable, well-adjusted, and charming, often attractive and popular. Realistic and purposeful with a good sense of their potential. / Ambitious to improve themselves, to “be all that they can be"—often become outstanding, a kind of human ideal, embodying widely admired qualities. Others are motivated to be like them in some positive way. High-spirited, goal-oriented, and persistent. They are effective, industrious people. At Their Best: Inner-directed and authentic, everything they seem to be. Accept their limitations and live within them. Self-deprecatory sense of humor and a childlike innocence emerge. Charitable, genuinely modest, and benevolent.
Average: Highly concerned with performance, doing the job well, being superior, and rising above others. Compare themselves with others in search for status and success. Become driven careerists and social climbers, invested in achievement, exclusivity, and being a "winner.” / Become image-conscious, highly concerned with how they are perceived. Begin to present themselves according to the expectations of others and what they need to do in order to be successful. Pragmatic and efficient, but also studied, losing touch with their own feelings beneath a smooth façade. Problems with intimacy, credibility, and expediency emerge. / Want to impress others with their superiority: constantly promoting themselves, making themselves sound better than they really are. Narcissistic, with grandiose, inflated notions about themselves and their talents. Exhibitionistic and seductive, as if saying, “Look at me!” Arrogance and contempt is a defense against feeling jealous of others and their success.
Unhealthy: Fearing failure and humiliation, they misrepresent themselves, distorting the truth of their accomplishments. They can be extremely unprincipled, covetous of the success of others, and willing to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the illusion of their superiority. / Exploitative and opportunistic, but also deceptive so that their mistakes and wrongdoings will not be exposed. Pathological lying, extreme hostility, and delusional jealousy: betraying and sabotaging people in order to triumph over them. / May become vindictive, attempting to ruin what they cannot have. Relentless, obsessive about destroying whatever reminds them of their own shortcomings and failures. Psychopathic tendencies: murder.
Key Motivations: Want to feel valuable and worthwhile, to be affirmed, to distinguish themselves, to have attention, to be admired, and to impress others.
Examples: Bill Clinton, Christopher Reeve, Michael Landon, Richard Gere, Shirley MacLaine, Jane Pauley, Paul McCartney, Sting, Tom Cruise, Sharon Stone, Tony Robbins, Bryant Gumbel, Dick Clark, Vanna White, Brooke Shields, Kathie Lee Gifford, Denzel Washington, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Truman Capote, O.J. Simpson.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE THREE
The United States is fast becoming a dysfunctional “Three” culture: driven, narcissistic, image-oriented, emphasizing style over substance, symbols over reality. The pursuit of excellence (as exemplified by the healthy Three) is being replaced by the celebration of the artificial as everything is treated like a commodity—packaged, advertised, and marketed. Politics is becoming less concerned with principles or the use of power for the common good than with the display of personalities. Politics serves public relations, selling candidates with their calculated positions to a public which can no longer tell a fabricated image from a real person.
The communications media, particularly television, are primarily concerned with attracting attention so that the public can be sold something. The shallow values and the beguiling glitter of “show biz” have become the norms by which everything is measured. The only guideline is the ability to gain attention: what is noticed and in demand has value. People are so seduced by the slick package that they often do not realize that there is nothing in it. To paraphrase McLuhan, the package is the message. Calculated images successfully masquerade as reality, from the programmed friendliness of television personalities to the rehearsed sincerity of beauty contestants to the hard fluff of “evening magazine” shows.
Exhibitionism and self-promotion are becoming acceptable as people do whatever it takes to be noticed in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The ideal is to be a winner—to be successful, famous, and celebrated. The quest for success and prestige is everywhere. Every day, a new book tells us how to dress for success, eat for success, or network for success. We are being sold a narcissistic fantasy: that we will be “somebody” if we are like everybody else, only better. If you manage your image properly, you too can become a star—or a god.
The personality type Three exemplifies the search for the validation of the self, and so Threes look to esteemed others to determine who they must be, what they must do, in order to feel valuable and worthwhile as human beings. With this particular focus, Threes frequently become successful in the eyes of their society because they make it their business to achieve those things which their peers find valuable. This is no less true in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand than in a fast-track corporate culture. Threes will strive to exemplify whatever qualities are honored in their given milieu. Thus, in an unhealthy society which manipulates such fears and motivations, Threes stand to gain the most attention and success from the society, but also end up among its greatest victims—estranged from their own heart’s desire, empty, and emotionally isolated, while never knowing what has gone wrong.
In the Feeling Triad
Threes, the primary personality type in the Feeling Triad, are the most out of touch with their emotional lives. This is because Threes have learned to put their own feelings and their own true desires aside in order to function more effectively. Threes believe that they will be valued only for what they do, so they put their energies into performing well, “getting the job done,” and becoming successful in their endeavors, however “success” may be defined. Further, Threes want positive responses from others, so they learn to behave in ways that they believe will create a good impression. Whereas this can be a useful orientation in certain situations, it can become a habitual way of being—even in circumstances where such behavior would be inappropriate, or at least limiting. Over time, as Threes continually postpone dealing with their own real feelings, they begin to have trouble accessing them. A profound split develops between who they seem to be and who they are, between the image they project to others and the reality behind it. Eventually, their image becomes their only reality. They become so distanced from their own feelings and needs that they no longer know who they are. They believe that the image is all they have. At this point, since whatever affirmation they are receiving is in response to an image, and not to themselves, no amount of praise or achievement will make them feel better. The great challenge for people of this personality type is to become inner-directed, to develop themselves as persons according to their genuine feelings and their own true values. Most Threes are unaware of the extent to which they have abandoned themselves, and it can be a very difficult realization when they discover that the dreams they have been so relentlessly pursuing are not their own.
When they are healthy, Threes are loved and admired, even idolized by others because they have taken pains to acquire the qualities and skills they embody virtually to an ideal degree. Ironically, though, healthy Threes feel worthwhile and valuable not because of others’ validation but because they are in touch with their own heart and are guided by it. Of course, the attention and praise of others is wonderful to have, but healthy Threes are not swayed by it. They would pursue their goals even without the admiration. The overwhelmingly positive self-esteem of healthy Threes is real, and therefore cannot be affected by the opinions of others. The freedom and purposefulness of this way of living is very attractive to others who hold them in high regard. Also, because healthy Threes have more fully integrated their feelings, they are warm and genuine both in their personal lives and in their careers. Healthy Threes are outstanding, human nature’s stars.
However, average Threes do not feel self-esteem, they believe that they will feel good about themselves only if they achieve, only if they become big successes and stars—number one in the class. This leads them to be intensely competitive with others for all forms of success and prestige, since they are convinced that this will give them a sense of value. To the degree that they repress feelings of worthlessness, Threes will be driven to become “winners.” Unfortunately, they also look outside themselves to determine what qualities a winner must have. Instead of developing themselves, they resort to projecting images, which are meant to make a favorable impression. Pragmatic and calculating, they are able to change their image to get what they want. As they become more desperate and empty, they begin showing off and hyping themselves to attract more admiration, but since they are not expressing who they really are, all of the attention in the world cannot touch them.
If they become unhealthy, Threes deceive themselves and others so they can maintain the illusion that they’re still on top—still superior people. They are extremely devious if they are in danger of being exposed and humiliated. Unhealthy Threes are like any other type with deep psychological problem: they have difficulty functioning. Yet for Threes, functioning, or at this stage, even the appearance of functioning, is everything. They are terrified that anyone will discover the degree of their disorder. They can become extremely dangerous as they strike out at anyone who they perceive threatens the crumbling image which they now identify with entirely.
Problems with Hostility and Narcissism
Like the other personality types of this Triad, Threes have a problem with hostility, which can manifest in less healthy Threes as vindictive malice toward anyone who they believe threatens their self-image. While Twos and Fours are indirectly hostile, average to unhealthy Threes are more directly hostile in a wide variety of ways, from arrogantly distancing themselves, to snide humor at others’ expense, to sarcastic putdowns, to sabotaging and betraying people. Hostility serves Threes in two ways: first, it compensates for their own feelings of inadequacy, and second, it keeps away people who, for one reason or another, undermine their fragile self-esteem. In this latter regard, less healthy Threes may even be hostile to people who they admire or to whom they are attracted.
Average Threes are the most narcissistic of the personality types. While healthy Threes justly possess high self-esteem, average Threes build their identities around an increasingly inflated self-regard: they appear to be utterly in love with themselves. But, more precisely, they are in love with their inflated image rather than their actual selves. Instead of loving themselves as they really are, including a realistic acceptance of their limitations, they love a false façade which bears little resemblance to the undeveloped person beneath.
Because Threes adapt themselves to the desires and expectations of others to validate themselves, they can lose a clear sense of who they actually are and what they want from their lives. In average to unhealthy Threes, the drive to get recognition for themselves becomes so great that it drowns out other legitimate needs they may have. Further, because their sense of their authentic self becomes increasingly blocked, average Threes begin to engage in internal “pep talks” to convince themselves that they actually are the outstanding person they are trying to become.
Narcissists care principally about themselves—and about others only to the degree that they reflect well upon themselves. They remain intensely self-centered, with a limited ability to empathize with anyone else’s feelings or needs. This is why they have little capacity for love and why—once they have become narcissistic—average Threes have little capacity to form lasting, mutually satisfying relationships. Relationships are one-sided because both parties are in love with the same person: the Three.
Of course, their narcissism puts them in constant conflict with people. Because they believe so much in their superiority, average Threes are competitive with the very people from whom they want admiration. They show off as if others were no more than an adoring audience endlessly ready to applaud their every move; if others do not applaud, Threes give them “attitude” or otherwise reject them. Worse, narcissistic Threes add insult to injury by demanding that people admire them even when they are contemptuous of the people whose admiration they want.
The problem is that narcissism is not the same thing as genuine self-esteem. Although average Threes seem to be coolly self-contained, they are not really secure with themselves because their self-esteem is based not on the development of their real capacities but on the ability to capture the attention of others. Threes are finely attuned to people’s reactions to them, and can respond by projecting whatever image they need at the moment. But since their repertoire of images does not have a corresponding measure of reality behind it, everything they do is done for affirmation, not because they are personally committed to, or deeply involved with, whatever they are expressing (being “politically correct”).
The irony is that behind the façade is a deeply hidden dependency on others, a dependency they cannot acknowledge because of the demands of their narcissism. Once narcissism takes over, Threes cannot live with people and they cannot live without them, because they are hostile toward the people on whom they depend, and because they feel like “nobody” without the attention of others.
Parental Orientation
As young children, Threes were connected to the nurturing-figure, the person who in their early development mirrored them, cared for them, and provided affection and a sense of the Three’s personal value. Young Threes are highly adaptable and responsive to the emotional states of others, and so learn to adjust themselves to the reactions and subconscious expectations of their nurturing-figure. This person is usually the Three’s mother or a mother-substitute, but not always. In some cases, the mother may have been largely absent, physically or emotionally, and it fell upon the father or a sibling to nurture the baby. In other cases, a nanny or grandparent may have fulfilled this role. In any case, it is important to understand that the nurturing-figure is the person who cared for the child and who provided mirroring.
In their formative years, Threes learn to tune in to the desires and hopes of their nurturing-figure. The expectations of the nurturing-figure need not be expressed explicitly. With the remarkable intuitive gifts of children, young Threes know what will please their nurturers and which behaviors produce approving looks and smiles. All of this is quite natural, and if the nurturing-figure is reasonably healthy, he or she mirrors the child’s true qualities and the Three will mature into a well-balanced person with good self-esteem. But to the degree that the nurturing-figure has unresolved narcissistic needs of his or her own, the Three will have to make much greater adaptations. To please the troubled nurturer, young Threes will have to abandon themselves to become the person who will be approved. In cases where the nurturer was more pathological and needy, Threes will have to disconnect from their own feelings and needs almost entirely. Because the nurturing-figure’s expectations are so unrealistic, the child is doomed to fail. Little that the child can do will get the nurturing-figure to approve of them or validate their existence. The result is a desperate individual with deep narcissistic wounds and an intense underlying hostility for being forced to abandon his or her own heart.
As adults, Threes continue to play out this pattern learned in early childhood. They seek out people whom they admire and esteem to give them validation and admiration. Threes are not interested in indiscriminately getting everyone to like them: rather, they focus on specific individuals who they themselves view as valuable, successful people. Although this motivates Threes to do those things which will make them seem worthwhile to others, this also leaves them highly vulnerable to fears of rejection. They will work tirelessly to avoid ever being rejected, ever being seen as a “loser.” The admiring gaze which they sought from their nurturing-figures made them feel that they were loved and valued, and in one form or another, they are always seeking that look in the eyes of others. Admiration makes them feel alive and worthwhile—at least for a while. Without it, they feel empty and hostile because their underlying feelings of not being valued for who they are begin to surface.
Average Threes perceived as children that they were generally valued for what they accomplished, for the quality of their performance, not for themselves. In adult Threes, this can lead to highly effective work habits, but it can also lead to powerful fears of intimacy. They may initiate relationships, but then end them before the other person gets to know them well, or have relationships with people other than the person they most want to be near. This protects their fragile self-image, but at a great cost to their happiness and connection with others. Threes believe that others will love them only for their image and for their success, but if people were really to get to know them, they would see the person beneath the image and they would be rejected. Because of difficult childhood experiences with their nurturing-figure, average Threes cannot accept the idea that others could love them just as they are. It seldom occurs to them that the most important person who has rejected them is themselves.
To give up their performance and risk exposing the vulnerable self within feels like an enormous risk to Threes. They feel that their authentic self has been rejected in the past and are secretly terrified of having it happen again. They also become convinced that their real self is relatively undesirable and that only their performance is worthwhile. Having put so much effort into it, to give it up seems unthinkable. Yet, if Threes never take that risk, they may become successful in the eyes of others, but will never know what it really is to be themselves, nor will they be able to relate to, much less feel love from, anyone else. Sadly, newspapers and magazines are full of stories about highly successful people who “have everything going for them,” but who suddenly contradicted their popular image in startling and tragic ways. One can imagine the anxiety and desperation of a person who has tirelessly worked to accomplish what they believed would make them feel good about themselves, only to discover that their feelings of emptiness remained and were more painful than ever.
ANALYZING THE HEALTHY THREE
Level 1: The Authentic Person
At their best, very healthy Threes transcend their desire to be affirmed by others and accept themselves as they are. They are no longer motivated by a concern for what others think of them or a desire to obtain applause or admiration. Rather, very healthy Threes shift their center of gravity to become inner-directed and self-generating; in so doing, they plant the seeds of their own interiority, their own feelings, their own identities. Their development becomes interior and personal, a matter of discovering their own values rather than overt, outward behavior.
Like many of the qualities of the very healthy Three, the ability to be inner-directed may not sound like much at first, but this is only a testament to the degree to which the illusions of the modern world have entranced us. To be truly inner-directed is a rare accomplishment. It does not mean that one is led by emotional reactions or fantasies, by avoidance or fear or compensations, any more than it means being influenced by the opinions of others or by prevailing tastes and mores. To be inner-directed is to follow the truth of one’s own heart and to act and speak from that place.
When healthy Threes do this, they are inspiring and genuinely affecting. They communicate in a way that touches others and motivates them to pursue higher purposes. Their self-expression is direct and entirely authentic. Healthy Threes feel deeply, but they are not sentimental or effusive. Rather, theirs is an openness of heart that takes in the truth of themselves and others with a childlike simplicity and compassion. Being authentic is an extraordinary accomplishment, especially when we consider how few moments in life we express our genuine feelings and perceptions to others. These moments are usually rare and precious, and entail a profound acceptance of self and others.
Self-acceptance is a way of viewing one’s self compassionately, without condemnation or justification. It is a starting point in life which makes other things possible. It celebrates the fullness and joy of being alive and of being who we are: accepting ourselves, however, does not mean embracing our neuroses or bad habits and celebrating them as if they were virtues. On the contrary, self-acceptance involves loving ourselves enough to accept painful truths about ourselves. It helps us to abjure the world of grandiose fantasies and to cease to listen to the temptation to be false about ourselves in any way. Self-acceptance is, at its simplest, the experience of one’s self, here and now, as a complete human being, with all the glories and problems that condition entails. By accepting themselves, very healthy Threes take responsibility for developing themselves as they truly are, both to realize their many gifts and talents and to gracefully acknowledge their weaknesses and limitations.
At this stage, healthy Threes are modest and direct about themselves because their energy is invested in being only who they are. Threes are practical even when they are less healthy, but at Level 1, they are also deeply contented. They often possess a disarming sense of humor about themselves because they are wise to their own tricks and can laugh at them, rather than act on them. Far from having some of the intimacy problems which develop further down the continuum, healthy Threes are tender and loving. They can listen to others attentively and communicate their feelings clearly and simply: they are nothing more and nothing less than what they seem to be. Their reality and their image converge, giving them a firm foundation upon which to develop as persons. Their feelings originate from within and are connected to their immediate experiences, not simulated or postponed until a time when they will not have to “function.” Healthy Threes are continually touched and amazed by the love that others extend to them, and because they are present to their own feelings, they are able to take others’ love in. Other people and their hurts and triumphs are intensely real to them because very healthy Threes are real to themselves.
Very healthy Threes often become extremely benevolent and charitable, not because of the positive impression this will make on others, but because they have opened their hearts and are truly concerned about the welfare and success of others. Truly wishing good for others, they take actions to guide people less fortunate than themselves toward their own goals. They are no longer concerned with “getting ahead” and distinguishing themselves. They begin to experience themselves as part of the greater human family, and are moved to take a responsible role within it, while modestly using whatever talents and position they may have to contribute something worthwhile.
Level 2: The Self-Assured Person
Even healthy Threes are not always this healthy. Instead of being inner-directed, they more typically start looking outside themselves to find out what others value. They become adept at determining what qualities are esteemed by people who are important to them, and adapt themselves so as to become a person with those same qualities. Although Threes are still authentic people, they have begun to shift from following their own hearts to seeking validation and recognition from others.
At Level 2, Threes have begun to seek the positive regard of others because they have succumbed to their Basic Fear that they are worthless, without value in and of themselves. In a way that is similar to the dilemma of a Two, Threes feel they can only get a sense of their own value by obtaining the praise and recognition of significant others in their lives. To the extent that Threes were not seen or valued for themselves in childhood, they will begin to turn their focus away from their own needs and feelings to determine what behaviors, qualities, and attitudes will make them valued within their world. To this end, Threes develop their ability to adapt along with their talent for reading others’ expectations to a fine degree.
Since they possess the most exquisite social instincts, healthy Threes are extraordinarily well adapted to other people, effortlessly responding to attention the way leaves turn their faces to catch sunlight. Every shift of emotion, every variation of warmth or cooling by others registers immediately in the Three’s psyche, in the same way that a sunbather can tell when the thinnest cloud comes between him and the sun. Healthy Threes possess a talent parallel to the Twos’ empathy in their ability to read people and situations. Upon entering a room, Threes immediately sense the prevailing mood of others and are able to respond effectively and sensitively to the situation. This ability puts others at their ease and usually causes them to respond favorably to the Three’s presence. When Threes bask in the approving attention of others, they positively glow. The affirmation of others makes them feel alive and good about themselves.
Their psychic dynamics are difficult to analyze precisely because there is a subtle interaction continually taking place between Threes and other people. The affirming attention of others makes Threes feel desirable, and they respond to people by adapting themselves to the values they perceive in others. Others, seeing their ideal selves reflected in Threes, continue to shower them with attention, and the interaction is sustained. When they are healthy, Threes are able to maintain this “feedback loop” because they really are embodying qualities that others admire, and they are secure enough in themselves to give genuine affirmation and positive attention to others. However, because Threes are not entirely inner-directed, this self-esteem requires maintenance. Not only do Threes feel the need to adapt themselves to others, they begin to require self-affirmation, designed to keep them feeling convinced of their own worth, as if to continually remind themselves, “I am a valuable, significant person.”
One way that Threes convince themselves of their worth is by focusing on what they begin to see as their unlimited potential. Healthy Threes really work at maintaining a “can do” attitude and feel that they are able to accomplish goals and get things done. They took to heart the often repeated message from childhood, “You can be anything you want to be if you set your mind to it.” Indeed, Threes often function as the “hero” in their family, the child who is an athletic star or gets straight A’s on report cards or gets cast as the lead in the school play. In one way or another, young Threes strive to make their families proud of them. In healthy Threes, however, this sense of potential and possibility is tempered by a well-grounded realism and a steadiness of purpose which gives Threes the ability to actually achieve many of their goals.
Their apparent self-assurance and positive attitude make healthy Threes extremely attractive, which encourages more interactions and more affirmation. Other people are also attracted to Threes because, as a group, they are often physically attractive, and even if they are not particularly attractive by a culture’s standards, Threes usually know how to put their best foot forward, making the best of whatever positive attributes they do possess. In any event, Threes learn to be attractive in the broader sense of the word. They know how to attract other people, how to get others interested in them, and how to have others enjoy being in their presence. They possess a magnetism and an aura of desirability which is exciting to be around.
Desirability and attractiveness (both physically and personally) are important qualities for human beings because, on a biological level, we must attract others for the propagation of the species. But we are also social creatures and, to a certain degree, we all need the good regard of others in order to accomplish things in life. And people of no other personality type are more suited to attracting favorable attention to themselves than healthy Threes.
Level 3: The Outstanding Paragon
Just as negative feelings about oneself reinforce each other, so do positive feelings. Because healthy Threes want to feel good about themselves, they engage in constructive activities that will increase their self-esteem. Having worked to convince themselves of their own value and worth, they begin to fear that others will reject them or be disappointed by them. As a result, healthy Threes invest time and energy developing themselves, making themselves into outstanding individuals.
Healthy Threes are ambitious and eager to improve themselves in any number of ways—academically, physically, culturally, professionally, and intellectually. They are not ambitious for money or fame or social standing, but to make more of themselves. There is much to admire in healthy Threes because they really do embody something excellent. They are worthy of the admiration of others because they are outstanding, frequently model persons in whatever sphere of activity they enter—whether the Olympics, or West Point, or medical school. They are well-adjusted, well-rounded boys and girls, men and women who embody the values that the culture admires. (Of course, a particular Three may not embody the values you personally admire or would like to possess, but what he or she always embodies are those values which are affirmed by the Three’s own cultural and social environment.) Thus, Threes are living models of the culture’s values, the paragons by which we see and assess ourselves.
Because they possess outstanding qualities, healthy Threes are also able to motivate other people to develop themselves. Others see in Threes what they could be like if they made the effort to develop their potential as Threes have. Moreover, healthy Threes are willing to help others attain the qualities that they embody. If they are terrific dancers, they will teach you how to dance; if they are bodybuilders, they will share helpful tips while working out with you at the gym; if they have made a killing on the stock market, they will help you get into the market too.
In the workplace, healthy Threes are extremely capable and competent. They focus on goals and like to see projects through from start to finish. They also inspire team morale with their high spirits and industriousness. Threes persist through adversity, because they are convinced that hard work will pay off in accomplishing the goals that they have set for themselves. They are also effective communicators, able to motivate others to take on tasks or contribute money to worthy causes. Indeed, healthy Threes are often sought out by organizations as spokespersons to represent them to the public. In such positions, their poise, charm, and confidence act as powerful incentives to others who wish to emulate them.
Not every moment is geared toward effectiveness and self-development, however. Healthy Threes are highly energetic, youthful, and rambunctious, like healthy animals frisking in the sunlight. Their sense of humor admits a degree of self-mockery, an enjoyment of their own foibles and minor pretensions, which is as disarming as it is charming. These traits, added to their attractiveness and other admirable qualities, result in healthy Threes’ being in great social demand, because they are so stimulating to be around.
Almost everyone would like to be a healthy Three, at least in some way. Who would not like to be attractive and at ease with themselves and with others? Who would not like to be self-assured and endowed with the energy and motivation to make the most of their potential? Who would not like to enjoy being themselves as healthy Threes so evidently do? When they are healthy, Threes are truly stars. When people are in their presence, they are aware of something special about them.
ANALYZING THE AVERAGE THREE
Level 4: The Competitive Status-Seeker
A shift in attitude now takes place: Threes begin to want to distinguish themselves from others. It is no longer a question of working hard to feel worthwhile: average Threes want to be noticed. They begin to compare themselves with others, fearing that they may be overshadowed by others’ accomplishments. This inevitably sets up a need to compete with people, although at this point, the competition is mostly subtle and covert. Average Threes want to demonstrate to themselves and to their peers that they are extraordinary, superior people. They do this by working harder than others and by acquiring whatever symbols represent success and achievement to them: diplomas, raises, a prestigious address, a recording contract, a special position with their teacher or guru. Rising above others reinforces their self-esteem, defending Threes from deeper feelings of worthlessness by temporarily making them feel more desirable and more worthy of attention and admiration.
To this end, Threes literally throw themselves into their projects, their careers, and whatever else they are doing to enhance their self-esteem. They are truly Type A personalities, driven and potentially workaholic. Of course, not all Threes are in fast-track Wall Street careers; nevertheless, whatever “career” a Three has chosen will be a major focal point of their energy. A Three who is a homemaker and parent will work within the framework of his or her economic means to create a “model home.” Threes will strive to make their children outstanding, providing them with lessons and sending them to the best schools possible. A Three who is a Buddhist monk will work to become the most holy and selfless of his brothers. Average Threes want to excel at whatever they are involved with, and if possible, they want to be the best.
For example, they may be good swimmers or tennis players, but they begin to feel that this is not enough to suppress their fears of worthlessness, so they must outdo everyone else. Average Threes therefore create rivalries where none existed. Unfortunately, creating these comparisons puts all their relationships on an entirely new footing because they have put themselves in the position of competing with people whose positive regard they need.
Indeed, average Threes are more directed by the values of others, and work even harder to achieve goals they believe to be sanctioned as worthwhile by their peers. This begins to result in a growing estrangement from their own desires and feelings. After all, it is difficult to stay focused on goals when one’s heart does not entirely support them. Feelings then become a distraction, something that interferes with the Three’s ability to function, to stay “on track.” Average Threes are not concerned with what they have or do because they enjoy it, but because it makes them feel that they are “getting ahead.”
Average Threes pursue success with an efficiency unrivaled by any other personality type. (We can characterize average Threes in a nutshell by the three things they value most highly: career, success, and recognition.) Success to Threes means being number one, a “winner,” constantly improving their position or status. To be sure, average Threes work hard to get and stay on top. They value professional competence and aim at being the best at what they do, mainly for the prestige of being at the top of their profession. For better or worse, theirs is the world of the résumé and the “rat race.”
At this stage, they are careerists, since professional success becomes the primary gauge by which they measure their value as persons. Plotting career moves relentlessly, they want to advance as quickly as possible and are willing to make big sacrifices to achieve the success they seek. Unfortunately, these sacrifices can include a marriage, family, or friends, not to mention their emotional health. Having a prestigious title or profession is important to average Threes because it reinforces their sense of themselves as successful. (For the same reason, their self-esteem is highly threatened if they do not have a prestigious career, and doubly so if they are unemployed.)
Because success is so important to average Threes and because they have begun competing with others, they learn to present themselves more favorably and acquire the skills of diplomacy. While being diplomatic can be useful in many situations, in average Threes it marks the beginning of a move away from authentic self-expression. Threes are starting to mask their motives and to communicate with others to produce a desired response, not to express what the Three is actually thinking or feeling. Further, this orientation can lead them to become strategic about their friends and associates. To maintain “upward mobility,” good political sense and having the right friends and associates is critical. They are forever networking, making contacts, and cultivating people to further their careers and add to their social luster. Their healthy talent for sensing people’s states is now used to size up others quickly according to their prestige value, as if to ask, “How can you help me achieve my goal? Are you worth pursuing?”
Thus, average Threes become highly status-conscious, and are constantly assessing whether they are “moving forward” or not by looking for tangible symbols of their progress. But even these can fail them if one of their peers suddenly has something more valuable or gets greater respect or admiration (“keeping up with the Joneses”), They are still highly organized and goal-directed, but their focus is becoming distorted. What are the Threes’ goals? Is it their own self-improvement and the accomplishment of specific tasks or is it winning the recognition and attention of others? Increasingly, it is the latter.
Level 5: The Image-Conscious Pragmatist
Fearful of losing the positive regard of others because of their increasing competitiveness, average Threes begin to submerge their feelings and authentic self-expression even further, and become preoccupied with creating a favorable impression of themselves. This marks a significant stage in a Three’s development or deterioration. Healthier Threes may be competitive, but they are primarily focused on their own actual efforts and achievements. They are interested in genuine self-improvement. From Level 5 down, however, Threes are primarily interested in improving their self-presentation, their image. They want to make a favorable impression, whether or not the image they project reflects who they actually are. Style over substance—how one comes across to others—becomes their overriding concern.
Fear of rejection causes average Threes to increasingly abandon themselves as they search for the “right combination” of factors which they believe will enhance them and make them more acceptable. Their self-presentation becomes smooth and professional, their appearance more calculated. The Three’s tremendous energy is poured into developing a polished veneer which will hopefully “pass muster” and win them the success they desire. Of course, such attention to image betrays an underlying lack of authentic self-esteem. Average Threes have rejected themselves, and are determined to come up with a “package” which will be more worthwhile and valuable than they perceive their authentic selves to be.
Ironically, the result is that average Threes become less desirable as genuine human beings and more desirable as commodities. Image-conscious Threes correspond, in part, to the personality type described by Erich Fromm as the marketing orientation.
[This] character orientation … is rooted in the experience of oneself as a commodity and of one’s value as exchange value….
Success depends largely on how well a person sells himself on the market, how well he gets his personality across, how nice a “package” he is…. A stockbroker, a salesman, a secretary, a railroad executive, a college professor, or a hotel manager must each offer different kinds of personality that, regardless of their differences, must fulfill one condition: to be in demand….
The marketing orientation … does not develop something which is potentially in the person (unless we make the absurd assertion that “nothing” is also part of the human equipment); its very nature is that no specific and permanent kind of relatedness is developed, but that the very changeability of attitudes is the only permanent quality of such orientation. In this orientation, those qualities are developed which can best be sold. Not one particular attitude is predominant, but the emptiness which can be filled most quickly with the desired quality. This quality, however, ceases to be one in the proper sense of the word; it is only a role, the pretense of a quality, to be readily exchanged if another one is more desirable. (Fromm, Man for Himself, 76–77, 84.)
Because average Threes experience themselves as commodities, they become obsessed with how they come across to others. They worry about what impression they are making and constantly wonder what people think of them. Issues of being successful enough, competent enough, and attractive enough continually replay in their minds. They feel as if every eye is on them and they must always be prepared with the right look, the right thing to say, the right level of affect. Naturally, this orientation does not allow them to express their own genuine feelings and responses. In fact, average Threes have increasing difficulty even knowing what their own feelings are.
The problem is that they act according to the needs of the image they are projecting, not according to their own real needs and not because they sincerely believe in what they are saying or doing. Average Threes learn to project one simulated emotional state after another, each appropriate to the situation and each equally convincing. They may appear to be sincere, friendly, modest, kindly, repentant, virtuous, and truthful, although they may not be. They may have only adjusted their image to meet the demands of the moment so that others will think well of them. What they appear to be and what they actually are begin to be quite different. Thus, there is an element of slickness, an emotional hollowness about average Threes because much of what they say and do is not a true reflection of who they are. “Who they are” is becoming ever more difficult to identify, both for others and for themselves.
Average Threes know how to package themselves to fit into their environment successfully. Entire industries have been devoted to this aspect of human behavior: the advertising and fashion industries understand and manipulate these fears particularly well. The professional and corporate worlds are full of highly paid image consultants who teach others how to put together the right look, master professional jargon, and erase any annoying regionalisms in the person’s speech or style. Like the changing coloration of a chameleon, an image is useful to the degree that it allows one to fit into the environment perfectly. Their image allows Threes to do just that, only one better: they do not merely fit into the environment, they may perfect their image to the extent that it becomes the standard by which others judge themselves. The image assumes a reality of its own once others accept it as desirable.
It is important to stress how subtle average Threes can be in projecting a believable image, and how difficult it is for others to detect whatever degree of inauthenticity is involved, especially if a particular Three is intelligent and well-educated. This personality type is by no means limited to vacuous television game-show hosts, beauty contestants, or cloned yuppies. Average Threes can be found everywhere, in every profession, from MBAs to self-help instructors, from sports figures to politicians, from artists to network anchorpersons.
The clue to others that they are dealing with an image rather than a person is the average Three’s apparent perfection. Threes come across extremely well (the cool, composed, “friendly” professional is typical), although others may notice a somewhat rehearsed, studied quality about them. Threes, however, are aware of others’ reactions to them even if they are largely unaware of their own reactions. If others seem put off, they will redouble their efforts and make further adjustments, or apologies, if necessary.
It is precisely because their behavior is so well-considered that it is difficult for others to put their finger on what Threes lack. If, however, others look deeply enough, they will find almost nothing “essential” about average Threes—they express few genuine feelings and have few deeply held personal convictions. They seem to have no idiosyncrasies and no passion beneath the smoothly polished surface. Although everything about them seems perfect, the various images do not add up to a whole person. What is missing is a personal sense of engagement and commitment. Average Threes are not connected with themselves, with their own feelings. They are like perfectly engineered machines which perform precisely as expected and therefore continue to be in demand.
As one might expect, there are difficulties with this orientation. Average Threes fear genuine intimacy lest anyone discover their inner emptiness. They fear (probably unconsciously) that their authentic self is worthless and they become increasingly unwilling to let others see the vulnerable self beneath the image. It is an extraordinary sign of trust and respect when an average Three dares to reveal himself to someone. More often, however, with their considerable charm and ability to adapt to people, Threes are able to create the impression of intimacy, seemingly revealing more of themselves than they really do. This is why average Threes are typically concerned with their credibility, with whether people believe the idealized image they are constructing.
Despite all of the attention and effort that average Threes have put into their image, they are increasingly unconvincing because their emotional disengagement becomes evident to others. However, being disconnected from their feelings allows Threes to be extremely efficient at work and unusually able to focus their energy on attaining professional objectives. Expedient and goal-oriented, they are good at practical problem solving because their pragmatism allows them to respond to situations without being constrained by abstract principles or turbulent emotions. When feelings do arise, average Threes tend to feel out of control and lost. They deal with their feelings privately. They emote quickly and strongly, but want to get “back to business” as soon as possible. Their feelings are increasingly strange and unfamiliar territory to them—threatening to destroy their focus as well as their image of efficiency.
As a result, Threes become unsure of what they feel about things. They have spent so much time trying to become someone else that they have difficulty accessing their own beliefs and responses. They can take either side of an issue—and switch to the opposite side with incredible ease—because their passions and personal convictions have become foreign to them. Instead, they learn to rely on techniques and formulas, whether in their careers or their personal lives. Average Threes are masters of jargon, supreme manipulators of symbols to effect their ends, whether to elect a president, sell a toothpaste, or promote themselves. Others begin to sense that the friendliness of average Threes is often out of expediency. They have places to go and things to accomplish, and become increasingly brisk, efficient, and emotionally detached.
Because they are losing contact with their own heart’s desire, the only source of guidance for Threes at this Level is “what works.” While they are well suited to mastering technical problems, average Threes are usually not good leaders because they lack personal vision, have few strongly held values, and little empathy for others. Unfortunately, however, average Threes are often attracted to positions of leadership because prestige is involved. The upshot is that they lead by following, by telling people what they want to hear rather than what they need to do. Once the image becomes the reality, it takes on a false life of its own.
Level 6: The Self-Promoting Narcissist
After meticulously crafting a “new, improved” self that others can affirm and accept, Threes may fear that others will see through them and discover that they are not really the fantastic, “alltogether” image they are trying to project. At this point, to be exposed as less than their idealized image would cause complete humiliation, so Threes “up the ante” and shift into an overdrive of self-promotion to impress others. They want others to admire and envy them, to think that they are absolutely outstanding in every way, that they have it all, that they are nothing less than perfect. But most importantly, Threes want to forget the increasingly needy inner self that continues to cause them shame and pain. They want to become their image.
As a compensation for their growing fears of worthlessness, their self-image has become grotesquely inflated and grandiose. They begin to advertise themselves relentlessly, bragging about their accomplishments, dropping important-sounding names, “hyping” their achievements or letting others know about the great success they are about to have, making themselves sound incredibly wonderful and making whatever they do seem better than whatever anyone else does—and better than it actually is.
At this stage, average Threes begin to oversell themselves, making extraordinary claims about their achievements. Narcissistic self-inflation marks a degree of dissociation from their actual selves, with all their real neediness and limitations, to claims about a glorious self which does not exist. There is actually less than meets the eye here, although this is still difficult to perceive because their sales pitch is usually quite convincing. Nevertheless, although they are desperate to convince themselves and others that they are outstanding, others may begin to sense that they are too good to be true: much of what they say about themselves just does not add up.
Everything they do at this stage is for show, to get people to notice and admire them. Their self-displays all have the subtext “Look at me!” They become shameless braggarts, showing off their culture, their education, their status, their bodies, their intelligence, their careers, their spouses, their sexual conquests, their wit—whatever they think will gamer admiration. Their only subject of conversation is themselves, and they act as if others were, or should be, enthralled by everything they say and do. Naturally, this often has the effect of boring others, who then withdraw their attention—exactly what Threes want to avoid.
Conflicts with others also begin, and get progressively worse, as a result of their now overt competitiveness. Because it is difficult for Threes at this Level to have positive feelings for anyone with whom they compete, they begin to have problems making friends with their peers. Competitiveness makes them see others as threats and obstacles to their own success. They feel comfortable around people only if they feel superior to them in some way, either because others have less status than they do, or because Threes have beaten them in some kind of open or covert contest.
Because Threes at Level 6 have deep wounds to their sense of worth, they feel that only huge success will be sufficient to satisfy them. The ultimate mark of success for average Threes is to become rich and famous, especially famous. Fame has a deep appeal to them because it means being known by a large number of people. With fame, their existence is affirmed: they are not nobodies. If everyone knows who they are, they must be truly valuable people.
They also typically pursue and promote status symbols as a way of creating new social values. Average Threes give possessions their status by adopting them, then using them as the basis for competition with others. Exclusivity is a very important adjunct to competitiveness because by excluding less desirable people from their social circle, average Threes make themselves arbiters of who is “in” and who is “out.” Status is thus the game of one-upmanship played by those who idolize success. As self-styled arbiters of status, Threes need to ensure that whoever else plays the game will fail, yet still come back for more.
It goes without saying that narcissistic Threes are self-involved, arrogant, and highly impressed with themselves. They begin to believe their own press and convince themselves that they actually are superior people. By adopting a contemptuous attitude toward others, Threes are able to reinforce their delicate self-esteem. Feeling superior to others also ensures that they will not be rejected by anyone, and if for some reason they are, the rejection will not bother them, since they feel that those who reject them are inferior and do not count anyway. In short, they look at others only to see if others are looking at them.
Looking good, literally and figuratively, has always been extremely important to Threes, but physical attractiveness is never more important than when they are openly narcissistic. They strike poses, displaying “attitude” both as a way of being exclusive (and unapproachably better than anyone else), and of drawing attention to themselves (without seeming to do so constantly). Male or female, Threes at this stage are exhibitionistic and seductive, using their sex appeal to increase their desirability. Hypermasculine or hyperfeminine sexual displays, such as being a hunk, or stud, or beauty queen, are typical. Of course, not all Threes are physically attractive. Nevertheless, physical qualities are important to them, and those who are not attractive may substitute such narcissistically self-enhancing traits as a reliance on intelligence and cleverness, money and success, fame and prestige to impress others.
Narcissism is essentially passive, and the sexuality of Threes has a passive element to it as well: they want to be the object of desire. Narcissistic Threes want others to admire them, although they are not concerned with gratifying anyone else, either sexually or psychologically.
Narcissistic passivity shows up in other ways. Having won others over, they begin to “rest on their laurels” and become arrogantly complacent. They are so caught up in short-term boosts to their narcissism that they are increasingly unable to focus on real, long-term goals and accomplishments. They begin to coast through life, relying on sex appeal and charm. Whatever energy they may have expended in cultivating relationships stops: having charmed or seduced others, Threes can now take them for granted. Or they lose interest in others altogether: having made a conquest, they drop people once they receive the boost to their narcissism that they sought. They also enjoy frustrating those who attempt to get close to them, as if to say, “You can look, but you can’t touch. You can worship me, but you can’t have me.” All of this arises because their great fear of intimacy is at odds with a tremendous need for affirmation of their desirability.
Conflicts with others also result from their pretensions, because Threes begin to believe their own hype, puffing up their achievements to ludicrous extremes. (“My discovery will win the Nobel Prize.” “My first art exhibit will sell out on opening day.”) The trouble is that the more pretentious they are, the most easily offended they are by anyone’s pointing out how unrealistic their evaluation of themselves or their expectations for success have become. The irony is that, because of their grandiose expectations, they actually set themselves up for disappointments. And the more narcissistic they are, the quicker Threes are to feel slighted by others. They are very touchy about their self-worth precisely when their narcissism is most inflated, a sure sign that narcissism is covering up a profound lack of genuine self-esteem.
Indeed, if their narcissism is not constantly reinforced, average Threes begin to get hostile, quickly losing whatever sense of humor about themselves they may once have had. They become contemptuous and sarcastic about everyone else. Under the guise of being honest with others, Threes put people down to stay on top, at least in their own minds. Those few friends they still have come in for shabby treatment: they are ignored, stood up on dates or for appointments without apology, and made to feel inadequate and inferior in different ways. The deteriorating Three at this Level is a far cry from the outstanding, exemplary person we saw in the healthy Three. No longer focused on real goals or genuine self-improvement, they are consumed by a desperate need for recognition, although they do not know why. But having rejected their own hearts, and seeing that their hard work has failed to make them feel better about themselves, they are filled with disappointment and rage, which they try their best to suppress. If Threes can get in touch with their shame and self-alienation, they can begin to recover the authentic self and become healthier. However, if they continue to deceive themselves about their true condition, they risk completely severing the connection with who they really are.
ANALYZING THE UNHEALTHY THREE
Level 7: The Dishonest Opportunist
Failure is one of the most humiliating prospects for Threes. If they continue to overextend themselves and cannot make good on their claims, they will attempt to maintain the impression that they are still “winners” by deceiving others.
Their fear of failure, and thus of humiliation, makes unhealthy Threes more than willing to be dishonest to get what they need to maintain at least the illusion of superiority. We have already seen that they are pragmatists: at Level 7, Threes are determined to survive, and since they are completely identified with their image, that means ensuring that their image survives. Consequently, unhealthy Threes detach from their core, and have no direction other than what works for them at the time. Their pragmatism has degenerated into an unprincipled expediency in which Threes will do almost anything to convince others that they are still exceptional people. But because they actually are having severe psychological difficulties it is almost impossible for them to do this without distorting the truth of their situation: they lie on their résumés, plagiarize, cut corners, take credit for the work of others, or recount accomplishments that never occurred to make themselves seem more outstanding then they are. Unhealthy Threes are determined not to be losers, no matter who must pay the price for their success.
They are ready to sell out, lie, change their “loyalties,” or take advantage of others to come out on top. Because they are almost completely cut off from their conscience and their ability to discern the truth, they seem not to know what the truth about themselves is, and so do not feel guilty about deceiving others. Their underdeveloped and vulnerable inner self is disappearing beneath a personality structure that has only one agenda—its own inflation and survival. All of their energies are directed toward getting what they need to hold their self-image together.
Unhealthy Threes must now use exploitation of some sort to maintain their inflated self-image. Ironically, they have become superior not only to everyone else, but even to themselves by overshooting the limits of their talents. Either they must come down to earth and recognize the grandiosity of their expectations, not to mention their intense psychological distress, or they must take what they need from others to maintain their “superiority.” It often goes unnoticed, however, especially to the unhealthy Threes, that one person who is being repeatedly exploited in all this is themselves. Threes “sell themselves out,” often sacrificing their futures on the altar of short-term payoff. Their health, their careers, their integrity are all expended in the pursuit of narcissistic “fixes.” In colloquial terms, unhealthy Threes have become hustlers, people “on the make,” opportunists taking advantage of situations while unwittingly making their own situations worse. Their disconnection from their feelings has other severe consequences. Unhealthy Threes are unable to feel much about themselves or to have empathy for others. Because they do not see other people as real or as having value without reference to themselves, others become merely providers of attention and admiration, what are called “narcissistic suppliers,” as objects to be used to aggrandize themselves. This is why there is absolutely nothing reciprocal about relationships with unhealthy Threes. They will keep a relationship going as long as they get what they want, but will drop someone without a second thought, particularly if someone more desirable comes along. One of the tip-offs that, despite appearances, there is something wrong with unhealthy Threes is precisely their lack of long-term relationships. They run through a staggering number of friends and acquaintances, exploiting people and dropping them once they have gotten what they want. The same can be said for their work habits. There is little of the goal-orientation of the healthy Three in evidence here. Unhealthy Threes seem to be continually responding to situations as if their own sense of values, the part of themselves that could give coherence and meaning to their activities, is missing. Nonetheless, their energy is still directed at their performance, and unhealthy Threes will not let others get close enough to see the cracks in their façade.
Unfortunately, Threes are able to maintain the illusion that they are highly functional even when they are unhealthy. (It is axiomatic that Threes always seem to be healthier than they really are.) This ultimately works against them as it prevents Threes from getting the kind of help that could turn their situation around. Often, a catastrophe in their lives will cause their defense to fail, at least temporarily. Their inner desolation and emptiness are then exposed as Threes collapse into a depressive breakdown. Most unhealthy Threes will hide themselves when this happens so that others cannot see the extent of their deterioration.
Level 8: The Malicious Deceiver
Having seriously distorted the truth of their claims about themselves and concealed their pathology, unhealthy Threes become increasingly fearful that they will be caught and that their deceptions will be exposed. However, rather than face the fact that they are having major psychological problems and must seek help, Threes may go one step further in their deterioration by doing whatever they deem necessary to support their false claims. As a result, they get involved in even more seriously destructive activities while covering their tracks, concealing their true motives and actions as much as possible.
The ability to project an image, which we saw in average Threes, is relied upon more desperately than ever. Unhealthy Threes now become completely deceptive, because they need to hide whatever wrongdoings and previous deceptions they may have been involved with. (“False face must hide what the false heart doth know."— Macbeth, I, vii, 82) The image they now project is still convincing, but beneath it they have become extremely unhinged and potentially treacherous. Others almost always find out how deeply neurotic Threes are only after they have already done their damage.
It goes without saying that neurotic Threes are pathological liars. Neurotic Threes seem unable to stop lying even if nothing significant depends on it since, at this Level, Threes are completely compulsive about making an impression. Many times, however, their lies are far from insignificant, causing others enormous harm, financial loss, or emotional torment. Threes who have deteriorated to this degree of pathology are unable to tell what the truth is. They feel that it can be whatever they want it to be. Many of their lies will be connected to the objective they are pursuing at the time. They will say whatever gets them what they want with the least trouble, although they risk even greater trouble if they are discovered.
This way of living only heightens their terrors, although they will use whatever parts of themselves still function to convince others that they are calm and in possession of themselves. Beneath the surface, however, unhealthy Threes feel cornered and are barely able to suppress their panic. Their growing fear of being caught and punished can make them extremely dangerous. They become remorseless, and are quite capable of betraying friends, playing people off each other, or destroying evidence to keep their wrongdoings concealed. They sabotage what others have worked for and hurt those who love them because seeing the downfall of others is the only way that they are able to feel superior. ("It is not enough that I succeed, but that others must fail."—Oscar Wilde) Of course, one crime begets another, and Threes find themselves more and more entangled in the webs of their own deceptions. They make it almost inevitable that they will be discovered and held accountable for their actions. To avoid this state of affairs, Threes may descend into complete maliciousness and madness.
Level 9: The Vindictive Psychopath
Deeply pathological Threes fear that their falseness and emptiness—not to mention their wrongdoings—will be exposed. They have every reason to believe that if such an event were to occur, they would be completely ruined. There would be no chance for them to ever escape their unbearable feelings of worthlessness and inferiority. Indeed, the success and apparent superiority of others mocks them and humiliates them at every turn. It seems to them that others are, and will always be, superior to them. At this stage, they move beyond deception into unmitigated vindictiveness, in effect saying, "I will triumph over you no matter what it takes!” And, if they have nothing to lose, neurotic Threes will stop at nothing. Since they now have no capacity to empathize with anyone, nothing restrains them from seriously harming others. Indeed, destroying anyone or anything that reminds them of the wretchedness they are still trying to fend off becomes a monomaniacal obsession.
The need for a vindictive triumph then manifests itself mainly in often irresistible, mostly unconscious impulses to frustrate, outwit, or defeat others in personal relations….
Much more frequently the drive toward a vindictive triumph is hidden. Indeed, because of its destructive nature, it is the most hidden element in the search for glory. It may be that only a rather frantic ambition will be apparent. In analysis alone are we able to see that the driving power behind it is the need to defeat and humiliate others by rising above them.“ (Karen Homey, Neurosis and Human Growth, 27–28.)
While moments of hostility have erupted from time to time in the past, their hostility has now grown into an irrational malice, the result of the extreme jealousy they feel toward anyone who has anything they want. Despite their outward contempt for people, pathological Threes are secretly intensely jealous of others, precisely because others have attained worthwhile goals instead of chasing after narcissistic illusions. Therefore, anyone who is authentic or capable of feeling or who loves and is loved—in short, anyone who is a normal human being—is a threat to their shattered self-esteem and an object of their malice. Maliciousness may reach dangerous proportions as neurotic Threes become obsessed with ruining others so they can triumph. This is the dark, hidden side of themselves which they cannot show to others nor even to themselves.
Others who may sometimes be aware of their situation are usually afraid of confronting them about it. Unhealthy Threes count on the fact that others dare not say or do anything about their behavior for fear of retaliation. Their complete lack of restraint makes it nearly impossible for others to defend themselves against Threes because they sense that unhealthy Threes will go lower than they are willing to descend.
At this stage, Threes can become utterly psychopathic, ignoring the normal limits of behavior, acting out their cruelest fantasies of revenge. Having no internal brakes on their behavior, they do whatever they can until their fury is spent, others are ruined, or someone stops them. Their dissociation may be so complete, however, that after striking out viciously, they may actually have no conscious recollection of having done so. It is as if they were using the last vestiges of their sanity to buffer themselves from the intensity of their hatred and rage—as well as from the horror of the crimes they may be committing.
In addition to crimes like assault, arson, and sabotage, psychopathic Threes are entirely capable of murder. They are capable of killing a human being with as little remorse as normal people have in killing a fly. Their psychopathic behavior may seem unmotivated because of the randomness of their violence, as in the case of a sniper shooting at people on a street below. But from the psychopath’s point of view, the crime is motivated by the constant need to regain superiority by destroying others.
It is also worth noting that male psychopaths’ victims are frequently women, and since Threes often identified with their mothers, this fits the pattern. To arrive at Level 9, it is extremely likely that Threes experienced incredible abuse as children. Nothing they could do or be could win the affection or positive regard of their nurturing-figure. But since Threes depend upon gaining the affirmation of their nurturing-figure, and since a small child cannot consciously hate their parent and survive psychologically, their rage is displaced onto substitute figures who somehow remind the psychopath of their original torments. Rape, torture, and sexual mutilation are frequent outcomes.
Despite their duplicity and deviousness, psychopathic Threes may trip themselves up because part of their need for vindictive triumph includes the desire for their victims to know who victimized them. Their need for attention and affirmation, which we have seen from stage to stage in different forms, becomes their nemesis. However, psychopathic Threes do not care. Public condemnation and notoriety give them the attention they crave: being feared or despised affirms that they still exist as "somebody.”
ANALYZING THE DYNAMICS OF THE THREE
The Direction of Disintegration: The Three Goes to Nine
Starting at Level 4, Threes will begin to respond to stress by acting out some of the qualities of average to unhealthy Nines. Threes are highly driven and identified with what they do, so the move to Nine can be seen as a way of disengaging from their relentless activity and pursuit of success.
At Level 4, Threes are usually focused on developing their careers, achieving, and getting ahead. They are competitive with peers and eager to prove themselves to others. When they push too hard, or their competitiveness becomes apparent to others, they move to Nine, becoming conciliatory and apologetic. Threes want to stand out from “the pack,” but not too much. When anxiety arises that they may be alienating others, they begin to take on more conventional roles, lowering their profiles and conforming to group norms.
At Level 5, Threes are constantly working at a variety of projects in order to get ahead and make a favorable impression. This frequently leads them into situations in which they are uncomfortable or into work that they do not necessarily want to do. Average Threes deal with the stress of this denial of their own desires by disengaging their attention from their activities. They lose themselves in busywork and routine and hope to get through difficult situations without being directly affected by them. Threes are usually quick and effective in dealing with demands on them, but when they go to Nine, they become strangely unresponsive and unfocused. Over time, this can lead to a complacency which appears in marked contrast to their usual industriousness.
At Level 6, Threes are incessantly promoting themselves and their accomplishments. They want everyone to know that they are a “somebody.” But maintaining the energy of this self-deception is exhausting and collapses are inevitable. They are particularly vulnerable to setbacks in their careers at this stage, and if they are experiencing disappointments on that front, they may move to Nine for lengthy periods of time. No longer able to maintain their grandiose views of themselves, their underlying self-doubt breaks through and they can suddenly become apathetic and aimless. Formerly effective and goal-oriented, Threes now collapse into a listless resignation, avoiding the realities of their problems and resorting to wishful thinking and fantasies of their next big success. Drinking and substance abuse may enter the picture.
At Level 7, Threes have become deeply neurotic, and attempt to keep the illusion of their superiority alive through deception and false claims about themselves. They may engage in unethical, even illegal, activities in order to save their sinking self-esteem. Too unstable to function well, their “success” depends on convincing themselves and others that they’ve “got it together,” which, in fact, they do not. When the stress of keeping up the ruse overwhelms them, they can fall into deep apathy and depression. They become unwilling to look at the disasters in their lives, and seem to give up on themselves. They are highly ineffectual and have difficulty performing even basic tasks. Unhealthy Threes may spend months or even years in this condition rather than fall into Level 8 or 9.
At Level 8, Threes are desperately trying to cover up their misdeeds as well as the depth of their dysfunction. They are cut off from their feelings, and in the interest of saving their image, are capable of dangerous and criminal actions. Although they may be successful at concealing their true condition for a while, they are too broken down to avoid periods of collapse. When they go to Nine, the full extent of their distress and their lack of development are laid bare. They may regress to earlier parts of their life, replaying childhood triumphs or traumas. They may also alternate between depressive, dissociative periods and sudden hysterical outbursts. They will, if at all possible, avoid letting anyone see them like this, and, as long as they have the strength to do so, will restore their image whenever they interact with others.
At Level 9, unhealthy Threes are full of rage and hostility and want to attack whoever they feel has wounded what remains of their self-esteem. When the horror of their compulsive behaviors registers, or when others discover what they have been up to, they go to Nine, deteriorating into a psychotic-like condition, into a dream world from which they think they will not awake. Everything becomes unreal, including the horrible acts they may have perpetrated on others. They no longer feel enraged or hostile or vindictive. When they go to Nine, neurotic Threes unconsciously dissociate themselves from the only feelings they have, their hostile feelings, so completely that they feel absolutely nothing. Their depression manifests as “deadness,” flatness, having no energy or interest in anything, even themselves.
When deteriorated Threes become this depersonalized, the extent of their true alienation from themselves becomes apparent. The inflated illusions with which their narcissism allowed them to maintain their sense of self has collapsed, exposing their emptiness. They stop taking an interest in themselves, may gain weight, and sink into a vegetative state. At Level 9, they may break from reality altogether, fracturing into subpersonalities or retreating into a state resembling catatonia.
The Direction of Integration: The Three Goes to Six
Going to Six can be frightening for Threes because in doing so, they commit themselves to someone else, exposing themselves to the fear of being rejected. Genuine intimacy with others is especially threatening to Threes because they have come to believe that only their image and accomplishments are valuable. They feel that their authentic self is too undeveloped and vulnerable to be worthwhile.
When healthy Threes go to Six, however, they become committed to something or someone outside themselves, realizing that their value is not diminished by being part of something greater than they. Integrating Threes discover that by their commitment to something outside themselves, they paradoxically begin to grow as persons within themselves. Identifying with others allows solid values to take root.
Their commitment to others also allows Threes to do what they are so afraid of doing: letting others see their real feelings and vulnerabilities. When Threes go to Six they find the courage to explore their fears and genuine emotional needs and, because they often do so within a committed relationship, they find that they are still accepted and therefore have a firm foundation upon which to begin to develop their authentic selves. (A spiritual conversion may be extremely helpful in this regard.) What also helps healthy Threes to go to and remain at Six is the experience of falling in love with someone who is clearly more developed than they are. If Threes can admire and feel loved by others with whom they are not competitive, relationships have a real chance of lasting. Once Threes have established a committed relationship, the relationship draws qualities from them which may well help them to remain healthy.
When they move to Six, Threes no longer worry about impressing others with their prestige, success, or status, nor do they aggrandize themselves at the expense of others. They use their talents to affirm the value of others, which allows them to experience their own true value. Last, by learning to work for and serve causes which will not necessarily bring them direct attention or praise, Threes begin to open up their hearts and discover real sources of self-esteem. They are fulfilled by the rich satisfactions of cooperating with others for shared goals and discover that their commitment to others brings them more affirmation, love, and support than their drive for success and competitiveness ever could. Most profoundly, though, without even noticing it, Threes have stopped focusing on their own image, and as it drops away, bit by bit, their real self emerges: being in touch with the goodness of their own hearts fills them with more joy and serenity than they ever could have imagined.
THE MAJOR SUBTYPES OF THE THREE
The Three with a Two-Wing: “The Star”
In general, the Three’s traits and those of the Two reinforce each other. Threes with a Two-wing have extraordinary social skills: they like to be among people and enjoy being the center of attention; they are often extremely charming, sociable, and highly popular. They pride themselves on their interpersonal charm, humor, and attractiveness, which adds considerably to their social desirability as well as to their stimulating effect on others. With the Two-wing, the emphasis is more on personal touch and personal presentation. There is also a greater interest in reaching out to others and making interpersonal contact. Noteworthy examples of the Three with a Two-wing include Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, Brooke Shields, Jane Pauley, Whitney Houston, Denzel Washington, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Kemp, Kathie Lee Gifford, Dick Clark, Vanna White, Tony Robbins, Joe Montana, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, O.J. Simpson, “Hedda Gabler,” and “Lady Macbeth.”
Depending on how much the Two-wing is operative, healthy Threes of this subtype are generally more outwardly emotional and friendly than Threes with a Four-wing. They possess some degree of warmth and positive feelings for people. Threes are not completely affectless, of course. They care about those few people they are close to. They can encourage and appreciate others, and their feelings can be touched and hurt. There is a perky, vivacious quality about them that can resemble the energetic qualities of the Seven. They can be talkative, helpful, and generous like Twos, while maintaining the sense of poise and self-control characteristic of Threes. They usually want a particular kind of affirmation from others: besides receiving attention, they want to be loved. This encourages them to be more responsive to the needs and desires of others.
Average Threes of this subtype wish to convince themselves and others of their desirability, so they energetically reach out to others, attempting to engage them and garner attention. The Two-wing heightens their ability to project their feelings, or the illusion of feelings, as the case may be. Actors, models, and singers are frequently of this subtype. They know how to “turn it on” when they feel they need to impress someone, and as they become more unhealthy, this becomes their continuous preoccupation. People of this subtype care a great deal about what others think of them: competitiveness, comparing themselves to others, and success in their relationships are particularly important. They not only desire an enviable relationship with a spouse, they want the spouse to be a catch, sexually and socially desirable, one who reflects well on themselves. Children are also typically narcissistic extensions of the self, as is the home, hobbies, vacation spots, and other values in their lives. The narcissism of this subtype is more open than that of Threes with a Four-wing. They begin to use their “charms” excessively and inappropriately, often unaware that their efforts are backfiring. Exhibitionism and seductiveness are also more pronounced in people of this subtype. As they deteriorate, Threes with a Two-wing may court publicity, even negative publicity, to get attention, while shielding what is left of their fragile inner emotional life from any and all examination. Since their attention seldom visits this inner world, they are sometimes unaware of the anger and resentment they feel toward others who do not respond to the “sacrifices” they are making in order to be accepted.
Unhealthy Threes of this subtype are not only deceptive about getting what they want from others; they can be self-deceptive as well. They can be manipulative and feel entitled, which whets their appetite for revenge against those who do not give them the attention and love they feel they deserve. Both the Three and the Two have a problem with aggression: Twos feel aggressive when others do not appreciate them, and Threes are hostile when there is any slight to their narcissism. The combination produces particularly hostile people if they are not on top. The jealousy we see in unhealthy Threes is also present in unhealthy Twos, motivating these people to coerce others to give them what they want. When their hostility does break through, the intensity of their rage can reach dangerous levels, surprising everyone, including themselves. Threes with a Two-wing become malicious toward others, even psychopathically destructive. They are charming psychopaths, attractive men and women who seem to have had everything going for them until they suddenly become violent, usually toward those with whom they are closest, but who, for whatever reason, have frustrated their narcissistic needs.
The Three with a Four-Wing: “The Professional”
The traits of the Three and those of the Four produce a complex subtype whose traits often conflict with each other. The Three is essentially an “interpersonal” type, whereas the Four withdraws from contact with others. In this subtype, there is less emphasis on interpersonal skills and more focus on work, achievement, and recognition. To the degree that the Four-wing is operative, some persons of this subtype seem more like Fours then Threes: they can be quiet, rather private, subdued in demeanor, and have artistic interests and aesthetic sensibilities. They can be more emotionally vulnerable than Threes with a Two-wing, but are more restrained in their self-expression. Noteworthy examples of the Three with a Four-wing include Jimmy Carter, George Stephanopoulos, Sting, Richard Gere, Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Michael Tilson Thomas, Dick Cavett, Bryant Gumbel, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, Somerset Maugham, and “Iago.”
Healthy Threes with a Four-wing have some amount of intuition which they can direct both toward themselves and others. Because some self-awareness is also part of the picture, people of this subtype have more potential for gaining self-knowledge and developing their emotional lives than Threes with a Two-wing. They may have artistic sensibilities and creative ability, and often possess a strong sense of style, especially in regard to their homes and their personal appearance. They usually emphasize intelligence over personal attractiveness in their self-image and social dealings. In addition to the degree that the Four-wing is operative, there will be a strong attraction to aesthetic objects and a love of fine things. Hard workers, they generally present a more serious and overtly task-oriented persona than Threes with a Two-wing. Many people of this subtype spend a great deal of time honing their craft and make it their business to master whatever technical knowledge and skill is necessary to excel in their chosen field of endeavor. For this reason, they can easily be mistyped as Fives or Ones. People of this subtype are self-assured and outstanding in some way, yet also introspective and sensitive.
Since Three is the basic type, however, average Threes with a Four-wing will still be interested in success and prestige, although in more subtle ways than the other subtype. The competitiveness of the Three and the self-doubt of the Four combine in ways which inevitably create tremendous pressures for the Three with a Four-wing. They begin to base their self-esteem on the reactions of specific others to their work, and often feel as though they are putting their entire self-worth on the line with every project they take on. Their imaginations and feelings will play a more active role, but as Threes, they are still, as much as possible, suppressing their feelings in order to function more effectively and to “make the right impression.” Under such pressure, they are bound to make mistakes sooner or later, and when they do, the Four-wing adds a component of self-accusation which can be difficult to endure. The relentless drive for achievement of the Three combined with the self-reproach of the Four make the idea of failure truly terrifying for this subtype. Threes with a Four-wing tend to be more moody and pretentious than the other subtype, and also more aloof and conscious of how others treat them. They put great stock in their ideas and demand that others do likewise. Narcissistic feelings of superiority and arrogance mingle with the Four’s feelings of exemption and self-indulgence. They can be subtle showoffs, but showoffs nonetheless.
Unhealthy Threes of this subtype alternate wildly between the ego-inflation of the Three and the self-doubt of the Four. Since Three is basic, self-satisfaction and grandiose fantasies are the rule. To the extent that the Four-wing comes into play, they may also begin to suffer depressions in which they shut down emotionally and physically for periods of time. Threes can come out of these states with a renewed sense of purpose, but often fall right back into the same routines that got them in trouble in the first place. This can happen several times until the Three gets the message and makes significant life changes, burns out, or sinks into truly pathological behavior. (People of this subtype may be misidentified as manic-depressives since their moods may change rapidly, an element which Threes with Four-wings have in common with the manic-depressive disorder. However, the underlying problem here is not anxiety but narcissism and the lack of fulfillment of their grandiose expectations.) It is possible that people of this subtype will also be self-destructive and suicidal if constantly frustrated by reality.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
Looking back at Threes, we saw that they go astray by abandoning themselves, rejecting their own heart’s desire in order to become the kind of person that they believe will be more acceptable and worthwhile. As a result, Threes develop only certain parts of themselves, like bodybuilders who focus on the development of only one aspect of their physique instead of seeking overall balance. While the qualities healthy Threes develop are real, they are parts, not the whole, of themselves. In average Threes we saw the overdevelopment of a much more insubstantial part of themselves, their image, which served their narcissistic need for affirmation. And we saw that unhealthy Threes sacrifice their true selves, destroying their integrity and causing others a great deal of harm to keep their own inflated self-image alive.
Unhealthy Threes unwittingly bring about what they most fear. They fear being worthless and without value, but because of their narcissism, exploitativeness, and malice, they end up cut off from the only source of true value a human being can have, their own inner life. Their desperate bid for success leads to a gnawing desolation and terrifying feelings of deficiency. The person so desirous of being affirmed by others has done things that are despised by others. So much of what others admired turns out to have been a false front, a façade, which has collapsed, revealing the inner emptiness.
Because Threes are so adept at promoting favorable impressions of themselves, it is not apparent that they may be very undeveloped human beings beneath their image. The irony is that they are more and more dependent on others to affirm their value when there is progressively less and less of value about them to affirm. Yet when Threes brave their fears of worthlessness, stop the performance, and reveal the more simple, vulnerable human beings they really are, they become profoundly affecting and powerful.
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