#because sometimes works do have an express moral and political dimension to them

[boysnberriespie]

Truly you can’t simultaneously say “this queer media is important and meaningful in real life” and then simultaneously say that anyone critiquing it for its handling of certain subjects and the messages that sends is just applying morality to media where it doesn’t belong

It can not both be a moral win and free from analysis of those morals

[splosh-crime]

Hilda notes

Worldbuilding

- baby Vittra(turnip people) accidentally being mulched - obviously need more protective rights and awareness

- Mountains sometimes people hibernating (left for space when humans arrived)

- Elf people need contract to be seen or destroyed - pride themselves on accurate records, could have very valuable accounts of history - mc character Alfur has a huge fandom because of recording Hilda’s adventures

- Dragon gardener w social anxiety wants more common plants - definitely has potential for something like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault - just wants reimbursement for talents

- The Marra are basically just teenage girls who accidentally wound up in a cult through peer pressure - would like to know whether it’s reversible - does take multiple magic cult sessions to gain powers

- The Void is accessible both by witches and Nisse(sort-of house-elves)

- Nisse; sort-of house-elves that live in a dimension made of empty space they can use to teleport short distances

- Crazy weather scientist Victoria Van Gale invented a weather machine (so much potential for that helping w droughts worldwide!) and experimented on sapient(can hold complex conversation) weather spirits

- Trolls live in hollow mountains, eat food, steal pack animals to carry food - do they farm or just steal? - did they always need food? - some have hair - asexual reproduction? (No sex distinguishing features) - food stores - magic troll fire abilities - normally not aggressive, just wanna be left in peace - predator is stone-eating slug - they collect jewelry & revolt; much more complex than humans give them credit for

Hilda

- Gryffindor

- Can do magic - accidentally almost stole an entire office building’s and her closest friends’ souls using Tide(ritual) Mice

- Skilled w non-human interaction

- Future Sentient/sapient rights✊(ambassador?)

David

- Phenomenal singer (cursed to be interrupted tho?)

- Always has a bug on person? (Maybe nature spirit genes?🧬)

- V accepting parents (trans hc?)

- Anxiety

- Makes political connections easily (future work w hilda on sentient/sapient rights as ambassador?)

- Needs Therapy

Frida

- believes she’s expected to be perfect

- Hermione type

- Needs to work on experience and applying her knowledge (perfect match for hilda)

- Physically aggressive when feeling personally attacked

- Training to be a witch

- Can talk to animals now if she touches them

Woodman

- local cryptid

- Trouble expressing emotion

- He/him?

- Has/had a female loved one (mother? Past lover?)

- Wise & old

- His relationship with Hilda is mutual disrespect but being around each other because they find each other interesting

S2

- Gaston/Lockhart racist guy Erik Ahlberg

- Hilda being ruder

- Hilda being rude to Woodman because he’s not as selfless as her and she doesn’t accept him that way because his morals are different (typical Gryffindor but still)

- Hilda and her Mom bad at communicating

- Erik Ahlberg admitting to antagonizing trolls and endangering children and the populace of Trolberg (where they all live) for chances for glory to Hilda who doesn’t tell anyone and basically forgetting the next day

- Hilda/Frida v good match - apparently Hilda can be Frida’s familiar somehow

- British Magic schools are horribly awful v bad times - leaders are like the diamonds from SU

- Apparently Rat King(information broker) will also trade cod sandwich instead of secrets

- Time Worms; time police that eat time doppelgängers

- Healing potion from Swamp person Sigurd; might only work if the person dies in the bog, in which case a hospital should probably be set up there for grievously wounded people - requires further testing

- Witches can talk to animals by touching them and focusing

- Twig is part of an ethereal species of great rarity, Woodman just as rare

- David is most definitely suited for business, I recommend diplomacy

- The paperwork for firing Alfur was bullshit, no warning, no memos, censorship, no witness accounts allowed - Alfur has giant fanbase and gains a co-author

- Where did thunderbird from early episodes go?

- Peppercorn the nitten(like lice but microcats)

- Crazy weather scientist Victoria Van Gale (who invented a weather machine (so much potential for that helping w droughts) and experimented on sapient weather spirits) missing through an experimental Nisse portal but likely not dead because that’s too good of a dramatic comeback

- Greta (Erik’s deputy) doubting Erik after he keeps endangering her and David & Frida

- Troll family adopted human family

- Two-headed troll bad

- Jewelry collecting troll

- Freaky Troll consciousness switch

[gascon-en-exil]

How do you contend with your religious background and your job? Not judging, just curious

To answer that I have to ensure that you’re familiar with

1) Catholicism. I don’t many non-Catholics realize this, but the modern Church is substantially less anti-gay than most other conservative Christian denominations. When I was in the parochial school system in the early 2000s it was already part of the standard sex ed curriculum to address sexuality as an innate quality given to us by God that cannot be changed, which you could then use to conclude firstly that the Church does not support homophobic violence and secondly that it does not support conversion therapy which was something I wasn’t even aware existed until I was at university and was surrounded by Protestants for the first time in my life. Of course gay sex is still a mortal sin, but then so is every other kind of extramarital sex including masturbation and the use of contraceptives which as you might imagine dulls the effect considerably. Besides, that’s what the sacrament of Confession is for, and thanks to some entertaining moral loopholes I picked up on from my high school religion classes I only confess to the sex when I have an orgasm which is not all that common - certainly less common than my masturbatory emissions.

2) French Catholics specifically. While all Catholics nominally answer to Rome -we’re not like Eastern Orthodox Christians who have separate churches and patriarchs for each nation - each predominately Catholic nation/culture has a unique history with the faith and correspondingly different ways of engaging with the Church. France is sometimes referred to as the first daughter of the Church as it was the first nation to be founded under Christian dominion following the fall of the Roman Empire, but our 1500+ years of history with the Church has long been a contentious one. It’s little surprise that modern France is now one of the most atheist countries in Europe given the tendencies of our leaders and our people as a whole to think of our allegiance to the Church in primarily practical terms, to be used when the association would benefit us and discarded when religion becomes too troublesome. We acknowledge Catholicism as a foundational element of our history and culture but don’t have much use for it now otherwise. My family sent me through Catholic school because it’s the respectable thing to do here, but none of my relatives encouraged genuine piety and indeed frequently mocked people who expressed it - and there are plenty of those in New Orleans between the Spanish, Irish, and some Italians. I hear that this is true in metropolitan France and in Québec, that public expressions of religious devotion are considered to be in poor taste. Which brings me to

3) the Church and Louisiana. It must be said that unlike either our homeland or our brother colony to the north we Louisianais still have a practical use for the Church, which is why it has a much stronger visible presence here. The Protestants of the Bible Belt have been pressing down on southern Louisiana for over two centuries, and Catholicism has been one of our useful weapons in defending ourselves from total assimilation. The Anglos have forced us out of politics and the local economy and made us speak their language, indulged in our cuisine and culture of alcohol and carnal pleasure and endless festivals and gawked at our morbid acceptance of death in our magnificent cemeteries and tolerance for the occult, but they’ll always stop just short where the Church is concerned because their conviction to their Protestant heresies is too strong. Oh, some of them will convert when they marry into old New Orleans families and raise their children Catholic because it’s the fashionable thing to do, but most of the ones with wealth and influence only went so far as to build up Episcopalianism (the US arm of the Church of England, essentially Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off) as something of a rival denomination that doesn’t really rival us so much as give them an excuse to celebrate Carnival and so forth because it’s nowhere near as restrictive as the Calvinist denominations. We still can’t afford to be as secular as our people elsewhere, but having corrupted the Anglos here into our indolent lifestyles in retaliation for their hostile takeover of Louisiana following the Civil War does have a certain entertaining quality to it. Additionally, New Orleans’s history of sex work stretches back almost to the city’s founding, and being a variation on Parisian sex work with added racial dimensions (that don’t factor into my own practice, but are worth mentioning nonetheless) it’s not surprising that the Church here quietly looks the other way at all the endless decadence. The last thing they want is to seem like those demented Baptists who bus themselves down here every Mardi Gras and Southern Decadence waving their placards about how we’re all going to (their) Hell; helpfully, some of them are thoughtful enough to include anti-Catholic messaging as well, just to make sure that every single local will despise their presence.

To make a very long story short, I’ve never felt any cognitive dissonance between my sexuality (or what I do with it) and my religion, thanks to my particular upbringing encouraging religion without spirituality or even sincerity.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Why it’s bad — not just not helpful, but actively harmful — to go out on your way to shit on* people who might not vote Biden:

(Premises: truth is good and important, kindness is good and important, my audience is generally left of center and does not like Biden’s opposition, anybody reading this basically wants to do the right thing, the idea that the means justify the ends is kind of situational: sometimes how important your end goal is does actually affect what methods of getting there are appropriate (pushing someone away from you is excessive if they said something you didn’t like but appropriate as defense against assault), but also some things are always just wrong. Also, that climate change is a global existential threat, covid-19 is real, imperialism is bad, Black lives matter, there is no moral justification for the US to restrict immigration at all let alone anything about how undocumented immigrants are being treated, the prison system is extremely racist in practice and not actually a good idea in theory either, etc.)

People are stubborn cusses who don’t like being told what to do. Personally I’m not going to hold up “be nice to me or I might do the opposite of what you want just to spite you” as a threat because fuck I’ve got more self control than that and I know the stakes are sky high. But realistically: some people really are contrary enough to do that. So, demanding rather than asking or arguing for a thing is always a risk. (Demanding often feels safer. But that’s an illusion.)

People are stubborn cusses who don’t like being told what to do. And especially certain kinds of people — people with a history of being bullied or abused — tend to be very sensitive to being pressured, manipulated, or coerced into doing what other people want them to do. So it can harm relationships between people and between factions of the Left when some people/factions are demanding that others act a certain way, especially when the demands come attached to negging-like statements. (I get there’s a place for eg just shutting down terfs or Nazis. This isn’t that kind of thing; no one’s argument is based on the idea that other people aren’t really people here. At least not on the “don’t tell me what to do” side of this. Also, it’s possible to deplatform people without telling them they don’t really believe what they say they believe.)

It’s not polite and is not really ethical either. Consider: “if you cared about me you’d wash the dishes”, vs “hey, it’s your turn to wash the dishes.” “If you really held progressive values, you would vote Biden (and by implication, not criticize him until after the election)” follows the same pattern. “The fewer people vote Biden, the more likely it is that (the Republican candidate) will win the election” is a neutral statement of fact, and not one of the things I’m objecting to. It’s also not something I’ve actually heard anyone say this election cycle.

It’s not constructive, because getting people who are already likely to vote Democrat to actually vote is a better use of everyone’s time than trying to persuade someone who has already decided not to.

It’s not constructive, because if you want to change someone’s mind this is not how you do it. See point 1.

It’s not necessary: it’s possible to express support for Biden as a candidate and encourage people to vote for him without mentioning the existence of people who might not vote for him at all. Even if in the moment you feel motivated to express support for Biden because you read a post by someone expressing a lack of inclination to vote for him.

If you’re not sure about that claim that it’s not constructive (fair — you should be suspecting me of motivated reasoning), look at what people who actually run campaigns do. Is Biden insulting people who don’t want to vote for him on Twitter? Is the Democratic Party asking volunteers to insult people who don’t want to vote Democrat, as a way or contributing to the campaign? Is it paying people to do that? No? I wonder why that is? Maybe that’s because insulting people who don’t want to vote for a candidate doesn’t actually win campaigns?

Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Remember a time when someone insulted you for not agreeing with them. How did you feel? Conversely, think of a time when you changed your mind about something. How did that happen?

Why it’s actually OK to talk about being unenthusiastic about voting Biden (even if you really want him and not his opposition to win the election):

Well, fuck, look for another post on the subject I guess.

Some notes on impulse control:

Sometimes, another person says something on tumblr and you’re like “fuck yeah” and it just feels right to you and you reblog it. Maybe that’s where some of this is coming from: people who’ve decided to definitely vote for and fully support Biden (reservations notwithstanding) see a post, feel frustrated, go “yeah that’s right,” and reblog without really thinking about how it’s going to come across. That’s understandable. People tend to use social media to relax and unwind; we don’t necessarily bring our full game to it.

If that’s going on, maybe learn to recognize this pattern (recognize when a post that’s a feel-good vent to you is really hurtful to someone else, because it’s manipulative af) and think twice before clicking post? Maybe in general get in the habit of taking a breath/five seconds before posting or reblogging something? I realize for many of us that’s easier said than done, and it can be a work in progress. I’m not proud of everything I’ve hit post on even after I’ve given it some thought.

Maybe some people have an attitude of “well, if anyone is hurt by this, I don’t want them on my blog anyways.” I’d suggest, as an in between measure, tagging this stuff. “Biden” or “us politics” or “election 2020” or something. Explanation for why people who might have this kind of reaction might still be people who share your values either right before this post or right after, depending on what order I decide they’re done in.

Now, I messed up here. My first five or six reactions to this sort of post was not a positive one, but I wasn’t sure whether I had a good reason to not like them or was just...reacting. I have mental health issues and sometimes have much stronger reactions to things than the things warrant. So I just...didn’t say anything or do anything until it got to be too much and I lost my shit. Not ideal. If I had to do it over again, I’d send politely worded messages to people I wanted to keep following who were posting this stuff, asking them to not do that and briefly explaining why. But, I’m at a point where I can’t do the politely worded thing, which makes actually directly addressing the people who are doing this a much trickier proposition. So. Here we are. And I’m blogging to whoever the fuck reads my blog (other than my husband, who really doesn’t deserve any of this) like that’s actually going to help.

At least it’s making me feel better.

* “shit on”: this isn’t about the sort of posts that are all “vote for Biden!” Or “vote for Biden because ... ” or “I’m voting for Biden because...” or “here’s some non-straw-man arguments for not voting Biden that I’m going to disagree with in a way that basically respects that someone can make one of those arguments and be a fundamentally decent person also.” This is about the posts that are all “if you’re considering not voting Biden you are a tentacle monster from the dimension of non-Euclidean geometry, and also incredibly stupid because the only reason someone might do this is this tissue-thin straw-man argument.” And it’s certainly not about the posts that are “you might want to deliver your mail in ballot in person if that’s possible where you live” or “check to make sure you haven’t been dropped from the voter registry” or other posts that actively address barriers to voting or getting one’s vote counted. Those are good, keep doing those.

[bekahdoesnerdshit]

cog! indifference because I feel like that’s not a very cog thing she tends to feel. also: disgust! enthusiasm! raini: panic! mischief! ............ lust??? for auriga: frustration... excitement... boredom! ayen: anxiety, confusion!

Already answered disgust and enthusiasm for Cog, and mischief for Raini! Great minds, great minds, the group chat shares one braincell, etc. etc. 

Cog

Indifference: I think Cog struggles to process and express a lot of negative emotions, because she’s made such a conscious choice to repress put them out of her mind in pursuit of positivity. But she can get angry! She can get snippy because she’s stressed and hasn’t slept enough! But even then, even though the emotion is negative, at least she’s feeling and doing something. She’s taking a stand! She’s acting in defense of something she believes in! Indifference, though? It’s passive, it’s an inaction, it’s giving up. She has a bleeding heart, she isn’t capable of just turning that off and deciding she doesn’t care. If Cog gets to the point of indifference, it’s because she’s physically and emotionally exhausted. There’s too many morally gray choices she’s being forced to make, and there’s never a “right” answer, and everything she does hurts someone who doesn’t deserve it. Cog’s indifference is head down, shoulders hunched, tired eyes and still, folded hands. It’s pulling back from the conversation around her and letting the rest of the party decide the right course of action instead of weighing in and trying to steer them toward a more morally upstanding decision. She’s tired, and there’s no time to rest, and there’s no objective “good” to push toward. What does it matter what decision they make in the face of that? 

Raini

Panic: Flighty! If I had to pick one word- which I do not because as yesterday’s ask proved I have never in my life heard of “brevity”- panicked Raini is flighty. Whether that just means skittish in the moment, moving quickly from spot to spot as things Spook her, or if that means leaving the situation entirely with a Dimension Door or Teleport, she is not going to stay in one place very long at all. Her movements when she talks get a lot more jerky and abrupt, and she loses most of her intentionally cultivated air of aloofness evaporates. I don’t think it comes to this very often! I think it takes a lot to rattle Raini to the point of panic. But, you know, again. Sometimes you kill the goddess of magic, or whatever. Sometimes you’re staring down the barrel of an attack you know you won’t survive, and you have enough time to whip around to face your party with wide eyes before the blade of a sword that’s nearly as long as you are tall sinks home in your stomach, and you have just a second to panic because. What if this is the end? Are the others going to try to help you? Why would they? They don’t have to! I think, of just about every emotion, panic is the one Raini hates the most. You’re helpless, it means you’ve lost your head, and you’re just grossly out of control of the situation. Pass! Hard fucking pass!!! Lust: You just want to know how she acts when Ecstasy is visiting and that’s Fair but you have to own it.  Raini who’s trying to Get some is honestly like. Essentially unrecognizable. Y’all know that “oh, with the horns!! you’re so funny!” text post? But like, for real. And maybe 40% sarcastic? She’s SO more touchy than she usually is, especially on the bicep or upper thigh if they’re sitting down. Lots of lip biting, lots of stolen glances through eyelashes, and honestly? I think she’s very much the type of person to just circle while she flirts. We’re playing coy a little, but we’re also moving a little closer on each pass, so read into that what you will. Also! It’s definitely a competition to her, in a weird way? Like she’s super pale, so any amount of blushing shows up super clearly, but she will Not acknowledge it because that is losing. Somehow. Even though we all know how the night ends anyway. And while there are no losers when it comes to having sex with someone who is very hot very sensual very sexy, Raini does Not generally get to maintain her pride to the extent she would like to those nights. Is that too much information? Maybe so! But you asked, So! (Also again I Know this is non-verbal BUT such a big part of Raini flirting is banter. What’s the point of spending time on someone who already can’t keep up with you outside the bedroom?)

Auriga

Frustration: I think, in an incredibly ambitious and unprecedented move, I have finally created a character who is a wellspring of patience. He’s an elf, a cleric, a ruler, and a middle child. Technically. He has a fuse, because everybody does, but it’s probably literally about a mile long. But like, as a result? When it’s done, he’s done. He finally gets fed up trying to explain something to someone? Well, that’s it. His expression is still placid and pleasant, because he was Raised Well, but he’s written them off entirely. Too stupid to make understand, to slow to bother with. He’s had too much of a frustrating situation? It’s hopeless. There’s nothing to be done about it. Someone else is going to have to take care of it. He pulls back entirely behind manners and decorum, smiles politely but coldly, and excuses himself from the situation as soon as is respectable. Excitement: Aww this was so sweet to think about. Generally, Auriga is a pretty reserved person! The centuries of High Expectations (and a seven charisma) will do that to you! Can’t put your foot in your mouth if you don’t open it in the first place! But when he’s excited, he lights up. You get a real, not practiced smile, and soft touches on your forearm or shoulder. Still respectable!! But small, fleeting moments of intimacy, urging the other person to be as excited as he is about what is, in fairness, probably some pretty lame shit. I think he’s also very likely to default to drawing pictures to explain whatever he’s talking about so that the other person can see exactly what he means. Someone who engages and asks the right questions can absolutely get him to talk for hours about a given topic, when before that they may have heard barely a handful of words from him. Boredom: I’m making this character choice now and I may come to regret it when we start to actually play but I don’t care: Auriga’s default when he’s bored is to start to doze off. Like, has he had a lot of practice sitting in council meetings for long hours, debating circles around the same topic without making much, if any, progress? Sure! But that’s, bless him, something he finds interesting. Somehow. If it’s something he has absolutely zero interest in though (like, for example, a stuffy, boring play he’s obligated to attend out of professional courtesy? hypothetically) I think he’ll try to focus for a while? Because he was raised right, he has manners. But eventually his chin finds its way to his palm, and his eyes start to droop, and idk if mechanically elves can sleep and just don’t or if he’s just trancing in the middle of a public place (which I guess would be less conspicuous, technically?) but our boy is No Longer Paying Attention. 

Ayen

Anxiety: Anxious Ayen is fidgety. Bounce the leg! Continually summon and dismiss various small hexblade weapons! Open your hand, close it around the handle of a dagger. Open it agin and let the dagger disappear in a puff of smoke, close it again around a weird crooked sickle. Open your hand and let the sickle disappear, close it again around-- And so on, and so forth. I think she gets worked up really easily when she’s anxious, gets kinda jumpy, and is definitely ready to shoot off at a moment’s notice to go do whatever there is to do that will get rid of or distract from her anxiety.  (Also I know the original prompt was ‘non-verbal’ but it’s important to me that you know that she for sure talks to herself when she’s anxious, like. “Okay Ayen, you got this. We have no clue what the Fuck is going on, but we’re gonna pull it together and take it the fuck out. Alright? Alright.”) Confusion: Ayen is that classmate you sit next to in like some fuckoff high level math class, and the professor is talking and you realize you have No idea what they’re talking about? And you look over at Ayen to see if she can clarify anything, and she’s already writing “bro idfk” on the corner of her notes for you to read. If Ayen’s confused she’s gonna default to thinking it’s funny, because like. Can’t look stupid if you’ve decided the stuff you don’t understand is stupid first! So she’ll laugh, and shrug real big, and make a show of not caring what’s going on, because that saves face. That’s dumbshit nerd stuff, she is Way too cool for that.

[tomasistrill]

“Don’t look; but I Think The Elephant In The Room is Wearing An MF Doom Mask..”

By @tomasistrill

December 12, 2019

The Manifesto

“I am the elephant in the room;

bringing doom,

really soon.”

-TOMMY TRILLY

-Form & Shape

The image is sized to be square to eligantly frame my thesis of the symmetry that outlines all things asymmetrical.

Using dimensions of 1080x1080pixels gives the piece functionality & purpose as cover artwork for an important project being manifested as we think, speak & breath.

The color scheme is purposely & purely monochromatic. Starting from left to right; the viewer will immediately see that black is the dominating color of the composition.

However, dominant, is nothing less than an understatement. When working with black on this piece; I found myself compulsive, aggressive & even manic at times.

I strayed far from my initial concept of having the black fade to an almost white tone; never truly giving my viewer the graceful embrace of a pure white.

Instead; my fanatical usage of black lead me ever deeper into the enigmatic labyrinth of my subconscious & a graceful awareness of the courage to create.

-Ethos, Pathos & Logos

The toxic love affair between my creative mania & the color black conceived a scene no longer so two dimensional; contrasted with a character that will never be anything more than it’s two dimensions.

The character is depicted in the center of the room. However, because he cannot escape his two dimensional existence, the center of the room is a place he can only observe from afar. He doesn’t understand why none of the people in the room pay attention to him.

His body language communicates a lonely disposition; arms hanging at his sides, hands [possibly] in his pockets & eyes staring far into the abyss; painfully conscious of his glaze matched by the depths of true existence.

On the left & right of our self-ruminating character; reads “S†≡≡Z.”

A word meaning to have style with ease; made popular by hip-hop on the East Coast. In my meditations on the word, came to me, the most clear understanding of grace & what it means to have it.

Bruce Lee describes it as the effortless flow of water; taking the shape of whatever contains you; the body containing the mind & the mind then containing the soul.

This journey inward in search of the holy S†≡≡Z requires you to courageously be yourself purely in the face of adversity. Everytime you choose fear over courage; you’re taking steps outward & away from the S†≡≡Z!

-Spiritual Subliminals

Diving ever deeper into the art & the messages it has for us; we’ll turn our focus to how the word “S†≡≡Z” is communicated to the viewer. Using things such as; color, form, shape, symbology, typography, etc. I was able to effectively communicate ideas to the beholder, in a very visual, yet subtle way.

“S - - -Z”

The “S” at the beginning represents a wavelength that’s smooth from crest to trough.

While the “Z” at the end presents an opposite, but equal wave; this one being more aggressive in it’s frequency.

This is the inevitability one faces in making the decision to be themselves.

Sometimes the wave is S & sometimes the wave is Z, but if you know how to surf; the ride is always steezy.

“- † - - -“

The letter “T” here serves at a ✞ symbol standing for the divine power of love & forgiveness within Man.

“- - ≡ ≡ -”

The arrangement of three horizontal lines is an angelic numerical sequence “111” that tells the intuition to take action.

Encouraging you to keep following your spirit; if you see this listen to your gut/heart.

The double “EE” sequence is made of three horizontal tic marks, similar to a traditional capitalized E, but instead here we see “≡” used; one of the eight trigrams used in Daoist cosmology meaning “Heaven.” 乾 Qián ☰ Heaven|坤 Kūn ☷ Earth|震 Zhèn☳ Thunder|坎 Kǎn☵ Water|艮 Gèn☶ Mountain|巽 Xùn☴ Wind|離 Lí☲ Flame兌 | Duì☱ Lake

This rendering of “S † ≡ ≡ Z” is then contrasted across the longitude of the entire ensemble; painting a polarizing picture of the age old existential struggle of the inner against the outer.

The only usage of a true white tone is in the first occurrence of S†≡≡Z; in the darkest section of the piece. Then, almost mockingly, right in the middle of the lightest area, we see the return of darkness; in the second & final occurrence of S†≡≡Z.

This beautifully illustrates; when the world is dark, the individual will intuitively become the light he so desperately seeks.

We can then safely assume if the world becomes illuminated in mankind’s brilliance; the individual will only find peace in the shadows of his own world.

Narrative-

MF Doom:

A character/persona written by british-born EMCEE Daniel Dumile.

From his upbringing in Long Island, New York to his controversial rise to infamy; his story is trill hiphop lore. He became a man deep in the minds of millions & they don’t even know his name.

Initially, rapping under the alias Zev Love X, he formed the rap group KMD & signed to Elektra Records. Just before the release of the group’s second Album, boldly titled “Black Bastards,” the doom rapper’s late brother DJ Subroc was struck by a car & killed.

That same week the group was dropped from their label & the album was scrapped. Dumile left the industry & lived essentially homeless from 94’ to 97’.

He then left New York to settle in Atlanta, Georgia. Still recovering from his wounds; the rapper would don the iconic DOOM mask & take revenge "against the industry that so badly deformed him".

Thus the notorious villain of the hiphop underground MF DOOM was born.

He is often praised as not only one of the illest lyricist to ever do it, but also as a genius producer.

However, inspite of his immaculate discography & significant respect from industry legends, he is still widly unaccepted by the community he’s devoted his life to.

The Elephant:

Elephants are known as a keystone species; meaning it has disproportionately large effect on its environment relative to its abundance.

In fact, by simply existing; the elephant has the power to inflict change in the world it lives in. They, as all animals do, move across the earth manifesting their every desire; unconcerned with anything & everything that isn’t necessary to life.

Effortlessly laying the foundation on which nearly every other speices, within it’s domain, inevitably builds it’s existence.

They themselves embrace a matriarchal lifestyle; in which the feminine is the primary power within society.

Family Groups, consisting of mainly females & children, are led by the eldest female matriarch; with many of the males choosing a more solitary existence.

The elephant recognizes itself in a mirror; demonstrating a capacity for self-awareness found only in apes & dolphins. They also morn their dead & show signs of stress when loved ones aren’t well.

It is well known that the elephant’s memory is stone; able to recall locations of watering holes, family members, vast migration routes, etc. all over their 70 year lifespan.

Conflict:

It’s no surprise that elephants have inspired many literary, mythical & religious cultures; traditionally the elephant has been a symbol of strength, power, wisdom, longevity, stamina, leadership, sociability, nurturance and loyalty.

We see these things reflected in political ideologies of the American Republican Party; who’ve used the elephant as a mascot since 1874.

Conveying a message to undecided voters to preserve the values of the past & to have noble principle guiding your actions.

On the surface level this is honorably patriotic, but as I dived ever deeper; I found a story of people divided simply by perspectives based on how reality presented itself to the misdirected & misguided naiveté of the ignorant & innocent.

The parable of the blind men & the elephant originated in the ancient Indian subcontinent. A group of blind men, who never encountered an elephant before, all touch a different part of an elephants body & insist they know exactly what it is in front of them; based on their limited experience, they all go on to describe what they understood the elephant standing in front of them to be. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said "This being is like a thick snake". Another man, whose hand reached its ear, said it seemed like a kind of fan. The third man, whose hand was upon its leg, said the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. A fourth man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

In this parable; I found a moral of the subjective truths we face every day in our common lives.

All of these men share a deep common attribute of blindness & thus will cling to shallow differences in sensual experience & each man will have a different ideology for why he does so.

Man will neglect fellowship with his fellow man if, in his limited experience of reality, he finds it to be a necessary action in his life.

Unfortunately for a more modest man; life is often misunderstood by his neighbors.

Perhaps he dreamns of power, so he creates the illusion he has a higher knowledge of the elephant. Maybe he’s a coward & would rather formulate an opinion than walk away, because he fears rejection from the group.

Man has a habbit of claiming to know the absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience. As they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences. Which may be equally true; only ever able to justify their claims with fear or courage.

Resolve:

Courage requires immaculate moral responsibility & higher knowledge. To stand in the face of destiny with the heart of a warrior is an endeavor most men can no longer dream of.

It requires too much & so most men spend their lifetime in the same predicament the elephant himself is in; standing in a room being ignored by those whose hearts call out to him! To be the elephant in the room is a tragedy largely ignored.

The expression "the elephant in the room" is a metaphorical idiom in English for an important or enormous topic, problem, or risk that is obvious or that everyone knows about but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable or is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or dangerous. This same sociological & psychological repression operates on the macro scale of modern society.

Should something as conspicuous as an elephant be overlooked in codified social interactions? Of course not. You are the elephant in the room.

Conclusion:

Not only has he not forgotten; but the elephant himself, in all his divine S†≡≡Z, stands in a room full of people he remembers from the beginning of time. They talk of the old days; almost every word hinting at his presence in the room, but they just go on rambling as if the elephant himself isn’t standing next to them. They’re completely oblivious to the fact that there’s a god damn eight-foot seven-inch Asian elephant with a fucking MF DOOM mask on right there. He’s tired of being ignored; soon he will escape from his interdimensional hell & bring doom.

[lupinusalbus]

Will Jon Snow be the Downfall of Daenerys?

Much has been made of the alliance of Jon and Daenerys on Game of Thrones.  From a long term perspective, the two coming together was years in the making.  For six seasons, the audience followed their somewhat parallel journeys as they rose to power: Daenerys as a conqueror who has always had her eye on Westeros, and Jon as a reluctant leader who is given power through more democratic means.  From the earliest episodes of the show, the two are singled out as being special and even marked by destiny.  We see that both are touched by their world’s magic as Jon fortuitously rescues six Direwolf pups and Daenerys makes a blood sacrifice in order to hatch three baby dragons into the cosmos.

Jon and Dany have made a political and sexual alliance on the show, but also are secretly bound by a blood tie which will soon be revealed.  In light of their recent physical attachment, the revelation of Jon’s true parentage  has potentially tragic implications for their relationship.  There has been speculation and debate about why Jon Snow bent the knee to Daenerys at the end of season 7.  Over the course of this season, it became clear that Dany had become infatuated with Jon; and this, combined with her encounter with the Army of the Dead fueled her pledge to fight with him.  Jon then verbally pledges   himself (and the North) to Dany.  It is not entirely clear why he did this, but the plot has foreshadowed that Northerners and the Stark family will not be accepting of Jon’s actions.

For Daenerys, a romantic union or marriage to Jon Snow has many positive ramifications which may be lulling the audience into anticipating a fairy-tale ending.  Beyond the obvious political benefits, Jon Snow is a potentially  good partner for Dany.  In her past marriage to Khal Drogo, even though the two eventually came to love each other, Dany had to endure many indignities.  As a very young woman, she was used by her brother as a political pawn and then raped on her wedding day.  Although Drogo developed a softer side with respect to Dany, he was not an ethically enlightened person.  The Dothraki (including Drogo) are portrayed as primitives whose “masculine” ethos involves pillage and rape in their raw pursuit of power.  This is basically what they are all about.  Although Dany intervenes with Drogo to stop specific acts of rape, this concession from him indirectly leads to his death.  In addition, although Dany is opposed to rape and slavery, she relies on brutal tactics of her own when she burns the Khals.  It is through this display of raw power and supernatural “fire-proofness” that she gains the support of the Dothraki.  Her triumph does not happen because the Dothraki have suddenly become politically enlightened.

In any case, Jon Snow as a partner for Dany is ostensibly an advance over Khal Drogo.  Although Jon is very competent, even exceptional, in the masculine art of “fighting” he has never pursued power for it’s own sake.  In emotionally charged situations where he has been compelled by circumstances to take a life, he often did so reluctantly, and sometimes not at all.  He also has expressed doubts to others about the lives that he has taken.  In some sense this “tortured soul” quality even seems to be what Dany finds attractive about him, as when Jon gives her pause by admitting that he doesn’t enjoy the things that he is good at.  While Drogo was no doubt operating within the Dothraki code of honor, his world view was primitive compared to Jon’s more sophisticated conscience.

Although Dany appears to be a champion of the downtrodden, most of those who have pledged loyalty to her have done so because they had no other choice.  The unsullied were conditioned to obey whoever held the whip.  Even though Dany dropped the whip and allowed them certain freedoms, they really had nowhere else to go.  Likewise, the Dothrhaki were conditioned to follow whomever was able to kill other Khals.  Dany got her Dothrakis by effecting a mass burning of the leadership in their holy city and also by a raw display of God-like power.  Even though Dany seems better because she is against slavery and rape, her followers never appear to question her quest for world domination and the means that will be required to achieve it. Her means in and of themselves are not very different from what any other leaders have done.  Although Dany is inspirational in her reputation as a “liberator” she is still authoritarian in her desire for domination, which mostly seems to be based upon the Targaryen name and Dragon-power.

The coming together of Jon and Dany is setting us up for a clash of world views as well as armies.  In many ways, Jon’s world view is the antithesis of Dany’s.  Dany’s route to power on Game of Thrones has been “positive” in that she has actively sought her acquisition of armies and wealth to fuel her conquest of Westeros.  She is very comfortable in the role of receiving obeisance from others since this is all wrapped up in her sense of destiny as The Last Targaryen. She feels that it is all her birthright.  On the other hand, Jon Snow’s journey to power is “negative” in the sense that he has not sought it for himself.  His personal qualities have motivated those around him to select him for leadership.   After he is resurrected, instead of viewing himself as being destined for something important (as Melisandre hints), his plan is to anonymously head South.  It is only because Sansa arrives at Castle Black and convinces him to attempt to take Winterfell that he even becomes King in the North.  So Jon is a person who uses his conscience to do the best that he can when others place their trust in him.  Rather than pursuing power, he tries to do what is right for its own sake.  Although it appears on the surface that Jon and Dany’s paths are complementary, they are actually in conflict.

After Dany destroys a large part of the Lannister forces and burns the Tarlys for refusing to bend the knee to her, she returns to Dragonstone and asks Jon Snow how many men his army killed when he took back Winterfell as if to imply equivalence.  Except that the two situations are not really equivalent.  The quest of  Sansa and Jon to regain Winterfell had a moral dimension that is absent from Dany’s conquest of Westeros.  Dany’s notion of “helping people from a position of strength” really rests on little more than the sense of entitlement she derives from her name and her dragons.  There is no foundation of moral “rightness”,  but rather a cult of personality backing her.  Her followers, after all, are composed  primarily of armies of brutally subjugated slaves and tribally minded “bloodriders”.  She really has not proven herself to be worthy of support in Westeros, but is a foreign invader.

In his relationship with Ygritte and even with Dany, Jon Snow has been portrayed as an object of affection for a more active woman.  Ygritte made the initial advances in her relationship with Jon, and Dany is shown being more actively interested in Jon than he is in her.  The interesting part of this is that Dany is actually waylaid from her conquest of Westeros because of her attraction to Jon Snow.  She loses Viserion because she goes beyond The Wall to rescue Jon, and she unknowingly buys Cersei more time by attempting to enter into a truce with her.  Dany may be risking everything she has been working  towards for love and it could lead to her downfall. Although Jon is certainly on dangerous ground by forming an alliance with Dany, this is also true for her.

How could her downfall happen?  One wild card will be how Jon’s reaction to finding out about his true ancestry will affect their relationship.  Another is the reaction of the people around Jon and Dany to the truth about Jon.  Tyron and Varys have expressed reservations about Dany’s execution of the Tarlys and it seems likely that this situation is going to come to a head early in Season 8, as Jon and Daenerys come into contact with Samwell Tarly at Winterfell.   It may be a catalyst for a serious rift in their relationship and is also fertile ground for their clashing world views to play out with very dramatic consequences.  If she breaks with Jon and/or circumstances force her to retreat back to Dragonstone, her armies will still be vulnerable to attack from Cersei, and Dany would be seriously weakened and vulnerable. 

For the general audience, Jon and Daenerys are the protagonists of Game of Thrones; they are the “good guys.” Exactly how the show will portray a rift between the two will be fascinating.  Many have speculated that Westeros is headed for the abolishment of the Iron Throne as somehow ushered in by Jon Snow, the new Aegon.  The character development of both Jon and Dany, with their “negative” and “positive” paths to the conclusion of the series is one way of looking at where the plot will go.  A victory by Daenerys is not really very groundbreaking, whereas the ascension of Jon (or at least his ethos) would actually represent a step forward for the seven kingdoms.

[thearistocratsblog]

Academic Misgivings

I sometimes dwell on this stuff in my head so might as well inventory it here. During my college years in the Brown/RISD dual degree program, Brown work was generally on the backburner, but I did have a few ideas for essays which I thought might’ve been interesting if I had more time and space to execute them.  I was never incentivized to try harder, because my teachers usually laughed at my ideas or directed me to focus more on sex/gender (never the most exciting topic to me, although it figures into my work in some capacity.)  Off the top of my head, here are a few of my undergraduate academic ambitions/misgivings. 

Sophomore Year:

1. American Modernism and Its Aftermaths: Essay on the relationship between “Squidward’s Suicide” haunted media creepypasta, Mike Kelley’s “Deoderized Central Mass With Satellites” /repressed memory syndrome/Derrida’s “Archive Fever.” Feedback: None. 

2. Media, of Affect: Essay on the relationship between Bataille’s accursed share and loot box/blind box economics (with completely unnecessary detour on Greenbergian distinction between kitsch and fine art)   Feedback: Was told to focus on gendered gross-out toys, so I added a whole section on how the the Trash Pack/ Grossery Gang toys never had menstrual blood on them.  Would have been extremely helpful to research more about libidinal economies, video game monetization schemes, or Deleuze’s theories about the origin of money. 

Junior Year:

3. Serial Fictions: Essay on Jim Woodring’s “Frank” comic/monomythic exploratory narratives/moral relativism of the cartooning medium/the relationship between cartoonist’s laboring-bodies and their corporeal, volumetric ‘illustrative’ sensibility/cartoonist vs painter personalities (& their respective working temporalities) /google maps as illustrative surface, as it relates to Kant’s mathematical sublime/fantastic sublimity as patchwork of realistic detail (It was titled “Moral Algebra & The Patchwork Sublime in Woodring’s “Frank”.)

Feedback: Told to make it more sex-related or something? 

4. Digital Cinema and the Inhuman: Essay attempting a Deleuzian reading of  Blue Sky Studio’s 2015 Peanuts movie. The neurotic/Freudian/ “talking cure”- style comic strip becomes properly Deleuzian when computer animation introduces a deterritorialized/anti-Oedipal set of concerns via textures, procedural simulation, moving cameras etc. 

Feedback: Told to focus on only “Becoming Animal” chapter from Mil plat, fair enough. The teacher thought the essay was a bit of a meme. The “textural reading” in the middle section was a travesty. Read it here. 

5. Refiguring Expression: The Feeling of Voice in Modern and Contemporary Poetry: Essay on Melanie Klein’s dolls as a site of projection/waiting-room aesthetics in Jasper Spicero’s installation, “Living Waterway.” All artists collect based on childhood motifs (therefore positing aesthetic taste in the model of traumatic recursion? or something?). Then I free-associate with the sculpture. Feedback: More on the sentence level, but helpful. Read it here. 

Senior Year:

6. Deleuze and Cinema: Essay interpreting the contemporary horror movie, “It Follows” (with shapeshifting stalker-ghoul) through the lens of Bergson’s critique of duration (monster confusing qualitative and quantitative multiplicities). Also made the point of videogame-style POV being used to create psychological discomfort/lack of agency (a pt I have recently seen echoed in a Galloway book) and the question of how critique could be enacted at the ‘level of the character’ (the archive-as-monster?) and not the flimic scenario as a whole.    Feedback: Can’t recall. 

7.  Getting Emotional: Passionate Threories: Essay attempting to develop a theory of “counter-diffential” irony that is purely spatial or experiential, using Marnie Mull’s affectively-imbued “Cigarette Hedgehog” sculpture as a key example. (Self-duping, self-sacrificing Romantic smoker ethics briefly discussed.) Going through DeMan’s “Rhetoric of Temporality” to figure out allegory of blindness... (and Duchamp’s anti-aeshetic sculptures-as-dick-jokes could be groped with your eyes closed, couldn’t they?) Also the “counter-differential” title is a reference to the normals used to calculate light info on surfaces of 3d models (normals= negative reciprocal of tangency, ) because I was also trying(& failing) to square theories of irony with calculus/rates of change. Also I compare Whitman’s poem about a blind man with his life story written on a sign around his neck to a Surgeon General’s warning LOL... Feedback: JK thought this was a mess, which is true. 

8. The Contemporary Novel and Its Cultural Rivals: Essay on how Adult Swim’s Million Dollar Extreme used antihumor and excessive deus ex machinas to obscure conservative political intents- antihumor as inherently conservative aesthetic. Feedback:Gentle encouragement. 

Supersenior Year: 

9.Senior thesis proposal on “Theory of the quirk”: midway between characterology and aleatorics, by way of fan wikis. Also wanted to think about autistic memory-bank and subliminal memory vis a vis Derren Brown’s “Subliminal Messaging” video.  Realized this was too unconventional a project for the structure Brown was providing, so I dropped out. 

10. Sex. What is it, why does it matter? Essay on psychoanalytic/interpassive qualities in ASMR and “Satisfying” youtube videos. (What drive is being satisfied/denied relationship to sexuality etc.) Feedback: Helpful, according to JC didn’t do enough to acknowledge ‘the other in oneself’. Read it here.

10. Prose Sagas of the Medieval North: Essay applying Benjamin’s “Fate and Character” to  Grettir’s Saga/Grettir as Homo Sacer (via Agamben). Low key the coolest move of my academic career was using the Draugr’s curse to critique Benjamin’s definition of law, rather than the other way around! (I.e. by creating a fork in fate to sap Grettir’s potential strength, the Draugr employs law as a preventative measure, a dimension of law which Benjamin never acknowledges. It makes sense, almost!) Feedback: None.

11. Is that a fact?: Wanted to write on discursive modes surrounding autism ( ironic oxymoron considering relationship between autism and nonverbal behavior). Feedback: My trolling was stopped in its tracks by the teacher; I wasn’t allowed to write this. 

Academic work as a whole: I was most interested in sculpture/cartoons/toys/horrific allegories/archives/sexual difference/organization of the personality/ironic structures/art criticism rooted in the maker’s set of concerns. Too jokey at times but maybe I had potential. Le sigh.

[firebirdtransam68]

Most Hilarious Post From @uiruu

I got this quote from @uiruu who tried to put me in their watch list; which just proves my point about Leftists being totalitarian in nature.

Here is what they said:

“i just found the best blog in the universe, @firebirdtransam68. they said that neonazis are leftists, that imperialism is a leftist trademark, and then they blocked me. all the posts on their blog are fucking golden and i wish i could reblog them though… theyre far too long to screenshot… please PLEASE for the love of GOD read this post about what this person wants to see more of on tumblr: https://firebirdtransam68.tumblr.com/post/186215177878/what-i-want-to-see-more-on-tumblr”

“Best blog in the universe,” huh?  You say it in a really sarcastic way; as if your blog is superior than other blogs.  Well, my blog is not superior, either.  My belief is that Fascists, Nazis, Communists, and Marxists are all Leftists, and you are fine to disagree with me, but don’t pester me for having a completely different opinion; that’s makes you just as bad as the “Nazis” you claim to be against.  Also, I blocked you because you kept harassing me for sticking to my beliefs.  That sounds really immature and intolerant.

“some standout excerpts are:

'Fictional landscapes created by users”

Well, yes, I do like landscapes, but mostly fantastical and extraterrestrial landscapes.

“Extraterrestrial content”

I do like extraterrestrials, too.

“Hybrid/crossbreed animals, werebeasts, alien skunks”

I am not a big fan of them; this came from a list of what I want to see more content of, since many things I see in mainstream media are overrated, and many other factors are left out.  I want as much underrated content to be recognized as possible.

“Cars from 1967-1988″

Especially cars from the 1980′s (particularly 1982).

“Mpreg and fempreg (her*******ites, transgender, reverse reproduction, magic, alternate dimension, etc)”

Hey, this is relating to fanfiction that I take interest in sometimes.  I see Shadow mpreg, and it makes sense since he is the Ultimate Lifeform genetically engineered by a scientist.  And hermaphrodite is not a bad word; stop treating it like it is.  It is just a description of someone with two sex organs.  If you want to see bad words, refer to a racial slur common for Black people.

“Conflicts regarding the LGBTQ+ community (gay conservatives, march vs morality, discrimination based on political party,”

You really got to stop discriminating against people based on political party, including LGBTQ+ people.  To say that there are no conservative, Republican, or libertarian LGBTQ+ people, and only Democrats only makes you more homophobic than the Right-wingers you hate.

“Statements and opinions about the 1980s”

I like the 1980′s.  It is all right if you don’t, but you should respect that people have a different opinion than you do, and you can’t really change that.

“Synthwave”

Because it is relating to the 1980′s.

“Any direct-to-video film”

I do not care for direct-to-video films.  Just because I mention something that needs more recognition does not mean I like them (or hate them).

“Star Trek franchise”

My father is a bigger fan of Star Trek than I am.  I only like it for its extraterrestrial content.

“Older Garfield comic strips before 2006″

I used to like Garfield; not anymore.

“and of course…. the entire subsections for content related to Sonic the Hedgehog, Transformers, and the videogame Spore”

Because I like these works.  I don’t see any problem with that.

“i hope this person gets what they want and gets to follow lots of blogs that deliver on all these great topics that they want to see content about. maybe it’ll keep them from giving their opinions about whether or not Nazis are leftists”

I am put in your watchdog list because I have a different opinion than you do?  <sarcasm> Oh, have mercy!  I am too young to die!  Please, spare me, my leige! <sarcasm>.

Tough luck, buddy; I will express my opinions without any shame whatsoever; and if you don’t like it, that is too bad.  You could have moved on to something else, but you want to search for people with different opinions than you do, so you can shame them, threaten them, or even lie about them.  Now that is what I call totalitarian intents that are intolerant, and proves my point about the Left.

You say that I am a bully, but I see you are bullying others so you can get them in trouble.  And why did you even bother replying to my comment to someone else?  And then messaging me, which seems to be more like trolling?  You are becoming part of the problem, rather than the solution, for doing that.  You are becoming the example of a typical Leftist.  You are more totalitarian than individualistic for pestering other people who are just minding their own business.  You don’t follow the “live and let live” motto; you go against it.

And good luck trying to demonize me for being a free-thinking individual.  Many people with common sense will know you are not someone to be taken seriously.

[onett199x]

Yes, video games are art, but are they artistic?

This is another essay I wrote - I don’t do this super often, but I was feeling particularly inspired on this topic tonight, so here it is.

A question I often see asked, usually by someone with an obvious bias or conflict of interest, is this: Are video games art?  These days, the prevailing attitude towards that idea seems to be that they are, although that could easily just seem to be the prevailing attitude from my perspective because most people I  know have a generally favorable attitude towards video games.  At least from where I'm sitting, it seems like a tired, silly question - I imagine a college freshman pointedly answering "VIDEO GAMES!" when his Introduction to Art teacher asks about different mediums of art, and then being slightly disappointed when that professor doesn't try to argue with him about it.  Of course, there are different definitions of what 'art' is and isn't, so I'll start by defining my own terms.  To me, personally, there is no threshold of quality in art.  In other words, anything made by anybody can be art, whether that person has a talented bone in their body or not - macaroni glued to construction paper by kindergartners is art, and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes are art.  By my definition, then, of course video games are art - they have design and controls, they have images designed by visual artists, and they have music composed by musicians.  Any and all video games are art - it didn't just happen when presenters at E3 started trying to target the Self-Important College Freshmen demographic.  So Asteroids is art, Custer's Revenge is art, those battery-operated Game And Watch handhelds are art, and Flappy Bird, Neko Atsume, and Pokemon Go are art.  Some of those are art in the same way that Tijuana Bibles or 'Spot the Difference' games in the funny papers are art, but by my definition, they're still art.  In my mind, at least, that much is simple.

               Where this discussion gets instantly a thousand times more complicated is whether they are artistic.  This is what I think many people mean when they have conversations about whether video games are art - the implied question is not 'Is this something humans made to express themselves', but 'What is the value of this expression?' and, underneath that, 'Can we say it is as valuable as, for example, books, film, or visual art?' And THAT is a hairy, complicated question with a lot of different arguments to unpack and address.  

               I think, to take the previous thought just a little further, many people really want to discuss whether video games can teach us something about the human condition the way that literature or some movies or television can.  This is what makes it a fun debate for people, because when video games were first invented and popularized, that answer was almost universally a resounding 'No'.  At their inception, video games largely served the societal purpose of relieving children and older nerds of their pocket change - Jumpman's plight to rescue Paulina from Donkey Kong had no metaphor, allegory, or social/political commentary.  Everything about its premise, down to Jumpan's mustache and large nose, was the direct result of working within the limitations of primitive hardware.  As video games moved into the home market, they were still primarily targeted towards children (and nerds), with mostly bright, colorful mascots and cartoony aesthetics.  So while they still met my (admittedly generous) standards for the definition of 'art' listed above, they did not pretend to probe the depths of the human soul.  I imagine that changed sometime in the decade that saw the advent of text-heavy role playing games and the transition from two dimensions to three within the game space. In Search Of Lost Time these games were not, however - the closest analogue I could provide would be a Saturday morning cartoon show with action figure marketing tie-ins.  It's only been in the last ten years or so that it seems like some people have really started to push that particular envelope, and, in my eyes, a lot of these efforts are pretentious or heavy-handed.  I'm sure somewhere, someone has written a Thinkpiece on how those games with ~serious moral choices~ (see: Bioshock's decidedly unsubtle 'Will you rescue this innocent child or harvest their organs?') are advancing the artistic merit of the medium, and I hate that thinkpiece.  Attempts to be more subtle with these ideas have certainly surfaced since the whole 'Would you kindly...?' thing, and some of those have, admittedly, presented much more interesting questions for debate.  Much of these more interesting ideas in the 'commentary on the human condition' wheelhouse of video game design comes from indie developers who are setting out specifically to make us ask those questions. Just to name a few, Papers, Please puts us in the role of a government official in a bureaucratic dystopia and encodes its morality-based commentary in the actual gameplay;  Undertale takes Bioshock's simple 'this or that' morality and flips it 180 degrees to be about how we consume video games.  In fact, many of these games ask us what we can learn about ourselves based on the choices we make when we play video games, which makes for fun conversations but, in my mind, they lose a lot of their academic merit as soon as you try to apply those lessons to just about any other scenario.  As much as I loved and bought into Undertale's unique take on video game morality, it has almost no real-world application.  Outside of these examples, the bigger, more mainstream games have certainly become more cinematic, or, to perhaps narrow it down a bit, more like blockbuster films.  Naughty Dog's Uncharted series has all of the genre hallmarks, snarky witticisms, and epic symphonic soundtracks of Marvel's Cinematic Universe, while their critically-acclaimed The Last Of Us puts us in approximately the same head space as AMC's The Walking Dead television adaptation.  It's work that engages us mentally, in other words - we don't simply sit and absorb it, because it isn't so much statements as questions.  Something that engages us, though, isn’t necessarily high art just for that fact.  The works that are the most discussed and revered among narrative-driven mediums frequently have stories that affect many people on a deep, personal level, perhaps even altering their world view.  To contextualize it, I’d put the artistic merit of most video game storylines/premises/scenarios somewhere in the middle of the scale that ranges from Antonio Banderas's performance as the Nasonex bee to Brian Cranston's performance as Walter White on the scale of 'what does this teach me about myself' - they're fun to think about and talk about, but I'm not expecting many academic texts on the intricate socio-political subtexts of Mass Effect 2.  

                That's my admittedly complicated answer to the question of whether video game storylines/scenarios can pose powerful existential questions - you might unsatisfyingly condense it down to 'sometimes, I guess'.  I think even the most artistic video games have a hard time truly transcending the threshold of 'high art' because, at some point in almost any game with a serious message to it, that message is encoded in the game's very gameplay, even if it's not as obvious as 'X to save, Y to harvest'.  It is a message that you cannot complete the game without at least hearing, even if you aren't thinking about it as hard as perhaps those game developers wanted you to.

               This is my caveat to all of this, though - I don't think all art has to ask us deep, probing questions about humanity, society, politics, or history.  Even high art does not need to ask us that.  When people frame the debate of The Artistic Merit of Video Games, they often use literature, film, or television as a reference point, all of which are art forms that almost universally present a narrative, the presentation of which provides a message of some kind.  It seems, on a surface level, that these mediums are the most relevant comparisons to video games, because a very sizeable chunk of video games also present a narrative, and maybe even a message.  To imply that something must have a narrative to it in order to qualify as art, though, is to discount work like J. S. Bach's keyboard music or the paintings of Piet Mondrian from a discussion of what is and isn't art.  Obviously, then, that definition is not a functioning definition of art.  Even film and books are not solely artistic because of their narrative or because of their underlying message.  Many of cinemas great auteurs are considered great not solely because of the stories they told, but because of their innovation with finding new ways to tell those stories through the use of cameras, lenses, lights, sets, props, and actors.  Alfred Hitchcock told compelling thriller stories, but he also once presented an entire movie in what appeared to be a single unbroken shot.  William Faulkner presented the history of a troubled Louisiana family by telling it through the eyes of a mentally-handicapped character with no concept of the passage of time.  These are not just compelling stories, but compelling stories that could not have been told to us any other way.  In the 'uniqueness of presentation' discussion, video games certainly have a strong horse.  I am surely not the first, second, or hundredth person to point out that video games are special because we must actively participate in them.  More so than a stage drama with audience participation or a music performance where the crowd claps and sings along, video games cannot and will not engage us without our input.  They even prevent us from experiencing them if we aren't skilled enough, a subject that has come more into debate in recent years with the rise in popularity of extremely challenging games like Dark Souls.  In that (admittedly somewhat extreme) circumstance, we must learn the language, dynamics, and flow of the game in order to experience it.  Any person can listen to Liszt or Chopin and enjoy themselves without understanding the complex music theory that went into the composition of their music, and anyone can watch Mulholland Drive without grasping its experiments with narrative structure, but to play a video game requires a base level of comprehension.  Where the bar of that comprehension is set and the ways the video game works to impress that comprehension upon us is an artistic choice on the part of its creator.  I've heard it said that people learn best by teaching themselves, and that great teachers excel because they identify well the methods their students learn by, and are better equipped by that to provide the students with the tools they need to teach themselves.  Video games are a potent example of this principle - there are some excellent YouTube videos of people breaking down the ways in which video games allow us to teach ourselves how to interact with them.  It's through careful attention to this instruction that even punishingly difficult games like Dark Souls can be enjoyed by a large community of fans - I would contrast it with games whose difficulty is based purely in muscle memory or in trial and error.  

               To delve into this a little further, a commonly discussed element of game design that is hard to put exactly into words is called the feel.  My best definition I can give is how well the game gives the player the impression that they are in direct control of their avatar on the screen - a game with good feel can be as effortless to play as it is to move one's own body, and a game with bad feel can completely ruin the immersion, like bad acting or an out-of-tune musician.  To me, game feel is another of the more important facets by which a game's artistic value can be judged.  Video games are, like I said, unique for their symbiotic relationship with their audience/consumer, and the games that do the best job of immersing their audience do it by feeling the most natural.  I think perhaps the ur-example of this connection is with that omnipresent man, Super Mario (who I mentioned above in his previous identity as Jumpman).  As his original moniker implies, Mario is a guy who jumps, and he jumps in many different ways (exponentially more since his transition to 3D).  This concept is so simple it can be reduced to two words. It works so powerfully and connects to so many people, though, for two reasons: first, that it feels very natural and responsive to do, and second, that it can be done however the individual consumer wants to do it.  Mario can jump everywhere all the time, or only as often as he needs to.  He can do a regular jump, or a long jump, or a backflip, or kick off of walls.  Game Maker's Toolkit's Mark Brown describes this as 'player expression' - I don't know whether he came up with that term or if it was someone else, but it perfectly illustrates that element of video gaming.  The ability to bring such a versatile array of experiences from so simple an action demonstrates the technique of video game design that is there just as surely as there is film technique, writing technique, or music technique.  Regardless of the message of what is on the screen, we can tell a well-shot film from a poorly-shot one, even if we don't necessarily know the terminology to explain to someone else what the difference is between the two.  We can also instantly tell the difference between trying to control Mario and trying to control Superman in Superman 64.  While it might seem strange out of context to say that, in this sense, Mario games are an example of an exceedingly technical, artistic accomplishment in video games, that is absolutely a point I will stand by, much the same as Dark Souls or Half-Life 2.  

               There are other common points of comparison between video games and other mediums in the debate about artistic merit, but I think what my general argument is boils down simply to the fact that video games can do the most for us artistically when they do for us what nothing else can. I think using interactivity in an artistic medium to push the boundaries of narrative is one powerful way that artists can do that, but the very most basic idea of what a video game is - a world you can interact with - presents the widest possibility for artistic expression, narrative be damned.  Almost all of the truest artists in video games - whether they are Shigeru Miyamoto creating games that any preschooler or retiree can pick up and play, or whether they're Hideo Kojima crafting an experience that demands a comprehensive understanding of a detailed game world - exceed at what they do not because they ask themselves how they can tell a great story.   They exceed at it because they ask themselves what can be done in a video game, and the artistic merit of the medium grows and expands best with the exploration of new ideas.  Like blockbuster film franchises and copycat musicians, there's certainly money to be made and entertainment to be had from presenting another angle on something familiar and comfortable, and like those mediums, innovation isn't always world-changing or popular.  Any form of art succeeds by connecting in some way with its audience, and it's so exciting to think about the ways we still haven't yet discovered to connect with art - when a good book or film truly engages us, it's nothing short of a revelation, and to me, the surest sign of artistic merit in video games is that I can feel that revelation from them, too.

[lk-mitogen]

mental health rant

A friend of mine had an explosive breakdown at work today, and he got into a lot of trouble for it (he yelled at an R4 and an external doctor, both of which are...wayyyyyy higher up in rank than we are lmao, we’re at the bottom rung or lower). Talking to him and his girlfriend and another friend individually, I got the gist of why he did it -- his parents are divorcing, he has financial issues because of it, he’s lost faith in becoming a pediatrician and now has no idea who he wants to be, we work under insane pressure every day and no one gives a shit except when we fuck up, etc etc -- and I remembered me in my first year and a bit of med school, how I was just like that, because my own parents were divocing and it was hellish, and people came to know me as “that person who’s always fighting with the teachers” because I didn’t give a shit who you were, if you were wrong I told you and gave you twenty citations to back up my opinion, and it was just disruptive and offensive and it absolutely made me no allies.

He wasn’t wrong to get angry, to get irritated, but there are ways of expressing it that are better and more productive, but the reason I can tell that is because I’m in a better place now.

And like, he’s not the only one. My best medical school friend had a prolonged breakdown from last year until very recently, and it manifested as panic attacks and fainting spells and she would literally tell me “I have to get fresh air” and leave me alone in the emergency room with 20 patients because she just couldn’t handle it anymore, and I hated her a little bit for it, not gonna lie, she abandoned me when I really fucking needed someone to help me over and over and over, even in the middle of a goddamn surgery once, but I understood, I got it, and she got help and she’s better now, and she’s an impeccable doctor, whipsmart and attentive, I’d consult her anyday.

And like, this guy’s girlfriend has lately been complaining about nonspecific abdominal symptoms, and she keeps wanting to find a medical explanation for it, but I know it’s psychological, because she’s dealing with the same stress we’re all under PLUS her boyfriend is going absolutely nuts and in a violent way, it’s not the first time he yells at people when he’s frustrated, it’s just the first time he did it to people high enough and emotionally alien enough to him to report the shit out of him for it, and she’s his onlly emotional support, he’s the kind of boyfriend who would say “if you leave me I’ll kill myself”, so good luck with that sort of insane pressure, even if you have enough money to pay for your own transportation and food without difficulties like some other people have.

Another friend keeps sleeping in, she just can’t get up, I keep telling her put!! an alarm!! earlier!!! and she swears she does, but she says she can’t help herself from turning it off, because she “self-sabotages”, and it’s so!! fucking!!! frustrating!!!! because again, she leaves me to handle the 6:45 am handoff alone every. single. day. because she can’t get up and she arrives at 7:20 am with coffee and an apology and I gotta grit my teeth and bear it, because I GET IT, i really really do, she’s under a lot of stress and it manifests as self-sabotage, like, boy do I get it, I’ve been there, so I try to be kind and understanding and patient but. My god. I legit tune her out now whenever she starts apologizing because I’m 99.999% sick of it. And like! She’s a great doctor! Her bedside manner is A++ I admire her so much for it, and she genuinely cares for our patients, even the worst of the lot, I really wish I had her empathy (only not really because that’s where her self-destructive tendencies come from, I think). Basically, she’s a great person, just. Man. Wake the fuck up on time, PLEASE.

And this other guy, another part of our team, is a total flake, he keeps manifesting nonspecific symptoms like MY JAW HURTS I GOTTA GET MY WISDOM TEETH PULLED OUT!! one day and MY ABDOMEN HURTS I CANT COME TO WORK I THINK I HAVE APENDICITIS!!! and fucking shit like this every goddamn week it’s something new, and he’s on so many different medications for depression and anxiety and sleeping and staying awake and he’s gained easily 20 kilograms this year and I feel for him, I really do, his life is spiraling out of control and he’s clawing the walls all the way down to rock bottom, and I can see it, everyone can see it, but he’s too flakey to ever get anyone on his side, and part of me wants to tell him, buddy, take a sabbatical, but the problem is, he already took one so he can’t take another, and he’s burned me too many times and not reciprocated emotionally enough for me to reach out and help him, because I will drown right alongside him at the rate he’s going.

And then my other friend!! Whom I care about! A lot!! she’s also super empathic and kind but. SHE IS. SO GODDAMN SLOW. AT EVERYTHING. In the time it takes me to see 6 patients and write their SOAP notes she’s done one, and she’s not the sharpest tool in the box, she sometimes suggests treatments that are...not the correct ones, and so I gotta go and help her out, talk it through with her so she doesn’t heck it up, and she’s super cool about it! But!!! SO GODDAMN SLOW!!!!! PLEASE! LEARN TO BE MORE EFFICIENT!!! Even though I know it’s all a symptom of burnout, too, even I’m not cold-hearted enough to not realize it.

We’re all just. Shambling through this year, trying our best, and our best manifests in different ways when under stress, sometimes it’s just showing up to work. Sometimes it’s just managing to write the note, even if it takes you hours. Sometimes it’s asking your buddy if they can cover you so you can go cry in the bathroom for five minutes and then come back. We’re all doing our absolute best to be here and attentive and empathic, and I am really proud of everyone, but I’m also really sick of being the most sane person on the team. A selfish childish part of me is like, I WANNA HAVE MY BREAKDOWN TOO DAMNIT!! But I’m too old for it, and I’ve trained myself quite well to handle my meltdowns in efficient ways, productive ways, so I can get back on the horse quickly and in a stable manner. I’m proud of me for that too, but it does get tiring, having all parts of my team leaking anxiety and depression and stress in psychosomatic ways.

So I’m going to give in to my desire right now and have a very condensed breakdown rant and hopefully get all my high octane frustration out in one go, and then parse it out once it’s text.

For the past 10 months I’ve lived through the best and worst of people. I’ve given folks CPR to the point where their ribs break under my hands, I’ve had to fist a lady’s inverted uterus back into place in the most body horror moment of my life, I legit feared for my life when this dude going through withdrawal physically threatened me, I’ve delivered an extremely deformed baby with gastroschisis manually and their guts were spilling over my hands and though it didn’t die in my arms it died about ten minutes later in mom’s and it was sad as FUCK, I’ve had 13 12 11 and 10 year old girls delivering babies because their brother cousin uncle foster dad abused them and abortion is illegal in my stupid fucking hyper catholic state and this is a never ending cycle cause mom was 14 when they had them and on and on and on, and this other time I was the only fucking doctor at a public hospital once during an overnight shift and I had to suture this guy’s toes back on having 0 prior experience suturing ANYTHING and they fell right off the next day because I didn’t know what the FUCK I was doing and I still feel fucking awful about that, and at that same fucking hospital some IDIOT put formaldehyde in a saline solution bottle and this poor surgical nurse accidentally poured it into some poor patient’s open abdominal cavity IN FRONT OF ME and the fucking suction didn’t work because that public hospital is a piece of SHIT and that patient totally died and the resident told the family it had been something else and I WAS THERE and it was BULLSHIT, and COUNTLESS other horrible, truly horrible, absolutely horrible things, and I’ve tried to take all of that shit and learn something from it, make something good come out of so much, so much, SO MUCH awful, and I’ve patiently, patiently, patiently tried to tolerate my collegue’s breakdowns, and their eternal lateness, and the residents yelling at me, and the external doctors telling us we’re never going to be anything worthy, and I think I’ve been doing a good job of it, to be honest, at this point I feel like I’ve become this politely smiling shell of myself to survive it, because a part of me feels like I’m living in an alternate dimension where morality and ethics and laws no longer exist, because they simply do not apply anymore, someone has just taken all of that important stuff and dismissed it to be kindergarden stuff, and I gotta nod and go with it or else I’m going to be my friend saying “i need air” and leaving, or “i self sabotage like this” and sleeping in, or “i think my wisdom tooth is aching” and taking the day off or just, simply, EXPLODING at everyone until they kick me out, and like

a big part of me is MOURNING the fact that I’ve become like this, that THIS is what becoming a doctor means in my country, that THIS is the type of formation they require of us. This horrible automaton of a person, that is a symbol of so much goodness but underneath it it’s all lawless shit, it’s all under the water shit, it’s all cover everyone’s fuck ups type shit. I hate it. I hate what I’m becoming. This person that can talk about all this and kind of go “yeah, I guess it’s objectively awful, but have I told you about [this even more awful event]?” because if you play that game there’s always a worse story, there’s always lower, and lower, and LOWER.

I’ll always be glad I chose to study this career, for all it’s morphed me into something I never wished to be. Because I can wade in these muddy rotten waters and help my friends and my family navigate it, I can help strangers and underprivileged people navigate it, I can help all of them from my insider privileges, to make their experience better than it would have been without me, more efficient, more smooth, more right, correct, lawful. I can’t help everyone, and I’m human and I’ll fuck up now and again too, because I’m learning, but I know, firm in my heart, that wherever I go it will be better that I was there than if I wasn’t.

Even if it’s just because the bar is so fucking low it’s difficult not to do better, believe you me, a lot of my colleagues are so fucking burnt out that they somehow still do it worse, and I’ve seen it in external doctors as well.

I’ll take all of these horrible awful no good experiences and I’m going to do better, I’m already better, I will make people have a better experience when they are going through the worst parts of their lives. Even if I had to mess myself up a lot to survive it, I think it’s worth it to spend this one life of mine doing this. I really really do.

[tumetters-blog]

Results of the 300-Question Personality Test underneath the cut. Some are, quite frankly, hilariously contradictory.

Your cognitive style is... Pragmatic

In your thinking, you strike a balance between creativity and practicality. You can be imaginative when the situation calls for it, but never so much that your head is lost in the clouds. On the other hand, you’re also able to think through the practical concerns of a situation, and be a hard-headed realist when the need arises.

Your organizational style is... Balanced

You take a balanced approach to work and play in your life, buckling down to work hard when the situation calls for it, but also taking plenty of time for rest and relaxation. Not a driver, but not a slacker either, you know how to set goals—but you also know when it’s time to scrap the plan entirely and start anew.

Your energy style is... Introverted

You tend to be reserved and calm in your approach. Although you may enjoy being around people, especially close friends and family members, lots of socializing tends to be draining to you. You are more thoughtful than talkative and tend to be a good listener. You enjoy quiet, independent activities than you can do at your own pace.

Your stress management style is... Resilient

You deal with stress well and respond effectively to most of the hurdles in life. You do not easily become depressed, anxious, or angry. You can maintain a cool head in situations that set others off. You tend to take an optimistic approach to life, trusting yourself to manage challenges and difficulties.

Your interpersonal style is... Collaborative

When your needs conflict with the needs of others, you tend to negotiate a compromise that works for all parties. While you don’t take advantage of other people, you’re not a doormat either, and you usually look for a balance between your interests and the interests of others. You’re unlikely to agree to something just for the sake of harmony, but you can also sacrifice yourself for the collective good when it’s necessary.

Your Scores on All 30 Personality Traits

Now let's go into depth to describe your personality. Below are your scores on 30 distinct personality traits, organized by the Big 5 personality dimensions of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness.

Openness Traits

The 6 traits below relate to your level of Openness. Openness is a broad dimension of personality describing your tendency to think in terms of ideas and abstractions. People high in Openness tend to be creative, imaginative, and progressive. People low in Openness tend to be practical, concrete, and traditional.

Imagination

Your level of imagination is low.

To imaginative individuals, the real world is often too plain and ordinary. High scorers on this scale use fantasy as a way of creating a richer, more interesting world. Low scorers on this scale are more oriented to facts than fantasy.

Artistic Interests

Your level of artistic interests is about average.

High scorers on this scale love beauty, both in art and in nature. They become easily involved and absorbed in artistic and natural events. They are not necessarily artistically trained nor talented, although many will be. The defining features of this scale are interest in, and appreciation of natural and artificial beauty. Low scorers lack aesthetic sensitivity and interest in the arts.

Emotionality

Your level of emotionality is low.

Persons high on Emotionality have good access to and awareness of their own feelings. Low scorers are less aware of their feelings and tend not to express their emotions openly.

Adventurousness

Your level of adventurousness is high.

High scorers on adventurousness are eager to try new activities, travel to foreign lands, and experience different things. They find familiarity and routine boring, and will take a new route home just because it is different. Low scorers tend to feel uncomfortable with change and prefer familiar routines.

Intellectual Interests

Your level of intellectual interest is about average.

Intellectual and artistic interests are the two most important, central aspects of openness to experience, as they examine a person's tendency to enjoy abstract ideas.

High scorers on this facet love to play with ideas. They are open to new and unusual ideas, and like to debate intellectual issues. They enjoy riddles, puzzles, and brain teasers. Low scorers prefer dealing with either people or things rather than ideas. They regard intellectual exercises as a waste of time.

Intellectual Interest should not be equated with intelligence. This facet of personality describes an intellectual style, not an intellectual ability.

Liberalism

Your level of liberalism is high.

Psychological liberalism refers to a readiness to challenge authority, convention, and traditional values. In its most extreme form, psychological liberalism can even represent outright hostility toward rules, sympathy for law-breakers, and love of ambiguity, chaos, and disorder. Psychological conservatives prefer the security and stability brought by conformity to tradition. Psychological liberalism and conservatism are not identical to political affiliation, but certainly incline individuals toward certain political parties.

Conscientiousness Traits

The 6 traits below relate to your level of Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is a broad dimension of personality that describes your tendency to persist toward a goal. High scores tend to be determined, hardworking, and reliable. Low scorers tend to be spontaneous, impulsive, and flexible.

Self-Efficacy

    Your level of self-efficacy is low.

    Self-Efficacy describes confidence in one's ability to accomplish things. High scorers believe they have the intelligence (common sense), drive, and self-control necessary for achieving success. Low scorers do not feel effective, and may have a sense that they are not in control of their lives.

Orderliness

    Your level of orderliness is low.

    Persons with high scores on orderliness are well-organized. They like to live according to routines and schedules. They keep lists and make plans. Low scorers tend to be disorganized and scattered.

Dutifulness

    Your level of dutifulness is about average.

    This scale reflects the strength of a person's sense of duty and obligation. Those who score high on this scale have a strong sense of moral obligation. Low scorers find contracts, rules, and regulations overly confining. They are likely to be seen as unreliable or even irresponsible.

Achievement-Striving

    Your level of achievement striving is about average.

    Individuals who score high on this scale strive hard to achieve excellence. Their drive to be recognized as successful keeps them on track towards their lofty goals. They often have a strong sense of direction in life, but extremely high scorers may be too single-minded and obsessed with their work. Low scorers are content to get by with a minimal amount of work, and might be seen by others as lazy.

Cautiousness

    Your level of cautiousness is about average.

    Cautiousness describes the disposition to think through possibilities before acting. High scorers on the Cautiousness scale take their time when making decisions. Low scorers often say or do the first thing that comes to mind without deliberating alternatives and the probable consequences of those alternatives.

Extraversion Traits

The 6 traits below relate to your level of Extraversion. Extraversion is a broad dimension of personality that describes your style of gaining and managing energy. People high in Extraversion tend to be outgoing, energetic, and sociable. People low in Extraversion (a.k.a. Introverts) tend to be reserved, calm, and independent.

Friendliness

    Your level of friendliness is low.

    Friendly people genuinely like other people and openly demonstrate positive feelings towards others. They make friends quickly and it is easy for them to form close, intimate relationships. Low scorers on Friendliness are not necessarily cold and hostile, but they do not reach out to others and are perceived as distant and reserved.

     Gregariousness

    Your level of gregariousness is low.

    Gregarious people find the company of others pleasantly stimulating and rewarding. They also enjoy the excitement of crowds. Low scorers tend to feel overwhelmed by, and therefore actively avoid, large crowds. They do not necessarily dislike being with people sometimes, but their need for privacy and time to themselves is much greater than for individuals who score high on this scale.

Assertiveness

    Your level of assertiveness is low.

    High scorers on Assertiveness like to speak out, take charge, and direct the activities of others. They tend to be leaders in groups. Low scorers tend not to talk much and let others control the activities of groups.

Activity Level

        Your activity level is high.

    Active individuals lead fast-paced, busy lives. They move about quickly, energetically, and vigorously, and they are involved in many activities. People who score low on this scale follow a slower and more leisurely, relaxed pace.

Excitement-Seeking

    Your level of excitement-seeking is about average.

    High scorers on this scale are easily bored without high levels of stimulation. They love bright lights and hustle and bustle. They are likely to take risks

    and seek thrills. Low scorers are overwhelmed by noise and commotion and are adverse to thrill-seeking.

Cheerfulness

    Your level of positive emotions is low.

    This scale measures positive mood and feelings, not negative emotions (which are a part of the Neuroticism domain). Individuals who score high on this scale typically experience a range of positive feelings, including happiness, enthusiasm, optimism, and joy. Low scorers are not as prone to such energetic, high spirits.

Neuroticism Traits

The following 6 traits relate to your level of Neuroticism. Neuroticism is a broad dimension of personality that describes your response to stress. High scorers tend to react with anger, depression, anxiety, and other negative emotions when under stress. Low scorers tend to be resilient and deal with stress easily.

Anxiety

    Your level of anxiety is about average.

    The "fight-or-flight" system of the brain of anxious individuals is too easily and too often engaged. Therefore, people who are high in anxiety often feel like something dangerous is about to happen. They may be afraid of specific situations or be just generally fearful. They feel tense, jittery, and nervous. Individuals low in Anxiety are generally calm and fearless.

Anger

    Your level of anger is about average.

    Persons who score high in Anger feel enraged when things do not go their way. They are sensitive about being treated fairly and feel resentful and bitter when they feel they are being cheated. This scale measures the tendency to feel angry; whether or not the person expresses annoyance and hostility depends on the individual's level on Agreeableness. Low scorers do not get angry often or easily.

Depression

    Your level of depression is about average.

    This scale measures the tendency to feel sad, dejected, and discouraged. High scorers lack energy and have difficulty initiating activities. Low scorers tend to be free from these depressive feelings.

Self-Consciousness

    Your level or selfconsciousness is about average.

    Self-conscious individuals are sensitive about what others think of them. Their concern about rejection and ridicule cause them to feel shy and uncomfortable abound others. They are easily embarrassed and often feel ashamed. Their fear that others will criticize or make fun of them are exaggerated and unrealistic, but their awkwardness and discomfort may make these fears a self-fulfilling prophecy. Low scorers, in contrast, do not suffer from the mistaken impression that everyone is watching and judging them. They do not feel nervous in social situations.

Immoderation

    Your level of immoderation is low.

    Immoderate individuals feel strong cravings and urges that they have difficulty resisting. They tend to be oriented toward short-term pleasures and rewards rather than long-term consequences. Low scorers do not experience strong, irresistible cravings and consequently do not find themselves tempted to overindulge.

Vulnerability

    Your level of vulnerability is low.

    High scorers on Vulnerability experience panic, confusion, and helplessness when under pressure or stress. Low scorers feel more poised, confident, and clear-thinking when stressed.

Agreeableness Traits

The following 6 traits relate to your level of Agreeableness. Agreeableness is a broad dimension of personality that describes your inclination to get along with others. Agreeable people tend to be cooperative, compassionate, and concerned with harmonious relationships. Disagreeable people tend to be competitive, challenging, and concerned with their own self-interest.

Trust

    Your level of trust is low.

    A person with high trust assumes that most people are fair, honest, and have good intentions. Persons low in trust see others as selfish, devious, and potentially dangerous.

Honesty

    Your level of honesty is about average.

    High scorers on this scale see no need for pretense or manipulation when dealing with others and are therefore candid, frank, and sincere. Low scorers believe that a certain amount of deception in social relationships is necessary. People find it relatively easy to relate to the straightforward high-scorers on this scale. They generally find it more difficult to relate to the unstraightforward low-scorers on this scale.

Altruism

    Your level of altruism is about average.

    Altruistic people find helping other people genuinely rewarding. Consequently, they are generally willing to assist those who are in need. Altruistic people find that doing things for others is a form of self-fulfillment rather than self-sacrifice. Low scorers on this scale do not particularly like helping those in need. Requests for help feel like an imposition rather than an opportunity for self-fulfillment.

Cooperation

    Your level of cooperation is low.

    Individuals who score high on this scale dislike confrontations. They are perfectly willing to compromise or to deny their own needs in order to get along with others. Those who score low on this scale are more likely to intimidate others to get their way.

Modesty

    Your level of modesty is high.

    High scorers on this scale do not like to claim that they are better than other people. In some cases this attitude may derive from low self-confidence or self-esteem. Nonetheless, some people with high self-esteem find immodesty unseemly. Those who are willing to describe themselves as superior tend to be seen as disagreeably arrogant by other people.

Sympathy

    Your level of sympathy is about average.

    People who score high on this scale are tenderhearted and compassionate. They feel the pain of others vicariously and are easily moved to pity. Low scorers are not affected strongly by human suffering. They pride themselves on making objective judgments based on reason. They are more concerned with truth and impartial justice than with mercy.

[trikkidetroit]

Social media & why the fuck am I even still awake?

I’m pretty sure, out of all social media outlets, Tumblr is the only one that actually makes me semi-happy…. it’s just a bunch unique people posting cool pictures & spouting off random musings & in it’s simplicity it is inspiring. Pinterest is cool & definitely helpful & a great source of inspiration, but it doesn’t ease my mind at all. In fact, it gets overwhelming. Frankly it becomes downright depressing when you realize 90% of the shit you’re pinning are the beautiful places you’ll never go, the wondrous marks on the globe you’ll never travel to, the amazingly unattainable things you’ll never possess, and the recipes that you are probably never going make…. for that dinner party that you’re never gonna throw…. in that custom kitchen in the dream home you’ll never have Facebook is much more self-explanatory in it’s misery. The more friends you collect, the less private your life becomes. There’s a fine line between harmless networking and destructive infringement on personal privacy in Facebookland that is skirted constantly. And there are those who think it’s okay to just completely invade another person’s private life (because they’re “on social media”, fuck their privacy right?) These bottom-feeder-esque leech people that choose to disregard the Facebook line of morality, and the difference between right and wrong altogether, & might act in a manner that is destructive in terms of lynch-mob bullying, deliberately attempting to ruin a person’s reputation, or saying things & acting in a way behind a computer screen that they wouldn’t dare say to their targets face out in public. Pussies. You hear more and more these days about kids that commit suicide, or are totally fucked up from this website due to malicious cyberbullying by their peers. Facebook users report FOMO, and tend to feel inadequate about their own lives when they see friends of theirs who think it’s a popularity contest, posting pictures of amazing things that they’re doing every single day, or the “super enlightening thing” that they’re going to say or do that’s going to change everybody’s life via a post. It’s OK to post pictures from the one.. or two.. or five….. or fucking 20 vacations one may go on a year…. or if one’s life is just a vacation, posting pictures from that sweet end of the deal in life they’re living….. but be mindful & attempt to recognize the line between “I’m posting this to feed my superego” and “I’d like to share this with my friends and family”. Not to mention the countless hours of mindless scrolling, liking everybody’s pictures, checking to see if your pictures got likes, and feeling the need to interject on some political issue you have no base knowledge of or some social issue that doesn’t concern you…. and I don’t mean to give anyone a complex (though if you’re that high & mighty to actually be offended by the things that I’m saying, you probably deserve one). I’m just using these examples because even I am guilty of these waste-of-time, dumbing-down-of-society-overall activities in my Facebook history. And there’s Twitter…. I for one think it’s kind of stupid. I mainly use it mockingly, or to share mindless drivel, or to post a shock-tweet here & there to see if I can elicit some type of indirect, latently passive aggressive online response from one of the trolls, or to share semi-pertinent news stories. But I will give it this: celebrities and even our commander-in-chief tend to love this platform to share information because it keeps them relevant… really if you use Twitter and you’re not a celebrity or a politician or a musician then you’re really just there to spectate on what the fuck those people are doing day-to-day or hour-to-hour. It’s a quick way to get straight-to-the-point information across assertively and decisively, which can become a problem because when one doesn’t use the adequate follow-up information via paragraphs to express themselves after making an in-your-face tweet, there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation on what the fuck they just said in that 140-characters space. Here’s why it is depressing to me: I feel that too much is going on in my head at any given moment to appropriately express myself in one brief, haiku-like statement. If social media was poetry, and the different forms of poetry represented each media outlet….Twitter would be the haikus. Sometimes a haiku is profound, but how much can you fucking express in such a small space? And to extend that thought on to multiple tweets just gets confusing in terms of continuity & it throws the reader off so it’s best to just keep it short to begin with. Also, who or what the fuck am I tweeting too? I’m not a celebrity, I’m not rich, I’m not famous. I’m not an inspiring author or an astrophysicist or a career politician. I’m just some asshole. Sometimes I just do it because… oh I don’t know…. I’m sick in the head and think somebody might be reading it that actually thinks I’m a celebrity of sorts… although I’m not. And if I tweet enough I could trick them into believing I was someone important. But even that wouldn’t fill the empty hole inside that twitter creates. Instagram is kind of like Tumblr in the sense that you’re sharing cool photos that you either find or you take yourself but you’re limited to a box format in terms of photos dimensions which is annoying, and a bunch of generic filters, and it’s not really a blog. I guess it’s cool if you don’t have much to say or if you do a lot of video blogging, but for those of us who enjoy good old fashioned writing as a means of self-expression, it’s kind of a sad media outlet. :( *edit: I have been able to find quite a few meaningful blog-like instagrams recently with purpose, mainly by people who foster animals or do charity work. Reddit is just a massive fucking forum board, and Snapchat is for college students & 20-somethings that want to show their friends the great time they’re having getting shitfaced but don’t want any record of it to remain so it doesn’t get out to mom. It’s also good for, I’m guessing, unimpressive dick pics from guys that are probably sending the same picture to their whole female Snapchat list. Which is a depressing thought in and of itself. I guess what I’m trying to say is social media sucks, I’m kind of an extroverted-introvert, so I tolerate the idiocy that breeds in these networks, but I feel my most at home & able to express myself amongst like-minded individuals on this particular site. I have been kind of melancholy over the past couple months… probably because I tried to shut my Tumblr down because I thought my life was going to get suddenly interesting enough to where I wouldn’t really need to blog that much anymore because I’d be too busy living my exciting life. Well, suffice to say that never happened, so starting back up is helping me cope… Besides the fact that (in the far reaches of the Tumblr universe) there is some great porn.. I mean.. erotic art. So thank you Tumblr for not sucking.. and for anybody who actually reads all of this, I’m sorry in advance.

[ganzeer]

7 Things I Have Learned From The Mask of Freedom

June, 2011

On the 26th of May, 2011, I was detained by Egyptian Military Police for fly-posting the following sticker:

[”New! THE MASK OF FREEDOM! Salutations from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to sons of the beloved nation. Now available for an unlimited period of time.”]

Luckily, I was released on the same day with no charges whatsoever pressed by Military Prosecution. This, I believe, came as a result of quick and vast external pressure that manifested from the internet community, human rights groups, the press, and well, phone calls certain members of the military had received from “people high up.” Throughout this process, I happened to learn a few things.

1) We are our biggest enemies.

Many people I know would like to believe that my detainment by Military Police was part of a military crackdown on freedom of expression and general civil dismay towards Egypt’s so-called interim military rule. In all actuality, my detainment was a result of a long-lasting civil crackdown on freedom of expression.

The way it all went down was, as I was sticking one of the stickers onto a lamppost, two civilians stopped me and expressed their discomfort with it. This led to a little debate which other passersby felt the urge to partake in, which very quickly led to a big scene that involved a lot of shouting on the corner of a crossroads of two main downtown streets. This prompted the close-by traffic officer to use his walkie-talkie to call in Military Police. The reason Military Police was involved was that the regular law enforcement apparatus was entirely dysfunctional following “the revolution”, and martial law was virtually put into effect.

This, I think, highlights the core problem we face as a nation, and that is the culture of righting the wrong wrongs, and wronging what could be legitimate rights.

For example, it seems very acceptable in our culture to keep someone from expressing an opinion you may not agree with, but it isn’t so popular to keep someone from throwing trash on the street or blasting the volume of a Vespa-mounted stereo. This is especially odd to me, because it would seem to me that the act of throwing trash on the street would cause more direct discomfort to a another person than a sticker that criticizes the country’s governing body.

Some would disagree with me and point out that if such criticism were left unchallenged, it would lead to even more popular dismay towards the military body, which could possibly spark mass protests and strikes, which in turn could lead to a political situation that would make your lifestyle quite uncomfortable.

This very unrealistic roundabout argument can easily be invalidated by the facts surrounding my detainment. Although the Mask of Freedom was originally unleashed upon the inter-web on May 19th, it only spread on May 26th within hours of word of my arrest spreading across social networks. It very quickly got picked up by Al Ahram Online, Al Shorouk News, The Daily News Egypt, The Christian Science Monitor, and even television (local and CNN). As a result of my arrest, the image was vastly spread in less than 24 hours. The irony is that the very image that the civilian halted me for, to keep me from spreading, garnered even more exposure only because he stopped me.

More importantly, did the spreading of the image negatively affect that person’s life? I can assure you, this person very likely wakes up in the same bed, eats the same food, and most probably has the same job. Knowing so, I wonder if he still thinks it was worthwhile to keep me from putting up those stickers.

I sincerely believe that if he would instead put that same energy into keeping someone from littering the streets or chronically honking a car horn, his life would instantly improve, and he would most certainly feel the difference.

2) We are all but vessels.

A couple of friends of mine were putting up the same sticker in a different part of town when they, too, were halted by civilians. As the crowd of civilians grew, my friends were accused of being foreign spies, plotting against the nation, disrupting the peace, and all kinds of emotionally-charged things, until finally a police officer showed up, examined the sticker for 30 seconds before saying “What’s the big deal? Freedom.”

What was a very vocally disgruntled crowd less than a minute ago all of a sudden proceeded to face my two friends with smiles and ask if they could have some free stickers.

So this raises the question: Were they against the sticker because they morally believed it was wrong, or simply because they felt the need to take it upon themselves to do what was socially perceived as right?

I think the latter is correct, because if they had truly believed in the righteousness of their cause, they would’ve firmly opposed the police officer’s ruling. They didn’t and that gives me the impression that this urge to censor the sticker comes from a less-entrenched external source than moral intuition. This is essentially true, as it is no secret that the military has been using state TV and official newspapers to propagate the importance of the military’s role as authority in the country, and spread paranoia in regards to “foreign agendas” and peace-hating troublemakers.

This is a clear indication of how we, as people, are so easy to sway based on the ideas we are fed. As such, the direction taken by humanity at large is frighteningly easy to control. Which brings me to the next point.

3) We all need a crusade.

I was having a chat with film director Amr Salama the other day about this notion of humanity as an easily controllable vessel. I told him how I imagined a world where all these very influential media resources used to propagate fear and paranoia would instead be used to promote things like empowerment, liberty, honor, dignity, creative freedom and social justice. Salama argued that tapping into humanity’s dark side is a lot easier than tapping into humanity’s bright side. Upon examining historical events, this theory becomes eerily true. Peoples’ conviction with things such as racial or sexual equality has been moving at a much slower pace than peoples’ tendency to fear and attack a race or unfamiliar culture.

Essentially, people will always need a crusade. Even when attempting to sell the idea of doing something inherently good, it will need to be packaged in a fear-driven crusade for it to work. It’s easier for people to be against something than for something.

For example, the only way to get masses of people to care about the environment would be to promote the fear of global warming. People are driven by being against environmental destruction, rather than being for environmental prosperity.

4) It is important to transcend from the digital to the physical.

There is great value in spreading ideas over the internet, even if these ideas remain represented in the digital dimension of the world. As long as these ideas are exposed to people, these ideas will have great value. However, as soon as an idea takes on a more physical form, its impact on unsuspecting viewers enormously multiplies. This is apparent when comparing between the impact of the Mask of Freedom on May 19, when all I did was post it online, and its impact on May 26, when I decided to go down and take it to the streets.

5) Niceness does not necessarily mean goodness.

They were very nice to me at the military’s prosecution headquarters. I was served soda, Nescafe, and engaged in conversations with smiling military men. The content of these conversations, however, made it very clear to me that these people do not usually act out of goodness, but quite the contrary. An example would be when they attacked the tents in Tahrir and pulled out men and women who might’ve allegedly engaged in sexual activities,  the military’s actions seem to have been motivated by a kind of malevolence, rather than doing a good deed. The same arguably applies to when they arrest criminals. It seems to stem from the desire to beat the shit out of someone rather than simply keep someone from committing a crime.

I got this sense when discussing widely agreed upon basic human rights that these officers find to be absurd. They find it absolutely legitimate to cuss and slap-around criminals during their arrest rather than limiting the act of the arrest to simply making the arrest. I find this completely disturbing, because as military personnel, one would expect them to have an understanding of these sort of rights that would not only apply to civil criminals but even prisoners of war. But respect for other human beings is not why people take to having a gun for a living.

However nice these men may be, they do not act upon goodness. The same could apply to a man like Mubarak his, who is said to be quite nice and personable around those he speaks to. His actions as a 30-year-long ruler of Egypt, on the other hand, show him to be anything but “good.”

6) Old men in uniform will never understand young boys in shorts.

I won’t get into the absurdity of my shorts and long hair being a topic of debate and discussion among the Old Men in Uniform, but I would like to point out how baffled these men were by the involvement of a young man in activities that were not backed by “organizations” or power-driven aspirations.

One of the questions directed towards me during the friendly interrogation was whether I was a member of the 6th-of-April Movement or Revolutionary Youth Coalition. When I answered that I was part of neither, the next logical question they asked was if I had been paid by someone to put up the Mask of Freedom stickers across town.

These Old Men in Uniform clearly cannot fathom the idea of a someone going around town to express something backed by nothing other than personal motivation. Sometimes young people tend to do things they believe in with no aspirations for power, money, or fame. The fact that these men do not understand that, I feel, is very dangerous and quite sad.

7) The Military “manages.

When debating whether or not the military is fit to “rule the nation,” a common argument brought up is that the military knows how to “manage”. It simply knows how to deal with situations. This very notion was made clear to me when inside the office of a high ranking officer at Military Prosecution Headquarters, I couldn’t help but notice the… air conditioning unit.

Yes, the air conditioning unit, which was an old model dating back to… maybe the late 80’s or early 90’s, was working very well. The room was definitely cool, but in accomplishing that, not only did we have to deal with the loud clunky noises of what sounded like a very exhausted machine, but the officer had set up a fan right in front of the unit to better spread the cool air around the room.

So instead of properly fixing the air conditioning unit or installing a more up-to-date device that might sound quieter and efficiently distribute the cool air around the room and most likely require less electricity to do its job, the army people thought it would be more practical to use the old unit and consume more electricity on the additional fan while at it.

This, I feel, has been the military’s strategy in managing the entire country since the Liberated Officers’ coup of 1952. As long as things work, regardless of inefficiency or social/psychological discomfort, they let it be.

Which is exactly why military personnel should be stripped from anything involving government.

First published on the now defunct ROLLING BULB in June, 2011.

[randomguywholikesstuff]

Quotes From: Jonathan Haidt. “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”[4]

Perception Hypothesis

“God created the angels from intellect without sensuality, the beasts from sensuality without intellect, and humanity from both intellect and sensuality. So when a person's intellect overcomes his sensuality, he is better than the angels, but when his sensuality overcomes his intellect, he is worse than the beasts

-MUHAMMAD”

“OUR LIFE is THE CREATION of our minds, and we do much of that creating with metaphor. We see new things in terms of things we already understand: Life is a journey, an argument is a war, the mind is a rider on an elephant.

With the wrong metaphor we are deluded; with no metaphor we are “blind””

“We have all encountered something we failed to understand, yet smugly believed we understood because we couldn't conceive of the dimension to which we were blind. Then one day something happens that makes no sense in our two-dimensional world, and we catch our first glimpse of another dimension

In all human cultures, the social world has two clear dimensions: a horizontal dimension of closeness or liking, and a vertical one of hierarchy or status

Our minds automatically keep track of these two dimensions.”

“O n c e again, disgust turns off desire and motivates concerns about purification, separation, and cleansing. Disgust also gives us a queasy feeling when we see people with skin lesions, deformities, amputations, extreme obesity or thinness, and other violations of the culturally ideal outer envelope of the human body.”

“when people think about morality, their moral concepts cluster into three groups, which he calls the ethic of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the ethic of divinity. W h e n people think and act using the ethic of autonomy, their goal is to protect individuals from harm and grant them the maximum degree of autonomy, which they can use to pursue their own goals. When people use the ethic of community, their goal is to protect the integrity of groups, families, companies, or nations, and they value virtues such as obedience, loyalty, and wise leadership. When people use the ethic of divinity, their goal is to protect from degradation the divinity that exists in each person, and they-value living in a pure and holy way, free from moral pollutants such as lust, greed, and hatred.”

Perception Hypothesis: Secular Reverance

“Eliade says that the modern West is the first culture in h u m a n history that has managed to strip time and space of all sacredness and to produce a fully practical, efficient, and profane world. This is the world that religious fundamentalists find unbearable and are sometimes willing to use force to fight against.

Eliade noted that even a person c o m m i t t e d to a profane existence has privileged places, qualitatively different from all others—a man's birth-place, or the scenes of his first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in his youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious man, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality; they are the "holy places" of his private universe, as if it were in such spots that he had received the revelation of a reality other than that in which he participates through his ordinary daily life.”

Perception Hypothesis: Emotional Responses to Moral Beauty

“When any . . . act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice.

Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions, and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.

Jefferson went on to say that the physical feelings and motivational effects caused by great literature are as powerful as those c a u s e d by real events. He considered the example of a contemporary French play, asking whether the fidelity and generosity of its hero does not dilate [the reader's] breast and elevate his sentiments as much as any similar incident which real history can furnish? Does [the reader] not in fact feel himself a better man while reading them, and privately covenant to copy the fair example?”

“Both parts of Sara's study show that Jefferson got it exactly right. People really do respond emotionally to acts of moral beauty, and these emotional reactions involve warm or pleasant feelings in the chest and conscious desires to help others or become a better person oneself”

“Keltner and I concluded that the emotion of a we happens when two conditions are met: a person perceives something vast (usually physically vast, but s o m e t i m e s conceptually vast, s u c h as a grand theory; or socially vast, s u c h as great f a m e or power); a n d the vast thing cannot be acommodated by the person's existing mental structures. Something enormous can't be processed , a n d when people are stumped , stopped in their cognitive tracks while in the presence of something vast, they feel small , powerless, passive, a n d receptive...

Religions sometimes lose touch with their origins, however; they are sometimes taken over by people who have not had peak experiences—the bureaucrats and company men who want to routinize procedures and guard orthodoxy for orthodoxy's sake. This, Maslow said, is why many young people became disenchanted with organized religion in the mid-twentieth-century, searching instead for peak experiences in psychedelic drugs, Eastern religions, and new forms of Christian worship...

Scientists may tell us in their memoirs about their private sense of wonder, but the everyday world of the scientist is one that rigidly separates facts from values and emotions..

Maslow charged, however, that the humanities had abdicated their responsibility with their retreat to relativism, their skepticism about the possibility of truth, and their preference for novelty and iconoclasm over beauty..

His goal was nothing less than the reformation of education and, therefore, of society: "Education must be seen as at least partially an effort to produce the good human being, to foster the good life and the good society.”

“But by giving each one of us an inner world, a world full of simulations, social comparisons, and reputational concerns, the self also gave each one of us a personal tormenter. We all now live amid a whirlpool of inner chatter, much of which is negative (threats loom larger than opportunities), and most of which is useless. It is important to note that the self is not exactly the rider—much of the self is unconscious and automatic—but because the self emerges from conscious verbal thinking and storytelling, it can be constructed only by the rider.”

“Leary's analysis shows why the self is a problem for all major religions: The self is the main obstacle to spiritual advancement, in three ways. First, the constant stream of trivial concerns and egocentric thoughts keeps people locked in the material and profane world, unable to perceive sacredness and divinity. This is why Eastern religions rely heavily on meditation, an effective means of quieting the chatter of the self. Second, spiritual transformation is essentially the transformation of the self, weakening it, pruning it back in some sense, killing it—and often the self objects. Give up my possessions and the prestige they bring? No way! Love my enemies, after what they did to me? Forget about it. And third, following a spiritual path is invariably hard work, requiring years of meditation, prayer, self-control, and sometimes self-denial. The self does not like to be denied, and it is adept at finding reasons to bend the rules or cheat. Many religions teach that egoistic attachments to pleasure and reputation are constant temptations to leave the path of virtue.”

Religion Ethics

“core idea of the ethic of autonomy: Individuals are what really matter in life, so the ideal society protects all individuals from harm and respects their autonomy and freedom of choice.

The ethic of autonomy is well suited to helping people with different backgrounds and values get along with each other because it allows each person to pursue the life she chooses, as long as those choices don't interfere with the rights of others.

The core idea of the ethic of divinity is that each person has divinity inside, so the ideal society helps people live in a way consistent with that divinity.

On issue after issue, liberals want to maximize autonomy by removing limits barriers, and restrictions. The religious right, on the other hand, wants to structure personal, social, and political relationships in three dimensions and so create a landscape of purity and pollution where restrictions maintain the separation of the sacred and the profane. For the religious right, hell on earth is a flat land of unlimited freedom where selves roam around with no higher purpose than expressing and developing themselves.

If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God

It is impossible to analyze "the meaning of life" in the abstract, or in general, or for some mythical and perfectly rational being. Only by knowing the kinds of beings that we actually are, with the complex mental and emotional architecture that we happen to possess, can anyone even begin to ask about what would count as a meaningful life.

Without a target or goal, one is left with the animal default: J u s t let the elephant graze or r o a m where he p l e a s e s . And because elephants live in herds , one ends up doing what everyone else is doing. Yet the human mind has a rider, a n d as the rider begins to think more abstractly in adolescence , there may come a time when he looks around, past the edges of the herd, and asks: Where are we all going? And why?”

Perception Hypothesis: Work Life

“Even before Freud, Leo Tolstoy wrote: " O n e can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one's work

White called it the "effectance motive," which he defined as the need or drive to develop competence through interacting with and controlling one's environment...

Effectance is almost as basic a need as food and water, yet it is not a deficit need, like hunger, that is satisfied and then disappears for a few hours. Rather, White said, effectance is a constant presence in our lives:

Dealing with the environment means carrying on a continuing transaction which gradually changes one's relation to the environment. Because there is no consummatory climax, satisfaction has to be seen as lying in a considerable series of transactions, in a trend of behavior rather than a goal that is achieved.”

“occupational self direction." M e n who were closely supervised in jobs of low complexity and much routine showed the highest degree of alienation (feeling powerless, dissatisfied, and separated from the work). Men who had more latitude in deciding how they approached work that was varied and challenging tended to enjoy their work much more. When workers had some occupational self-direction, their work was often satisfying.”

“most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling. If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work. If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige. T h e pursuit of these goals often energizes you, and you sometimes lake work home with you because you want to get the job done properly. Yet, at times, you wonder why you work so hard. You might occasionally see your work as a rat race where people are competing for the sake of competing. If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling—you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in s o m e larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to "quitting time" nor feel the desire to shout, "Thank God it's Friday!" You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy”

“Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.”

“correct version of the happiness hypothesis, as I'll illustrate below, is that happiness i lies from between...

every path is unique, yet most of them led in the same direction: from initial interest and enjoyment, with moments of flow, through a relationship to people, practices, and values that deepened over many years, thereby enabling even longer periods of flow.

“vital engagement," which they define as "a relationship to the world that is characterized both by experiences of flow (enjoyed absorption) and by meaning (subjective significance)..

There is a strong felt connection between self and object; a writer is 'swept away' by a project, a scientist is 'mesmerized by the stars.'The relationship has subjective meaning; work is a 'calling.'

Vital engagement does not reside in the person or in the environment; it exists in the relationship between the two”

“When doing good (doing high-quality work that produces something of use to others) matches up with doing well (achieving wealth and professional advancement), a field is healthy..

Whenever a system can be analyzed at multiple levels, a special kind of coherence occurs when the levels mesh and mutually interlock. We saw this cross-level coherence in the analysis of personality: If your lower-level traits match up with your coping mechanisms, which in turn are consistent with your life story, your personality is well integrated and you can get on with the business of living. When these levels do not cohere, you are likely lo be torn by internal contradictions a n d neurotic conflicts. You might need adversity to knock yourself into alignment. And if you do achieve coherence, the moment when things come together may be one of the most profound of your life...

“finding coherence a c r o s s levels feels like enlightenment, and it is crucial for answering the question of purpose within life..

People are multilevel systems in another way: We are physical objects (bodies and brains) from which minds somehow emerge  ; and from our minds, somehow societies and cultures form. To understand ourselves fully we must study all three levels—physical, psychological, and sociocultural.

People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence

Once again, happiness—or a sense of meaningfulness that imparts richness to experience—comes from between.”

Perception Hypothesis: Cultural Coherence

“To the extent that a community has many rituals that cohere across the three levels, people in the community are likely to feel themselves connected to the community and its traditions. If the community also offers guidance on how to live and what is of value, then people are unlikely to wonder about the question of purpose within life. Meaning and purpose simply emerge from the coherence, and people can get on with the business of living. But conflict, paralysis. and anomie are likely when a community fails to provide coherence, or, worse, when its practices contradict people's gut feelings or their shared mythology and ideology...

because elements of culture show variation (people invent new things) and selection (other people do or don't adopt those variations), cultural traits can be analyzed in a Darwinian framework just as well as physical traits (birds' beaks, giraffes' necks). Cultural elements, however, don't spread by the slow process of having children; they spread rapidly whenever people adopt a new behavior, technology, or belief...

The human capacity for culture—a strong tendency to learn from each other, to teach each other, and to build upon what we have learned—is itself a genetic innovation that happened in stages over the last few million years..

Individuals who could best learn from others were more successful than their less "cultured" brethren, and as brains became more cultural, cultures became more elaborate, further increasing the advantage of having a more cultural brain. All human beings today are the products of the co-evolution of a set of genes (which is almost identical across cultures) and a set of cultural elements (which is diverse across cultures, but still constrained by the capacities and predispositions of the human mind).”

“After a thousand years of inbreeding within caste, castes will diverge slightly on a few genetic traits—for example, shades of skin color—which might in turn lead to a growing cultural association of caste with color rather than just with occupation.”

“A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them.”

“Human nature is a complex mix of preparations for extreme selfishness and extreme altruism. Which side of our nature we express depends on culture and context. W h e n opponents of evolution object that human beings are not mere apes, they are correct. We are also part bee.

G r o u p selection creates interlocking genetic and cultural adaptations that enhance peace, harmony, and cooperation within the group for the express purpose of increasing the group's ability to compete with other groups. Group selection does not end conflict; it just pushes it up to the next level of social organization.”

“conclusion suggests that synchronized movement and chanting might be evolved m e c h a n i s m s for activating the altruistic motivations created in the process of group selection”

Happiness Hypothesis

“What can you do to have a good, happy, fulfilling, and meaningful life?

What is the answer to the question of purpose within life? I believe the answer can be found only by understanding the kind of creature that we are, divided in the many ways we are divided. We were shaped by individual selection to be selfish creatures who struggle for resources, pleasure, and prestige, and we were shaped by group selection to be hive creatures who long to lose ourselves in something larger. We are social creatures who need love and attachments, and we are industrious creatures with needs for effectance, able to enter a state of vital engagement with our work. We are the rider and we are the elephant, and our mental health d e p e n d s on the two working together, e a c h drawing on the others' strengths. I don't believe there is an inspiring answer to the question, 'What is the purpose of life?

The final version of the happiness hypothesis is that happiness comes from between. Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. S o m e of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality.

Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.”

“All things come into being by conflict of opposites”

“HEHACLITUS , C. 500 BCE”

“Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

— WILLIAM BLAKE ,  C . 1790”

“Psychology and religion can benefit by taking each other seriously, or at least by agreeing to learn from each other while overlooking the areas of irreconcilable difference...

The Eastern and Western approaches to life are also said to be opposed: The East stresses acceptance and collectivism; the West encourages striving and individualism. But as we've seen, both perspectives are valuable...

Happiness requires changing yourself and changing your world. It requires pursuing your own goals and fitting in with others. Different people at different times in their lives will benefit from drawing more heavily on one approach or the other.

An important dictum of cultural psychology is that each culture develops expertise in some aspects of human existence, but no culture can be expert in all aspects. T h e same goes for the two ends of the political spectrum. My research confirms the common perception that liberals are experts in thinking about issues of victimization, equality, autonomy, and the rights of individuals, particularly those of minorities and nonconformists.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are experts in thinking about loyalty to the group, respect for authority and tradition, and sacredness

Anomie would increase along with freedom. A good place to look for wisdom, therefore, is where you least expect to find it: in the minds of your opponents. You already know the ideas common on your own side. If you can take off the blinders of the myth of pure evil, you might see some good ideas for the first time.

By drawing on wisdom that is balanced—ancient and new, Eastern and Western, even liberal and conservative—we can choose directions in life that will lead to satisfaction, happiness, and a sense of meaning. We can't simply select a destination and then walk there directly—the rider d o e s not have that m u c h authority. But by drawing on humanity's greatest ideas and best science, we can train the elephant, know our possibilities as well as our limits, and live wisely”

[seekfirstme]

The following reflection is courtesy of Don Schwager © 2019. Don's website is located at Dailyscripture.ServantsOfTheWord.org

Meditation: What can adversity teach us about the blessing of thanksgiving and the healing power of love and mercy? The Book of Proverbs states: A friend loves at all times; and a brother is born for adversity (Proverbs 17:17). When adversity strikes you find out who truly is your brother, sister, and friend. The Gospel records an unusual encounter between two peoples who had been divided for centuries. The Jews and Samaritans had no dealings with one another even though Samaria was located in the central part of Judaea. Both peoples were openly hostile whenever their paths crossed. In this Gospel narrative we see one rare exception - a Samaritan leper in company with nine Jewish lepers. Sometimes adversity forces people to drop their barriers or to forget their prejudices. When this band of Jewish and Samaritan lepers saw Jesus they made a bold request. They didn't ask for healing, but instead asked for mercy.

Mercy is heartfelt sorrow at another's misfortune

The word mercy literally means "sorrowful at heart". But mercy is something more than compassion, or heartfelt sorrow at another's misery and misfortune. Compassion empathizes with the sufferer. But mercy goes further - it removes suffering. A merciful person shares in another's misfortune and suffering as if it were his or her own. And such a person will do everything in his or her power to dispel that misery.

Mercy is also connected with justice. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a great teacher and scripture scholar, said that mercy "does not destroy justice, but is a certain kind of fulfillment of justice. ..Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; (and) justice without mercy is cruelty." Mercy.."moves us to do what we can do to help the other." Mercy seeks to remedy the weakness of others, and where sin is involved to lead others to recognize their need for repentance and turning away from wrongdoing. Pardon without repentance negates justice.

God's mercy brings healing of mind, heart, and body

So what is the significance of these ten lepers asking Jesus to show them mercy? They know they are in need of healing, not just physical, but spiritual healing as well. They approach Jesus with faith and with sorrow for their sins because they believe that he can release the burden of their guilt and suffering and restore both soul and body. Their request for mercy is both a plea for pardon and release from suffering. Jesus gives mercy to all who ask with faith and contrition (true sorrow for sin).

Why did only one leper out of ten return to show gratitude? Gratefulness, a word which expresses gratitude of heart and a thankful disposition, is related to grace - which means the release of loveliness. Gratitude is the homage of the heart which responds with graciousness in expressing an act of thanksgiving. The Samaritan approached Jesus reverently and gave praise to God.

Ingratitude leads to lack of love and kindness, and intolerance towards others

If we do not recognize and appreciate the mercy and help shown to us, we will be ungrateful and unkind towards others. Ingratitude is forgetfulness or a poor return for kindness received. Ingratitude easily leads to lack of charity and intolerance towards others, as well as to other vices, such as complaining, grumbling, discontentment, pride, and presumption. How often have we been ungrateful to our parents, pastors, teachers, and neighbors? Do you express gratitude to God for his abundant help and mercy towards you and are you gracious, kind, and merciful towards your neighbor in their time of need and support?

"Lord Jesus, may I never fail to recognize your loving kindness and mercy. Fill my heart with compassion and thanksgiving, and free me from ingratitude and discontentment. Help me to count my blessings with a grateful heart and to give thanks in all circumstances."

The following reflection is from One Bread, One Body courtesy of Presentation Ministries © 2019.

 

THE DEGREES OF THANKSGIVING

  "He threw himself on his face at the feet of Jesus and spoke His praises." —Luke 17:16  

We start off in life thanking others in order to be polite. Then we thank others, even God, in order to be just. We say such things as: "At least you can say 'Thanks.' " Then the Lord calls us to thank God by faith rather than by sight (2 Cor 5:7) — to thank God when we don't see a reason to thank Him. Then the Lord calls us to live lives of such profound and constant thanksgiving that our thanksgiving is an act of faith by which we accept salvation (see Lk 17:19).

For Christians, thanksgiving is not just a day, or even many actions; it is the atmosphere in which we live, the very fabric of the Christian life. Because God became a human being, died on the cross for us, and rose from the dead for us, we have reasons to be thankful which will always take precedence over even the worst circumstances. Thus, we should give "thanks to God the Father always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 5:20). We should never stop thanking God — to the point that we thank our way right through death and enter the courts of heaven with thanksgiving (Ps 100:4). There we will prostrate ourselves before God's throne, worship Him forever, and exclaim: "Amen. Praise and glory, wisdom and thanks­giving...to our God forever and ever. Amen!" (Rv 7:12)

Today, let us accept God's grace to move our thanksgiving up a notch. Then let us keep increasing our thanksgiving to the Lord to the point that we will thank our way into the heaven of eternal thanksgiving.

  Prayer: Father, send the Holy Spirit to teach me new dimensions of thanksgiving. Promise: "Authority was given you by the Lord and sovereignty by the Most High, Who shall probe your works and scrutinize your counsels!" —Wis 6:3 Praise: Mother Cabrini, the first canonized U.S. citizen, founded 67 institutions to care for the sick, poor, and abandoned.    

  Rescript: In accord with the Code of Canon Law, I hereby grant the Nihil Obstat ("Permission to Publish") for One Bread, One Body covering the period from October 1, 2019 through November 30, 2019.

†Most Reverend Joseph R. Binzer, Auxiliary Bishop, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, March 11, 2019.  

The Nihil Obstat ("Permission to Publish") is a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free of doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat agree with the contents, opinions, or statements