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arkt-nehrim-archive · 4 years ago

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A Story in Spring : Renewal {1/3}

"I have a proposition for you."

The walls of the fallen seraph's humble hut had so far been something of a passive comfort, yet Lithirill found no sense of ease. Her host, and fellow Tel'lmaltath could certainly tell, eyeing her with some hint of concern, slowly rising to his full height, turning to face her once the fire had suitably caught. "Go on."

The encouraging mannerism was commonplace in their interactions thus far, but it didn't do much to make her desirous of speaking her mind, as images played in her head of all she had been plotting in secret, only thinking to bring the matter to him when she -knew- beyond a doubt she could -achieve- her goals. "It is a...personal matter, to you specifically. I hesitate to even ask, truthfully." At that notion, her company raised a sculpted brow. How he might've read her words differed from what she seemed to mean by her body language; a normally stood straight, confident woman now half hunched and barely maintaining eye contact. He simply watched, resting a hand along his hip. It was the only prompt to continue she was going to get. "...Right. -Arkt-. I will speak plainly." even then she hesitated, a sigh accompanying an expression of complete honesty, "...I want to reconstruct your wings. I would see you fly again."

There weren't many things reality could offer him that still surprised, but that had done it, the gentle carefulness in her tone most of all. It wasn't just an offer, but a plea. Arkt's gaze fell to his floorboards, called back to the moment she had seen the tattered remnants, and the conversation that followed where he learned much and more about the individual he chose to champion. Her perseverance in the face of impossible odds had ensured his second chance at freedom from past mistakes, yet here she was still giving. It was not debt fueling her either, but desire, leading him to a thought forgotten sensation; confoundment.

Lithirill only fidgeted in the quiet, narrowing her eyes in passive calculation, half braced for some kind of impact. It took him some several moments to recover, clearing his throat. The ever-present ache at his back he'd still struggled with flared up. Even to this day, the injury pained him, centuries "dead" had been his only reprieve.

"You are firmly familiar with the reasons I lost them in the first place..." he began, watching his company instinctively tense, ready for rejection; instead he would give her a question, "Knowing that, I must ask -why-? To what end would you go to such efforts?" Asked with genuine curiosity, over any manner of accusation; he suspected her of nothing.

Lithirill nodded, crossing her arms and easing her weight onto one leg. "History was one among a few reasons I have debated asking. As for why, well. I feel there are certain wrongs afflicted to those I’ve come to care for, and it is within my power to unravel those wrongs.”

Arkt watched her carefully crafted mask slipping, the woman ever at odds with herself. He wondered if there would ever be a time where she did not engage in the practice, and simply felt at home in his company.

"As you did with Arantheal?" he questioned, curious to see if he could keep her at that boundary.

Lithirill puzzled over the question for a moment, pondering if it was harmless comparison or an accusation. Foolish to think it the latter, knowing Arkt had no history of resisting her intent.

"...Yes. As I did -for- Narathzul." She corrected, offering a sideways nod and a shrug, "Know I don't need an answer -today-. I only wanted you to know that the idea lingered in mind long enough to...plan for.”

Ultimately, Arkt was touched. Shock still kept a whirlwind of emotions at bay at the mere hint of taking to the skies again, permitting the warmth of the smile behind his veil to only grow as he watched her. She was not having so easy a time, clearly having wrestled with herself on the matter for awhile.

"Is this what has kept you from your usual visits of late?" he wondered, gesturing with a hand in a motion pushing down from his midsection; 'Relax.' he said silently.

Her eyes followed his hand, flicking up to his face like the lash of a serpent's tongue before she took in a breath and let it out, chuckling to herself.

"In part. Alongside the politicking and the visits somewhere warmer. Thoughts?"

He sighed through his nose as he partly answered with the considering tilt of his head and a prolonged shutting of his eyes, continuing to chew on the notion.

"Too many to rightly voice in a manner composed or remotely understandable. Would you mind returning to Castle Darlan for the moment? I'll have an answer for you come the evening."

"Of course.~"

The professional manner in which she pulled herself together and turned from him showed a wall climbing between them that he had no patience for, the old seraph chuckling when she moved to open the door.

"Lithirill."

She twitched, shoulders bunching as her fingers fumbled at the doorknob, before she straightened again and smiled a familiar, shy curve over her shoulder. Her eyes lit up a touch when she saw he’d pulled down his veil.

"Yes?"

"...Thank you." he spoke, genuine appreciation clear in his expression.

A hint of color, and the wall scattered; his only goal in the moment. She departed with an amused, "See you soon.", quickly on her way.

~~~ As promised, Arkt had arrived that evening, uncharacteristically anxious, but Lithirill could hardly blame him. She could not imagine the weight of what her offer truly meant to him.

In times long gone, the loss of his wings, however deeply traumatic, had served a purpose; symbols had power, as much in their creation as their destruction and his fall signaled the end of an era where the Lightborn could rule without fear of repercussion. Yet now that all his battles were over, and this new life lay before him...

It was not long before the old seraph was waxing poetic, teetering back and forth in his words, as was his way. He all but danced between every sentence- whilst Lithirill only offered more wine when his glass neared empty. She refused to rush him in coming to a decision, simply enjoying his company, equal parts devilishly curious and genuinely empathetic.

Such camaraderie came to it's end at the dawn of the following day, Arkt admitting in the quiet of the morning fog that he accepted her offer; even with her many warnings of risk and pain, he had seen firsthand what she was capable of; he knew he was in good hands, even if a fair few of her achievements were with his shadowed aid.

Two weeks had passed since he agreed to her offer, wasting no time in getting started. The first bout had been the hardest thus far- having not yet known just how -much- it took to render a seraph numb, and having the unfortunate task of plucking the feathers he still had. A meticulous, painful, unexpectedly bloody process...but it was safer to start with a clean slate than try to rebuild all that was under them when half the limb had been shorn down to bare bone.

Trippling the dosages from there made things much easier, at least for Arkt. His struggle was not with pain in the familiar sense now, it came instead from a nameless sensation; the agonizingly slow return of what should never be, able to sense every -tiny- thread of what was lost reconnect. It was as torturous as it was euphoric, and it could only be overcome by sheer force of will.

Tonight would be no different. Lithirill had learned his tells after a few sessions. When in the throes of her spell work, she could spare little attention for observance, but awareness returned as she dialed back, murmuring gentle nothings mostly for her own comfort; though it signaled to Arkt he could stop taking such measured breaths.

The touch of the Sea crept away like the retreating tide, Arkt opening hazy eyes, idly stretching his fingers. He knew well enough not to move until his companion told him to do so, watching her over his shoulder. There was a slight notion of fear that kept him from immediately looking upon his wings, naked and ghastly as they were. He only had eyes for Lithirill's face, noting the knitted brow and how she clicked her tongue when observing progress, pondering how to proceed.

"I'd hoped to have had bone completely covered by now..." she lamented, drawing again the magicked circles that held his wings in subtle regeneration between sessions, "I've underestimated how deeply the burns go. I should’ve-”

"You need not fret, Lithirill." Arkt spoke up, a look of assurance crossing fair features, "This shall take as long as it will take, and you have plenty to grapple with without adding the unnecessary elements of haste and worry.~"

"...Perhaps. Still, I don't savor putting you through further pain I could have avoided." she spoke idly, glad he could not feel it as she undid the slings above, gently moving the humble beginnings to rest on cushions whilst she worked tension from developing musculature.

"We went into this knowing it would be difficult. We will endure." he replied, his tone as much an attempt to comfort as it was a statement of fact; she was far too deep in it now to safely -stop-. "Which for you to manage, requires heady use of those flasks behind you, as I recall."

It was a gentle, but earnest jab to not neglect her own health whilst taking care of him. She might have been Tel'lmaltath, but healing at -this- level for such prolonged bouts tested the limits of even legendary resolves, and Arkt did not fancy the idea of a Shadow God turned Oorbaya.

Satisfied with her ministrations, she sighed and nodded, letting her hand trail down his back as she turned and gingerly stepped away to pluck a flask of Ambrosia from a stockpile. The edges of a smirk tugged at his lips as she made a show of drinking half the vial like it didn't taste awful, raising both brows at him in a silent 'satisfied?'.

"...-Thank- you." he muttered, humming a chuckle, "Do not lose sight of your own well being in concern for me. I must stress, we have nothing but time."

Lithirill tilted her head at him as her eyelids drooped, well accustomed now to the odd heated popping in her ears as the Ambrosia did its work, blanketing the red pressure in her head and quieting the skittering under her skin.

"-Now- whose fretting?" she teased, setting down the flask so she could help him to stand, not letting his wings droop as she supported them from the base, "I don't intend to go hurrying into the arms of the Blue Death, I promise. Come now.~"

Twas a short jaunt to the spare bedroom within her personal quarters, Arkt leading the way and Lithirill matching his steps. The seraph counted his blessings that his pride could not be so easily wounded as she settled his wings into yet another set of slings, these ones arranged to allow them to safely hang whilst he rested. He knew -she- worried about such mental troubles, but he was far too old and that much more taken by fascination in all she insisted upon doing for him to care for foolish things like shame.

"Tell me something, Lithirill." he said, eyes on her as she arranged the vials that would help him sleep, and come the morn, ease his pain, "What do you suppose I'm meant to do in return for all of this?"

The question was laced with an undertone of playfulness that reminded her of when the seraph had taken an almost catty tone in Arktwend, all but making -gossip- of the infatuation between those who'd brought Narathzul into the world. She could only raise a brow at him in plain curiosity, willfully stepping into whatever trap this might have been.

"That is hardly a matter to burden the likely recipient, don't you think? Or am I -supposed- to be reading between some manner of line here?" The teasingly scrutinizing gaze she leveled upon him was nothing to the coy look he gave her beneath the messy strands of his hair, the two locked in a quiet contest before she relented; as she always did where he was concerned. "...ponder and plot all you like, my friend. But hold to that patience you've assured me with. I would say it is early yet to be planning anything more than recovery." she offered.

Arkt sighed through his nose at that, uncapping the cork to her sleeping drought and drinking it down with a quick chaser of water. Her answer was as good as any. Ponder and plot indeed then.

"Fair enough. Rest well, when you find it." he bid gently, offering only a smile. For a would be God according to most's definition, who had seen millennia pass and returned even from -death-, he seemed to be handling the life of a crippled patient quite well.

Lithirill could only take that profound patience and trust in her ability to heart; ensure no matter her doubts that she'd finish the job.

She returned the evening farewell and meandered to her own bed, falling upon it like a stone. All too swiftly would the sun rise, and the pair would be again until their great task of renewal was complete. Lithirill could only hope she'd be done by Spring.

~Fin~

#Vynblr #VynSpringEvent #A Story In Spring #Nehrim #Enderal #Arkt #Lithirill Andethil #Post-Ending

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internetmemologist · 10 months ago

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As the horrified whisper of the first ant echoed through the tiny crystalline circle, you found yourself caught in a surreal moment of realization. The ant that had sought your assistance to make her important to another now stood among the devastated colony, surrounded by the silence that followed the sudden demise of her fellow ants.

She looked at you with tiny, accusing eyes, her antennae trembling in shock. "What have I done?" she whispered, her voice carrying the weight of unintended consequences.

Panicking, you tried to explain that you had misunderstood her request, that your actions were an overzealous attempt to fulfill her desire. The ant, however, seemed inconsolable. In her grief, she began to recount the individual personalities and quirks of each fallen ant, mourning their unique contributions to the colony.

Just as you were grappling with the gravity of your unintended destruction, a soft hum emerged from the remnants of the ant circle. The surviving ants began to gather and weave intricate patterns on the ground with their tiny bodies. The hum grew louder, resonating with an otherworldly energy that seemed to defy the limits of the miniature world they inhabited.

In a surreal twist, the fallen ants started to stir, their tiny forms reassembling as if nothing had happened. The hum reached a crescendo, and the ants collectively chanted in a language that transcended the boundaries of understanding.

As the chants of the ants reached a fever pitch, a palpable energy filled the air. Unbeknownst to you, the patterns they wove on the ground formed an intricate sigil, a gateway to dimensions far beyond the understanding of human minds. The hum became an otherworldly roar, and a dark portal materialized within the crystalline circle.

From the depths of the abyss, a colossal, tentacled form emerged. Cthulhu, the ancient cosmic entity, towered over the miniature world of ants and you. The air seemed to grow heavy with a sense of impending doom as the eldritch being regarded you with eyes that shimmered like malevolent stars.

The ants, now united in their purpose, pointed their tiny bodies at you, revealing you as the unwitting instigator of the disturbance. Cthulhu's voice, a guttural resonance that seemed to reverberate through the fabric of reality itself, echoed in your mind.

"Foolish interloper, disruptor of the sacred balance," Cthulhu intoned. "You have meddled in the affairs of beings beyond your ken. The consequences must be faced."

Tendrils of darkness extended from Cthulhu's form, enveloping you in an otherworldly embrace. You felt a surge of power and dread as the ancient being peered into the recesses of your soul. The ants, now silent, watched with a mix of fascination and trepidation.

Cthulhu, in its unknowable wisdom, decided upon a fitting punishment. Instead of outright destruction, it imposed a cosmic understanding upon you—an awareness of the vast, indifferent cosmos and the insignificance of mortal concerns. You were now burdened with the weight of cosmic knowledge that transcended the limits of human understanding.

The weight of the cosmic knowledge pressed down on your mind like an oppressive force. The once familiar world now appeared distorted, its significance overshadowed by the vastness of the cosmos. You struggled to reconcile the mundane concerns of everyday life with the profound truths that had been thrust upon you.

Days turned into sleepless nights as your mind unraveled under the weight of the cosmic awareness. Whispers of ancient entities echoed in your thoughts, and the insignificance of mortal existence became an incessant, tormenting mantra. Reality itself seemed to warp and contort, and the line between sanity and madness blurred.

Haunted by visions of cosmic horrors and drowned in the existential dread of a universe indifferent to human existence, you reached a breaking point. In a fit of despair, you sought refuge in isolation, withdrawing from friends, family, and the remnants of the world that once made sense.

The descent into madness reached its climax, and those around you, unable to comprehend the turmoil within your shattered mind, made a fateful decision. In the dead of night, you were escorted by faceless figures in white coats to the sterile confines of a mental institution.

Within the cold walls of the hospital, your reality fragmented further. Doctors, with concern etched on their faces, attempted to understand the nature of your torment. The cosmic knowledge, however, defied explanation, leaving you confined to a padded cell, where the whispers of eldritch truths continued to torment your every waking moment.

The once vibrant spirit that had embarked on a surreal journey with ants and cosmic entities now withered in the sterile confines of the mental institution. The weight of the unknowable bore down on you, and the line between reality and delusion became increasingly blurred.

If Cthulhu can be summoned by humans who are so far beneath it, why can’t humans be summoned by ants? The answer is they should be.

#eldritch #eldritch horror #cthullu #ants #summoning ants #writing #text post #ant cthulhu

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ivendarea · 5 years ago

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The Wylaai

Strength in Unity

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The icy tundra and deep forests of Ivendarea’s north and northeast are the home of the Wylaai. Having a reputation of being the proudest of the Nyr, they strongly believe in fate and prophecy, in the importance of unity, and in daring to walk out of their usual path. Iovana Neron, the founder and unifier of the nation was the leader of a Wylaai tribe. Through him they have been given the reputation of being charismatic, provident, and diplomatic even in the face of great challenges.

Table of Contents:

Culture and History

Cultural Heritage

Language and Dialect

Shared Values

Common Etiquette

Historical Figures

Fashion

Art and Architecture

Ideals

Beauty Ideals

Courtship Ideals

Relationship Ideals

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Culture and History

Once spread far along Ivendarea’s eastern shoreline, from the northern capital Canwyl to Beldran and beyond, the Wylaai suffered heavy losses during Zerenda’s invasion. After Beldran had fallen many of them returned to the north or fled to the west and south. Until today they are persistent advocates of the nation’s unity. They look forward to a time of being at peace again, be it under Assadin rule or with their own Iovana at the head of government again.

Cultural Heritage

Once wandering nomads at home in the Ivendarean tundra and taiga, the hunter-gatherers, ice-fishers, and animal herders were always used to a life of extremes. Travelling far distances with sleighs that can be re-purposed into carriages and vice versa depending on the weather conditions, the Wylaai roamed for many years before settling down for the first time in the area that is now Canwyl. While the Wylaai aren’t nomadic anymore for the most part, their sleighs are still an important part of their culture and have become the centre of sporting events and spare time.

The same applies to their hunting and fishing days - both aren’t practised anymore by the majority of the population ever since Aman rose to godhood and their Teachings of not killing animals for food or clothing were spread. The Wylaai early on recognized the importance of the “cult” around Aman. After the Gideya were one of the first to fully integrate Aman’s teachings into their everyday lives the Wylaai quickly followed suit.

The old capital is characterized by its use of glass in many aspects of its architecture. This dates back to the founding days of the nation, when the Gideya helped the Wylaai in setting up farmland in the cold north, sharing their knowledge as well as seeds and workforce to bring in the first harvest. The Wylaai would never have to suffer hunger again, even in the harshest of winters. Most of the farmland lies within large green houses still standing until today, and the glass-elements, symbolizing warmth and life, have found their way into many residential and commercial buildings.

The inhabitants of the cold north can also pride themselves with their extensive bath-house culture, brought on by the many natural hot-springs in the region. Canwyl has many public bathhouses, and the relaxation and health benefits a day in the bathhouse promises was already enough incentive for this piece of culture to spread across Ivendarea and be greeted with open arms.

Language and Dialect

The Wylaai speak the purest version of Nyrval - no wonder, as it was through their efforts that the language was standardized to begin with when Ivendarea was in its early years. In day-to-day life most Wylaai speak exclusively in their native language, but Trade or Azash for example are also spoken by most.

Shared Values

Standing strong together as a unity is everything to the Wylaai. Perseverance is a virtue taught to children from an early age, as is looking out for each other and seeking help if needed. The Wylaai easily forgive, even missteps that might not be as easily overlooked by others. But they aim to solve all problems as a community and want to uphold their unity. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and making mistakes is part of the learning process.

This does not mean that there is no punishment. In fact, though it is, important and carried out consistently, it always goes hand in hand with social rehabilitation. Remembering the past and history to prevent the same mistakes from being made over and over is necessary to build a future together.

The Wylaai are known to be the most cheerful people of Ivendarea. Despite or maybe because of the often-harsh living conditions of their original homelands, the Wylaai always have a hopeful outlook to the future. Difficulties and obstacles are a challenge they tackle with fierce ingenuity - and if a plan fails on the first attempt there’s no shame in asking for help and trying again.

Despite their remote and isolated main settlement Canwyl the Wylaai are open to new ideas, wanting to honour the memory of Neron, whose life’s work it had been to celebrate the Nyr’s differences and commonalities alike. Many would call their open-mindedness “naivete”, especially cases such as Iovana Fannyel inviting king Zerenda to the Emerald Palace - still believing that after the destruction of Beldran the invader would be willing to come to a peaceful arrangement. Surviving thousands of years in a hostile, infertile environment has made the Wylaai resilient and inventive - they believe a failure always means new chances, too. Without a positive attitude and a willingness to walk new paths, to go out of one’s comfort zone and trusting in intuition rather than logic, they might not have lasted as long and come as far as they did.

Historical Figures

Neron, called “Iovana”, the unifier; was once an influential chief of a Wylaai tribe. He was the first Nyr to go out of his way and formed alliances with other far away tribes during a series of particularly harsh winters, which eventually led to the birth of Ivendarea as a united nation.

Fannyel was the last Iovana before Zerenda conquered Ivendarea. He tried to make peace with the invader but ended up being slain in front of his throne, and his partner Ylla and daughter Brestine fled to Maan Garth.

Common Etiquette

The Wylaai are open-minded and hospitality is particularly important to them, especially when it comes to strangers from far away paying them a visit in the cold north. A lot of time is spent with family and friends, big dinners for a whole community coming together to are common. Refusing an invitation without a very severe reason is considered rude - even if the host would never tell this to your face.

Positive thinking is a virtue and speaking ill of others (or oneself) is frowned upon. Everyone has a bad day or horrible encounters with others now and then, but chronic moaners and complainers not doing anything to make their unpleasant situation better aren’t well-liked. The same goes for spreading gossip, rumours, and panic; sensationalism and causing a fuss without a life-threatening reason are not favoured among the level-headed Wylaai.

Humour on the other hand is cherished, not taking oneself too seriously, or putting on a smile even in the darkest times can be observed often. This is another reason why outsiders would call the Wylaai naive or even accuse them of never taking anything seriously, but these critics couldn’t be further from the truth. The Wylaai believe that nothing makes your enemies more insecure than brightly smiling at them. Humour and a positive attitude show strength of will and character, not giving in to intimidation tactics.

Fashion

Similar to how red hair is associated with remembering the past and pride for one’s identity, green clothing is a sign of pride for Canwyl and Ivendarea as the Wylaai’s homeland. The Green River is Ivendarea’s lifeblood, the first green saplings of spring symbolize the cycle of rebirth, and Canwyl’s green glass roofs show the great achievements and ingenuity of the Nyr as a nation.

Green, particularly emerald tones are also associated with themes of nobility and heritage, although not exclusively worn by those of a higher social standing. Wylaai clothing is also characterized by its many functional layers that insulate against the cold. The top layer is usually thick and held in neutral tones that blend in with the bleak surroundings. Robust fabrics that are easy to clean and not too much of a loss when damaged during work are also a common choice when it comes to the coats worn on top.

The layers underneath though, the clothing worn for social gatherings, around the house, to the temple - they are richly adorned, bright, vibrant colours of all possible combinations and patterns resembling Canwyl’s famous mosaics, materials ranging from fine wool and linen to silk.

A Wylaai individual in typical work attire with tight-fitting trousers and a short coat as well as thick scarf, compared to a more casual, even festive outfit for indoor wear. On the right a flowing coat richly adorned is worn on top - these types of coats are mostly seen in casual everyday life as well as during travel.

Art and Architecture

The architecture of the Wylaai is truly one of a kind. Canwyl, which was built on their lands, is Ivendarea’s oldest city and has been its capital for millennia until comparatively recently. Considered the birthplace and heart of the modern Ivendarea, immense effort and work went into making the city the most outstanding one using the resources close by, but also not hesitating to incorporate materials from all over the nation in equal parts.

The huge Emerald Palace in the heart of Canwyl is the most unique piece of art and architecture. Built from metal, marble, and stained glass its tallest tower can be seen from miles away, higher than the surrounding forests, and in the harsh winters a lighthouse in an endless white sea guiding lost travellers to safety. Its name stems from the emerald green colour of its glass windows and roofs. In the centre of the building lies a huge garden frozen in ice all year round, beautifully kept and its pools of water adorned with mosaics retelling the events leading up to the founding of the nation.

Canwyl’s architecture isn’t only impressive and beautiful, it is also technically ingenious, looking on the inside. Not only the palace, many buildings have elaborated, often decorative heating elements and running water powered by the subterranean hot springs.

Ideals

Beauty Ideals

The Wylaai grow their hair out long, often wearing it intrinsically braided or pulled to the back for practicality. They Wylaai are a people of artisans also known for grand celebrations. Glass- and metal pearls and other ornaments are sometimes incorporated even in day-to-day life hairstyles. This is a long-standing tradition from before Ivendarea’s tribes were united and the Wylaai were still traveling nomads. The use of decorations of a specific colour or number can give clues to social status, but more often nowadays hair ornaments can also be just that: accessories without any deeper meaning.

Red hair and red eyes are considered particularly beautiful and express a certain melancholy. Iovana Fannyel had both these features, as does his daughter Brestine. Both are symbol figures of the old Ivendarea before its conquest) and dyeing one’s hair red is a sign of Nyr pride and valuing the past.

Courtship Ideals

Courtship is direct and playful, handled a little like a game where the waters are carefully tested, and honesty plays a big part. There are no strict rules, social conventions, or a lot of seriousness involved. Happy small surprises like small gifts left in unusual locations only the receiver would know about are common. It has become tradition to leave a plant sapling in its pot on one’s object-of-desire’s windowsill - symbolizing a new hopeful beginning, life, and growth.

Adventurous escapes to secret natural hot springs and the like are also an activity many couples engage in - it’s so popular actually that it happens on a regular basis to run into a different couple already at the spot one had thought was a top-secret romantic location. It’s all taken in good humour though and who knows... something interesting can sometimes blossom from random encounters like this as well.

Relationship Ideals

Comfort, home, unity - all those are especially important to the Wylaai in daily life and in relationships. Polyamorous and open relationships are common, love and partnership are celebrated, and children are regarded as particularly precious. Childhood friendships usually last a lifetime and even over big distances it is ensured to stay in regular contact. Strength lies in unity.

#fantasy setting #fantasy worldbuilding #fantasy #worldbuilding #elves #article: peoples #the wylaai

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years ago

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Anarchy Vs. Communalism: Bookchin, 'Lifestylism', Ideology & Greenwashing

Blasted Lifestylists!

The father of communalism; Murray Bookchin, long identified as an anarchist but later in life penned scathing attacks against anarchists. He largely invented an imaginary schism between what he termed 'lifestylist' anarchists and socialists, denouncing 'lifestylists' as being beneath him.

Even though he eventually abandoned anarchism in favor of his communalist ideology, this elitist divide he created between 'lifestylism' and socialism continues to reverberate today, with some social-anarchists even going as far as to distance themselves from the individualist aspects of anarchy that largely defined the movement from the beginning. This manufactured divide has greatly assisted in fragmenting anarchists into two opposing factions and led to needless infighting and distraction.

He lobbed the accusation of 'lifestylism' against anarchists who live a life that, to them, embodies the spirit of anarchy but, in his view, do not work hard enough to achieve revolutionary social organization and the overthrow of capitalism. He also used it as an insult towards anarchists he saw as promoting what he termed "anti-rationalism".

In reality, Bookchin was creating a false dichotomy; something he did often in his writings so he could then promote his patented solutions to problems that were often non-existent... Individualist anarchists are perfectly capable of both living anarchically in the current moment, as well as organizing for a future beyond capitalism.

A lot of the most successful anarchist movements in the world today stem from individualist tendencies. These movements are then aided by the social-anarchist concept of 'prefiguration' to create movements within the current system that replicate the conditions that would exist in an anarchist society. This allows the people exposed to these movements to see that anarchy works, and become comfortable with the idea of a post-capitalist world. Food Not Bombs is a great example of this.

Bookchin on anarchism:

[Anarchism] represents in its authentic form a highly individualistic outlook that fosters a radically unfettered lifestyle, often as a substitute for mass action—is far better suited to articulate a Proudhonian single-family peasant and craft world than a modern urban and industrial environment. I myself once used this political label, but further thought has obliged me to conclude that, its often-refreshing aphorisms and insights notwithstanding, it is simply not a social theory.

Regrettably, the use of socialistic terms has often prevented anarchists from telling us or even understanding clearly what they are: individualists whose concepts of autonomy originate in a strong commitment to personal liberty rather than to social freedom, or socialists committed to a structured, institutionalized, and responsible form of social organization.

In fact anarchism represents the most extreme formulation of liberalism’s ideology of unfettered autonomy, culminating in a celebration of heroic acts of defiance of the state. Anarchism’s mythos of self-regulation (auto nomos)—the radical assertion of the individual over or even against society and the personalistic absence of responsibility for the collective welfare—leads to a radical affirmation of the all-powerful will so central to Nietzsche’s ideological peregrinations. Some self-professed anarchists have even denounced mass social action as futile and alien to their private concerns and made a fetish of what the Spanish anarchists called grupismo, a small-group mode of action that is highly personal rather than social.

He penned this attack against anarchy late in his life while he was working to build communalism into his final legacy, perhaps hoping he would go down in history with Marx as the father of a powerful socialist ideology that could outlive him and impact the world for centuries. He even warned that if his communalist ideology was not adopted by the world at large, it would result in the destruction of everything.

Equating anarchism with liberalism, when he spent years of his life identifying as an anarchist is a rather shameless attempt at rewriting history in order to sell his new vanity project. It's a true shame that he ended his long history in radical politics on such a sour and self-defeating note.

Communalism: Murray's Prescribed Cure for Lifestylism

Bookchin's politics evolved greatly throughout his life, starting with Stalinism and then Trotskyism in his youth, before he found anarcho-communism. In the 1970s, disillusioned with the authoritarian nature of the Leninism that dominated the worldwide socialist scene, he stated that he felt closer to free-market libertarians; who unlike the totalitarian Marxist-Leninists, will readily defend the rights of the individual. Later, he developed a series of interrelated ideologies; anarchist social ecology, post-scarcity anarchism and libertarian municipalism. He increasingly spoke out against the innate individualism of the anarchist movement, and finally broke with anarchism completely to form communalism. He was a professor and taught students his political theories.

This is a description of communalism in his own words (while also managing to disparage both anarchism and Marxism in the same breath, in true Bookchin fashion):

The choice of the term Communalism to encompass the philosophical, historical, political, and organizational components of a socialism for the twenty-first century has not been a flippant one. The word originated in the Paris Commune of 1871, when the armed people of the French capital raised barricades not only to defend the city council of Paris and its administrative substructures but also to create a nationwide confederation of cities and towns to replace the republican nation-state.

Communalism as an ideology is not sullied by the individualism and the often explicit antirationalism of anarchism; nor does it carry the historical burden of Marxism’s authoritarianism as embodied in Bolshevism. It does not focus on the factory as its principal social arena or on the industrial proletariat as its main historical agent; and it does not reduce the free community of the future to a fanciful medieval village. Its most important goal is clearly spelled out in a conventional dictionary definition: Communalism, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, is ”a theory or system of government in which virtually autonomous local communities are loosely bound in a federation.”

Communalism brings production and certain property under the control of municipal assemblies, who decide how property should be best distributed to meet the needs of the confederation.

While not being a state by the most common definition (since the political process is strictly localized), municipal assemblies could still be described as a form of hierarchical government. Communalism is a big step up over most other forms of government, attempting to curtail and decentralize the power structures we are governed by, but it's not anarchy.

Localized power structures are still very corruptible. They still create hierarchy. They can still grow out of control. Similarly to ancient Greece's democracy; communalism deliberately allows for majority rule (or democracy-by-the-majority). This limitation should instantly disqualify it as being a form of anarchy, as voter-hierarchies can easily be exploited by authoritarians to exclude minority groups from the political process, and thus deny them the right to self-determination. Any society that encourages the majority to force their will on a minority (thus creating a clear hierarchy) can't honestly be described as anarchist in nature. Bookchin reinforces this further:

The anarcho-communist notion of a very loose ‘federation of autonomous communes’ is replaced with a confederation from which its components, functioning in a democratic manner through citizens’ assemblies, may withdraw only with the approval of the confederation as a whole.

So, according to Bookchin, a community which joins a confederation “may withdraw only with the approval of the confederation as a whole.” This is probably the worst aspect of his majority-rule fetishization, as it locks entire communities into his system forever, whether those who didn't want the system like it or not. Any organization that forbids you from withdrawing from it is clearly at odds with libertarian ideals and the right to freedom of association, so it's really dishonest of him to talk about 'libertarian' municipalism when it's anything but:

[Libertarian municipalism's goal is to] create in embryonic form the institutions that can give power to a people generally ... In short, it is through the municipality that people can reconstitute themselves from isolated monads into an innovative body politic and create an existentially vital, indeed protoplasmic civil life that has continuity and institutional form as well as civic content. I refer here to the block organizations, neighborhood assemblies, town meetings, civic confederations, and public arenas for discourse that go beyond such episodic, single issue demonstrations and campaigns, valuable as they may be to redress social injustices.

Put into practice, I believe communalism can initially be a successful departure from the unwieldy nation-state monolith that plagues the world today and a reversion to the city-states that were once prevalent in ancient Greece at the dawn of civilization. Bookchin writes fondly of classical Athenian democracy, which he uses to glorify his romantic view of Western civilization.

But does simply returning to an earlier state of civilization go far enough? Will an effective micro-state not morph back into a super-state as it grows and faces both internal and external pressures? Decentralization is admirable, but is it enough to successfully safeguard us from statism? And are Athenian democracy and Western civilization even things we want to reproduce, when both allow for the brutal oppression of minorities, were both built on slavery, and institutionalized the denial of human rights to anyone that wasn't a member of the privileged class?

Bookchin's ideas for 'libertarian' majority-rule democracy are deeply flawed and really can't be described as being anything other than authoritarian:

The minority must have patience and allow a majority decision to be put into practice... Municipal minorities [must] defer to the majority wishes of participating communities.

Any anarchist reading this should immediately be alarmed at the unjust hierarchical implications it presents. White people putting their priorities ahead of black people, men forcing their will on women, Christians excluding Muslims, polluters shutting down environmentalists, heterosexuals subjugating homosexuals... Whichever voting body has the highest numbers (or best propaganda) can effectively rule over the minority. It's almost as if Bookchin came full circle, returning to the Stalinism of his youth after his flirtation with individualism and anarchy.

While direct democracy is one of several decision-making mechanisms anarchists may utilize, communalism doesn't simply allow for direct democracy; it requires it. Enshrines it in law. In making his case for direct democracy, Bookchin asserts that the only other option anarchists have at our disposal is consensus democracy. He then proceeds to brutally attack the consensus decision-making method, associating it with anarcho-primitivism (which he vocally loathes, even equating it to Nazism) and deems it 'authoritarian'. This allows him to offer an exact prescription to the 'problem' of multi-layered anarchist decision making in the form of his definitive, structured ideology and its rules.

Organizational structures such as those communalism revolves around should be treated as a means, not an end. Basing an entire social system around a specific structured mode of organization that was designed to be implemented under the conditions present in the 1990s is restrictive and shortsighted.

Anarchy allows for communities to be adaptable to the conditions present in the place and time where the community exists. Rigid ideological structures should always be avoided as they rapidly become outmoded. Historically, communities revolving around political ideologies tend to become dogmatic, and as a result fail to adapt as conditions prove unfavorable to the demands of the ideology.

For instance: Marxism requires that a highly advanced industrial economy be present before Marxist communism can be implemented. Most of the societies where Marxism was attempted lacked these conditions, and destructive policies were implemented in order to speed up industrialization (including mass-displacement of people); eventually leading to the collapse of the societies and ecological damage that will continue to be felt for millennia. As Marx had designed his economic model to function under specific conditions, Marxist leaders attempted to force their societies to fit a mold they simply didn't fit.

The unwillingness to sway from ideological dogma; however impractical the planned system proves in practice, has frequently led to disaster. So any political movement that has strict guidelines for how society should be structured and governed has big weaknesses right out of the gate. Anarchy requires flexibility, because all forms of social planning can lead to unexpected hierarchies popping up. The avoidance of hierarchies needs to be more important than sticking to a pre-written ideology if we are to pursue anarchy.

Dedicated ideologues often tarnish anarchy as being 'vague' and lacking in exact instruction. I'd argue this is exactly why anarchy succeeds and manages to be so ageless; reinventing itself with every new generation of revolutionaries. Prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution to life is impractical in an ever changing, multi-cultural world. Especially while we're experiencing unprecedented worldwide social and ecological collapses. The greatest strength of anarchy is its flexibility. Anarchists have long laughed in the face of those who would have us live by their rigid rules.

A Green Anarchist Perspective

Green anarchists like myself are often most critical of Bookchin's ideas because of his concept of 'post-scarcity'; which to anyone paying attention to the catastrophic mass extinction event we're in the midst of, is dangerously idealistic. Resources don't cease to be scarce when socialism is adopted; the reality is that resources are dwindling all over the planet after centuries of over-extraction; including by socialist states. Once those resources run out, there's no getting them back, so an ideology that envisions a 'post-scarcity' economy is intrinsically flawed.

Bookchin and other socialists imagine a society where regular people, rather than states, have the power to determine policy. And they imagine this society will somehow be spared the same destructive pitfalls of capitalist society. But there's no reason to assume that.

We have centuries of history showing us that people will not altruistically opt for policies that will put the ecosystem or minority groups (especially indigenous and immigrant groups) ahead of their immediate personal interests.

Just as people now vote for politicians that loudly promote disastrous environmental and social policies in order to safeguard their own privileges in society, history shows us they would continue to make damaging decisions if the system moved from representative democracy to direct democracy. To imagine that everyone in a society is capable of acting unselfishly and putting other people and other lifeforms ahead of their own families is foolhardy. They will use their voting power to protect their own immediate interests at the expense of everything else. That's how power works. It corrupts everything in its path absolutely, whether its wielded by a politician or a private citizen is irrelevant.

Bookchin saw technology as a mode of revolution, and promoted using technology in ecologically sustainable ways, but green anarchists are often critical of the technologies Bookchin envisioned. We see them as inherently isolating and hierarchical. A position Bookchin scoffs at.

One of the technologies he promoted was cybernation, which is essentially 'rule by machine'. Tasks are assigned, decisions made and resources distributed by computers; largely diminishing an individual's self-determination and leaving it up to software algorithms. Like all software solutions, cybernation could potentially be hijacked by malicious actors who could seize control of the system and give themselves untold power. Cybernation is also exposed to the personal biases of the programmers who write the software. The programmers effectively govern the governor.

Bookchin often wrote enthusiastically about the revolutionary potential he saw in such technologies:

Bourgeois society, if it achieved nothing else, revolutionized the means of production on a scale unprecedented in history. This technological revolution, culminating in cybernation, has created the objective, quantitative basis for a world without class rule, exploitation, toil or material want. The means now exist for the development of the rounded man, the total man, freed of guilt and the workings of authoritarian modes of training, and given over to desire and the sensuous apprehension of the marvelous. It is now possible to conceive of man's future experience in terms of a coherent process in which the bifurcations of thought and activity, mind and sensuousness, discipline and spontaneity, individuality and community, man and nature, town and country, education and life, work and play are all resolved, harmonized, and organically wedded in a qualitatively new realm of freedom.

Advanced technologies can forever alter the way we live our lives, detach us from our ecosystems and train us to seek fleeting relief from technologies, even as those technologies forever degrade and pollute the ecosystems we depend on to survive. It's easy to ignore the damage industry does to our ecosystems when we can use the technology it produces to escape from the reality of our situation... At least until the ecosystems become so degraded that they can no longer sustain our lives and we're forced to look up from our digital sanctuaries to gasp for air.

Bookchin's emphasis on the modern urban city in his theories will give pause to anyone who has studied the history of civilization and its disastrous effect on every ecosystem it comes into contact with. City life has always alienated us from the land and what it produces for us, creating the depressing situation where most urban dwellers raised in vast concrete deserts have little respect for the natural world or want of preserving it. When the repercussions of our actions towards the ecosystem are completely hidden from us, it's unlikely we'll change our behavior and act to preserve whatever ecological diversity the planet has left on the fringes of the grim industrial wastelands we call civilization.

A society structured around advanced technology can even create new elite classes of technologically advanced people and exploited underclasses whose lands are used to mine and manufacture the devices the technological class grow dependent on. It's easy to see how this cycle can lead to devastating hierarchies.

Bookchin claimed technology and agriculture can be made sustainable with new advances, but years after his death, technology has improved greatly, while the destruction to the planet caused by it has increased tenfold. The science is showing us that the damage industry has done to the world's ecosystems could very well lead to our own extinction in the near future.

Bookchin wrote:

The development of giant factory complexes and the use of single or dual-energy sources are responsible for atmospheric pollution. Only by developing smaller industrial units and diversifying energy sources by the extensive use of clean power (solar, wind and water power) will it be possible to reduce industrial pollution. The means for this radical technological change are now at hand.

Technologists have developed miniaturized substitutes for large-scale industrial operation—small versatile machines and sophisticated methods for converting solar, wind and water energy into power usable in industry and the home. These substitutes are often more productive and less wasteful than the large-scale facilities that exist today.

While it is true that 'green' fuels can be less destructive than 'dirty' fuels, they still remain incredibly destructive, and by no means can they be sourced from a single ecosystem as Bookchin imagines in his writings.

The machines Bookchin speaks of are built using a large assortment of materials that need to be sourced from different ecosystems all over the world. The processes to extract the materials are destructive, the processes to transport the materials to the manufacturing plants and distribution points are destructive, and the waste products created during manufacturing are destructive. There are currently no viable solutions for any of these problems, and every new technology introduced to the market has instead created yet more inequality, warfare and environmental destruction; especially for the Global South that is exploited by the West for its natural resources and cheap (or slave) labor.

Solar panels and wind turbines depend on dirty mining to acquire the minerals needed for their construction, and massive energy use (usually coal) during manufacturing. Mining the quartz that solar panels are made from causes the lung disease silicosis in the impoverished miners. Then, once the quartz is transported to the factories, the manufacturing process creates vats of toxic waste (silicon tetrachloride) that is disposed of in random fields near the factories in China, contaminating the soil and water, and making entire rural populations sick.

From "China’s Communist-Capitalist Ecological Apocalypse" by Richard Smith, Real-World Economics Review no. 71:

When exposed to humid air, silicon tetrachloride turns into acids and poisonous hydrogen chloride gas, which can make people dizzy and cause breathing difficulties. Ren Bingyan, a professor of material sciences at Hebei Industrial University, contacted by the Post, told the paper that “the land where you dump or bury it will be infertile. No grass or trees will grow in its place… It is… Poisonous, it is polluting. Human beings can never touch it.” When the dumping began, crops wilted from the white dust, which sometimes rose in clouds several feet off the ground and spread over the fields as the liquid dried. Village farmers began to faint and became ill. And at night, villagers said “the factory’s chimneys released a loud whoosh of acrid air that stung their eyes and made it hard to breath.”

Solar panel, wind turbine and battery production fuels colonialism, slavery, war, hunger, fossil fuel burning and ecocide. Calling these energies "green" is really a bold-faced lie and just the latest example of industrialism giving itself a skip-deep makeover that will quickly fall apart when the evidence piles up too high for the media to ignore. By promoting these destructive industries, Bookchin aids their shameless greenwashing.

Bookchin:

The absolute negation of the centralized economy is regional ecotechnology— a situation in which the instruments of production are molded to the resources of an ecosystem.

The idea that rapidly advancing technologies can be distributed equally among billions of people (which they would need to be if we care at all about preventing power-hierarchies and inequality from forming), or that all people would even want their lives to be governed by these technologies is naive at best, or a malicious falsehood aimed at selling books and "Institute for Social Ecology" certificates at worst.

Bookchin's insistence that industry is only destructive because of capitalism, and would instead be liberating under (decentralized) socialism has no basis in reality, as the technologies he romanticizes remain destructive to the environment and are hierarchy-forming regardless of the social system in place. They also require resources that simply cannot be sourced from a single locale. This fact alone greatly diminishes his theory.

Bookchin:

The new declasses of the twentieth century are being created as a result of the bankruptcy of all social forms based on toil. They are the end products of the process of propertied society itself and of the social problems of material survival. In the era when technological advances and cybernation have brought into question the exploitation of man by man, toil, and material want in any form whatever, the cry "Black is beautiful" or "Make love, not war" marks the transformation of the traditional demand for survival into a historically new demand for life.

Bookchin's plans for localized, ecologically-sound, self-supporting, automated micro-industries unfortunately remain a pipe dream; vaporware if you will. In the 21st century, as the Earth's ecosystems collapse all around us under the strain of industrial exploitation, as forests burn, lands flood and countless species of plants and animals go extinct forever, his vision of distributing industrial technology equally and freely to everyone on the planet becomes less and less relevant to our reality. These ideas aren't something to base a political movement for lasting social change on. Not on a planet being rapidly exterminated by industry.

Bookchin eventually broke with anarchism completely when he finalized the guidelines of his communalist ideology. Today a lot of his more practical ideas have been implemented by the celebrated Rojava community in western Kurdistan, which has had mixed results in achieving his vision.

His attacks on individualist anarchists (especially of the anti-civ flavor), have provided decades of fuel for collectivist anarchist ideologues to villainize and purge non-collectivists from our spaces. A lot of these people soon follow in Bookchin's footsteps and abandon anarchy altogether in favor of various structured ideologies including Marxism-Leninism, transhumanism and communalism.

#ziq #anti civ #communalism #green anarchism #industrial civilization #libertarian municipalism #lifestylism #lifestyle anarchism #murray bookchin #social ecology

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alexsmitposts · 5 years ago

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Cyber Forces Manipulate Public Opinion The influence on public opinion is one of the primary functions of the information space, presented today not only by TV, radio and print media, but also by the Internet and social networks. Therefore, it isn’t surprising that the CIA is especially focused on obtaining control of the information field and seeks ways to influence it. Thus, in the middle of the last century, the agency began a large-scale secret operation named Mockingbird on the territory of the U.S. and abroad. Most of the documents related to said operation are still classified. The purpose of Operation Mockingbird was to secure the CIA’s control over the media and the information space in America and beyond by establishing an extensive network of agents in leading publications, news outlets, radio and television all around the world. After numerous pieces of evidence of illegal CIA activities in the media, including those executed through Operation Mockingbird, a special working group called the Church Committee (named after Senator Frank Forrester Church III, a Democrat from Idaho) was established in 1975 in the U.S. Senate. The Commission was later transformed into the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence. In 1976, the Committee even prepared a separate report detailing the CIA’s interference into the U.S. and foreign media in order to misinform the public. In particular, the report notes: “The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial hook publishers, and other foreign media outlets.” After investigations and hearings held by the U.S. Congress, it was decided to forbid the CIA to continue Operation Mockingbird. In 1976, George W. Bush, appointed director of the CIA, even announced the following new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full‑time or part‑time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” However, he added that the CIA will continue to ‘value’ voluntary cooperation with journalists, which is obviously always influenced by money. Many experts are convinced that Operation Mockingbird has not been completely terminated and is being carried out not only through traditional media, but also in the cyberspace. The operation’s main targets in its current form are all those who speak against the policy of the White House. From here arise numerous anti-Russian and xenophobic campaigns of the U.S. special services, which preserve the CIA’s traditions of working not only with journalists, but also with social networks controlled by Washington. A large-scale research “The Global Disinformation Order 2019: Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation” was carried out recently by Oxford University. It focuses on the ways public opinion is swayed by via the Internet and social networks. In the resulting report, the researchers showed that the number of countries where attempts of organized manipulation of public opinion with the help of social networks were detected has more than doubled since 2017. The authors registered 28 such countries back then, and the number went up to 48, then 70 in 2018 and 2019 respectively. 25 countries cooperate with private Internet companies to disseminate propaganda on the Internet. The most popular among them is Facebook, and the second most popular platform for attempts at manipulation is Twitter. At the same time, the researchers found that 56 countries, in one way or another, have organized campaigns to misinform users of social networks. The leading perpetrators are the United States and the United Kingdom. Today many countries possess special cyber forces, whose representatives use social networks to try and influence the opinion of Internet users from certain countries, different religions and political beliefs. Special attention is paid to such efforts in the Pentagon and American security services. Only Americans (ideally those who know the language of the country being manipulated) are involved in these activities. The CIA’s website even has a detailed description of the people who can apply for such jobs. In order to further impact the public, today the FBI is even trying to recruit Russians living in the United States through social networks (in particular, Facebook), as reported by CNN. Anti-Russian sentiment of the main direction of Operation Mockingbird is evidenced by several media outlets which are independent from Washington. The same goals are pursued today by U.S. intelligence agencies. “The U.S. State Department considers the battle against state-run media from Russia, Iran and China one of its top priorities,” said Acting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Heather Nauert in March 2018. That is why the U.S. budget for fiscal year 2019 includes $661 million meant to finance the BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors), which is engaged in anti-Russian propaganda. The White House project for the budget of the U.S. government in 2021 entails the allocation of $700 million for the information war ‘against Russia’s destructive influence.’ Britain is not behind the United States in waging a hybrid war. A special unit in the British cyber forces is called JTRIG, and it is this unit’s ‘specialists’ who quite often carry out propagandistic cyber operations, which have recently most often been directed against Russia. Among these are the anti-Russian fuss around Skripal poisoning, groundless accusations of Russia’s alleged involvement in the crash of the Malaysian plane MH-17 over Donetsk, and accusations of Moscow’s aggressive actions in Syria. Such work is done using both the cyberspace, as well as media which are loyal to London. The 77th brigade of these troops is working specifically on Twitter. They actively attempt to undermine the users’ faith in their own beliefs, trying to convey ‘their thoughts’ by appealing to emotions. Further promotion of the propagandistic struggle against Russia, £18 million is going to be spent by the British government on ‘counteraction’ in Eastern Europe and on strengthening the ‘independent media’ in the Western Balkans. This was reported by the press service of the British Foreign Office. NATO also has a cyber force, which includes over 13,000 military personnel. The organization is called CCDCEO and is located in Tallinn. Governments have long used propaganda, but digital tools have made it more complex and effective. Over the past few years, intelligence agencies have mirrored the experience of activists in using social media to disseminate information and are now actively using these methods. Additionally, interactive tools, such as data analysis software, allow for adapting cyber warfare to be more effective against certain groups of people, maximizing its impact.

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a-room-of-my-own · 5 years ago

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This is grim stuff, so apologies in advance. Although I don’t know why I’m apologizing.

Aimee Challenor, former spokesperson for the UK Green Party and current Diversity Officer for the Coventry Liberal Democrats is about to marry a gentleman from Michigan who writes pornographic fiction about children and “mind control.”

How do we know this? Because someone posted the accusation on Mumsnet and the budding author, Nathaniel Knight, cheerfully owned up to it on Twitter.

“Yes, I have written smut,” Knight said. “I have written smut featuring minors. I have written smut featuring incest. I have written smut featuring things that are not ethically sound or morally right in the real world. I also write smut featuring adults.”

Stirring stuff! Even by the Internet’s cavalier application of the laws of space and time, the thread stayed online for too long. Knight deleted the thread, but it was too late. The tweets had been screen-shotted and reposted.

Note his choice of word, by the way: “Smut.” Not “pornography” or “porn” or even “erotica.” Those words wouldn’t have quite as casual an air. “Smut” has the just-minding-my-own-business-guv quality you need when you’re choosing something to loiter next to the word “minors.” Essentially, he’s trying to diminish it and normalize what it is he actually writes and fantasizes about. “I have no reason to hide the fact,” he continues, “that I am sexually awakened adult who has fantasies that might be unethical to explore in real life.”

Well, you do, mate, as a matter of fact. Because your “unethical” fantasies are the kind that get you housed away from the general prison population, should you be so “unethical” as to indulge them in real life. (Again, note another artfully chosen word.)

It was an astonishing thread. The guy’s brain is obviously so pickled in porn that he genuinely doesn’t realize that the thing he is oversharing is something that no human being should ever feel safe saying out loud to anyone, except maybe a therapist.

But Knight isn’t really the point. You see, at the time of writing, Aimee Challenor is still — still — on the trans advisory board at Stonewall, an influential charity which advises many organizations with responsibilities for children, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Yes, that NSPCC. (And now, this NSPCC.)

Despite the fact that Challenor’s father was charged for an unspeakably dreadful and depraved crime, Aimee continued to use him as an election agent. David Challenor is currently serving a 20+ year sentence for raping and torturing a 10-year-old girl in the attic of the family home.

The Greens produced a report that meant Aimee scarpered rather than hang about to be disciplined, pausing only to shout “transphobia” on the way out the door. Then it was straight into the arms of the Liberal Democrats and a new man, who apparently shares the same taste for children — at least in his imagination — as David Challenor.

A Labour peer recently got fired from her position as the shadow Brexit secretary because she complained about a bunker mentality at the top of the party, but this is a problem that extends all the way across the UK Left. Anyone pointing out legitimate concerns with, for instance, the obvious ramifications of legally allowing individuals to self-identify as the opposite sex, is portrayed as a bigot and a bully, with a kind of message consistency that would be the envy of Fox News.

Feminists who question modern gender ideology are insulted by trans activists in suspiciously coordinated language. The same phrases come up again and again: “no debate,” “transwomen are women,” “trans rights are human rights” (whatever that means… Trans people have the same rights as the rest of us…) There are some — the majority — who repeat this messaging because they think it makes them appear more inclusive, more evolved, and because they haven’t thought beyond its superficially “kind” appearance.

But there are others — and I think David Challenor was one of them — who have a vested interest in lowering the standards of safeguarding in the UK and silencing those who raise the alarm about it. As social workers often point out, it only takes a few people to groom an organization — or, in this case, a whole movement — and people like David Challenor see the destruction of safeguarding norms as a way to normalize sexual practices and exploitation of children that would ordinarily attract a criminal sanction. Almost in the same way another person with paedophilic tendencies would replace the words “pornography” and “evil” with “smut” and “unethical.”

These women who must be silenced include Helen Watts, who was expelled from the Girl Guides for questioning Stonewall’s safeguarding policies. Stonewall (along with Gendered Intelligence) advised Girlguiding on its trans inclusion guidelines — guidelines that require males who identify as girls to use the same sleeping, washing, and changing facilities as females, without the prior knowledge or consent of parents. If girls object, the only remedy is to ask for a private space away from the others, or not take part.

“Girls are being groomed to ignore their own boundaries, to put the needs of males above their own, to never express a preference for single sex spaces for fear of being labelled a bigot.” Watts told me. “It’s revealing that while the Guides trans policy emphasizes that trans children must be protected from harassment and victimization, no such protection is offered specifically for girls who must have single sex spaces.”

As Helen also pointed out, “In all seriousness now, if Yaniv was in the UK and so inclined, [Yaniv] could be a girl guide leader. Girlguiding policy is that being a woman is a matter of self ID. Anyone who says they’re a woman can be a leader. Assuming [Yaniv] passed a DBS check (no convictions) then [Yaniv] is in.”

Women like Watts are now tagged for violence as “TERFs” by both gleeful misogynists and unthinking children who insist they are protecting the most vulnerable. Aimee Challenor is very likely a damaged young person for whom we should have sympathy, but sympathy should not extend to enabling such people to take influential lobbying roles with young people’s organizations.

And must it again be pointed out that both organizations have a duty of care — not only to the vulnerable LGB people who are affected by their guidelines and policies, but to Aimee Challenor?

One thing is certain, there is no way this person should be giving Stonewall any kind of advice. And while they are, no-one should be taking advice from Stonewall.

Graham Linehan is the comedy writer and director behind Father Ted, The IT Crowd, and Black Books.

#Gender critical #Transgender #Transactivism #UK #Aimee Challenor #Stonewall UK

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a-wandering-fool · 6 years ago

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Something I read recently was the idea that the Left in the United States actually lives in a state of fear.

Which seems like a strange idea to me.

I do have worries. I worry if the freelance contract I’m working on will help pay the bills. I worry about my weight. I worry about the direction things are going in the world.

But fear? I don’t live in fear. I’m not afraid of the horrors of the world. I’m not afraid of groups of people doing nasty things–because I trust that society as a whole won’t listen to them. I’m not afraid of political movements–because I trust the political pendulum to swing the other way, as it has for 230 years. I’m not afraid that somehow the world will become a meaner place because so far it’s gotten consistently better: personal political and economic freedom have all been on the constant rise in the United States, wealth has increased around the world, and the percentage of people in the world living in abject poverty, without clean water, nutritious food and solid shelter is smaller today than it has ever in my lifetime.

So this idea of living in fear is foreign to me.

But once it was pointed out to me–well, now, I can’t help but see the fear on the Left everywhere I look:

Annual warning. Be careful traveling from April 15-21. Various kinds of fascists focus on this period for special nastiness. Yes, statisticians are skeptical. Still, eyes open. Have courage. Citizens are mighty beings.

Yes, statisticians think there is nothing to be afraid of–but still, be afraid. And “have courage”: face your fear.

Kaine says Trump’s rhetoric “emboldens” white nationalists: “Mr. Trump also said he did not see a rise in white nationalism around the world, saying it was ‘a small group of people’ who perpetrated these attacks.”

But of course, white nationalism is on the rise everywhere, and by not living in a proper state of fear, President Trump is actually allowing white nationalists to run roughshod over good people.

Four Reasons To Worry About Global Warming: Beyond Scientific Consensus: “Nobody can predict exactly how climate change will play out – only that it’s likely to be much worse if there’s no effort to address carbon emissions.”

And here are four reasons to be afraid. Deeply afraid. Until we “do something”–as if no-one has thus far tried to do anything.

Why inequality is the most important economic challenge facing the next president: “Not only is greater inequality a threat to our democratic capitalist society, it’s bad for the economy and causes a whole host of other problems – including other items on the president’s list.”

All those rich people with their rich stuff controlling rich things: they’re destroying our democracy. And things are getting worse–far worse, so be afraid. (Nevermind that a century ago the wealthy were so powerful J.P. Morgan actually bailed out the United States government.)

I can go on and on.

But once you realize what to look for, it’s unmistakeable: the Left live in fear.

Fear of people who don’t think like them. Fear of the powerful. Fear of inequality. Fear of the environment.

And the language of the Left is full of fear and facing that fear: that we must “have courage” against fear. That we must “hope” things get better. That we must look beyond logic–because logic lies. What counts is that we come together as a group, find solace in a world full of fears, full of destruction and hateful, powerful forces aligned against us. That we must huddle in the faint light against the darkness, the monsters and the forces of destruction–and hope against fear.

Wear those brave little ribbons, wave those brave little protest signs, have courage against the inevitable, mind-numbing, soul-crushing fear. And maybe, if enough people are afraid enough, they’ll rise up and start taking some action.

Frankly, to me, this is insane.

By fearing everything you can’t rationally evaluate; all you can do is react.Instead of evaluating your chances of having a run-in with a white nationalist with a gun, you live in fear you’re about to be struck dead–regardless of the fact that your chances of being stuck by lighting are actually higher.

And this is no way to live.

It does, however, explain why so many on the Left don’t seem to listen to appeals to logic.

Because arguments about top-down or bottom-up decision making, or observations about increasing respect of individualism or the successes of minorities, women, and members of the LGBT community to make gains in equality, or observations about the rising wealth enjoyed by all in this country–all of this is cold comfort in a world so full of fear all we can do is huddle with those who are like us, have courage and hope for the best: hope for the revolution which will finally destroy all the things we fear.

=====================

This actually helped me understand the progressive folks on tumblr and my ex-friend. He (and the tumblr folks) are always over the top about every issue to the point where it was like I was talking to someone hysterical and devoid of logic. Some of his accusations (like me wanting him dead because he was gay and I said that I believed in God) were so wild that I often wondered how he could think I wanted such horrible things since all I did was try to support him and talk about how I believed in equality. I constantly tried to walk the middle ground believing in equality for all, but he had this mode of operation that you either believed exactly what he did or you were the enemy.

I now understand why the left comes at most issue from a very emotional standpoint not necessarily based in logic. When fear is your motivator every issue must be reacted to emotionally -- that fight or flight reflex driving behavior.

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surflove808 · 6 years ago

Text

On “social justice warriors” in the SPN fandom, knee jerk reactions and why they’re harmful to everyone.

I keep seeing people trolling Jensen after the (insert sarcasm font) terrible, horrible, remark he made during a roundtable discussion at SDCC2018. When asked about the challenges of speaking another language as a new character, he said, and I quote: "It was Arabic and it was an actual verse from the Quran and so, um, you don't wanna mess that up. (laughter from around the table) (Said with nervous laughter) I mean is ISIS gonna come after me if I'm saying the wrong thing?" (More laughter from around the table).

In another interview he talked about the importance of speaking and enunciating the language correctly especially because it was a holy verse from the Quran. Respect for the language, respect for the verse and respect for the religion was the name of the game, thematically speaking. However... we have our usual peanut gallery making a mountain out of a molehill, so here I am to be an equal, but just as obnoxious voice on the matter.

Even though my brother-in-law and his family are from Iraq and have been a part of my family, and ours theirs, for many years....even though my sister and a handful of friends (Palestinians and Iraqis predominantly) are practicing Muslims, I'm not arrogant enough to speak on behalf of the Muslim majority based on my small association. Unlike a lot of commenters I’ve been seeing.

I'm not of the Muslim faith. What I'm about to tell you guys is based on my knowledge and opinion alone. But I can tell you, my brother-in-law thinks the uproar over this is ridiculous with a capital R. AKA: "Majnun"

Islam is complex and misunderstood, to say the least. But for those of you who care to educate yourselves or others on the basics, read this: https://www.islamreligion.com/articles/10256/core-values-of-islam/ But really, read more. Much, much more.

The core values of ISIS are similar to the core values of Islam, but the way they practice is fundamentally opposed to the Muslim faith at large. That's why they're considered an extremist group. They're responsible for countless human rights violations, genocide and acts of terrorism not only against Westerners, but fellow (and especially) Muslim people who don't bow to their attempts at suppression.

Jensen stated that it was important to him to get the Arabic language and enunciation right because he was reciting holy verse from the Quran (which in and of itself, is a dangerous thing to do as a public figure on a t.v. show as far as ISIS is concerned) and he's pretty fucking on the mark about being concerned about flubbing the verse and dialect as far as ISIS is concerned. I guarantee you that this is a conversation that took place on set that day. This is a real thing, people.

What he did NOT do at any point in time, was equate fear of retribution with Islam or Muslims. He equated fear of retribution with ISIS. A splinter group of jihadists. It's a pretty valid concern, even said jokingly. Because these people do NOT have a sense of humor.

The only people I see generalizing around here and on his instagram/twitter are the people insisting he apologize and going off on him for his remark. They are literally assuming that ISIS=Muslim, and that’s beyond ignorant. They can assume all they want, but his statement does not reflect what they are accusing him of. Bottom line.

Reactionary children are equating his comment with anti-Muslim sentiment when it's simply not. ISIS is a relevant, dangerous and very real group of individuals who seek to terrorize their own countrymen into submission and the world-at-large, if possible. Stop conflating the two, people. You're only making matters worse with your fake "wokeness".

Some misguided people and their dire need to be social justice warriors could very well turn this into a very real, and very dangerous issue. You think I'm kidding? Remember Charlie Hebdo?? Try reading a bit, learning a bit...before you go off on social media. For fucks sake, people. If you don’t know about the massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, google it.

I see some comments on Instagram saying "Well, I've spoken with MANY Muslims and they're ALL offended...." I'm sure you took a poll in the past 4 hours in order to compile your results. That must have been very challenging...I'm just kidding, you're full of shit.

It's always easier to go after a random celebrity when you're arrogant enough to think you can influence their lives, their decisions. Makes you feel powerful knowing that maybe something YOU said helped them see the light and change their ways. Right? Gives you some sense of control over the object of your adoration.

In some instances, I could see the logic in public shaming. Holding a public figure accountable for actions that are genuinely harmful. I get it. But (and I hate to say this. Because it sucks) this is the SPN fandom we’re talking about. Rife with ship wars, trolls and anti’s. After everything I’ve seen around here, it’s becoming difficult for me to trust attempts at calling one of these guys out on the basis of “social justice”. It feels dirty, because most of the time - it is.

If you want to change the world.... there are much more effective ways than misguidedly harassing an actor on a t.v. show. I've stated a variation on this theme a few times in past posts. And I'm not thrilled that I felt compelled to write and post this, but when I see and have seen the destructive power of the gloriously anonymous comment sections on social media and the ripple effect that can come from a few determined Boneheads On A Mission.... it sets me off on the fucking broke down, held-together-by-duct tape rantmobile that I call my conscience.

I'm not active on Twitter and don't do Instagram or FB because I generally feel social media does more harm than good. I'm not gonna repeat myself here, there or anywhere. I just needed to get this out of my system and hope that maybe someone reads this long ass essay and comes away with another perspective. Because.... common sense?

These issues are far more complex than a soundbite and the ensuing knee-jerk reactions. This is an important discussion that transcends the “He said/She said” nature of this conversation and it merits real, thoughtful exploration. And it deserves to be held with accountability and respect for one another and a degree of seriousness that you’re just not gonna achieve with your bullshit back and forth on an actors social media account.

My question for you is: Are you more concerned about shaming someone, getting their attention even if for negative reasons, and bending them to your will... or do you want to make the effort, do the research and have an intelligent discussion with your friends, family, professors, the world at large? Because I guarantee if you guided your attentions to positively provoking discussion and being receptive to other peoples experience, opinions and knowledge, you’d be a helluva lot more productive.

#jensen ackles #dean winchester #spn fandom #spn family #supernatural #fakewoke

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whisker-biscuit · 7 years ago

Text

Harley Quinn is Not A Good Role Model: Chapter 4

Rated T-M for language and graphic descriptions of violence

Pairing: Dr. Flug/Black Hat

Summary: Dr. Flug Slys is a successful psychiatrist working at one of the world’s most respected mental institutes for the criminally insane. But this new patient is unlike anything he’s ever encountered. Flug is determined to help him, nonetheless.

Black Hat has other ideas.

Note: All Black Hat POVs are in first person

Chapter 4: Naming Conventions

Before we continue, I suppose I should make a few matters quite clear.

First, I am not, as you humans say, beyond this world. My body is very much physical, for all of its horrific capabilities. I require sustenance as any other, although the frequency and form of it differs greatly from most current life on this miserable mass we call a planet. I also have the potential, hypothetically, to experience pain in its most basic, physical manner.

I have yet to encounter something able to do so.

Secondly, I have a biological drive, so to speak, in the same way all living creatures do. But unlike the pathetic urges felt by these creatures to survive and reproduce and further the existence of their species, mine is the unconditional opposite. I live to destroy, to halt the process of life and its advancement. These inclinations are most strongly felt during the potential removal of a soul – a being, if you will – from the corporeal world, but that does not mean I am unfulfilled in the more subtle eradications of the every day. Far from it; I relish the inconsequential inconveniences, the negligible nuisances, the eventual ends of equanimity that develop only from the consistent and repetitive breakdown of the emotional and mental states. One does not have to lose their head to, well, lose their head.

Third and last of all, I am not above admitting my faults. I will not deny to being prideful, or confident, or even arrogant. The accusations of those concepts mean nothing to me. But to be unwilling to recognize a mistake, or refuse to believe one can be made, is a dangerous and frankly foolish mindset. How does one expect to prove themselves the best, if they cannot seize their moments of weakness, however few, and use them as stepping stones to an even higher level of awareness and efficiency towards their claim? The thought baffles me.

That is not to say I allow my enemies or allies to recognize them, or admit to them there are indeed mistakes that I can make. Quite the contrary – one must always display a certain poise in the presence of others that does not betray any hint of fault, as failing to do so often leads to insubordination, mutiny, and challenge on all sides. A lapse in judgement is fine, so long as it is known to only yourself.

And so, of course, we reach my current predicament. I had one rare moment of weakness, and it was such an unfortunate occurrence as to happen in a situation where many significant details were at stake – the disruption of human lives, the destruction of human lives, and myself. Needless to say, my error cost me dearly, and I soon found myself captive at the hands of the detestable Inspector Marcus Daniels and his deplorable team from that blundering group known as Interpol. It was not my first time in incarceration, but it was the first instance in which I was actually treated as a more viable threat than most convicted individuals. Imagine my surprise and disbelief when I was finally released from my, transport, to find I had been dropped rather unceremoniously at a criminal mental hospital, of all things.

To say I was insulted would be an understatement.

Even more humiliating was the presence of who was supposedly my psychiatrist. A thin, clumsy, stuttering excuse of a human who hid his face under a paper bag and was so woefully unprepared for the task appointed to him. His boldness surprised me, near the end of our first meeting, but that was quelled easily with the threat of bodily harm. Humans are so breakable, really. I should have snapped his neck and been done with it.

But in the high brought on by my inclination, I forgot myself and my situation and erred yet again. I attempted to change the shape of my jaw, for easier access to wrap around the beautiful, beating veins of the throat and tear it open in the most visceral, painful way. But I was thwarted as soon as I tried.

That damned collar.

So here I was, confined in a high security room reserved for the most mentally unstable and unable to do anything about it. You could imagine my frustration, perhaps, in those first few hours after I was wrestled away from the pitiful doctor and left alone to do nothing but dwell on my newfound situation.

Of course, one does not create a means of escape without first knowing every variable, so I spent much of that isolation observing every inch of my outfit, my cell, and the door. I counted every buckle keeping me restrained – six – as well as every bolt covering the only way in and out – forty-five. No windows, no manipulated patchwork in the floor or wall or ceiling, and no immediately obvious form of liberation. Everything was a lovely shade of light blue, intended for its calming effects I’m sure. Even the blasted toilet seat was the same color. It too would be unhelpful to my predicament – nothing more than a basic hole in the ground with a foot pedal for flushing.

My mortification turned to fury rather quickly.

Unfortunately, the bloody padding was thick and smooth enough that my teeth – currently my only way of expressing my ability – could not puncture in any place I attempted. Ironically, it was not my physical strength but my…release of emotion that garnered attention.

I had admittedly overlooked the possibility of the presence of other inmates.

A few responded immediately to my outburst of anger, loud in their screaming and thumping. Whether they were declaring their presence, asserting their own dominance, or were simply emboldened by my actions I cannot say. Regardless, it was enough to startle me out of my emotions and instead pay attention to the direction and distance these sounds occurred in relation to my quarters. At least three voices, maybe more, all coming beyond the right side of the wall when I faced my cell door. Whereas I had stopped my actions quite suddenly, it took nearly five minutes for most of the others to calm themselves.

Fascinating.

Moderately satisfied with my conclusions – or as much as I could be in the present situation – I settled down on the raised cushioning that no doubt was meant to resemble a mattress. One side was raised in the imitation of a pillow, but no blanket or detachable items were available. It struck me as odd until I remembered a personal assassination of a high-ranking nobody in which I tied him with his own comforter and proceeded to suffocate him with his pillow.

Unlike the fools at Interpol or that idiot doctor, there was a semblance of competence here, at least.

My surprise the next morning was apparent even to the densest of people when I was visited by the same psychiatrist who had pressed my patience just the previous afternoon. He was not alone this time, obviously having learned his lesson; another man in a white coat arrived at his side, along with one of the guards who had so rudely assaulted my person. They stood shoulder to shoulder like a meager mimicry of force, and I could not help the expression of amusement from outweighing my irritation.

“Back again already, are we? I didn’t take you to be that imbecilic.” I took the time to incline myself against the far wall in the perception of laziness. Nonchalance is often greatly underestimated.

“Ah, I, I did say we have to w-work out a schedule while y-you’re here,” Dr. Slys resembled a skittish antelope, rather remarkably well. “Since yesterday, uh, since we d-didn’t get to finish our, your orientation, I thought it would b-be best to try again as soon as possible. I’ve, brought another psychiatrist if, if you’d be more comfortable with someone else.”

This particular individual puffed his chest up most pathetically at the declaration of his presence. “That’s right, Doctor, and I’m here to let you know that we won’t tolerate any breach of protocol or improper behavior from our patients.” He was reckless enough to glare at me. Fool.

In response to the feeble display at superiority I allowed myself a chuckle. “So it would seem. And what shall I call you?” He was considerably larger than Dr. Slys; at least six feet if I had accurately estimated the height of the security guard, to whom he rivalled in elevation. Nothing outstanding about his features, except perhaps the dainty silver watch along his wrist.

“I am Dr. Bautista, but you can address me as either sir or doctor.” The newest intrusion held up a clipboard in a parody of importance and clicked his pen most unprofessionally. “According to our records, you have no known history of substance abuse. Is that correct?”

His words had long stopped holding my attention, and I deemed the watch to be more significant. Not knowing the time and date can be so cumbersome. My gaze stayed fixed on the polished silver metal, waiting for the angle in which I could read it properly. The watch’s owner did not have the intelligence to realize this, as he cleared his throat in obvious frustration.

“I asked you a question, Patient 513.”

“So you did,” was my soft reply. Patient 513. How interesting, that they had already assigned me a number. No doubt an attempt to disassociate me from my former life. At yet another sound of aggravation, I flicked in the direction of the nuisance’s face. He had stepped closer, just past the human line of defense.

“Yes I did, and I expect you to answer it.” I studied the movements of his hands, waiting for the clock face to be visible. “And I also expect you to make eye contact in a conversation. Honestly, can you believe this?” The miscreant turned to his colleague, no doubt trying for sympathy.

He got none. Instead of catering to the ego of his fellow, Dr. Slys surprised the psychiatrist, and myself, when he looked directly at me and said very sincerely, “It’s 9:47 am, on a Wednesday.”

I had already written off Dr. Bautista as useless and of no interest to me. Yesterday, I thought I had come to the same conclusion about Dr. Slys. But now he tiptoed closer, and despite the limp I saw in his gate – my doing I was certain – he did not appear bothered by the decrease in our distance. He offered his gloved hands to me, palms up.

“That’s what y-you were wondering, wasn’t it? That’s why you were, um. You wanted t-to know the time.”

To see a human again who I had attacked less than a day before was unusual. To see him willing to visit me in my own territory, backup or no, was abnormal. For him to be observant enough to recognize what I wanted, and to give it to me without negotiation in his favor, well. It was rare to the point that I found I could not ignore it.

“If I say yes, Dr. Slys, what would that matter?” I could feel the edges of my mouth part fractionally, poised to expose my only current weapon. Regardless of subject, it was dangerous for anyone to feel they had power over me. Dangerous for me, of course, but even more so for them.

“Ah, well, I j-just thought, you might want to know, since you…” His goggles fluttered briefly in the direction of his colleague’s watch, but he did not reveal me. Smart creature. “Well, I know I like kn-knowing the date, and the t-time. It’s…easier. Everyday.”

“Is that so.” I could find no lie in his expression, despite the headwear. This was the second time he had been so earnestly truthful, and the second time it had caught my attention, for what reasons I could not say. I would have to be careful with this one.

At his eager nod, a good-natured smile stretched along my visage. “Well, Doctor, I suppose I should thank you. You may ask five questions, and I will answer them.” Both psychiatrists were visibly astonished by my change in attitude, and my smile spread further. Two could play this game of catching the other unawares.

Of course, the idiot Dr. Bautista attempted to open his mouth, but I stopped that behavior short with a hiss. “Dr. Slys may ask me five questions, and I will answer them.” He looked affronted, but had enough self-preservation to let his colleague take his place.

“Okay, um, okay.” He fretted with the serrated edges of his paper bag; a bizarre motion I had witnessed before. “I g-guess, we’ll start with what we asked earlier. Do you have any history of substance abuse, or currently using? Our records have no indications of anything.”

“No, I do not. Nasty, uncontrollable things.” I was not lying. Drugs of all forms – except alcohol, perhaps – were useful tools of destruction but entirely unpredictable in combination with my biology. One methamphetamine mixture could have no effect beyond an itch along my feet while another could leave me in the closest I’d ever experience to a seizure. There was no way of knowing which black market substances were pleasurable, painful, or nullified without personal experimentation, and I did not have enough interest in the subject to waste my time.

“Well that’s g-good,” Dr. Slys scribbled along with his fellow psychiatrist and looked me in the eye. “Next q-question. Are there any allergies we should be aware of? Food, medical, latex, etc.?”

“I have no such weaknesses, Doctor.” To even insinuate that human issue was insulting.

“Okay, um. Third question. Are there any actions you feel would be detrimental to your psyche? Some patients have a history of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse that can accidently be brought to memory in a, situation, such as restraining involving human contact or the sound of raised voices. We cannot comply with all requests, but if there is anything you think is noteworthy, we will take it in consideration. If you have a preference for the gender of your psychiatrist or physician, we can do that.”

“I do believe you offend me, Dr. Slys, to assume I am so easily triggered by petty things like those.” I had noticed that as my supposed doctor continued his query, he appeared more relaxed and confident in his posture. The stuttering had also vanished. Fascinating. “But to fully answer your question, I do not have many, requests. However, I must ask that your security keeps their hands to themselves. It was rather irritating yesterday.”

“Well, we can try our best to accommodate you, but I’m afraid that would depend on your behavior around others.” Dr. Slys moved on the weight of his heels and winced, clearly still injured. I offered him a cruel twist of lips. “Okay, so that’s about it for the preliminary. Now about your schedule, I was – we were thinking that the best option would be to start with a bi-weekly counseling session in your room, with me and possibly Dr. Bautista depending on…conduct. I would also suggest a three-hour period of recreational activity every day, and we can work out the activities at the beginning of each day. Perhaps after a full evaluation of mental and physical stability, we can include group therapy and/or outdoor privileges as well. Would you agree with this tentative schedule plan? Your first counseling session would be with me tomorrow at 11 am.”

I pretended to consider it, to assume as they did that I would be actually be imprisoned any longer than a week. “Yes, I suppose that is a plausible arrangement. How long would you estimate my sessions with you to last?” I tilted my head, amusement broadcasted freely.

“Roughly about an hour and a half, give or take.” To my surprise and admitted delight, he looked at me with narrow, calculating eyes and continued, “And I expect we’ll be having them for a long time, Mr. Black Hat. You shouldn’t underestimate our facility.”

I should have been incensed by his calling out of the real meaning of my question, but frankly I found it interesting. Here was a human who understood at least the basic rules of how I played. That he had willingly defied my orders the day before and was now matching my serve with a fair enough return was not as bothersome as I had earlier considered.

“Very well, Doctor. You may ask your final question.” I crossed my legs on the imitation mattress, nearly finished with our conversation, lovely as it was. But what he asked next caught me off guard.

“In your case file, it mentioned you had named flying as your favorite mode of transportation. Why is that?”

I could not help the bemused twitch of my eyebrows nor the brief, startled blink that passed my face. Dr. Slys waited patiently for me to recover, and the colleague at his side appeared just as rightly confused.

There was no gain or loss to be had by answering this, so I settled with a shrug and laid back, studying the unusual human. “Flying is statistically the safest method of travel.” He looked at me, and I looked at him. My mouth parted. “At least until it hits the ground.”

His gloved hands tightened on his clipboard in what I assumed was anxiety. Imagine my surprise when he let out a solitary laugh, not much more than a breach of air past his lips. It stopped just as suddenly as it started, and the doctor seemed shocked at his own action.

“Is something funny, Dr. Slys? I didn’t know humans could find a plane crash humorous.”

My psychiatrist was nervous now, and fretted yet again with that silly headwear, but still he responded despite the abrupt suspicion placed on his shoulders.

“I j-just thought it was a coincidence, a-a bit of a funny connection.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

Unfortunately, my doctor has already shown to be more observant than he looks, because he shut his mouth promptly – I could even hear the click of teeth – and returned to his notes in an attempt to protect himself. His colleague was not so perceptive, however, and gave up the doctor’s secret.

“Hey, doesn’t your name mean a plane wreck? Like in German or something?”

Dr. Slys squeaked most unbecomingly, but it was too late. As someone who prides myself on my knowledge of social etiquette and culture, I knew most languages thoroughly, and those of Indo-European roots were no exception.

“A flugzeugabsturz?” I gave my psychiatrist a lengthy once-over, considering him. “No, your last name is Slys. But you pronounced it as the English adoption. So how…?” As I calculated, Dr. Slys’ body language grew more nervous, apprehensive even. “Perhaps not German, then.” The answer came to me just as my doctor appeared ready to flee, and I smiled.

“Icelandic, I do believe.” My delight heightened at the stiffness setting in his legs. “Plane crash. Flugslys. Dr. Flug Slys.” I practically purred the word. “Do tell me, since you pronounce your last name so hideously, does your first name follow its Icelandic rule, or is it more barbaric? Floooog.” My psychiatrist shuffled backwards to the door. “Fl-ugh.”

That was it. That was how he introduced himself. I watched, twitching grin wrapping my face as Dr. Flug Slys grabbed his oblivious colleague and the forgotten guard and hauled them out. There is a lot of power in names, you see, and he seemed to know it as much as I did. The two doctors stood just outside my cell and whispered hushed nothings while I laughed longer and louder than I had since my capture.

“It truly is a pleasure, Flug Slys!” I raised my voice, standing and gliding to the center of the room. I could see the top half of brown paper through my window. “I look forward, to our first real session tomorrow. You are a fun one indeed, Dr. Flug.”

Every use of his name sent my psychiatrist into a flinch until he disappeared from my sight and I heard his retreating, feathery footsteps leave the hall. The mirth from the encounter left me in a much better mood than I had expected while confined here. Perhaps I would not be so short of entertainment.

Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough, in my honest and humble opinion.

#villainous #villainous au #asylum au #dr flug #black hat #demencia #paperhat

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tanadrin · 7 years ago

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On love

(Attention conservation notice: ca. 6,000 words, more polemical than analytical, not an expert in either Chinese history or utilitarian philosophy)

The Anglo-Saxon conception of Christlike virtue, certain passages of the Tao Te Ching, and Effective Altruism both as a specific concept and as one expression of a broad, compassionate, utilitarian approach to human suffering are, I believe, related elements of a coherent whole. This post is going to be an attempt to examine the thing that lies in the middle of those three ideas.

Essentially, I want to suggest that it is reasonable to portray a utilitarian ethical stance as being a formalization of one of the oldest radical political positions on the planet, and that this position is best expressed simply by the word “love.” Moreover, I’d like to add that for any radical political position to deserve that designation, it must include this concept in some form or another, and, as consequences of that incorporation, also incorporate the idea that one’s opponents are always and in every instance deserving of love, and compassion; and that empathy is the basis for all and any attempt at a coherent approach to building a better world.

“Even if a man is not good, why should he be abandoned?” --Lao Tzu

I think it is safe to say that empathetic political positions are not currently in vogue. Indeed, they are almost never popular. Where ideologies attempt to stake a claim for greater empathy for a group, they are normally limited in scope as a practical matter (you must often focus your attention, as an activist, on whether you want to advocate for the rights of, say, the homeless or the disabled). These positions aren’t necessarily exclusive, but they do tend to be translated into targeted action. Broader ideological movements expand their circle of concern: socialism, say, to all workers and all economically dispossessed people; pro-democracy movements to nonaristocrats of all stripes. But even such broad movements have, ultimately, a demarcation between the circle within which empathy is extended, against those who lie outside it, and who are beyond such consideration. These are the aristocrats of revolutionary France; the kulaks of the Soviet Union; the white farmers of Zimbabwe and South Africa; racial minorities to the alt-right and ethnonationalists; the infidels, if you like, to the Crusade.

In the case of tribalist political alignments that are built explicitly on the creation or reinforcement of us-versus-other dichotomies, can we be surprised? Yet such dichotomies creep in when least expected: the long history of anti-Semitism on the socialist Left (to say nothing of misogyny), and the comparable anti-black and anti-immigrant nature of populist-economic movements in the U.S. and Europe spring immediately to mind. Ideas, like socialism or Communism, which seem in conception like outgrowths of a humanist/Enlightenment belief in the extension of empathy to wider and wider circles of the human race, run into curious limits, sometimes out of the prejudice of the imperfect proponents of those movements (I, for instance, have occasionally considered myself an anarchist; Mikhail Bakunin, who I think has some really important critiques of power structures, was a virulent anti-Semite, and his anti-semitism seems in no way to be a logical consequence of his political beliefs. The guy was just an asshole who really hated Jews)--others are explicit delineations, either useful to the movement, or simply natural ideological extensions of it (Bolshevism, I think it’s fair to say, was always going to murder of the Romanovs).

I’m not interested in directly exploring here the practical reasons for, say, the failure of Communism in Russia, but I am interested in how movements which are nominally for everyone fail in their aspiration. Why, in other words, revolutionary France felt the need to kill its aristocrats rather than just redistribute political and economic power. Why, in more prosaic terms, people feel the need to tweet out “kill all men, seriously” when advocating for feminist positions (and, forgetting that not everyone is steeped in their flavor of the Discourse, and that “men” is not a metonym for the concept of “toxic masculinity” outside their political bubble, are shocked when someone takes offense at that), why people feel that the only imaginable solution to the rise in far-right (or even just perceived-to-be-far-right) political groups is street violence, or indeed why people keep forgetting that is has been consistently shown that opening up a humane dialogue with people professing extremist views has repeatedly to be shown to be an effective way of deradicalizing them, while punching, to put it mildly, hasn’t.

Full disclosure: I dislike Richard Spencer, and was fairly amused when he got punched. I’m not proud of it, but there we are.

A violent approach to political change in the modern context normally has two effects: it makes your opponents fearful and defensive, in a way which is likely to engender a violent response, and it makes your movement less palatable to the mainstream. You are therefore less likely, even with just a rhetoric of violence, to convince people who oppose you not to oppose you, and (more importantly), to convert people who might be sympathetic to your aims to your cause. That’s an instrumental reason to inject a degree of empathy into your worldview. Another reason is that it’s the right thing to do. You should, to repeat a trite but important injunction, love your enemy. I mean caritas, specifically (I guess you can agapize or even eroticize them too, if you wish, but I don’t advise it). Yes, you say, getting impatient. I’ve heard that before. And what does that language do other than protect people in power, engage in political conversation on their terms, and inhibit any real challenge to the status quo? To which I say, you misunderstand. There is no power which can or will change the world except love. I want you to focus on that sentence, because I’m pretty sure you didn’t understand it--I’m pretty sure you parsed it as a trite sentiment you have heard a thousand times before, and, even if you sympathize with it, your eyes glazed over a little as you read it. What I really mean is this: there is no individual act more monumental than murdering a sadistic dictator, than destroying the walls of a prison, than tearing down a hateful flag, that more severely challenges any system of brutal oppression or apathetic destruction, than choosing to extend love to your fellow human beings. It is a simple thing, in that it requires no money, no organization, and no propaganda. And it is a difficult thing, in that it is a virtually unimaginable thing to do. And this idea has been recognized, and implemented, and succeeded, repeatedly, for almost three thousand years.

We imagine, trained on the imagery of the lamb and the lion, of the imagery of a five-thousand-year-old civilization which has incorporated militarism from its very beginning, that love is necessarily passive; that it stands in contrast to the dynamic virtues of the strong, the fearless warrior, and we assume this opposition so fundamentally that we rarely have cause to question it. When someone does, we assume that here is another bleeding-heart milquetoast liberal (even if we are ourselves bleeding-heart milquetoast liberals), trying to put a more attractive shine on an unpalatable worldview, true though it may be. I must emphasize how culturally contingent this association is: the ancient Anglo-Saxons, who though they can be accused of many things, cannot be accused of being bleeding-heart milquetoast liberals with an excessively tolerant worldview, recognized that there existed in the act of love the fire of courage, and for them, to describe love as “passive” would have been an incoherent notion:

“Genāman mē ðǣr strange fēondas, geworhton him þǣr tō wǣfersȳne,⁠ hēton mē heora wergas hebban; bǣron mē ðǣr beornas on eaxlum,⁠ oð ðæt hīe mē on beorg āsetton, gefæstnodon mē þǣr fēondas genōge.⁠ Geseah ic þā Frēan mancynnes efstan elne micle,⁠ þæt hē mē wolde on gestīgan. Þǣr ic þā ne dorste⁠ofer Dryhtnes word būgan oððe berstan,⁠ þā ic bifian geseah eorðan scēatas.⁠ Ealle ic mihte fēondas gefyllan,⁠ hwæðre ic fæste stōd. Ongyrede hine þā geong hæleð,⁠– þæt wæs God ælmihtig! – strang ond stīðmōd.⁠ Gestāh hē on gealgan hēanne, mōdig on manigra gesyhðe, ⁠þā hē wolde mancyn lȳsan. Bifode ic þā mē se beorn ymbclypte. ⁠Ne dorste ic hwæðre bugan to eorðan, feallan tō foldan scēatum,⁠ ac ic sceolde fæste standan. Rōd wæs ic ārǣred;⁠ āhōf ic rīcne Cyning, heofona Hlāford;⁠hyldan mē ne dorste. Þurhdrifan hī mē mid deorcan næglum;⁠on mē syndon þā dolg gesīene, opene inwidhlemmas; ⁠ne dorste ic hira ǣnigum sceððan. Bysmeredon hīe unc būtū ætgædere.⁠ Eall ic wæs mid blōde bestēmed, begoten of þæs guman sīdan,⁠ siððan hē hæfde his gāst onsended.”

They seized me there, strong enemies, made me a symbol to show off their condemned; men carried me on their shoulders; they set me on a hill; these foes fastened me there. I saw the Lord of Mankind, his head held high, eagerly approaching. I dared not bow or break then, against the word of the Lord; not even when I saw the Earth’s corners tremble. I might have killed them all there--yet I stood still. He unclothed himself, the young hero--that was God Almighty!--strong and still-minded. And he ascended the high gallows, brave in the sight of the many, in order to ransom mankind. I trembled when the man embraced me. I dared not bend to Earth, to fall to the open ground, but I stood fast. I was raised up a cross; I held up high the powerful King, the Lord of Heaven; I did not dare sway. They pierced me with dark nails--see the wounds here, the open sores of malice! But I did not dare to injure any of them. They mocked us, both together. I was drenched with the blood that poured out from that man’s side, after he sent forth his spirit.

This is a passage from the Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Dream of the Rood,” known principally from a 10th century copy in the Vercelli book. It is probably considerably older--part of it is inscribed on the Ruthwell Cross, which is from about two hundred years earlier. What is being described here? A dreamer one night has a spiritual vision: a cross, adorned with gold and gems, speaks to him: it is the tree on which Christ was raised and died, relating in the first person the experience of being cut down, hewn into the shape of a cross, and being used as a gallows on which the third part of God was slain. It’s powerful stuff, and the poet reminds us of things which, in an age in which Christianity is both commonplace and banal, we might forget as crucial details of the narrative: the cross is not a religious sign for the onlookers. It is a humiliation, a punishment for prisoners, something worse than any mere instrumental of killing. It is a tool to break someone’s spirit, as well as their body, on which to prolong suffering, to expose the condemned naked, to make them abject. And it would be easy, and perhaps not entirely inaccurate, to read the language of this poem (especially if it is indeed as old as we suspect) as being, in part, communicating the central narrative of the Christian faith in a way that makes it comprehensible to a culture steeped in war, for Christ is like Thunar or Woden, a hero of martial vigor. But to what end is that vigor put? As the Cross says: he could have, before Christ was nailed to his body, pitched himself over and slain every one of their mutual foes. He could have struck them down on the hill. But Jesus specifically enjoins him from doing so. And proceeds to climb up eagerly, dying in a brutal and humiliating fashion in order to save all mankind. And then the Cross is alone: holding the body of God, drenched in blood, an object of contempt no less than his burden, about to be buried and forgotten in the ground.

[The Ruthwell Cross, which has lines 39-64 of The Dream of the Rood inscribed on it.]

And yet this is shown to us as the deed of courage. Not merely as a deed of passive love, but an active deed, a deed requiring deliberate choice, even zeal, on the part of a determined man. A man of rank and of power--the rightful King of all the Earth! The choice to love and the choice to die--and to refrain from killing, or from permitting another to kill--are not portrayed as being in any way in conflict with what we know are the other Anglo-Saxon poetic virtues (courage, skill in battle, powerful faith, honor). They are harmonious, and, here, perhaps synonymous. We must ask ourselves why a thousand-year-old civilization, whose culture was formed during the wars of the Migration Age, can understand the radical act of love, and why we continue to struggle with it.

The inception of this idea, at least so far as the Anglo-Saxons were concerned, are the Gospels themselves, well known to the poets of England in this age in both Latin and verse translations. Paul of Tarsus, even that misogynist old goat who spoiled much that was lovely in the faith of the Nazarene, was able to recognize this, whence, of course, that famous passage of Corinthians. Love, in the sense Paul and Jesus and the anonymous Rood-poet understood it, is dynamite at the foundation of everything: of greed, of hate, of empire, to be sure, but also at the foundation of ourselves. For you and I, and everyone alive, we are all at times scornful, angry, petty, and, yes, hateful. And in order to consistently apply this tool, this weapon that can make all the world tremble, we must confront first the possibility that maybe, just maybe, no matter how right we feel, in our heart of hearts, we are not right to hate.

Utilitarianism in its common usage is a dirty word: at best, it conjures up the image of well-meaning but misguided technocrats willing to inflict suffering and misery on a minority to save the majority. It is, most people seem to think, a philosophy beset with repugnant conclusions, and devoid of empathy.

For myself, for the utilitarianism I conceive of when I think of the word, nothing could be further from the truth. Empathy demands a utilitarian approach to suffering, and the reverse is also true. I am not going to go too in-depth into the primary arguments for utilitarianism; other people have done that better than I could hope to. What I want to do is talk about how I think the concepts relates to the ideas in the previous section: namely, radical politics and love.

The central insight of utilitarianism, especially of the sort discussed in the context of Effective Altruism, is that if we believe all human lives are worth equal consideration, it follows that all suffering is roughly commensurate. Therefore, 1) we should seek to alleviate the most suffering possible given the resources at hand, and 2) it doesn’t matter where that suffering is, or who it afflicts.

Let us consider these ideas more closely. I believe empathy is an effective tool for political change, and perhaps the most effective. I also believe it’s ethically correct. Can we coherently circumscribe the empathy we’re willing to offer to other human beings? Of course, we do circumscribe it; we are, being primates, probably subject to a Dunbar’s Number-type constraint for the possible number of people we easily and naturally feel affinity for in our ordinary lives. We have developed abstract concepts as handles for relating to larger groups of people: concepts like Faith, Nation, Allies, and their opposites: Heathen, Stranger, Enemy. But ethical intuitions are a messy thing, and even if we believe in a higher power that has inscribed a strict rule of ethics onto stone tablets via divine intervention, we tend to acknowledge that our human impulses are often at odds with ethical action: after all, if we did not have some inborn tendency to do unethical things, it would never be necessary to teach people what is a sin and what is not, much less what is empathy. And the New Testament would not need to enjoin us to love our enemy or to turn the other cheek, because such a lesson would be so obvious as to go without saying. Therefore, I argue, where we feel, either by the use of words that shut down such a potential avenue of thought (Heathen! Stranger! Enemy!), or by having approached the limit of our natural sphere of concern, that our empathy is at its limit, we should hold that feeling in utmost suspicion. Think of someone you hate: someone who is the enemy of all that you stand for, and who, if they knew you personally, would almost certainly want you dead. Someone who, if they were in a position of absolute power over you, might cause you to fear for your life. I’d like to suggest that you should extend your empathy to that person--because they, like you, are capable of suffering, and in equal magnitude. Because they would (perhaps justly) fear for their life if the same situation occurred with the roles reversed. Because it is the right thing to do.

Under this standard, most common boundaries according to which people consciously or unconsciously circumscribe their empathy collapse. You should not care about your family more than strangers: yes, love for our families is one way we signal to outsiders we are capable of love, and therefore not unempathetic monsters, so I think some people hear this idea as “believing your family’s suffering is more important than strangers’ suffering means you’re an inhuman monster.” I don’t agree, nor do I think people should, lest they privilege them unduly at some point in the future, practice treating their family like shit. But for most people, “consider the fact other humans are as worthy of their suffering being relieved as your dearest sibling” is a fairly revolutionary thought--not because they don’t acknowledge its truth intellectually, but because that intellectual acknowledgement will never lead them to do anything about that fact at all. How many people have bought a friend lunch who will never donate ten dollars to guarding against malaria in a distant country? It would be an interesting statistic to find out. Likewise the ethnic group; likewise the nation. Even if every “race realist” on the planet were absolutely right that most racial minorities in America are dumber than white people, our approach to ethics we are entertaining here puts no value on intelligence. We are asking only about suffering here: your racism, though perhaps emotionally satisfying to you, can teach you nothing about love.

And since we live in a scarcity economy, there is a question about how to distribute resources to solve problems of suffering in such a way that the most people are helped with the available funds and talent. Though a straightforward concept, this is, of course, the hard part about Effective Altruism. And the careful and rigorous intellectual attention devoted to such questions should not be mistaken for the disinterested cruelty of a technocrat: rather, I think, it is those whose efstaþ elne micle, while understanding that performing love for the reassurance of others is not the same as doing it.

After all, Christians have been performing this part of the message of the Gospels for two thousand years. But how different the world would look if they had been practicing it!

“When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow. When victorious in war, one should observe the rites of mourning.” --Lao Tzu

I believe my position implies pacifism. I realize that’s not an entirely popular position these days (and it definitely has never been), but the essential approach of love negates vengeance, negates violence, negates most kinds of coercion we feel, or, unchallenged, assume, are necessary for the functioning of society. If I do not believe one who kills, even out of hate or inherent viciousness, deserves to suffer or die, even if that hate is directed at me, how can I believe someone trying to kill me right at this moment deserves the same?

This is a reasonable policy to object to. Do we not have the right to self-defense? Do we not have the right to defend innocents? It is all very well and good, you say, to be willing to lay down your life for someone, even a deranged killer. It is altogether another thing to demand others lay down their lives for your cause. Therefore, is there not justified violence? Is there not justified war? Your nonviolence works very well when it is Gandhi or King embarrassing a state that can be embarrassed; but no number of sit-ins in the world would have closed Buchenwald.

An interesting thing about pacifism: there are ways to fight we rarely consider. For instance, our apparatuses of war are built around dehumanizing the enemy. This is achieved at both psychological and practical levels. The classic war propaganda is an example, of course: the Germans/Russians/Japanese/Chinese/Americans/whoever depicted as rapacious monsters coming to devour your children. It can be remarkably effective at getting a civilian population to consent to assisting the waging of a total war; and it may be necessary to actually get soldiers to kill one another. In On Killing, Dave Grossman repeatedly talks about how soldiers--even in the deadliest war in human history--often would shoot to miss at each other. Even though, presumably, the enemy was trying to kill them (as far as they knew anyway). Humans have to be trained and coerced into killing each other; making the enemy monstrous is one way. Other ways are, as I have said, to impose physical distance. A building seen through a drone camera is not like a man in front of you. A city below your bomber is not like a crowd of men, women, and children in front of your machine gun. There is, as bleak as this is, a reason the Nazis eventually turned to gas to murder people: they wanted to protect their soldiers’ mental health.

[A WW1 depiction of Germans that, ironically, Freud could have a field day with]

So let us turn to the Warring States period in China. From the collapse of the centralized authority of the Zhou dynasty until 221 BC, when the state of Qin unified China and inaugurated the first true Chinese emperor, China was divided into numerous small feudal states in conflict with one another. In this time, the great schools of Chinese philosophy were founded: Taoism, Confucianism, Legalism, and tons of others you have never heard of. Taoism, of course, has had a long afterlife (like Confucianism). The Tao Te Ching, ascribed to the sage Lao Tzu, collects some of the most crucial early Taoist philosophy, which emphasized small, peaceful states, governed in a hands-off way that emphasized natural flourishing. Governing a large state, Lao Tzu wrote, is like boiling a small fish. What he meant was that, like a fish, a state is spoiled by too much handling. When you’ve got a good thing going, keep your hands off it, and don’t fuck it up.

The Tao Te Ching is not big on war. When people of one state can hear dogs barking from the next state over, but have never meet the people of that state in their lives, that will be when we’ve really got things figured out, Lao Tzu says. This seems like a narrow worldview now, but I think it probably sounds pretty nice when you live in one of those ages of the world beset by warfare. The Mohists, whose ideas later were incorporated into Taoism, went even further. They were pacifists by inclination, with the unfortunate fate to live in a period of incessant warfare. Nobody liked the Mohists. But the Mohists made themselves indespensible by being the preeminent siege engineers of the age: you see, they realized that if a big state wanted to conquer a small state, if you’re going to go empire-building like Qin, you need to win sieges and take cities. Sieges, in the early modern period, are bad news. Sieges mean starvation. Sieges mean plundering. Sieges mean rape and massacres when the walls come down. So, the Mohists decided, we’re going to offer our services for free to states defending against aggressors. We’re gonna build the best damn defenses you’ve ever seen. That’s a kind of pacifism I can respect.

The Taoist approach to warfare was a little different: it’s a kind of reminder. A stone you should keep in your shoe. When you win, you can be glad you have averted catastrophe. But how dare you rejoice, because you just killed a whole bunch of people. And that’s a good thing to remember--because I remember when Osama bin Laden was killed. It used to be in America that we arrested terrorists and prosecuted them in a court of law. For some reason, after 9/11, even though it was a terrorist attack like all other terrorist attacks (very deadly, yes; very showy, yes; but it was not an act of state-on-state violence), we decided antiterrorist actions meant War. We didn’t arrest bin Laden. We didn’t really try. We stopped really trying to arrest anybody, because, well, this was War now, not a job for the FBI, and not really a job for normal law enforcement methods. No, our increasing jingoism as a nation and our faith in the rightness of our cause meant that when we did find out where bin Laden was, we just killed him. And rather than regretting that we couldn’t safely arrest him, that we couldn’t bring him to trial and show the justice of the American legal system and American democracy and the rule of law (though I guess those were ideas that were pretty much spent by then anyway)--rather than have faith in the collective narratives that we, on some level, I think still make us believe America has moral worth as a concept--we decided to throw a fucking party. And I couldn’t help but watch this happen and think, what the hell? Am I taking crazy pills? When did this become a reasonable reaction? The Axis killed a lot more people, for much shittier reasons than Al Qaeda, and we still put the surviving motherfuckers of that shitshow on trial after the war. It’s not exactly the rites of mourning, but it’s also not a street party.

At the very least we would do well as a society to incorporate a pacifist bias into our outlook: you should be suspicious if your faith in the justness of your cause leads you to rejoice in death. You should be suspicious if you are eager for violence, eager for open war. Violence may be a last resort--I cannot see how slavery would have ended without the civil war, how the Holocaust would have been averted without armed resistance, how the American Indians would have resisted the invasion of white settlers any better except by shooting back--but it is a last resort. It would be easier to dehumanize your enemy. To rejoice in victory. To ignore your obligation to mourn. But it shouldn’t be easy. It should never be easy. And shame on us, if we want it to be.

What kind of world do you want to live in?

Ultimately, I am arguing that love will build that world better, stronger, and more surely than anger, or hate. Again, let us turn to the practical test: what works? Since extremist violent ideologies are driven by social isolation, personal anxieties about race, economic stability, and changing social structures, and a lack of familiarity with the human objects of those ideologies’ hate, we have seen repeatedly that what works to deradicalize extremists, whether they’re white supremacists or Islamists, is treating them like human beings. Engaging with them socially, so that the only people they have to turn to are not people with extremist ideologies who will just reinforce these ideas, and ensuring they have economic options and support networks outside that narrow, hateful community.

I have heard many stories from people who have worked on deradicalizing extremists this way. I have never once heard a story of someone no longer being a Nazi because they got punched in the face. Yeah, maybe it’s funny because Richard Spencer is an asshole; but I didn’t ask if it was funny or not. I asked you, what kind of world do you want to live in?

Do you want to live in the Utopia you are thinking of right now? Because there are two choices you can make about how to get there. You can decide to work for that world with love. It will work. It won’t be easy. It will take a long time. There will be setbacks. But you can choose that route. Or you can decide that the only way to bring peace in this world is to wipe out every heretic, every infidel, every ideological enemy who disagrees with you--either to literally kill them, or to suppress them with violence and the fear of violence so they don’t dare show their true colors in public. At least, not for now. Not until they think it’s their turn to try the same thing.

You absolutely can choose the guilt-free extermination war if you want. This is a choice you can make. Europe made this choice in 1618, and what followed was thirty years of warfare bloodier than almost anything the continent had ever known up to that point. One third of the population of Germany was killed; entire regions of the Holy Roman Empire were laid waste. In the end, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, not because either the Protestants or the Catholics achieved the political supremacy they desired, nor because they had come to a comprehensive understanding of one another through their shared struggle, but because there was simply no one left willing to fight. Europe stumbled into the principle of religious toleration--for certain sects, for a certain value of “toleration”--not because they followed humanist principles to their logical conclusion, but because they could no longer afford the price their hatred demanded of them. On the foundation of such struggles, and such accidental progress, much of the modern world is built. But it is a price we do not have to pay. There is a price less costly in blood, less costly in suffering, less costly in iron and treasure and sorrow, but which demands a great deal more of our imaginative capacity and our empathy. It is the price of recognizing that even those who hate us--who want us to suffer, to weep, and to die--are human as well, and that even as their hatred repulses us, we can extend to them the fundamental empathy we grant to our friends, our family, those who are like us and so we find easy to care about. In short, it is the price of love. I cannot demand that you pay it, but the dilemma before you is this: which price do you want to pay? Which price can you pay? Do you really imagine that if you choose the first, your triumph is guaranteed, you will feel the thrill of victory, the satisfaction of crushing your enemies, or will in thirty years your children limp to the negotiating table because your confessional war has all but destroyed the world you inhabit? Yes, the survivors of Europe’s 17th-century conflagrations inhabited a marginally better world than the one they started with, insofar as there were not repeated wars between Protestant and Catholic factions in the Empire; but can you imagine the history of Europe if instead Ferdinand II and Frederick V had been able to extend the hand of friendship and of love to one another, rather than that of hate? If eight million people had lived, instead of died, and the productive capacity of western Europe, for a generation, been turned to the work of prosperity, rather than the work of war?

[From “The Great Miseries of War,” Jacques Callot, 1633. Not a happy time for Europe.]

Instead, you may pay the price of love. It requires empathy, yes; it requires also humility. It is not as satisfying as deciding your enemy is not worth your time trying to to convert or make peace with, but it is a price that you can certainly pay. And it has this advantage: it works. It is instrumentally useful. You can consider it a coldly rational calculation, a sign of your steely, Machiavellian devotion to winning at all costs, if you wish: you will love your enemy, because you want to win. Either way, you will love; and you can purchase a world that, instead of fighting a bloody war to stumble, haphazardly, into an equilibrium that is slightly more tolerable, can be a world in which the only limit on the future is your capacity to extend the common grant of humanity and empathy to people you do not agree with, a world which is designed to be as good as it possibly can be under the circumstances, rather than as good as a bitter and angry compromise will allow.

Just remember the Thirty Years’ War. Why do you think your war will go any differently?

You know what I think. I don’t pretend that what I am advocating is a set of sublime insights that will solve all the world’s problems forever. I don’t think believing (truly believing) in our common humanity and being willing to extend the hand of friendship--well, the hand of friendly toleration--to people who hate you means that we will build Utopia, or the New Jerusalem, or whatever overnight. But I do think it’s the best option we have.

I don’t think it means you have an option to share a meal with someone who wants you dead. I don’t think it means you have to let people treat you like an asshole, or threaten you with violence, or even inflict violence on you. Remember: love is not passive. Love is not weak. Love doesn’t mean jerks don’t face social consequences. Love does mean those jerks are humans, too, and that no one, no matter how monstrous, can ever elect to put themselves beyond the pale of human empathy. That’s important. It’s important for instrumental reasons (because the slippery slope fallacy is a thing, and while for you that pale may end at, say, serial killers, for other people it ends at abortionists. Or homosexuals. Or black people. And yes, the comparison seems insane if you don’t mind abortion, homosexuality, or racial minorities, but how sure are you that every post in that pale, every turn and switchback of its border, cuts correctly over the moral landscape? Have you never, ever changed your mind on an important question?), but it’s also important for ethical reasons. You should never be absolutely certain of your ethics. Yes, you should strive to be a good person, but you must always admit the possibility you are wrong.

Today my girlfriend and I were listening to a podcast on CRISPR, the gene-editing technology. One of the things the podcast discussed was the possibility of genetically engineering humans in the future--alleviating diseases like cancer, yes, but also the thorny question of how to approach disabilities, especially ones that don’t preclude living a happy and meaningful life. If the only reason that (say) deaf people might enjoy a lower standard of living than hearing people is because our society is shitty to deaf people and won’t make reasonable accommodations for them, it’s a bad argument to say deaf people should be caused to cease to exist--and the horrifying counterpart to that thought is, if this technology had been discovered two hundred years ago, what would the world look like now? Would we, in such a world with subtle understanding of genetics but poor understanding of ethics, have any neurodivergent people at all? Any disabled people? Any gay people? Any minorities? Would we have learned, through the struggle toward acceptance by people not like the perfect mythical median, how to extend empathy even in difficult cases? Even to people not very much like us at all?

The mythical median doesn’t exist, of course; to quote Dan Savage, variation is the norm, and the illusion that traditionalists and conservatives of all stripes cling to is that the past was not affronted by such variations as trans people and genderqueer people and women who didn’t want to be homemakers and black people who wanted to be treated like human beings. But really, which is the parsimonious explanation: that liberalism has fundamentally altered human psychology, or that traditional societies simply force people to conceal their misery, and they do so because they don’t realize any other existence is possible?

And so I wonder what engines of misery we are driving today. Plenty are obvious: wealth inequality, economic insecurity, insufficient acceptance of gender and sexual minorities, and of course there’s still plenty of racism and misogyny to go around. But what other engines of misery remain hidden from us? The Anglo-Saxons had no room in their worldview for trans people. Yet I don’t think that the neurological or psychological preconditions for trans people didn’t exist in any form the 10th century, that every man and woman in early medieval England was perfectly happy with the gender role society put them in. There were certainly people like that in Rome, in India, in China before then. So what are we missing now? And by our refusal to extend to everyone we meet our innate capacity for empathy, by refusal to challenge ourselves to love instead of to hate, what suffering do we prolong? If in the 10th century, the Catholic hierarchy had collectively reexamined its approach to homosexuality in light of true empathy, real empathy toward the gay people of that age, how much suffering could it have avoided even simply by saying, “OK, yes, Paul is against this; but Paul is an asshole, Jesus is silent on the subject, and we’re chill with shellfish and mixed fabrics so the Old Testament doesn’t count. Anybody who uses religion as an excuse to murder ‘sodomites’ is excommunicated latae sententiae, and yes, this counts as one of those infallible dealios”? Quite a lot, I reckon.

And if you are thinking, “yes, this is all well and good, but surely you don’t mean”--just stop. Stop right there. Yes them. Yes, them too. Yes, those assholes. Yes, those monsters. Yeah, maybe the idea repulses you. Yes, it’s hard to imagine. You may revolt against the idea; perhaps it is enough to make you disregard everything I have said entirely.

Or perhaps the gulf between us is greater than that; perhaps you and I share no political sympathies; perhaps you are one of the many people in this world who, I am sure, hates me and everything I stand for, despises me utterly and thinks that the world would be better if I and everyone like me, and everyone I love, were tortured to death and dumped in a landfill somewhere.

I don’t care. I will do my best, imperfect though it may be, to love you anyway.

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indomitablekushite · 6 years ago

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Why are so many social media conscious sisters using the word witch.Im sick and amazed how African people will try to take African Traditions Concepts and explain them using the very limited English language. “THE WITCHCRAFT (ÌYÁMI ÀJÉ) In Yoruba language, Ìyá mi means "my mother". In Yoruba cosmology, the mother's roles as the force of creation and the sustainer of life and existence elevates the mother to the realm of the divine. Consequently, Ìyá mi, with alterations in tones becomes Ìyààmi or Ìyàmi which means "My Mysterious or Divine Mother. Àjẹ́ is a Yoruba word that signifies the biological and spiritual power of the Africana woman that has myriad potential, including, but not limited to, powers of elemental, biological and artistic creation; healing; destruction; spiritual and physical development and fortification; and political organization and empowerment. In The Architects of Existence: Àjẹ́ in Yoruba Cosmology, Ontology, and Orature, Teresa N. Washington defines Àjẹ́ as "a force that is beyond definition, but English approximations for Àjẹ́ would be Power, Creation, Cosmos, All." Given the foregoing, Ìyàmi Àjẹ́ would be most appropriately defined as "My Divine Mother of Unfathomable Powers."Iyami Aje are known by many praise names which include, but are not limited to, Iyami Osoronga, Awon Iya Wa (Our Mothers), Eleye (Owner(s) of the Sacred Bird), Iyanla, Elders of the Night, Old and Wise One(s), the "Gods of Society," Ayé (Earth), and Àjẹ́, as the latter term signifies both the power and the individual wielding it. In Yoruba cosmology, the god Odù is the Creator of the Universe and all that thrives within it. She is the originator of existence and the womb of all origins: Yoruba spiritualist Samuel M. Opeola reveals that Odù is the Àjẹ́. Africana women, the direct biological and spiritual progeny of Odù, are said to all inherently bear some aspect of her signature force: Àjẹ́. Àjẹ́ is primarily associated with women because of their essential roles in conceiving, carrying, birthing, and nurturing children; however, Africana men, including African gods, can also have and be Àjẹ́. Opeola reveals that "any Òrìṣà regarded in creation, childbirth, protection of a town also possesses the power of Àjé" including Ọbàtálá, Ọbalúayé, Ògún, and Odùduwà, to name a few gods. However, with its origins cosmically in Odù, the Womb of Existence, and biologically in the menstruating, conceiving, birthing wombs of existence, Africana women are the owners and controllers of Aje.Because of its scope and power, Aje is feared and revered by many. Some individuals have attempted to demonize Aje by translating the word as witch, but Àjẹ́ and witch are not culturally, historically, politically, or spiritual synonymous concepts. Using the term "witch" is especially dangerous because in many African communities the accused can be ostracized or lynched because of false accusations. Ayo Adeduntan's article, "Calling Àjẹ́ Witch In Order To Hang Her: Yoruba Patriarchal Definition and Redefinition of Female Power," analyzes the impact of the misuse of the term witch in Yoruba societies and the necessary usage of culturally appropriate and accurate Yoruba terms. In some cases, to protect the bearers of power and avoid confusion, terms such as "Elders of the Night," Ayé, and Awon Iya Wa may be used euphemistically.” Ifatope Akindele

#Demon possessed Africa women calling themselves witch

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isedonsdndgame · 5 years ago

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Game Night 2019-08-17

The party moves on to explore upper western side of temple after their short rest. Moving cautiously down the hallway, first door on their left appeared to be a potion storage room, but the contents of all the vials are no longer viable, missing, or evaporated. Ignys gives a thorough check around the room and locates a hidden door that opens to a stairwell and another door that seems to line up with the next door in the hallway.They open the door to a 20' by 10' room with nothing inside, some of the party step in to investigate but are immediately hit with a wall of flame the engulfs the room, burning them before they step out. Not descending the stairs for the time being, they move to the next room down the hallway, Ignys picking up some transmutative magic from the room. The party cautiously enters and find a replica of the castle Driscoll saw in his vision, the castle Ravenloft. Ignys moves to investigate the magical aura he is sensing and is directed to an old wooden chest. Its rusty hinges complain loudly as it opens, revealing an empty chest. The aura seems to be coming from below a false bottom, easily removed when aware of it, and Ignys finds a magnificent red leather bound tome embossed with the visage of bearded sage. Moving down to the next room at the end of the hall, Ignys senses the auras of illusion, necromancy, and a bit of transmutation from beyond the door. Preparing from some trick, they open the door to the sights and smells of a grand banquet in a well lit room, necromantic energies come from the walls and the transmutation coming from a single wine ewer on the table. Ignys conjures a spectral hand to try to lift the ewer and as it rises off the table, twelve specters appear and converge around the hand, following its movements until Ignys has it placed back on the table. When the Ewer is replaced, the specters all dissipate once more. Passing through this room undisturbed for now, Ignys and Iskafar step through doors on the east of the room and onto a damaged section of balcony. Unfortunately, the balcony is unable to support the weight of both of them together and begins to crumble. Ignys quickly jumps back through the door but Iskafar tumbles down 30 feet to the floor below, catching himself with a hastily cast levitation spell. Ignys is able to clear the gap with a misty step and appears in the door across the way. Iskafar in the mean time uses his levitate to ferry the rest of the party safely down from one door and up to the other. Vilnius remains behind so as not to touch anyone with his contagion and indicates he will wait back where the party took a short rest earlier. In the newly opened room, Ignys sees a statue on the western side and feels an enchantment try to take hold of his mind. He struggles for a moment but is able to shake off whatever effect it was. Noticing several skeletons around the statue, he fires several fire bolts into it, weakening the stonework, and then shatters it with the force of a magic missile, stone shards from the statue scattering everywhere. With the statue destroyed, the enchantment fades and Ignys declares it safe for the rest of the party to enter the room. Noticing the symmetry of the temple, the party decide to look for another secret door in this room in the space matching the other side of the temple. Iltharian is able to easily pick out the door and how to open it. Stepping inside 10' by 10' square room, he sees another door on the other side of the room, and a chest on the ceiling 20' up with something written on it. Driscoll, understanding the language, sees something written in Celestial. Fearing a trap, he has everyone clear the room and has Iskafar levitate him closer to read it clearly. The words on the chest read "Greed has no place in the heart of the scholar, for the truest treasure is knowledge." Fighting against their curiosity, they decide the chest should probably not be opened and float back down. Ignys joins Iltharian to open the next door and view a lit chamber with fine furnishings, decorations, art, and books. In the middle of all of that, they see a skeletal figure dressed in a fine robe with burning red points of light in its eye sockets. It floats towards and asks "Do you know me? Do you know who I am?" Holding off on hostilities to evaluate the situation, they talk with the lich that does not know its name. It warns them against doing anything with the amber pillars in the rooms as they contain imprisoned powerful and evil entities, and also offers the party in their quest for knowledge. The lich also explains that he once knew Strahd 400 years ago, before he was corrupted by the entity known as Vampyr that was contained in this temple and released it. He explains how he was an noble, ambitious man doing the best he could to better his realm at the time, but unfortunately fell to Vampyrs influence, murdered his brother Sergei out of jealousy over Tatyana, then was slain himself and arose a Vampire, and ceased his visits to the amber temple. The lich then repeats the warning previously given and appears to forget recent events, and the more conversation proceeds, the more obvious this trait becomes. After the warning, Ignys shares that he has been seemingly communicating with one of the entities, its presence has been guiding and pulling him to a place beneath where they stand. The lich eyes Ignys warily and advises that he break any connection to the entity as soon as he can, and should he attempt to free it, he would become the target of the liches wrath. Ignys sits down and turns his mind towards the burning sigils in his head. The entity, having traced Ignys lines of thought begins the conversation:

"One cannot deny that fire is the purest element. The fire that burns within us all can roar brightly, if you only fuel it." Release us champion, that we may bring justice/purification/flame to this land with the purifying flame. Scour the tyrants/oppressors/villains from this place beginning with Strahd. From the ashes, a new and just kingdom will arise/flourish/unfold. Fear not your bloodlines doom/destruction/fate, our mastery of the flame is total/supreme/inviolate. Together we will incinerate any who oppose our ideals, the flame/heat/star will reign. We are Xelthanon/Burning Judges/Trifold Star, release us from our unjust/wrongful/insulting prison, and burn brightly as our true champion.

Ignys, incensed at the entities use of his families creed to try and coerce his allegiance, redoubles his intended communication and firmly rejects the presence of the entity and any powers it might bestow. The entity replies with nothing more than "So be it." It tears itself from Ignys mind, wounding him as its fiery tendrils extricate themselves from his thoughts, his magic, and his identity, leaving him exhausted and collapsed on the floor, his spells depleted. As the warmth the entity brought leaves him, his previously flushed skin becomes pale and cold, and the pressing chill of the mountains bites into him.

Iskafar helps Ignys up and they ask if there is any place to recuperate. The lich indicates there is and then shows them to the the library beyond a pair of doors off of his room. Entering the library, the party lay eyes upon 6 massive bookshelves that seem to travel upwards beyond sight in mists far above. Floating lights move around the room and there are enchanted ladders that respond to commands to carry anyone searching for books around the room. As Iskafar gets Ignys settled to rest, Driscoll, remember Vilnius asks the lich if they have any remedies for disease, to which the lich replies that he does not believe so but he could examine the individual. They describe where Vilnius is and the lich floats off. Realizing it might not be best for Vilnius to be alone and a lich appears with them all of a sudden, Driscoll takes off running, trailed by Iltharian and Iskafar walking behind at a more sedate pace. Watching the lich float easily past the fallen balcony, Driscoll lowers himself to the floor below and dashes across the large entry chamber to the stairs in an attempt to meet up with it. Halfway across the chamber however, Iskafar and Iltharian watch as a bolt of crackling blue electricity shoots out of the statue on the north of the chamber and strikes Driscoll to the ground, unmoving and smoking from the blast. Iskafar jumps down and quickly runs to Driscoll, uncorking a healing potion and pouring it down his throat. Driscoll stands up and continues running partway up the stairs to the south, Iskafar following close behind. The two of them are struck from behind by another bolt of lightning coming from the statue, Driscoll falling once more. Iskafar picks up Driscoll and teleports to the safe room that they rested in before, then is able to stabilize his condition, leaving him breathing shallowly, his clothes still stinking of electricity. He looks up to see the lich confronting Vilnius, accusing him of trying to release one of the sealed powers below. Iskafar sensing that Vilnius is trying to quickly think up another lie makes an intimidating show of power that compels him to cower and truthfully reveal that he was only going to release the dark power because he was promised his disease would be cured, and that he deserves to be cured because he spread the plague he carries to so many villages and killed so many in Fekres name. The lich pulls the amulet off from around Vilnius neck, examines it, and then crushes it to powder in one hand, declaring it to be a key to unlock and shatter one of the amber pillars. They both then banish Vilnius from the temple, to return on pain of death. Vilnius hastily retreats to the howling winds outside and Iskafar watches as he disappears from view down the mountainside. The party then returns to the library via the path they originally took to get there, the lich casting a spell to carry them back across the gap. Iskafar lays Driscolls unconscious form down comfortably and they settle in for a long rest. They sleep soundly in the still cold air of the library without incident, Ignys feeling a little better in the morning, but not fully recovered, and Driscoll making a full recovery from his injuries. After resting they, decide to examine some of the books, Ignys and Driscoll looking for topics relating to the curse that plagues Ignys family lines, Iltharian looking for some information on repeating lines of reincarnation and memories, and Iskafar looking over the histories of the Amber temple and anything regarding the creation and alterations of ancient elven Mythals, thinking to repair or enhance the forgotten temple they discovered before entering Barovia. After several hours of research, they decide to look at the area beneath the library and find a few amber pillars, one if which is shattered, likely belonging to Vampyr that was freed by Strahd so long ago. They also see a three foot crack in one of the walls to the south. Sticking his snout in to see better, Iskafar looks into a chamber filled with vast wealth, six piles of coins and statues and carvings and old chests, all watched over by another amber golem. Driscoll comes down to see what all the quiet is about, not having heard anything from Iltharian and Iskafar, who has been ogling all the treasure. After seeing the bounty in the room beyond the cleft in the wall, Driscoll decides that asking the lich if there is anything it would take offence at if they removed the treasure for themselves. The lich advises that it does not want for anything and the treasure in the vault is from the mages who maintained the temple long ago.

Taking that as tacit permission to begin looting, they first eliminate the golem easily as it is far too large to fit through the crack and they have enough ability to attacking it to bring it down before it can widen the crack large enough to pass through. With the golem removed, they begin to comb through the piles of treasure and recovery nothing magical, but several thousands of coins are recovered, as are valuable jewelry, art, and even some gems and preserved incenses that would work Driscolls spells.

Game ends as the party loads the bag of holding with anything valuable that fits inside.

#D&D

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chanceuibb856-blog · 6 years ago

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17 Reasons Why You Should Ignore chrono trigger rom

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As if all this was not enough, a few days before the beginning of E3 2018, there were major announcements like the presentation, finally, of the brand new episodes of Battlefield and Contact of Duty, along with Rage 2 or Fallout 76 by part of Bethesda Softworks, or the promising Pokemon Let's Move, Pikachu! / Eevee! , which undoubtedly have warmed up the environment in the face of the imminent start of the most important video game reasonable in the world. Are you aware just a little? For having, there has also been a leak that has revealed Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

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Ranking (8.0) Funcom provides managed to create a great experience of survival that uses advantage of the great and bloody literary universe of Conan the Barbaro. Only, but better accompanied by close friends, the gaming amazed by the epic of his action and the level of some of his pitched battles. Whether or not you are keen on the genre, you will surely find a lot of fun in a Conan Exiles that guarantees a casino game for a while.

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Rating (8.0) Horizon Chase Turbo is just what it really wants to be: a tribute to the driving arcades of the 90's recreational saloons. It really is achieved based on basic but perfect handles, a well-studied difficulty curve, and a very powerful period if we consider the type of video game we are talking about. There exists a large amount of repetition in the medium term, and he could possess dared to improve more things, but as the heir of a golden age group in the arcade genre, he'll cause you to spend a few afternoons of nice nostalgia by pressing the accelerator ... and your teeth.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition

Platforms: Switch By Omega Force

Rating (7.5) Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition is a slot with hardly any news, and therefore should only consider those that didn't play on Wii and 3DS. Even if so, they need to consider that it is a musou, and as such, it is a repetitive video game. But when you can disregard it, you are facing an interesting machacabotones, faithful to the Zelda permit and very durable, which may be even even more if you perform in a local cooperative for just two players, an extremely interesting choice for the owners of Nintendo Change.

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Rating (8.0) Though it is an extremely continuous sequel, maybe even too much, there is a large amount of fun to get out of State of Decay 2. If we manage to overlook its asperities, which are not few, we have a game of very legitimate survival and ability to present many hours of entertainment and optimum pressure and immersion. To obtain an award in a future Condition of Decay 3? To polish even more the arranged, to give something of even more depth to the combat and to obtain a cooperative that starts to materialize the potential that right here limitations itself to purpose. Along the way, we will love, and far, your proposal.

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Detroit: Become Human

Platforms: PS4 By Quantic Dream

Rating (9.0) Detroit: Become Human is still a 100% Quantic Dream video game, so it has all of the mannerisms and tics of a David Cage work and can not dissuade those that accuse their releases of lack of interaction. However, it is difficult to acquire something as effective in its genre as what it offers accomplished this time. The PS4 gaming is formally interesting and includes a staging worthy of a movie, but I really do not think that neglects at all a disagreement filled with hard decisions to make, and that approaches difficult problems with seriousness and good work. In my opinion, the best game up to now by the creators of Large Rain.

Ancestors Legacy

Platforms: PC By Destructive Creations

Ranking (8.0) The authors of the controversial Hatred stand victorious with their dedication to the strategy instantly, giving lifestyle to a great gaming, exciting in its action, which raises interesting tactical options. In front of Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Germans or Slavs, in Ancestors: Legacy we will enjoy

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missgoldieisbeautiful · 6 years ago

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@blackreigen

Last summer I was fortunate to receive a grant to research about the Latasha Harlins case and 1992 L.A. Riots, so lemme provide some of those nuances.

Latasha Harlins was a 15-year-old honors student from South Central L.A. On March 16, 1991, Soon-ja Du, the wife of a storeowner, falsely accused Harlins of stealing $2 orange juice, and after instigating a pysical altercation with her, Du shot Harlins in the back of the head with an illegally modified 0.38 handgun. The incident was caught in its entirety on CCTV videotape. In the interviews following up to her trial, Du showed no remorse. A sentencing report disclosed that even after months of press coverage of the murder, lengthy consultations with psychologists and church members, and interrogations throughout the trial, Du remained unrepentant and more importantly, utterly puzzled. She revealed she felt she would do it again, if given the chance. That November, a jury found Du guilty of involuntary manslaughter and advised the maximum sentence of 16 years in prison. However, Judge Joyce Karlin, a white woman presiding over the case, overruled the court. Karlin invoked in her sentencing statements her experience as a gang prosecutor to “know” Harlins as the dangerous criminal in the case. Karlin defended her ruling by declaring the shooting accidental and offered the logic that if Harlins were still alive, the child would be in her court for assault against a storeowner.

Years later, mainstream media reframed the L.A. riots the way that we typically think about black shootings, that is, as a predominately male event. We don’t think about the women who are involved because our imagination is flooded by male images. We remember the names of Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, but don’t pay as much attention to all the women who have been killed in the last few years. But in the case of Latasha Harlins, the judge is not male. She is female. The murderer is a woman. The district attorney in the case is also a she. The lack of justice in the little girl’s death so clearly identified racism and our coverage of it as a gendered and systemic issue - a greater indictment beyond individual cops on the street. It wasn’t the jury nor the police nor the district attorney, but the judge, the elected representative of the courts who decided to criminalize the child-shooting victim instead of the Korean woman proven guilty of murder.

Harlins’ case became a pivotal moment in the history of black and Asian relations in Los Angeles and helped fuel the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (more popularly known as the Rodney King Riots) a year later. Rioters burned stores and businesses after a jury acquitted the four police officers taped viciously beating King. Widespread looting, assault, arson, and killings occurred in the course of six days, and estimates of property damage exceeded $1 billion. Contrary to popular opinion, most of the looters were Latinx, not black - but the media looked past this to tout its anti-black narrative. Though the 63 killed and 2,383 injured came from multiple ethnic backgrounds, Korean American lives and stores were targeted. Given their foreign social status and language barrier, Korean American merchants received very little if any aid or protection from the LAPD, who reportedly fled when shootings took place. Two male Korean storeowners were controversially televised repeatedly firing pistols at looters, without the context that the wife and daughters of another community member, Richard Park, had been shot at few days before. The destruction of the Korean community and livelihood became known as Sa-I-Gu, or “four-two-nine” in Korean, in reference to April 29, 1992, the day Koreatown began burning. It was a historical moment that has been pinpointed as the origins of Korean American political conscious and imagination, that is, the birth of Korean America as we know it.

Latasha’s death elucidated that Koreans are not bystanders to America’s continuing cruelty against black Americans but are intimately and inextricably implicated in its strife. The number of Koreans who defended and rallied around Soon-Ja Du – what did they achieve? They actively abetted the racial friction between the communities by perceiving they were situated on a higher rung in a racial hierarchy that trivializes the brutalization of black lives. They upheld at no benefit to themselves white supremacy that allowed the murder of Latasha Harlins and the near murder of Rodney King – the very same that sanctioned the murders of Vincent Chin and Yong Xin Huang. Like the rest of the country, Koreans assured themselves that these incidents were anomalies, unusual and isolated. But in each case black people were murdered, their families were humiliated, lied to in the media about who their children were and how they had behaved before their deaths. In each case, the justice system refused the victims and their surviving family members any justice. It shrugged off its own inefficacy because neither its individual actors (i.e. Judge Karlin) nor society at large was ready to be introspective about their own preconceptions about black Americans. That Harlins was killed by a civilian testifies to how anti-black violence extends beyond institutional borders and equally importantly, how racial conflict extends beyond the black-white racial paradigm.

It’s impossible not to bring up black-Asian relations without bringing up Claire Jean Kim’s seminal work and theory of racial triangulation. It illuminates how Asian Americans become a foil to American-ness and because of this, occupy a role necessary to our imagination and formation of what constitutes a national citizen.

Kim’s work on black-Korean conflict develops a mapping on white, black, and Asian Americans against two axes— Superior-Inferior and Foreigner-Insider. In this model, whites hold the most privileged position along the Superior-Inferior axis and a coequal position as insiders with black Americans on the Foreigner-Insider axis. In contrast, black Americans hold the least privileged position along the Superior-Inferior axis, while Asian Americans hold a middle position along the Superior-Inferior axis, and the least privileged position as foreigners on the Foreigner-Insider axis. Our presence becomes the signifier that stitches the racial triangulation amongst white, black, and Asian Americans together.

What racial triangulation theory does is shed some light on the ways systemic white supremacy encourages social friction between Asian and black American communities. Even as Asians are given model minority status, we are always still deemed as foreigners - and when resources like jobs are scarce, invasive. Conversely, white supremacy paints black Americans as insider subjects inextricably rooted in the nation yet inferior in their sociopolitical status. These different privileges ascribed to each community, the theory posits, can give rise to intercommunal prejudice and violence - as seen in the case of the 1992 Riots. Situational proximity is always a decisive factor in conflict, and the neighboring enclaves of Koreatown and South Central had (and still do) face deep set tensions. For years, black Americans have spoken out against Korean merchants’ prejudice and disrespect to their black customers. They expressed anxieties about the lack of jobs and Korean American businesses taking away opportunities from black establishments. In turn, Korean Americans share a struggle with a language barrier that hurt communications - but perhaps more importantly, a culture barrier, an ignorance of black history and race relations in America. Many immigrants lacked this education when they came to the states and thus harbor anxieties about the high rates of gang crimes at the time, some of which had claimed the lives of Korean storeowners. To this day, many in both communities scapegoat each other for systemic problems instituted by white supremacy and capitalism.

I write this because I cannot agree more that we need to contextualize the L.A. riots. Koreatown didn’t burn for no reason, and the mainstream media’s demonization of black protesters was a travesty to journalism. But I want to push back on the portrayal of Koreatown’s destruction as warranted or justified, as it feeds into the mainstream narrative of the Riots as an all-out race war between black and Asians - that ultimately obfuscates white supremacy’s role in this conflict. What the helicopters didn’t get during the Riots, the ground cameras got - of volunteer firefighters, of people helping providing each other safety and shelter in the midst of destruction. After a week of rioting, both communities participated in a peace march, and both helped in the cleanup of Koreatown, as evidenced in this extensive archive called K-Town’92 of interviews that prove the exclusion of narratives from mainstream reporting. To the commenters wondering where the black-Asian solidarity was, it was very much there - if you know where to look.

Scholarship on the ‘92 riots proves that for any form of coalition building to take place, education and self-reflection on the respective histories of communities is paramount. As long as we live here, Koreans are responsible for educating ourselves on American race relations instead of turning against our black brothers and sisters for problems brought about by white hegemony. At the same time, it’s equally important to acknowledge the often concealed yet integral role of white supremacy in the Riots and its position in racial triangulation theory.

It’s a disgrace that Latasha Harlins’ murder was for a time forgotten in a way that King’s beating never was. The King case galvanized reform over the years that stipulated the ways LAPD officers could use force. Harlins’ death left no standing memorials or policy changes, a reality that still haunts her family. The life of Latasha Harlins was worth 5 months of probation, 400 hours of community service, and $909 in 2018 dollars.

Additional links:

https://www.laweekly.com/microsites/la-riots

http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/la-riots-deaths/

https://laist.com/2017/04/28/radio_korea.php

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=8887

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/communities-work-build-understanding-25-years-after-la-riots-n748591

Tagging you as a resource @visibilityofcolor

“On earth tell me what’s a black life worth A bottle of juice, no excuse the truth hurts”

Tupac

#latasha harlins #1992 LA Riots #Rodney King riots #Los Angeles #black-asian conflict #claire jean kim #black-asian coalition building #racial triangulation #mine

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