#book access and literacy for the blind is not as easy as people think | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blindbeta · 3 years

Note

How do you think infrastructure would be different in a culture where everyone is blind?

Hi anon! I like this question. I think it would obviously depend on the culture and time period, but I have a few ideas. I’ll just try to write ideas for a general Western culture, because I am aware of more of that, but obviously the culture itself would influence what changes occurred or did not occur.

Education.

Look to blind schools! I’m thinking about training for Braille as very small children, which mostly includes strengthening finger sensitivity. Braille would also be taught the way reading regular print is, either in schools or at home. Regular print would probably also be available and large print would be normalized, especially to minimize eye strain. Computer literacy would include screen-readers and Braille displays. Websites would be designed for accessibility for everyone and this would include large for those who like to read some print.

In classes, people would use a slate and stylus, Braille notetakers, etc, depending on time and what was easier to carry. Braillers would also be more high tech in general, even if it might be considered old school, or the high tech stuff would have come sooner for each device.

Braille, O&M, and life skills classes would be normal for everyone. O&M would probably be done mostly by people with some sight, although this might change if everyone is blind anyway.

Lifestyle.

Things like telescopes (monoculars, minifiers) would be normal for low vision people, maybe even something cool like ‘oh I got the latest telescope model for my birthday!” It would be something shared with friends for fun. Something like SunuBand would be like, I don’t know, a car of something. People would show status through how cool their cane was, if they had a Sonar cane, like WeWalk, etc.

In schools, and in life, I think people with some sight, like me, would not face any pressure to use it. In real life, people with residual sight are expected to use what sight they can, even if it is inconvenient or painful.

More emphasis would be places on other sense, such as touch, smell, and soatial awareness.

Safety.

The world would probably be safer, structurally. There would be high contrast stairs everywhere, if there are stairs at all. There would be more in place that makes it safer to walk around outside, such as, idk, less of a risk of hurt yourself by stepping off a curb? I’m not even sure if roads would be designed the way they are now. Would people drive if they have some vision? Would everyone have cars that don’t need vision? Anyway, more safety with blind people in mind.

Transportation.

Transportation would be better. Maybe public transportation would be more accessible, easier to navigate, and more readily available in rural areas. Maybe trains would be more popular in every country, because they run on a schedule and you can carry more people for longer periods of time. Trains can also allow people to travel long distances, which can be harder for blind people (who almost always can’t drive, as far as I know) who can’t drive cars and may not have money for flights, or want to avoid them for environmental reasons.

Accessibility.

Braille would be everywhere. Buttons would be tactile, especially on kitchen appliances. I imagine a lot of the tools blind people use in the kitchen, such as bump dots for microwave buttons, would already be standard. Talking or otherwise accessible things would be cheaper, more common, and considered staples for everyone. Because they would be made for the wider population of blind people, accessibility would not be a niche or extra thing. It would not be associated with kindness, but a standard fare.

Clothing would be different. Designs would be tactile and/or high contrast, where they are often flat. I think colors would still be important, for everyone, but the tags would probably have labels. Some brand designed for blind people have actual Braille fabric on the clothes, which is cool. While color scanners do exist and would probably be used, I think other methods would be utilized if clothing is designed with blind people in mind from the start. Wearing glasses would be cool, you guys.

In terms of entertainment, I think most of it would audio-based or interactive. The radio and live theatre would be more popular than they are now. If visual mediums still existed, they would all come with audio descriptions and they would be better than they sometimes are now. TV would be written with audio descriptions in mind, if they didn’t talk about more of what they were doing.

Art would be tactile, period. Maybe we would have something by now that allows you to feel digital art. There are already amazing forms of tactil art out there, so think more of that from all cultures. Rather than adapted or described with the blind in mind, art would be naturally tactile even if the artist could see what they were creating well enough.

Online.

Obviously image descriptions would be everywhere, although I feel people would naturally include less screen-shots and less pictures. Again, accessibility would be a more mainstream thing than it is now. I’m thinking there would be more self-care posts, such as about dealing with eye strain headaches. Although I think some of the issues we have would be lessened when the entirety of humanity was on the blind spectrum. I’m also thinking about fun quizzes like, Describe Your Dream Home and I’ll Guess What Type Blindness You Have. Debates about disability in general would happen in regular spaces. YouTube would have contained audio descriptions from the start, and perhaps highly visual content would be less common or naturally described in the video, such as person describing what they are holding before talking about it.

Work/Career.

Productivity would be measure differently. Accessibility would just be a thing. Like, at a meeting, “What tools do you like to use the most?” Working from home would be an option. Work would be open to and even designed for blind people. Blind people wouldn’t have the low employments rates they do now, or else no one would work. A lot of tools we use to make things accessible wouldn’t be necessary if things were designed for blind people in the first place. Subminimum wage would not be a thing.

There would probably be jobs and career opportunities that don’t exist now.

Blind people wouldn’t be more likely or even expected to live in poverty.

Money.

Money would be tactile, labeled, large print, and high contrast. If we still used cash at all.

Inovation.

I think we would have a lot of cool stuff. Countries might even compete to be the first to create things for the blind population which, again, would be everyone in this scenario.

Food/menus.

Restaurants would be easy for blind people to navigate. Menus would be offered in Braille and large print. Maybe plates would be made sectioned so people could know where their food was. I’m thinking about blind accessibility videos and restaurants run by totally blind people. Hmm. Glasses would not be as common at all, because they can be hard for people to see. I have broken too many glasses myself.

If people were to buy food, such as local produce, bags would probably come with homemade Braille or large print signs. Canned food and boxes for cooking would have Braille on them initially. Giving food to others, such as bringing food or snacks for the home when you visit, would come with either an explanation about what it was or a label.

I could go on. I don’t want this too be too long. Basically, what I want to get across is that a lot more than accessibility would changes if everyone is blind. I didn’t want to get into too many heavy topics because this is more of a fun question. However. feel free to add whatever you like. I believe history itself would be altered in many, many ways that have influence on life today, so I could have gone on about that. I could write books on the lifestyle and safety and work sections. And all cultures have their own ways of viewing, supporting, and limiting blind people, so this could change a little or a lot depending on what your culture or the culture you are writing about is like.

-BlindBeta

#blind #blind life #blindbeta

192 notes · View notes

un-enfant-immature · 4 years

Text

As ADA turns 30, tech is just getting started helping people with disabilities

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 paved the way for decades of incremental changes to the way buildings, businesses, and laws accommodate people with a wide variety of disabilities. At 30 years old this week, the law’s effect on tech has been profound, but there’s still a lot of work to do.

The ADA originally applied mainly to things like buildings and government resources, but over the years (and with improvements and amendments) came to be much broader than that. As home computers, the web, and eventually apps became popular, they too became subject to ADA requirements — though to what extent is still a matter under debate.

I asked a few of the most prominent companies and advocacy organizations what they think about how tech has improved the everyday lives of people with disabilities, and where it has so far fallen short.

Those who responded had the most to say about how tech has helped, of course, but also offered suggestions (and recriminations) for an industry that has in some ways only recently begun to truly include people with disabilities in its processes — and in many ways has yet to do so.

Claire Stanley, Advocacy and Outreach Specialist at the American Council for the Blind

“Tech has opened the door to so many things,” said Stanley. “Books, for instance — 10 years ago to get a book you might have to wait for the Library of Congress to convert it to audio. Now, because of Kindles and e-readers, the day a book comes out I can buy it. Access is a lot faster than it once was.”

“The ability to do certain things in the workplace, too. The caveat is, people don’t always design software to work with accessibility technology. Designing with screen readers in mind can be very helpful, but if they don’t, that opens up whole new problems,” she said.

“Companies just don’t think about accessibility, so they design a product that’s totally inaccessible to screen readers. To my understanding, if you design it right from the get go it should be easy to make it compatible. There are the WCAG standards — if programmers took even a cursory glance at these, they’d be like, oh I get it!,” said Stanley. “And I’ve heard from a lot of people that when you make something accessible to the blind it makes it better for everybody.”

That’s exactly the problem that Fable intends to alleviate by providing software testers with various disabilities as a service to companies that may not have thought that far ahead in their QA process.

Fable aims to make disability-inclusive design as simple as a service

New devices and services are also changing the landscape for blind folks:

“Braille literacy is going down because people are turning to audio synthesizers — but new designs of braille readers are coming out, and they’re getting cheaper. I have mine right next to me,” said Stanley.

Of course for the deaf-blind community braille is still indispensable. One dad hoping to teach his daughter braille recently built his own inexpensive braille education device — not something you were likely to do 20 years ago.

The BecDot is a toy that helps teach vision-impaired kids to read braille

“And Aira is an app that has been around for about four years – basically, though video from your phone, a person on the other end can answer questions and identify things. I use it all the time. They’re starting to integrate AI to do some simple things like read signs,” Stanley said.

“We’ve also been working a lot in the autonomous vehicle space. That will open up a lot of doors, and not just for blind people, but people with other disabilities, the elderly, children,” she added. “I know we have a long way to go, but we’ve been fortunate enough to be at the table with companies and Congress when we’re talking about what making an autonomous vehicle accessible looks like.”

Eve Andersson, Director of Accessibility at Google

“To me, one of the most notable tech advances has been changes in captioning technology. About two years after I started at Google, in 2009, we introduced automatic captioning on YouTube using AI. Then 8 years later, we introduced the ability to caption sound effects (laughter, music, applause, etc) to make video content even more accessible,” said Andersson.

youtube

She pointed out that although captions were originally made with accessibility for deaf and hard of hearing users, they quickly became helpful for many other users who wanted to be able to watch videos on mute, in other languages, and so on.

“Programming computers to be able to understand and display or translate language is allowing for so many more advances that benefit everyone. For example, speech recognition and voice assistants have made it possible to have the speech to text features that we have today, like voice typing in Google Docs or dictation in Chrome OS,” she said.

Live transcription and captioning in Android are a boon to the hearing-impaired

Live transcribe is another feature that tech has enabled, letting hearing impaired people follow in-person communications live.

“Before the ADA, some parts of the physical world remained inaccessible to people who are blind or low-vision,” Andersson said. “Today, you can find braille under almost all signs in the United States, which paved the way for us to create products like Google BrailleBack and the TalkBack braille keyboard, which both allow braille users to gain the information they need and communicate effectively with the world around them. In addition, the spirit of ADA in making the physical world accessible to people with disabilities is what inspired innovations like Lookout, an app that helps people who are blind or low-vision identify the world around them.”

“One area that we’re thinking about more and more is how to leverage technology to be more helpful for people with cognitive disabilities. This is an incredibly diverse space spanning many different needs, but it remains largely unexplored,” she said. “Action blocks” in Android are an early effort to address it, simplifying multi-step processes into single buttons. But the team is looking into larger scale improvements to help out those who have trouble using a smart device out of the box.

“As an industry, we need to work to ensure that people with disabilities – from employees to consultants to users – are always included in the process of developing a product, research area, or initiative from the very beginning,” she said. “People with disabilities or who have family members with disabilities on my team bring their experiences to the table and we make better products as a result.”

Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy at Apple

“It’s fundamentally about culture,” said Herrlinger. “From the beginning Apple has always believed accessibility is a human right and this core value is still evident in everything we design today.”

Though somewhat general of a statement, Apple has the history to back it up. The company has famously been ahead of others on the accessibility curve for decades. TechCrunch columnist Steve Aquino has documented these efforts over the years, summing many up in this feature.

Image Credits: Apple

The iPhone, being Apple’s flagship product since its introduction, has also been its main platform for accessibility.

“The historical impact of iPhone as a mainstream consumer product is well documented. What is less understood though is how life changing iPhone and our other products have been for disability communities,” said Herrlinger. “Over time iPhone has become the most powerful and popular assistive device ever. It broke the mold of previous thinking because it showed accessibility could in fact be seamlessly built into a device that all people can use universally.”

The feature that has been helpful to the most people is likely VoiceOver, which intelligently reads off the contents of the screen in a way that allows blind users to navigate the OS easily. One such user posted her experience recently, racking up millions of views:

I thought I would share how I, as someone who is visually impaired use my iPhone. pic.twitter.com/wPI9smOIq0

— Kristy Viers (@Kristy_Viers) July 26, 2020

As for where the tech industry has room to grow, Herrlinger said: “Representation and inclusion are critical. We believe in the mantra of many within disability communities: ‘Nothing about us without us.’ We started a dedicated accessibility team in 1985, but like all things on inclusion — accessibility should be everyone’s job at Apple.”

Melissa Malzkuhn, Founder & Creative Director, Motion Light Lab at Gallaudet University

“If not for the laws in place to safeguard our access, no one would implement them,” Malzkuhn said frankly. “The ADA really helped push greater access, but we also saw a lot of change in how people think, and what is considered socially responsible. More and more people now see that their use of social media comes with a sense of social responsibility to make their posts accessible. We would like to see that social accountability with all individuals, and with all companies, big and small.”

Gallaudet is a university that aims to be “barrier-free for deaf and hard of hearing students,” providing a huge amount of resources and instruction for that community. Many of the technologies its staff has used for years have seen major improvements as mainstream users have flocked to virtual meetings and the like and found them wanting.

Image Credits: Microsoft

“We have more video meeting options than ever, and they continue to improve. We also have seen a constant improvement in our experience with video relay services,” Malzkuhn said. She also cited voice-to-text as having improved a lot and provided serious utility; Gallaudet’s Technology Access Program has worked with Google’s Live Transcribe.

“Language-mapping processing, and the early pioneering work on gesture and sign recognition is exciting,” she added, though the latter is still a ways from practical use. She was unsparing in her criticism of the many attempts at smart gloves, however: “Enough with the sign language gloves. It reinforces a bigger ideology: Give deaf people something to wear and our communication issues will go away. It is not about putting the burden of communication on one group of people.”

“I would say that the Apple iPad has revolutionized how we look at the experience of reading for deaf children. In the Motion Light Lab here at Gallaudet University, we have created bilingual storybook apps, intersecting both ASL videos and written text on the same interface,” she said. “But technology will never replace the humanity in all of us. All it takes are attitudes and the willingness to communicate, regardless of technology. Learning a bit of sign language goes a long way.”

iOS 14 lets deaf users set alerts for important sounds, among other clever accessibility perks

Malzkuhn emphasized the value of inclusion and chastised companies that fail to take even elementary steps in hiring and process.

“Companies that hire Deaf people have it right. Companies that focus on inclusive design and accessibility as an important and ‘non-negotiable’ aspect in product design also have it right. Their products are invariably superior to inaccessible products,” she said, while those who do not are guilty of “a serious omission. Many companies strive to create products to ‘help’ our lives, but if we are not in the room in the first place, and if we do not have a seat at the table, that is not helpful. Inclusive design starts with an inclusive team.”

Investors need to look at startups focused on accessibility and deafness as well. Like any growing community, they need funding and mentorship.

Malzkuhn also wanted to make sure that companies are thinking about the deaf and hard of hearing not just as consumers of an end product, but full-fledged users.

“That is a driving force in my work — we need to always give tools so anyone can design technology. We need to ensure that we have the responsibility of training, teaching, and making those accessible so we develop and cultivate the next generation of young deaf people who design and construct, who are architects of systems, who can program systems, as well as being end users of technology.”

ObjectiveEd is building a better digital curriculum for vision-impaired kids

Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft

“On a personal level, the ADA drove a new bar of awareness and provision of captioning, interpreting which are both invaluable to me in the workplace, home, and navigating crucial life needs like medical care,” said Lay-Flurrie. “Technology can unlock solutions that can help empower people with disabilities in the spirit of the ADA and lead to greater innovations for everyone. To enable transformative change accessibility needs to be a priority.”

Like Google’s Eve Andersson, Lay-Flurrie highlighted captioning as a major recent advance.

“Captioning, like many other aspects of accessibility is increasingly woven into the fabric of what we do,” she said. “Captioning has evolved so much in the last 30 years, and accelerated as a result of AI and ML in the last 5. Teams now has AI captioning integrated and we have seen the impact of that during COVID with Teams Captioning usage up 30x from a few months prior.”

“Accessibility has also diversified – with technologies like Seeing AI, Learning Tools, and the Xbox Adaptive Controller as Microsoft focuses on inclusive design, building with and for people with disabilities in these instances, creating breakthrough technologies for blind/low vision, dyslexia and mobility,” she said.

The Adaptive Controller was one of the best hardware surprises of recent years — a device for playing games and interacting with computers and consoles that’s hyper-compatible and clearly the result of immense effort and expenditure.

Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller is an inspiring example of inclusive design

It’s an example of one of the “doors that remain closed and need to be opened, vehemently and with speed,” as Lay-Flurrie put it. “Seeing AI is a great lens on what is possible here, and I get excited to think about what AI/ML, as well as AR can do across the spectrum of disability. Additionally, we believe that AI can help unlock solutions to some of the biggest challenges people with disabilities face, which is why the AI for Accessibility program plays a crucial role in how Microsoft is working to drive inclusive innovation.”

Lay-Flurrie had a good deal to say on how to integrate inclusivity into a company’s processes — and with good reason, seeing as Microsoft has been a leader on these issues for years.

“Accessibility isn’t optional. It must be part of your business, ecosystem and managed/measured,” she said. “It starts with people and we have really focused on how we build an inclusive culture, pipeline of talent. Though we are still continuing to grow and learn, have also taken steps to share our learnings with other organizations through resources like the Autism Hiring Playbook, Accessibility at a Glance training resources, the Supported Employment Program Toolkit, and the Inclusive Design Toolkit.”

“We realize that each organization has its own pace and starting point. The first step is to recognize the need to design for accessibility,” she continued. “It’s particularly important to evaluate the maturity of a product development lifecycle through the lens of accessibility and look to build in assistive features from the start, not bolted on later in the process. But there is more to do here. Until then, my mantra stands – if you don’t know its accessible, its not.”

Mike Shebanek, Head of Accessibility at Facebook

“The portability, ease of use, affordability, and built-in accessibility of smartphones has allowed people with disabilities to be more connected, more mobile and more independent than anyone thought possible thirty years ago,” said Shebanek. “The rise of voice technologies like speech synthesis, speech recognition, and voice control of devices has also radically improved the lives of people with disabilities.”

“Facebook created React Native, and made it open source, so that developers can create accessible mobile apps. We’ve also helped set global digital standards for web accessibility that enable everyone to enjoy a more accessible Internet,” he continued.

Like the others, he suggests that tech companies need to consider accessibility needs and methods early on, and increase the numbers of people with disabilities in the development and testing process.

Machine learning is helping address some major obstacles in a more automated way: “we’re using it at Facebook to power automatic video captioning and create automatic Alt-Text to provide spoken descriptions of photographs to people who are blind,” said Shebanek. “But these are only recent innovations and the industry has barely begun to scratch the service of what’s possible in the next 30 years as we begin to thoughtfully address the needs of people with disabilities.”

#TechCrunch

0 notes

workfromhom · 4 years

Text

As ADA turns 30, tech is just getting started helping people with disabilities

Claire Stanley, Advocacy and Outreach Specialist at the American Council for the Blind

Fable aims to make disability-inclusive design as simple as a service

New devices and services are also changing the landscape for blind folks:

The BecDot is a toy that helps teach vision-impaired kids to read braille

“And Aira is an app that has been around for about four years – basically, though video from your phone, a person on the other end can answer questions and identify things. I use it all the time. They��re starting to integrate AI to do some simple things like read signs,” Stanley said.

Eve Andersson, Director of Accessibility at Google

youtube

Live transcription and captioning in Android are a boon to the hearing-impaired

Live transcribe is another feature that tech has enabled, letting hearing impaired people follow in-person communications live.

Sarah Herrlinger, Director of Global Accessibility Policy at Apple

Image Credits: Apple

The iPhone, being Apple’s flagship product since its introduction, has also been its main platform for accessibility.

I thought I would share how I, as someone who is visually impaired use my iPhone. pic.twitter.com/wPI9smOIq0

— Kristy Viers (@Kristy_Viers) July 26, 2020

Melissa Malzkuhn, Founder & Creative Director, Motion Light Lab at Gallaudet University

Image Credits: Microsoft

iOS 14 lets deaf users set alerts for important sounds, among other clever accessibility perks

Malzkuhn emphasized the value of inclusion and chastised companies that fail to take even elementary steps in hiring and process.

Investors need to look at startups focused on accessibility and deafness as well. Like any growing community, they need funding and mentorship.

Malzkuhn also wanted to make sure that companies are thinking about the deaf and hard of hearing not just as consumers of an end product, but full-fledged users.

ObjectiveEd is building a better digital curriculum for vision-impaired kids

Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Chief Accessibility Officer at Microsoft

Like Google’s Eve Andersson, Lay-Flurrie highlighted captioning as a major recent advance.

Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller is an inspiring example of inclusive design

Lay-Flurrie had a good deal to say on how to integrate inclusivity into a company’s processes — and with good reason, seeing as Microsoft has been a leader on these issues for years.

Mike Shebanek, Head of Accessibility at Facebook

from Facebook – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/30PlPI0 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Facebook – TechCrunch

0 notes

tipsycad147 · 5 years

Text

Leandra Witchwood

Preparing For Winter – A Spiritual Alignment

As we move beyond Samhain and closer to winter, we feel the chill in the air sharpen. The wind seems more vigorous while the days shorten. I take this time to cleanse and organise.

For me this time of year is when I move inward and further define my path. I am not an Outdoor person when temps fall too low. I am much more content staying inside allowing the wind and cold to do its thing outside. So as I am drawn indoors physically. I am also drawn inward spiritually, domestically, and intellectually.

Before I am ready to settle in for the winter I find myself needing to do a few things. Since my Magickal practice is enveloped within my home and mundane life, I find that doing some mundane chores is essential in maintaining my spiritual and Magickal essence.

Here are a few key things I like to do each year between Samhain and Yule.

Cleaning: Living and Work Spaces:

You’ve heard of spring cleaning, well I also try to do this in the fall. I use the autumn seasonal transition to organise and clean up my living spaces and work area. This year the task is more daunting for me because we are in the process of moving. The house we are moving into is an old house that being refurbished. We have a lot of work ahead of us, far more than usual. So I am feeling a little overwhelmed in the process.

Typically during this time of year I go through our clothes, cupboards, etc. and clean out anything that is worn out, unused, and the like. This project includes my kitchen pantry, attic, basement, my office, and bathrooms… the whole house really. I have one exception, I will not touch is my husband’s office. Nope! Not going there!

In all the other rooms, I make three piles:

1-keep pile,

1-donate pile,

& 1-toss pile.

Then I deep clean each room down to the mini blinds. I find this most helpful in keeping my home and life clutter free. When my living and work spaces are clean I am more able to focus, and deepen my thoughts. Oddly enough I create better in clean and uncluttered areas. I am not the typical creative personality I suppose. If there is too much mess or items in my way I cannot work. I cannot think, and my creativity is blocked.

To me my creative side is infused with my spiritual side. I cannot have one without the other. So it is essential for me to live and work in an environment that is clean and organised.

2 Spiritual Cleansing:

With any spiritual practice I think cleansing, beyond general cleaning and organising is important. So after I deep clean the rooms in our home, I then go through and smudge each room.

After smudging I then use a cleansing spray & spell to refresh and deepen the cleansing process. I prefer Dragon’s Blood as my burning smudge and I make a cleansing spray. I will give you the recipe and spell work at the end of this post.

It is important to cleanse all the corners, and areas of each room that are often over looked.

3 Gathering & Drying of Herbs:

As the weather get colder and as my garden is laying itself to rest, I take this time, (before it is too cold) to harvest any final herbs and the few remaining vegetables from my garden. After I harvest, I take this time to dry what I can, including the last of my tomatoes. By this time I have already canned everything and what is left I either use fresh or I dry for later use.

Since I usually begin with the kitchen in my annual cleaning process, I have also emptied all of my old herbs from my kitchen cupboard. Once I have dried what remains, I replace my stock by replacing my stock with freshly dried herbs.

It is important to use tightly sealing jars for storing you herbs and spices. I like to use ones that are meaningful and easily identifiable. The photo you see here are some of my own herb jars. These are my favourite jars.

They seal very tightly. They also have some helpful info on them for easy reference. The important thing to remember, is to store your herbs and spices in a cool dark cupboard. Light and heat will damage your herbs and make them age more quickly. Try to store them away from your oven, but where they can still be easily accessed.

4 Winterising:

From my garden to my vehicle, I like to take time to make sure things are ready for the cold. As for the garden I go through and make sure my perennial plants are well covered for the harsh winter. I like to use leaves and other natural materials to help make sure they can make it through the winter. In my area we often have cold temperatures with our snow fall to help insulate, I find covering them with leaves is an effective method. My Annuals that die off each season are removed from the beds and I layer the beds with newspaper, leaves and mulch. This will help feed the beds and generate compost for spring planting.

An important spiritual ritual I conduct for my garden is making sure that it is energetically at rest for the winter. I like to go through and feel the energy of my garden. When you do this enough you will notice the subtle plant and earth energies from spring to fall is very different. I do this is silently so I am certain to pick up on any subtle vibrations. This is a great time to do a garden meditation, and final blessing before it is too cold to do so.

As for my home I go through and make sure the windows are closed tight, I wash and place extra blankets in each room. I make sure the animals have extra warmth with bedding and blankets. Even the living room gets extra blankets for the couch. This year I think we need some extra pillows as well.

One other thing I do is take my car out to my mechanic for its usual winterizing checkup and oil change. I prefer to have my mechanic do this, but if you are savvy you could do this yourself. I certainly don’t want to get stuck on the road in the cold so this is one precaution I take each winter. When this is complete I do the same smudging and spiritual cleansing for my car as I did for my home. Lastly, I will conduct a safe travel spell and hang a small bunch of herbs from my mirror as part of the spell work.

5 Soul Searching/Spiritual Sojourn –

I have very little free time or “down time” outside of running my business, teaching cooking classes, running The Magick Kitchen, maintaining our home, and my volunteer obligations. I love all the things I do, so I make sure I schedule my time accordingly. I am not one for using my down time for watching TV, especially the news. I find most shows and newscasts are stress inducing. I try hard to keep stress out of my life.

Instead of parking it in front of the TV when I have “down time”, I like to read. After all, Witchcraft is a path of literacy, and it is important that we educate ourselves. I spend a lot of time reading new books and re-reading my old favourites. When fall quickly turns into winter I spend more time inside, and reading is a perfect way to pass the time.

Many of the books I read are of a spiritual and educational nature. They are intended for personal and spiritual development. I read the thoughts, opinions, and ideals of other spiritual people and spiritual leaders. This is what keeps my mind flexible and open. Because I have little time to spend on reading, one book might take me a few weeks, and that’s okay. As long as I am working toward expanding my mind, I feel good.

Cleansing Lemon and Rosemary Room Spray & Spell Work

[mpprecipe-recipe:13] Well that is a good summary of how I prepare for winter. I hope you enjoyed this little run through of my rituals. I also hope this has inspired you to create your own rituals for this time of year.

http://www.themagickkitchen.com/preparing-winter-spiritual-alignment/

0 notes

peakwealth · 6 years

Text

The Will of the People (2)

The Public Against the Public Interest

“To the fool-king belongs the world.“

(Friedrich Schiller, 1759-1805)

January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. Day one of the new age when reality turned liquid. (Screenshot)

Of all the canaries twittering away in the coal mine of Western dystopia, the one that chants about infant immunizations must be among the loudest. The other day I noticed a picture taken during a demo of people opposed to the compulsory immunization of their children. One of the so-called antivaxxers held up a printed sign that read

STIFLE

UNCOMFY

SCIENCE

The words have shock value for they capture the present revolt against reason and empiricism, against what is perceived by many as the unsettling, uncomfy nature of science -- as if it were a stained old IKEA sofa to be dragged onto the sidewalk and disposed of before dawn. The notion has taken hold that if science makes you feel bad, if it doesn't resonate with your inner self, or your religious faith, you can simply reject it. Opt for 'science' you are comfortable with, be it pseudoscience or complete bogus. Or no science at all.

There is of course nothing new about the discomfort caused by science or by any other sort of manifestly rational knowledge. The late German philosopher Norbert Elias (1) explains, as have countless others, how the human species, once it has domesticated the forces of nature, ends up feeling disenchanted. When the world is no longer revealed through religious myth but through reason, it turns out to be a thoroughly unsettling place. Existence itself, stripped of magic and fantasy, is a sobering affair. And the closer nature is examined, the less it shows any sign of making sense. It seems to lack the deeper logic that humans have always craved to give purpose to their short, insecure lives.

In other words, when reality does not match our hopes and dreams, many of us will reject it out of hand. But, says Elias, we have to grow up, we have to get over it: the universe is neither good nor bad, it is blind and doesn't care about us.

There we have it. In a blind universe, not only is there no god and no devil, there is no Santa either.

To make matters worse, observable reality isn't what it used to be. Ever since it came up with the story of Adam and Eve, authority has looked upon factual knowledge with suspicion. Knowledge was and still is equated with arrogance and transgression. For thousands of years, religions have ignored or contradicted rational thinking and have instead provided comfort to those terrified by the unknown as well as to those who revel in it.

But as science is not compatible with religious dogma, so empirical knowledge necessarily challenges ignorance. When science expands as rapidly as it does today, the world inevitably becomes a more disorienting place to people who are suspicious of the modern age and of all its complexity. Rather than bending their convictions to accommodate the evidence before them, they resent science for failing to provide the reassurance that will allow them to sleep at night.

Rational thinking can only go so far. Lacking transcendence and being a purely human enterprise, science is 'only' a process based on the best available evidence and therefore liable to change over time. It does not provide absolute answers and is therefore as powerless as ever against the rigid beliefs suggested by tradition and sanctioned by society.

The quest for unscientific answers never ends (Jehovah’s witness, 2016, Buffalo, NY, USA)

Again, such stubbornness is hardly new. Back in 1801, Friedrich Schiller wrote the famous line that "against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain" (in the somewhat less elegant German original: Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens). This leads me to surmise that today's problem is perhaps less with the discomfort produced by scientific relativism as with the word stifle, the aggressive readiness to sweep reality under the rug, to look the other way, claiming it is 'part of a vast cover-up'.

In this respect I may be behind the times. A few years ago I started hearing the argument that reason and science were evil ploys used by the elites to keep the people down. (Tellingly perhaps, the same was said about literacy or correct spelling as another tool of oppression).

Uninhibited anti-intellectualism like this has gained traction. It was adopted by right-wing extremists around the time when hooliganism morphed into political revolt, when the ultras, the heavies, les casseurs emerged from their soccer stadiums and moved into politics - identity politics.

But why? It is easy to point at the effects of capitalism or the intuitions of steamroller materialism (impulse shopping, binge watching, uncontrolled eating...) which in turn have given rise to impulse politics and gut-based decision making as exemplified by Donald Trump. I persist in thinking that at least some of today's populism finds its roots in trash culture, the unrelenting cult of celebrity, in computer games, spectator sports and so-called reality TV, all of which spread symbiotically in the late 20th century.

They ended up infantilizing a broad section of the population and unmooring them from evidence-based thinking. The resulting narcissism of the selfie generation and their lack of empathy then went on to infect the internet (2). Add the rising incidence of educational failure in 'advanced' societies and a new age of ignorance, superstition and triviality has emerged.

With his ample background in reality TV, Donald Trump quickly came to epitomize a post-political age where elections were popularity contests or open invitations to insurrection. The ballot box must look increasingly quaint in an age of web manipulation and click-farming where "influencers" gather vast constituencies of "followers" on Twitter or Instagram.

‘DEUS OMNIA VIDET’: from an all-knowing god to an all-seeing internet. (London,UK, 2018)

The internet has thrown everything wide open. Without reliable gatekeepers to police the discourse or to catch post-factual nonsense, it has given free rein to people who distrust reason and dislike complexity. It also suggests that, just as there is convenient and inconvenient science, there is a good truth and a bad truth, and that one is free to choose between them.

Before the internet became universal, factual reality was better shielded from manifest unreason or scientific deviancy. All kinds of people held all manner of wild ideas, as ever, but there was a cordon sanitaire around them that kept them at a distance. In order to publish scientific findings, for instance, you needed academic credentials and peer reviews. Getting any book published was a big deal. Access to the old media, far fewer in number and therefore more influential, was similarly restricted, ring-fenced, filtered by professionals whose job it was to check and double-check information. Such a system of checks and balances may have been perceived as censorship or elitism by some, but it kept the madmen out of the room.

Not any more. The unmediated democratization of access has meant that anyone with an easy onscreen manner, no matter their lack of qualifications, can build up a following of millions. What works for make-up tutorials on YouTube can also do wonders to subvert the political process.

Liberated from restraint and social control, it wasn’t long before the web turned toxic. It was overwhelmed by conspiratorial fantasies, doublespeak and torrents of resentment.

Conspiracy thinking derives from paranoid disbelief, the haha! suspicion that things are not what they appear to be, and seems to be as intuitive as belief itself. It can be argued that one is indistinguishable from the other.

Belief in alternative medicine, in magic and miracles has been around for ages, as have religious practices such as the refusal to accept life-saving blood transfusions. Sometimes reason and paranoia actually intersect as in the perfectly rational distrust of big pharma. Generally, though, amalgamation is central to conspiracy thinking, as is the malicious disregard for observable reality.

The world changed two days after Donald Trump's was sworn in as president of the United States when photographs showed that the crowds along Washington's National Mall were much smaller than those at Barack Obama's inauguration. Not so, said Kellyanne Conway, a member of Trump's inner circle, they had 'alternative facts'. The photographs were not to be believed, your eyes deceived you. It was a historic moment. Trump's assault on reason, irrefutable facts and the media who report them hasn't stopped since that day.

Needless to say, post-truthism or postmodern disinformation didn't start with Donald Trump. Born-again George W. Bush was famously disconnected from reality, perhaps never more so than when he mistakenly declared war on Saddam Hussein in 2003 or when, standing on the deck of an American aircraft carrier only a few weeks later, he declared 'mission accomplished'.

But Donald Trump has created a matrix of all-out lies, disinformation and utter incoherence that is unprecedented and stands in the way of meaningful governance. Trump declares white to be black, only to reverse himself two minutes later and when confronted with the evidence of what he just said, turns around and says it's fake news. And his political constituency doesn't seem to mind.

Defactualization and magical thinking are now around every corner. Farcical as it may seem, some people continue to embrace the belief that mass shootings in the US are inside jobs staged by actors, that 9/11 was an obvious fabrication or, more insidiously perhaps, that European Union bureaucrats in Brussels are to blame for anaemic vacuum cleaners or dim light bulbs forced upon the United Kingdom.

Facilitated by social media, regression has corrupted politics and fed an us-against-them narrative. After moving into the mainstream with Donald Trump, it was embraced by populist imitators such as Italy's Movimento 5 Stelle (Five-star movement). They swept the elections in Italy's underprivileged, undereducated Mezzogiorno earlier this year. As a result, conspiracy theorists are now part of the ruling coalition in Rome and the incidence of measles is on the rise as unvaccinated children spread the disease. Politics in Poland and Hungary have similarly been upended by paranoia, anti-establishment rhetoric and outright anti-Semitism.

Wave after wave of primitivism and voter rage are destabilizing Western societies. Some of that anger has been a long time coming. Politics has lacked credibility for decades. Europe's leadership has been weak and often asleep at the wheel. In failing to assert its historical legitimacy, the gilded bureaucracy in Brussels has become an easy target of popular fury, no matter how uninformed or ill-advised.

The big, ugly question has become this: what to do, in representative democracies with universal franchise, when the will of the people is increasingly at variance with the public interest?

How can governments be expected to govern when hostile voters support irrational, counterproductive governance? How does the British government go about implementing Brexit, a decision imposed by a belligerent electorate against the country's manifest interest? How can the European Union continue when so many members of its own parliament oppose the very idea of a united Europe?

The Roman empire took centuries to unravel. We live in speedier times.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) Norbert Elias (1897-1990): Humana conditio (1985)

(2) ‘They Laughed at Berlusconi’ http://peakwealth.tumblr.com/post/146399295392