#but on the other hand i have a psychiatrist to help w the actual mechanics of my intrusive thoughts-- IS THIS NOT WHAT THE MEDS ARE FOR?--

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

[riviae]

just venting abt my own indecisiveness lmao: 

i’m so stressed rt now :/ 

i’m graduating which is great, but i honestly don’t know what to do next. i’ve got a few viable options but i’m frozen at the crossroads of my education out of sheer indecisiveness. what’s the right choice?? is there such a thing as a ‘right’ choice?? should i fight for the hardest path or should i take the easier path, the one with the least remaining schooling? if i make a standard cost-benefit analysis then of course the easiest option is the best--but it feels like i’m giving up on my original dream. 

option 1: med school. that’s what all this work’s been abt--there needs to be doctors that are knowledgeable & supportive of lgbt+, neurodivergent, and disabled ppl as well as poc & understand how these identities intersect/overlap. the state of biomedical ethics is absolutely awful right now--it’s not a required course/topic in the majority of medical schools & so doctors are never really challenged to think past their inherent biases or how they should treat their patients or how knowing a patient’s background can aid in the patient-doctor relationship. patients aren’t a commodity, yet i can count on 1 hand the amt of doctors who know the 4 established virtues of medical ethics or can even explain them: beneficence (you must do what is best/good for the patient), maleficence (”do no harm”), justice (i.e., appropriate rationing of health care, services, supplies, & actively keeping historically-targeted groups of medical malpractice from harm), & autonomy (arguably the most important imo--the patient has their own autonomy & a doctor can /never/ take that away/do things against the patient’s will, which, by definition, makes mental health institutions unethical but i digress).

rt now i’m interested in working as either a neurologist, psychiatrist, pathologist, or specializing specifically in rural medicine (i.e., underserved populations/small towns), but can i really devote the next 8 yrs of my life to an occupation wrought w/ sky-high suicide rates, 36 hr shifts, & all the emotional trauma that comes w/ a field so intertwined w/ death?? idk if i’m strong enough for the demands. i don’t have any interest in money or prestige (i’d prefer to have no attention at all honestly), but i just wanna use my love of science to do some good, no matter how small. 

option 2: PhD in neuro. makes logical sense since i’m getting my MSc in a month & also neuro is my fave science of any subfield. i could do a lot of good w/ my research interests (that being of neurodivergent populations--seeing as i have adhd myself). understanding the neurological mechanism(s) behind neurodevelopmental disorders, for instance, can help in reducing harmful symptoms of certain disorders ((note: i do not mean wanting to ‘cure’ autism or anything that obtuse. more like providing pharmacological or genetic-based approaches to therapies. so for instance, i’m a big supporter of the cortical excitability hypothesis of autism which basically states that difficulties in sensory processing, insofar as being especially attentive to stimuli i.e., hypersensitivity/hyposensitivity is concerned, is due to the cortex’s inability to mitigate excitatory signals. so an ASD individual will experience sound or touch/texture aversion bc their brains are truly experiencing the sensory inputs at an incredibly high or low signal, as if their brain is a radio stuck continuously at a volume of either 100 or zero. it’s also why ASD & epilepsy are so often found to be comorbid--hypersensitivity to stimuli is more common & cortical excitability/excess firing of neurons outside of phase synchrony can explain the mechanics behind epilepsy too. oh, & this could also explain adhd symptoms since adhd and autism have considerable overlap both in symptoms as well as brain structure pathology). long story short, academia is great for me bc i love teaching, learning, and putting my brain to use (studying other brains). it’s a good fit & i’d be happy......... but i still have my own hesitations bc academia, esp science, is historically a field wrought w/ misogyny, racism, classism, u name it. it’s a mess™ 

option 3: pathologists’ assistant. the easy road. i could matriculate in jan (assuming i’d be accepted) & complete the degree in 2 yrs. i’d be able to teach, do clinical stuff (tissue sample analysis, post mortem autopsies, etc.), all w/o having to do all the paperwork, patient-juggling, & long hours that doctors do. i could specialize in pediatric pathology (by applying for a job at a children’s hospital) and really feel like i’m doing good work, helping to make accurate diagnoses of samples & leave it to the docs to tailor their treatment to my diagnosis. i love puzzles/solving things. this would give me a lot to do & it’d be good, honest work. it’d be behind-the-scenes so i wouldn’t need to overextend my naturally shy personality too much either. & the starting salaries are a real nice bonus (insofar as paying off my current student loans are concerned). but idk if i’m as passionate abt tissue sampling as i am abt the brain. i don’t wanna settle for a job simply bc it’s arguably easier than my other academic pursuits and makes good money or is ‘safe.’ ughhh can someone make the decision for me lol? 

& all this doesn’t even touch upon my own inferiority complex/inability to recognize my achievements as actual achievements. like sometimes i wonder if i’m even smart or capable of reaching any of my academic goals :/ as they say, u are always gonna be ur biggest critic. 2019 was supposed to be the yr i learned to love myself (or at least my brain), but i fell off at some point & i’m struggling to see my self worth as more than what i ascribe by default to myself & others (since all humans have intrinsic value no matter what imo). 

[happymeishappylife]

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume Two A edited by Ben Bova The Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of all Time

I’ve absolutely loved getting to read these. I’ve been slowly catching up on classic literature, but as a sci-fi fan, I know I’ve been more than a little lacking in actually reading the classics of the genre. In order to fully dissect my thoughts on this book, I’ll have to review each tale since they all had unique plots and situations that really captured my interest.

Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson – As the first novella, I found this a nice way to ease into this journey. Set on a research station on Jupiter we learn of Earth’s future scientists playing with an idea on how telepathically link their thoughts and souls with actual living beings in order to explore the world below which human’s can’t since it would kill them instantly. What we learn along with the rest of the scientists however, is this program of using Joviens to link to could be so much more than a projection as the only linked man on the base discovers that he prefers to stay inside this centaur man’s body rather than his disabled one on the base. And why shouldn’t he prefer to be Joe? To get a second chance at living a life on a planet we could only dream of being on. What I liked was that the head scientist sent from Earth to correct the problem of the short circuiting K-tubes ends up being the champion to let this man do this as a way of letting this man control his own fate. Rating 7/10

Who Goes There? By John W. Campbell, Jr. – I’m not if this was the first that it was explored of alien’s taking over and shapeshifting into people to create paranoia and panic among friends and colleagues. Because that is a pretty overwritten and over explored idea, the story didn’t hold up as much for me. It was entertaining of course, but it became pretty clear that due to the paranoia of these men in this remote Antarctic base that many were going to die and kill each other in order to root out who the monster was. So while some of the details were new, this wasn’t a new idea. It was still enjoyable but not as much as some of the others. Rating: 6/10

Nerves by Lester del Rey – I think because now in 2019, atomic scientific research and catastrophe is not only a realistic idea but a historical occurrence, I felt this was hard to classify as true science fiction though because the novel was written in the 1940s where that was only just getting starting I’ll give it a pass. Still the actual story of this failed nuclear experiment told through the eyes of the head Doctor trying to save people from radioactive death was interesting because of how much medical information was put into the book to combat what they were dealing with. Although because of that we got a picture I really didn’t want to see let alone believe was a real procedure of actually opening someone’s chest up and holding onto an actual human heart to pump blood into the body manually. That’s the part of medicine and doctor’s works I get squeamish about. Rating: 6/10

Universe by Robert A. Heinlein – Loved this one because while it could very well have been a novel in so rich a world, I thought it was well presented in a novella to cover so much history of the story and the timeline of the characters. It takes place on a spaceship that had since drifted off course and been floating around for centuries where now two ancestry clans of humans existed. The normal, highly religious ones who could not grasp where they actually were as they lived towards the bottom of this giant ship and the mutis, mutated humans with oddities like having two heads who knew but didn’t really care much to do anything about it. It perfectly sets the stage for Hovan to fall into the hands of this two-headed muti Joe-Jim and learn about the true meaning behind his life and organize a resistance to reignite the spaceship and fly among the stars. Rating: 9/10

The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth – Overall my least favorite just because there was absolutely no character to root for since the whole premise was based on a future where humans fell into laziness and stopped thinking critically, thus allowing a smart overload to essentially become a new age Hitler (who was referenced as a role model) and destroy much of the world population considered inferior. I think the other part about this story was how much parallel could be drawn from it and into today’s political climate which is what good sci-fi should do, but was not a good read because of it. Rating: 1/10

Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore – I found this one the most intriguing. Beautifully told through the eyes of Oliver Wilson, we see the same weirdness unfolding among his strange new tenants who don’t appear to be from the same Earth we know. And while they are indeed not foreigners in the sense of being from a country they originally claim to be, the interesting weaving and foreshadowing of them proving to be a time travelling tourist group was fascinating but also horrifying since their aim was to watch cataclysmic events at different points of Earth’s history. Much like Oliver, the reader gets trapped into the euphoric and learns of their true backstory a little too late which end in tragedy for him. But overall the story telling and the settings of these exotic characters made the read very intriguing throughout the story. Rating: 7/10

…And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell – Easily, this was my favorite story of the whole thing. It’s probably because it did a masterful job at bringing to light a really powerful and relevant discussion about freedom and letting people control you, through the use of humor and lightheartedness the entire story. We get brought into the story by an Earth ship with an Ambassador of the Terra regime. It’s filled with military personal and an Ambassador whose sole duty is to bring this planet under control. But what they soon find is the locals don’t want to and won’t give into them and its simply because they have learned that having freedom to say “I won’t!” is the most valuable form a control and individual may have. And the slowly by slowly all the lower ranking military men decide “I won’t” and leave their superior officers and Earth Ambassador completely confused and lost. Rating 10/10

The Ballad of Lost C’Mell by Cordwainer Smith – This story I felt needed to be fleshed out and extended. Like it made it very clear from the get go that C’Mell’s romantic feelings were never realized, thus a ballad was created, but the interaction between her and her intended suitor is so rushed and short that you just don’t feel it. Plus I hate the way C’Mell is described and sexualized as a human-cat organism. It’s actually rather creepy and disgusting. However, play out a longer story with real levels of attraction and it might not have come across that way. Rating: 2/10.

Baby is Three by Theodore Sturgeon – What a ride this story is! It’s starts that way too as we meet Gerard who confesses to a psychiatrist he’s murdered someone and then from there we learn of this crazy, kinda sad, and finally really bizarre life he’s led. Plus then we learn about this woman who was abused mentally and physically and its heartbreaking. But the storytelling was actually widely fascinating and I loved the mechanic of switching between what happened to Gerard throughout his life and his quips with the doctor to tell this tale. Rating: 8/10

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells – The oldest and most well known of the bunch. I had never read this until now, but can see how it is treasured. Told in that perfect Victorian London way of sitting around and swapping stories, we learn about this innovative Time Traveler and his adventures into the far future, his observations, and his conclusions. It’s a fascinating tale and the thing that struck me was since this was written in 1895, how cool to know that there was someone so fixed on time travel and in that way was an innovator themselves. The actual adventure ended up being heartbreaking, but like any time traveler, once you do it, you can’t stop. I wonder if we’ll ever see the Time Traveler again. Rating 10/10

With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson – To end with this novel was a sad and depressing, but yet something of a semi-caution to our present day. The ultimate fear that the robots will take over the world, but in this tale instead of violence, they do it by over pleasing and over helping the world. So many people out their now have that idea and while I agree we should move technology forward it can be frightening. Although, I wonder if these fears really truly are felt by all. I mean the frustrations were that people couldn’t do their passions because either they were dangerous or they weren’t as good as the humanoids, but what if you passion was reading? A robot doing everything else and you just get to read all day? I wonder how this story would work in todays time. Rating: 8/10

[nebris]

The S&M Election Nov 05, 2012

I learned at the age of 10, when I was shipped off to a New England  boarding school where the hazing of younger boys was the principal form  of recreation, that those who hunger for power are psychopathic  bastards. The bullies in the forms above me, the sadistic masters on our  dormitory floors, the deans and the headmaster would morph in later  life into bishops, newspaper editors, college presidents, politicians,  heads of state, business titans and generals. Those who revel in the  ability to manipulate and destroy are demented and deformed individuals.  These severely diminished and stunted human beings — think Bill and  Hillary Clinton — shower themselves, courtesy of elaborate public  relations campaigns and an obsequious press, with encomiums of piety,  patriotism, devoted public service, honor, courage and vision, not to  mention a lot of money. They are at best mediocrities and usually venal.  I have met enough of them to know.

So it is with some morbid fascination that I watch Barack Obama, who  has become the prime “dominatrix” of the liberal class, force us in this  election to plead for more humiliation and abuse. Obama has carried out  a far more egregious assault on our civil liberties, including signing  into law Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act  (NDAA), than George W. Bush. Section 1021(b)(2), which I challenged in  federal court, permits the U.S. military to detain American citizens,  strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military  facilities. U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest struck down the law  in September. The Obama administration immediately appealed the  decision. The NDAA has been accompanied by use of the Espionage Act,  which Obama has turned to six times in silencing whistle-blowers. Obama supported the FISA Amendment Act so government could spy on tens of millions of us without warrants. He has drawn up kill lists to exterminate those, even U.S. citizens, deemed by the ruling elite to be terrorists.

Obama tells us that we better lick his boots or we will face the  brute down the hall, Mitt Romney. After all, we wouldn’t want the bad  people to get their hands on these newly minted mechanisms of  repression. We will, if we do not behave, end up with a more advanced  security and surveillance state, the completion of the XL Keystone  pipeline, unchecked pillage from Wall Street, environmental catastrophe  and even worse health care. Yet we know on some level that once the  election is over, Obama will, if he is re-elected, again betray us. This  is part of the game. We dutifully assume our position. We cry out in  holy terror. We promise to obey. And we are mocked as we watch promises  crumble into dust.

As we are steadily stripped of power, we desire with greater and  greater fervor to be victims and slaves. Our relationship to corporate  power increasingly mirrors that of ancient religious cults. Lucian  writes of the priests of Cybele who, whipped into frenzy, castrated  themselves to honor the goddess. Women devotees cut off their breasts.  We are not far behind.

“Anyone who wants to rule men first tries to humiliate them, to trick  them out of their rights and their capacity for resistance, until they  are as powerless before him as animals,” wrote Elias Canetti in “Crowds  and Power.” “He uses them like animals and, even if he does not tell  them so, in himself he always knows quite clearly that they mean just as  little to him; when he speaks to his intimates he will call them sheep  or cattle. His ultimate aim is to incorporate them into himself and to  suck the substance out of them. What remains of them afterwards does not  matter to him. The worse he has treated them, the more he despises  them. When they are no more use at all, he disposes of them as he does  excrement, simply seeing to it that they do not poison the air of his  house.”

Our masters rely on our labor to make them wealthy, on our children  for cannon fodder in war and on our collective chants for adulation.  They would otherwise happily slip us rat poison. When they retreat into  their inner sanctums, which they keep hidden from public view, they  speak in the cold words of manipulation, power and privilege, words that  expose their visions of themselves as entitled and beyond the reach of  morality or law.

The elite have produced a few manuals on power. Walter Lippmann’s  “Public Opinion,” Leo Strauss’ work and “Atlas Shrugged” by the  third-rate novelist Ayn Rand express the elite’s deep contempt for the sans-culottes.  These writers posit that the masses are incapable of responding  rationally to the complexities of power. They celebrate the role of a  tiny, controlling elite that skillfully uses propaganda and symbols to,  as Lippmann wrote, “manufacture consent.” They call on the power elite  to operate in secrecy. The elite’s systems of propaganda are designed to  magnify emotion and destroy the capacity for critical thought. Kafka  was right: The modern world has made the irrational rational.

”Crowds  have always undergone the influence of illusions,” wrote Gustave Le Bon,  one of the first pioneers of the study of mass psychology. “Whoever can  supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to  destroy their illusions is always their victim.”

The more we believe the lies that saturate our airwaves, the more we  salute our “heroes” in Iraq or Afghanistan, the more we militarize  social and political values, the more frightened we become, the more we  bow down and clamor for enslavement, the more the elite detests us. We  are, in their eyes, vermin. We have to be dealt with and controlled. At  times we have to be placated. At other times we have to be repressed and  even killed. But we are a headache. Our existence interferes with the  privileges of the ruling class.

“Those who have put out the people’s eyes,” John Milton wrote, “reproach them of their blindness.”

There are a few writers and artists who give us a view of the dark,  corrupt heart of power. The 1972 film “The Ruling Class,” a black comedy  based on Peter Barnes’ play, does this, as does Jean Genet’s play “The  Balcony.” So does Noam Chomsky, Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power,” C.  Wright Mill’s “The Power Elite,” Karl Marx’s “Capital,” Thomas Pynchon’s  “Gravity’s Rainbow,” Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” and  Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s “Castle to Castle.” The astute explorations of  the pathology of power, however, are buried in the avalanche of  Disneyfied popular culture and nationalist cant. The elite deeply fears  any art, literature, philosophy, poetry, theology and drama that  challenge the assumptions and structures of authority. These disciplines  must appear to the public only in bastardized forms, packaged as froth,  entertainment or sentimental drivel that celebrates the established  hierarchy.

Pynchon in “Gravity’s Rainbow” portrays Brigadier Ernest Pudding, the  commander of a special psychological operations unit in World War II  and a veteran of World War I, as the archetypal member of the elite.  Pudding’s glory on the battlefield “came in 1917, in the gassy,  Armageddonite filth of the Ypres salient, where he conquered a bight of  no man’s land some 40 yards at its deepest, with a wastage of only 70%  of his unit.” He holds secret fortnightly trysts with “the Mistress of  the Night” where he strips, kisses her boots, receives blows from a  cane, drinks her urine and eats her excrement. He dies “of a massive E.  Coli infection” that results from his nocturnal coprophagic rituals.

Peter Barnes captures the same dementia in “The Ruling Class,” in  which Ralph Gurney, the 13th earl of Gurney, accidentally hangs himself  in his bedroom while wearing a tutu and playing erotic games with a  noose. His successor, Jack Gurney, believes he is God and speaks only of  love and charity. This will not do. A psychiatrist is called in to help  the new earl adapt to his role as a representative of the ruling class.  By the time the psychiatrist’s work is complete, Jack is cured of his  God delusion. He now believes he is Jack the Ripper. He assumes his seat  in the House of Lords. He rails against the unemployed, homosexuals and  socialists. He champions God, queen and country, along with corporal  and capital punishment. He murders innocent women on the side, including  his wife, and becomes an esteemed member of the ruling class.

Genet, who like Pynchon and Barnes equates the lust for power with  sexual depravity, sets “The Balcony” in a brothel. Clients don the  vestments of power, including those of a judge, a bishop and a general.  The “bishop,” who outside the brothel works for the gas company, hears  the sins of the prostitutes in confession and revels in the power of  absolution. The “judge” metes out severe sentences for trivial offenses  to maintain law and order. The “general,” who rides his prostitute as if  she were a horse, demands self-sacrifice, honor and glory for the  state. A bank clerk in the brothel, meanwhile, defiles the Virgin Mary.  Revolution occurs outside the doors of the brothel. The actual rulers,  priests, generals and judges are killed. The patrons step outside, along  with Irma, the brothel madam, who is anointed the new queen, to assume  the roles in society they once playacted and to mount the  counterrevolution.

Irma, at the close of the play, turns to face the audience. She says:

"In a little while, I’ll have to start all over again … put all the lights on again … dress up. … (A cock crows.) Dress up … ah, the disguises! Distribute roles again … assume my own. … (She stops in the middle of the stage, facing the audience.) … Prepare yours … judges, generals, bishops, chamberlains, rebels who allow the revolt to congeal, I’m going to prepare my costumes and studios for tomorrow. … You must now go home, where everything — you can be quite sure — will be falser than here. … You must go now. You’ll leave by the right, through the alley. … (She extinguishes the last light. It’s morning already. (A burst of machine-gun fire.)"

The only recognizable basis for moral and political authority, in the  eyes of the elite, is the attainment of material success and power. It  does not matter how it is gotten. The role of education, the elites  believe, is to train us vocationally for our allotted positions and  assure proper deference to the wealthy. Disciplines that prod us to  think are — and the sneering elites are not wrong about this —  “political,” “leftist,” “liberal” or “subversive.” And schools and  universities across the country are effectively stomping out these  disciplines. The elites know, as Canetti wrote, that once we stop  thinking we become a herd. We react to every new stimulus as if we were  rats crammed into a cage. When the elites push the button, we jump. It  is collective sadomasochism. And we will get a good look at it on  Election Day. 

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best  selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and  ordained Presbyterian minister.