#critical thinking does not negate allowing vulnerability

[writing-for-life]

We've bought into the idea that education is about training and "success", defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.

CHRIS HEDGES

[lover-of-mine]

I just saw someone genuinely argue "as a Buddie shipper" (which I don't believe) that Buddie shouldn't happen because: their close friendship is too important, the text of the show doesn't support Eddie being gay the way it supports Buck being bi, Eddie is "not ready", and that Ryan Guzman plays Eddie "too straight" to be able to pull off acting Buddie and this feels like to me someone who doesn't actually ship Buddie but is claiming to cause they think it'll give them more credibility in criticizing it.

1) if I see one more argument about how their close male friendship is too important because of toxic masculinity and that making it romantic would ruin it I'm going to lose my marbles because this is the dumbest take. TV is FULL of vulnerable platonic male friendships - 9-1-1 is FULL of them. Also them becoming romantic does not mean they would no longer be friends.

2) So we're just pretending queer-coding doesn't exist now okay.

3) I'm sick to death of the argument of Eddie not being ready. When is he allowed to be ready??? Does he have to suffer for a decade before he's allowed to figure things out??

4) They have to be watching the show with their eyes closed to think Ryan Guzman who has been playing Eddie "Heart Eyes" Diaz for 6 seasons couldn't pull off Buddie.

I'm gonna talk about all points, but the Eddie is too straight thing drives me INSANE. Four months ago, if I said "oh, Eddie is straight, no way buddie is happening" I would have whole essays on how he's gay thrown my way before I hit post. We're talking about a character who had panic attacks about his girlfriend. Who this season had literal erectile dysfunction with another girlfriend. There is no heterosexual explanation for the way Eddie was looking at Buck during the poker game. That man looks at Buck like he's the sun, the sky, the stars, and the moon. Like Buck is somehow the best thing he ever laid eyes on. Yeah, there are threads to pull. With Buck. We only need Eddie to be into one man. And boy, do we have threads to pull there. And honestly, if you wanna see Ryan play painfully straight men, go watch anything else in his filmography, that man knows how to act painfully straight. It's not what he's doing with Eddie. This narrative that Ryan is somehow sabotaging buddie's chances is so beyond ridiculous. Personally, I don't subscribe to Eddie being strictly gay, but I legit don't care anymore as long as he's out of the closet soon give him whatever label, but even if there weren't threads to pull to make it seem like Eddie is in love with Buck, and there are a lot of them, this idea that Eddie being gay is only valid if he's a stereotypical gay man from the beginning is NUTS. Why does gay have to look a specific way to be valid for y'all? This is such a harmful point of view. You want rep but it needs to fit in this one specific box or else it's not valid? What is wrong with you?

The male friendship thing, please tell me where are we lacking vulnerable male friendships in media? Media is made of male friendships. Everything everywhere is about male characters. And Buck and Eddie dating would not negate their friendship all of a sudden. Yall do realize you're supposed to like the person you're dating, right? Isn't literally everyone on the planet telling everyone to marry their best friend? How would that ruin their friendship? It just makes them a stronger couple because they have that foundation. And there literally isn't a show or movie that had two guy best friends who weren't introduced as queer who started dating. Literally, does not exist in media, how would losing exactly one friendship suddenly destroy male friendship representation everywhere? And we weren't even be losing the friendship, the friendship is gonna be a core part of buddie forever. You want strong male friendships? Go watch literally anything else. Every procedural ever has two guy best friends. Go watch house, any of the ncis, h50, the one chicago shows, hell, go watch lord of the rings or something, there are so many male friendships in media. No one is gonna die if Buck and Eddie kiss.

And the whole Eddie not being ready thing. Are we watching the same show? The show where madney started while Maddie was running for her life or bathena started while Bobby was actively suicidal? Or that even henren was presented to us when Hen cheated? Buck's own definition of love is "So every day is the best day ever. Is that really love? Right? Shouldn't it be when you're at your worst, they're at their worst, you have every reason to give up, and you still decide you want to try again?" loving someone at their lowest is the definition of love for that show. It's working through the bad to appreciate the good. And again, this idea that someone needs to be healed to be worthy of love is fucked UP. Eddie is never gonna be fully healed. Recovery isn't linear and he has ptsd. He will forever grieve Shannon. Does that mean he's never gonna be allowed to be loved because he is a human being who has been through hell? What does it take for someone to be "ready for love", huh? What's the threshold here? He was in a helicopter that was shot down and got shot 3 times, he was abandoned by a wife he later was forced to watch die, he was shot at again in broad daylight, he watched his best friend die and had to save him, his own parents just stole his kid. What does he have to do to prove that he is worthy of love, how does he have to handle all that? What I'm getting here is that someone who's been through shit can't be loved, is that the message we're sending? Really? No one seriously wants Buck and Eddie to open season 8 dating, but they are partners and best friends and they don't have to have everything figured out before they go there, they can figure it out together, they do it together anyway. Why can't they take that step and figure things out as a couple? Jesus.

[angelic-and-terrific]

I think a lot of authors are afraid to write because of how superficial the writing discourse is oftentimes. You'll have an author use "said" a bunch, and there'll be TikToks with someone giving writing advice bashing them for this being the wrong writing move and that any up and coming author should consider flagellation before using said. That's how we get new iterations of the fantastic core memory of:

Advice for writers: -Use the word you want to use

Then there's stuff like being mean about using adverbs, yes there are different ways to say the same thing, and honestly? They are kinda all equally valid for use in prose, ya goofs!

Advice for writers: -Use the word you want to use There's also how discourse on media evolved into this weird pit of negativity. It often feels like you can either feel like things will not be good, or you are a good polite sheeple who enjoys things (I can't abide how much I saw the word slop recently). The negativity feels like a weird defense mechanism, no expectations means no dissapointment. But this approach also means that the audience does not engage with what they're reading, instead they're looking for reasons to not like it. Allowing yourself to feel something because of a piece of art is vulnerable, you're open to something scary. But that's the best part. Sometimes it won't be the Dutch Master painting or that Top 10 Goodreads book that makes you cry, sometimes you cry because of Baldurs Gate 3 cutscenes, sometimes you cry to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, I don't know your life.

Being a sheeple who enjoys their corporate made slop tho? This idea is just darn-tooting annoying to me. It absolutely ruffles my feathers. It grinds my gears. Yes, there is a lot of low effort content made on every platform right now, every single one. Does that mean that all of it is trash? No. Enjoyment of art is relative, it's subjective. The thing we call art is the sum-total of experiences and emotions a thing made by someone, made for the purpose of making us feel, has made us feel in the end. There's no good or bad art and that kind of discourse is ultimately kinda rotting people's brains online. Did you enjoy something that many people didn't? Hell yeah, good for you! Criticism of art should not be about *JUST* saying what didn't work, but also examining why it worked on someone but not you sometimes. But most importantly, you can enjoy parts of something! You don't have to enjoy over 50.1% of a thing to say you liked it. You like that one Chapter because of how it developed the character? Hell yeah! You liked that one scene of that one show because of the landscape CGI being cool? Hell yeah. You can enjoy parts of a thing and not others, and that doesn't negate your enjoyment. Advice for audiences: -Let yourself enjoy things, believe it or not, you'll enjoy more things if you do

please i love you i'm begging you bring back suspension of disbelief bring back trusting the audience like. i cannot handle any more dialogue that sounds like a legal document. "hello, i am here to talk to you about the incident from a few minutes ago, because i feel you might be unwell, and i am invested in your personal wellbeing." "thank you, i am unwell because the incident was hurtful to me due to my childhood, which was bad." I CANT!!!!

do you know how many people are mad that authors use "growled" as a word for "said"? it's just poetics! they do not literally mean "growled," it's just a common replacement for "said with force but in a low tone." it's normal! do you hear me!! help me i love you please let me out of here!!!

[soundoflaughingwind]

Qrow’s Experiences With Trauma

The thing is, the experiences we have with our early caregivers are what shapes our self-worth and ability to form attachments with others. If our parents think badly of us, or if we receive disordered or negligent care as children, it deeply negatively affects us. If a child is demeaned or harshly criticized from a young age, it damages their self-worth. Children construct protective barriers around emotional wounds, and these barriers also work to prevent new attachments, in order to not risk vulnerability.

It’s pretty obvious that Qrow has had his Semblance active from a young age, and that it’s forcibly colored all of his relationships, whether people know about it or not. We know that Qrow has been blamed for bad luck around him ever since his Semblance was unlocked. He was likely forced to keep his distance from the other bandits because of that, and I put forward that this is where his habit of physically distancing himself from others comes from, in order to not ‘infect’ others with his bad luck. He couldn’t please those around him, regardless of his actions, and this pushed him into emotional withdrawal as well as physical.

Qrow’s addiction to alcohol is another symptom of his trauma. Severe childhood trauma is related to an increase in the chances of drug dependency (e.g., alcohol), and alcohol is also connected to and results in social and emotional isolation from friends and family. All of which are things Qrow shows signs of in RWBY.

Qrow probably turned to alcohol young, either as an emotional crutch to numb the hurt of the rejection by other members of his tribe, because it dulled the effects of his Semblance, or because alcoholism was normalized by the bandits. (As a side note, I also theorize that drinking is normalized in parts of Remnant as a way to numb negative emotions and keep from attracting Grimm. Whether this works or not is a matter for debate.) In any case his alcoholism was encouraged/not discouraged by the bandits.

His profession as a spy is another way Qrow maintains both physical and emotional distance. He leaves his family for long periods of time, assuring himself it’s for the best, when what he’s really doing is just enforcing the walls protecting his emotional wounds.

I doubt that Qrow ever had much of a support system outside of his team, and it’s pretty clear that Raven was never really emotionally available. When Summer died, Qrow lost about half his emotional support, and Tai went into a depression, which negated his ability to do the same. Doubtlessly, that whole tragedy and its consequences only exacerbated Qrow’s trauma regarding emotional intimacy.

It’s not that he doesn’t want attachment, it’s clear he wants it desperately, but that he’s terrified to seek it out. So he draws away and self-sabotages with alcohol, as if to prove to himself that he really is a fuckup and then uses his drinking as an additional reason to push people away and keep his walls up. Because he’s terrified of what will happen if he lets those walls down.

The attachment styles people develop in childhood stay with them our entire lives, unless they go through some form of therapy and/or trauma recovery. People with disrupted attachments in childhood are often afraid of genuine closeness. Many prefer detachment to connection because they’re afraid dependency and closeness will only lead to rejection. Because of the circumstances surrounding his Semblance and his childhood, Qrow believes himself unworthy of love and support.

Ozpin acted as someone Qrow trusted, who granted him purpose without getting so emotionally close that Qrow felt the need to automatically drive him away. When Ozpin’s backstory and secrets were revealed, it violated the trust that had been built and caused Qrow to lash out. Qrow took it as a severe emotional betrayal and retreated into his primary coping mechanisms: self-isolation and alcohol. He numbed himself to the betrayal and in doing so numbed himself to everything else going on around him.

In order to change, have to be mature enough to reflect accurately on your behavior and say, “I want to change things.” You have to have to actively choose to seek and accept help. Any interventions people attempted to previously hold for Qrow failed because he was unwilling to allow people past his protective walls, and refused to accept their offers of help.

The Apathy finally helped Qrow realize how deeply fucked up things were. He was supposed to be the adult, supposed to be able to keep the others safe. But when he was most needed, he was sitting in a cellar getting stone drunk. If not for Maria and for Ruby’s Silver Eyes, everyone would have ended up dead, and that hit Qrow really hard.

When Ruby finally confronted him while they were in Argus was what finally pushed him into taking up sobriety, I think. Ruby has been shown to idolize Qrow: she bases her style on his, he taught her how to use a scythe, she obviously adores her uncle. And throughout this season she’s been getting more and more upset at his drunkenness. Her confrontation was the last straw on the camel’s back, what forced him to finally accept exactly how badly his actions were affecting her and the others. Change always has to be a choice. And Qrow finally decided to make that choice.

Dealing with attachment trauma requires consistent, sensitive, and loving behavior from those around you, which Qrow does get, but he also really needed that hard push to knock him out of the rut he’d dug himself into through the years. Of course, Qrow needs to resolve old grief and work out issues on both an emotional and intellectual level if he wants to continue to heal. Deep-seated and longstanding trauma doesn’t just go away, but Qrow is definitely working on pushing himself to be better.

As of V7, I wouldn’t say that Qrow is recovered completely. Trauma doesn’t just disappear, or addiction, or coping mechanism you’ve used your entire life. But Brothers, he’s trying.

Of course, Qrow’s life just can’t be smooth sailing. Clover’s death and Ironwood’s betrayal were basically slaps in the face for him. I think regardless of how you view Qrow’s relationship with Clover, it’s clear that he was hopeful that here was someone his Semblance wouldn’t hurt, and that was shattered with Clover’s death. Qrow also genuinely trusted General Ironwood; he was wary but ultimately trusting, and was insistent that he needed to talk with Ironwood, was convinced that things could be worked out. Ironwood shooting Oscar, though, is unforgivable, and his plan to sacrifice Mantle for the potential safety of Atlas is horrifically calculated and fatally short-sighted.

My worry is that despite his resolution, Qrow will return to his previous behavior. If not going back to drinking, then isolating himself emotionally. In fact, judging by how he acts after Clover is killed, it’s very likely.

[bubmyg]

Hi 👋 Can you maybe write a fic where Jungkook introduces his girlfriend on his YouTube channel since they haven’t seen her before? (I know you’ve already written a few YouTube fics with Jungkook already, but I thought it could be cute) and then later, after the video has gone up, they both look at the comments together, but the reader is kind of nervous about the result, but of course she doesn’t need to since their all positive 🤗 If you do, then thank you ❤️🧡💛

genre/warnings: youtuber!jeongguk, again.....the most tooth rotting fluff with the tinniest bit of angst but you may need glasses to see it

word count: 1,631

a/n: i think i’ve said this but all my youtuber!guk drabbles are non chronological but all exist in the same timeline so obviously this occurs before anything already on my masterlist atm :’-)

“We don’t have to do this, you know.”

You ignored the press of Jeongguk’s lips to your cheek, staring down the bulk balanced on top of his tripod carefully centered at the end of his bed. It was the outlet to his fan base, the tiny glass lens that opened up his budding creativity to love and criticism all the same, that allowed him to monetize carefully placed vulnerabilities of his life on a dangerously slippery slope, some pieces chosen on his own accord, others pried out, speculated on, fussed over. 

It was something he’d chosen to expose this time, unlike his phone number on Jimin’s livestream or his address when he’d filmed a little too far out on the street of his building. 

“Everyone already knows,” He tried, “This is just like...confirmation.”

“I know,” Your eyes wandered from his camera equipment to his apprehensive gaze, “I’m just a little nervous, is all.”

“I can turn the camera off right this second,” Jeongguk offered explicitly this time, curling warm palms against your cheeks, “We can go back to pretending like you, my friend, just so happen to be here every morning. And every night. I can keep editing out you forgetting your role and kissing me—” You whined and he kissed you on reflex, “—until you’re ready. There’s no rush.”

You cupped his hand holding your face, lightly brushing your thumb against his knuckles. Softly, you inquired, “Do you want to do this?”

“I have seven unlisted videos ready to post that are giant love professions hidden behind fancy editing and royalty free music,” He chased the embarrassed drop of your chin with his lips, “but I can make how many ever more in the time it takes to wait on you. I don’t love you any less because I haven’t got to tell the Internet yet.” 

You were silent for a handful of heartbeats before mumbling, “Well I’m not helping you set these lights up ever again, so get over there.”

Jeongguk’s eyes lit up when he pressed his forehead to yours, “You’re sure?”

You suppressed the urge to knee his thigh in response. “Go.” 

He kissed the tip of your nose for good measure, taking careful strides to his camera, questioning eyes wavering to your appending glare only for a moment before he was pressing record and bounding to the end of the carefully made bed. 

You mocked his intro out of habit but also to calm the flutter of nerves in your stomach, grin shaky at the tiny giggle that escaped Jeongguk’s lips when he cast a glance at you. He stretched backward, tiny smile turning full featured as he placed his hands behind him, back arching, and in that moment did you finally see the tiniest hints of nerves seep into his aura, in the awkward lean of his stature, the sideways cast of his eyes away from the lens, the dimple in his cheek when he bit the inside of his mouth, the prolonged hums in between his words that you hadn’t heard him do since watching his years old vlogs. 

“...so, yeah, as you can tell, today’s a little bit of a different video. An update? Yeah, I guess it’s an update—” He was staring at you now, arms outstretched and fingers wiggling, voice a drastic contrast to the childlike innocence of his gestures, tender and low in his request, “—come here, baby.”

Your hesitation was brief, a part of your lips and a panic in your eyes but Jeongguk mouthed it’s okay with the tiniest of smiles and tilts of his chin and suddenly the lens prepped to project your relationship to the world felt minuscule in comparison to the glittering astral bodies adored only to you in the gentle light of his sparkling irises. 

“The update is...” He was speaking while you fit yourself into his arms, letting him pull you down against his side with his nose nuzzling into your hair. “...that this one refuses to leave my house. So if you all have any suggestions to get her out—”

“Can’t leave when you won’t let me,” You countered, nerves falling out in the slight stutter of your tongue but you managed to elbow his stomach none the less. His actions seemed to affirm your words, arms twisted around your waist so you were half sprawled across his thighs, cheek pressed against the top of your head. 

"No, uhm...” Jeongguk pulled away to look at you, the softest of smiles meeting the seam of his lips the longer the fondness of his eyes streaked up and down your features, “...meet my girlfriend, everyone.”

Soft touches trailing down your spine woke you, the loving affections carrying to the lips that were pressed against your forehead. He hummed, the vibrations renewing the jump of your heart, “Are you awake?”

Something like a noise of negation groaned past your sealed lips and you hiked your stature higher on Jeongguk’s chest to press your nose into his neck. “No. Still asleep. Leave a voicemail. Call back later.”

He’d ordered a nap after posting the video, dragging you out of his office and into his embrace on the couch while your social medias stayed as dark as the screens of your sleeping phones. He combated your itch to mindlessly scroll Twitter in search of that one negative comment by promising you could read the feedback on the video, together, after a nap. 

It was enough for you until you suddenly wanted the nap to last forever so you never had to know. 

Jeongguk squeezed your waist, rolling until you were underneath him with digging fingers tickling at your sides. He swallowed your loudest squeals, ones of I’m awake, I’m awake! — lips sweet into the part of your mouth.

The exchange between your steady gazes was silent until he nodded, “Are you ready?”

You trailed him by attachment to his hand wrapped securely around your digits, following him with furrowed eyebrows back into the depths of his office. “Why can’t we just look on our phones?” You pouted while he fiddled with the lighting settings, dropping the room into a gentle purple. You continued to glower when he let go of your hand, dropping into his chair with outstretched arms. “I’m not ready for Y/N reads hate comments about herself but in size seven hundred font on Jeongguk’s seventeen different monitors—” 

“Baby girl.”

Your teeth sank so deeply into the your bottom lip you tasted the hint of metal. “Yeah?”

“I’ve got you. I’ve always got you,” His chin tilted, hands flexing once more in your direction, “Come here.”

You tried to make yourself as tiny as possible in Jeongguk’s lap, immune to the periodic stumble of his mumbling mouth against your skin as he clicked around on the screen, shades of whites and blues contouring the concentration in his features as he sought out the touch of your skin against his lips. There was a stutter in his chest when he inhaled, properly nudging your temple with his lips, hand leaving his mouse to wrap around your hip. 

“Well, the top comment is a petition for you to make your own channel,” You felt his lips curl against you, “It has a thousand thumbs up. And counting.”

You shifted to press your cheek to his chest instead of your nose, “Yeah?”

“Mhmm,” Jeongguk’s mouse clicked as he scrolled, “this one just says ‘I knew it!’ with, uh...eighteen hearts after it.”

You dared to squint at the screen, not catching much in his absent scrolling but stretching your arm out with the tiniest of gleeful smiles. 

“That one—” He paused vaguely after following the line of your finger, “—I used to think I wanted someone to look at me the way he looks at Jimin but now I want someone to look at me the way he looks at her :-(.” 

“Why not both?” Jeongguk teased against your hair and it took you a moment of feigned shock to realize he’d stretched out to type it in reply to the comment. 

“Are we going to be one of those couples that has those cheesy the way he looks at her edits now?”

“We have been,” He continued scrolling, “Sprinkled in with Jeongguk annoying Y/N for four minutes straight.” 

“They could only find four minutes of footage? Must be a new subscriber...”

His monitor dimmed as he pulled away from it, hugging you tighter underneath his chin as the chair spun in a slow circle away from his desk. 

“Are you okay?” When you nodded underneath him, he teased, “Well, then I don’t want to say I told you so but...”

“Shut up—”

“No. Look at me.” 

You complied, fitting your chin into Jeongguk’s awaiting palm, one that curled around your features. 

“I wouldn’t have put you, us, in that situation if I didn’t know,” His thumb strayed from pressing into the corner of your lips to stroke your cheekbone, “I’ll always protect you to the best of my ability.”

“Good, does that mean we can skip the obligatory couples yoga challenge? You’ll crush me.”

Jeongguk whined, high pitched and dramatic as his head hit the back of his chair and your surroundings whirled as his foot turned you in another looping circle. “Announce our relationship to the whole Internet and you can’t even let me be sentimental for five seconds—”

You kissed him, chaste and everything you weren’t good at articulating. 

“I love you.”

He smiled against your lips and you missed his arm that outstretched to drag your figures closer to his desk again. 

“I love you...” Jeongguk trailed off and you squinted when his monitor lit again in your peripheral, “...so how many of these videos of you will you allow me to post tonight—”

[destroyyourbinder]

why not go to therapy for gender dysphoria?

I see this question often posited by both trans people and radical feminists, as well as garden-variety homophobes and transphobes. This is a brief attempt at an answer from my perspective. --- 1. The first reason is that trans people aren't stupid. They are right when they say there is no known therapeutic modality that is known to reliably reverse transgender identity or get rid of gender dysphoria. This does not mean that transition is therefore the best means of dealing with gender dysphoria, but it means you cannot currently just go to a psychologist or therapist and "get therapy" to make it go away. I’m tired of dealing with radical feminists or gender critical types who dismissively insist that this is currently a possible option. I am skeptical that you can ethically treat transgender people with the intent to change their personal identity anyway even if some sort of treatment protocol was developed. There may be some way to lessen gender dysphoria in a therapeutic context without major ethical violations, but few therapists are willing to try, and those who will work with people wanting to ease their gender dysphoria without transition often are working blind and therefore are liable to make mistakes that can harm already vulnerable patients. Even barring the political environment around transition right now, I am not sure therapists generally know what to do to help people or even how to conceive of the problems of those who come into their offices framing their issues as "gender dysphoria" but who do not wish to transition or who are postponing the choice to do so. When I discussed my gender dysphoria outside of a transition context with two different therapists previous to desisting from trans identity, one in about 2007 and the other in about 2014 or so, the first one told me I couldn't possibly be transgender because I was waffling on wanting a penis and attempted to get me to work on rejecting femininity by asking me to do CBT practices when I got compliments about my appearance, and the second did not even know how to deal with my gender issues at all, asked me to educate him on trans identity more broadly, and then tried to get me to accept that I was attracted to men because I considered myself bisexual but was not wanting to interact sexually with them. I ceased discussing it in therapy (and considered the times I had attempted to an unacceptable risk) because I sensed it was actually impossible for my feelings to be understood outside a transition-based context and at the time transition was impossible for me. The desisting and detransitioned women I know who are trying to reconcile with their femaleness seem to have had a very mixed bag of luck with therapists; the ones I know with positive interactions with therapists around their gender stuff have had to go through multiple therapists to find a decent one, and I know a few women who avoid therapists entirely now. Even if you go explicitly seeking a therapist for this issue as a full and competent adult with decent boundaries and deep pockets you will often have poor luck. 2. Those people offering means of getting rid of transgender identity or gender dysphoria are generally explicit religious conversion therapists or pediatric doctors using unethically coercive strategies to alter children's gender behavior. These are the last people you want to be in contact with if you have a gender or sexuality problem, and their strategies don't work except insofar as they might shame you into suppressing your feelings and desires. The doctors offering these therapies for children are direct descendants of therapists who used these strategies to prevent adult homosexuality, some of the older ones literally having studied under gay conversion therapists or at clinics offering anti-gay therapies, and I would guess they probably have similar outcomes in that they permanently traumatize kids. You would have to be extremely self-negating to seek these people out or literally under the pressure of authorities, which obviously isn't conducive to developing a way of coping with your body, sexuality, and gender structures that is healthy and promotes your well-being. 3. One of the hallmarks of being trans is wanting to transition, and one of the hallmarks of gender dysphoria in female people is either strongly wanting to be male or literally believing you are in some way male. Trans people do reach for "being trans" as a primary explanation for their thoughts and feelings about gender, even though they may have pervasive doubts and obsess over the question of whether they are "really" trans or their dysphoria is "real". Female trans people in particular often believe that if they aren't trans or don't have gender dysphoria, they must be "making things up" or that their suffering is stupid, only for attention, not as severe as they thought it was, and so on. The obsessing over whether you are "actually trans" or not ends up locking you into your dysphoria deeper than you might have gone otherwise, and means you will hold onto being trans as an explanation and the trans identity far longer than you otherwise might, because your dysphoric mind is telling you that if you aren't trans then you must really have been a stupid girl this whole time. The last thing a dysphoric female person wants to be is a stupid girl, so you will continue holding onto interpreting your experiences as trans or as gender dysphoria because that is part of the dysphoria itself. I don't believe most trans people look to transition as something they wholeheartedly "want" to do (and those that claim to are likely extremely dissociated from the reality of transition and their bodies more generally); most I think recognize to some degree that transition is risky, painful, socially isolating, legally fraught, and a medical nightmare. But the whole problem with having gender dysphoria is that it's self-reinforcing; if you are actively dysphoric, the way your dysphoria works is to propagate itself and that means you will not try a solution that invalidates "dysphoria" or "being trans" as the reason why you feel this way. Although in some sense nobody "wants to be trans", most trans people are relieved in some way or another when they find out transgenderism exists and that transition is possible, and most female trans people actually resist the possibility of therapy to get rid of their self-concept as not-female. I have not met a trans man who actually wanted to stop considering himself a man, although I have obviously seen many trans people want to ease the suffering caused by gender dysphoria and stop being subject to the negative social consequences of being trans or transitioning or being subject to misogyny/homophobia/transphobia. The reason why trans people reach for transition is because it purportedly allows them to maintain their self-identity and also get rid of the suffering caused by their body being incongruent with their self-identity. If you already conceive of yourself as trans or have extensive gender dysphoria it is unlikely you will reach for a solution that will invalidate your own perception of what's gone wrong, a.k.a. you will not go to therapy that will eventually cause you to let go of the idea that you are a man or not-female. The problem is that the self-identity is not separable from gender dysphoria, and interpreting your suffering as the result of the fact that your body is female but "you" are somehow not is a framing driven by the insecurity cycles and obsessions particular to gender dysphoria. You cannot ease dysphoria long-term without being able to recognize and confront that you are female in a value-neutral way. I honestly believe to the extent that transition can work, it works precisely because it allows some trans female people to let go of constant nitpicking at their bodies, it allows them to be among other female people who don't see them as worth less because of their bodies (albeit ones changed through transition) and in an environment where they can freely discuss their experiences together, and it permits some to actually experience being embodied without shame and distance from themselves. This should not sound unfamiliar to most trans people as it's exactly how the positive results of transition are framed. I just disagree that transition is necessary to achieve these results, that transition actually achieves them persistently in most people, and that to whatever extent they are achieved it means that trans people are right about why they happen (that it means you are a man or not-a-woman). 4. I don't think therapy to achieve peace in your body usually works if you are female, whether you are dysphoric or not, and it's because I think the therapeutic relationship and medicine more broadly are a small-scale replication of the authoritarian and misogynistic practices that cause female people to be alienated from their bodies to begin with. I don't think most female people want or need an authority implicitly or explicitly telling them that their bad feelings about their body are wrong when authorities have inculcated these feelings in us to begin with. Most female people don't end up with gender dysphoric feelings specifically, but I don't think it's an inherent sign of mental illness or irrational for trans men or other female trans people to avoid authorities trying to invalidate or reinterpret their experiences with gender, sexuality, and their bodies. Maintaining a core identity (even if it's a male one) that is untouchable by others trying to convince you out of rejecting womanhood, when "accepting womanhood" means a shitton of gross, dirty, and violating things, absolutely makes sense, and I'm never going to try to convince anybody otherwise. Therapy is inherently intended to guide you to "better functioning" and for most therapists, this means decreasing your friction against social reality so you can hold a job, housing, maintain relationships, and so forth. Obviously being able to survive is important, but being able to survive in this world means making some horrible bargains against your well-being (such as devoting forty hours a week to being captive to people who don't share your interests in a place you don't want to be so you can make enough money for shelter and food) and therapists do not usually frame these bargains as having severe costs. They sometimes actually frame you as ill precisely because you recognize the costs of these decisions, and because you fixate on trying to find a way to escape them. So why would you go to a therapist, then, so you can make yourself believe you are a woman again, if that therapist won't acknowledge the costs of everything required for you to psychologically adopt that identity as well as try to adjust as a "proper woman" to others and gives you a pathological label for insisting that the costs are real or too high? If you are a trans person attracted to your same sex, why would you try to go to a therapist to adjust to being a lesbian for example when few therapists even know what healthy adjustment looks like, nonetheless the kinds of terrible bargains you have to make to avoid or deal with homophobia? One of the most isolating and devastating things about having gender dysphoria is that nobody else seemingly sees how awful it is to be female, and the people around you who should be supportive of you (your female family members, friends, peers, coworkers, etc.) are invested in doubling down about how happy they are and how great it is to do things that you find invasive and traumatic, and seem to be in horrific denial of how it could possibly affect you and may even attempt to force you to adopt these practices and attitudes yourself. If therapy is supposed to get rid of these feelings and replace them with the feelings of the women around you, of course you won't go! Of course you won't go to therapy if the therapist herself is one of these women, or is a man who does not seem to get it at all. If "adjusting" and "functioning" means accepting your lot, trying to gaslight yourself into believing your shame about your existence was unwarranted, crazy, or came from nowhere, and fixing your dysphoria means learning to act and speak and think like these other women and to LOVE it, then hell no, most of us will not adjust or function until our feelings are recognized in some way or another. For some of us this means maintaining being trans and pursuing transition, and for others it means politicizing our experience and becoming active feminists and/or radically anti-authoritarian. It’s telling to me that the medical industry is supportive of one rather than the other, because the latter choice is more likely to indict psychology as a practice and transition is capable of being incorporated into medicine. But seeing it that way is a function of my political view on the whole thing.

[southeastasianists]

The fight for access to adequate family planning in the Philippines has for decades been an endless game of politics. With no shortage of vicious rhetoric on either side of the divide – a war of words which has seen President Rodrigo Duterte labelled a “modern-day Herod” – the ever-watchful gaze of the gale force that is the Catholic Church continues to grip the country and to paint in broad brush strokes the church’s declaratory motto: “Contraception is corruption”.

Rumblings of reproductive health policy were first heard in the government with the establishment of a population commission back in the 1960s as a measure of population control to manage high fertility rates and alleviate poverty. Ever since, backlash from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has been unrelenting.

The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act, commonly RPRH or RH for short, was passed in 2012 – 14 years after a first version of the bill was presented to congress under belligerent opposition campaigns from the CBCP. The act mandated that contraceptives be made available for free and that information about family planning be made easily accessible at public hospitals.

“We were overwhelmed with joy, of course,” said Benjamin De Leon, president of the Forum for Family Planning and Development. “After 14 years of hard struggle, we now have a population and development policy in this country. [But] it’s still a struggle in terms of making sure we achieve fertility planning.”

With ongoing pressure from the church, the bill faced two important setbacks: in March 2013, it was challenged before the Supreme Court, which delayed full implementation of the law. Only a year later was the case resolved, and, while the bill was declared “not unconstitutional”, some provisions were removed and are still void today. The axed provisions included a clause that allowed minors to access reproductive health services without the written consent of a guardian and penal measures for government officials who did not implement the law. There is also still no comprehensive sexual education curriculum taught in schools – a top priority at the Forum, according to De Leon.

In 2015, a further temporary restraining order (TRO) issued again by the nation’s Supreme Court prevented the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the Philippines from procuring, distributing or issuing new certificates of product registration on more than 50 different contraceptives, allowing many licences to eventually expire. The TRO was launched after the FDA registered a contraceptive implant called Implanon, which critics falsely argued could be used to induce abortion.

In January of last year, in a move that was celebrated by international human rights groups that are normally staunch critics of Duterte and his violent war on drugs, the cut-throat strongman signed an executive order that sent strict directives to all responsible parties and ensured the push for a family planning agenda to cover all families across the Philippines.

Yet, what should have signalled a new stage in the battle for full access to reproductive health services could only fall flat because of the lingering TRO – and has today merely heralded a shift away from constant legal challenges from anti-family planning law campaigners towards new, more pernicious forms of resistance.

With the TRO still in effect despite the executive order, and with certifications quickly running out, a simple lack of supply of contraceptives in the market threatened to negate any policies Duterte could put in place. Only in November last year, when the implants  were finally ruled non-abortifacient, was the TRO on a range of contraceptives lifted.

“The TRO, by the time it was lifted, had resulted in the unavailability of almost 80% of contraceptives in the market,” said former Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral, who now heads the National Implementation Team for the reproductive law. “If the restraining order had not been lifted, by this time, there [would have been] no hormonal contraceptives available in the market for both the public and private sector, and we would have been left with condoms and surgical contraception.”

The Implanon implant has proved popular among Filipinas, according to Cabral, because of the convenience of its three-year effectiveness period. There’s also an equally steady stream of all kinds of contraceptives returning to the market – although more rural areas still lack access, and progress is slow on all accounts, said Cabral: “[The] short answer is, the executive order has not yet had any significant impact on the implementation of the law.”

With Duterte at the helm, De Leon knows that the church is unlikely to proceed with any legal appeals to the lifting of the TRO or other challenges to the law. “We have a president whose political will is there. He’s not afraid to face the church in terms of sanctions,” he said. “Our friends from the other side have not protested legally because the TRO which has been lifted says that any appeal contrary to the recertification has to go through the office of the president. So they know that if they make an appeal, their endeavour will be wasted.”

De Leon cautions that while more and more bishops are supporting the law and the right of couples to choose the size of their family, the anti-contraceptive forces aren’t done yet: “They are monitoring us. Of course they are monitoring us.”

The country’s de-centralised form of government also means that the responsibility of imposing any legislation put in place by Duterte’s administration lies with local government actors. “Local government implementation of family planning is dependent on the priority capacities and personal beliefs of local government officials and local health officials,” said Michael Singh, national programme officer for reproductive health at the UNFPA Philippines, the UN’s reproductive health and rights agency. “So in a way, implementation is varied across the country.” Not enforcing the law results in no punishment, a provision the Supreme Court had mandated before it was removed.

Despite country-wide popular support for access to family planning – around 80%, according to a Forum survey undertaken during the height of the debate over the legislation – Singh says that the remaining reluctance to use contraceptives is borne out of a fear of side effects: “Here we feel that the anti-RH groups are very successful in propagating myths and misconceptions on family planning – that they cause cancer, that they cause abortions. And this is a major reason why many Filipinas still don’t use family planning.”

Beyond issues of morality and the politics of contraception, experts insist on the developmental benefits that family planning legislation will bring, especially important in a country with the highest HIV growth rate in the Asia Pacific, per the UN. HIV diagnoses shot up 140% to 10,500 between 2010 and 2016, according to the Health Ministry. The Philippines also registers a high number of unwanted teenage pregnancies, with one in ten women aged 15 to 19 becoming pregnant, said De Leon.

“[Filipinas] become more empowered, more autonomous, more productive members of society” when they can freely access family planning tools, said Singh. “And it addresses the social ills of society – for example, teenagers who have access to family planning are able to complete their education. Families who are able to space their births have less deaths and less sickness in their families. Families who are able to achieve their desired family size have better access to basic needs such as shelter, education [and] employment.”

It is these most vulnerable members of society who are most in need of access to services, a goal which would require $10 per women per year, estimated Cabral, to reach the poorest 60% of women in the country – not achievable with the current budget, she said, despite increases in funds since the executive order came into effect.

Manpower and resources need to be rallied to feel the effect of Duterte’s directives, said Cabral. Singh agrees that the law does not go far enough, “especially for those who are left behind – the people in the slum areas, the farmers, the fishermen, the disabled, the indigenous peoples, the people displaced by emergencies”, he said. “So there [is] still a lot of work to be done, but I think the RPRH law is a very strong anchor on which positive changes can be made in the lives of women and men in the country.”

[redheadz-jess]

14 Reasons Why Redheads are smarter than others, with proof

Are redheads smarter than others?

The data shows that, redheads really are smarter than others. The data is found in the hallways of the vast complex intellectual center of intelligent research and the redheads are the cleverest. You have to be careful because there are these smart redheads that throw you away so that you don't believe they are luminous at all.

 Here are 14 Reasons Why Redheads are smarter than others:

1. They have a more precise temperature sense

  Certainly, redheads are a minority, but if a fellow ginger says that you have a cold office, they're usually right and all of it comes with genetics. The red hair genes also help their hosts to more precisely perceive temperature changes, in particular coldness.

2. They'll last as long as a great wine.

  Do you ever find yourself thinking 'gosh they look fantastic for their age,' gazing at a ginger celebration like Prince Harry or Scarleton Johansson! You won't be insane...

Although redheads have no secrecy in the youth's spring, they have actually been born with something equally as important. According to experts at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the specific gene which creates ginger hair is a variation of MC1R genes, which keeps some younger than others. Studies show that red-headed persons frequently seem two years younger on average than they are.

This comes with an extra anti-aging advantage, which means that the redheads keep their color statistically longer than any other hue because of the degree of pigment in the individual hair stand. Even if the color finally fades, it's frequently blonde before it's gray.

3. Gingers are tough.

  Not surprisingly, it is difficult gingers. We now know why – in DNA! Now we know why! Genetics testing at the Sensory Engine Interaction Center at Aalborg University, Professor Lars Arendt-Nielson, showed that red-haired persons react to pain different from other colors of the hair. Arendt-Nielson says that "MCR1 is engaged in central brain processes and we are aware of the substantial brain functional involvement of subgroups like MC2R, MC3R and MC4R, likewise connected to redheads." That means their chemistry makes them less vulnerable to hot meals and skin discomfort. There'd never interact two things I wish.

4. They have a genetic weapon

  Nearly each redhead has heard the comic story that they might burn withinside the shade. Well, it seems there's a fine turn aspect to this. Research indicates that due to the fact humans with ginger hair frequently don’t take in enough quantities of Vitamin D because of low concentrations of eumelanin, their our bodies have learnt a way to create the diet with out stepping out of doors the house. This permits them to combat off lethal ailments including Ricketts higher than every other hair color and manner they may be much less possibly to expand diabetes, bronchial allergies or arthritis from having low diet D.

5. Some Stereotypes Are Good.

  With brilliant hair comes brilliant obligation and all hair sorts have taken their share. Two college professors concluded in a 1986 have a look at that redheads can frequently be stereotyped negatively actually due to the fact they may be uncommon ­- that means that the complete international is jealous of your suitable locks. And regardless of negate stereotypes trying to keep gingers returned, it became observed that redheaded ladies had been visible as extra able and a success than different hair colours. The Redheaded ladies of the arena are pushing returned in opposition to historical labels and making their manner withinside the international as uncommon unicorn girl bosses.

6. They have a extra correct experience of temperature

  Sure, redheads are a minority, however in case your ginger buddy tells you that the workplace is bloodless they'll normally be right, and all of it comes right all the way down to genetics. The genes that purpose crimson hair additionally permit their hosts to locate temperature adjustments extra accurately, particularly the bloodless.

7. They age like a excellent wine

  Do you ever locate your self searching at a ginger celeb like Prince Harry or Scarlett Johansson and thinking ‘god they appearance brilliant for his or her age!’ You’re now no longer going crazy…

While it seems that redheads don’t have their very own mystery the fountain of youth, they had been certainly born with some thing simply as valuable. As researchers from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam propose that a variation of the MC1R gene, the precise gene that reasons ginger hair, is likewise the gene that continues a few humans searching extra younger than others. Studies imply that humans with crimson hair will frequently appearance a mean  years more youthful than they genuinely are.

This comes with an extra anti-growing old bonus – because of the extent of pigment withinside the person hair stands, redheads statistically preserve their color for longer than every other shade.Even while the color sooner or later does fade, it'll frequently move blonde earlier than it is going grey.

8. Gingers are tough

  It comes as no marvel that gingers are tough. Now we recognise why – it’s withinside the DNA! Genetics trying out with the aid of using Professor Lars Arendt-Nielson of the Centre for Sensory-Motor Interaction on the Aalborg University have proven us that humans with crimson hair react to ache in unique approaches than different hair colours. Arendt-Nielson concludes that “MCR1 is concerned in critical capabilities withinside the mind, and we recognise that subgroups like MC2R, MC3R and MC4R, that are additionally related to redheads, have tremendous involvement in mind capabilities”. Meaning that their chemistry makes them much less liable to such things as highly spiced meals and stinging pores and skin ache. Two matters I might desire might by no means interact.

9. They have a genetic weapon

  Nearly each redhead has heard the comic story that they might burn withinside the shade. Well, it seems there's a fine turn aspect to this. Research indicates that due to the fact humans with ginger hair frequently don’t take in enough quantities of Vitamin D because of low concentrations of eumelanin, their our bodies have learnt a way to create the diet with out stepping out of doors the house. This permits them to combat off lethal ailments including Ricketts higher than every other hair color and manner they may be much less possibly to expand diabetes, bronchial allergies or arthritis from having low diet D.

10. Some Stereotypes Are Good.

   With brilliant hair comes brilliant obligation and all hair sorts have taken their share. Two college professors concluded in a 1986 have a look at that redheads can frequently be stereotyped negatively actually due to the fact they may be uncommon ­- that means that the complete international is jealous of your suitable locks. And regardless of negate stereotypes trying to keep gingers returned, it became observed that redheaded ladies had been visible as extra able and a success than different hair colours. The Redheaded ladies of the arena are pushing returned in opposition to historical labels and making their manner withinside the international as uncommon unicorn girl bosses.

11. Redheads do not sense as a good deal ache as different human beings.

   One observe suggests that, opposite to famous belief, redheads aren't weaker than blondes or brunettes.

After reading the impact of ache in humans, researchers located that redheads seem to be "higher protected" at the floor level.

The observe worried injecting a stinging ache into the skin, and researchers observed that redheads had been the least tormented by the shot out of all of the members.

However, that isn't always to mention a redhead is a few form of invincible vampire who does not sense ache or emotions. Seriously, prevent trying.

The actual purpose they do not sense the identical form of ache as fast as others is possibly due to their genetic coding.

ScienceNordic reviews that lady mice with the receptor gene MC1R are a good deal less complicated to deal with with positive medications. Redheads are the handiest human beings with a version of this gene.

Basically, redheads sense ache a wholly unique manner than different human beings, and it is possibly due to the fact their genetic make-up is basically unique.

12. Men are intimidated and afraid to catcall them.

   The Huffington Post says a current observe approximately enchantment and hair colour suggests prejudice towards redheads this is almost as harsh as racial discrimination.

However, that is now no longer the actual purpose men are not arising to the redheaded bombshells sitting on the bar.

According to Elevated Today, the studies crew determined after in addition research that the male members of their observe had been in reality afraid to technique the girls out of worry of rejection.

The guys assumed that the girls would not probable be interested by them due to the fact their precise, fiery functions cause them to strikingly beautiful.

13. Redheads can devour spicier meals than we can.

   Coincidentally, redheads have a tendency to opt for their meals purple-hot. We're speakme flaming-hot-Sriracha spicy. Frank's Red Hot? They are those who placed that sh*t on everything.

And, even in case you're a redhead who does not like your meals more spicy, possibilities are you could nevertheless take the warmth greater than the relaxation of us.

According to a observe executed at Aalborg University in Denmark, redheads are capable of deal with spicier flavors greater than human beings with some other hair colour.

Time for every body to get out of the kitchen and allow the redheads spice matters up.

14. Redheads are 4 instances much more likely to be CEOs.    In case you wished any greater convincing to stop the redhead harassment, right here it is: Our ginger opposite numbers are 4 instances as possibly to come to be the CEO in their workplace.

That's right. Chances are, in case you've ever made amusing of a redhead, karma's coming for you withinside the shape of an assertive, confident, redheaded boss.

A joint observe via way of means of the University of Tennessee and Dalton State proves that redheads are not going extinct. They're doing simply the opposite: They're taking over. And they imply business.

One viable purpose redheads are much more likely to come to be a CEO is that they are typically visible throughout cultures as having bold, precise functions, which set them other than the relaxation of the pack.

And, in case you are a redhead, you've got got lived a whole existence continuously being visible as unique from all of us else. Your functions have described you as a person who's precise, at the internal and out.

Only  percentage of the sector populace has purple hair, and our society has compelled you to face out even greater in any crowd. It is not possible to cover in a shell, and also you likely would not need to in case you could.

So the following time you overhear a person speakme trash approximately the redhead gang, consider this article. I do not suppose I'd need to head up towards an exceedingly hot, insanely tough, destiny CEO.

[illegiblewords]

And after a full rewatch of Ergo Proxy point is yeah postmodernism is hell, tradition and connecting to dat collective unconscious is good, too many fucking clones holy shit.

Everything is fucking clones.

Also.

- I think the despair of Ergo Proxy might be that the artificially grown humans could never reproduce on their own despite his efforts, probably this ties to proxies themselves actually not being able to reproduce. The mimicked humans were based off of their DNA but not actually full-functional humans.

-Note to self and the interested, when I mention the pulse/pulse of the awakening this is a physical phenomenon in the show. It’s a biological timer placed in proxies by the humans who first made them, an instinct that recognizes the earth is habitable once more. The pulse signals to proxies that it is time to die upon exposure to natural sunlight. Proxies who feel the pulse usually go crazy because it means death is coming and sends them into intense fight or flight response.

- Apparently advanced aging is really weird tech so I actually need to look into this for real. Daedalus has the technology to do it, hence Monad being recreated as REAL, but it seems to be somewhat taboo and not generally utilized if Raul’s reaction is anything to go by. So if I’m going with that assumption, then timeline wise (seriously this is the most hellish point of the whole series it makes me so fucking upset, they put so much thought into so many things but the timeline holy shitfuck) is like this:

- Proxy One is made, realizes reason for proxies, gets fucking upset, clones himself to make Ergo Proxy. Ergo Proxy has a lot of Proxy One in himself, like a LOT to the point that when he kills the pulse in Proxy One it counts as negating the power of the pulse over him, but is not identical.

- Monad Proxy falls in love with Ergo Proxy. Monad is the proxy of Mosk. Ergo Proxy had tried real fucking hard to make a perfect city in Romdeau but 1) could not perfect it due to his own physical flaws/incomplete nature (humanity, while not strictly opposed to engineered humans or autoreives the way they were to proxies, saw them as more guinea pigs) 2) was having insane existential crises tied to his own knowledge that he was doomed to die for his success and was born with no purpose but to clean up someone else’s mess and die. Basically intense postmodernism headache that got so bad and was genetically ingrained, he literally ran away to Mosk to be with Monad--abandoning his own people because he saw himself as a failure of a god and them as failed creations.

- Romdeau got fucking pissed about losing their proxy and went to war with Mosk. I think during the war was when Ergo Proxy’s despair peaked, he’d brought shitloads of death to both peoples and had utterly failed not only at what he was trying to do but he was never an authentic proxy of humans to begin with so that only made it sting worse. He’s basically a postmodern abomination who should not exist in nature and he knows it and he thinks he’s cursed every genetic aspect of his being to destroy. So he asks Monad to take his memories, and leaves his memories with the autoreive Amnesia as a backup plan just in case before she does this. Before having his memories stripped Ergo Proxy also assumed the physical body of Vincent Law so essentially looked like just a dude and had the vulnerabilities of just a dude more or less.

- When Monad strips Ergo Proxy of his memories she takes them into her own mind and was basically going insane. I think it’s critical that first, Vincent had a huuuuuuuge period where he just has no memory. He full on cannot remember years of his life after Monad wiped his brain. I mean, chick removed thousands of years of info I think she actually damaged him a fair amount. The split personality bit is only part of it. But yeah he was probably in a ???? state for a long time while Mosk was at war.

- Insane!Monad was taken before war with Mosk ended. Mosk as a city under a true proxy I think was actually a little more stable than Romdeau without a proxy was, although it still would have died out eventually. Monad was taken at least nineteen years prior to the plot if not slightly longer. My personal theory is that Vincent was probably in a full coma for a lot of it (likely being attended by autoreives in a hospital or something), woke up toward the end of the Mosk-Romdeau war but was basically in a stupor on autopilot for that time and remembers very, very little of that period. Monad being taken nineteen years ago allowed for Re-L Mayer and, by connection, Daedalus to be born. It also meant that technically speaking some humans in Romdeau have full-proxy DNA happening--including Daedalus.

- Mosk continues fighting without a proxy of their own for a long time, falls within a few years of the plot beginning. Re-L was familiar with the fact that Romdeau bombed the hell out of them at her grandfather’s direction, and there was enough stigma about Mosk and immigrants that I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe Mosk fell more than a decade or even five years prior to the plot. Frankly it would more likely be between one and three years before the story starts. The population of Mosk, that said, would have had no children for that period and would have a significantly crippled population due to casualties. They literally would have been dependent on the mercy of Romdeau for their survival when it became clear they weren’t winning. Romdeau, for their part, kept fighting because they wanted Ergo Proxy specifically back and at that point Vincent was incapable of delivering. In the end Romdeau just accepted Ergo Proxy was lost.

- Important to note, Proxy One was in his own city that was not Mosk or Romdeau, but was pretty close to Mosk. Proxy One’s location was pointed out at the end of the game show episode and that was the location bombed by Raul. Raul meant to kill Vincent, he actually destroyed a random city out of nowhere and Proxy One had to scramble hard in the not-dying game. Basically, MCQ was a magnificent dickhead whose dying words were fuck you Proxy One and he deserves a moment of silence.

- Daedalus and Re-L were created around the same time while war with Mosk was ongoing, both aged naturally. Vincent did not enter the city until comparatively recently in their lives.

-Anyway, after Raul bombed the fuck out of Proxy One’s city Proxy One went to Mosk himself, killed Amnesia (a relatively recent occurrence to the point that he might have been there at the same time as the trio) and went back to Romdeau himself to continue playing puppet master. Note, Proxy One was in Romdeau at the story’s beginning as well and was fucking with Re-L and possibly lured both Monad and Ergo Proxy to Re-L’s house to begin with. Why? He was being a dickhead and trying to start fights between strangers to get them to fuck each other and their cities over more. Literally all of Proxy One’s actions come down to “I got screwed so Ima fuck things up for everyone else” at a certain point, he isn’t exactly anti-Vincent but he wanted Vincent to kill him so he would no longer be bound by the pulse so Vincent would serve as a fuck you to the original humans. And he also wanted to make sure Romdeau was destroyed, and probably would have destroyed his own dome at some point anyway if he didn’t make Raul blow it up on purpose.

- REAL is mostly a true proxy, the form she took in the last ep was more because she’d heard the pulse of the awakening although her skin being different probably she’d been made with some alterations. Also I mean Monad didn’t have wings. But yeah she just shifted because of having a human and proxy form. I think she had some if not all of Monad’s memories at death because of knowing about shit Daedalus most likely would not have told her, also behaving older than a one year old. But she still acted like a child with a string obsession so her copy was probably not complete either. Re-L was much less complete as a clone of the living Monad and basically turned out as a baby human with no memories and was adopted by her grandfather.

- Re-L thinks Ergo Proxy set himself-as-Vincent up to be an immigrant so he would be rejected upon trying to join Romdeau without memories, making him suffer horribly. She thinks every single thing he did was an exercise in the highest masochism to punish himself for leaving and being a failure. I think he probably didn’t think that far ahead and just wanted to pretend to be human in a similar way to how the two amigos wanted to be customers in Smile Land. He didn’t want the responsibility anymore and didn’t want to have to think about what he was made to be or how he would die.

- I think Raul actually deliberately unleashed cogito everywhere because he wanted to make humans more natural in Romdeau or something and because he was reasonably sure Romdeau would eventually die without a proxy. I’m still not positive here though. He did a dumb thing.

Some bonus points from a previous analysis that still seem fair game:

- Pino undergoes a wardrobe change after gaining sentience, and that in and of itself is nbd, but I was ??? about her hair going from brown to purple. She had a time gap and in an advanced world like the one she’s in lbr hair dye exists. That wasn’t a sentience-induced hair color change she prob just did it herself for rule of fun.

- Immigrants happened in Romdeau after Mosk was defeated. My big question in the past was logistically what is the deal with immunity to the outside world vs susceptibility to disease etc. etc. and how did the immigrants happen at all. I think probably the whole immigrant population came from Mosk and also probably Ergo Proxy went into Mosk dome when he created his identity as Vincent. As Ergo Proxy, in that form, he would not have been vulnerable to the outside world but in Vincent form he is. So basically Vincent in his squishy human body had no immunity to shit. Also probably there was insane transporting of immigrants from Mosk to Romdeau after the war. EDIT: In Vincent’s flashback he shows himself and other immigrants walking outside but Vincent’s memory is shit so either there is stuff in Romdeau itself that causes poor reactions with the outside air through prolonged exposure or else Vincent’s brain is basically a collage of trying to fit forgotten things together. Going with the latter here because I think the former has consistency and motive problems.

- Daedalus confirmed he was created specifically to run the proxy project and watch over Re-L. I think he probably is the same age as her roughly for that reason. Vincent also saw Re-L when he entered Romdeau to get work. Therefore either it took a weird long time for Vincent to enter Romdeau, like almost two decades during which he did not age and was unaware of what was happening, or else Re-L and Daedalus had rapid aging. I personally lean toward natural aging partly because ages are listed in spots, partly because I think it’s more fun when characters have to learn from direct experience generally. Also this allows more time for emotional ties to happen between characters like Re-L and her grandfather and Re-L and Daedalus.

- The way Ergo Proxy is said in the last line makes grammatical sense and the whole thing being a tie to postmoderism also makes sense so this is acceptably not fancy garbage latin/english/greek/idek dudes. Also though postmodernism is spiritual death and doom and shit and Vincent is like postmodernism incarnate that just went fuck this I want to tap reality.

- Autoreives existing and being robots and all and having the ability to reach sentience and praying upon reaching sentience foreshadow that basically even things that become heavily derivative can still strive for truth and spirituality and reality and shit also I think there’s additional religious subtext in the whole “humans in image of god, robots and proxies in image of man, Vincent and Re-L in the image of proxies”. I think it might be showing that the ultimate connectivity and spirit of the divine still echoes through all of it if we’re getting religious here but I mean they got so much religious imagery in the show anyway so lbr.

- Also for new readers who might be tuning in, it’s common in both today’s western education and in a lot of media for people to assume that postmodernism (things being copies of things, critiques of critiques that grow increasingly distant from direct life experience) is the only truth and there is no reality at all, that failure to be wholly unconnected to others and unique is a tragedy. People who subscribe fully to postmodernism tend to believe that the alternative is being anti-progress or worthlessly derivative. However, looking into Jung in particular with concepts like the collective unconscious, the real alternative is tradition, community, instinct, and finding inspiration in the shared experiences life has to offer while simultaneously combining those experiences in unique ways. Two people in mourning doesn’t mean one is more important than the other, just that they both know what it is to mourn and can talk to each other and understand the feeling in some capacity. Ergo Proxy as a narrative shows a world where reality has been constructed on postmodern principles that ultimately fall apart because life itself by nature is a tradition, and Jung is shown to be right. Vincent and Re-L and Pino, although all copies of copies, are no less part of the tradition than the original humans would have been. Also, the original humans’ belief that proxies, clones, and autoreives have less worth than them for being copies is shown to be hugely unjust and incorrect through the narrative.

- I think there might also be some kind of Adam/Eve thing with how Vincent and Re-L work metaphysically but I’m not touching that right now and frankly it’s a scary analysis for a show full of scary analysis. Seriously I swear to god this concept must have been made by sadists or masochists or something holy shit this is like clone saga in spider-man if it was done by intelligent people on purpose to make a statement.

- Point of the story and all the Jung and shit is that this is a world that literally went through a postmodern apocalypse and a trio of the most postmodern bullshit copies of humans go out together and actually succeed in tapping into the primal collective unconscious and powerful storytelling/instinctive/psychological truths that had been so disregarded by the original humans. They manage to become real where the original humans had become fake.

[aadmelioraa]

Sorry but that fanart you reblog,i dont like her she has nothing to do in the poster,lucky for us she is not gonna be in the official poster because she isn't a main,and is a character who is gonna die next season like roan did in s4.i dislike her so much and i can't control it everytime i see her in fanarts or photos,she doesnt deserve to be in s5,she deserves to be death.

Hey Anon.

I’m assuming this is about Echo? 

I don’t know whether Echo is going to die next season or not, anything is possible on this show (seriously…anything. Ugh). I agree that the character has done some truly awful things. That’s not up for debate. She and Bellamy have had a really tumultuous relationship since the end of s2, and she’s fundamentally betrayed his trust multiple times (understatement of the century, I know). I would argue Echo’s motivations were never personally directed towards Bellamy, rather, she did what she did out of loyalty for her clan, and she always demonstrated a fascination with and respect for Bellamy. I know, that doesn’t erase her transgressions. But this show isn’t about condemning people for moral failures. 

One of the faults of fandom is that people either A) completely write off characters they don’t like bc of bad things they’ve done, allowing them no chance for redemption, or B) put characters they like on pedestals and refuse to acknowledge any of their mistakes or shortcomings. Either way erases their complexity, moral or otherwise. Either way does a disservice to the show/book/narrative.

I know a lot of people hate Echo because they see her as a threat to Bellarke, but even if Bellamy and Echo do end up fucking in space (which seems less and less likely the more I consider it, but who knows), that doesn’t negate Bellamy x Clarke being endgame. Clarke and Bellamy’s relationship is CONFIRMED the center of the story. It’s always been the center of the story. That’s not going to change. It’s not going to change even if Clarke and Bellamy both have sexual or romantic relationships with other people over the time jump or in s5.

I think we need to take our cue for their relationship going forward from the scene in Praimfaya (which was just released as part of the script to screen). That scene only reinforced the lack of romantic relationship between them for me (the lovely @clarkegryphus had some good thoughts on this). It highlighted what makes Bellamy such a great leader (see the amazing @head-and-heart ‘s fantastic post), and brought a certain arc of redemption to the Bellamy/Echo relationship, mirroring the scene in Mt Weather where Bellamy saved her the first time by rattling his cage and making himself the target for the harvest instead of her. 

In 413, Bellamy saw Echo broken and vulnerable, and after everything she had done to him and his people, he cared enough to step in and save her life. If Bellamy can forgive her on some level, why can’t we as viewers at least give her a chance going into s5? There is always the potential for redemption. All of the characters on this show are fucked up, and have done or participated in awful things in some way. We can’t afford to read the text of the show as if it’s a flat, black and white morality tale. 

I’m honestly pretty excited to see “grounders in space.” Echo and Emori are so different from the others in Spacekru, and I think they’ll bring good narrative material to the table. We’ll see. 

I can tag Echo if you’d like, going forward, but I’m honestly not here for the Echo hate (or character hate in general). Criticism, yes, all about that. I don’t love every character on this show–people who follow me definitely know my least favorites, lol. But they each served their purpose and were important to the story, which is, at the end of the day, why we’re all here. 

[mzhong2014]

Reading digest 8/4-8/10

What It's Like to Learn You're Going to Die

“Nessa Coyle calls it ‘the existential slap’—that moment when a dying person first comprehends, on a gut level, that death is close. For many, the realization comes suddenly: ‘The usual habit of allowing thoughts of death to remain in the background is now impossible,’ Coyle, a nurse and palliative-care pioneer, has written. ‘Death can no longer be denied.’”

Ironically, this article about death made me think more critically about what it means to be alive. Death is not simply a physical experience, but also one of the soul. I believe that your soul experiences multiple deaths of the nonphysical form throughout life that fundamentally alter the Self -- the death of a romance, death of friendship, the death of a dream, etc. Although these experiences may reappear, they are never reincarnated in the same form, creating a sense of permanence of these nonphysical deaths. So long as one is still living, one is always surrounded by death. 

Perhaps change, both good and bad, can only be done through the death of parts of the Self -- hence why change is so painful. But in the process of destroying and morphing the Self, one is faced with existential questions of what is intrinsic to the Self. If nothing is intrinsic, then does the Self truly exist? 

“In this crisis, some people feel depression or despair or anger, or all three. They grieve. They grapple with a loss of meaning. A person’s whole belief system may be called into question because ‘virtually every aspect of their life will be threatened by changes imposed by the [disease] and its management,’ Lee has written. In a small 2011 Danish study, patients with an incurable esophageal cancer reported that after their diagnosis, their lives seemed to spin out of control. Some wondered why they had received a fatal diagnosis, and fell into despair and hopelessness. ‘I didn’t care about anything,’ one patient said. ‘I had just about given up.’”

Religion aside (which is not a trivial parameter to constrain), physical death is the ultimate destruction of the Self because it destroys both the conscience and the body. Although I have never had a near-death experience, I have had moments in my life where an essential part of my Self was stripped away, leading me to spiral into self-destruction as my perception of reality loses all grounding. During these existential crises, the Self is reduced to the physical body as foundational beliefs that distinguish us from fully functioning robots are blown up into smithereens. Death presents the possibility of rendering all meaning meaningless by denying the existence of both the conscience and body.  

Given the overwhelming difficulty of conceptualizing death, I found the following excerpt particularly interesting:

“Palliative-care doctors used to think that a patient was either in a state of denial or a state of acceptance, period, Rodin says. But now he and his colleagues believe people are more likely to move back and forth. ‘You have to live with awareness of dying, and at the same time balance it against staying engaged in life,’ he says. ‘It’s being able to hold that duality—which we call double awareness—that we think is a fundamental task.’

Whether or not people are able to find that balance, the existential crisis doesn’t last; patients can’t remain long in a state of acute anxiety. Coyle has found in her work that later peaks of distress are not usually as severe as that first wave. ‘Once you’ve faced [death] like that once, it’s not new knowledge in your consciousness anymore,’ she says.”

To live in the face of death is perhaps to feel so acutely what it means to be alive because living is no longer defined in a vacuum of false immortality, but in negation with death. Using this analogy for the nonfatal deaths experienced throughout life, these moments of acute pain remind us what it means to live, and thus what it means to die. But to continuously live in agony of death is to define life as purely a shadow of death, a permanent and unconquerable state of being. Unable to continuously live in this duality, the concept of death shows the limitations of the human mind. But perhaps those who are more able to strike this balance are those who can appreciate simultaneously the concept of life and death. Just as how living makes us fearful of dying, death makes us more appreciative of life and how much we have to lose -- not just of our physical existence, but also of our soul. 

He’s Your Destiny. Just Be Patient.

In every single relationship that I’ve had, I always run up against the following question: Do you just know when you’ve met the right person? Or does your partner become the right person through hard work and patience of both parties? 

As someone who is a strong believer in free will but also has compulsive overthinking tendencies and is prone to identifying patterns in meaningless trends in this noisy and chaotic world, my philosophy has wildly oscillated from believing in the ability of sheer willpower to overcoming incompatibilities to trying to concoct a scientific framework of key inputs to forecasting the future of a relationship.

This article is quite fitting because it shows us the irony of life, both in creating incredibly unlikely circumstances that seem to follow the narrative of a certain trajectory, as well as in surprising us with outcomes far from what one had expected. For Stefanie, the author, this irony is encapsulated in a tarot card reading. During this reading, the author learns that she will 1) soon leave NYC, 2) face a career of unexpected turns, and 3) reunite with her ex in three years time but will have other relationships that don’t work out in the meantime. 

The first two come true, and after leaving NYC for Detroit, she meets a guy named Brandon. 

“I fell very much in love with Brandon. There was no lightning strike of certainty but rather a slow warming that grew into something sweet. I wanted to marry him, and I told him so. I daydreamed about painting walls and walking dogs and all of the ways in which we would build a future together.”

After two years of falling in love with Brandon, Stefanie moves to LA for her work and finds herself in the same city with the ex she is destined to be with. One can only imagine how everything leading up to this moment has been a journey towards that destined love, that all of the pain and heartbreak, learning and growing, has prepared her to reunite with the One. 

“I finally wrote an email to my ex.

‘Hey’” I began casually, as if this greeting had not weighed heavily on me for ages. ‘It’s been so, so, so, so long. I live in LA now and I know you know that. I guess I’m hoping it’s finally time to have coffee and say hi? Whaddya think?’

After three years of wondering, I had to wait only a few hours for his response.

‘Yo yo,’ he wrote. ‘I appreciate the guts it must’ve taken to reach out, but I’m not really interested in grabbing coffee, sorry. I do sincerely hope everything in your world is awesome though!’

And that was that. No destiny. No lightning strike. No certainty written in the cards.”

A few months later, Stefanie and Brandon break up because they have drifted apart from each other and have become different people.

“We didn’t break up because the cards said we would, nor was it a failure of the cards that my ex and I didn’t reunite. I chose to believe in the possibility that there was some perfectly pre-written story that I was only playing a role in, but there was no pre-written story for Brandon and me. There’s no pre-written story for anyone.

And isn’t that part of the bargain we strike with our partners? That we are willing to live together inside of a story being written rather than a story already told? And that trying to see the future before it happens is just an attempt to make the terrible uncertainty about being in love, and staying in love, a little easier to bear.“

I love the ending of this article because it shows the absurdity in trying to predict the future as it unrolls, creating narratives out of disparate crumbs of faded memories and desires. It doesn’t answer the question of whether there are people out there destined for us or whether the success of a relationship is a result of sheer luck and hard work. It tells us that we don’t know, and that we choose how to cope with this uncertainty. But regardless of whether a relationship is fated to be, this does not deny the love that one feels when there is something “true and deep” between two people. 

November Rain

I really love this song, and more generally, Guns N’Roses. The raw emotions in the song and lyrics capture the essence of emotional vulnerability. 

“When I look into your eyes I can see a love restrained But darlin' when I hold you Don't you know I feel the same

Nothin' lasts forever And we both know hearts can change And it's hard to hold a candle In the cold November rain”

The imagery in the last two verses in this stanza shows the fragile, ephemeral, and fickle nature of love.  

“And when your fears subside And shadows still remain, oh yeah I know that you can love me When there's no one left to blame So never mind the darkness We still can find a way 'Cause nothin' lasts forever Even cold November rain”

After a great guitar solo, Rose sings these verses that I find to be so magnetic. It’s a message of hope, but tempered hope. Just as love fades and dies, even darkness must eventually subside. 

Putin plays judo, not chess

I found this to be a really clever analogy for Russia’s strategy in the international stage considering how judo is one of Putin’s favorite past times (how I pity Russian athletes that are pitted against him.) 

“In judo, a seemingly weaker practitioner can rely on inner strength and force of will to defeat a larger, stronger foe. One basic technique involves putting an opponent off balance and taking advantage of his temporary disorientation to strike a winning blow. Mr. Putin has proved adept at seizing opportunities presented by the West’s disarray and its leaders’ indecisiveness. He had a plan to restore Russia as a great power when he took over from Yeltsin; the U.S. has had no comparable strategy in the post-Cold War era, and Russia has taken advantage against its much stronger competitor.”

AKA US needs to get its cybersecurity policy together. 

Being a Law Firm Partner Was Once a Job for Life. That Culture Is All but Dead.

One of my biggest qualms of going to law school to practice law is the incentive system. Lawyers are billed on hours worked, not sales generated or results delivered. Thus, I was surprised that this article paints this shift towards a compensation model found in finance and consulting negatively. The hourly billings model creates an incentive for longer hours regardless of the quality of the deliverable, which trickles down to the associate-level and creates this poor work culture that already faces workaholic pressures by virtue of being client-facing. 

Also, this shift in model doesn’t necessarily mean that being a partner is no longer a cushy position. This doesn’t change the fact that partners would still take profit sharing of retaining client relationships, which they should be able to do as long as they don’t seriously screw up anything. I also don’t think that partners should get an easy pass once they achieve this rank. If you’re making that much as your annual salary, your value-add better be worth a few million dollars. 

Gun Policy in America: An Overview and What Science Tells Us About the Effects of Gun Policies

I find gun policy to be one of the most frustrating and mindboggling issues in politics. How can both sides of the aisle react so vehemently to the tragedy of mass shootings, yet have such different conceptions of what are their root causes and appropriate policy reactions? Additionally, why is this issue so partisan? Do gun issues symbolize the partisan disagreement on protecting personal rights at the expense of greater safety of the nation or clashing of personal identities between the isolated inhabitants of rural regions and the disconnected elitists of metropolitans? I’m not exactly sure why gun regulation has become so divisive, but I do know that protecting people’s lives should rise above the petty politics of partisanship.

RAND, a global think tank that covers both domestic and international policy issues, has tried to dissect these issues in an objective, nonpartisan, and analytical manner. From its preliminary research, what is clear is that there isn’t enough conclusive and rigorous research on gun policy, and that the government should appropriate more funds for researching gun regulation. In fact, “the U.S. government has spent just 1.6 percent as much on gun policy research as it has on research involving causes of similar levels of mortality in the United States, such as traffic accidents or sepsis” (Morral). I don’t know if this is because of lobbying efforts from pro-gun organizations, but investing in high-quality research is one of the first steps to fixing this issue.  

A few issues with researching gun policy include the lack of reliable data sets and the inconsistent categorization of different gun policies. Data sets are limited in sample size and the availability of historical information. New policies affect only a small fraction of guns purchased every year of the population of gun owners (e.g., prohibitions against the mentally ill). The lack of historical data makes it difficult to establish a causal relationship between passing gun regulation and perceived changes in gun violence. The difficulty of establishing strong evidence for a causal relationship between gun regulation and gun violence, however, may be a chicken and the egg problem. If there aren’t enough examples of states passing gun regulation, there aren’t many case studies to draw from for analysis.

Despite the difficulty of researching gun regulation, there are a few gun policies with strong evidence of its impact on gun violence. RAND defines supportive as having three studies showing significant effects in the same direction using two independent data sets, with no other studies of comparable or greater rigor contradicting its findings.

Interestingly, studies on child-access prevention laws are able to draw from larger data sets because of a larger proportion of gun-owning households also have kids (e.g., in contrast to the population of gun owners that commit domestic violence). There is also moderate evidence that background checks reduce suicide and violent crime, and that prohibitions on the mentally ill decrease while stand your ground laws increases violent crime.

Also, just because a policy has inconclusive evidence on its impact on reducing gun violence, this doesn’t mean that the policy is ineffective. Rather, there isn’t evidence to prove its effectiveness – unsurprising, given the relative rarity of mass shootings (which is unfortunately changing as we speak).

However, it is fair to claim that even if with more conclusive evidence on gun policy, this would not bring our government any closer to a political resolution on how to effectively regulate gun ownership. For example, climate change issues have strong evidence for the relationship between manmade pollution on global increase in temperatures. However, the lack of rigorous and conclusive research makes it even more difficult to agree on any changes in gun policy, which is clearly needed to curb recent increases in gun violence.  

[citizentruth-blog]

You Can't Debate Cruelty and Hate

Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist masquerading as a legitimate journalist, and boycotts of his show are well within the bounds of what should be deemed as appropriate. (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0) Why does insist on giving air time to ? The above is a refrain I've seen countless times on social media in relation to the appearance of some political figure on a show like Meet the Press or Anderson Cooper 360°. Usually, the official is Kellyanne Conway or someone else for whom the commentator has little regard in the way of truth-telling or giving a straight answer. Deflect, pivot, or lie outright. I'm sure you can think of a few such examples. In an era in which consolidation among media outlets or talk thereof is all but constant, and in which the desire for media output is such that traditional purveyors of the news must find new ways of competing with alternative sources, there seemingly has never been a greater need for scrutiny of the media's stewardship of the day's breaking stories. Who will watch the watchers? An unfortunate byproduct of this state of affairs is the effort to appeal to "both sides" on a given topic. As it is with other forms of reporting (e.g. sports pregame shows), this lends itself to rather bloated collections of panelists. On-screen discussions begin to look less like conversations and more like the opening theme to The Brady Bunch. This is problematic for no other reason that, in a political climate already predisposed to name-calling and shouting matches, there is all kinds of cross-talk and people unable to get a word in edgewise. If at first you don't succeed, just yell louder or cut off others while they're speaking. More importantly, though, the desire of news outlets to appear free of bias creates situations in which "experts" with diametrically opposed views "debate" matters in such a way that the dialog is less substantive discourse on relevant issues and more a manner of ceding a platform to individuals with objectionable policy stances based on false statistics and misleading narratives. Journalist/columnist Lauren Duca recently penned an opinion piece about how defending oneself as presenting "both sides" doesn't (or shouldn't) apply when someone is a vehicle for hate speech. Duca, in particular, references Tucker Carlson—with whom Duca memorably debated back in December 2016 on his show, calling him a "partisan hack"—amid expressing her viewpoints, labeling him a "full caricature of white supremacy." Duca's Exhibit A in a long list of evidence in her charge against Carlson is a recent segment on his show when he denigrated Central American migrants and those who support their lawful entry into the United States, averring that letting them in "makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided." So much for those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, eh, Tucker? In response, Tucker Carlson Tonight lost over a dozen sponsors—and rightly so. The only downside is it took these companies so long to distance themselves from Carlson and his show. As Duca explains, Carlson protests that his right to free speech is being disregarded, and while he's right that he's being "silenced" by boycotters who exert pressure on companies not to advertise on his show, this is not inherently unfair. Or as she puts it, "I keep Command-F-ing the Constitution, and can't seem to find the place where our founding fathers guaranteed that a bigotry variety hour be sponsored by IHOP." Other critics advocating on behalf of Carlson—or specifically, against any boycotts—suggest there is danger in allowing customer protests to dictate advertisers' decision-making. We might see corporate sponsors shying away from the political arena altogether unless to support a pro-corporate message. Or commentators who are also members of vulnerable minority groups might be attacked with strategic boycotts based on some vague conservative "moral" objection. Cue the slippery slope imagery. It's worth noting at this point that sponsors jumping ship is not censorship. This is not to say that the abstract idea of companies as arbiters of content is necessarily A-OK either; while we might revel in Carlson losing advertisers, we have seen what companies like Facebook have done in their negation of content that veers toward either political extreme and away from the corporatist mainstream vanguard. Still, it's not as if the long arm of the federal government is holding Tucker down. If businesses don't wish to align themselves with your brand, that's their decision. We might disagree if we feel their standards are being applied unevenly—or not at all. In any case, the free speech defense rings a bit hollow with FOX News's boy wonder here. Even if we frame the argument for or against Tucker Carlson in terms of constitutional liberties, though, the point Duca makes is that defending him on the basis of a "both sides" argument assumes he is a legitimate journalist with legitimate opinions. But he's not, and his hate speech as deemed acceptable by corporate sponsors isn't guaranteed by the First Amendment. Furthermore, it's not as if his opinions are merely bad ones. They're intentionally designed to dehumanize their subjects. What makes this so troublesome is that views like Carlson's are not based on facts. There is no preponderance of data which supports them. Duca similarly assails a Yahoo! News ad as part of the company's "see all sides" campaign in which the statement "immigrants enrich us" is juxtaposed with "immigrants endanger us." The implication is that the two ideas are on a par with one another, but the latter is, as one Twitter user put it, "racist garbage." Immigrants are no more likely than native citizens—and are, according to multiple studies, statistically less likely—to commit dangerous crimes. It's a false equivalency. Duca closes with these thoughts on the immigration "debate" as it involves Carlson: According to Carlson and those condemning the boycotts of his show, the right to empower white supremacy relies on the idea that all views deserve unbridled expression regardless of public will or their relative harm. This creates a perverted juxtaposition in which personhood is set on a level playing field with bigotry. The idea that a group who is being targeted has no right to self-defense is a patently absurd. You could fault Carlson’s line of thinking as a person with a soul, or just as someone who comprehends the basic principles of logic. If nothing else, we can thank Carlson for the egregiousness of this example, which reveals the fatal flaw at the core of “both sides” nonsense with stunning clarity. Carlson insists that his dehumanization of immigrants be heard based on the ignorance at the core of “both sides-ism” and the “free speech” hysteria that often surrounds it. Beneath his whiny white supremacy lies the ugly fallacy that somehow all opinions are equal, but all people aren’t. There's no context in which Carlson's commentary is acceptable or correct, and therefore no use in "debating" him on the merits of his arguments. Boycotting his program is the most direct way of telling him that he and his rhetoric have limits—even if his employer doesn't enforce any. To insist otherwise is to make it that much more likely his hate has a place in everyday conversations. For many conscientious objectors to the way the Trump administration is handling enforcement of immigration law and its messaging on the need for border security, irrespective of what we think about illegal immigration or the efficacy of any wall/slatted steel barrier, what is striking is the heartlessness inherent in their attitudes and speech, as well as those espoused views of their supporters. If the parents didn't want to be separated from their children, they shouldn't have crossed illegally. If they want to apply for asylum, they should do it at a port of entry. I mean, only two children died in federal custody. Um, that's not that bad, right? It shouldn't be surprising that fundamental misunderstanding of how asylum/immigration works and what exactly families from Mexico and Central America are leaving behind accompanies this spirit of overall callousness. The insistence on applying for asylum at ports of entry doesn't account for the delays in processing applications and the refusal of customs officers to even entertain asylum-seekers, as well as President Trump's and Jeff Sessions's modifications—attempted or otherwise—to make asylum or other lawful entry more difficult for those who would entreat it. Nor does it appreciate the seriousness of the threat of violence in the region related to the drug trade, a situation we have helped fuel. As for the whole kids dying in federal custody thing, I'm not sure how this can really be deemed acceptable, but there are people who will defend it along the lines of my sample remark above. Kevin McAleenan, head of Customs and Border Protection, has claimed that federal agents did "everything they could" to avoid the deaths of two children age seven or younger while defending the administration's agenda. So, what—we just chalk these up as "oopsies," shrug our shoulders, and move on? McAleenan also sought to defend not telling Congress about the death of the seven-year-old when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, so his judgment is already somewhat suspect. Either way, children shouldn't just mysteriously up and die. And DHS chief Kirstjen Nielsen should really have made more of an effort to know how many children had died in federal custody before her own testimony—not to mention not waiting until a second child died to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. On the subject of separation of families and putting mothers and their children in cages, meanwhile, Donald Trump's defenders will point to their trusty rebuttal of "Obama did it first." As it bears constant reminding, however, while Barack Obama and his administration were not above reproach in their numbers of deportations and of prosecuting people who entered the United States illegally, the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy stepped it up and then some. Under Obama, at least initially, asylum-seekers and parents were only targeted in extreme circumstances (e.g. the father was carrying drugs). By contrast, under Trump, they were detained and separated as part of standard operating procedure, and with increased vigor. In Obama's case, too, the administration was responding to a surge in unaccompanied minors crossing the border and a lack of resources leading to struggles in accommodating these numbers. That it sought to deter asylum-seekers by detaining and deporting them expeditiously was bad policy, but eventually, Obama put an emphasis on removing those who committed felonies or were otherwise considered dangerous. Besides, the courts checked him on the use of detention as a means of deterrence for more than 20 days, citing Flores v. Reno as precedent. With Trump, on the other hand, his administration has aggressively sought to overturn the Flores settlement and to separate families, aiming to hold them indefinitely and longer than 20 days as well as take children away from their parents and treat them as "unaccompanied minors." Trump has also bandied about the notion of ending birthright citizenship, whether or not he can actually achieve it. What's more, even if this were Obama's legacy—which it isn't, noting the shift in us-versus-them rhetoric and the indiscriminate persecution of immigrants—that was then and this is now. Donald Trump clearly hasn't learned any lessons from his predecessor—not that he really wanted to in the first place. Coming from a man who began his presidential campaign with labeling Mexicans as rapists and other criminals with a broad brush, and who refuses to take one scintilla of responsibility for anything that happens during his tenure, it should surprise no one that an agenda predicated on fear and hate would be devoid of empathy. That it would resonate with those who voted for him and those who continue to stand by him is what continues to confound many of us not among them. It sounds almost silly, but we simply can't wrap our minds around this sort of indifference to human suffering. And yet, as Adam Serwen wrote about in a piece for The Atlantic from October of last year, the cruelty of it all "is the point." Beginning with allusions to 20th century lynchings and other state-sponsored murders of blacks with the photographs of white men grinning alongside their bodies, Serwen makes the connection between the present-day cruelty of the Trump administration, a cruelty which includes the "ethnic cleansing" of the president's anti-immigrant stances but also extends to the male-dominated laughter at Christine Blasey Ford's expense (and that of all other survivors of sexual violence). In all cases, there is a communion based on the shared enjoyment of others' suffering, a perverse joy that, much as we might be loath to accept it, is part of the human condition. Worse yet, it is a communion built on hypocrisy. Only President Trump, his family, his inner circle, his supporters, and those people he himself supports deserve "the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it." All others merit scorn, if not outright abuse. Serwen concludes his article with these thoughts that echo Lauren Duca's take-down of Tucker Carlson: Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them. To hear Serwen talk about Donald Trump in this way provides at least some comfort to those of us who oppose everything he represents. I personally have bristled at the notion Trump deserves credit for anything, even when it is pulling one grand confidence trick, because appealing to people's baser instincts is generally not something I'd hold in any esteem. That Serwen would limit Trump's talents to this questionable skill, though, reinforces the idea that Trump is not nearly as skilled as some would make him out to be save for his ability to connect with those of a like mindset. It is through this lens that we can view Tucker Carlson's hate speech and the futility of debate on its merits. When the narrative has no merit because it is built on the negation of the other's humanity and on distortions of reality, what utility is there in trying to expose or rationalize this line of thinking away? Along these lines, when cruelty is the driving force behind a shared vision of America, what is the use of amplifying the voices that would coalesce this mentality? For this reason and more, discussion of boycotting Carlson's show and the Trump family's business enterprises is well appropriate. As far as the mainstream is concerned, their message of division must not be normalized. While we should stop short of violence to achieve this purpose, coming out in support of marginalized groups and standing up to each white supremacist rally with vastly greater numbers where it may arise is essential. You can't debate cruelty and hate with those that choose to make them their modus operandi, but you can show that they have no place among what can be deemed generally acceptable. Read the full article

[anna-2807]

A boundary is something that marks a limit. Think of psychological boundaries as guidelines that preserve your individuality from your partner’s. They comprise your uniqueness — your history, experiences, interests, personality, and values….your “you-ness.”

Setting Clear Boundaries — I am not You

Boundaries are crucial to enjoying healthy and secure relationships and avoiding dysfunctional ones. They define the safe and permissible ways you want to be treated by your partner and how you will respond if those limits are crossed.

Consider the following questions to determine if your boundaries are clear:

Do you know when to say “yes” or “no” to your partner?

Are you clear how to respond if your partner steps outside your limits?

Do you pretend to be someone you are not?

Do you respect your partner as a unique individual or do you think you can read their mind?

Do you ever weaken your boundaries by doing the following?

Pretend to agree with your partner when you disagree.

Accommodate your partner’s needs even when you do not want to.

Conceal your true feelings from your partner.

Decline something when you really want it.

Have difficulty stating your preference.

Keep quiet when you are treated poorly.

Feel guilty when you say “no.”

Do you set healthy boundaries by doing the following?

Learn to say no. Don’t say yes when you mean no.

Figure out what is acceptable to you and challenge what is not.

Communicate clearly.

Look to your Self, not your partner, to fill your needs and create happiness.

Ask your partner’s permission before making assumptions?

Maintain a keen awareness of how your partner is different from you?

Learn to make up your own mind.

The key to setting healthy boundaries is knowing your inner life. If you are out of touch with the many dimensions of your Self, not only will you have difficulty defining your limits, but you will continuously be vulnerable to self-betrayal.

Intimacy and Boundaries

Intimacy, the sharing of the deepest parts of your Self (your strengths and weaknesses, your angels and demons), cannot exist without boundaries. However, people often mistake boundaries for walls. Walls shut others out. Boundaries, on the other hand, help you regulate your needs for connection and separateness

The most effective boundaries are flexible. By learning to calibrate your boundaries you can decide how intimate you wish to be with your partner and how much personal space you desire.

Why do some people have difficulty establishing clear boundaries and healthy intimacy with their partner? Inadequate parental support for your developing independence as a child can result in one of two dysfunctional adult boundary patterns; co-dependence (enmeshed boundaries — where you seek your self-definition from your partner) and counter-dependence(fear of closeness and healthy interdependence).

A successful partnership, in contrast, occurs when two well-defined people create an interdependent partnership in which they appreciate and love the qualities in their partner that make them unique. When people with strong boundaries partner, the potential for intimacy, trust, security and commitment can be astounding.

Boundary Violations Between Partners

Much of my clinical work consists of helping people to gain clarity about their Self, so that they can engage fearlessly in healthy inter-dependencies. In order to accomplish that we must first identify the ways in which their flimsy boundaries may be impeding their ability to be intimate with their partner. Here are some of the common ways that my clients violate their partners’ emotional boundaries. Can you relate to these violations?

Discounting — devaluing or minimizing your partner’s thoughts, feelings or behaviors (“I can’t believe you are making such a big deal about that!”)

Denying — shifting the focus of attention away from one’s feelings when they emerge (“No, you’re the one who is bothered by this, not me.”)

Manipulating — controlling your partner (“If you don’t get your act together, I’m going to walk out the door.”)

Intruding — stepping into your partner’s space (“You must be sick. It is not warm in here it’s cold. I am going to turn up the heat.”)

Blaming — not taking responsibility (“It’s your fault. You are making me act this way.”)

Criticizing — due to differences (“You insist on doing it the wrong way. What’s up with that?”)

Negating — (“That doesn’t hurt as much as you think it does.”)

Although intangible, boundaries are real and essential to your individual welfare and that of your partnership. They are the distinctions we make between ourself and our significant other. Human boundaries allow you to be intimate with your partner — to be both connected and simultaneously be separate.

Learn more —www.drdeborahhecker.com

[notesfromthepen]

Freewill And Determinism

Because the meaning of language is subjective, words can fail to give an all encompassing universal meaning that is equally understood and accepted by each unique individual. This is especially true when dealing with the metaphysical, with the entirely real but physically intangible, with things that sit out side of space time, with the deepest of ideas. And in recognition of this flaw inherent in language. I must make this disclaimer: Some of the words I use to label or describe these things are simply pragmatic. They are the handles I put on the intangible so that I can get ahold of them long enough to explore them.

Please feel free to interchange the words that fit for you. If need be, Use your own handles to grab these deepest of ideas. In one circumstance I may say "true self" and in another I may say "God" and in another "divinity" or "true nature" and though I use different words for different occasions they are all one in the same and part of the whole. How do you pin down and define the eternal and the infinite? Imperfectly, that's how. With that being said and without further adieu:

FREEWILL is not a Given.

Freewill: A voluntary choice or decision.

Determinism: A doctrine, that acts of the will, natural events, or social changes are determined by preceding events or natural causes.

Because most of us are familiar with freewill, I'll start with determinism. A growing doctrine supported by many scientists, materialists, and intellectuals. Determinism challenges the stronghold of the long accepted idea of freewill. Determinism states that freewill is an illusion. That every "choice" you make is, in reality, just the natural and inevitable result of your previous experiences and make-up. It states that your choice of what to order for lunch, or whether or not to run a red light, only feels like a choice made of your own volition. Determinism argues that if an experiment could be created that exactly replicated every one of your previous experiences, in exactly the same order, you would always make the same "choice" to have pizza for lunch or to run the red light.

Freewill, on the other hand is much easier to explain. It states: That we as conscious beings have an innate and voluntary choice in the decisions and circumstances that face us. Freewill leaves the universe open and possibilities loose. Though on the same day that you choose pizza, freewill allows the possibility that you could have just as easily chosen to have a plate of green eggs and ham and rather than run the red light you could have decided to do doughnuts in the intersection.

For reasons that should be obvious freewill offers a soft comfortable place to rest our heads. An idea that places us at the controls of our existence. Determinism isn't such a pleasant reality to lay your head on. Its hard, cold, and sterile. No room for humanities highest attributes.

Like most things in life the reality lies not exclusively in either extreme but in a commingling mixture of the two.

Does freewill exist? Yes.

Does determinism also exist? Yes.

But neither exists in an absolute and all encompassing form. One doesn't negate the other.

Though freewill exists, it is not guaranteed. It is given to us but in a partially dormant state. We posses the potentiality of freewill. We are equipped with the tools to be free, to consciously choose. But the responsibility lies with us to develop the ability and skills to properly use them.

For most people the decisions they make, decisions that they assume are rooted in a truly freewill, is just an illusion. A comforting story that they tell themselves and choose to believe. Asleep at the wheel, far too many of the choices we make aren't made by us at all. They are dictated by our past experiences, our fears, and desires. These motivators are all received in the brain and acted upon as impulses. 

This determinism plays out in cyclical behavior patterns all around us. The sexually abused kid who grows up with the uncontrollable impulse to repeat the abuse that was done to him. 

Determinism is the antithesis to conscious thought. It is reactionary and unchecked by self-awareness. As with the kid who grew up poor and is now willing to kill someone for fifty dollars. Here's the tricky part Even when we are in a reactionary deterministic state we are still technically awake, so our brain is active which gives us the feeling, the illusion, that we are conscious and freely making our decisions, even when we're not. 

Brain activity, the processing of stimuli, and simple thinking, don't equal a truly free will. Self awareness, insight, and an understanding of motivating factors and the way in which your mind works are the tools required for utilizing your freewill.

In our everyday state its rarely all or nothing. Most of us have moments of both deterministic behavior as well as true freewill. The full capability of a free will isn't equally active in all. Neither is a fully deterministic life.Though our natural state of limited self-awareness leans heavily in the direction of determinism. The degrees of ones position between the two extremes varies from person to person.

Your ability to truly exercise your free will is directly proportional to your level of self awareness and mindfulness. To obtain a consistent and meaningful use of your freewill you must adopt a disciplined, fearless, and dedicated practice of self examination. Freewill isn't free. It isn't a given. It is a skill that requires cultivation.

Impulse is both the enemy of freewill and the vehicle of determinism. When I was in the throws of my addiction, my decisions or choices were nothing more than an open door that impulse was free to walk through, unimpeded. Sure I constructed stories and inner-monologues to convince myself that I was the one in control. I believed that I was consciously making these decisions. But it was nothing more than a story I told myself. And behind it all was the Ego. If impulse is the vehicle of determinism then Ego is the motor that drives it all.

We all have deterministic weak points from which our freewill escapes us. My most glaring weakness was centered around substance abuse. Most peoples primary weak points, are some form of addiction. Addiction to sex, money, food, gambling, or adrenaline. You may instantly know where your weak point is or you may have to do some honest self searching to find out what it is that saps your self control. In any sense, this is a knowledge about yourself that you must come to if you wish to be awakened from deterministic slumber. 

These things are layered. The largest outer layer, like that of an onion, will be the easiest to recognize. But with every layer you successfully peal away, another more subtle layer will be waiting, until full self-awareness is reached and you go from utilizing freewill to becoming freewill. Though with every success along the way you will be rewarded with new insight, knowledge, strength, and the desire to continue progressing.

So how do we know when we are acting in a deterministic way or when we are using our conscious freewill? This is a tough question so forgive me for the vague nature of my answer: "you just will". To be a little more comprehensive I'd say: By increasing your self-awareness and honing the skills of honesty and truth you will become in-tuned with yourself to such a degree that the answer “You just will” will make sense.

To come, I will help to show you the path to opening up your communication with your True self. To become more attuned to this aspect of your true nature and to be able to listen to that voice. This will help you reach the point where "you will just know".

Before we move forward a more fundamental and important question needs answering. The first question of freewill, from which the spring of all future freewill flows, is this: Do you wish to be freed from the shackles of determinism and impulse, to utilize your right, responsibility, and duty of an actualized freewill, so that you may rise from the slumber of determinism and move consciously through life?

You may balk at this question and ask yourself: If Im not currently accessing my freewill how could my answer be anything but a determinist response? Have no fear. If you have questioned this apparent paradox then, in your critical thinking and doubt, you have cracked the code and taken the first step towards utilizing your freewill. Self examination, contemplation, and critical thinking. These are the keys to freewill. And if you haven't questioned this apparent paradox, it doesn't matter. How you get to the well doesn't affect the well's ability to quench your thirst.

However, before coming to an answer, let me make a suggestion: sit down in meditation and contemplate the many dimensions and aspects of the question, of yourself, and of the meaning and consequences of the choice you will make. Honestly ask yourself: are you actually ready to abandon excuses and the ability to coast, to drop the built in defense of ignorance and the comfort of slumber, to move towards a conscious life of freewill?  

There are many different types of meditation. I won't go into a comprehensive list of meditative practices here. That information is already out there, ready to be soaked up, and I suggest you look into it. I will give you this basic advice: Find a quiet place where you won't be interrupted. Come into the space with honesty and humility. Sit down and mentally state your intentions. Breathe steady measured breaths through your nose. Focus on your breath. Listen to yourself with love and compassion until your answer is revealed to you. Ask not for what you want but what you need.

With enough honest and vulnerable contemplation you will know when you have your answer. If you decide: No, I'm fine with the comforting illusion of freewill and a mostly deterministic existence. Then I wholeheartedly wish you the best and my heart aches for you. But I want you to know that these words and your potential will always be right here waiting for your return.

If your answer is yes, then my heart aches for you as well. For there is much work to be done.

Before deciding how, when, and where to utilize your freewill you must first uncover your purpose for a free will. To what end should your will be freed? To what destination are your guiding yourself? For without the answer to this question freewill is irrelevant. Freewill without direction is just another term for impulse fulfillment. Which we already know is movement in the direction of determinism.

Obviously I can't give you your purpose or goal. That is up to you and only you, to uncover. For any external purpose derived from another would not be worthy of your efforts and would eventually crumble under the weight of your accomplishments.

I will say this: certain levels of freewill can be gained with a variety of goals in mind; money, success, revenge, adoration, fame, power, unity, love, compassion, enlightenment and so on.

However, be very careful what you choose to place on the alter of freewill. For if it is a self-serving idol that you toil for you will be limited in the meaningful growth you can attain. 

The importance of choosing your purpose or goal with pure intention cannot be overstated and anything less than the loftiest goal is to miss the point. The highest form, the purest object to set your mind on, to place on your alter, is rooted in selfless love. With your intentions fixed on the loftiest of goals the heights attainable are unrivaled. When your intentions are refined and pure the universe will unfold to meet you.

To find your true purpose, the goal will direct your freewill towards, you must go inward and return to the well of meditation. For the truest form of freewill is not the choices of the external but of the internal.

Once your goal is revealed the next step is to prioritize. Where do you start? What choices are worth your efforts? Initially, how many sugars to have with your coffee should take a back seat to should I punch this guy in the face for bumping into me?

As you begin developing your self-awareness and mindfulness you should use your limited abilities only in the decisions important to reaching your goal.

At a certain point the extension of your freewill will merge with your meditative practice. The two will become so interdependent that to speak about one will be to reference the other. Everything covered in this book (and in life) is dependent on a consistent meditative practice. Any question you have, any uncertainty that arises, any doubt conjured, can and will be resolved through meditation. A disciplined approach must be taken up in the quest, to first: understand yourself and your mind. And finally: to master yourself and your mind. There is no way more effective or important to this monumental task than a serious meditative practice.

Meditation produces countless benefits. One of the earliest and most all encompassing aspects is the re-calibration of your inner dialogues. With enough practice and patience in meditation you will begin to turn down the volume on the cunning and deceptive ego voice. The voice pushing you towards impulse satisfaction and superficial pleasures. As the volume dims you will begin to perceive, ever so slightly, the voice of your true self. This voice is known by many names: God, your conscience, the Universe....your true voice. A voice that resides is us all.

The more progress you make in your meditative practice the easier it will become to tell the difference between the ego and your true voice.

This may be able to help to differentiate in the beginning stages: The Ego is based in the mind and speaks through justifications and subtle manipulations. It uses language and inner-monologue. It whispers in your ear like a devil on your shoulder. Its greatest trick is disguising itself as your own voice.

Your True voice, the one that has remained unchanged in tone and message over time. The same voice that guided you as a child, never wavering, into adulthood. A voice you can try to ignore but do so at your own peril. A voice you can try to muzzle but never successfully. A voice you can never lie too and never entirely silence. This voice comes from the pit of your chest and uses feeling, not words, to communicate with you. So many of us have spent years drowning out our True voice. And all the time the Ego voice grew louder and louder eventually learning to mimic your True voice in such a cunning way that it became nearly impossible to tell the difference. It will take time to re-tune yourself to this eternal voice. A voice that is timeless. The all knowing and loving voice that we have spent so much time rendering dormant.

With honest and humble intent you will again become fluent in deciphering that wordless communication that comes from the deepest well of your heart. It will never steer you wrong and the truest form of sin is to ignore its message.

Tune in and let your unfiltered nature guide you. Once you do this the pieces will begin to fall into place and this is how you will ultimately know which direction to exercise your will towards.

As with anything, the more work you put into the endeavor of becoming a conscious actor in the decisions that face you, the more control you will have at your disposal and the more clearly you will see both the choices, as well as the consequences of your decisions.

Eventually, with enough effort, even the seemingly unimportant decisions and circumstances will reveal themselves in their full context. As you purify your mind and exercise your freewill towards the achievement of your purpose you will begin to see the relation in every aspect of your life to the goal of your will. You will have moved from the life of a rudderless boat, aimlessly drifting and tossed about by the waves of impulse, to the life of an unsinkable ship with a determined and skilled captain on a charted course.

Freewill awaits you... but it’s not a given.

[spamzineglasgow]

SPAM Digest #2 (Oct 2018)

A quick list of the editors’ current favourite critical essays, post-internet think pieces, and literature reviews that have influenced the way we think about contemporary poetics, technology and storytelling.

‘How to Write About a Vanishing World’, by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker

Like many others, I’ve spent a week in a state of grief about the recent IPCC report. I’m all over The Guardian like a traumatised fungus, trying to find nourishment in the form of answers, devouring data I don’t understand. I sense the dyspeptic effects of all those figures. Thank goodness for Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014), who draws us back to the role of narrative in making sense of our vanishing world. Provocatively she opens with the familiar trope of the ‘stormy night’ and tells of ‘an American herpetologist named Marty Crump’ who, after a neighbourly tip, discovers the emergence of golden toads not far from her home in northwest Costa Rica. This is in the late eighties. These strange and beautiful creatures are part of the biospheric treasure trove whose loss Kolbert then documents across the intervening decades, up to the present. By the turn of the century, she suggests, biology had become a practice of living elegia: ‘A biologist could now choose a species to study and watch it disappear, all within the course of a few field seasons’.

Her article collects numerous other stories of scientists losing their subject — from Arctic ice to Great Barrier corals — until extinction becomes the presiding litany of our times. She notes how researchers find themselves paralysed, unsure of intended outcomes when faced with such scales of ecological loss. Even as scientific projects to assist vulnerable ecosystems gather in nuance and strength, there’s a sense that we’re already fighting a losing game. Science becomes a question of narrative transmission, as much as active intervention; by doing research, you’re sending some sort of message of hope. As Kolbert puts it, ‘Hope and its doleful twin, Hopelessness, might be thought of as the co-muses of the modern eco-narrative’, inspiring nature writers and scientists alike. The central question is ‘how we relate to that loss’: is it a question of elegy and mourning, or sparking a call to arms? Even those writers who urge us to act, who celebrate the potentials of direct intervention, admit that none of this will happen fast enough to make a lasting difference. Ending on the phrase ‘Lalalalalala, can’t hear you!’, Kolbert sardonically evokes that familiar, Trumpian stage of climate denial which has been rearing its all-too-human, deluded head of late. But what persists is the value of keeping on — ‘Narrating the disaster becomes a way to try to avert it’ (and here I am reminded of Maurice Blanchot’s writing of the disaster as a polysemous, irreducible event) — writing, as Kolbert does in this piece, our stories in the face of defeat. An earnest act in the face of inevitable cynicism, a careful digestion of failure. Maybe ecological writing just needs to be more metamodern. 

M.S.

‘Your favorite Twitter bots are about die, thanks to upcoming rule changes’, By Oscar Schwartz, Quartz

Twitter bots fans, you might want to take a seat: there could be some terrible news out there. According to Oscar Schwartz and his article on Quartz, many of our favourite sources of coded linguistic beauty might disappear in the coming months due to what he calls ‘a company-wide attempt to eradicate malicious bots from the platform.’ A couple months ago, Twitter announced that they would start requiring bot developers to undergo a thorough vetting process  in order to gain access to Twitter’s programming interface (where the essence of a Twitter bot lies) - an amount of bureaucratic load that prolific bot artists have told Schwartz would simply be too much work to keep up with.

Regardless of the bleak prediction, the think piece reads less like a eulogy for Twitter bots, and more like a defense of them. Schwartz provides us here with a real goldmine for Twitter bots to follow -  from Jia Zhang’s @censusAmericans, which composes little biographies of nameless Americans by compiling information provided to the open census database, to Allison Parrish's @the_ephemerides, which couples images of distant planets from NASA’s archive with computer-generated poetry. In a statement to Schwartz, Parrish (a poet, computer-programmer, and educator as well as a Twitter-botter) states that ‘asking permission to make a bot is like asking someone permission to do graffiti on a wall (...) It undermines everything that is interesting about bot-making.” - a point that is not only rhetorically effective, but possibly a very productive way of conceptualising Twitter-bots as an art form.

‘For these bot-makers, letting their creations die off on Twitter is an act of protest. It’s not so much directed at the new developer rules, but at the platform’s broader ideology. “For me it’s becoming clear that Twitter is driven by a kind of metrics mindset that is antithetical to quality communication,” Parrish says. “These recent changes have nothing to do with limiting violent or racist language on the platform and are all about making it more financially viable.”

[Darius] Kazemi [another prominent bot artist] agrees, adding that to continue making creative bots on Twitter is making a bargain with the devil. “We’re being asked to trade in our creative freedom for exposure to a large audience,” he says. “But I am beginning to suspect that once we all leave Twitter, they will realize that we represent a lot of what made Twitter good, and that maybe the platform needs fun bot makers more than we need Twitter.”’

D.B.

‘Erasing the signs of labour under the signs of happiness: “joy” and “fidelity” as bromides in literary translation’, by Sophie Collins, The Poetry Society

Some of our most significant intellectual epiphanies occur in lecture theatres, often in resistance to the lecture in question. Maybe this is a form of vicarious translation. In her piece, Collins begins with an anecdote about a lecture she was looking forward to leaving her cold. The speaker’s takeaway slogan, the ‘joy of translation’, rang hollow as a company ‘mission statement’. Against this platitude from the corporate happiness factory, Collins explores the affective entanglements of reading translation through various types of negativity, the disciplinary disparities around its process, intentions and attendant critical debates. Drawing upon her own experience in translating literature from the Dutch, Collins explores the value of acknowledging struggle in translation — from ‘uncertainty and self-consciousness’ to ‘breakdown and frustration’. She makes room for the translator’s own vexed identity to be critically recognised in the process, and thus asks for analytic frameworks which keep in mind the theories around hybridity posited by thinkers such as Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhaba and Julia Kristeva.

Working through the negative space of translation, Collins goes on to deconstruct the concept of ‘joy’ itself, upon whose insistence various arms of society’s ideological apparatus are able to keep us in stasis and check: ‘Given that the desire for happiness can cover signs of its negation, a revolutionary politics has to work hard to stay proximate to unhappiness’. Joy becomes less a personal experience than ‘something more like obedience to a collective cause’. Translation might allow us to notice relationality and difference between cultures; but as a creative act in itself, translation also provides a discursive technology for intervention in structures of power. Often denigrated as secondary or indeed ‘women’s work’, translation occupies a precarious position in the ‘creative hierarchy’, and this is reinforced by vacuous proclamations about its joy. Whose joy are we reveering here anyway? What we need, Collins argues, is a more complex set of theories around translation, which bring into play its disruptive, ‘negative’ aspects. Her productive alternative to ‘fidelity’ or ‘faithfulness’ as the goal or logic for translation is that of ‘intimacy’: a translation process that ‘exhibits a heightened contextualisation of its source text for the reader’; one that bears with it the often fraught emotional truths around the act of moving between texts, times, cultural tones and affective states. Emotional truths whose discernment opens a space for seriously ‘affirm[ing] the possibility of change’:

As a proposed ideal for translations, ‘intimacy’ brings with it its own questions, problematics and risks. Ultimately, however, my application of the term is intended to shift the translation relationship from a place of universality, heteronormacy, authority and centralised power, towards a particularised space whose aesthetics are determined by the two or more people involved, in this way amplifying and promoting creativity and deviant aesthetics in translations between national languages. 

M.S.

‘On Translating Human Acts’ by Han Kang - By Deborah Smith in Asymptote

Han Kang plays language with the kind of near-unbearable intensity which Jacqueline du Pré applied to the cello, exploring its sensory possibilities through a continual detailing of the minutely physical—a bead of sweat trickling down the nape of a neck, the rasp of even the softest fabric against skin—which builds to such a pitch that even the slightest physical contact, no matter how intentionally tender or gently performed, is felt as violence, as violation.

As someone who works in the field, I'm always eager to read the translator's note before commencing my reading of the work. Translators' introductions, beyond outlining the context of any novel, tend to reveal the hyper-specific difficulties they faced when attempting to replicate linguistic nuances of the source language into the target language. In this case, one example given was the 'brick-thick Gwangju dialect', as Korean dialects are distinguished by grammatical differences rather than individual words. Looking to avoid 'translationese', Smith identifies that her primary concern was the effect the text had over the reader, rather than specific syntactic structures, aiming for 'a non specific colloquialism that would carry the warmth Han intended'. 

Already intrigued by Smith's introduction, and after having finished Human Acts, I continued my research of Smith, coming across much of the criticism she received by many academics for her translations of both The Vegetarian (she had been studying Korean for only three years before commencing this work) and Human Acts. In this essay, Smith takes us on a journey through the complexities and challenges she faced as a translator. One that really stuck out to me was the necessity to find as many possible synonyms for the verb 'to erase'. This word continued to resurface in the original often as a straight repetition. As Smith notes, Korean is 'far more tolerant' of this than English. I had once encountered a similar issue myself when translating a memoir based in one Rio de Janeiro's jails. The prisoners in that text frequently used the word 'parada', a local slang that can mean 'thing', 'business', 'occurrence', but is context specific. The heavy repetition of any of these options in English didn't read well, making the text clunky and awkward. Only through methodically finding specific synonyms to match with each context was I able to resolve this.

Out of all the nuances and subtleties Smith had to work through, none can be more thought-provoking than the title itself, 'Human Acts'. As Smith notes, a literal translation of the Korean would have resulted in the slightly awkward title 'The boy is coming', leaving her with the tricky task of finding a captivating title that retained the neutrality of the original. Read the full article to hear about which elements Smith had to keep in mind when deciding how to translate Kang's 'restrained Korean'.

M.P.

[mounicalucia-blog]

BOUNDARIES IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

A boundary is something that marks a limit. Think of psychological boundaries as guidelines that preserve your individuality from your partner’s. They comprise your uniqueness – your history, experiences, interests, personality, and values….your “you-ness.”

Setting Clear Boundaries – I am not You

Boundaries are crucial to enjoying healthy and secure relationships and avoiding dysfunctional ones. They define the safe and permissible ways you want to be treated by your partner and how you will respond if those limits are crossed.

Consider the following questions to determine if your boundaries are clear:

Do you know when to say “yes” or “no” to your partner?

Are you clear how to respond if your partner steps outside your limits?

Do you pretend to be someone you are not?

Do you respect your partner as a unique individual or do you think you can read their mind?

Do you ever weaken your boundaries by doing the following?

Pretend to agree with your partner when you disagree.

Accommodate your partner’s needs even when you do not want to.

Conceal your true feelings from your partner.

Decline something when you really want it.

Have difficulty stating your preference.

Keep quiet when you are treated poorly.

Feel guilty when you say “no.”

Do you set healthy boundaries by doing the following?

Learn to say no. Don’t say yes when you mean no.

Figure out what is acceptable to you and challenge what is not.

Communicate clearly.

Look to your Self, not your partner, to fill your needs and create happiness.

Ask your partner’s permission before making assumptions?

Maintain a keen awareness of how your partner is different from you?

Learn to make up your own mind.

The key to setting healthy boundaries is knowing your inner life. If you are out of touch with the many dimensions of your Self, not only will you have difficulty defining your limits, but you will continuously be vulnerable to self-betrayal.

Intimacy and Boundaries

Intimacy, the sharing of the deepest parts of your Self (your strengths and weaknesses, your angels and demons), cannot exist without boundaries. However, people often mistake boundaries for walls. Walls shut others out. Boundaries, on the other hand, help you regulate your needs for connection and separateness

The most effective boundaries are flexible. By learning to calibrate your boundaries you can decide how intimate you wish to be with your partner and how much personal space you desire.

Why do some people have difficulty establishing clear boundaries and healthy intimacy with their partner? Inadequate parental support for your developing independence as a child can result in one of two dysfunctional adult boundary patterns; co-dependence (enmeshed boundaries – where you seek your self-definition from your partner) and counter-dependence(fear of closeness and healthy interdependence).

A successful partnership, in contrast, occurs when two well-defined people create an interdependent partnership in which they appreciate and love the qualities in their partner that make them unique. When people with strong boundaries partner, the potential for intimacy, trust, security and commitment can be astounding.

Boundary Violations Between Partners

Much of my clinical work consists of helping people to gain clarity about their Self, so that they can engage fearlessly in healthy inter-dependencies. In order to accomplish that we must first identify the ways in which their flimsy boundaries may be impeding their ability to be intimate with their partner. Here are some of the common ways that my clients violate their partners’ emotional boundaries. Can you relate to these violations?

Discounting – devaluing or minimizing your partner’s thoughts, feelings or behaviors (“I can’t believe you are making such a big deal about that!”)

Denying – shifting the focus of attention away from one’s feelings when they emerge (“No, you’re the one who is bothered by this, not me.”)

Manipulating – controlling your partner (“If you don’t get your act together, I’m going to walk out the door.”)

Intruding – stepping into your partner’s space (“You must be sick. It is not warm in here it’s cold. I am going to turn up the heat.”)

Blaming – not taking responsibility (“It’s your fault. You are making me act this way.”)

Criticizing – due to differences (“You insist on doing it the wrong way. What’s up with that?”)

Negating – (“That doesn’t hurt as much as you think it does.”)

Although intangible, boundaries are real and essential to your individual welfare and that of your partnership. They are the distinctions we make between ourself and our significant other. Human boundaries allow you to be intimate with your partner – to be both connected and simultaneously be separate.

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