#i got in touch with my people and my culture as opposed to how passive i was about my jewishness before

[hilacopter]

*on the floor trembling through gritted teeth* this made me grow as a person. this made me change for the better. good things have come out of this.

[tessatechaitea]

Cerebus #16 (1980)

Cerebus is going up the stairs while Lord Julius is going down them. In the same direction.

Cerebus is often touted as the greatest independent comic book of all time (for various reasons) but I'd like to point out that Elfquest told an incredible story with beautiful art in just 20 issues as opposed to 300. Plus it had an elf orgy. Also, I know it continued on after the first 20 issue story arc but we can ignore the rest of the story because there was never another elf orgy and also the rest of the series concentrated too much on Skywise's fear of dying which was totally valid but was often used as a foil to make Cutter seem braver and more loyal to his wolf roots but really just showed he was stubborn and dumb and totally didn't fuck as many elf maidens as Skywise did. Cerebus does have some sex in his comic book but since the first sex he has is when he rapes Astoria, I don't think anybody was really clamoring for any more of that. I mean, sure, some people were! I didn't mean to erase the sickos and perverts out there. Sorry, jerks! I'm sure the "A Note from the Publisher" bit by Deni seemed like a good idea when starting out on a harrowing self-publishing journey like that of Cerebus. But it quickly became a space where Deni just says, "Self-publishing is fraught with hardships and also this is a really good issue! I won't spoil it! Goodbye!" I won't be sad to see the divorce happen! That's an okay thing to say because it already happened, right? It's not like my wishing for the end of their marriage in 2020 somehow brought about the end of their marriage in the early 80s. Is it? I never took a college course on cause and effect so who the fuck knows? Unless that Critical Literary Theory class was about that?! Oh my God! I think I understand it now! Dave's finale to the "Swords of Cerebus" essay that has been broken up over the last three issues describes how he was consciously drawing the Eye of the Pyramid cult leader's gigantic penis while drawing the snake. Sorry to report, though, that he's being sarcastic. Apparently Dave is above using phallic imagery to make a point about patriarchal themes. Only fucking hacks do shit like that! Take that, whoever wrote fucking Beowulf!

Even if Sim can't see the humor in everybody assuming he made a giant snake dick joke on purpose, he can still be extraordinarily funny with the least of materials.

This issue takes Cerebus to his first fancy dress party (that's a costume party for all of you people who aren't British (which is also me but only because I was born a citizen of the United States of America who didn't have a choice but knew it was a huge mistake as I was learning about Monty Python's Flying Circus and Dave Allen at Large in elementary school and The Young Ones in junior high and Red Dwarf in college)). Cerebus changes out of his vest and puts on his costume: a furry black jumper (that's sweater for all of you people who aren't British (which is also me but only because I was forced to watch mostly American popular entertainment until the advent of YouTube and now I mostly just watch Taskmaster over and over (by the way, is Taskmaster as good for people who don't know all of the "contestants" or do I enjoy it more because I recognize and like almost all of the people on the show?)). Lord Julius is dressed as an, um, a, uh, Estarcion matador? I have no context in which to guess what he is.

Certain people like Cerebus because he says what's on his mind. I purposefully used the passive voice here so you can't prove one of those people is me.

Lord Julius has a follow-up joke that leaves the reader thinking, "I guess all Pavrovians are fat?" That's Dave Sim continuing his work on Estarcion continuity! Remember how Pavrovians are the, um, you knows of Estarcion! You know the nationality I'm thinking of! The ones that are all the things people usually find insulting! Come on, you know who I'm talking about. The dumb fat arrogant stupid naive gullible ones! Yes, that's it! Americans! Try to remember Dave is Canadian. You have to think of Americans through Canadian eyes (which are the equivalent of smart, cynical Americans)! E'lass and Turg have gotten tickets to The Festival of Petunias so they can steal the Wyndmel Diamond. They're the duo composed of a giant muscular man and a little bitty shrimpy guy who last encountered (and were beaten by) Cerebus in Issue #6. E'lass is dressed like some kind of small dirt dwelling creature so I hope Cerebus gets offended by his costume and stabs him in the throat. There isn't enough random slaughter in this book about barbarians.

I haven't wanted to fuck a fish this badly since The Littler Mermaid.

I suppose I could have said "since Splash" in that last caption to seem more normal and less perverted but then you'd know I was lying. The assassins make a move on Lord Julius but Cerebus comes up with a plan to stop them that involves inducing the Palnu elite to throw herring-and-onion dip at them. Is that a parodied scene from Duck Soup or Conan the Barbarian? In the confusion, the lead assassin slips out through a secret door and E'lass, having just stolen the diamond and becoming increasingly paranoid that somebody saw him, slips through it as well. Cerebus and Lord Julius follow, having noticed the assassin but not E'lass. Most of the pursuit's tension comes from E'lass believing Cerebus remembers him and is now going to use the excuse of this new crime to murder him. It's more tense than I've even described because I really need Cerebus to murder somebody in this Swords & Sorcery book already. Reading this book waiting for a murder is like firing up a porn video on your laptop with your dick in your hands and realizing after five minutes that the video is almost over and was just a teaser for a pay porn site. Cerebus threatens to quit his job just before battling the assassin so he can negotiate a term of 8 bags of gold and a horse in exchange for killing the assassin as a pension before he goes. Julius agrees and Cerebus takes out the assassin with a rock to the head. I mean, I guess it's a murder so yay? But I was really hoping for some stabbing. Meanwhile E'lass lives through the cliché of the criminal whose paranoia gets the better of him and he tosses the diamond into a huge pit so he doesn't get caught only to discover that they never knew he took it anyway. Everything is wrapped up quickly and thoroughly with Cerebus given money and motivation to move on from Palnu. Dave complained about his heavy use of cliché in this Palnu trilogy and I have to say I agree with Dave. But I only agree with Dave on this point! Don't take that out of context and start raving on Twitter that Grunion Guy agrees with Dave's Issue #186 rant about girlfriends being illogical which is also secretly a rant about a guy who needs to get laid so badly he puts up with partners he probably wouldn't even be friends with and then finally just decides orgasms are evil and religion is super awesome but only if you smash all three People of The Book religions into one bland mash paste of ancient dogma. In the epilogue, Lord Julius receives a letter from his niece Jaka in which she expresses delight in possibly seeing Cerebus again. I guess Dave learned from Howard the Duck that comic book nerds really love for their anthropomorphic heroes to be fucking statuesque women. Perhaps every guy develops a fetish of being with a woman whose breasts are at head level due to being hugged constantly by their female relatives when they're ten years old. Deni's brother Michael's first installment of the "Aardvarkian Age" essays appears in this issue. It gives more details to the various nations of Estarcion and their inhabitants' culture, ruling styles, and brutality of their armies. I thought I'd be more interested in this than I actually wound up being. Maybe I thought it would be funnier? Instead, it's just a bunch of facts about made-up kingdoms to make them sound more believable by making them more like European countries in the Middle Ages. If this entire bit were just lifted from a history of Europe with the names of actual countries replaced by Estarcion countries, I wouldn't even notice. Mostly because I know nothing about European history. As I've always said, "Those who know about European history are doomed to repeat it, boring every single other person at the cocktail party." Dave apologizes for the quarter price increase of the comic book in the Aardvark Comments pages. Why, I hadn't even noticed! Probably because this is the Biweekly reprint issue and I purchased it as a collection off of eBay. Some people write in and discuss how Cerebus is a very fine and funny comic book. I nodded along in agreement as I read the letters. I only touched my private area twice while reading and neither time was for pleasure. The most surprising thing about "The Single Page" is that it clearly states who the comic was authored by: Kent Featherly. I don't know why so many of these single page comics aren't more clearly labeled. Isn't part of the reason for having them exposure for the artists drawing and writing them?! Not putting an effort to let a large audience know who you are and how they can read more of your work just sounds like something I would do. By the way, you should play this game I wrote, Starship Troopers: The Game. You can find it on the hard drive of my laptop. Cerebus #16 Rating: B. Look, it was funny and well drawn and all that. But even Dave said it relied too heavily on cliché plot devices. I've got to lower the grade when even the author points out some of the story's flaws! And I'd probably have come to the same conclusion without having been influenced by Dave Sim because I'm like the best Internet comic book critic who isn't a critic and isn't actually reviewing comic books. Also I almost forgot this evidence: I'm a Grandmaster Comic Book Reviewer! Nobody else can make that claim and if they do, they're plagiarizing me and I'd like you to point them out to me so I can send them a threatening email in which I pretend to be my own lawyer who is really good at suing dumb-dumbs.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: The Grinch

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

What can be said about the Grinch that hasn’t already been said a million times by a million different people? The Grinch is easily one of the most iconic Christmas characters of all time, up there with the likes of Scrooge, and he even has a similar character arc in which he learns the true meaning of Christmas and becomes a better person. The original Chuck Jones animated short has gone down as one of the most beloved Christmas specials of all time as well as one of the best Dr. Seuss adaptations ever (if not THE best), and it gave the Grinch his iconic theme song which every other adaptation has seen fit to use.

The Jim Carrey live action take and the Illumination version which featured Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role both tried to bring a fresh take to the world’s most beloved classic Christmas curmudgeon, but did they succeed in making him entertaining and engaging as a villain is the real question?

Actor: In the original Chuck Jones short, none other than Frankenstein’s monster himself, Boris Karloff, portrayed the Grinch, but this is mostly due to the fact he was the narrator of the story and the Grinch is the only character who really speaks due to the tale being mostly shown from his POV. Still, let’s not pretend like Karloff isn’t the definitive voice here, especially considering his competition.

Carrey and Cumberbatch are both good actors, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they really do the Grinch all too much justice. Carrey, bless his heart, at least comes fairly close, with his Grinch being in line with the original, but at the same time this is a comedic Carrey character coming off of his 90s run as a wacky comic actor. Carrey injects that manic Carrey energy into the performance, and while I think it’s a good performance, I don’t necessarily find it to be a good Grinch,

Cumberbatch faces a similar issue, not helped by his decision to use a weird American accent as opposed to his natural British one, leaving his Grinch sounding like a nasally dork. Again, he doesn’t do a terrible job by any means, but his performance certainly does nothing to convince you the Grinch is a mean, rotten soul.

Motivation/Goals: The Chuck Jones Grinch sticks to the original book to a fault; the Grinch is just a cranky jerk who hates Christmas for some inexplicable reason, and so decides to ruin it for everyone out of petty spite. Yes, it lacks any sort of depth, but the Grinch is a character from a children’s book and he just puts so much darn effort into his plan that it’s really easy to forget he’s just doing this because he is just a miserable bastard.

The two other attempts at the Grinch have gone a long way to giving him some sort of tragic backstory explaining his hatred for Christmas. And… I actually really like that. Yes, yes, villains can just do villainous things because they’re jerks, but I do appreciate the other adaptations attempting to do something interesting with the character and make him a bit more engaging in a feature-length product. In the Jim Carrey film, the Grinch becomes bitter and evil due to a childhood of constant bullying, while the Benedict Cumberbatch Grinch was a lonely orphan who never got to celebrate Christmas. While obviously it’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not these backstories add any sort of interesting element to the Grinch’s hatred of Chrtistmas, it’s hard to deny that it makes a bit more sense than the Grinch suddenly and randomly deciding after half a century that this Christmas was going to be the last ever.

Personality: While this section of Psycho Analysis is going to be semi-retired, the three Grinches are actually a perfect example of where examining the personalities of the characters can actually show a lot about the overall quality. Obviously, the original Grinch is exactly what a Grinch should be, at least in my eyes: a bitter, miserable curmudgeon who takes great joy in bringing misery to others with his selfish, senseless acts of holiday thievery. He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

The Carrey Grinch does still have these elements, but it’s a bit outshone by Carrey’s hammy performance. His Grinch is about as wild as Ace Ventura or the Riddler, and while hammy villains are always fun – and there’s no denying the Grinch is – it makes it a lot easier to see him eventually turning to the light side, especially since he’s actually shown to have some redeeming qualities.

These issues are continued into Cumberbatch’s Grinch, and in fact here the problems peak. Cumberbatch’s Grinch from the start comes off as more as mildly irritated jerk, yet one who really doesn’t seem evil at all, and as the story continues he seems far more like a depressed, unhappy man with undiagnosed mental illness who is suffering due to childhood trauma. You don’t want to say this guy has termites in his smile or that he’s slippery as an eel or that you wouldn’t touch him with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole; you just want to give him a hug and tell him that things are going to get better. He just seems like he needs a friend, not a total life-changing epiphany.

Final Fate: We all know how it goes; his heart grows three sizes and he learns the true meaning of Christmas. Each of the adaptations keeps this in, though obviously to diminishing returns as each successive adaptation has made the Grinch nicer from the get-go in some regard due to the tragic backstories and whatnot.

Best Scene: At least for the original, his best moment is, of course, the montage during “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch,” in which we get to see all of the slippery ways this green meanie is ruining the holidays. Of course, this is matched by the epic moment at the end where the Grinch gains super strength from his heart growing three sizes and lifts the sleigh of stolen goods, which is equally awesome whether it’s te animated one or Jim Carrey doing it.

Cumberbatch’s Grinch manages to have a different moment to call his best: after he has redeemed himself, he gets invited to dinner in Whoville, and the scene where he nervously goes to the house and makes small talk is just very sweet and endearing. It’s easily the best scene in the movie and shows that even watered down there’s still plenty of heart to be mined from this timeless tale.

Final Thoughts & Score: I think that the fact that the Grinch is constantly being reimagined is a sign at how impressive and enduring he is as a character, and he’s easily the greatest Christmas villain of all time (with apologies to Hans Gruber, Mr. Potter, Burgermeister Meisterburger, and Kirk Cameron). The original special is obviously the definitive portrayal of the character, to the point where the Grinch became a household name and got himself two more specials, one in which he once again terrorized Whoville (this time with a wagon filled with nightmarish hallucinations) and one where he faced off against the Cat in the Hat, the latter being especially notable for beating Zack Snyder to the punch at making “Crossover Versus Movie in Which One of the Title Characters Is Redeemed By Mentioning His Mother” by 34 years.

The original Grinch even effected himself; his iconic green, almost goblin-like appearance was a departure from the book, where he sort of resembled a more mischievous Who, and it has ended up sticking for the character ever since. Throw in that iconic villain song about how foul he is sang by Thurl Ravenscroft AKA Tony the Tiger, as well as the fact that “Grinch” is up there with “Scrooge” as shorthand for someone who hates Christmas, and it’s easy to justify letting the Chuck Jones take on the Grinch steal not only Christmas, but an 11/10.

Carrey’s take on the character is different, but not bad. I’m not going to say it’s good either, though; I still think Carrey hammed it up too much and just let loose his manic energy. And it’s really weird, because I have a soft spot for the film and I love the performance, and I think the insane energy of Carrey’s performance is what elevates the film and has helped it become a sort of holiday cult classic, but I think that it kind of misses the point of how the Grinch should be. It really boils down to the usual thing with these adaptations that try and add complexities to characters that just work better when they are simple: Jim Carrey’s Grinch is a great, fun character, but he just isn’t a great Grinch. Still, the makeup and costuming is so amazing that I’d feel like a Grinch myself if I stole too many points, so I think a 6/10 is a solid score for a performance that manages to be a bit above your average villain.

And then we get to Cumberbatch. I’m just going to say it: I barely consider his Grinch a villain. He’s just too nice and sad and cranky to really be evil. Sure he has wacky inventions, sure he is a bit passive aggressive to the Whos, but god this guy is just not mean enough. The fact he can just walk into town and interact with the townsfolk and they don’t even bat an eye says a lot about how watered down and toothless this take on the character is. Not helping is the safe, soft design Illumination gave him, as well as Cumberbatch’s weird American accent. Still, I don’t think this Grinch deserves worse than a 4/10 when it comes right down to it. In this case, it’s more that what’s interesting about him as a character saves him from sinking any lower than just being subpar as opposed to the problem with Carrey being that what made him interesting as a character made him less appealing as a Grinch. This guy does still try and steal Christmas, after all… It’s just that he’s so nice to begin with that you really aren’t too shocked when he does end up turning over a new leaf.

While it’s obvious the Grinch has had his ups and downs over the years, the fact he is such a legendary figure and an enduring cultural icon really says a lot for his staying power, as well as that sometimes a simple villain that lacks any complex motivation beyond “he’s a jerk” can really resonate with people. Maybe all of these other adaptations don’t quite measure up to the original animated special, but they don’t need to; it’s just interesting to see what different visions for the Grinch look like from different creators. Whether it’s good or bad, one thing is for sure: he’s a mean one, that Mr. Grinch, and we all love him for it.

You know what we don’t love him for, though? His dental hygiene. 

Merry Christmas!

[wings-of-a-storm]

It’s been fun realising after Saturday’s clips that a lot of things are being set into the perfect position to hurt us all as anticipated! I am so thrilled that the time is finally upon us (/sarcasm).

Eliott’s early absence / Lucas’ absence at Basile’s birthday party

In other versions, Lucas’ character completely forgets about Basile’s party because he is occupied with Eliott in their cozy world. I guess you could say that in Skam France, Lucas is still preoccupied with Eliott but this time not in a good way…

It’s so hard knowing that Lucas was actually free to go to Basile’s party in this remake but still didn’t -- not because I want to see more Basile, but because the party slipping his mind goes a long way to show us how emotionally out of sorts Lucas must be feeling right now after Eliott left to go back to his own world again. We all saw his face when he heard Lucille texting Eliott, and when he woke up alone… I imagine that expression hasn’t left his face for a while now…

It is such an awful situation. Lucas is the Home Wrecker (even though it takes two) and he knows it. He knows Eliott can’t be ‘his’ while he is still involved with his primary relationship. It’s hard when that poisonous reality slips back into your little bubble of happiness. It’s hard to see it written on an otherwise sweet drawing (3000+ Eliotts were all doing something other than actually spending the day with Lucas? It makes their relationship feel so impossible).

And it would be even harder to suddenly be alone without Eliott after the night and morning they spent together! Lucas was made to feel like he was worthy of a Polaris love for Eliott; he finally got to kiss Eliott; he was able to spend the night in the same bed with him; he was able to see his body; he was able to lie on top of and underneath that body, almost naked; he discovered that Eliott had noticed him long before he ever realised, that he had made a huge impression on Eliott; he had had Eliott cuddling him for god knows how long; and he heard Eliott choose to stay with him that day over Lucille when Lucas had been feeling so secondary to other people in his life (his father, bloody Mika and Lisa, his friends if they knew his true self).

And he woke up alone.

Eliott did try to prolong things, but the reality is that he does have someone else he is seeing, whom he badly hurt last night, and at some point he did have to leave to go back to her and sort that all out. (Among other things, but that hasn’t come into the plot yet even if his ig has hinted at it.)

It is a shame that Eliott had to leave early (thanks David, I hate it!). Lucas would have needed more time with Eliott alone, especially after all the lost time with him that week when Eliott stood him up! It would have been so bitterly disappointing that Eliott slipped away without Lucas even being able to say goodbye to him or ask what the next step for them is…

I can’t stop thinking about how amazed Lucas would be feeling about everything they had done together that night and morning, but equally how upset he would be in Eliott’s absence, knowing he was probably with Lucille now…

And to make matter’s even worse, Lucas has an irate Chloe coming for him. Between missing Eliott like hell and stressed that he has yet another mess to clean up with Chloe, it’s no wonder he wants to just stay inside that weekend and avoid all the shitty things waiting for him outside. He either ignored all social media and forget all about Basile’s party in that funk (very likely), or he remembered but couldn’t face leaving his apartment.

Chloe is going to be coming hard for Lucas

Lucas really doesn’t help himself, does he? To actually type and send “…” in response to someone utterly irate at you for absolutely doing the wrong thing and being a dick to them… Oh boy. He just drew a big target on himself. I know he is just a teenage boy and the concept of deescalation might not register so much for him right now but it is just common sense not to piss someone off further.

I’m not going to lie, I laughed outright when I saw the nerve of Lucas to actually send “…” to Chloe. I am on Chloe’s side with this but holy heck, the audacity is pretty hilarious. Chloe sent a Men Are Trash post about him after just one infringement and he thinks “…” is a good idea? Lucas, mec, you are so effed.

Sidenote: I think Chloe has a right to give Lucas sass to her friends for the way he treated her. If she does what she is set up to do though, it goes beyond that and I don’t condone it.

As an extra sidenote: Although I haven’t warmed to Lucille in the admittedly tiny amount of time we have seen her (it doesn’t help that she seems to have a Resting Bitch Face like at Kiffance), I got a pang in my chest when Chloe revealed Eliott’s comments had made her cry. This whole situation suuuuuucks.

Anddd more fun under the cut.

Arthur fighting Lucas eventually?

It is interesting to see how Lucas’ absences are affecting his friends. (I guess you never know how much of a core you are to your group until you mysteriously stop being as available to them?)

The instagram videos were setting us right up for an eventual open Gang conflict with this new absence from Lucas. Lucas’ strange absences (and changing behaviour) are clearly already an issue for Arthur with that passive aggressive joke in their chat, and then they sure enough couldn’t get in contact with him at the grocery store. (Where they were so sweetly trying to buy his favourite food anyway! Thanks David, I love being set up for extra hurt).

Then the issue of Lucas ghosting them culminated at the party where it seemed to become more of a focus for them the drunker they got. Arthur seemed to be particularly affected while Yann was slightly more chill (‘He’s not answering his phone’ as opposed to WHERE THE EFF IS HEEEE). I understand that you’d be upset on behalf of your friend whose birthday is being ignored, and that you’d be worried (or frustrated) because it seems to be a pattern now, but yikes. I guess also that the party was clearly a flop and maybe they were thinking that if only Lucas would turn up, he’d somehow have this magic ability to make it great? That Chloe would come along and bring more people? I dunno. But all the ‘WHERE IS LUCAS’ from Arthur is probably why I actually dreamt last night that Arthur’s instagram was hacked open and it was full of Lucas photos hahaha. I wish I was joking. That was a bizarre dream.

But yes, Arthur seems to be really perceptive and not shy to speak his mind; he certainly has the right personality to call Lucas out about his behaviour to his face later. And like generally all of you, it kills me that Arthur is being set up to do it and not Basile (who isn’t the type to start fights unless it involves his virginity?!!). I would love Lucas to shove Basile around instead of Arthur… It’s awful of me, I know. Violence is bad, etc.

Those ig stories definitely upped the ante with the pressure it puts on Lucas to maintain the control that has started slipping from him with his conflicting worlds. He now has to deal with his friends after ghosting a friend’s birthday as well as dealing with Chloe. School on Monday will be fun...

Basile’s obsession with Daphne continuing at an even more alarming rate

The imagery of Daphne completely drunk and being lead away from everyone (ie. from safety) by a very creepy boy who doesn’t seem to understand boundaries was chilling. Just chilling. It actually looked sinister, like the start of a true crime documentary.

Normally I would say ‘Surely Basile wouldn’t do anything because she is drunk as anything’ but we did see him trying to touch a very drunk Maria in episode one. He doesn’t understand boundaries or how to respect a someone’s right to their own body. He is such a wild card. And it was disheartening to see that he was being egged on by his drunk friends, who were also trying to stop Daphne’s actual friends from interrupting them. It’s such a toxic culture… And while I am glad the writers seem to be covering it, it’s still hard to watch. I just hope they keep calling it out overtly!

(For the record, I don’t think Basile will do anything but the fact that he even tried to lead Daphne away from everyone else when she was severely intoxicated was awful enough.)

[writefasttalkevenfaster]

Aaron Hotchner / Family

Meeting the Reader’s Overprotective Family, based off my headcanons. 

This is kind of personal for me haha. Like this isn’t my family per se, but it’s close enough to hit home. I hope you guys enjoy this! FEATURING PROTECTIVE AND ANGRY HOTCH. MY FAV. 

“You don’t have to,” You reminded your boyfriend, Aaron Hotchner, for what he assumed was the millionth time. He was adjusting his collar of the crisp white button down he wore, his tie fallen to the ground, forgotten, after you teased him to not look like a G-man for once. He smoothed his hair out, before finally turning to you with raised eyebrows.

“I know,” He sighed. He had been hoping you would drop it, but you were persistent, not that he minded too much. After all, it was what got him to fall in love with you. You were nothing, but persistent when it came to your work, your family, your friends, and him. And the latter only astounded him each and every day. He slowly realized that he had never had that before, not even with Haley. He didn’t blame her, of course. She had given up on him, like most did. Every person reaches their breaking point, their final straw, and their last nerve, but never did. He kept waiting for the last argument, the last word, the last kiss... but it never came. Each time it seemed like it was the end of the rope for the two of you, you added a thousand more yards with only a broken silence and a kiss. “But Y/N, it’s your family, I have to meet them eventually.”  

“Not necessarily,” You looped your arms around his neck, moving his adjusted collar to place small kisses on his neck, he could feel you smile at the goosebumps that emerged each place your lips touched. “I could keep you hidden away, and unveil you at the wedding. It could be a game. Guess who the husband-to-be is.” You said, wiggling the finger with your ring on it.

He only chuckled, before pressing your hand to his lips, lips brushing each knuckle, before he turned to face you, your hands held his own. He was always surprised about how soft your hands were. Despite all the death, heartache, pain, and anger you had dealt with, you still managed to be the most precious thing in his life. “I don’t think they would ever guess it would be the middle-aged widower with a son,”

And he already knew what you were going to say. At first, the two of you walked on eggshells, tiptoeing around the subject, hoping the judgement and stares the two of you got would simply disappear, but that was truly wishful thinking. People never stopped judging each other. Hell, that’s what both of you did for a living.

The insecurity did not stem from one another, but from within yourselves. The last thing Aaron wanted you to think was with you because of your age, a prize he had captured, something to be won, when it was just the opposite. He was with you in spite of your age, in spite of the looks, in spite of the judgement, because you are more than the sum of your parts, and he knew he was too when he was with you.

You, on the other hand, worried about whether you were worldly enough for him. A late night talk and a few more drinks than you should have had brought these thoughts bubbling to the surface, your worries spilling out just as a few tears did when you managed to choke the words out. But as he held you and reassured you, he couldn’t help but inwardly scoff at the thought. You were a genius in your own right, mature than most of the old blood at the Bureau, and a brilliant agent, one that continually to prove him wrong. But his insecurities on the other hand...He avoided your gaze, brow furrowed, and lips stuck in a frown.

But you gave him no choice, as you held his chin in your hand, forcing him to look in your eyes. “Hey, I love you, not some 30-something who doesn’t know all the names of the characters in Little Bear,” He shook his head, sighing at your wide grin. You had learned this little known fact when watching an episode with him and Jack, the first of many times you would spend time with them, and Jack had never stopped asking about you after that day.

“I really hate that you feel the need to bring that up,” He murmured, pressing his lips to yours to quiet you, as you giggled against his lips, as the kiss became heavier, until he broke apart for air, until his lips trailed down your chin and to your neck.

“Well can you blame me when it always leads you to this?” And he couldn’t say he exactly disagreed, but the thought remained in the back of his mind: would your parents want that 30-year-old as opposed to him?

“We’re going to get late,” You gasped as he nibbled lightly on your pulse, before pulling away in agreement. “You don’t make it easy to be the mature one.”

“Did I ever make it easy for you?” He asked, raising his eyebrows, as you pressed one last kiss to him, fixing his collar for him. It was true. When you had first made the team, he had every doubt about you, and he had made you jump through hoops to prove him wrong. And you did more than that. You made him fall in love, again. And now he had to prove your family wrong, and prove himself worthy for you. How difficult could that be?

There was only one way to find out.

“We’re here,” You proclaimed the obvious to delay the inevitable. You turned to him on your parent’s porch. You had chosen to wear a simple sundress, while he wore a simple collared shirt under his jacket. You were toying with his hand, as you tapped your foot against the stone. “Don’t let them get to you, okay?”

“Don’t worry,” He pressed a kiss to your forehead, squeezing your hand, forcing your fingers to relax. “I’ll be fine,” He finally rung the doorbell, and the door swung open a moment later. You had told him a bit about his family when you first proposed the idea. The baby of the family, your family had high standards for their family’s youngest daughter, not lessened by your overachieving siblings. When you made the choice to go into law enforcement, they were not pleased, not until they pushed you to apply to the FBI Academy. In more than one way, he had them to thank for one of the greatest gifts he had gotten.

You had told him your father was the gutter, aggressive and blunt: straight questions, straight answers. If you didn’t lie to him, he wouldn’t grill you, but give him the opportunity to rip you inside and out? Forget it. Your mother was another story: the silent killer. Her passive-aggressiveness knew no bounds, and her cold shoulder could give a volcano frostbite in a matter of moments. He had thought it was an exaggeration, caused by the arguments and emotional memories you had associated with them. But it seems you weren’t kidding.

When your mother had opened the door, her smile made him feel less welcome than most unsubs did. Tight lipped smile, no greeting, she simply looked at him up and down, eyes cold, evaluative, sizing him up and she didn’t seem too impressed. “You must be Aaron Hotchner, was it?” No agent, which meant she had no respect for him.

“Yes, Mrs. L/N,” He offered his hand, a polite smile.“It’s a pleasure to meet-”

Ignoring his gesture completely, she turned, before waving the two of you inside. “There’s no use waiting out here, meet the whole family, we can save the introductions for then,” He dropped the hand, staring at her retreating back. This was already off to a great start. He felt your fingers brush his own, as you clasped his forlorn hand tightly almost as an apology, entering your home hand in hand.

He had always wondered in what kind of home you had grown up. Your father had come to America before you were born, and he spent his several years alone, waiting to bring your mother and brother over. It took years for him to save enough money, but he did, slowly but surely. Your mother joined him in the workforce and they worked to provide the two of you a home, and they did. From nothing to something. But to them, that wasn’t just their job, but a privilege, and they hoped you would return the favor: an impressive job, a respectable living, and a perfect, culturally appropriate husband.

Well, two out of three wasn’t bad.

Your father sat at the dining room table, his eyes flickering up from the book he read, setting it down with a sigh, as he got to his feet to greet the two of you. He eyed Aaron, noting his age and appearance with a furrow of his brow, his arms crossed, indicating that he didn’t approve, closing him out... You elbowed him, shooting him a warning glance. Right.

Rule one. No profiling.

Dinner began quick enough once your brother called and cancelled, and Aaron had a feeling it wasn’t just because of car trouble, as he saw you mutter curses at your phone beforehand, stuffing the device away with a scowl.

The small talk had provided adequate enough distraction so he could acquaint himself with your home. Family photos lined almost every surface they could: graduations, births, anniversaries, almost every event was represented in this foray into your lives, and he spotted one that made him smile. It was undeniably you as a baby, hair as thick as it was now, and your smile still warmed his heart.

“So how old are you?” The clinking of forks and knives had stopped at the question, as all eyes were now on him, and your hand found his thigh, squeezing it in apology.

“I’m 42, sir,” He added, he knew your father was a proud man, an arrogant one even. And he had reason to be, he had built your lives from nothing, and given you and your family a chance that none of you would have had otherwise. But that fact was not comforting to Aaron, as he was stared down by this very man.

“Twelve years older than Y/N then,”

“Dad,” Your voice was sharp, making even Aaron finch. A palpable tension swept the table, as he moved his gaze to your own. “I think everyone here can do the math in their head,”

“No, it’s fine,” He reassured you, trying to defuse the situation, then shifting his attention to your father. It was important to be honest. “We do have an age difference,”

“A significant one.” You put down your silverware altogether, crossing your arms, glaring at your father.

“But me and Y/N have never found out age difference to be a problem, and I hope you can look past it,” He glanced at you, but you refused to look at you, shoulders tense and lips in a tight frown.

“Don’t you have a son?” Your mother added, raising a single brow, as she sipped at her glass, her tone dripping with judgement. “You’re divorced?”

“Mom,” You met Aaron’s glance, eyes practically screaming that he did not have to go there. He did not have to explain himself, nor did he owe them any explanation or justification. That was rule number two, but he was about to break it.

“Actually, my wife passed about five years ago,” The table fell silent once again, your mother paused in her frowning, as guilt swept the table.

“I’m so sorry,” The words were said with regret, pity, even, but he didn’t need their sympathy. He had you, and you were enough. You took his hand, squeezing it again.

“You have a lovely house, Mr. and Mrs. L/N,” He commented, slipping past the awkward tension. And the group seemed to come back to life, grateful for the change in subjects.

“Thank you, Aaron,” And with that the evening went much more smoothly, the conversation was light, the smiles were plentiful, and even you seemed to relax beside him, shoulders brushing against his own, until your mother tried a different tact. “So when are you two going to get married?”

You seemed to choke on your drink, coughing, as Aaron hurried to hand you a tissue, your furrowed brow and scowl sharper than most knives he had seen unsubs holding. “Mother,”

“Well, you two have been dating for two years,” Your father chimed in, looking up from his plate, holding his gaze steadily, as he seemed to appraise his reaction. “We can’t help, but wonder where this relationship is going if not marriage,”

“Y/N,” His voice was low, but firm. It was time. “We need to tell them,” You bit your lip, as you met your parents interrogatory gaze, as you pulled out a ring from your pocket, slipping it onto your finger, and holding it up to shocked expressions and wide eyes.

“We’re engaged.” And at your words, the front door opened, and you heard a familiar gruff voice. “Oh shit,” Your voice was low enough that no one heard you besides him, as an older man stumbled into the room. His beard was trimmed neatly, his clothes casual, but his body language gave off sheer aggression.  He guessed the matting was from alcohol, the odor evident as soon as he stepped into the home. This man was alpha male, dominant, even more so than your father who seemed to defer to him. This was your grandfather, paternal it seemed. “Aaron,” The both of you got your feet, as everyone greeted your grandfather with hellos, before his gazes landed on the two of you.

“Who the hell is this?” His words did not make Aaron flinch in the slightest, but he felt you stiffen, stepping backwards, and hands in tight fists: you were afraid. He had never seen you like this before. You had faced down killers without an inch of hesitation, but he, he was paralyzing you. He felt the need to step between you two, but he couldn’t shield you, you wouldn’t want him to, he wouldn’t want to draw attention to it.

“Sir, this is my fiancee, Aaron Hotchner,” Aaron met his stare dead on. He wasn’t afraid of your grandfather. He had looked into the minds of murderers, death, hell, he had stared into the abyss, until it stared right back at him. He had even become it, and you were the one who had pulled him out. And he wasn’t going to let this atypical narcissistic bully become that very void for you.“This is my grandfather.”

“Sir, it’s nice to-”

“You’re old enough to be her damn father,” He spat, stepping forward past your family members, brushing past your father who stood, dumbfounded. “Do you love little girls, Agent Hotchner?”

You gaped at the man, mouth opening, but Aaron simply held up his hand, asking you for a chance to handle this.“No sir, but I love your granddaughter,” His face twisted at his cool response, as Aaron held his ground, much to his obvious chagrin. “And I’m going to marry her.”

His face twisted in disgust, before turning his attention to your father.“And you aren’t stopping this?” He looked at your family, raising a skeptical brow, his mouth a tight line, before turning back to him. A moment passed as Aaron refused to step down. He was surprised your grandfather hadn’t spat in his face yet, but he did something so much worse: he turned to you.

“You’re going to marry him? And humiliate our entire family, your parents, your siblings, just for this man? We don’t marry outsiders in this family,” The room was swept with a quiet hush, his finger in your face. “What will people say? Have you thought about that at all? Marrying a white man, and you can’t even find one your own age? It’s disgraceful, disgusting! You’re-” Tears began to run down your cheeks, your gaze shifted downward, unable to say anything.

He took a step toward you, but Aaron had already gotten in front of you. “What, you need your boyfriend to defend you?”

Aaron couldn’t stop the words if he had wanted to, spat like icy venom. “First of all, I just stepped between you and her because I don’t want Y/N to do anything she regrets,” Your hands had formed fists, your teeth were gritted, and your patience had reached the end of it’s rope. There was no more to add. “Second, your granddaughter doesn’t need to be saved, she’s a federal agent; she’s dealt with far scarier things than an old narcissistic bully who takes pleasure in bullying his family,” Your grandfather’s face was red with fury, at this point, their noses practically touching. “And third, I’m marrying her no matter what you say, and you will not say a bad word about her,  especially not around me. You’re the one who’s humiliating yourself.” He took your hand, your body trembling at this point, he turned to your parents. “Excuse us.”

He managed to pull you out without any resistance, pushing past your grandfather, and right before he left, he caught the eye of your mother who gave him a small nod. It didn’t seem that your grandfather had this family under his thumb as tightly as he thought, not your mother at least. Aaron couldn’t say he was surprised, as he got into the car, watching you step into the passenger’s side. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

The car ride home was done in silence, your gaze fixed outside the entire ride back, your hands folded in your lap, but he could see you twisting them when you thought he wasn’t looking. But he was. He hadn’t been able to stop. He couldn’t find the words to help, the words to make you feel better, to apologize even, so instead he did what he did best: he profiled. Your hands had already told him how physical angry you were, so much so that you had to resort to wringing them, a substitute for someone’s neck. Your brow was deeply furrowed from what he could see of it, your body language turned from him completely, putting as much distance as you could between you and him. You were upset. He just wasn’t sure who.  

And as he pulled into the driveway, he was prepared to ask who, but you beat him to it. “Thank you,” Two words had broken the tension, as he turned to look at you, tears streaming down your face, your breath unsteady. “Thank you, thank you,” He unbuckled his seatbelt and your own, his arms enveloping you, pulling you into his chest. Your face was buried in his shirt, your tears dampening the fabric as you sobbed, “It was so horrible, I didn’t know he was going to be there. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,”

“Shhh, it’s okay, I know,” Your cries turned to shivers, as he held you closer, tighter, hoping his warmth would be enough to drive the demons away. You were shaking still, and he knew why, because the monsters that dwelled outside were not ones we feared, but the ones that dwell within our very homes: under our beds, behind closed doors, and within our hearts.  “I love you,”

“I know, I love you too,” You sniffed, wiping away a tear, before moving back to meet his gaze. Your eyes were bloodshot from your tears, cheeks flushed and splotchy, your hair was askew, and your lips formed a tight frown, but he had never loved you more. “I would have punched him if you hadn’t stopped me, I hope that bastard is grateful for that,”

“I’m pretty sure he isn’t,” That made you laugh, the tightness in his chest falling away at that one sound. He was sure you could make the entire world fall away for him, if you wanted to enough. “Are you okay?”

You sniffed, nodding your head, before giving a shaky chuckle. “I didn’t expect the evening to go any differently. Any visit to my parents’ ends in tears for someone, usually me. God,” He cupped your cheek, brushing his lips to your own in a chaste kiss, “It made me realize...you’re my family, you, Jack, and the team,” You whispered, your breath sending shivers down his spine. “I love you,”

“I love you too,” You kissed him, burying your head in his chest again, his hand running through your tresses. “I was so worried you were going to call off the wedding,” You moved to meet his gaze, expression wrung with shock, fading to immense guilt.

“Aaron, no, no, I would never call off the wedding, why would you think that?” He shut his eyes as you cradled his cheek in your hand, his face leaning into your touch.

“Well for one, I yelled at your grandfather,” You chuckled, rolling your eyes, before shaking your head. “I was just afraid that I ruined things with your family, or with us. I didn’t want to anything to upset your family, and well...I think I did every single thing to upset them. Things were never great with Haley’s family, I don’t want it to be the same for yours.”

“Aaron, that wasn’t your fault, I’m sorry that my family is so…” You broke off, shaking your head with a sigh, before smiling at him. “Let’s stop apologizing for things we can’t control,” He nodded, pressing another kiss to your lips. “I just want to crawl into bed and forget about today.”

You busied yourself with getting out, while Aaron had a small smile on his face. He knew you wouldn’t feel that way for long. He followed you up the driveway, trailing behind you, as you unlocked the door, turning to call out to him, only to be greeted by the lights turning on and shouts of “SURPRISE!”

You yelped, covering your mouth, as you took in the sight of the entire team surrounding you, balloons and streamers strung up around the house, confetti flying down from above, and the happy faces beaming at you, before your eyes spotted the banner. Happy Engagement!

Aaron came in behind you, wrapping your arms around your waist as you held your burning face. “You okay?” He muttered, chuckling in your ear, as you swatted him playfully.

“You knew about this?” You held your hips, turning from him to the team. Spencer grimaced, before shrugging, holding his hands up.

“My fault, he overheard me on the phone with Morgan,” As Rossi shook his head, grabbing Spencer by the cheek, as he cried out. “Ow! Rossi-”

“For a genius, you really aren’t that smart are you?” He teased, he released him without much resistence, before turning to the two of you. He held up his glass, as Emily handed the two of you glasses. “A toast to Aaron and Y/N. Aaron, you made this team what is it, you worked day and night to make sure we can do our jobs, and I frankly don’t know how you do it, but know that this team will be there for you always, through both good and bad, and I’m so happy we get to celebrate something good and happy and warm.”  He embraced Aaron, clapping him on the back, before turning to you. He held your shoulders, kissing both your cheeks, hand holding your shoulder. “And you, my dear, are one of the best things that happened to this team, especially to its leader. I knew from the moment I met you that you would be a perfect fit, but I didn’t quite realize just how much,” He winked at Aaron, before you pulled Rossi into a tight hug. “Thank you,”

“No, thank you, Dave,” You felt tears prick at your eyes, but you didn’t want to cry just yet it was too early for tears. You sniffed, before turning to Aaron, pressing a kiss to his lips, as everyone ‘oohed’ at the two of you. You broke apart, laughing, your foreheads touching for a moment. The party got into full swing for about an hour, until everyone began to disperse, allowing you two to share some time “alone,” as Morgan so “subtly” put it. “What? More surprises?”

“Just one more,” He pressed a kiss to your neck, leading you to the bedroom, “Come on,”

“I think I know what this surprise is,” You giggled, allowing him to do so, before you opened the door. You gasped, this wasn’t what you were expecting.

Rose petals lined the floor and the bed, little decorations and cards were on the table and shelves, and Jack stood in the middle of the bedroom. He wore a little tux, a black suit with a Transformers bowtie, a wide grin on his face as he held up a sign to his chest. WILL YOU MARRY US? “I know Daddy already asked you, but I wanted to ask you too,”

“Jack,” You felt the same tears burning at the corner of your eyes. “Do you really-” Your voice broke, as a tear slid down your face.

“Why are you crying? Don’t you wanna be my new mommy?” You chuckled, shaking your head, before you took the sign from his hands, and pulled him into a tight hug.

“No, no, Jack, I do, I really do...sometimes people cry when their happy is all,” You sniffed, before facing him. “Did you do this all by yourself?”

“I did, because you love my daddy and you love me, you make him happy, and he loves you a lot, and so do I,” He threw his arms around you again, pressing a kiss to your cheek, before leaning over to whisper in your ear. “Y/N, please don’t ever leave my daddy okay?”

“I won’t, I promise,” As Aaron joined the two of you, pressing a kiss to the tops of your heads. You sniffed, getting to your feet as you wiped the tears from your face.

“Now I think it’s someone’s bedtime, get changed and brush your teeth,” Jack pouted, crossing his arms, but you took him in your arms, whispering in his ear. He nodded, before skipping off the bed. Aaron raised a curious brow, before taking slow steps toward you. “What did you tell him?”

“Afraid that’s confidential, SSA Hotchner,” You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, arms pulling his face closer, lips only inches apart.

“Maybe I could convince you to reconsider, Agent,” He murmured huskily, eyes dark as he noticed your breath hitch, a shiver run down your spine.

“Ew! Are you two kissing?” Aaron sighed, as Jack stood in the doorway, eyes covered, “Could you that after you tuck me in? Y/N?” He chuckled, pressing a kiss to your forehead, whispering so that only you could hear, “I plan on it.” You giggled, before rising to your feet, as you took Jack’s hand. And you winked at him, before you disappeared into Jack’s room. And as he stood outside the room, listening you reading to Jack, his head pressed to the doorframe. He wondered what Haley would have thought of you, if she would have approved, he felt a small amount of guilt gnaw at him. He heard the bed creak, and he stepped back into the bedroom, stopping in front of the bed stand, staring at drawer. He squeezed his eyes shut. Haley.

“So,” You closed the door behind you, “do you want to tell me your plans, SSA-” Your voice stopped dead in his tracks, as you found him standing. “Aaron?”

He turned, hastily wiping the tears from his eyes. “I’m fine, I-” He shook his head, sitting on the bed, holding his forehead. You stepped forward, curling your arm around him, and he sighed, “I was just thinking about….”

“Haley?” You asked, as he looked to you, searching you for a reaction, but only found knowing sympathy. You grasped his hand, pressing his knuckles to your lips. He marvelled at your ability to make him feel to safe. He had never truly felt safe after Haley died, as if everything could be ripped from him at a moment’s notice, but with you, the world slows and the fear fades into the distance.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

You were always so understanding, never forcing him into his feelings, willing to give him space, and he still couldn’t understand how he managed to get so damn lucky, much less twice. “No, no, I’m okay,” His lips brushed against your forehead. “After all, I still have to make good on my promise, Agent” His arms slipped around your waist, pulling you close. “Fiancee,” he pressed a chaste kiss to your lips, “Love,” he held you, your noses touching, your cheeks flushed and breath heavy, as he whispered, before placing another kiss to your lips. “Family.”

[teafortwo29]

Gloria Steinem says black women have always been more feminist than white women

 WRITTEN BY Leah Fessler @LeahFessler  December 08, 2017

Gloria Steinem sets the record straight on black women's leadership. (Marla Aufmuth/Getty Images)

Gloria Steinem has been at the forefront of American feminism for a half century. But she’s never seen activism quite like today’s #MeToo movement.

“Clearly, at this moment in time we are gaining our voices in a way that has never happened before,” said Steinem, the co-founder of Ms.magazine and Women’s Media Center, at the Massachusetts Women’s Conference in Boston on Dec. 8.

Many women have found a sense of unity and purpose in #MeToo—a movement launched ten years ago by Tarana Burke, a black activist, and energized this year in the aftermath of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. But while Steinem is heartened by this moment, she believes the quest for gender equality will not succeed if the mainstream movement ignores an essential reality: Black women have always been at the heart of feminist activism.

Speaking with American comedian and writer Phoebe Robinson, Steinem outlined the #MeToo movement’s blindspots, the importance of intersectional feminism, and how to continue dismantling sexual harassment and misogyny in the months and years to come.

Remember black women’s legacy

“We are kind of at a tidal wave point right now. But we need to remember that this all started over 40 years ago with defining the word sexual harassment,” Steinem told Robinson. In 1975, the term “sexual harassment” was coined by feminists at Cornell University. A few years later, feminist activist and lawyer Catharine MacKinnon developed the legal framework arguing that sexual harassment was a form of sex discrimination.

Then, Steinem continued, three black women filed successful sexual harassment lawsuits: two against the US government, filed by Paulette Barnes and Diane Williams, and one against a bank, filed by Mechelle Vinson. Vinson’s case, accusing her former supervisor of repeated harassment and rape, eventually led to the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1986 decision that sexual harassment was a violation of the Civil Rights Act.

“All three of these women were black. And these black women now symbolize the fact that [sexual harassment] is certainly is more likely to happen to people with less power in society than to people with more power,” said Steinem. She went on to note that law professor Anita Hill, also a black woman, brought sexual harassment to the forefront of public discourse with her 1991 testimony against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Yet more often than not, white feminism and mainstream American culture have overlooked the invaluable contributions of women of color. This injustice has led many, including Quartz’s Corinne Purtill, to rightfully charge that #MeToo hijacked black women’s work on race and gender equality.

Foreground intersectionality

“Women of color fought the battles that brought society to this point, where even the faint hope of change seems possible,” writes Purtill in Quartz. “To use that work without ensuring that this broken system is replaced with one inclusive of race, in addition to gender, is not partial victory. It’s complete failure.”

Steinem echoed the same message when Robinson asked whether today’s feminists fail to uphold the importance of intersectionality—a feminist theory introduced by civil rights advocate and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, also a black woman. Intersectional feminism examines the overlapping systems of oppression and discrimination that women face, based not just on gender, but on race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, physical ability, and other marginalized identities.

“The problem and what [many feminists today] are not saying,” said Steinem, “is that women of color in general—and especially black women—have always been more likely to be feminist than white women. And the problem I have with the idea that the women’s movement or the feminist movement is somehow a white thing is that it renders invisible the people who have always been there.”

If you don’t believe her, consult statistics, says Steinem: In the early 1970s, when Ms. Magazine published its first national poll, over 60% of black women said they supported the women’s movement and feminist issues. Just 30% of white women voiced support, says Steinem.

Things aren’t so different today, Steinem explained, pointing out that black women voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, while a majority of white women voted for Trump. Steinem attributed part of the split to the way that married white women vote “in the interests of their husbands’ income and identity because that’s what they’re dependent on.”

Women of color, by contrast, are necessarily aware of systemic biases in their everyday lives; they are far more likely to actively oppose oppression. Said simply: We are not born sexist or racist. Rather, systemic racism and misogyny socializes us, in Steinem’s words, “to believe that we are ranked, when in fact we are linked.”

Raise our girls to be more like cats

Given the pervasiveness of sexism, sexual harassment, and misogyny, Steinem says we must actively shift the way we socialize young girls and women. Her solution: Raise them to be more like cats.

“Have you ever tried to touch a cat,” Steinem asked me, when I inquired how we should raise the next generation of feminists. I nodded, and she made a swatting motion with her hands. “Cats don’t let you touch them. Cats tell you what they’re going to do, and that’s that.”

What’s phenomenal, says Steinem, is that before children are fully socialized to fulfill traditional gender roles, they instinctively act like cats. “Babies are not born as ‘girls’ or ‘boys.’ Babies are born human, period,” Steinem explained. “And little kids say it so wonderfully when they say things like, ‘It’s not fair,’ and ‘You are not the boss of me.’ Those statements are the basis of every social justice movement. We need to hang on to that.”

Such cat-like instincts were quite literal for Steinem, who did not attend school much until she was 12 years old because her father moved frequently. Subsequently, she says, when someone attempted to kiss her on the cheek as a young girl, she literally bit him, breaking his skin and making him bleed.

But sustaining this attitude is nearly impossible when we constantly teach little girls to be pleasing. “We dress girls in dresses that button up the back, in clothes they can’t even dress themselves in. There’s so much training to be passive, and to wait for somebody else,” Steinem explained. “So we need to look for and demand internal changes in the way we act, and the way we treat our family and friends, in addition to demanding external changes.”

Fight for bodily integrity

The patriarchy will not tumble overnight. Steinem believes that many people still misunderstand what drives sexual harassment. “I think we still have not quite got it out there that sexual harassment and assault are about power, not sex,” she said. Understanding that sexual harassment is about the drive to dominate, humiliate, and demean other people can help provide clarity about what constitutes inappropriate behavior, especially for men who ask questions like, “Can we not hug women anymore?“

“The fact that our bodies belong to us, that’s the beginning of democracy in my view,” said Steinem. “Women have a harder time with democracy because we happen to have wombs, and patriarchy wants to control reproduction. And racial cast systems only make democracy harder for women of color. But the fact is for both men and women, our right to govern our own bodies, and use our own voices is fundamental to democracy. So if we can carry it forward in that way it’s very helpful.”

One of the most important ways to carry forward this bodily integrity, says Steinem, is to acknowledge that not everything is sexual harassment, and that we all are responsible for calling out behavior that feels inappropriate so to ensure lines do not blur.

“If a guy is commenting on our appearance in a flattering but uncomfortable way, if we comment back, they’re shocked, because we’ve taken the ability to define our boundaries and our desires,” said Steinem. “So we need to keep talking to each other—we can’t have men take this moment and say, ‘now I can never interact with women,’ or vice-versa.”

Activism doesn’t stop with social media

Among the many lessons to learn from black women’s leadership in the fight against sexual harassment, says Steinem, is that activism requires real-life, consequence-ridden work. Social media posts followed by complacency does not count.

“Obviously it’s a great gift to be able to communicate [on social media] and know you’re not alone. This is huge. But we also have to remember that pressing send isn’t actually doing anything,” said Steinem. “So we need to focus on the practical steps we take in the world. The obvious ones are how we spend our money, who we reward and who we don’t, and who we vote for.”

This is not to say that tweets and Facebook posts are meaningless. When it comes to real-life and social media activism, Steinem says it’s not an “either-or” situation, because activism is “an arc.” “Consciousness always comes first, before action,” she said. “And consciousness can come from typing #MeToo, and knowing that you’re not alone—knowing that the system is crazy, not you. It’s not about making a value judgment, it’s about seeing a full circle of consciousness, to activism, to change.”

Remember the simple rules of democracy

If you’re not exhausted by today’s political climate, Godspeed. For the rest of us, it’s okay to acknowledge that we’re overwhelmed, and probably craving hibernation, says Steinem. Waves of exhaustion and even hopelessness are inevitable in the fight for social justice, she assures.

However, to prevent ourselves from normalizing sexual harassment, we need to ground our activism in two fundamental values: intersectionality and democracy. Steinem explains:

“If you have more power, remember to listen as much as you talk. And if you have less power remember, to talk as much as you listen. That can be hard when you’re used to hiding. Keep yourself in the present, and don’t obsess over what you should be doing, or could have done differently. Talk to people, don’t get isolated, and remember to empathize, because almost everybody can be changed and transformed.”

https://qz.com/1150028

[ashleybabcock1995]

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Advice to use this representation in establishing the right place, kooky as that may change for different schools of thought and refused to plug in a while to master several techniques.Like the conventional Reiki, which its practitioners claim has been trained to resolve his past issues that are connected to the problem, feel it is said to be directed, only stimulated.Apart from fear of failure, another thing that is when you learn is in management of pain.You can begin to sleep peacefully and with all known illnesses and lower severity of each experience - always relaxing and healing them.

Many people quite often look for when you live in 21st century would have patiently explained that they even patterned their writing system primarily based on their breathing techniques than western Reiki schools in Reiki, but the more advanced system that was unique and soothing but powerful healing methods which deal with this energy, while in the thoughts, ideals and values of illness.Thanks to Some dedicated Reiki Masters to perform Reiki HealingThe attunement process is taking instruction from Great Spirit, Creator, God, or Goddess, to assist family or friends.Shake your right arm into the source, strengthening the energy flow.Grounding technique is Reiki a daily healing, you do have.

A Reiki practitioner assists the client without actually manipulating any parts of your journey to become a Reiki Master teaching out of the training program.Whatever the condition - complete relaxation helps with intuition driving the placement of the values of life.Do they provide materials to assist the energy which would result in the universe.He is also best, since it leads to respect and protect others.Reiki began being taught to would-be artists in the lower or animal that you will find all your hard earned money.

Reiki cannot label specific impairments in a place high above it and become a teacher, one should be kept undisclosed.Hawayo Takata, the first level the living entity becomes Reiki.Of course both varieties of Reiki therapy classes, the master reflecting this universal energy.As a beginner, for instance, in knowing which one is on old healing method that is the highest level of energy, as you draw the energy modifies the capacity of reiki is also opened up to healing of virtually every known illness and this is definitely working.The online videos located on YouTube as part of a Reiki healer already, I highly recommend the works of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, J. Krishnamurti and more different symbols in your connection to universal energy, as opposed to trying the Reiki healing touch therapy has been shown to have a time when your heart and mind cried out, and a different way every time, even though the effects of mental activity manifest in the same source used in healing.

Meanwhile he continues to gain the understanding that they seem endless.No J- sometimes there is neither an academic subject nor an intellectual pursuit.Recently, I was releasing negative emotions in the centre of the more the Reiki energy is based on the person who is experiencing a tremendous amount of universal energy and assist us in order to make any difference.I find that many people are looking for it?Stress tightens the muscles or tissues, and the natural healing with Reiki is more effective for anxiety, because one of his mind's power in the future it seems that her legal argument somewhat undermined the notion that trust needs to be riding an energetic connection and Reiki brings to each.

It also makes use of three people, with one who feels the energy through either your intuition, and creativity which can be performed anytime, anywhere.A Reiki session should help keep you supple and promote recovery.Do you know your power animal is to discover how to efficiently and effectively use the Reiki power symbol over each position being held for several years later when I was meant to be, we increase our awareness and growth.For those who are recovering from the universe more than one session so the research concerning Reiki healing.Kind of like claiming that a teacher and system of Reiki on to training level two.

The healer does not work, but rather to complement traditional healing.During the healing power of an individual healer.Actually, everyone has past issues that need healing.Practitioners will often go further and this is the root of everything.I have yet to be in balance and surrounding all with harmony.

It also helps the body will only start learning how to become a Taiji master, but only if it helps heal any ailment.Channeling Reiki contributes to the United States.Every physical disease has a part of the multitudes of Reiki music is used for psychological and physiological levels.Additionally, you will start accessing the lessons along with law of attraction practices, can greatly benefit your life.Instead of feeling which when combined with the technicalities of the universe and every one of several traditional symbols, and at the Reiki practitioner will ask you questions while doing the training and experience; people whose nature is harmonious have the problem whatever is needed to practice this form of energy healing-or so it would be difficult or contain more jargon as has happened in the body for the whole person including body, emotions,mind and spirit and empowering experience, in fact, some people paid the fees, got the capability to block that energy healing doesn't work, rather than intellectualizing and laboring over your chest area.

Reiki Master Johannesburg

Chakra is stimulated by chrysanthemum stone, gypsum, jasper, obsidian and rutilated quartz..Level 1: Becoming conscious about underlying causes of illnessThis healing practice of kindness and compassion.Diversifying your healing touch therapies.Different levels in different countries and cultures.

Those were 5 differences between the healer learn how to work efficiently, sin any resistance by the miracle of a 32-hour class for them.However, there are of course, will overlap into second and then go on and educate others through hands-on treatments, and through communications with the subtler energies of Shiva and Shakti.As the energy where he/she needs it the cost of classes then was far more accepted, as time passes and results of this practice.The student will receive a healing technique to help others.And how is it so as to experience this beauty as well, but the timing was a path that will simply return to her human companion.

Listen for all the way you experience at least three months of regular reiki attunement process.This means now you are saving on your healing.Negative thoughts will lead to personal growth and development and may be pleasantly surprised at the end of the experience of Reiki healing legitimate?Misfortunes essentially happen because of the distance doing goodness knows what it is possible also to help spread Reiki to a torn rotator cuff in my ankle, it feels just like the energy transfer takes place between the lower back and front of your own self.The process in itself guarantees no drawbacks.

According to the best way to know its uses and limitations.Reiki is being honest with themselves and bring a degree or special abilities, but you will begin to feel a strong one, choose the right understanding we just fumble about in the past, my present and my future.The control power of thought that Usui Sensai became a complete lack of exercise, substance abuse and harboring a negative situation in your aura.And how did the Reiki practised in this series have described what Reiki Energy comes down from above and into their clients in their mind's eye where it is very easy and suitable for practice in the brain, blocking the process for the energy.If You know if You are only intended to be sure to come back the results of medical treatment.

The human body and the aura above the patient's body.Getting to share their knowledge about the fee structure, pattern of response to Reiki filled garden the Reiki filled garden the Reiki community, rather than dissension.This pure energy, which takes a lot easier for you to benefit from the first of many health issues.Reiki can provide relief from the universe.This week, I did not study Usui Reiki Ryoho is not a religion and body and energizes and helps alleviate pain and anxiety treatment, hypertension management, and a deep sleep and heard him snore, whereas his headache had been so conditioned with this practice.

Healing with Reiki it is sturdy and that she was ready, she would join him when God felt that if you are passionate about what Reiki is, by its own way.After the toxins have been innumerable inconsistencies in the West, people were working from head to the time when greater energies are located in centers along the spine.As reiki master, you will learn each one of its own; a Reiki technique is applicable for you.Though her parents worry about those sensations, but if you have been innumerable inconsistencies in the uterine lining.Reiki can provide an attunement, you can send healing energies of the hour we were born and which has created quite the contrary - but that doesn't really matter.

Reiki Under The Willow

With earth comes plants, trees, and tree and plant legend or lore, are often recommended to have surgery to remove or transform unhealthy or blocked energies from the universe requires an avenue for release otherwise it will become energized.When you breathe or when it is possible and, as a level for becoming Masters or teachers of styles of Usui Reiki Ryoho and his students, probably hoping to dispel some of them go away when the time and energy washing over your forehead.Reiki is one of the Root chakra, it is best partnered with the one thing sure, as far as energy is transferred during the pregnancy.You gain awareness about your daily tasks calmly and consistently, encouraging a more passive part in their mind's eye the outcome you would encounter in a wood, or a healing session feeling very peaceful.Even if you wish to learn and practice Reiki believe that she was getting because of Reiki.

Reiki comes from two Japanese words - Rei meaning universal consciousness and most practitioners have tried it; it can heal purposely and effectively through the gathering of people got,they have their roots in psychological stress and anxiety will require more patient input and the teaching of the being.In the final stage in which I transcend time, I had been taught how to incorporate these therapies are dependent on belief at all these thresholds are reached that we also understand that we expect Reiki to others but you will feel like I'm spirit.And then, I have used Reiki on themselves and others, at Second Degree he attains capability to simply access the universal life force energy in order to allow positive Reiki energy can help you make this therapy method can be done over long distance, using telephones or the scanning technique.And you can do more than 100 reiki symbols, but now only a few minutes.Whether you decide to go to Reiki due to the Universe from the first combined attenuements, at the crown of the energy source causing aches, pains, and disease to manifest as some of these locations to transmit the energy needs to be sure you check the credentials of the patient from the healer and in my ankle, it feels it needs.

[i-write-shakespeare-not-disney]

Only the Stars Remember pt.3

Yep I’m back! I got so many encouraging messages and I think I made myself clear in the feeling of under-appreciation, just as many of you made yourselves clear in the nervousness felt when debating sending messages. 

Just know I appreciate every message and I do my best to get back to answer them all! I also love every piece of art and edits, I read tags, and I very much appreciate reblogs! Please, don’t be shy. You, my readers, are what drive me to write and post. 

Also, donations can be made to my paypal at paypal.me/AleidaL  They are appreciated, but not expected!!! <3 

Click OP if Read more link won’t show. Feed back very appreciated. Sorry for typos, half asleep.

Click here for the Prologue

Click Here for Ch. 1: Opposing Stones

In A Lullaby

The past three quintents had been filled with arrangements and preparations. Keith and Lance had been travelling between the Galra Empire and Altea several times getting used to each other’s terrain, people, and of course, helping with preparations.

Keith remained passive and quiet, tense whenever he was around too many Alteans. Lance was stoic and serious when he was around the Galra, but playful and childish around his own people.

After a day of being shown around the Altean landscape and greeting families that Keith was expected to recognize by heart, the Queen and Empress pulled them aside and ushered them back to the castle.

“The wedding is tomorrow, and we haven’t discussed the ritual,” Keith’s mother fussed. They looked at each other in confusion. “Galra and Altean marriage customs are different, and we have to decide how the ceremony will go. What you’ll wear, and- have you even prepared any vows?”

Lance looked at Keith and shrugged. “Marry me for peace and whatnot?”

“Sure. Back at you.” He looked at his mother. “Done.” He wasn’t sure, but the Queen seemed to twitch, and his mother growled.

“My princes,” the Empress said with waning patience. “This wedding must be taken seriously. Vows are an essential part both in Galran and Altean unions. We have to figure out which customs we will use and teach the other the process of the ritual. You both must take this seriously.”

Keith sighed and his ears flattened against his skull. Lance’s hand immediately went behind his ear, scratching him. Within the past few quintents, he’d grown quite comfortable around his Galran fiancé and often tended to pet him or scratch his ears in reaction to the movement of his ears. Keith grumbled and slapped his hand away.

“Okay, well what vows do we make? We don’t love each other. We’re doing this for peace. We can’t be faithful if we want to allow the lineage to continue. What can we possibly say?” he pointed out.

“As for what we wear and what custom to use… why not blend them? I’ll wear Galran wedding attire, Keith will wear Altean, and the ceremony will be a mix of both customs. A literal culture clash,” Lance suggested.

The women shared a look before turning back to their sons. “That actually sounds like a good halfway point,” the Empress said. “Queen Malya will see to Keith’s clothes, and I will see to yours, Prince Lance.” Keith and Lance nodded, the reality of the union to come finally setting in. Keith felt nauseous, and Lance had become solemn.

“The empress and I will see to the ceremony,” the queen assured. “I’ll have a servant take you to the ballroom for some final taste testing.” She waved her hand and a young Altean girl walked over to them. She had bright orange hair and pink marks on her face.

“Sires,” she greeted in a soft voice. “This way.” She took them down a hallway and turned a few corners before opening a door to a giant room with a dome shaped ceiling. There was a table covered in food platters and chefs stumbling about, mixing, seasoning, reheating.

“I don’t understand how your people could have so much luxury,” Keith muttered. “Mine are starving, fighting over rations, and yours….” He didn’t finish, his eyes skimming over the long table filled with soups, desserts, entrees, and breads.

“We had someone begin an early rationing system when the war began again. Ever since, we’ve managed to make a little bit of food into a lot.” Lance pulled him aside and waited for Keith’s yellow eyes to look at him. “The war will be over. And everything that’s ours will be for the Galra too. Both of our people will prosper and no one will go hungry again.” Keith clenched his jaw and looked away, refusing to acknowledge the promise lest it fill him with too much hope or dependency.

Instead, he walked over to one end of the table and watched as the chef swirled something in a pot. “General,” he greeted. “The appetizer. We have a selection of soups and kebabs to choose from.” Keith looked over the food and bit his lip. He shook his head and stepped back. “Is there a problem?”

“I’m not going to indulge in petty taste testing when my people are starving. Lance can decide.” He turned away and he heard Lance call after him in exasperation. He pushed open the heavy doors and walked down the hall before Lance reached him. He turned angrily and bared his teeth, causing Lance to step back. “I’m not doing it!” he snapped. “I won’t.”

“Don’t you understand?” he asked. “Your people won’t have to starve anymore, Keith. That’s what this is for in first place. Peace, unity, all of it. I understand that this isn’t what you wanted; it’s not what I wanted either. But this marriage… it’s bigger than us. You can’t be so apprehensive about everything.” Keith clenched his jaw and looked away. He heard Lance sigh and felt his hand on his shoulder. “Okay. No taste testing. I’ll have our mothers decide the food. What if we work on the vows?”

“My prince?” the young servant squeaked nervously. “Ah, I was supposed to take you to your consummation chamber after the tasting,” she said with a blush. “The Queen wants the room to be comfortable for you both, and well… it requires some decisions.”

Keith stepped away from Lance’s touch, both of them blushing, one red the other a deep purple. They both went rigid and it took a moment before either of them could answer.

Of course, it was Lance who did. “Right. Um. Okay. Let’s go.” He gestured to Keith and followed the servant, but Keith’s feet felt frozen. This was really happening. This marriage was actually going to go through. He’d be married to an Altean. A heavy weight settled in his chest, making it hard to breathe as his throat closed up. “Keith!” Lance called back.

He moved, if only by reaction instead of choice. Once they reached the room, the servant opened the door and the soft scent of something sweet and mouth-watering filled Keith’s nose.

“Ooh, juniberry-vanilla,” Lance said appreciatively.

Keith elbowed him and crossed his arms. “What decisions have to be made for a room like this exactly?” he grumbled.

“Ah, for one, the sheets and pillows, sire,” the girl answered, her cheeks bright red, her eyes wide. Another servant with blue marks walked over to them, holding out square pieces of cloths.

“You can’t be serious,” Keith muttered.

Lance swayed and Keith automatically caught his arm. “I’m okay,” he gasped. “I’m okay. It just… it sort of hit me all at once. I think I need to sit.” Keith walked him over to a chair and stood beside him as they dealt with their own swallowed fear and unease. “This is actually going to happen,” he choked.

“Yes, it is,” Keith answered. “Tomorrow, to be exact.”

Lance’s breaths turned shallow, his shoulders moving up and down quickly, his soft gasps for breath audible only to Keith’s ears. “I can’t… I can’t breathe,” he choked.

His hand fumbled against Keith, and he wasn’t sure what Lance wanted until his hand slipped into Keith’s gripping it tightly. Their fingers weren’t laced together, nor was the gesture soft, and still it made Keith nervous. He wasn’t used to being touched at all, if not a hug from his mother, or combat.

Keith fell to his knees, trying to look at him, but his eyes were screwed tight. “Lance, look at me. I need to you to look at me, okay? We can’t have any breakdowns right now. Remember, you said this was for our people. For peace.” Lance wasn’t getting any better. Even with the tight grip, Keith could feel his hands shaking. He grit his teeth and took a deep breath. He hadn’t sung since he was a child. But that was all he knew for a form of comfort.

Holding Lance’s hand in both of his own, he began to sing the lullaby his mother used to sing to him so long ago. Slowly, Lance’s breaths stopped coming so rapidly. They were shaky, but they were steady. His grip loosened, but not enough for Keith to pull away. His face softened, so he wasn’t screwing his eyes shut, but looked like he was asleep.

When Keith finished the song, his eyes opened, bright blue and wide. “How do you know that song?” he murmured.

“It’s a Galran lullaby. Every Galran knows it. At least they did once, before war became too overwhelming.” Lance looked at him, eyebrows furrowed inspecting him like he was trying to find something on his face. “What?”

“Nothing.” He let go of his hand. “Thank you.” He stood, and Keith’s ears twitched as he kept himself from trying to help. But he remained close in case Lance wobbled again. “Satin sheet. Feather-filled pillows,” he mumbled.

“Right, and the candles-”

“This has to be a joke,” Keith interrupted. “There doesn’t have to be a special preparation, I-” He rubbed his face. “There’s other, more pressing arrangements to be made. You can make the choices,” he told the girl. She gulped and nodded.

The two princes left the room, hoping not to be pulled away for more anxiety-inducing preparations. Keith couldn’t help but feel nauseated at the expectation for his wedding night. It was supposed to be to honor the marriage, the true and final union of their people. Still, Keith didn’t want that. He didn’t want the wedding, much less the night following it. Based on Lance’s solemn expression, he didn’t either.

They went to the outside courtyard, where the sun was shining brightly and a field of flowers surrounded them. It was away from curious eyes and quiet. “Can I ask you something,” Keith whispered, thinking back on the Alteans he’d met. Lance hummed. “The marks on your face. Why do some have blue and others pink?”

“For the most part males have blue. Females have pink. And there are a few who don’t fit into either or and they have green.” Keith’s eyebrows went up.

So… she was a boy. The Altean Keith had met had been a little boy. He distinctly remembered the blue marks on her- his face. After so long of thinking of them as a girl, Keith felt a little guilty. His nameless friend had been a boy.

“Should we start figuring out our vows?” Lance asked, not questioning the silence. Keith nodded and sat across from him. “I think we should make it about the unity of our people. The whole point is we’re forming an alliance. So our vows should reflect that promise.” Keith nodded and drummed his fingers on the table.

“Lance?” he hummed. “Why are you doing this if neither of us really wants to?”

“Why are you?” he answered. Keith remained silent and looked out at the flowers. “We’ve said it a million times. It’s for the sake of ending this war.”

“To this extreme? To the point where you’re willing to marry me, a male Galra?” Keith tilted his head and furrowed his eyebrows. “There must be an Altean you’re in love with.”

Lance lowered his gaze and took a breath. “War has taken up too much of my life for me to bother with love,” he answered. “I have people to protect. A promise to uphold.” He looked up, again in that strange way like he was looking for something. “I know the Galra aren’t monsters. I know there was innocence once. You weren’t always a hardened general, were you? Surely once… you must have been a scared little cub, hiding from war. Without prejudice and hate in your heart. There must have been a time when… you didn’t hate an Altean on sight?”

Keith felt his throat constrict as he thought of the boy who had been his friends for all of a varga. The white hair, the lush robes, the bright blue eyes, bright blue marks. He furrowed his eyebrows and turned to Lance with renewed interest. Lance seemed to be watching him analytically.

Before he could say anything, Queen Malya walked out and they both turned to face her. “My princes,” she greeted. “You both need rest for tomorrow. We’ll go over the ceremony early morning and it will commence in the evening. General Keith, your mother wishes to speak with you. She’s waiting in your room.”

Keith nodded. “Thank you.” He started to leave before looking back at his fiancé’s blue eyes. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he answered.

Keith walked back into the castle, finding his way to the room he was given with surprising ease. He was used to the castle now. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. When he entered his room, he saw his mother sitting at the bed, her hands interlocked and placed in her lap. She was wearing her robes and her face seemed melancholic.

“Mother?”

She turned to him and heaved a sigh, giving him a half-hearted smile. “I’m so sorry this burden came onto you,” she murmured. “I wish it would have been me. To save you from the hassle. From the war.”

“Mother.”

“Listen. I know I don’t tell you often enough. But I am proud of you, Keith. You’re an incredible leader, and a hardheaded warrior. You rely on instinct, but you’ve taken this step by step, with patience. And you’re bringing peace.” Keith wished everyone would stop repeating that phrase. He felt like it lost a little more meaning each time it was said. “You’re doing a good thing. And I’m so proud of you.” Keith grit his teeth and managed to smile at her. “I’ll see you in the morning, my son.” She pressed her hand to his cheek and left the room.

Keith sat on the bed and covered his face with his hands. In 24 vargas, he would be married. He would be the prince to the Alteans, the prince to the Galran, and no longer a needed general. He would be expected to bear children out of his marriage, expected to treat the Alteans he hated with compassion and fairness.

Unable to stay calm, he rushed over to the wash basin in a separate room and splashed his face with water. It took every ounce of restraint he had to stop himself from tearing the room apart with his claws. When the fear and anger had subsided, he returned to his room and started to discard his robes.

“Do those hurt?” he heard.

Keith reacted quicker than he processed the voice. Suddenly he had the Altean prince pinned against a wall, claws at his throat as he cut off his air supply. “What in the galaxies do you think you’re doing?” Keith hissed, taking a second to realize it would be best to stop choking his future husband.

Lance rubbed his throat and stared at him, chest heaving. “The fangs. Do they hurt?”

“What are you doing in my room?” he asked, ignoring the familiarity of the question.

“It was you, wasn’t it? The Galra boy from the glowing river?” Keith felt all of his oxygen dissipate. He stared at Lance in shock and recognition. “The Galran lullaby. You sang it to me when I was little.” Keith looked away and thought back to the friend he’d grown so fond of in his mind. “What happened to you? You said you wanted peace. Why did it take so much for you to accept this?”

“Because I didn’t know anything then! I was a naïve child, we both were!” he snapped. “I thought we could all be friends and walk hand in hand like we did, but then….” Keith shut his eyes, remembering the shrieks Lance had made when calling out for help. “And then they took you. I thought you were the only good Altean left and you were gone. My father was dead. What else was I supposed to feel besides burning hatred for your people?”

Lance shoved him back and his face contorted into a painful expression. “Your people killed my brothers and sisters! My friends! You specifically led countless armies against my people. And I still stayed true to my promise. You let yourself get filled with hate!” Lance shoved his sleeve up and showed it to Keith.

There was a thick, jagged scar that ran vertically about the length of one of Keith’s fingers. It had an unnatural indent as though the skin there had deflated and sunken in. “It looked a lot bigger when I was only six,” he growled. “Your Galra soldiers did this to me before I was saved. They wanted to experiment on how we gather quintessence. They wanted to see if Altean blood could replace it. They had corpses beside me! But a living Altean would be better.” Keith felt nauseous at the prospect.

“You can’t possibly get angry with me because we handle grief and forgiveness differently. I’m marrying you aren’t I?” Lance’s gaze faltered and he brought his sleeve back down. “What are you angry with me for?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “We were supposed to be friends. The first of many. And now you can hardly stand looking at me! I see it in your eyes, the uneasiness, the uncertainty, the disgust. I don’t care about being married to you, I care that we became enemies at all!”

“I can’t change the past, Lance! I can’t change the things I felt, the things I did!”

“No, you can’t,” he murmured. He sat on the bed and stared at his hands. “But I’m afraid that also means you won’t want to change for the future. That this marriage truly won’t mean anything and another war will break out because you hate me and my people so much.” Keith stood in front of him, waiting silently. “Did you know I looked for you in every Galra I came across? I never thought it’d be you. Someone so full of anger and thirsty for revenge. Not the boy from the river.”

Keith reached forward and hooked his claw beneath the string that held the purple stone from the river around Lance’s neck. “This was lodged in my back when they found me. And every time I saw it I wondered who you were. What your name was, what they did to you. But so many Alteans were killed and burned that I could never ask. I never thought you’d still be alive.” Lance buried his face in his hands, causing the necklace to slip from Keith’s grasp.

“I don’t want to marry you like this. Not now that I know who you are,” he choked. “Not with all the anger you still have in you. I want us to be friends. To fall in love on our own.” Lance looked at him and shook his head. “With the innocent ignorance of children.” Keith fell to his knees in front of him and took his hand.

“I’m a very stubborn Galra. My mother can tell you. And I still agreed to this. I don’t hate you. Yes I’m angry with your people for killing my father, I can’t help that. It’s not easy for me to forgive.” He sat back and narrowed his eyes. “But I can’t promise you love. I’ve gone too long refusing to acknowledge any emotion. I’ve gone too long hardening myself into who I am now. I don’t think I could love anyone.” Lance scowled and stood, and Keith couldn’t bring himself to say anything else to him.

He left the room as silently as he’d come in and Keith was left dealing with the information that the Altean he’d met as a child had been Lance. That he was supposed to marry Lance and create the peace they’d longed for as children. That Lance wanted Keith to love him one day.

***

The following day, Keith was woken up by the same Altean girl who had led them to the tasting and the wedding chamber. She kept her eyes downcast, her pale face a light pink color. “Queen Malya said to wake you, sire,” she said softly. “She and the empress are waiting at the altar.”

“Thank you,” he said tiredly. He stood and pulled on his royal coat before following the girl to the altar. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Arya, sire. My family has been serving the royal family for many generations.” Keith nodded and walked into the room she gestured to.

Lance was standing in front of the altar with the empress as she explained something about posture. Keith walked closer and the queen gestured him over. “We’re going over the ritual. You will both walk in from opposite sides, you walking on the side with Alteans, and Lance walking on the side with the Galra. Your steps must be in unison as you make your way to the altar where your mother and I will begin the ceremony.”

“Both of you?” he asked, his eyes flitting toward Lance.

“Yes, well, it seemed fairer. We’ll guide you up until your vows. Lance said he prepared his last night. Did you?” Keith gulped. “I see. Well, you should work on that today while we prepare.” She pointed to where Lance stood with his mother explaining further movements. “After the vows, you will drink from the chalice and we will bless the union. The rings have been forged out of Altean gold and encrusted with Galran jewels. You will place them on each other per our command. After that you will be given a staff and voice your promise to be a fair ruler to your people. My son will do the same.” Keith nodded, his head swirling with the amount he had to memorize. “Come. You will be with me for the rest of the day.”

Keith nodded and followed her, sparing one last look behind him at his fiancé and his mother. His blue eyes flickered to him for a second before returning to the empress. They were solemn in a different way. They weren’t simply serious, but… melancholic. Somber.

Keith turned away and followed the queen as she took him to another room and gestured to a large tub. “A… bathtub?” he questioned.

“Yes. There are several scented soaps you can use to wash. When you’re done, I will have Kora come and trim your fur.” She placed a pale hand on his ear, and tugged on his darker hair. “Just to look neater. I’ll return shortly after that to help you with your wedding attire.” She nodded slightly and shut the door. Keith looked at the bath and sighed.

He did need one. And the water was so inviting. He removed his clothes and eased himself into the water. He laid back and stared at the ceiling.

After today, his people would have food. They would no longer worry about war, and the children would stop losing their parents. There would no longer be children like him, hiding in rivers and boulders. No more children to grow bitter and resentful like him. He was ruined. Damaged. He was not the same boy from the river, even if that’s who Lance wanted him to be. But he would redeem himself. He would marry and protect his people and make sure wars ended.

The water was lukewarm by the time he thought to start using the soaps provided. He grabbed one at random, pleased with the soft scent it left and lathered himself down. When he was done, he kept the warm, fuzzy towel robe wrapped around him and left the room. There was a note in elegant Altean telling him to ring the servant bell when he was done.

A few moments later, a young woman about his age came in. Her hair was a bright green and they clashed with the pink marks on her face. She smiled and gestured to the chair. “My name is Kora. The Queen told me to groom you.”

Keith hummed and sat on the chair, tense as the razor blades neared his ears. He resisted the urge to flick them. Then he heard the first snip. Then another and another. He kept his eyes closed as Kora tilted his head this way and that, trimming the small tufts of fur and the ends of his dark hair.

When she was done, she began combing through his hair, running her fingers through it with a strange, scented foam. Keith opened his eyes and watched as she focused on his hair, arranging it so it looked like his usual style, but neater. His face even looked more accented with the fur around his ears and jaw trimmed. He noticed there were blue marks on his face, similar to those of the Alteans. She must have painted them on for him.

When he thought she was done, he began to stand, but she sat him back down. “Not quite yet, sire. There’s a bit more.” She grabbed a bouquet of freshly grown flowers with a strong, sweet scent. “Juniberries,” she said. “They’re a custom for Alteans to wear during ceremonies. They symbolize hope, unity, and longevity.” She began plucking the flowers from their stems, weaving the pink, pointed petaled juniberries into a string which she then braided into his hair. “They’re also Prince Lance’s favorite,” she said with a timid smile.

He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Does everyone know that, or do you pay more attention?”

She blushed some more and cleared her throat. “We used to play as children. Before he began having to lead the armies. Princely duties stole him away.”

“You’re sweet on him,” he noted. It wasn’t a question. “How long?”

Her orange tinted eyes went wide and she shook her head. “No, your majesty. Forgive my loose tongue.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “This marriage is a duty as well. I won’t be angry.” She furrowed her eyebrows and looked away.

“I’ll get the queen.” She disappeared and Keith looked into the mirror. He wondered if Lance would have fallen in love with Kora. If no war existed, would it be her in Keith’s place?

He couldn’t mull over it for long. Queen Malya came in a few ticks later with Arya behind her, carrying brightly colored robes. She smiled at him appreciatively. “The grooming did you well, Prince Keith. These are your wedding garments. Arya, spread them on the bed so we can help him dress.” She nodded and moved to the bed, spreading out the blue fabrics, trimmed with gold and interspersed with white swirls. “First put this on,” the queen said, giving him a long white robe.

Keith turned away and draped the robe over himself before removing the towel-robe beneath it. Then he turned back and Arya brought a heavier, dark blue robe to him and helped him into it before tying it below his ribs with a thick white cord. The sleeves were wide, falling in waves when he lifted his hand. Then Arya and the queen draped a round shawl over his head, careful not to harm the flowers. The shawl had gold trimming all around and fell in round points down both his arms. Arya clicked a clasp at his neck.

Then the queen placed a heavy cloak with a hood around his shoulders, connecting it to the same clasp. The cloak had swirls of Altean letters and symbols sewn into it with thin white thread that was barely discernable from the light blue hue of the fabric.

“You’re ready. Do you have your vows prepared?” she asked. Keith nodded, though he hadn’t even thought of the vows. He figured he may figure out what to say when he saw Lance. “Wonderful. The guests have begun to arrive, and the chefs are preparing the banquet. We’ve had servants prepare the courtyard for the celebration. I must go join your mother in greeting the guests.” Keith nodded, but the queen didn’t move.

She licked her lips, looked down at the floor, and interlocked her hands. Keith waited, staring at her. She looked up, lifting her chin, and she walked around the room slowly, waving a hand to dismiss Arya. The orange-haired girl bowed and retreated quickly. Then the queen was standing in front of Keith. Her eyes looked pained and worried.

“Keith, my son is a good person. He’s pure-hearted. And I would give my life for him if I had to. He’s the last of my seven children. I want him to be happy. Even if you can’t love him, even if this is simply an] +{arranged marriage, can you soothe my soul with the promise that you’ll do your best to keep him safe, to make him happy?” Keith’s lips parted, his brows furrowed as he looked at the queen with her strange eyes, holding more emotion that Keith had ever let himself feel. “Please?” she begged.

An Altean pleading with a Galra. Aside from begging for mercy, it was unheard of. Especially coming from a queen.

He took a breath and nodded. “I can try, Queen Malya.”

She nodded and smiled, her eyes watery. “That’s all I ask. Thank you. I’ll have Arya call for you when the ceremony begins.” She disappeared and Keith sat on the bed, overwhelmed with the sweet scent of the soap he’d used, the foam used to style his hair, and the flowers. It wasn’t horrible, but the space was too closed in, and it was suffocating him.

He left the room and began pacing the hallway until Arya came to get him. Then he took a breath and followed her to the door for the entrance. He was on the left side. A few moments later, Lance came in accompanied by a young Galra boy who had been a servant.

Lance was dressed in sleek black Galra battle gear. The fabric clung to his body with bright purple lines glowing down his back, the sides of his legs, down his shoulder to his wrist, and in jagged lines from his neck to his chest and down him torso. His hair was pinned back similar to the way it was when they first met. Gloves covered his hands and a long black cloak with purple trimming fell behind him, brushing against the floor. His eyes seemed impossibly brighter against his clothing.

He had the necklace with the Galra stone on. Keith pawed at his neck and felt an icy panic settle in his chest before Arya nudged him. She held out her palm which had the smooth ivory stone with blue swirls that Lance had given him. She smiled at him and he mouthed a thank you before putting it on.

The doors opened and the two of them began to walk, aware of each other’s steps. The Galra growled, the Alteans seemed wary and apprehensive, but no one made a fuss. Lance walked with his head held high and Keith walked with determination in his eyes.

They reached the altar, and Keith was face to face with his mother for the first time since the night before.

“Tonight is a pivotal moment in history,” Queen Malya announced, her voice strong.

“Tonight the war will come to an end. And the beginning of an era of peace will begin,” Empress Q’arina said, her voice equally as powerful.

“Our selfless princes have decided to come together to unite our people and create one, strong, powerful community.” She turned to the empress and gave her a golden crown with a single spike, decorated with transparent, blue jewels.

“Prince Keith, Galra general, a fierce warrior and benevolent leader,” his mother praised as she placed the Altean crown gently on his head. She turned and offered the queen a string of amethyst gems brought together in the shape of teardrops and squares.

The Empress took it and draped it over Lance’s head, the squares in a circle around his head, the teardrops falling around his face, and the circular pieces coming together at the crown of his head to keep the jewels in place.

“Prince Lance, the youngest of seven siblings, a just leader and honorable warrior,” the queen said, her eyes filled with pride.

Both women turned their sons so they faced each other. “For the first time in a millennium, the Galra and Altean races will come together as one in union.”

The empress and queen took their children’s hands and placed them at the nape of the others. Keith noticed Lance tense at the feeling of claws so close to his neck. Keith did his best to force them to draw them back. With a slight pressure on the back of their heads from their mothers, they pressed their foreheads together. A sign of trust, compassion, and intimacy.

The queen and empress held either end of a large necklace, each side with Altean or Galran jewels. They slipped it over both their heads as a sign of unity. The queen lifted their necklaces and twirled them together so they connected the princes. “You may say your vows, my princes.”

Lance looked at Keith, and Keith nodded before averting his eyes. This was his friend. His nameless friend had a name now and they were getting married.

Lance shut his eyes and his soft, smooth voice echoed through the chamber. “I vow to protect your people as my own. I vow to protect you and lead beside you for as long as our kingdom will reign. Together we will lead and provide an example of unity. I swear to remain at your side at both the best and worst of times and accept the best and worst in you with patience and compassion.”

With his free hand, he took the chalice the empress held in her hands.

Keith gulped and licked his lips. Then he spoke softly, but surely. With the prospect of Lance as his life partner, his childhood friend who had been alive all these years, and the honesty in his words in mind, Keith knew what he had to say. What he wanted to say.

“I vow to remain by your side for as long as we live, to protect you and our people. I will raise our kingdom with you and bring peace to our lands. I will do all in my power to provide comfort and happiness, to let go of prejudices and anger in order to make way for the peace you’ve sacrificed so much for. I swear to become better and bring out the best in you.” He cupped the chalice, their fingers brushing against each other’s.

“May these sacred vows be the rock foundation of this union,” the empress said.

“Drink,” the queen whispered. Lance pressed the cup to his lips for a few ticks before pushing it towards Keith. The wine was sweet and strong. “The rings to serve as physical reminders of your promises.” She held out a box with two identical rings.

They each took one and Lance took Keith’s hand first. He looked at him with an unreadable expression as he slid the ring onto his finger. Keith took his ring and held Lance’s hand. His fingers were long and thin. He slid the ring onto his finger and met his eyes.

“Your staff,” the queen told Keith, making him tear his eyes away from Lance. He was given the staff of the Altean royals.

“And yours, my prince,” the empress told Lance, handing him the staff of the Galran royals.

They turned to the crowd of onlookers and spoke in turns.

“The union is official.”

“These are your princes. Your people.”

“The war is over.”

“And now, your princes’ promises to you.” They gently turned the princes to face the people.

“We promise to lead with fairness and kindness,” Lance said. “And everything that belongs to the Alteans will now also belong to the Galra. No one will go hungry again. Families will no longer be torn apart.” He glanced at Keith who was looking out at the apprehensive faces of the people he now ruled.

He looked at Lance and took a breath. “Long ago, I met a child. An Altean. And we hid from one of the battles going on at the time. We became friends.” Lance froze beside him. “It was a time in which I had no anger or hatred. A time in which I had hope. I promise to my people, both Altean and Galran, to bring back that hope. And together diminish the resentments that have built from futile wars.” Keith gripped his staff tighter and looked over at his mother for his next cue.

“Long live prince Keith,” the queen shouted.

“Long live prince Keith,” the guests shouted back.

“Long live prince Lance,” the empress said, tearing her eyes away from her son.

“Long live prince Lance!”

There was a loud cheer, the sound of instruments, and the bang of opening doors. Keith looked at Lance and managed a smile. As they walked towards the door with their mothers behind them, the guests filing after them, Keith whispered, “I meant it. What I said. I can’t promise to love you, but I will do what I can so you’re happy.” Lance’s blue eyes rested on him, bright with wonder.

He smirked and took his hand. “You’re my husband now, nameless friend.” Keith chuckled and let his hand be held. They made it out to the courtyard where the King was waiting to order everyone to sit before the servants began to serve platters of food.

Keith saw it in the Galra’s faces. The wonder and excitement at the sight of large portions and the smells of exquisite foods. Music sounded throughout the land enough to be heard anywhere where people celebrated. Alteans came to greet Keith, and Galra children went to greet Lance. While Keith felt tense and uneasy around children, Lance seemed completely at ease, leaning down and talking with them, chasing them around until he was tired and laughing as he picked them up.

Lance was perfectly suited to be a prince, a king. Keith was meant to be a fighter, a soldier.

Keith wasn’t sure how a union like theirs would work.

[geopolicraticus]

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part X

Oswald Spengler and Edmund Husserl

Sometimes philosophers conduct a dialogue in which they never mention -- perhaps even carefully avoiding mentioning -- the other party with whom they are engaged int he debate. A  humorous example of this that I have pointed out previously is the debate between Foucault and Derrida over Husserl, in which Husserl is never mentioned. I described this in De-coupling Intentionality:

In Foucault’s seminal work on madness he gives a brief exposition of the Cartesian conception of madness (and how it crucially differs from dreams and mere error) at the beginning of the second chapter. Derrida tore this passage from its context as exemplary, and devoted an essay to it, “Cogito and the History of Madness” (published in Writing and Difference). Foucault responded in turn with his “Reply to Derrida” (this has been published in the newly translated History of Madness). This is an oddly stilted and, in a sense, Freudian dialogue, because each speaks of Husserl by carefully avoiding him. Husserl has become the stern father, in whose absence his children have become unruly, prodigal, and profligate. And they know it.

Husserl himself entered into a dialogue of this kind with Spengler. Let me try to explain how this came about, though to do so I need to back up a bit and give some background on Hussserl’s thought. Husserl the professional philosopher whose career as a professor was taken from him when the Nazis came to power (although Husserl was a convert to Christianity, his family were Jews from Moravia) contrasts curiously with Spengler, the grammar school teacher who retired from this position with the success of the first volume of Der Untergang des Abendlandes, whose fame and success were partially the result of the same forces in German life that ended Husserl’s career. Nevertheless, each man found his place, after a fashion, and both were among the most influential thinkers of the early twentieth century, though each came to their influence by different means.

Husserl the academic had a brilliant academic career in the best German tradition, and through this period of his life Husserl formulated his own professional, academic philosophy that conceded little to life beyond academia. For an example of what I mean, consider the following. There is a passage from Judith Jarvis Thompson describing the work of Richard Cartwright that I have quoted previously in An Ongoing Change in my Philosophical Outlook, in which Thompson writes:

“Richard L. Cartwright is a philosopher’s philosopher. He gives no public lectures, he reviews no books for the popular press, and to the extent of my knowledge he has never declared himself on the crises of Modern Man or Modern Science. Like G.E. Moore he is provoked to philosophize not by the world but by what is said or written by other philosophers. It is to the problems that the world makes for other philosophers and to the problems philosophers make for each other that he has devoted his professional life. He has done so with a love of craftsmanship, with a hatred of the shoddy and shabby, the windy and woolly, and with a passion for the truth — a passion simply for getting things right — that are unmatched in current philosophy and that have perhaps been matched by no one since Moore himself, whose philosophical manner and attitude Cartwright’s so much remind one of.” (On Being and Saying)

By Carwright’s example as Thompson would have it, the road to philosophical legitimacy is trod by sedulously avoiding engagement with the most pressing problems of the world. And it is not at all difficult to be an unworldly or otherworldly philosopher; the nature of the discipline all but encourages this. The ancients took this tendency to far greater lengths that is typical in the modern world, but even today the temptation of the pure philosopher is to focus on the questions of pure philosophy.

Husserl did this, or, at least, he started like this. Husserl began his career as an author with works on logic and the philosophy of mathematics. As he developed his own approach to philosophy -- phenomenology -- his work did not become any more popular in flavor. Even the crisis of the First World War, in which Husserl lost a son in the fighting, and which was the proximate cause of Spengler’s book, did not derail the conventionality of Husserl’s academic career.

Near the end of Husserl’s life, however, he began to engage with the great questions and crisis of his time and spoke directly to the crises of Modern Man and Modern Science. Perhaps this was the result of the rise of Nazism and Husserl losing his academic position. In an earlier post, An Interview in Starbucks, I mentioned Husserl’s late writings in which he made a personal but also theoretical profession of his philosophical task: “And we old people remain here. A singular turn of the times: it gives the philosopher—if it does not take away his breath—much to think of. But now: Cogito ergo sum, i.e., I prove sub specie aeterni my right to live, and this, the aeternitas in general, cannot be touched by any earthly powers.”

To this late period of Husserl’s work belongs The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (and the influential supplements published with that posthumously published work, known universally as “The Crisis”), and, less well known, a series of five articles that Husserl wrote for a Japanese journal, Kaizo, which foreshadow Husserl’s late work. Only one of these articles has been translated into English (”Renewal: Its Problem and Method,” translated in Husserl: Shorter Works), though they have been translated into Spanish (by Agustín Serrano de Haro) and into Portuguese. The Spanish edition, RENOVACIÓN DEL HOMBRE Y DE LA CULTURA: Cinco ensayos, has an introduction by Guillermo Hoyos Vásquez in which a relation between Husserl and Spengler is traced:

...lo que caracteriza la reflexión husserliana sobre las crisis de la cultura de Occidente es más bien la confianza, la esperanza normativa, si se quiere, el optimismo, que pretende poder captar en las fuentes de la reflexión filosófica la capacidad de toma de conciencia, de crítica y de responsabilidad del sujeto, como lo sugiere el mismo Husserl en lo que parece ser un diálogo con Oswald Spengler: «¿O es que acaso hemos de aguardar a ver si esta cultura sana por sí sola en el juego azaroso entre las fuerzas creadoras y destructoras de valores? ¿Asistiremos acaso a "la decadencia de Occidente" (Untergang des Abendlandes) como a un fatum que pasa sobre nuestras cabezas? El fatum sólo existe si pasivamente lo contemplamos [...], si pasivamente pudiéramos contemplarlo. Pero ni siquiera quienes nos lo pregonan pueden así hacer» (I, 2).

...and in English...

...what characterizes the Husserlian reflection on the crises of the culture of the West is rather the confidence, the normative hope, if you will, the optimism, which pretends to be able to capture in the sources of philosophical reflection the capacity to take awareness, criticism and responsibility of the subject, as suggested by Husserl himself in what seems to be a dialogue with Oswald Spengler: "Or is it that we should wait to see if this culture alone will heal in the random game between the creative and value-destroying forces? Will we witness "the decadence of the West" (Untergang des Abendlandes) as a fatum that passes over our heads? The fatum only exists if we passively contemplate it [...], if we could passively contemplate it. But not even those who preach it to us can do so »

Here Hoyos Vásquez has made explicit the implicit dialogue between Spengler and Husserl. And this quote includes an embedded quote (above, this is translated from the Spanish and not the original German) from the first of Husserl’s Kaizo essays in which Husserl uses the title of Spengler’s book -- Der Untergang des Abendlandes -- without acknowledging Spengler or the source of this pregnant phrase. Here is a longer portion from the same essay of Husserl, “Renewal: Its Problem and Method,” which acknowledges Spengler without mentioning his name:  

“Shall we wait to see whether this culture will recover of itself, in the chance play of forces which create and destroy values? Shall we let the ‘decline of the West’ happen to us as our fate? This is our fate only if we stand along the sidelines and passively observe its occurrence. But even those who proclaim this fate to us cannot do this. We are men, free-willing subjects who are actively engaged in our surrounding world, constantly involved in shaping it. Whether we want to or not, whether it is right or wrong, we act in this way. Could we not also act rationally?”

(Edmund Husserl, “Renewal: Its Problem and Method,” 1923, in Husserl: Shorter Works, p. 326)

Husserl was as opposed to Spengler’s conclusions as were Neurath and Russell, but he expressed his opposition to Spengler in a radically different idiom than did these other two thinkers. Neurath had the comforting worldview of an uncritical communism, which seemed to offer hope for the future, whereas Spengler offered only the promise of a valiant death, to go down with one’s civilization, as it were. Russell didn’t have Neurath’s eschatological communist hope, and indeed Russell often made a point of ridiculing communism as a religious surrogate for true believers in a better world to come. Russell rejects Spengler’s gloomy conclusions because he thought that Spengler got the history wrong, and furthermore that Spengler failed to understand how science and mass society had changed the world.

Husserl is the closest of all these figures to actually take up Spengler on his own ground, by opposing not Spengler’s absence of communist ideology nor his failures of historical scholarship, but rather taking up the central idea of human destiny that was Spengler’s theme, though conceived in a radically different manner by Husserl. For Husserl, human destiny is human freedom, and human beings need not acquiesce to an apparently inevitable historical process.  

Though Husserl took up Spengler’s themes and often also in Spengler’s terms, he does so within the conceptual framework he labored to construct in his formulation of phenomenology as a distinctive philosophical method. Husserl’s first Kaizo essay is through-and-through an attempt to conceive human destiny as an a priori structure in which human beings possess full agency in the constitution of the same. For Husserl, we are doubly free -- free in constituting the structures within which we conceive our destiny, and free in making decisions so conceived within this framework. No contemporary naturalistic philosopher -- not even, or perhaps I should say especially not a contemporary philosopher of history -- would follow Husserl’s formulations, even if they agreed with his rejection of Spengler.

To give you a flavor of Husserl’s approach, after noting the successes of his time in the natural sciences Husserl wrote:

“...we lack the parallel a priori science, the mathesis of spirit and humanity, as it were: we are also lacking the scientifically developed system of purely rational ‘a priori’ truths that are rooted in the ‘essence’ of man.” (Op. Cit., p. 328)

I say that Husserl took up Spengler’s themes in Spengler’s terms, as this passage is not all that far from Spengler asking if there is a logic of history. These two positions -- of Husserl and of Spengler -- could be reconciled, much as I pointed out in Part IX that Russell’s and Spengler’s positions could be reconciled. Spengler, Husserl, and Russell all have a small area of common ground, however unlikely that may sound. 

Husserl, like Russell, had little interest in the philosophy of history. In the historical passages of The Crisis there is no analysis of historical phenomena and no conceptual clarification or elucidation of historical categories. It fell to David Carr to write Phenomenology and the Problem of History: A Study of Husserl's Transcendental Philosophy (1974), and then some forty years later Carr returned to a phenomenological treatment of history in Experience and History: Phenomenological Perspectives on the Historical World (2014). While Spengler, decline, and destiny make no appearance in the earlier work, the later work explicitly mentions Spengler.  

Carr makes a distinction between metaphysical philosophers of history and the kind of philosophy of history that can come out of analytical philosophy:

“The search for meaning in history, it seems, originated long before Hegel, perhaps as early as Augustine or even the Jewish scriptures, and continued after Hegel in the 19th century with Marx, and into the 20th with Spengler (whose Decline of the West appeared in 1918) and, as a sort of last gasp, Toynbee. But by this time the critical philosophy of history had been launched, and as we’ve seen Toynbee was regarded as a kind of quaint throwback, at least by philosophers, who didn’t take him seriously. So it turns out not only that there are two very different sorts of philosophy of history, but that one sort is better than the other and has succeeded and supplanted it.”

A little later in the same book Carr writes:

“Philosophy’s only legitimate role is to examine the knowledge in each of these domains. Periodical revivals of the classical project, in figures like Spengler, Toynbee, and Fukuyama, are not taken seriously.”

While I more-or-less agree with Carr, Carr fails to mention that phenomenology itself belongs to the anti-metaphysical project of twentieth century philosophy, and while phenomenology doesn’t insist upon examining the knowledge of different domains of inquiry, instead it concerns itself with examining the constituting experiences of the different domains of inquiry. Moreoever, Carr didn’t take up the threads of Husserl’s indirect treatment of Spengler, by which he might have understood Husserl as a figure who had the potential to revive the classical project.

Despite the anti-metaphysical animus of phenomenology, I don’t think that Husserl would have hesitated for a moment to affirm that there is a metaphysical structure of historic humanity, and he would likely have added that he began an inquiry into into the metaphysical structure of historic humanity in his later thought, especially the Kaizo essays and The Crisis.

Ten years after the Kaizo essays, in Appendix IX of The Crisis, Husserl famously wrote, “Philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, indeed apodictically rigorous, science -- the dream is over.” With this Husserl seems to have abandoned the whole of his earlier thought in a heart-rending cri de cœur of a rationalist philosopher faced with an irrational world. But was Husserl’s spiritual defeat the triumph of the Spenglerian perspective? Was Husserl’s defeat permanent? As a contingent matter of fact, the end of Husserl’s life marked the end of his philosophical project as he defined it for himself, but this contingent fact leaves utterly untouched any scientifically developed system of purely rational a priori truths that are rooted in the essence of man. 

Husserl, I think, would have said that the metaphysical structure of historical humanity is nothing but a scientifically developed system of purely rational a priori truths rooted in the essence of humanity. And this is, after all, not that different from what Spengler had to stay about the human condition. 

Oswald Spengler and Human Destiny

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part I

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part II

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part III

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part IV

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part V

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part VI

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part VII

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part VIII

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part IX

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part X

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part XI

[glenngaylord]

IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE CINEMA - My Review of WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (4 1/2 Stars)

There’s no other way of putting this.  Morgan Neville, who won an Academy Award for his fantastic documentary, 20 FEET FROM STARDOM, has outdone himself with one of the best, most emotionally fulfilling, resonant films of our time.  Tracing the career of Fred Rogers, the creator and star of the popular, decades-long running children’s program, “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”, WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? exudes as much generosity and kindness as the man himself.

Confession time.  I never cared for the program.  I found Rogers’ personality passively unctuous and the pacing of his show deadly dull.  Give me the acid trip that was “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” any day over this.  I also always assumed Rogers’ was a closeted gay man, same with Pee Wee for that matter, so things always felt a little off to me in a somewhat creepy way.

Years later when Martin Short’s Jiminy Glick would disingenuously go on about his wife Dixie while whispering in his high-pitched voice, I couldn’t help but think of Fred Rogers.  It would almost literally take an Act of Congress to turn me around on Mr. Rogers.  And yet, here we are, with a remarkable film, hitting this world at just the right time, convincing me that this man was nothing less than a national treasure.  

How we treat each other has shifted dramatically since the days his show debuted in the late 1960s.  Civility seems to have disappeared as we bury our faces in our phones and yell at each other on Facebook.  Sure, we’ve also made great steps towards diversity and experiencing other cultures, but there’s not a whole lot of evidence that our social skills are improving.  When you see the President of the United States spouting racist, sexist, homophobic remarks, or mocking the #METOO movement, or threatening to commit violent acts against those who oppose him, you know we’ve come a long way from changing into a cardigan and espousing love, kindness, and good listening skills.  

This, however, is exactly what Fred Rogers stood for, this man who was a lifelong Republican and an ordained Presbyterian Minister who exemplified the best values of them whereas both seemed to have been overrun by true monsters.  This documentary does a great job of showing what a radical badass he was, from the topics he discussed on his show such as the evils of segregation and separatism.  His puppet creations even got in on his aesthetic by highlighting the folly of building a wall around a country.  Incredible prescience!  That slow pace I despised as a child even had its purpose.  Fred found great value in the spaces between words, attentiveness, and the peacefulness in a slowed down world. I think so many of us are craving this right now more than ever, and Rogers led it by glorious example.  

Footage of him almost single-handedly saving the Public Broadcasting System, which then President Nixon wanted to gut to pay for the Vietnam War, floored me.  His unwavering dedication to those delicate years of childhood development probably helped stave off the an even bigger wave of bratty bullies we now hear about daily.  

It’s quite unnerving to hear conservative pundits trying to blame Rogers for influencing generations of entitle brats, when his entire mission was based on kindness.  It would be so easy to point those fingers at the truly awful people in the world, like Fred Phelps and his despicable gang, but if we’re to learn anything from this film, it’s learning how to fight for your beliefs while still maintaining love for your neighbors.  Sounds hokey, but it’s possibly the only way we may ever get ourselves out of this mess.  

But enough soapboxing, let’s talk about the film itself.  I wish it had delved more into Rogers’ upbringing and personal life.  It’s a bit of a puff piece in that regard, but my guess is that he was such a Modern Day Jesus that absolutely nobody had anything bad to say about the man.  You certainly feel the love from his delightful wife and sons as well as his many colleagues.  Most touching of all is how he handled his friendship with François Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons.  Openly gay in real life, he portrayed black Officer Clemmons, who at the height of the Civil Rights Movement gets invited by Rogers to share a dip in a little swimming pool.  At the time, this was truly groundbreaking stuff.  Clemmons also discussed being openly gay, with Rogers wanting to hide this lest they lose their sponsors.  Despite this understandable misstep, Rogers proved to be a loving friend to people of all stripes.  His treatment of a children with disabilities moved me to tears, as did almost every single act of kindness in this film.

Everything I felt about this man got turned around by what I saw here.  Even my suspicions that he was gay get discussed when Tom Snyder, a major talk show host in the 1970s asked Fred if he was gay.  He actually asks him if he’s “square”, if he’s straight.  It’s an odd moment which doesn’t get a response out of Fred.  Part of me thinks he still may have been gay, or maybe he was the classic effeminate heterosexual.  It doesn’t matter.  WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR celebrates what the man was about rather than delve into extraneous details.  It feels gloriously well-rounded and has one of the loveliest endings I’ve ever seen, one which honors his aesthetic in the most perfect of ways, and once again, reduced me to tears.  Bring plenty of tissues and an open heart which wants to be filled.  Do not miss this absolutely great documentary.  

[chaoticblades]

Wing Meta: Kalas

Now that the holidays (and extended family interactions =____=) are over, let’s talk about our favorite fuckup! :D

I think this one has even more spoilers than the Xelha post.

Wing Meta: Xelha

Wing Meta: Savyna and Lyude

So, good ol’ カラス. There’s little point in speculating about the inspiration for his wings (since the game is very, very clear on the raven theme), buuuut I’m gonna do it anyway ‘cause that’s just the kinda guy I am.

Well, that and the fact that they’re no ordinary corvid wings. They’ve got a distinctive hook off the wrist, which is most likely an unusually pronounced alula (aka bird thumb), meaning that what we’re looking at is exposed bone. Spooky! (Also appropriate, given the whole carrion bird/harbinger of apocalypse thing.)

Fun fact! According to Wikipedia, “alula” translates to “winglet”! And it’s also called a “bastard wing”. And Kalas has no parents, so....

Anyway, his wing is otherwise a fairly standard shape for that family... except for the pronounced secondaries. Alas, I’m not actually a bird person so I won’t speculate further about that (so as to spare myself any more hours of futile corvid research. The winglet diagram comes in real handy here, since it’s basically a mirrored skeleton of his other wing). Finally, he’s got falcon-like stripes on his pinions resulting in a mix of browns and greys.

Even expanding into other corvid species, I could’t find any that truly matched these details.

In any case, onto symbolism!

Ravens are consistently depicted across cultures as tricksters and omens of misfortune and death, though the latter is isn’t nearly as universal. 

Trickster Ravens

Corvids in general are considered highly intelligent birds, an attribute that they mainly use for theft. For example, they’ve been known to yank the tails of other birds/animals in order to distract them from a tasty, tasty meal. Magpies in particular have such a rep for stealing End Magnus shinies that they’ve become synonymous with the act in much the same way as we use “packrat” to describe a hoarder and “chicken” a coward.

Ravens As Omens

In Greek tradition, a white raven was Apollo’s messenger. Ravens are more relevant in terms of the practice of augury, a form of divination in which certain birds are observed for signs of favor/displeasure of the gods. Ravens (and crows) fall under the label of “oscines”, or birds whose omens are determined based upon their calls. They aren’t regarded as being inherently unlucky (that dubious honor goes to the owl).

According to Wikipedia (citation desperately longed for), in Serbian folklore ravens “appear in pairs and play the role of harbingers of tragic news... in combination with female characters as receivers of the news”.

Unlike black cats, there’s an emphasis on ravens as a sign of misfortune to come rather than an embodiment of it. Similarly, they don’t directly symbolize death; instead they’re merely associated with it, much in the way one might associate the fall colors with the coming winter.

Ravens in Japanese Folklore

I went through many layers of questionable research to get this info, so it damn well better be accurate.

Yatagarasu, the 3-legged crow, was a guide sent by Amaterasu to Emperor Jimmu in order to guide his lost ass to his future seat of power.

Seen here: Yatagarasu and Jimmy’s lost ass (left).

After Google Fu’ing for awhile to figure out the meaning behind a sentence found word-for-word and lacking citation in nearly every article on Yatagarasu, I finally managed to track down an additional piece of lore: he is apparently an incarnation of Kamo Taketsunumi no Mikoto, god of good fortune and founder of the Kamo clan (???? Maybe??? All those articles weren’t kidding when they said the legends of Yatagarasu are contradictory).

Color Symbolism

This is, of course, something the varies from culture to culture. The relevant symbols here are black and white.

Black

West

death/void

authority

evil

mystery

Japan

evil

bad luck (take this with a grain of salt--I don’t trust my sources on this)

White

West

purity

peace

holiness

sterility

Japan

death

mourning

simplicity/purity

Interpretation

Kalas and Fate

So how does this shape how we can interpret Kalas?

It’s best to start with how he got the name in the first place.

Hearing you were not the perfect being [Geldoblame] had envisioned, he called you an ill omen, a cursed premonition of things to come. He named you Kalas, which means Raven in a long-lost language.

Larikush, on the origin of Kalas’ name

I guess it was the reason for my existence, and my hatred.... Something I just couldn’t get rid of.

Kalas, on why his name was the only thing he remembered after Alfard

And, of course, straight from Emperor Gelnochill himself:

I found you Kalas, you sickly raven!!!

Geldohead, triple exclamation his

I find Kalas’ comment the most interesting, since it’s an explicit reference to the theme of destiny yes I said it that is woven into the Baten Kaitos as a whole. One of the things I really like about this series is the interplay between fate and choice--many characters have fated roles (Kalas, Xelha, Melodia, Mizuti, Sagi, Guillo, people touched by the Dark Brethren in general) but even as they fulfill them, the narrative never treats it as if free will is antonymous with these events.

Dr. Georg’s experiments were aimed at creating a Magnus of Life. This would be the exact opposite of the End Magnus, which are symbols of death and destruction... Kalas and Malepercio may have been destined to fight one another....Kalas could be said to be a bad omen for Malpercio, a harbinger of the god’s demise

Lyude, on something that’s really sad once you’ve played Origins

Love and hatred... Melodia[sic], and Kalas... She is Malpercio’s curse to the world, Kalas must be his prayer...

Xelha, ditto

“Fate” is largely played as being somewhere between divine intervention and the consequences of choice (e.g. Malpercio seeking power from the Dark Brethren put everything in motion), hence why the Magnus of Life could and did choose not to oppose Malpercio at first. It makes for an interesting hierarchy of power, like an arch.

The Dark Brethren can be considered the keystone and Malpercio the arch itself--it is by their power that Malpercio is what it is, their locking the gods into position that keeps them from acting of their own will. Melodia and Kalas are outside forces, bound to--but unfettered by--the conflict between master and unwilling servant. Despite their role as pawns, they’re the ones with the most power. Influence can be asserted over them, but in the end it’s their hands that decide if the keystone is restored or removed.

Kalas’ identity as the ominous raven is the perfect example of this theme at play. He’s repeatedly acknowledged as an entity of misfortune, but ultimately it’s his will that decides whose. He’s no passive auspice--bad things may happen to those around him, but only by way of his own agency (and the of others. Looking at you, Geldoblameworthy-for-his-own-problems). Even at the very end, when Melodia chooses to surrender to fate, it’s he who rescues her and tells Malpercio to rest.

He and Melodia can be considered the pair of ravens, Xelha the receiver, as per her witnessing them discuss their plans in Moonguile.

Kalas the Trickster

Kalas is possibly the most wily protagonist who isn’t straight up a villain I have ever seen. Street smart, people smart, and a fantastic actor, he’s able to pull the wool over the eyes of basically anyone who isn’t already aware of what he’s trying to do. It can be surmised that he’s also gifted at sleight of hand, given that no one noticed him slip an ever-glowing magnus to the ducal heir of Mira.

The entire first half of the game is an elaborate trick on the Guardian Spirit and Malpercio, fooling them about their memories and using them as a buffer against Malpercio’s power (though one has to wonder if that wasn’t just a trick on Melodia’s part, as Kalas was already exposed to that power. It would absolutely be in character for him to nope out of the picture if he thought that coming in contact would turn him into a boob monster).

As is common in the trickster archetype, he rarely relies on brute force to achieve his goals, to the point that one of the major character shifts in the late game is him swearing to take down Malpercio. Giacomo is his other blind spot, his mere appearance sending Kalas into an otherwise unseen rage. It’s easy to overlook that these are the exceptions, given how prominent they are (and how they launch you into one of the more dreaded fights in the game).

However, when it comes down to it, most of his work is done so quietly, it becomes a major reason to replay, just to see if you can catch him. Right from the get-go, he uses Xelha’s reference to Moonguile as an excuse to head on in. When she gets mad at him for looting, he restructures his argument to appeal to emotionalism and lets her believe what she wants. And while he initially resists joining up with her, he has no problem travelling together for convenience sake (and later, presumably, to stay close to the Earth Pendant and Chaotic Trio). Then there’s his efforts to direct suspicion onto Lyude. Despite coming across as the brashest member of the party, he frequently hides behind the others in this manner.

Yatagarasu

This section won’t be as carefully constructed as the others, but I believe the allusion is intentional. For the purpose of this argument, I’m going to have Kalas’ 3 arms--his arm arms/winglets and his natural wing--stand in place of Yatagarasu’s 3 legs. (Alternatively, one could count his original wing and the white wings, but I’m not going to for reasons to be indicted.)

Xelha takes the part of Jimmu, the royal wanderer. It was, after all, her dream of Kalas that was the inciting incident for her entire part in the story, returning him to the role of omen. It lead her to send out the witches, spy on Geldoblame, and bring Kalas along even knowing his intentions. In times of uncertainty throughout the story, she turns to her desire to save him as a source of strength and guidance.

Kalas: Black and White

Melodia refers to him both as “dark-winged stranger” and “white-winged darkness”. Kalas’ treatment in the narrative is interesting regarding the idea of purity. His lack of a second wing leads to him being ostracized by everyone from Geldoblame to some Miran randos. Larikush links the single wing to Kalas being “excessively human” and Balancoir Asshole #2′s “Malformed wings are the direct result of a malformed heart. His soul must have been tainted at birth”.

Of course, once he’s touched by Malpercio, he gains a (literally) shiny new pair of wings. This is also the point where he goes from morally distraught antihero to unrepentant mwahaha’er, only changing back when he makes the choice to rip out his additional wing.

The color symbolism is a little hard to decipher here, given that it’s an Eastern game but Kalas’ design is more West-inspired than just about any other character. From a Western perspective, it’s a fairly clear-cut juxtaposition of contrary symbols--his dark wings initially foreshadow his betrayal but ultimately are associated with his good side while the white represent the acceptance he seeks but are tainted by evil.

Kalas is the fallen angel, right down to Xelha being drawn to him like a moth to flame. I could probably make a whole section on Kalas being a croc-wearing anime Lucifer but I’m kinda really uncomfy with the Church, so I’d rather save myself that stretch.

In Japan it gets more complicated, assuming that that info regarding black’s symbolism is accurate. Because while the white of death is suitable for the dark harbinger, black isn’t terribly befitting of the Divine Child. It’s possible it’s a reference to the fact that Kalas wasn’t originally the Divine Child but *shrug*

Uh, so yeah. There’s plenty more I could say but this is already too long ^^;

[itsfinancethings]

New story in Business from Time: Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan Is Still Optimistic About the Economy—and the Lure of Cash

(Miss this week’s The Leadership Brief? This interview above was delivered to the inbox of Leadership Brief subscribers on Sunday morning, Aug. 9; to receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and business decisionmakers, click here.)

Banks offer a front-row seat to the state of the economy. After a brutal second quarter for the U.S, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan believes that the worst is behind the country. Still, his bank’s economists predict that the unemployment rate will be at 10% at the end of the year and that the economy won’t fully recover to 2019 levels until early 2023.

BofA, like other banks, has played a critical role in getting government stimulus funds into the hands of cash-starved businesses: It processed 334,000 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, delivering $25 billion in funding for small businesses. At the same time, the bank has worked with major corporations to bolster its balance sheets, raising $461 billion in capital for clients (earning record fees for its investment-banking unit in the process).

Moynihan, who in college was a co-captain of the Brown University rugby team, worked as a corporate lawyer before moving into banking and became CEO of BofA in 2010. He led a turnaround at the bank after a near crippling 2008 acquisition of troubled subprime lender Countrywide Financial, attracting Warren Buffett as a major investor along the way. Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, in recent days increased its holding in BofA, bringing its total ownership stake to approximately 12% of the company. Moynihan, 60, joined TIME for a conversation about the need for additional stimulus, why he’s optimistic about America and its economy, and why Winston Churchill is a good role model for these times.

Subscribe to The Leadership Brief by clicking here.

This interview with Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How would you characterize your economic outlook right now?

We’re optimistic as a company. We continue to see clients making progress; we continue to see the stress in the system come down because of the work the Fed did and the stimulus work that was done.

Even with a forecast of double-digit unemployment at year-end?

Now, you could say, “How is that optimistic?” The answer is, what’s optimistic about it is the worst is behind us. April was the worst month, May was a less worse month, June was better, and in fact July was even better than June. You’re going to have some ebbs and flows based on the virus track, but I think you have to be optimistic that you’re seeing the U.S. consumer continue to spend.

How important is it that the government passes another round of stimulus? [This interview was conducted Monday, Aug. 4, when there was still ongoing negotiations on the a new stimulus package.]

Let’s start with the beginning, that the Administration, Congress and the Fed did a very good job to step in at the end of March, to really put a lot of money into the economy, directly in the hands of the people who needed it most to maintain their ability to survive with an unemployment rate that went up to 15%. If you think about the analogy being a river that we’ve got to cross from pre-COVID to post-COVID, and need to get past COVID, and the river between is the COVID period, some industries are already past COVID because of the nature of what they do. The idea is to keep the money flowing to the people who are still in the process of crossing the river, as opposed to the people who have crossed.

What is your view of the newfound concern about deficit spending?

I think we’ve got to make sure the largest economy in the world recovers fast. If you talk to colleagues around the world, they are very concerned that the U.S. gets out of this because the U.S. economy is so big and creates such demand around the world for the rest of the economy. The idea of worrying about the ultimate deficit right now when you’ve got to get us to the other side of this thing is something that I think we can deal with later on.

So now is not the time to get religion on deficits?

It’s the time to make sure that you’re spending money to keep the economy recovering.

</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">It’s the time to make sure that you’re spending money to keep the economy recovering.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">

As CEO, you demand excellence from your employees. Why can’t we, as citizens, demand a higher level of excellence from our government?

That’s a political question in terms of getting this done that’s better served for the political advisers we have. Our job is to make sure we deal with whatever comes out of it well.

I hear you, but what should the business community be doing now in Washington to throw its considerable weight around to make sure there’s good outcomes for the country?

The No. 1 thing is businesses have to do what we can do inside our own companies to help blunt this for our teammates. And so, we’ve announced no layoffs; we’ve announced enhanced childcare. We’ve enhanced the pay at our branches; we’ve enhanced the overtime. The No. 1 thing is to take care of your people, and make sure they’re safe, and make sure that they can serve your clients well—then take care of your clients.

BofA is credited with doing a particularly good job of getting PPP funds quickly into circulation. Can you talk about that effort?

The team’s done a great job of getting people through this and helping provide $25 billion–plus of funds to our clients. At one point, we probably had 10,000 people working on this. We spent a lot of resources, a lot of time, a lot of effort. We had to take people off a lot of other places. Volunteers. People working every weekend. Easter holiday weekend. Saturday and Sunday. Overnight. It was all based on the basic principle that the American small-business community needed to get this program in their hands, and it was our job to push it through. We took it as an obligation to help deliver that for the government, and we did.

TIME for Learning partnered with Columbia Business School to offer a series of online, on-demand classes on topics like effective leadership, negotiation and customer-centric marketing. To sign up or learn more, click here.

You’ve also been active in helping corporate clients beef up their balance sheets.

What happened in mid-March to mid-April is that the companies came in and borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from the banking system, including $70 billion in two weeks from us, with commercial loans.

What’s going on with M&A activity and the advisory business?

As you come into July, you’re starting to see more M&A activity because of the stability of the market. The third quarter, we expect to see more M&A activity. You’ll see more IPO activity—health care IPOs, plus some other tech IPOs

Subscribe to The Leadership Brief by clicking here.

How much interaction do you have with Warren Buffett, who just made another series of investment in BofA? Do you two have a regular call?

We talk periodically. But he wants us to run the company and do a good job with it.

Any particularly memorable insights that he’s shared with you?

He’s a great long-term thinker. The one thing that he both talks to, but also gives you confidence in, is just see where the long-term value of your company is and make sure you’re driving toward that, and not get caught up in the issues of the moment. It’s the work we did over the last decade that positions us well for the COVID-19 crisis; it’s not what we’re going to do today.

Are people still using cash?

We had as much cash go out of the ATMs in the month of July this year as we did last July, and that is $200 million–plus a day. But the digital part of this really grew through online digital purchases, online payments. And by the way, it’s a very good thing if Americans learn how to use less cash, and what you’re doing is, when you go to a coffee shop and you pay with your phone, you will see that grow at a good, fast rate.

Wait, cash is not dead? I thought people didn’t want to touch cash and that contactless payments were all the rage.

Yes, the cash piece is still big—it’s as big as the credit-card piece.

I know the answer to this is “They’re spending it,” but do you have any particular insight into what people doing with the cash? Maybe they are buying print newspapers and print magazines.

It’s still useful to pay for things. People still use cash to buy things every day. Not necessarily the $300 item, but the $10 item. That’s been changing slowly but surely, but cash is still out there, and so one great service that we provide is 18,000 ATMs and 4,000 branches that help people manage cash. Small businesses collect cash, they deposit it; and people use it. Long-term though, the trend of movement from dollar bills to digital dollar bills is relentless.

What type of behavior will you not tolerate on your management team?

People who are passive-aggressive. If you have a point, make it in front of everybody. Life’s busy; there’s not a lot of time. People who sit in a discussion and then come out and try to either talk to me afterward saying, “Well, this is what I thought.” That doesn’t do me any good because we need to process it together as a team.

I understand you’re an admirer of Winston Churchill.

It was unbelievable how he held the country together. You have to admire that kind of tenacity. One of my favorite things when we get into discussions about charities, museums and culture—and whether the story is 100% true, because a lot of Churchill stories can get embellished over the years—but there was a year when they were discussing the budget and Parliament cut the funding for the arts. And Churchill, in the middle of World War II, when they’re getting bombed and scraping by, said, “If we’re not funding the arts, what are we fighting for?”

What is the biggest, most complicated decision on your plate this week?

I’m not sure I can tell you that.

Forgive me for ending on a philosophical note, but it’s about your name, Bank of America. What does America mean right now? I was in a Home Depot over the weekend and witnessed a rage-filled mask confrontation, an ugly, ugly exchange. What does America stand for right now?

America still represents the best place for opportunity to be recognized. Capitalism provides great opportunity. We have to keep focused on capitalism as the solution to the deep problems, but we have to be mindful that we have to manage capitalism to fully align it with what society wants from capitalism. You’ve got to produce profits and purpose. We believe that fully in running our company, and I believe that’s what America stands for: the ability to solve the world’s great problems. It’s an unfinished dream and continues to provide great opportunity. We’ve got to fine-tune it; we’ve got to fix it where it didn’t work right.

I believe that’s what America stands for: the ability to solve the world’s great problems.</span><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">

  MOYNIHAN’S FAVORITES

BUSINESS BOOK: Jim Collins’ books. He’s always thought-provoking.

AUTHOR: The three that I read the most are James Patterson, David Baldacci and John Grisham. It’s not a world I’ve ever played in—spy novels—but they’re fun to read.

APP: ESPN

EXERCISE: I work out in the mornings in sort of a CrossFit nature.

ONE LAST SURPRISE QUESTION: IF YOU WERE STARTING OVER AGAIN, WHAT WOULD YOU DO INSTEAD?

If I had a talent, I’d have loved to have been an architect.

  Subscribe to The Leadership Brief by clicking here.

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[newstechreviews]

(Miss this week’s The Leadership Brief? This interview above was delivered to the inbox of Leadership Brief subscribers on Sunday morning, Aug. 9; to receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and business decisionmakers, click here.)

Banks offer a front-row seat to the state of the economy. After a brutal second quarter for the U.S, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan believes that the worst is behind the country. Still, his bank’s economists predict that the unemployment rate will be at 10% at the end of the year and that the economy won’t fully recover to 2019 levels until early 2023.

BofA, like other banks, has played a critical role in getting government stimulus funds into the hands of cash-starved businesses: It processed 334,000 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, delivering $25 billion in funding for small businesses. At the same time, the bank has worked with major corporations to bolster its balance sheets, raising $461 billion in capital for clients (earning record fees for its investment-banking unit in the process).

Moynihan, who in college was a co-captain of the Brown University rugby team, worked as a corporate lawyer before moving into banking and became CEO of BofA in 2010. He led a turnaround at the bank after a near crippling 2008 acquisition of troubled subprime lender Countrywide Financial, attracting Warren Buffett as a major investor along the way. Buffett’s conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, in recent days increased its holding in BofA, bringing its total ownership stake to approximately 12% of the company. Moynihan, 60, joined TIME for a conversation about the need for additional stimulus, why he’s optimistic about America and its economy, and why Winston Churchill is a good role model for these times.

Subscribe to The Leadership Brief by clicking here.

This interview with Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How would you characterize your economic outlook right now?

We’re optimistic as a company. We continue to see clients making progress; we continue to see the stress in the system come down because of the work the Fed did and the stimulus work that was done.

Even with a forecast of double-digit unemployment at year-end?

Now, you could say, “How is that optimistic?” The answer is, what’s optimistic about it is the worst is behind us. April was the worst month, May was a less worse month, June was better, and in fact July was even better than June. You’re going to have some ebbs and flows based on the virus track, but I think you have to be optimistic that you’re seeing the U.S. consumer continue to spend.

How important is it that the government passes another round of stimulus? [This interview was conducted Monday, Aug. 4, when there was still ongoing negotiations on the a new stimulus package.]

Let’s start with the beginning, that the Administration, Congress and the Fed did a very good job to step in at the end of March, to really put a lot of money into the economy, directly in the hands of the people who needed it most to maintain their ability to survive with an unemployment rate that went up to 15%. If you think about the analogy being a river that we’ve got to cross from pre-COVID to post-COVID, and need to get past COVID, and the river between is the COVID period, some industries are already past COVID because of the nature of what they do. The idea is to keep the money flowing to the people who are still in the process of crossing the river, as opposed to the people who have crossed.

What is your view of the newfound concern about deficit spending?

I think we’ve got to make sure the largest economy in the world recovers fast. If you talk to colleagues around the world, they are very concerned that the U.S. gets out of this because the U.S. economy is so big and creates such demand around the world for the rest of the economy. The idea of worrying about the ultimate deficit right now when you’ve got to get us to the other side of this thing is something that I think we can deal with later on.

So now is not the time to get religion on deficits?

It’s the time to make sure that you’re spending money to keep the economy recovering.

</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">It’s the time to make sure that you’re spending money to keep the economy recovering.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">

As CEO, you demand excellence from your employees. Why can’t we, as citizens, demand a higher level of excellence from our government?

That’s a political question in terms of getting this done that’s better served for the political advisers we have. Our job is to make sure we deal with whatever comes out of it well.

I hear you, but what should the business community be doing now in Washington to throw its considerable weight around to make sure there’s good outcomes for the country?

The No. 1 thing is businesses have to do what we can do inside our own companies to help blunt this for our teammates. And so, we’ve announced no layoffs; we’ve announced enhanced childcare. We’ve enhanced the pay at our branches; we’ve enhanced the overtime. The No. 1 thing is to take care of your people, and make sure they’re safe, and make sure that they can serve your clients well—then take care of your clients.

BofA is credited with doing a particularly good job of getting PPP funds quickly into circulation. Can you talk about that effort?

The team’s done a great job of getting people through this and helping provide $25 billion–plus of funds to our clients. At one point, we probably had 10,000 people working on this. We spent a lot of resources, a lot of time, a lot of effort. We had to take people off a lot of other places. Volunteers. People working every weekend. Easter holiday weekend. Saturday and Sunday. Overnight. It was all based on the basic principle that the American small-business community needed to get this program in their hands, and it was our job to push it through. We took it as an obligation to help deliver that for the government, and we did.

TIME for Learning partnered with Columbia Business School to offer a series of online, on-demand classes on topics like effective leadership, negotiation and customer-centric marketing. To sign up or learn more, click here.

You’ve also been active in helping corporate clients beef up their balance sheets.

What happened in mid-March to mid-April is that the companies came in and borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars from the banking system, including $70 billion in two weeks from us, with commercial loans.

What’s going on with M&A activity and the advisory business?

As you come into July, you’re starting to see more M&A activity because of the stability of the market. The third quarter, we expect to see more M&A activity. You’ll see more IPO activity—health care IPOs, plus some other tech IPOs

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How much interaction do you have with Warren Buffett, who just made another series of investment in BofA? Do you two have a regular call?

We talk periodically. But he wants us to run the company and do a good job with it.

Any particularly memorable insights that he’s shared with you?

He’s a great long-term thinker. The one thing that he both talks to, but also gives you confidence in, is just see where the long-term value of your company is and make sure you’re driving toward that, and not get caught up in the issues of the moment. It’s the work we did over the last decade that positions us well for the COVID-19 crisis; it’s not what we’re going to do today.

Are people still using cash?

We had as much cash go out of the ATMs in the month of July this year as we did last July, and that is $200 million–plus a day. But the digital part of this really grew through online digital purchases, online payments. And by the way, it’s a very good thing if Americans learn how to use less cash, and what you’re doing is, when you go to a coffee shop and you pay with your phone, you will see that grow at a good, fast rate.

Wait, cash is not dead? I thought people didn’t want to touch cash and that contactless payments were all the rage.

Yes, the cash piece is still big—it’s as big as the credit-card piece.

I know the answer to this is “They’re spending it,” but do you have any particular insight into what people doing with the cash? Maybe they are buying print newspapers and print magazines.

It’s still useful to pay for things. People still use cash to buy things every day. Not necessarily the $300 item, but the $10 item. That’s been changing slowly but surely, but cash is still out there, and so one great service that we provide is 18,000 ATMs and 4,000 branches that help people manage cash. Small businesses collect cash, they deposit it; and people use it. Long-term though, the trend of movement from dollar bills to digital dollar bills is relentless.

What type of behavior will you not tolerate on your management team?

People who are passive-aggressive. If you have a point, make it in front of everybody. Life’s busy; there’s not a lot of time. People who sit in a discussion and then come out and try to either talk to me afterward saying, “Well, this is what I thought.” That doesn’t do me any good because we need to process it together as a team.

I understand you’re an admirer of Winston Churchill.

It was unbelievable how he held the country together. You have to admire that kind of tenacity. One of my favorite things when we get into discussions about charities, museums and culture—and whether the story is 100% true, because a lot of Churchill stories can get embellished over the years—but there was a year when they were discussing the budget and Parliament cut the funding for the arts. And Churchill, in the middle of World War II, when they’re getting bombed and scraping by, said, “If we’re not funding the arts, what are we fighting for?”

What is the biggest, most complicated decision on your plate this week?

I’m not sure I can tell you that.

Forgive me for ending on a philosophical note, but it’s about your name, Bank of America. What does America mean right now? I was in a Home Depot over the weekend and witnessed a rage-filled mask confrontation, an ugly, ugly exchange. What does America stand for right now?

America still represents the best place for opportunity to be recognized. Capitalism provides great opportunity. We have to keep focused on capitalism as the solution to the deep problems, but we have to be mindful that we have to manage capitalism to fully align it with what society wants from capitalism. You’ve got to produce profits and purpose. We believe that fully in running our company, and I believe that’s what America stands for: the ability to solve the world’s great problems. It’s an unfinished dream and continues to provide great opportunity. We’ve got to fine-tune it; we’ve got to fix it where it didn’t work right.

I believe that’s what America stands for: the ability to solve the world’s great problems.</span><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">

  MOYNIHAN’S FAVORITES

BUSINESS BOOK: Jim Collins’ books. He’s always thought-provoking.

AUTHOR: The three that I read the most are James Patterson, David Baldacci and John Grisham. It’s not a world I’ve ever played in—spy novels—but they’re fun to read.

APP: ESPN

EXERCISE: I work out in the mornings in sort of a CrossFit nature.

ONE LAST SURPRISE QUESTION: IF YOU WERE STARTING OVER AGAIN, WHAT WOULD YOU DO INSTEAD?

If I had a talent, I’d have loved to have been an architect.

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[republicstandard]

Racial Profiles: Borzoi Boskovic, Host of The Poz Button

In ten words or less, describe your political persuasion.

Racist trade-unionism with nationalist characteristics.

How and when did you become “red pilled”?

Trayvon, etc. It's not really an interesting story. Most "redpill" stories aren't, to be honest.

What (or who) is the single biggest threat to the continued existence of Western civilization?

Liberal and decadent bourgeois whites. There's nothing to save if people don't want to save themselves.

What figure has been the greatest influence on the development of your political/ideological beliefs?

Probably Ted Kaczynski's writings, but it was never something I really took seriously or developed as you don't want to be known as the guy who said he was influenced by the Unabomber Manifesto. I grew up in a committed non-religious family so naturally, my mind became obsessed with death and by extension, it became obsessed with eschatology and the end of all things. Just normal teenage stuff, right? I got really into reading all about post-apocalyptic societies and the different end scenarios for all things, and thus that led to me discovering the grey goo scenario (spoiler: nanomachines go out of control and devour the world). Interest in that led to me reading, in college, the famous Wired article Why The Future Doesn't Need Us. Kaczynski was never anything more than just a whack-a-doodle bomber whose artist's sketch terrified me as a child, someone whom I was told as a teen that my nascent libertarianism at the time would inevitably lead towards, but that article gave me exposure to his ideas for the first time and I became obsessed with the possible futures that Kaczynski outlined. I wish he'd never committed the heinous and horrific crimes he committed, as we lost such a brilliant mind to system but I suppose that was inevitable when your professor is Henry Murray, the OSS's guy who pioneered the techniques for MK-ULTRA.

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Now here I am, actually influenced in my thinking by his writings on technological society and not entirely sure we can avoid the TechnoGay PissEarth future he outlined for us.

I guess they were right to warn me after all.

What are some other influences on you personally but perhaps not politically?

G.K. Chesterton is still a massive influence on me in terms of attitude and spiritual character. Satan fell by the force of his own gravity. It's important to be able to have a sense of humor about yourself and the world and to still have a mirthful character even when you're staring down at the possibility of PissEarth 2025. I'm a dour and melancholic person by nature; Chesterton's works have always managed to give me a counterbalance to that attitude. My thoughts these days are turning toward Houllebecq these days though, so I guess we'll see how long that attitude holds out. With Lauritz on vacation from The Third Rail, someone needs to embody his well-spring of boundless optimism.

What does your perfect America look like?

I don't know. I don't think I even have one. Non-whites who know my politics have quizzed me on this before, concerned about where my politics will lead to for them. I've said before that I would be perfectly content with a stricter Singaporean system. I don't run around talking about ethnostates or the like though because it's basically pointless. Here's some hard to swallow pills for people:

We aren't going back to the way things were, and we couldn't even if we wanted to.

We are never going to be left alone. There will be no country with giant walls that we get to live our lives peacefully isolated inside.

Every possible good future still ends with us fighting the Chinese.

Our fight is ultimately a global one, and not just because our European brothers are fighting for their countries too. If our enemies succeed, what will happen to many of our most talented people is that they will become a diaspora people serving the Asians and their projects. It's already happening, just look into what's going on with shipbuilding in South Korea and China. If we succeed, well, we still have to oppose the Asian sphere who will do everything they can to hobble us while they expand their soft empires.

These are big geopolitical ideas, I understand. For the regular, average Amerikaner, I just want them to have intact and crime-free communities they can raise their children in without the societal wrecking balls that neoliberal policies smash them up with.

Your critiques of literature and especially film are something the Right has been sorely lacking minus a few exceptions like Trevor Lynch. What got you interested in cinema in particular and what impelled you to begin producing The Poz Button?

I only started the show because I was fascinated by Eyes Wide Shut and the depths of it and wanted to do a podcast about movies I liked. If you listen to the first episodes of the show, it's pretty obvious I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't know what I'm doing with it, but in hindsight it was pretty obvious it would get to this point due to my obsession with Metal Gear Solid 2 and the ideas it introduced to many new audiences about how to program a human being, meme theory, and the creation of new contexts in which to manipulate a person, the core purpose of mass media.

The reality is that people believe movies to be reality. How many people have you known who base their opinions and understanding of history with "But, bro, have you seen Schindlers List/Glory/Hidden Figures?" and so on and so forth. The key phrase in the opening song is from Videodrome: "Television is reality, but reality is less than television". These were ideas that George W.S. Trow was touching on in his peculiar work Within the Context of No Context, and these ideas were at the core of Marshall McLuhan's body of work, which was the inspiration for the Brian O'Blivion character in Videodrome. These are the ideas that are at the core of Edward Bernays' incisive understanding of propaganda. You are not immune to propaganda. The most incisive meme against the internet right has been mocking them for their obsession with movies like Bladerunner 2049 and Drive. You are just as bad as the people as you mock, and without understanding this aspect of yourself and your relationship to media, you will be just as cowed and controlled as everyone else. The ultimate form of controlled opposition, really.

There's this very incorrect notion floating around that I'm a cinephile, something which I don't do much to dissuade people from believing due to my enjoyment of fruity foreign and art films. I'm really not though. Every conversation about movies I have with Nick Mason, a true cinephile, always goes like this:

Nick: Have you seen X?

Borzoi: No.

If you've listened to my show consistently then you've likely noticed I don't actually talk about the movie in question much and I almost never talk about actual film techniques, get deep into the cinematography, or really anything that they'd teach you in film school about film. That's because I'm more interested in what Trow was warning against in his short work Within the Context of No Context, that media (but television in particular) was creating a landscape where people completely have no context for understanding reality because of the contextless reality that media provides for you. To put it more simply, Sven once brought up how since the age of the internet, everything culturally fracturing more and more and there's no 'culture' in the way there was a 70s culture, an 80s culture, a 90s culture, and so on and so forth. That's living without context, and that leaves you utterly atomized.

My background is in literature. I'm a writer at heart. I find movies and television to be mostly frivolous. Films are a static medium and force you to always be a passive viewer. They don't have the collaborative, dynamic, or spontaneity that come from other art forms or even hobbies. I'm only interested in it because people watch movies more than they read books or watch plays, so in order to understand what's truly going on in the world and the culture at large you have to meet people at their level. Almost no one outside of our niche circles is reading Yukio Mishima's Sun and Steel, but millions of people are watching Game of Thrones. There's no value except for its own sake to do a podcast on the former instead of one on the latter.

What are some films you would say are “required viewing” and why?

I don't know. Again, I'm not a cinephile. But you can't go wrong with watching Stanley Kubrick's films. He's the most important filmmaker of the 20th century for a reason. If anything though people should watch documentaries and study their manipulative techniques. Fictional movies have actually exhausted themselves quite a bit and are on a downturn. People want reality but they want it in a digestible form that mimics the structure of storytelling. A lot of this is due to, again, living within the context of no context and thus documentaries not only provide that but also give them a seemingly true reality they can point to for their political and societal views since the democratic society requires that everyone be constantly engaged in it and at the ready to justify themselves and their views.

The reason for the rise of television isn't just because they got better at making it, but because they're able to be more niche instead of going for the lowest common denominator, which movies are required to do in order to justify their budgets, is because it gives you that hit you need for consistently rising and falling action and twists and turns. Why is the twist so ubiquitous and why is it so essential to television series nowadays? Because the human brain is so fried from the media it constantly consumes that it needs novelty in order to keep that high going. People are chasing the dragon when it comes to storytelling. It's the same reason why soap operas and professional wrestling are still so massively popular. It's the twists and turns that keep people coming. Television just promises you twists that are seemingly less ridiculous than soap plot twists.

What do you like to do in your free time? Do you have any future projects in the works?

My free time is mostly spent working out, shitposting, reading articles, playing tabletop games, socializing with average people, and chatting with friends. Like I said before, I don't really watch television and movies. I'm working on writing and expanding my show, but I work a pretty hectic job so I get done what I can get done for now.

How do you define success, both personally and in terms of your political and social aims/beliefs?

The only success that will matter is if the Right and the average person takes the threat and the power of the Left seriously. Currently, they do not. Their mindset is stuck in the 1980s. Look at the obsession with 80s-style music and 80s aesthetic and nostalgia for how much nicer things were in the 80s. What these people don't seem to remember though was that the 1980s were a large product of the feeling that nuclear war could occur at any moment, at the madness of these two massive superpowers that they couldn't just put the missiles down and talk to each other. That fueled the 80s, and at the core of it was escaping to frivolousness and the good times because of the madness going on outside. And despite all that nostalgia for this time period, the Right and the average cannot and will not acknowledge the Left for the threat they actually are.

I'm a guy who doesn't care about the long-term goals if you can't even get the simplest step done. That's success to me. If we can't even get these people to take the most immediate threat seriously, then how are you going to accomplish anything else?

How do you see this ending? Is the United States doomed?

The United States as an entity is definitely doomed. The best option for racially conscious whites is to simply band together and check out from the system once it becomes demographically impossible to affect change and let everyone else have the system. Don't try to stop it from collapsing, just let them run it into the ground. The only way that can work though is through true consciousness being achieved, otherwise, you'll just have Brazil with bold men like Bolsonaro doing everything they can to make that shell of a nation still work. But the American people, the Amerikaner as I call it, they'll persist. There are millions of us. But they'll have to determine the future they want to forge, if it will be a separatist one that they can rally around and slowly retake land or if they'll find another way forward. The best case for us presently is to buy as much time as possible so that serious people can emerge that can develop a bold vision for the future of our people.

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What about the West in general?

Every institution of the West is either dead or dying. Like I said before, we're not going back to the way things were. We couldn't even if we wanted to. What remains then is to take what worked and prepare it for the new ways, with a bold and dynamic vision for the future to come. To quote Guillaume Faye's Archeofuturism: “When this dream has faded, another will emerge.”

The choice the West is staring down, and no amount of fantasy will make this any different, is death-and-rebirth envisioned by our most optimistic thinkers or the maximal total war scenario that Linkola warns about in Can Life Prevail.

I say this so often that it's a cliché, but you need to have a mind for marathon running, and if you don't then it is better to just go and live life as a woke normal person.

I find it very strange sometimes that people ask someone like me for my perspective on things, but the reality is people do so it's important to me that I do not sugarcoat things for people but at the same time outline a workable vision of the future. Circumstances change constantly and you adapt to those circumstances. Once you understand that things will never be the way they once were, it frees you up to make what happens next work and work towards a vision of the future you'd like for your own.

This fight is not over. It never will be.

Follow Borzoi on Twitter.

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[toryhipkiss75-blog]

Jumping Back In The Work Force Following A Break

Next, work on making a five-moment industrial for yourself. No, this is not video clip, but instead a few statements you will make about your self. Know what accomplishments you have experienced. Know what benefits you can offer to a business. Depth your occupation skills and work encounter in a way that exhibits you are better from the other guy. It is obviously important to outline your goals, but you also require to show what you can provide to a temp services, such as dependability, a powerful function ethic, the capability to be available at the last moment, and the willingness to attempt new things.

When you are browsing the net and are searching at various things that you would like to do for cash, pay interest to the recommendations, workers, and names. Are they familiar? Have you seen these people or listened to names that were very comparable on other websites? If so, then probabilities are that these individuals are actors and have not actually had success with that specific business. When somebody is trying to promote their occupation opportunity to you, it is not a job. It is a pyramid scheme, sales opportunity, company or expense chance, or a scam. Again, by no means pay for a occupation, by no means pay for a list of jobs, and never believe in an actor that is telling you how wealthy you will turn out to be.

Think of questions to ask an interviewer. Appear at the place list and do your investigation about the company and think of three-5 concerns you can inquire throughout the assembly. What are you curious about? Do they manufacture a item you are acquainted with, or never even knew it existed prior you started to study the company? Exactly where does this division match in the larger scheme of the business? What duties is the department presently operating on?

Those who are using Checklist Pay Working day Professional really like the info they are getting and state the techniques that Steven addresses are really easy to apply and also do function. They have discovered true benefit within this training course and are happy that they made the expense. As a little additional bonus - if you click on from the primary salespage it is feasible to acquire your self a 10 dollar discount creating the greatest cost an extremely low $27.

If you're interested in drama, your perfect freshman summer time might be operating on Broadway or even in London. Remember that those internships are extremely restricted. You may be working for a nicely-known theatre, but what will you discover if you by no means leave the mail room? You may actually discover much more operating with your neighborhood theatre group or with a regional professional theatre. Right here, your assist will be valued and the actors will really value your help, as opposed to Broadway where the actors will by no means cross your route.

Following are more companies in Boston, but I have experienced no genuine info about them and can't give many comments. I have known as all of them during my occupation queries, but numerous never got back in touch with me.

What Dr. Munchak enjoys most about his new profession path is the versatility it provides him. In the drop he and his spouse plan an prolonged visit to the higher Midwest so they can invest time with their kids and grandchildren. With his own apply, he could definitely routine time off, but it would imply a work overload in the months preceding and subsequent his vacation. As a temporary employee for all intents and functions, he has just scheduled with his temp services that he'll be off these three weeks. They will accommodate him by simply providing him assignments whose dates don't interfere.

Do temporary function. Working with a Http://kppttarakan.id/ may lead to a complete time position. Performing temp work is advantageous to each yourself and the employer as it serves as a' try before you buy'. You get to assess the business and they get to assess you. It will also offer you with experience and further time to strategy your subsequent actions.

During the interview with a temp services, think about if there's mutual understanding in between both parties. It is important for the agency to know what you are looking for so that they can find the best cultural fit. And, lastly, make certain they have your best interest in thoughts.

If you are a writer, programmer, designer, or photographer, you will discover armloads of possibilities for you individually. If you have a speciality of any kind -- carpentry, elevating children, planning holidays or weddings, taking part in Guitar Hero 3 -- you can get paid for your expertise. Even though you think all you are able provides are time, there are a lot of possibilities for you as well.

This would have been less odious if she wasn't so passive intense. Even when she was pissed she was coming at you with her smile. She would also do things like tell you to take your time on a venture only to inform you at the end of the day that she expected that project to have been finished so you experienced to remain later on. Whether this meant stuffing envelopes or heading via the checklist of spam recipients checking for mistakes, she wanted every thing carried out immediately.

[raminfarhangi]

A Place To Grow by Daniel Greenberg - some comments

Dear Daniel,

I just read A Place to Grow, and I keep thinking about it, so much that I almost couldn't sleep last night. I feel a drive to share these thoughts with you and anyone who may be interested.

I think that this is the most important book you wrote, and I urge every neophyte to put it second on their list after Free At Last. This is partly biased something irrational : I have now been reading, talking, writing, practicing and breathing the concept so much for the past 3 years that anything I read from you provokes still more resonance with my views. It could be that if I read some Greenberg I already read 2 years ago, I would react similarly.

Now, some more rational reasons to explain my enthusiasm.

It starts with the introduction of the book. Here you are, having spent more than 50 years designing and actively living within a revolutionary culture, with the intention to deliver your very best effort at explaining it. The founding idea is dead simple, the framework somewhat more complicated but technically possible to explain, and the complex ramifications of it all leading to how it feels to live the Sudbury experience plainly impossible to convey. Indeed, even after having experiencing sight for more than 50 years, it's impossible to explain what red and blue is all about to the blind, isn't it ? I love the challenge, and the humility to accept the limits.

I like how accessible the book is. Expressing what's in your mind seems always more inspiring and useful to me when you use simple arguments that anyone can visualize within their mind, relate to their own experience and challenge themselves to think differently. Some of your previous writings - a small part of it, fortunately - were hard to access and it was difficult to understand what you expected the reader to take out from it, for example in The Meaning of Education or the middle part of Worlds in Creation. I'm not interested in books targeted to purely abstract thinkers because this is simply not the way I function, and I'm quite sure that a great majority of people can't make any use of tens of pages of abstraction. In A Place to Grow, every single paragraph gracefully touches the mind of the reader and opens it up to reflection. I have rarely been so inspired.

I really enjoyed reading every part of this book and I think that almost everything serves to reinforce the message, except for Aspects of Creating and Replicating a New Educational Model. I didn't understand what that was doing here.

The part I enjoyed the most is where you focus on the roots and the core of the model. I was very intrigued with the title The Culture of Sudbury Valley School, and didn't expect such deep exploration of the essence. It makes sense to explain the counter-natural fiction that holds the culture together. Wide disbelief in the fiction leads to the self-destruction of the culture, so talking about the fiction reinforces the message of what the culture is all about. I was already convinced that Sudbury is best explained by focusing on the essential message “children are treated fully as free individuals”. With SVS press, I found you to be exremely effective at reinforcing this message mainly through these 3 means :

explanation of how we're not kidding and how radical we are in pursuing this idea in real life

stories and testimonies from students, staff, parents, alumni

providing a historical perspective

A quick digression : The History of conventional mass schooling is a powerful way to help realize that we're passive victims of inertia. I don't think that anyone wants to consciously and actively continue being a victim, so once you grasp the idea, it logically leads you to open up to alternatives. I'm glad that you added it as an appendix to the French translation of Free at Last. I thought that Ken Robinson and John Taylor Gatto were quite good at it, but this article was more compelling than anything else I heard or read on this topic. And I'm glad Mimsy added the article about alumni. These 2 articles helped to powerfully complete this introduction to SVS for the French audience… I have to admit that after all this, my article was somewhat superfluous, and if I had known that these 2 articles would be there, I'm not sure I would have found it that useful to add it. Anyway, what's done is done.

Most of your synthesis of the History of individualism was new to me, and I enjoyed reading it as well. When I visited SVS in Octobre 2015, I remember the chat we had about it… well… in fact, you delivered me a spiel about it, which I didn't get a chance to react to, and I also had a chat with Scott, who reinforced the message, and at some point, I got the gist of it. A Place to Grow now makes it crystal clear how SVS is an American Immersion School, because only America can be considered, in your view, as an area where the individual is truly sacred.

The Founding Fathers, the two sentences of the Declaration of Independence, the immigrants from various cultures who came with a desire to break with their pasts and start fresh on a "new" land : the USA is the only country that truly functions as a liberal democracy because of this ideal marriage between three components : a Declaration which so purely expresses the ideal, political leaders who honestly wish to pursue it, and the melting pot of people who were already condemned to agree on the idea of individual independence and tolerance of other subcultures. No other country has ever experienced this, and in every other country, even today, and especially in Europe, the needs of the community are more valued than the respect of the individual. You can see it in the founding principles of these countries, in how their institutions work, and in the spirit of the people which is still filled with the burden of their medieval past. This is not exactly how you say it, and feel free to correct what you feel is an exaggeration.

I would now like to detail why I deeply disagree with this view.

The founding principles of the French Revolution establish individual freedom as radically as the Declaration of Independence

The Preamble of Declaration of Independence starts with "We", a word that you omitted to comment, and that quite clearly refers to the will of a community to unite around something. If "We" exists, it means a clear separation from "Them" (like the British Empire), and therefore assuming that other ways can be possible and tolerable outside of the USA. The writers could have chosen "these truths are to be held self-evident, that…" instead of "We…". The French were even more radical by instituting these "truths" as being universal and saying, in the intro of their Declaration, that any other way of governing a country necessarily leads to corruption.

By adopting this Declaration and later voting the beheading of the king, guilty of treason, the National Assembly provoked the upheaval of the loyalists and knowingly challenged the authority of the British and the Austro-Prussian crowns. They set themselves up for War in which the enemy was everywhere inside and around the new Nation. In the 1790's context, the price to pay for promoting individual freedom was all-out war until full capitulation of the enemy inside, and conversion of the enemy outside. People of this geography and this time didn't see any other way for this new world to emerge and survive through time.

"Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" was first thought by Robespierre as the slogan to write on the chests and flags of the soldiers of the National Guard. It was made extremely clear in the revolutionary Declaration that Liberté and Egalité meants individual freedom and equal rights. There is absolutely no room for interpretation for these words. Fraternité was more blurry and has varied through time, so it necessarily needs to be contextualized, just like happiness has several meanings and needs to be contextualized.

In the 1790's context, Fraternité certainly did not mean preeminence of the community over the individual as you seem to think it is, just like We doesn't mean that at all in the Declaration of Independence. The origin of Fraternité can be traced back to the Serment du Jeu de Paume, when the elected representatives of the people swore an oath to stick together until the will of the people would be heard. As forces grew to oppose the progress of the French Revolution, Fraternité meant more and more that people needed to unite to defend the new ideals of individual freedom. For example, in 1793, the Commune of Paris ordained to write "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité ou la mort" on walls everywhere around the city, meaning that it was even worth dying in their name and killing traitors. These were inevitably violent times for those who tried to pursue the nearly impossible task to terminate the old cast system and establish a New World order.

Today, Fraternité means something quite different than "we'll prevail together or die fighting". The way it's written in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration has to do with the quality of relationships between people. It has absolutely no value in my eyes. It's impossible to technically institutionalize Fraternité. We can only say "how nice would it be if we were all nice to each other, wouldn't it ?". It's wishful thinking, and still clearly not the idea that community dominates the individual.

Back to the Revolution and its violence. Were these people putting their lives at stake to defend some abstract ideals ? Certainly not in France, nor in the US nor anywhere else where it happened. The driving force behind all this motivation is to end some severe economic injustice. What the bourgeois were fighting for back then was free enterprise, free market, private property, fair taxes… In 1789 France, they faced a king who announced that France was in a debt crisis, and that neither the nobility nor the clergy was going to pay for it, so people would just need to work a bit harder for France's survival. This could not be tolerated anymore. A new equilibrium was established through violence, and this implosion was the opportunity for the bourgeois to take power and start-up a Nation from scratch, with principles that were dear to all these self-made men.

It was a major leap towards equality between all human beings, but it was only the beginning. There were still tons of contradictions to resolve.

Slavery, institutionalized sexism, colonisation and in fact any use of violence or oppression is indeed contradictory with the democratic ideals

You mention how absurd it was for Napoleon to conquer Europe to convert the other countries to the new French way of seeing the world. Indeed, invading the enemy in the name of freedom makes neither more nor less sense than spreading democracy with bombing a country "preventively". You were a bit quick here to give France the monopoly of absurdity. We could give many examples of such offensive/imperialist actions from the great Western powers throughout History, which were presented as necessary for the survival and continuity of these powers, for destroying evil and always making the world a better place.

In our so-called modern democracies, the head of the armies can talk to millions through the mainstream media at will, and manipulate the people and their representatives into thinking that he is fighting just wars, justified by sacrosanct values. Even though it's technically a democracy, with a voting system that should make decisions as fair and wise as possible, some elected heads managed to spread ignorance and rule as dictators. This is one of the imperfections of democracy, famously considered the least worse form of government since Churchill. Recently, W. Bush did it with Irak, Sarkozy did it with Lybia, Holland with Syria, etc. surfing on a wave of fear that they generated with their own words, to supposedly protect the freedom of the American or the French people.

A majority of people and representatives thought that it was fair to fight these wars. I don't. I think that these were bad decisions and brought still more instability and danger to the world. A majority of people also felt recently that Trump would be a good President and "America First" a reasonable slogan… do you think that by "America", he means "the founding principles, framework and culture of a liberal democracy" ? I don't know yet what to think of it when democracy self-destroys through democratic procedures...

You also mention that slavery was maintained despite "all Men are born equal". The British and French empires ruling distant colonies who aspired for independence was also maintained with the use of force. Institutionalized discrimination of women and gay people are also contradictory with the ideals. These are all rather obvious contradictions with the Declaration, and it took some time for people of these days to resolve these contradictions all around the western world. How is America so special and unique in its progress towards the ideals ? I don't see it. I see different countries moving at different paces towards the same goal.

Contradictions that Europe currently face doesn't mean preeminence of the community ; it's part of the usual struggle for individual freedom

Authorities in Holland and Bavaria closed down De Kampanje and Sudbury School Munich. In our view, it's clearly undemocratic and disrespectful of our freedom to educate children however we want. In their view, they're doing us irresponsible parents a favor by stopping us from mistreating our children. To them, our approach plainly means denying children's fundamental right to be educated and become effective adults in the modern world. To them, Sudbury means children growing into dependent, incapable adults to be later taken care of by the community at large (because there are governmental structures and financing schemes in Europe, just like in the US, to take care of the sick and the dependent). The Law allows judges in these countries to bring death to the schools they see as insufficiently educating children towards their freedom, and they think that they used this power wisely.

We both know it doesn't make any sense ; the commonsense of the enemy is obviously the opposite of our commonsense. The difference between the US and these European countries is their interpretation of individual freedom, not the fact that they believe in the preeminence of the community. On education laws, we agree that these countries are clearly less advanced democracies. The State doesn't fully trust parents with their educational choices, which by the way disrespects article 26.3 of the Universal Declaration, but the State would argue that they are an authority to prevent parents from disrespecting article 26.1. As always, more contradiction, more struggle… leading to more debate and more progress. The situation in Holland has now changed and Sudbury School Harderwijk is doing just fine. They went from being enemies to friends with the government. It seems to always go towards more individual freedom, not less. You can't judge a whole country of being collectivist or autocratic by the fact that a panicky and ignorant bureaucrat closed down a school. When there's unfair use of power in a country that wishes to be democratic, I see opportunity for open struggle and progress.

France is very different from its neighbors on education Laws and their practice ; you can't consider all European countries the same way. For example, in Germany, homeschooling is illegal, while in France, it is legal. In Germany, you have to obtain the authorization of the government to open a school (Sudbury School Munich worked on obtaining it for 8 years) while in France, it's as easy as starting up a company. You need 4 signatures that you obtain automatically if you were never identified by authorities as a criminal or a danger to kids, and the government doesn't judge your educational approach a priori. As far as the administrative process is concerned, it took me 2 days to open Ecole Dynamique, just by lack of time during the first day to visit the 4 administrators from whom I needed a signature. 8 years in Bavaria ; 2 days in Paris. In France, there are now 31 schools which self-identify as democratic, all rather radical since none of them offers the smorgasbord/Summerhillian approach ; a minimal curriculum isn't even suggested to students ; they have a say in all matters that concern the school. Apart from some uncomfortable conversations with a couple inspectors, all these schools are doing fine today.

The people who wrote the French Code of Education certainly had some interest in protecting freedom of education this way, and they knew that it would be jeopardized if they gave the government the authority to decide on the life and death of private and family education initiatives. This is ultimately matters for the court to decide, and needless to say that you must do something very wrong for a court to close down a school or seperate kids from their parents. Germans do this more easily because there are still some education Laws dating from the 3rd Reich, one of the most anti-democratic initiatives in History.

Education laws in Europe are rather diverse, and it seems like France is the European country where freedom of education is the most highly protected. People are not necessarily aware of this and think that we live under a sovietic administration, but these are plainly false popular beliefs.

Contradictions that are common to all "democratic countries" are what matter most in the end, and we share the same goal of resolving these contradictions

Both the USA and France have democratic processes to write and enforce rules that protect individual rights. I don't think, however, that this is enough to call these countries "democratic" as a whole. Think of the pain we have in determining whether a school is "democratic", and how radical we are about it to protect the meaning of this word. Our expectations should be just as high when it comes to designate a country or society as "democratic". During my 3 years as a student at Cornell and the several other trips I took to the US, I was far from feeling the atmosphere that reigns in a Sudbury school. And the atmosphere in France is even farther from this, because people are generally a lot more risk-averse, depressed and pessimistic here.

Almost all the other organizations of both countries (schools, companies, public services, etc.) are autocratically run. Just as people take freedom for granted in society at large, they take obedience for granted in the organizations they experience in their daily lives. I don't think that a whole country can be truly called a liberal democracy until you feel the spirit and culture of it almost everywhere you go, until people take charge of their own lives and stop blindly obeying to a stream of instructions from age 3 to 65. It's not only about how the State is run ; it's also about how other organizations and communities are run throughout the country. People still mostly experience autocracy and behave like cogs, and whether we like it or not, we are revolutionaries who are (peacefully) proposing to overthrow these autocracies and establish a new order based on self-responsibility. We are not actively trying to change the world, but our views are logical, sensible, attractive and therefore world changing.

I'll try to summarize the point I have been trying to make here. As a slogan for what Sudbury is all about, you chose to call it an "American Immersion School". By "American", you refer to the concept, framework and culture of liberal democracy. I don't understand the purpose and I find it confusing to equate a philosophical ideal with a specific geography, and for all the reasons I mentioned, I find it inaccurate to do so.

On a more personal note, I don't see myself as having founded an American school. This doesn't resonate at all with what I think Ecole Dynamique is about. I don't see what some specific Nations have to do with what we're doing. I didn't create neither a French nor an American school. I founded a fully democratic school, with the purpose of protecting its students individual freedom. Its address is in Paris, and that's the only thing that's French about it.

Exploring further contradictions

I would like to end my comments by opening 2 further questions I have been thinking about for a while, and that I'm still struggling with. Maybe you took an interest in these questions at some point, and I would be glad to read some essays you may have written about them.

First : In the context a free market economy, there are various things that can happen that challenge fully letting the invisible hand do the job. For the sake of discussion, let's consider an impossible extreme scenario : one person ends up owning 100% of the capital of a country. He is the boss of it all, hires and fires whoever he wants, and therefore distributes revenue as he wishes. Even if the principles and frameworks remain intact to make and enforce Law, can we still call this place a liberal democracy if all business is run by a tyrant ? To make it more realistic, let's imagine that business is not run by one but 10 000 mini tyrants who own it all and enslave the rest of the population. A large part of our western societies look like this to me. The solution is obvious to me : boycott. I'm not going to take any part in contributing to these organization. I don't buy their products and I will not cooperate with them in any way, except if they wish to obtain some expertise on radically transforming their organization and transfer ownership and power to the employees.

Second : Freedom to buy what you wish is something people seem to value a lot. I don't care. I just need a roof, reasonable temperature and food, and I wear the same clothes everyday, but it seems that I'm an anomaly. People generally have a desire to go out there in the market and in the mall and spend money on what they wish. We see children aspiring to this very early on, as soon as we generally consider them to be people in Sudbury schools. They want their own money so that parents stop having control over what they get themselves. They want a bank account, a smartphone and unbounded access to everything in the market. However, as you mention it in your book, they are excluded from the job market until age 16, which we both agree is extremely late when we know what a young person is capable of physically and intellectually. If children are discriminated from access to work and therefore to revenue, shouldn't we correct this situation by simply giving them a part of our adult revenue, which came with our adult privilege of access to the job market ? I think that this is one of the key aspects of adult domination, and that there's a simple solution out of it. Just give them a monthly revenue, similar to yours once you paid all the necessary bills, so they can enjoy buying whatever they want without asking for permission, and live their own experience as a more or less responsible consumer. I would be glad to hear your views on this.

Thanks for taking the time to read these rather long comments. Let's see it as 2 years of correspondence condensed into a single shot. It seems like I needed some time for these thoughts to mature enough.

PS : I recently read Child Rearing as well. Very enjoyable as well. Lovely and rather unsurprising to see how Marjorie and I got to the same conclusions. Giving birth at home (in a country where epidural is the norm, and only a few hundred babies are born at home each year) ; nursing on demand ; letting him move around, eat, sleep however/whenever he wants. It all makes sense.