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secret-engima · 2 years

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Shinobi Economics 2: Warring States Boogaloo

RIGHT IT’S TIME FOR NINJA ECONOMICS 2: WARRING STATES BOOGALOO.

Link to my previous 3k tumblr rant on canon era shinobi economics here , and a casual reminder that I do not study or research economics a whole bunch outside of a casual interest for fantasy worldbuilding. Most of this is just- trying to logic out some semblance of sense inside the Naruto setting.

But to summarize the stuff I think is relevant to jumping into this one, in the previous ramble I established that:

1. Peacetime is actually Really Profitable for shinobi villages of the Nidaime to Boruto eras, because that’s when the lower classes (Merchant and Worker) can afford to pay shinobi for jobs that are ultimately the most money for the least amount of risk.

2. Shinobi villages set the prices of missions, not the clients (as seen in the premise of the Wave arc, where the bridge builder lied about the risk so that he only had to pay for a C rank instead of a B or A rank mission), and that whatever prices they have set for missions, it allows even a single parent shinobi with an active child to live comfortably in a city. Not wealthy necessarily, but clearly able to feed, clothe, shelter, and spend time with their child on top of work and training.

3. In all of canon, all the movies, even in Boruto (up to the point I’ve watched so far anyway), there is not a single shinobi that suggests going back to the warring state era. Not even the missing-nin. Not even Madara, who was more than happy to plot the downfall of every shinobi village and the world at large, tried to get them to go back to warring states (admittedly he was more interested in brainwashing everyone with an overgrown weed, but hey).

In that previous rant, I also made an offhand mention that Hashirama and Madara ending the war between their clans and making peace was them essentially inventing a ninja union, and I kind of want to come back to that in this rant by talking about what the Warring State Era ninja economy was probably like, considering what little we know in canon (ie the anime flashbacks which YES COUNT AS CANON since it makes exactly as much nonsense as the rest of Kishi’s worldbuilding),

Okay so. What do we know about the Warring State Era?

1. We know it was a very bloody time of frequent clan on clan fighting.

2. Medical chakra techniques/medicine in general were not as advanced (because Tsunade is infamous for her contributions to the world of medicine and she doesn’t exist yet) so fatalities or crippling injuries were definitely more common, and most shinobi wore samurai style armor which tells me:

2a. The armor was likely a response to how much easier it was back then for a shinobi to be crippled or killed through blood loss and infection (especially infection).

2b. It could also be a hold over from the Samurai era, since we honestly never get a straight answer from Kishi on where the heck Samurai fit into his swiss cheese timeline. There is, according to the Naruto wiki, a mention of them having split off from shinobi back when chakra use was still called ninshu but that makes … about as much sense as most of Kishi’s timeline and therefore is suspect at best and garbage at worst.

3. Child soldiers were even more of a thing than they are in the village era. For comparison, Kakashi was considered a prodigy for graduating and becoming a genin at 5, and Itachi was exposed to death at age 4, but that flashback is structured (in the anime at least) in a manner that implies that this was not the norm (thanks Fugaku) and that Itachi should not have been anywhere near the battlefield since he hadn’t even enrolled in Academy yet (canonically enrolled at age 6 and was allowed to take the graduation test a few months later). However in the Warring States Era flashback, Hashirama’s and Tobirama’s brother Kawarama died at age 7, and their father makes comments that imply Kawarama was considered at least enough of an adult to be a shinobi, which means he *probably* didn’t die on his first mission? Their other brother Itama, who we do not have an official age for but is clearly younger than Hashirama and Tobirama (who are drawn to at least appear 12 or younger) also dies young, probably around the same age as Kawarama did. We also see Izuna, during the river confrontation between Madara’s and Hashirama’s families, wielding a sword that is clearly *sized* for a child. Unlike Tobirama in that same scene who’s out here with an adult katana held on his back like a buster sword, Izuna is using a sword that looks like it was forged with a child his age in mind. Which … yeah. Not good. Hashirama and Madara also directly reference a desire for ending the deaths of children on the battlefield when they are discussing their dream of a village. So clearly children becoming shinobi at 6-7 and up was Not Uncommon.

4. Going off the continued existence of a Daimyo and his court in canon era, there were a lot of feudal lords in this era, hiring shinobi to do their dirty work. Not just Daimyo against Daimyo like we see in the village era Shinobi Wars, but likely neighboring lords hiring one shinobi clan or another to heckle, sabotage, and assassinate each other. Especially considering the Naruto world Warring States is clearly supposed to be reminiscent of the Sengoku period of Japan.

So, with those things in mind. How did shinobi economics in this era work and why was Konoha so revolutionary in more than just “hey the Senju and Uchiha aren’t killing each other!” way?

Well first thing is that the shinobi clans would have been at the whims of the various lords and the Daimyo rather than able to establish their own prices for missions, and the vast majority of the clan on clan conflicts would have either started or been fueled by the nobles of the era out of convenience. There are over 16 clans listed on the wiki as being “Konoha” clans, while we can discount a few of them (namely the Lee clan because that’s just Rock Lee, the Uzumaki who were from their own hidden village, and the Hoki family who I think immigrated in from Suna? If I’m reading the wiki right?), and those are just the clans that actually survived to the canon village era. That is a lot of competition for shinobi work in an era where most of those jobs would have come from the rich lords, the Daimyo himself, or a few very wealthy merchants would have been able to afford to both hire a shinobi clan and would have felt it worth the risk of gambling that their competitors wouldn’t also hire a shinobi clan to retaliate. The working class would not have been able to afford a shinobi’s services, and they also definitely wouldn’t want to risk going near a shinobi, because this era was when the clans would’ve had their bloodiest, most inhuman rumors and reputations as remorseless killers.

The staple/most common jobs for shinobi clans of that era would likely have been the violent ones that in the modern era get regulated to ANBU, because again, the Worker class can’t hire for D-ranks and the Merchant class probably either also couldn’t or wouldn’t want to unless desperate or trying to threaten their competition with the reputation of shinobi. These “common” jobs would have been assassinations of adults or children, kidnappings, sabotages, blackmail gathering, spying, and open battlefield conflicts (every Senju-Uchiha conflict we see in the flashback arc, not counting Itama’s death or the river confrontation, is on an open battlefield with both parties in varying levels of armor actually). And of course the other side of those common jobs would be missions from rival lords who are hiring a clan to prevent all the previously listed missions. Which is probably where a good chunk of clan animosities started, opposing contracts that got out of hand and started an all out blood feud.

If a wealthy merchant hired a clan to guard their product/caravan, it was probably because some competitor or a lord who took offense to them for some reason had already hired another shinobi clan to sabotage said caravan and product. If a lord hired a shinobi to kill a rival or his family, that rival had either already hired shinobi bodyguards or was going to in response to this. Which, on top of fueling a lot of clan on clan grudges from being repeatedly on opposite sides of a job, means that shinobi clans couldn’t really demand a specific mission prices. A little bit of haggling over the price, yes, especially in the case of the more powerful/sought after clans, but if a shinobi clan tried to push for “too much”, the prospective client could simply leave and hire another clan. Likely a rival clan that had a blood feud with the first clan just to spite them. Any failed missions or missions that were refused because of the pay or risk involved would also definitely lead to the client spreading word against that clan to any allies, which would lead to less missions and valuable income down the line.

The clans with the most ability to haggle, at least in Land of Fire, would *probably* have been the Four Noble Clans Kishi mentions; The Uchiha, The Aburame, the Akimichi, and the Hyuuga. We never have it explained why they are noble clans or why there is only four, but basic logic says that they were clans who actually held positions in the Daimyo’s court, and having that position would have helped them set at least *some* level of wage standard for shinobi work they took on so long as they were careful not to annoy the Daimyo in the process. But even then, there was only so much they could demand before there was a risk of the client leaving and taking any future business from them and their social circle with them.

The Uchiha-Senju conflict was said to last for generations. According to Kishi it lasted since Indra-Ashura thanks to Black Zetsu specifically, but that is stupid on multiple levels that I won’t fully cover here. It’s much more likely that the descendants of Indra and Ashura clashed a few times and mostly tried to avoid each other until the Warring States Era actually started, by which point those descendants were the Senju and Uchiha (and Uzumaki but they’re canonically a neutral party in that whole deal iirc). The blood feud *probably* started when a noble lord spotted the natural avoidance/borderline animosity of the Uchiha and Senju and hired the Senju to sabotage either an Uchiha job or even to attack the Uchiha themselves if the Uchiha held a position in the Daimyo’s court at that point. And because Uchiha do not react calmly to basically anything, the response was very bloody and over the top, to which the Senju also reacted poorly and… *gestures at the blood feud*. After that, warring lords would have started to intentionally hire the Uchiha and the Senju to pit them against each other because neither clan would haggle too much over the price of a job for fear of it being thrown to their enemy instead, and with both clans so eager to get revenge on the other as the years went on, they were guaranteed to give their all on the battlefield regardless of the mission pay. Which is a technique that would have been used against most of the clans to keep them from getting too powerful or too uppity about the pay for their jobs, but especially the dangerous ones with kekkei genkai.

With the inability to really dictate the prices of their shinobi work, the civilians of shinobi clans likely would have sought to provide some other form of goods and services to help bolster the clan (the civilians not busy trying to keep the clan fed anyway). This has been explored by other fanfic writers in this fandom (shout-out to Umei_no_Mai’s series “the Compass Points North” for being really great at this), but of course depending on the size of the clan and their access to resources that don’t immediately go to either Feeding the Clan or Providing For Shinobi Work, how much money this actually brought in for each clan is entirely variable.

So there’s the Warring States Era cycle of shinobi work. Lord A hires Clan 1 to Do Thing, Lord B hires Clan 1’s most hated rival if possible to Stop Thing, both lords sit back and watch the two clans fight it out for far less than their work is actually worth. Wash, rinse, occasionally repeat with clans that are not hated rivals but are still going to fight it out viciously because if they don’t do a good enough job then they will lose any further work from that client and the client’s associates.

And then the Uchiha-Senju Alliance happened, and did not disintegrate within weeks or months as outsiders would have anticipated.

And this one thing. This one alliance. Completely destroyed the “comfortable” cycle the lords, Daimyo, and wealthy merchants had for their shinobi dealings up to that point. Because now, not only are the two most powerful clans in Land of Fire no longer available to hire against each other, but they also have two clans’ worth of civilian trade and shinobi revenue to keep them from starving the first time they said “no” to a client, and any client they do say yes to has the pick of Senju shinobi, Uchiha shinobi, or a mixed team of the clans’ respective powerhouses.

What do you think the response was the first time a client approached literally any of the other clans and tried to hire them to go up against both Hashirama and Madara, or, just as scarily, Senju Tobirama with a grumpy Uchiha or three following on his heels.

The answer was no. The answer was heck no. The answer was we would literally rather starve rather than choose that flavor of suicide.

Because while other clans have clashed with the Senju and Uchiha before during this era thanks to it being logistically impossible for someone to hire a Senju to fight an Uchiha and visa versa every time, those clashes would still have been comparatively rare but memorable. Similar to the nobles funding these blood feuds, the other shinobi clans of Land of Fire would have grown accustomed to “your chances of dying via Tree Man or Angry Fire Cat Man are statistically low” and being able to kinda sit back and watch the Senju and Uchiha tear each other apart from a safe distance, with only minimal risk of running into far less skilled Uchiha or Senju on a job rather than the guy who gets named the “god of shinobi” and his frenemy rival. They’ve seen the damage either clan can do, and now you want them to go against both? Without the guarantee of Madara and Hashirama (and Tobirama and Izuna pre the latter’s death) being too busy trying to kill each other to bother with you and your squishy clanmates? Hahahaha no.

And now here’s where the Shinobi Villages are a Union thing really starts to kick in. Because the Senju-Uchiha alliance grinding the Warring States cycle to a halt would have been temporary if it had just been between them, if Hashirama’s and Madara’s dream had gone no further than peace between their respective clans. If it had remained just the Senju-Uchiha alliance, even with fear of Hashirama and Madara, the other clans would have eventually been prodded into fighting them, likely even being hired by enough lords who were all unhappy with this shakeup to the routine to temporarily band together in fighting the Senju and Uchiha and overwhelm them (or at least badly cripple the manpower of the Senju-Uchiha).

But Hashirama’s and Madara’s dream wasn’t just about their clans. And suddenly here’s Hashirama “my smile is photosynthesizable” Senju and Madara “consider my wrath as your alternative” Uchiha approaching the other clans and offering to let them join this alliance. To not have the risk of fighting either of these terrifying men or their clans, but rather to pool their resources together to make missions safer. To be able to turn down missions without starving thanks to the combined revenue of multiple clans and their civilian specialties (and the backing of the Uzumaki, who are generally accepted by fanon to have allied with the Senju by this point via Mito’s marriage), and to have other clans be extremely wary of taking any job against their combined might, which will make the jobs they do take a whole lot safer.

Not every clan jumps on board right away of course, canonically the first ones to join the alliance were the Sarutobi and the Shimura (fanon assumes that these two had connections to the Senju and Uchiha clans before this but I … couldn’t find mention of that in the wiki?), which means suddenly any job this alliance takes means that a rival will be up against a roulette wheel of anywhere from “maybe four Senju like normal” to “combined wrath of a Senju-Uchiha-Sarutobi-Shimura team that are working out their collective new-alliance stress on your hide”. The other clans would have chosen to jump aboard the alliance very quickly once it became clear that this wasn’t going away or splintering. Which means more and more clans are saying “no” to jobs that they feel aren’t worth the prices being offered, and less and less clans are willing to go against the alliance for fear of being stomped on. Suddenly the clans who are in the alliance can not only say no but can say “I want to be paid this much for this job” and the lords who once had the option to just take their business to another clan are stuck. They had to either pay up or not have the job done at all.

Tobirama comes in, probably somewhere very early on in the village founding with the start of what will eventually be the universal shinobi mission ranking system, and with that comes the ability for shinobi to have a set minimum wage for each level of risk. There’s an Academy for their children to learn skills from multiple clans and sources now rather than being forced to take to the field just to help pay for food/armor/resources for the clan.

In the real world, this kind of change takes … way longer on average. But in the Naruto world the options from the get-go were “be under Hashirama’s and Madara’s protection” or “be a potential enemy against them and their clans on a mission”, and none of the shinobi clans who survived to that point did so by being stupid. After they saw the Sarutobi and Shimura join without negative consequences (or subjugation as vassals), the clans of Land of Fire would have started joining the alliance faster than the nobles who used their blood feuds as a handy leash could keep up with or compensate for. Canon says something along the lines of the village negotiating with the Daimyo for permission to be there but realistically by the time the Daimyo realized this was not just a passing treaty, that the Ninja Union was not going away, it was already far too late to stop it. Trying to starve the alliance into compliance by cutting off their trades would have only meant that every shinobi clan now on board with Konoha’s existence (read; the majority of them) would overthrow the Daimyo and install a more cooperative leader in his place. Heck, for all we know that’s what happened, it’s not like Kishi bothers to keep a coherent history or timeline. But considering the Daimyo does have a say in who the Hokage of the village is and they are enough at the Daimyo’s beck and call to fight in the future Shinobi Wars, it is more likely that the budding Konoha did successfully negotiate with the Daimyo for a “our loyalty and your nominal supervision over our village in exchange for extra land and free reign over our internal structure” kind of deal.

The clans being united was also an advantage for the Daimyo, once he got over the “can no longer charge whatever he wants for assassinations”. Because with all the Land of Fire clans unified, suddenly any upstart lords looking to depose him or wars he might get up to with other Daimyo look a lot more winnable. The other major Elemental nations, seeing this and realizing it’s not going away, probably scrambled to get their own clans to unify, which is one reason why Kiri is … such a disaster in canon. Rather than being a willing endeavor by the various clans to unite for their own benefit, the Daimyo of Water basically threw all his feral clans off their respective islands and territories and said “you all live here now and you all do what I tell you or else the Land of Fire will wipe us out”. Which, as you can see, went swimmingly for them (sarcasm). That or the other shinobi clans in the various nations did actually unionize of their own will once they saw it worked for Konoha, but Kiri never got the memo of “actually make peace with your rivals” and instead just clustered together in a feral knot of “we hate each other but we hate outsiders MORE so we’re going to pretend we actually function as a society”. Which lasted… Not long.

And there you go, another shinobi economics ramble. I feel like this one is even less structured than the last one but hey at least it’s like. 100 whole words shorter.

#Secret Engima Rambles #naruto #ninja economics #naruto worldbuilding #warring states era

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a-god-in-ruins-rises · 2 years

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What are your thoughts on police reform/abolition?

lmao you are the second anon to ask me this question since last night.

so police. i think law enforcement as an institution is good. police abolition is just stupid. i think people have a fairy tale idea of what something like that would entail. the reality is that it probably wouldn't be pretty.

i do, however, think we should probably abolish police /unions/. and, ideally, i would love to see police departments just entirely purged and wholly replaced with new blood. at the very least the largest and/or most corrupt police departments. i know this is unrealistic though (would be so expensive to train wholly new recruits and we'd lose so much experience and expertise). it's just a fantasy of mine. but i do think get rid of police unions will make it a bit easier to get rid of the bad apples. this is important. we want to facilitated the removal of bad cops as much as possible.

not sure exactly how we'd do it but we need to figure out a way to identify the bad apples and keep them from policing. maybe some kind of public database of police that have a history of misconduct or excessive force? also having higher standards and enforcing them more strictly. and maybe some way to incentivize police officers to report misconduct from fellow officers?

instead of defunding the police i actually think we should considerably increase their funding. so they can have better training, recruit more police, update equipment, and hire social workers/mental health professionals.

which leads me to my next point: i am cool with the idea of making social workers/mental health professionals and /additional/ supplementary part of policing. but i believe they would still require a police escort. so, a call that might normally require 2 officers will now include 2 officers + a (probably educated, more expensive) mental health professional. so again, we need to /increase/ funding.

police are overworked. they are spread too thin. they do too many different jobs. i think police should be more compartmentalized and specialized. instead of expecting cops to be masters of all trades there should be dedicated community police, "regular" police, (probably state/federal-level) dedicated paramilitary/SWAT/crime suppression units, crisis intervention specialists, etc.

on top of all that, i really would love to see more involvement from the community itself. i want to see more neighborhood watches, citizen patrols, militias, civic guards, etc. i want everyone to be armed and vigilant.

more funding for state and federal oversight and investigating and prosecuting public corruption.

some people say police should be demilitarized. i agree with this to some degree, which is why i mentioned "community police" above. these would be mostly demilitarized. probably unarmed or equipped with non-lethal weapons (though, in certain circumstances, maybe one or two or all members of a given patrol unit could be armed). but i don't think we can reasonably expect to demilitarize the police across the board and, in some case i think we should even make the police /more/ militarized (the state/federal paramilitary i mentioned above). we live in a very violent and widely armed society. i think it's reasonable that police are equipped to deal with these risks. as long as we want to be an armed society we should expect the police to be armed as well. thinking otherwise is absurd to me.

also, some people bring up ending qualified immunity. i think this is dumb. it shouldn't end it. i think it's required for police to effectively do their jobs. i do think we need to rein in the scope of it or make some more clearly established standards because some rulings based on qualified immunity are really stupid. but i'd say that 99% of the time they are fair.

but if i'm really being honest, i think this issue is mostly overblown. of the most pressing issues facing our country right now this doesn't even make the top ten or twenty imo. of course, i think there's always room for improvement but i think people take for granted the excellence of american police. people want to talk about police corruption and police brutality but they've never been to another country, except maybe some european countries. if you want to see real police corruption visit mexico. our police are like knights in shining armor in comparison. we have third world crime but first world quality policing. i think that's a noteworthy achievement on its own.

i think it's more of a public perception issue (largely because of exacerbation by the media) than an actual issue. people say "the police" are corrupt but there is no single organization called "the police." we have thousands of different police departments. i don't deny that there are probably some individually corrupt police departments but this seems to be more of a localized issue (with its own unique causes) than something widespread or systemic.

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obsidiancreates · 3 years

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The Wrong Realization (But A Welcome One)

4,012 words long

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Jonah wakes up with a headache like he’s got a hangover. He groans, putting his arm over his eyes as the dim light of his bedroom tries to burn out his retinas. Even with all of his thickest curtains closed and fastened together, the sunlight is still too harsh. Must be the way it’s reflecting off the snow.

He falls out of bed more so than gets out of bed, and lays on the floor for a moment. He reaches up to his nightstand and manages to pull down his phone, which bonks him on the temple on it’s way down. That gets him to wake up, with a shout and a dash of fight-or-flight response.

He sighs, rubbing his eyes. He doesn’t even feel very rested! Granted, he did stay up most of the night listening to a new podcast he discovered... fascinating stuff, wonderful deep-dives into mythologies and legends from all over the world. Something a little lighter to relax to than his usual political commentary go-tos.

He stands up, and scrolls through his playlist until he finds a good morning podcast. He heads into the bathroom, ready to grapple with his hair to get it nice and presentable-

He looks into the mirror and freezes up. His hair is perfect. Exactly how he always strives to get it to look, and always falls just one stray strand short of. But now? Not a flyaway in sight.

“I could have sworn I took a shower,” he mumbles to himself. Maybe he just forgot to use shampoo? No, he would never. Maybe too much conditioner, then. But he’s always so careful not to overuse...

“I guess it saves time,” he says aloud. “No looking a gift horse in the mouth.” He picks up his toothbrush and gets to scrubbing, but pauses when he feels something stringy in his mouth.

He spits out the toothpaste foam, expecting a hair.

Instead, it’s a scraping of plastic from his toothbrush, and several bristles.

He stares for a moment, and then opens his mouth. Does he have something completely alarming stuck in his teeth? Did he somehow eat something metal?

... No, not as far as he can see. Nothing is out of the ordinary. Absolutely nothing. Completely fine.

On an unrelated note, the two little cuts in his lower lip that are perfectly aligned with his canines are starting to sting from the mint, so he hurries up and finishes brushing his teeth.

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The sun blinds him as he drives to work, and he has to manage mostly by listening to the traffic around him (which is absurdly loud today, he can hear it with his windows rolled up).

And the sunlight is harsh on his skin, too. Does he need to invest in better sunscreen? Maybe he should revisit that article he read about SPF effectiveness and how to choose the best one...

He gets into the parking lot and parks his car. He opens the door, and promptly slams it shut again with a yelp. His hands didn’t just feel burnt, it did burn!

Definitely needs to up his SPF! And research sudden sunlight sensitivity... his hand is bright pink.

He sits in the car for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. And then there’s a knock on his window. He startles, but relaxes when he sees it’s just Glenn. He rolls his window down just a bit. “Um, hi. Good-good morning, I mean.”

“Heyyyy, Jonah,” Glenn says with a smile. “So, um, I noticed you’re stuck in your car?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, no, I just um. Well you see I-I, um-”

“Need a hand?” Glenn’s smile is a bit strained, for some reason. “Because of the sun?”

“... Well I mean if-if you’re offering then it would be... rude to say no...”

Glenn opens up an umbrella, making Jonah shout in surprise. “Where did that-”

“Come on in under the shade!”

Jonah hesitates a moment, put off by Glenn’s... odd, energy. But he can’t stay in his car forever, so he gets out and walks in with Glenn under the safety of the umbrella.

“Thanks,” he says when they get inside. “I just um, I need to update my sunscreen, you know? And I just didn’t want to risk... my skin...”

“No, no, I completely get it,” Glenn assures. “The warm, life-giving rays of the sun can be very harsh sometimes!”

“... Y-yeah. Yeah.”

“Hey, um, Jerusha and I got you a gift, actually. She was so upset by the whole attack thing yesterday-”

“Oh, you guys didn't have to get me something-”

“Well, we wanted to, so um, here!”

Glenn hands Jonah a very, very wide-brimmed hat. There’s a little bat needle-pointed onto the sides.

“Oh! Wow! Um, it’s... so big!”

“Maybe it’ll help until you update your sunscreen?” Glenn sounds hopeful. Too hopeful for Jonah to turn down. And... it would be functional, at least...

“Yes! Yes, I think this’ll be great for that, um, thank you! Thank you both, send Jerusha my-my thanks. For this. I can um, see she put some effort into customizing it! Just-just out of curiosity... why a bat?”

“Oh, well um, because of your situation.”

“... Situation, I don’t-”

“You know. The reason you burned?”

“... I still don’t understand-”

“HEYYYY, GUYS!” Amy butts in quite enthusiastically. “How’s it going this morning?”

“Oh, good!” Glenn says with a smile and a nod. “I was just giving Jonah this hat Jerusha made for him, because of his whole condition about being a vam-”

“OH HEY, Glenn, I actually really need your help with something!”

“Really?”

“Yes! Come over here, with me, to... softlines!”

“Oh, okay. I’ll talk with you later, Jonah!”

“Okay! Buh-”

Amy drags Glenn away, leaving Jonah with his hand up in an unfinished wave.

“... Bye. I-I was saying... bye.”

Jonah looks at the hat, and heads off to the breakroom.

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“So does Jonah have them?” Cheyenne is saying when Jonah enters the room.

“I mean, he looked like he did when he was chasing that lady-”

“Do I have what?”

Mateo and Cheyenne startle. “Oh, Jonah! We didn’t see you there! You were like... really, quiet,” Cheyenne says with a slightly strained smile.

“Yeah. So... sneaky.” Mateo looks similarly stressed.

“Well I, I did just get new ultra-soft shoes, very comfortable but I’m not sure about the long-term arch support... but um, what do I have?”

“Um... standards, for your fashion. Sometimes you have them, sometimes you don’t... usually only when you’re chasing, after... someone to flirt with.”

“Oh. ... You-you thought I was trying to flirt with that woman, last night?”

Cheyenne shrugs. “You did literally chase her into the parking lot.”

“I-I guess I did. But I wasn’t attracted to her I mean, I wasn’t attracted to any customers yesterday, even though there were a few good looking ones, that made me laugh... but-but I’m not- I mean, I wasn’t flirting with anyone-”

Jonah babbles on for a good five minutes before Glenn finally comes in and starts the meeting.

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Jonah sighs and rubs his eyes as he mops up a puddle of... it’s either slushie vomit or watered-down blood (though he’s leaning towards slushie vomit, something in him just says it definitely isn’t blood).

He leans against the mop and closes his eyes for a moment. So tired... he felt okay this morning, but as the day creeps on he feels less and less awake...

“Excuse me?”

Jonah startles, yelping and dropping the mop. The customer jumps back as the mop drops.

“I am so sorry!” Jonah exclaims. “I um, I-I think I feel asleep, um, how can I-”

Jonah pauses, at a loss for words.

The customer, a man around Jonah’s age, looks concerned. “You alright, man?”

“Huh?” Jonah’s face feels hot (the first bit of warmth he’s felt in two days). “Oh, um, I-I just, that was very unprofessional of me.”

The customer shrugs. “It’s a Cloud 9, professional isn’t really expected.”

Jonah chuckles. He clears his throat. “So, um, how can-can I help you?”

“I was looking for the recycled paper towels?”

“Oh, yeah, um... let me help you find those. They’re only half recycled, though.”

“I know. But you do what you can on a budget, right?”

“Right, yeah,” Jonah laughs. He can’t stop looking at the guy’s face... why does he feel all jittery?

“Um, here we are. The closest Cloud 9 gets to activism.” Jonah sticks his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels. His mouth feels dry. Why is his mouth so dry? He licks his lips quickly while the customer isn’t looking.

“Better than I’ve been doing lately. Haven’t done a protest in months.”

“What kind of protests do you go to?” Why did he say that? He’s going to embarrass himself, oh no-

“Mostly wage labor ones, workers rights kind of things. Trying to get a union going at my job.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, well, I know unions don’t have a great reputation in a lot of places but-”

“No! I mean uh, I love unions! I-I’ve been wanting one here since I started working! Just uh, don’t tell my boss that, hah.”

The customer smiles at Jonah, and Jonah wonders if the floor actually fell out from under him or if that’s all in his head.

“Well, thanks for helping me find this. Maybe we can talk about helping each other’s unions efforts if I see you again.”

“Yeah!” Jonah flashes a bright smile. “Sure! Sounds-sounds great! Um was really nice to meet you!”

The customer smiles again and walks away, and Jonah needs to lean against the isle.

He lets out a heavy breath, wondering what the hell is going on and what he is feeling. He looks down the isle to see if anyone is watching him.

Mateo, Cheyenne, Marcus, and Dina are all staring.

Jonah quickly walks away, shame burning his cheeks. So they noticed something, too.

“-looked like he was about to eat him alive-”

He’s too busy being completely embarrassed by hearing them whisper that to wonder how he just heard it from three isles away.

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

Jonah wakes up with a start as a cart rolls right over his leg. He shouts in pain and surprise, and then sighs at himself.

He peels the glue trap off of his face with a grimace. Cleaning the rat traps is a terrible time for his sudden and new case of what seems to be narcolepsy to strike. He sits up and rolls up his pant leg, expecting something nasty to greet him based on the crack he heard.

... Nothing. He frowns, and touches his leg. It doesn’t even sting.

“How did-”

“Jonah?”

Jonah looks up at Amy’s voice. She’s standing over him with a clipboard. “Oh, um... hi.”

“Hey. ... Why are you on the floor?”

“I was uh, cleaning the rat traps. And I... maybe fell asleep.”

“In the middle of the day?”

“... Yes...”

“Okay then. ... So um, I just... wanted to check in, for a minute. How’s it been going with customers?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean, have there been any... notable interactions, maybe, to throw an idea out there,” Amy says in her ‘I’m-hiding-the-real-reason-for-asking-this’ voice.

Jonah’s cheeks burn, and he’s sure he’s blushing. “They told you about that?”

“I... might’ve heard some gossip.”

“It-it was nothing, Amy. Really.”

“Are you sure? They said you keep looking at his neck-”

"Well I mean, he had a nice neck I-I guess but I was more looking at his face-”

“And that you licked your lips at him?”

“That-! My mouth was dry, and-and you know I hate chapped lips!”

“... And the hovering over him?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say hovering, more like just watching and... admiring... but that-that’s normal! I’ve been doing that since high school! A good ally normalizes these things, and-and when straight men, yeah, can admire other men in a-a completely! Normal way! Then it um, it helps... break down! The stereotypes!”

Amy looks... perplexed. She shakes her head. “Wait, what are we-”

“I mean, everyone does it, too! Like-like you! I’m sure you’ve looked at-at other woman, and admired their appearance, without feeling feelings for them, right?”

“Well, I guess, but- wait, Jonah, did you-”

“I mean we all wonder in college, right? But I don’t like, I mean there’s nothing wrong with liking both I just- I don’t, I wondered but I never-”

“Okay, um, this isn’t what I came over here to talk to you about-”

“Maybe there was a moment or two where I thought it might’ve been a thing but I-I never acted and if I did like both I would have acted on that, I think-”

“Okay! Um, you’re working through something right now, that is, not what I thought you were working through, so um, I’ll just check up on you later...”

Amy backs away as Jonah keeps recounting half-baked thoughts and unfinished sentences about his time in college and his roommates one friend who maybe had the best hair Jonah’s ever seen but their friendly hair-war was not flirting he swears...

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

Jonah doesn’t chew the carrot, just rolls it in his teeth as he stares at the wall, lost in thought.

“... Not hungry for you lunch?” Sandra asks tentatively.

Jonah shakes his head, only half-hearing her.

“... Are you hungry for something else? Like... a customer?”

Jonah stops, and pulls the carrot out of his mouth. “You heard about that too?”

Sandra’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head.

“You did! Did- does everyone know about that?”

“Well, it-it’s been sort of, floating around-”

Jonah groans, putting his head in his hands.

“... So um... are you?”

“What? No! No, I am not hungry for him, that’s objectifying. Not that I- I mean, I’m a straight man, I can’t, objectify another man, because that implies attraction. ... Unless I’m playing into toxic masculinity stereotypes by believing that...”

“I don’t think you have to worry about falling into masculinity stereotypes,” Carol pipes up from another table.

Jonah looks at her, annoyed. Her eyes widen and she looks away.

Jonah puts his head back into his hands. “This is a nightmare...”

“For all of us,” Sandra whispers.

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

Jonah sighs, slumping over onto the customer service counter. Garrett just looks at him, waiting for whatever Jonah has in store.

“... It normal for straight guys to admire other straight guys appearances, right?”

Garrett blinks. “Wow, just some casual conversation, huh?”

“Just- I mean, I know people are talking about-”

“You eyeing up that dude earlier like he was a steak?”

“... Yeah. That.”

“Dude, I don’t think this is the issue you should be focused on right now.”

“I know, I know! I’m in my thirties, I should have this figured out and be focusing on more important things-”

“Not what I meant, actually, I meant the superpowers-”

“-but I don’t know, I’ve never really had anyone point it out before! And-and now I can’t stop thinking like, am I? Attracted?”

“You know there’s nothing wrong if you are, right?”

“Yes, I do, I’ve been to a bunch of rallies and stuff.”

“Did you oogle dudes at those rallies?”

“NO! ... I mean I guess I observed and-and appreciated-”

“Yeah, you might just be on the gay spectrum, dude. I don’t know what else to tell you. Except that, uh, you just accidentally slapped my shoulder and you’re as cold as a bag of ice, so maybe that should be your crisis of the day.”

Jonah is staring off into space, rubbing his arm. It doesn’t seem like he heard Garrett at all. Garrett just sighs, and rolls away.

Jonah stays there, contemplating, for quite a while.

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

“Okay, no more dancing around it.”

Jonah jerks awake. Again. God, why can’t he stay awake? ... Probably because he stayed up all night.

“No, Cheyenne.”

Jonah looks around. He peeks into the next isle, and then the next.

... Where the hell are Cheyenne and Amy? He can hear them so clearly...

“He’s like, totally oblivious to it!”

“He’ll realize it eventually, okay? It’s not some truth bomb we can just drop on him.”

“My friends drop truth bombs on me all the time, and it just brings us closer. Best bitches don’t lie to their best bitches.”

“... Right. But, it’s kind of something for him to take the time to process.”

“What if he doesn’t? He’s just gonna like, wander around forever making excuses and being all nervous and confused.”

“Well... then we’ll give him a push. But for now let’s just... give him some space. Let him come to terms with it on his own.”

Jonah is startled out of his accidental eavesdropping by hearing himself sniffle. He quickly wipes his eyes, sticks his hands in his pockets, and hurries away. He still doesn’t know how he heard them, maybe some kind of really weird echo or sound tunnel. So he goes to the other side of the store entirely and finds the chattiest customer he can.

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

He can feel Dina and Mateo staring at him as he restocks softlines. They whisper to each other, and he sighs and hangs his head. “You know, it makes it worse when you talk behind my back.”

Mateo yelps a little. He clears his throat and quickly composes himself. “Sorry. Uh, we were just talking about-”

“Yeah, no, I know. I’m... aware, okay? And I just would like to stop hearing about it for now, please.”

Mateo looks taken aback by the tiredness in Jonah’s voice, the... weary tone. Dina, however...

“Yeah, well, not exactly something to brush under the rug.”

“Why do you even care? It’s a me problem, okay?”

“Really? You think this doesn’t impact everyone?”

“How! Would it even do that?!”

“Well, let’s see! It made Mateo afraid, it made Amy all somber and worried about you, it made Glenn cry even more than usual-”

“It did?”

“He started a trust fund for your soul.”

“... Oh.”

Dina stops, her frown slowly becoming more confused. “You... didn’t realize that would happen?”

“... I don’t know, I guess I thought... thought he’d be more open-minded.”

“Glenn?”

Jonah takes a deep breath. Ugh, why’d it make his chest hurt? Why do his lungs feel like they don’t want the air?

The next thing he knows he’s done with softlines (it felt like he got done in the blink of an eye) and walking away. He swallows down the lump in his throat, and the urge to comfort eat. God, he’s craving a snack now. Well, he has all day, but he’s been... a little distracted.

“Excuse me? Hello? Hey!”

Jonah looks up at the customer, still feeling drained and empty.

“Finally, god. How useless do they let you people be around here? I’m looking for the shock collars, my dog keeps licking me when I tell him not to.”

“... That’s a really, really shitty thing to do to your dog.” Jonah doesn’t really mean to say it, but he’s just sort of on autopilot now.

For some reason, the customer doesn’t reply. Just stiffens.

“Follow me. I’ll sort you right out.” Jonah thinks he smiles at them. But he can’t be sure, because at that moment he blacks out.

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

Jonah shrugs his coat on, not looking anyone else in the eye as they all file out to clock out.

He waits until the very end, and clocks out last. Maybe he can avoid them all by waiting long enough?

Ugh, he can’t. He feels restless. Looking like another sleepless night already. Two in a row, great. Maybe that’s why he had that blackout. He still isn’t sure where the customer went, nor how he ended up in the No-Go zone of the Gardening Section...

Whatever. They were a jerk, anyway. Maybe he talked some sense into them? He did that during a blackout yesterday. Maybe it’s stress, then?

He keeps his head down as he thinks about it (trying to avoid some other, more introspective thoughts) and walks out.

He lifts his head as he exits the breakroom to find everyone standing in a group, smiling softly.

“Um... what’s going on?” He claps his hands behind his back. Please don’t let this be more teas-

“We know we’ve made you uncomfortable today,” Mateo pipes up. “And after talking to Garrett about your guys’s conversation, we realized we had the totally wrong idea about everything.”

Glenn steps forward and hugs Jonah. “I accept you no matter what,” he says firmly. “I would never start a fund to save your soul for being gay, that was a complete misunderstanding! You like whoever you like, Jonah!”

“And I didn’t mean to badger you,” Dina admits with her shoulder a little sunk. “I didn’t quite understand what you were going through in your head, and I made some assumptions. Wrong ones.”

“We all care about you, Jonah,” Amy says, prying Glenn off of the poor man. “Okay? We just want you to know that. Today we were being really, really shitty. But it won’t happen again.”

For the second time today, Jonah isn’t aware he’s crying until he hears himself sniffle.

“I just- I feel really, really stupid,” he admits, wiping his eyes with his palms. He laughs, not quite bitterly, but not happy. “I mean, I’m in my thirties. I-I had... so many obvious moments where I should have realized! How... oblivious, am I?”

There’s a bit of an awkward air to the group after that comment. But Amy hugs Jonah, and he feels a little... spark, in his chest. It’s nice.

His chest has felt pretty heavy and empty all day.

“Everyone comes to terms with stuff at their own pace,” Amy says. “I lived in an unhappy marriage for years because I couldn’t accept the obvious. What matters is that you got to this point of realization, okay?”

Jonah hugs back. He thinks he feels Amy shiver, but he brushes past it. They pull apart, and Jonah sniffs and wipes his eyes again.

“And I um. I-I don’t think I’m... fully, gay,” he says slowly. He hesitates, mouth open, the words stuck. “I think... I think I’m Bi.”

There’s a moment of silence. He smiles a little, and stands a bit straighter. That feels... really right. “I think I’m Bi,” he repeats.

Sandra claps for a second, but no-one joins in. She lowers her hands slowly.

“Wow! Hah! That feels- wow! God, that feels good! Um,, what-what now, though?”

Garrett shrugs. “Flirt with some dudes? Some people in-between dudes and chicks? I don’t know, man, it’s your life.”

“Your long, long life,” Dina mutters to herself.

“Right! Oh, yeah, uh... that guy! From earlier! I-I think I want to see him again. Okay, uh, I’m going to go home, and-and maybe research some local protests he might be at-”

Everyone groans a little.

“Protester Jonah is the preachiest Jonah,” Garrett says, shaking his head.

“Can he still be preachy? Wouldn’t that hurt?” Cheyenne whispers to Glenn.

Glenn shrugs. “I’ll ask Pastor Craig,” he whispers back.

Jonah doesn’t even notice. “Okay! I’m going to head home! I kinda feel like, I don’t know, like this is a whole new chapter in my life! Um, how do we- I mean how do- do we do a group hug, or-or maybe a high-five-”

“Or we just head home.”

“Yeah, no, Garrett’s right, head home. Let’s all head home!”

They all head out to their cars. Jonah gets into his, plops down into the drivers seat, and grins.

What a freeing realization! He doesn’t know how he missed it, it was all so obvious!

Well, as far as he knows, there’s no other huge life-revelations waiting for him. He’s figured it all out, finally.

He starts driving home, humming along with the radio as the car next to him keeps pace, despite being in the faster lane. He never understands why people do that when the roads are empty. He chuckles to himself. Maybe he’ll realize that Life Mystery tomorrow.

What he doesn’t realize, neither when he gets home nor when he wakes the next morning, is that he never turned his own radio on.

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cassatine · 4 years

Note

Regarding the senate representation question, I think your analysis misses something important: space habitats. The advanced life support tech in Star Wars means that folk can live in space indefinitely, for generations even. The idea of having representation based on territory/planets/sectors doesn't really work then. If someone lives on a TF ship, all of their life, no sector senator could really represent them, only a corporate senator. Besides, the TF pays taxes, so shouldn't it have a vote?

Yeah huh maybe you didn’t know but the poor fuckers living in moving company towns are not exactly a salient feature of SW so what can I say? i’m very sorry I didn’t feel like I had to account for their hypothetical existence.

I’ll also say I very much support your right to declare real or fictional legal frameworks unfair; having said that and done my mea culpa, let me remind you that you asked “why you don't think the Senate should have representation for groups like the Trade Federation“, and that half my reply was about the legal argument that in SW canon Senate representation is constitutionally built around geographical entities, period. I pretty much went “well from what we can work out of the constitutional framework it’d actually be illegal for the Trade Federation to have a seat”, and whether you (or I, for that matter) believe that framework is fair to all isn’t really relevant to the way said framework works.

Still, you do bring an interesting question to the table, even if you’re not very imaginative wrt how to solve it. Because there are plenty of ways (however imperfect they may be) to represent the moving company towns inhabitants -- believe it or not, but the set of issues brought by non-stationary space habitats isn’t actually new. You’re basically asking “how do we give representation to nomads”.

And yes, I say “nomads” because time to point it out, but your corporate Senator scheme does not actually ensure representation for all spacers (a handy term for people living their whole lives in non-stationary space habitats), a grave oversight if your concern truly is the representation of people rather than that of corporations: you’re only accounting for people living in moving company towns (and assuming the TF would actually allocate ship space and resources to their retired workers which, excuse me, is kinda loltastic), and ignoring several other possible spacer groups! Shame, dude. What about the people belonging to spacer cultures? The independant contractors? The nomads by choice? They bring the exact same issue to the table (lifelong nomadism in a representative system built around sedentarism) but they sure af can’t be represented by a corporate seat.

(And in any case, att the risk of repeating myself, a corporate Senator represents the corporation’s interests, not the workers’. It’s in the interests of the workers to have decent salaries and work hours, paid holidays, health and retirement plans, etc etc; it’s in the interests of the corporation to slash all that to maximize profits. That’s like, Capitalism 101.

So my friend, my dude, my darling ayn rand stan -- if you were really actually concerned about workers, you’d be arguing for Senate seats for workers’ unions rather than for the corporate overlords. You’d be arguing they know their interests better than said corporate overlords, that in fact suggesting those overlords know better is a classic classist stance long used to argue for the disenfranchisement of the poor and the working class.)

Anyway, here are some ideas to ensure representation for those Trade Federation workers (and other spacers) living in non-stationary space habitats you’re so very concerned about:

Jus sanguinis: spacers are represented by the Senator(s) of whichever sector(s) their parents come from. Or they grandparents, or their great-grandparents, whatever.

Alternatively: they’re represented by the Sen. of the sector they were born into.

In the context of regular ship routes, their Sen. is the one from the sector where they spend the most time

Alternatively: the space equivalent of multiple nationalities applies and people are technically represente by the Sen. of each sector their route take them to.

Alternatively: people get to choose which sector they’re members of out of those their route take them to.

if we gotta go with non-sector seats... UNIONS THAT’S FUCKING OBVIOUS OMFG I cannot believe you have the galls to play the “Im so concerned about workers :(” card and your fucking solution is arguing for the corporate overlords getting CORPORATE SEATS instead of pushing for UNION SEATS. The only way you can argue for a corporate Sen. over an union one is if you’re playing the card that the corporation knows the workers’ interests better than they do themselves, which, eew. (listen I’m tired and I’m not arguing this. meet me in a denny’s parking lot if you feel strongly about it)

some kinda combination of the above.

Alternatively, your choice, I can’t have covered all options

btw, if we can deal with multiple nationalities on one fucking planet, you bet they can do the equivalent at the federal level in fictional space pseudo-republic

AND NOW THE KICKER

Besides, the TF pays taxes, so shouldn't it have a vote?

Wrong audience, you right-winger, you neocon, you ayn rand stan. Also super confusing, considering we were talking about Senate seats and not voting rights. I’m so fucking lost -- do I have to explain the difference between a Sen. seat and a vote, seriously, I’d just about call it a day.

Anyway I’d ask what is it with people equating paying taxes and voting rights, but I see the pendent to your shitty take regularly among wannabe libertarian reformers of democracy: the idea is to have an income tax-based property qualification system because really, why should the people who don’t contribute (the tax-exempt poor) get a say? Fuck the poor, and let’s pretend it’s all in the name of democracy.

Look, the version of democracy I buy into does not link citizenship to one’s ability to pay taxes, and that’s really the simplest way I can say it. I believe all the members of a community should get a say in the way that community leads its affairs, not just the members who can afford to contribute monetarily.

Also like. Even if I were to give you the taxes = rights point. Even in a pseudo-democracy with a property qualification system in which one’s voting rights are linked to one’s ability to pay taxes... a corporation is not a citizen.

#wow that was salty #star wars #meta #space politics #anon #ask #i'm like 95% certain you're The Troll now because who else sends me this kind of gotcha

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 4 years

Text

a friendly update on what’s happening with the vote count

Nobody wants to be the person who gives you false hope the nightmare is over. At the same time, my goal here has always been to clear out some of the underbrush of bullshit and make it a little easier to understand what’s happening in the world. I don’t think that goal is served by letting right-wing merchants of doubt create a suffocating fog of unknowability.

Between the states that have finished counting, the >90% of the popular vote which has been counted, and where those last few votes are … I can’t think of a scenario where Trump pulls this out that I can defend as plausible. I don’t mean “I’m a poll wizard and I know exactly the percentage of college-educated Taiwanese-American moms in northern Fulton County.” I mean I was going to say “unless there’s a spectacularly successful hack” and couldn’t defend it. (Reasoning: if you’re competent enough to pull that kind of thing off, then you were smart enough to see that the best time to do that was between 9 and 11 PM on Tuesday night and the window was sliding shut all day Wednesday. If you’re dumb enough to try and pull a fast one today, it’s probably too late and the NSA will definitely catch you.)

A court decision? I hope I’ve been clear about how aggressively corrupt the decision in Bush v. Gore was twenty years ago and how much worse the courts are today. I don’t think they’re afraid to cross some dictatorship event horizon. I do think that Trump’s lawyers and judges are quickly running out of literal time to play those games. There’s a reason that poll workers have been pulling all-nighters in Atlanta and Philadelphia. It actually does take a minute to come up with something an extremely expensive attorney can say in court without worrying they’re going to lose their reputation or their law license. (State bar associations are perfectly free to decide that “going into court to tell deranged fascistic lies in farcically meritless suits” is a breach of professional ethics!) That may explain why their top legal eagle at the moment is an extra from a Borat movie. I know you think I’m being cute with that description but nope!

Two other things that suggest the wind is blowing our way:

Trumpist goobers have been self-soothing with clownish attempts to bully Michigan and Arizona election workers until they “stop the count,” after Biden pulled ahead in those states. I’m glad that local authorities are taking the slight risk of violence seriously, but I do think the rest of us have the obligation to note that these ding-dongs are like “I LOVE TRUMP! DON’T YOU DARE COUNT MY VOTE!! YOU CERTIFY THIS STATE FOR JOE BIDEN RIGHT NOW GODDAMMIT!!! MAGA!!!!” Meanwhile, unions in Philly have people dancing in the streets and cheering for the poll workers to count the votes.

Trump has been completely dependent on Fox News to bail him out at every turn. They’re not following him off this ledge.

You might come across some take artists who are desperately clinging to their beloved Dems in disarray narratives or pretending this year’s exit polls are worth the paper they’re printed on. They are damaged people who want to steal your joy at Vice President Kamala Harris breaking down barriers for women, infinitely expanding the dreams of little Black girls, bringing delight and pride to South Asian Americans. YOU DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, GOTTA HAND IT TO THEM.

So.

If my analysis of the situation changes at any time, I’m going to take this post down, because it will become dangerous misinformation. At the moment, though, I think giving the bad guys the power to deprive us of clarity is also tacit misinformation.

There isn’t going to be a gracious, cinematic concession, because Trump is a dick. There isn’t going to be a formal procedure until the Electoral College votes are tallied in December. We still have two hard and razor-thin Senate runoffs to win in Georgia. (GEORGIA!) We aren’t out of the woods until noon on inauguration day. And at 12:01 on January 20th, we start a new phase of incredibly important work.

If you’re not ready yet to let yourself believe that the Trump nightmare actually can end in just a few weeks, I get it. Honestly, I think that’s why I’m hedging a little bit more than I can rationally defend. But like. I was watching MSNBC early Wednesday morning when Trump shambled into the East Room to sniffle his way through a low energy autocratic attempt to declare that the real vote count was over and he had won the bigliest of victories. The three lady anchors laughed at him on live television. Then Wednesday night, the three lady anchors came back on television and laughed at him some more. I believe that’s what comparative politics scholars refer to as an “autocratic womp womp.”

#2020 election

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techworkerszine · 4 years

Text

Call for Work: Workers in Tech Zine

I spent a lot of 2018-2020 thinking about driverless cars. I wrote about them. I taught a course about them. I wrote a novel about workers in Pittsburgh’s driverless car sector that will be published [ TK ].

While working on these projects, I talked to many people in and around the AV sector (you, dear reader, are likely one of these people). In these conversations I heard solutions to fixable global problems. I heard frustrations about unfixable company-related problems. More than anything, I heard stories from workers who felt 1) incredible scrutiny and pressure at their jobs 2) incredible social scrutiny and pressure the instant they left their workplaces. Yes, I endured conversations with some true A1 Tech Assholes, but far more frequently, I spoke with employees from all levels (think after-hours employees to directors) who were incredibly self-aware about their privilege, their skill, their replaceability, the shockingly entrenched and ascendant power of their company, the shall-we-say clumsy treatment of workers at said company…

Me, an artist and writing instructor: “you should write something about all of this!”

Worker: “yeah, but where would I write for? Plus my NDA really frowns on this sort of stuff.”

I made multiple offers to look at work, of any sort, whenever they wanted, if only as an exercise in self-reflection. The more work I saw, the more I thought: it would be so beneficial for this all this work to be in conversation in some way.

So, I’m seeking writing and art from tech workers to be published in a zine alongside the release of my book in [ TK ].

_____________________

So um, I’m just supposed to write? About working in tech?

Your prompt, which you are welcome to reject or reframe in any way you see fit: what is it like to be a worker in the tech industry?

How exactly am I supposed to tackle this prompt?

It’s up to you. Visual art, short written narratives, a comic, a poem—I am big believer that artists need space, not direction (though I can certainly help provide the latter if you find yourself in need).

The only constraint is that you get two pages--think 8.5ish x 7ish. Consider those two pages yours.

Do I have to work in the driverless car sector?

No. I’m fine with loose definitions of ‘tech’ and ‘worker.’

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that my very first two thoughts are: oh I would love to tell story ‘X’, and oh I could totally get in trouble for doing this. The risk-reward is too imbalanced.

Authored pieces are welcome, as are anonymous ones. I would be the only person to know which piece was yours, and I would ensure that there’s no identifying details or information of any sort. If you doubt my commitment to protecting workers, consider: when my teachers’ union went on strike, the state education system briefly terminated our healthcare. My wife was 8.5 months pregnant. So, I picketed, without healthcare, while my wife was on the verge of labor, all because she and I believe in protecting workers’ rights.

What I’m saying is: you’re safe with me. We can talk more if you’re concerned.

So like, why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?

To the extent my novel has a thesis, it’s that blue collar work ethic is an insufficient personal credo in the face of enormous social problems. This is not some flimsily chosen notion. For years, I have burrowed into my writing well, eager to ‘work hard’ and ‘uphold familial blue collar values’ and ‘something something steel industry something something.' Meanwhile, the world outside this writing well of mine has grown tragic-comically worse seemingly every hour. It is destined to deteriorate further without a continually replenished spirit of collaboration and organization. These notions are, in part, what my novel is about, and I hope this project can put this idea into more tactile action in some small way.

Come on, be real, what’s really in it for you? Aren’t you just trying to sell more books?

Fuck yes I am, though I would revise that sentence: I am trying to help my publisher sell more books. One of my primary goals is this: I want my publisher, the heroic small press outfit Propeller Books, to break even on my novel. This is very, very important to me. Breaking even will not earn me any financial reward. It will very much reward my publisher, the heroic Dan DeWeese, who has run Propeller Books and Propeller Magazine for ten years. I very much want the press to continue for another ten (and more).

I also very much want to help ___[cause TK]______, which is why I am building upon a ‘book launch’ model my wife concocted for her own book release in January of 2021 (read more here). Whereas she created her own zine for her Level 2 perk in her Indiegogo campaign, our zine will serve as the Level 2 perk. In our (not my, our) model, Level 1 contributors would receive my novel. Level 2 contributors would receive a Book and our Zine. Level 3 would get some yet-to-be-determined benefit.

I’m looking at your wife’s page and it seems like she’s making some decent money. Do I get any of that $?

That’s the goal! The biggest cut will go to Propeller Books. A second cut will go to ________. I am working on acquiring grant funds to pay for zine printing costs, and my hope is that once zine costs are met either from grant funds or from Level 2-and-up purchases, zine contributors will split funds earned from the sale of the zine.

Seems very complicated.

Collaboration often is.

What if I just want the zine?

Spoiler: there will be many zines left over after this project. Before we sell them individually, I’d like to try and maximize the launch campaign as much as possible. I imagine you will get plenty of zines in the end.

So what is really, actually, truly required of me?

Make something. Send it to me. And, if you want, maybe participate in a launch event at White Whale Bookstore in Bloomfield when the novel comes out and vaccines are aplenty.

All this talk about ‘pieces’ and ‘comics’ and ‘anecdotes’….I’m just a freaking tech worker! I’m not an artist! Even if did want to submit, I’d have no idea how to go about it.

Look. Someone (me, a colleague, a friend) thinks you have a story to tell. That’s why you have arrived to this page. Don’t get caught up in the form. Think about your experience. What do you want people to know about you? What do they not understand about working in tech? What does your family not understand about working in tech? Your friends? Your bosses?

I know someone who would be oh-so-interested in this.

Give them my email—[email protected]—or send them the link to this page. The more the merrier.

I’ve got to confess: I’m a little leery about making it seem as though tech workers are this incredibly disadvantaged group. I don’t want to come across as whiny.

This is a very self-aware concern, and I actually think there’s a way to invite this discomfort into whatever you submit. I also think that the best stories arise from tension, which the tech sector has quite a high supply of at the moment. It might be helpful to consider this advice I once received from a very, very smart organizer: “labor learns best from labor.” I won’t explain that quote away. Instead, I’m going to try and collect work for a zine that puts that advice into practice.

When is this due?

Let’s say May 31st.

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we-future-first · 4 years

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The world economy is on the verge of collapse. Our future is in grave danger if we don't address wealth inequality

Hundreds of years ago, the world was ruled by the wealthy, and the elite. It's the year 2020, and things have changed, but the only things that have changed our the wealthy members of society becoming even richer than they were before, and wealth inequality becoming even worse.

Just prior to President Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address, media[7] reported that the wealthiest 1% of Americans possess 40% of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80% own 7%.

The fact that the bottom 80% only owns 7% of the wealth in the USA describes the problem perfectly. Most of the country is incredibly poor, yet they are the ones doing all of the work. This society is fueled by society as a whole, everything that makes up society, and makes up the cities that we live in.

What have the wealthy done to make the world worse off, you might ask?

It's a good question. What exactly have the wealthy done to make this world worse off?

Consistently decreased pay, eliminated jobs, outsourced labor to other countries, basically anything to pay people in society less, and bring more money to themselves

Taking advantage of natural disaster, famine, sickness, and even tragedy to make themselves even richer. When there is any tragedy or natural disaster, media companies get a sudden influx of attention from society, which brings them much higher ad revenue. this money doesn't go to the people who work for the company. It goes directly to the owners. When GM was on the brink of bankruptcy, the first people to go where those that made their products, and kept their business afloat. The government swiftly gave them a bailout, which they used on their own selves, rather than the company. One of the executives was even criticized for using bailout money to buy a new plane. So during tragedy, the working-class suffers, and the rich get even richer

During the coronavirus pandemic, grocery stores, medical supply companies, hand sanitizer producers, Mask producers, and even hospitals began to get a huge influx of business. The result of this incredibly costly tragedy was millions of people losing their jobs, while the people whose businesses were benefited by the coronavirus pandemic got even richer and didn't trickle down any of that wealth to their employees. many nurses, doctors, medical staff, essential workers who work at grocery stores, none of them got paid additional pay for risking their lives. Yet the people who run the companies they work for got millions and millions of dollars of extra sales. my local grocery store refuses to do refunds right now because of the coronavirus. Employees are not paid anything additional as far as I know. but grocery stores are making bank right now office pandemic, while society is near collapse

Large companies purchasing smaller companies continuously, until basically every single company in the a certain industry is owned by one single parent company, with some wealthy elite billionaire on top of all of it who can ensure that millions of people are getting paid less, and that any new small businesses that may arise are quickly bought out, or made to fail

Lobbying and paying government officials under the table to ensure that they are allowed to do corrupt, immoral, unethical things legally and keep getting richer

Why is being a wealthy elite a problem?

The wealthy elite have complete control over all of society, even though they accounts for a very small number of people. they can single-handedly ensure the government protect them for slashing salaries for their employees, or allows them to purchase mid to small-sized companies and build their company into a monopoly

Earn an unfair and unproportional amount of money simply because they own or make decisions on behalf of something. They are free to cut salaries for people doing all the work for them at any time

The wealthy elite always take active measures to ensure that the working-class is never any better off than they were the previous day. They cut salaries, outsource jobs, make things cost more, make things counterintuitive so you have to rely on them continuously, lobby and pay corrupt politicians huge sums of money to ensure nothing ever changes, and society never becomes more fair. These are all counterintuitive to progress, and moving into the future. We need an educated, motivated, and fairly paid society to reach the future that we desire

Finally, the wealthy elite are greedy beyond your wildest imagination. Some people work their lives away doing an incredibly tough job, and barely get paid enough to live in a one-bedroom apartment with their children. Yet some wealthy elites have several mansions reach big enough to fit hundreds of people. When society begins to struggle and things get tough, the wealthy elite take advantage of society, and use tragedy and misfortune to make themselves even richer.

What is the solution?

The world needs a new order. the Constitution we have today was written hundreds of years ago when the country hardly even existed at all, and it was a bunch of remote colonies, far removed from any sort of society. It's far too open, and unrestricted, and offers no protection for the working class of society

We need a new Constitution that makes society Fair, and still allows people to become rich, but never allows someone to become so rich that they control almost the entire economy, or even a huge portion of it.

There should be an earnings cap, for starters. one person should never be allowed to have more than a set amount of money, just as an example. Why should someone have 50 billion dollars? 50 million would be enough to live off of for an entire lifetime comfortably. So why does someone need over 500 times that? they don't. There needs to be provisions for how much each individual person can possibly earn

We need protections for employee wages that ensure employees are paid fairly for the difficulty and amount of work they do

We need laws to cap earnings four members of the government. Someone who is working for congress should never be allowed to be paid any amount of money by anyone. They should have a standard salary and that's it. why should someone in Congress make millions upon millions of dollars, be paid under the table or secretly through some foundation or hedge fund by a third party, so they can be manipulated into changing legislation for society as a whole? That doesn't make sense.

submitted by /u/basicbreeze943 [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/iknnc7/the_world_economy_is_on_the_verge_of_collapse_our/

#Future #Futuristic #Future oriented

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somnilogical · 5 years

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<<Over the past year, however, Google has appeared to clamp down. It has gradually scaled back opportunities for employees to grill their bosses and imposed a set of workplace guidelines that forbid “a raging debate over politics or the latest news story.” It has tried to prevent workers from discussing their labor rights with outsiders at a Google facility and even hired a consulting firm that specializes in blocking unions. Then, in November, came the firing of the four activists. The escalation sent tremors through the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., and its offices in cities like New York and Seattle, prompting many employees — whether or not they had openly supported the activists — to wonder if the company’s culture of friendly debate was now gone for good.

(A Google spokeswoman would not confirm the names of the people fired on Nov. 25. “We dismissed four individuals who were engaged in intentional and often repeated violations of our longstanding data-security policies,” the spokeswoman said. “No one has been dismissed for raising concerns or debating the company’s activities.” Without naming Berland, Google disputed that investigators pressured him.)>>

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/18/magazine/google-revolt.html

<<“Of the five people that were fired, three of us are trans women,” Spiers said. “That is either an unbelievable coincidence or Google is targeting the most vulnerable.”

“Trans Googlers make up a very small percentage of Googlers,” she added. “They make up a slightly larger percentage of organizers, but not 60%.”>>

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/17/fifth-google-worker-activist-fired-in-a-month-says-company-is-targeting-the-vulnerable

i too am transfem and would "violate longstanding data-security policies" if my organization were being unjust. i wouldnt say that unless it were already obvious by what bits ive leaked to people about my life, because otherwise i could suppress this information and whistleblow more.

if you were an evil corp at this point youd probably try to avoid hiring any trans women in the first place because given this happens to you, its likely done by a transfem. not that this saved CFAR, who never hired a trans woman, from having a bunch of transfems whistleblow on them despite not being employees.

from what ive read from transfem google employees who are or were involved in activism, the degredation of google's culture. their complicity with ICE and weapons manufacturing mirrors CFAR's with OpenAI and DeepMind; authoritarianism and expulsion of transfems who object to this among a myriad of wrongs. to protect the territory of injustice and complicity with organizations like ICE, google needs to import "a consulting firm that specializes in blocking unions", CFAR needs to violate their whistleblower policy. if you once protect injustice, justice is ever after your enemy. morality isnt some modular thing such that you can be comitted to protecting injustice and not have this choice spiral into also invoking and protecting systems that protect injustice and invoking further things to protect those, recursively. all the way down to doing really dumb and obvious unjust things like transmisogyny (lots of future posts), changing your fundraiser after its clear its losing money, announcing that this year you got way below your donation target and claim to have no idea why.

well *i* know the compact generator for all of these things, and that makes me strong. unlike MIRI/CFAR who like the CDC rely on gaslighting the populace for myopic gains. i also wore a particle mask during the time that the CDC claimed that they were useless to preventing spread of disease, so it was really important to give them to doctors and nurses.

after so much gaslighting, *i* have built up general capabilities at arbitraging the difference between what agents claim and the truth. people who say:

<<Edit: This is a type of post that should have been vetted with someone for infohazards and harms before being posted, and (Further edit) I think it should have been removed by the authors., though censorship is obviously counterproductive at this point.

Infohazards are a real thing, as is the Unilateralists’s curse. (Edit to add: No, infohazards and unilateralist’s curse are not about existential or global catastrophic risk. Read the papers.) And right now, overall, reduced trust in CDC will almost certainly kill people. Yes, their currently political leadership is crappy, and blameworthy for a number of bad decisions—but it doesn’t change the fact that undermining them now is a very bad idea.

Yes, the CDC has screwed up many times, but publicly blaming them for things that were non-obvious (like failing to delay sending out lab kits for further testing,) or that they screwed up, and everyone paying attention including them now realizes they got wrong (like being slow to allow outside testing,) in the middle of a pandemic seems like exactly the kind of consequence-blind action that lesswrongers should know better than to engage in.

Disclaimer: I know lots of people at CDC, including some in infectious diseases, and have friends there. They are human, and get things wrong under pressure—and perhaps there are people who would do better, but that’s not the question at hand.>>

https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/h4vWsBBjASgiQ2pn6/credibility-of-the-cdc-on-sars-cov-2/comment/uDYbgf3QtEQirbsJk

havent. its easy to see how peoples minds are warped when its someone elses glowy thing, when its someone elses friends working for an institution that that someone else routed their hopes through.

its easier to recognize betrayal and see knowledge beyond the veil when its happening to someone else, instead of you.

until you build up general skills for recognizing it, this sort of betrayal isnt infinitely powerful. and like how you might expect that smart people who live for predation would do anti-inductive smart predatory things, but they end up converging on child sex rings; institutions that betray you, because justice is their enemy will start doing dumb unjust things like banning two people from speaking about their irl experiences with anna salamon, saying their first-hand accounts werent evidence and then citing anna salamon's first-hand account of the meeting as evidence. when i objected that this was a fucked up self-serving ontology of "evidence" they acted like i was objecting to "beliefs flow from evidence" and they acted as if what i was saying was obscure and beyond their ability to comprehend. their "incomprehension" was fake, downstream of a fear to dynamically compute things in front of other people that might end up outside the orthodoxy. the result of which is they display a blue screen of death and say “i just dont understand and aaa dont explain this to me!!!”. and then people agree that it "seems like it could be an infohazard" because when your goal is the preservation of the matrix, everything that tears it down looks like hazardous information.

or a cfar employee, in response to claims that anna's transmisogyny influences CFAR's hiring choices, claiming that anna salamon, head of CFAR, is not involved in CFAR's hiring. until i post proof from another CFAR employee pursuing personal vengeance against the org for hiring their rapist where its tangentially mentioned and they suddenly "realize" that anna salamon, head of CFAR, is involved in CFAR's hiring process.

or a thousand other injustices that have burned themselves into my brain during my months of talking with people under the assumption that they were simply mistaken in their path to saving the world. when they were actually un-mistaken in their path to having babies and a low chance of personal death. hoping and expecting someone else will take heroic responsibility for the planet.

like when you drill down to the base of injustice, it bottoms out in dumb and petty injustice. like the structure doesnt go infinitely high and complex, if you go down to the base level, you just need a bit of courage to not flinch away from what you see even if it seems that it means the ruin of something you ran your hopes and dreams through.

"isnt this a little... extreme?" i hear some people ask. ""dont protect regions of injustice?" that sounds like the end product of obsessive compulsive fixation on virtue at the expense of practicality."

well, assuming the algorithm seeding this response is a systemic reasoning tool, it should forkbomb when you consider if youd output ""dont protect regions of untruth?" that sounds like the end product of obsessive compulsive fixation on virtue at the expense of practicality." in response to eliezers essay. the principle behind both is the same such that if you hold by one you should hold by the other.

all of these things have parallels. if you want to see what is happening with MIRI/CFAR, theres a lot of mutual information with whats happening with Google.

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bangtanstanst · 6 years

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Bangtan Unsolved: the Spoopy Spirits of Franklin Castle || 3 AM

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series masterlist | bangtanstanst masterlist

It appears your beliefs aren’t as cut and dry as you thought they were – but all you can do is simply push on.

characters: reader + hoseok, ft. the rest of ot7

genre: ghost hunter!au, horror I guess?, attempts at humour

warnings: (mentions of) ghosts & demons

word count: 5.5k

a/n: happy Halloween!!

“I’m cold,” you say, shivers running down your spine as the air cuts right through your coat. “Can we just go back to the library? I’d happily spend the rest of the night there while you hunt for ghosts.”

Hoseok snickers and shakes his head. “I’m sure the basement will be much better.”

You just scowl, rubbing your upper arms in an attempt to warm yourself, the crew thundering down the stairs and breaking the somewhat peaceful silence that shrouds this entire castle. Jungkook is right up front, being the one that proposed walking down the stairs backwards just so he could get a good shot of the two of you on your way down. And walk backwards he did, despite six voices of protest pleading him not to risk breaking his neck.

“So, this basement…” you start as you reach the first floor and turn to the final set of stairs you haven’t walked down yet, leading into pitch black darkness and what you can already feel are even colder temperatures.

“Uh-huh, that’s a basement,” Hoseok teases. “Servants’ quarters,” he elaborates curtly before stepping aside and looking at you expectantly, even going as far as to cock his head in the direction of the basement.

You pause, smiling at him in amusement. “You want me to go first?”

“Yeah, I’m a real gentleman,” he simply replies with a small smirk, crossing his arms.

You hold back a snort, only nodding a few times, narrowing your eyes at him. “Clearly. Letting me die first and everything.”

“Definitely. And totally not because you can’t lock me in there like last time if you go in there first.”

With a short laugh, you shrug and nod. “That’s fair,” you admit, turning towards the stairs and putting your foot on the first step. It doesn’t creak all that much, but you swear it slightly sags underneath your weight. You don’t know if you should be offended at the notion that you’re too heavy for a set of goddamn stairs, or if you should be scared for everyone’s lives – or legs, for that matter.

“Alrighty,” you mutter, setting your other foot on the stairs and then deciding to just accept the risk and walk like you normally do. “So, recap – rich enough for a parlour, a ballroom, a separate breakfast room, a library, and countless bedrooms,” you say in between your steps, glancing upwards at Hoseok as he, too, sets foot on the stairs and he, too, seems a little wary of its structural integrity. “Let’s see how much they cared about the well-being of their servants, eh?”

Hoseok’s face contorts a little more, though you read a little more empathy than fear this time. “I can already tell you that it’s not that much,” he says with a shake of his head, just as you reach the bottom of the stairs. You don’t even look around yet, turning your back to the space and waiting for the others to come down instead. “They didn’t exactly treat them like slaves, but let’s just say unions or worker protections weren’t really a thing back then and, well…” he trails off and doesn’t finish his sentence, though it doesn’t take much for you to figure out what he means.

“That bad, huh?” You point your flashlight at Hoseok’s feet so he has a little more light to work with. “I mean, they didn’t become friends or anything? I feel like you see that a lot in movies and stuff.”

Hoseok’s feet hit the concrete floor and he jumps forward a little bit, coming to stand beside you as the rest of the crew catches up. “From what I read, they did form some kind of a relationship, if you could even call it that. But being a servant wasn’t as nice and cheerful as they make it seem,” he elaborates, “Plus, they were still ‘below’ the Tiedemanns in almost every way possible and they had no way of getting out of that. Not exactly a fun life you’re leading.”

You scowl a little, turning to let your flashlight illuminate the room, though you can’t really see that much until Taehyung comes in and saves the day – ahem, night – with the larger lights he’s carrying.

The basement seems to be stuffed to the brim with old furniture, wooden planks that haven’t been used for the planned renovations, or random items, like a stray dress that looks to be from the nineteenth century.

“They say that, since the most tortured souls spent their lives here, these quarters should be the most active,” Hoseok mutters from beside you, taking in the room with wide eyes.

“You’re hoping for that?”

He pauses a moment, then looks at you and shakes his head, looking a little dejected. Or sad, perhaps. “Not really,” he replies softly, shrugging ever so slightly. “I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he adds right away, stepping a little further into the room, though he holds your gaze as he continues, “I’d love to prove that ghosts are real. But I just think that tortured souls like that – souls in general, really – deserve to rest.”

You nod slowly, silence falling over the basement as you ponder over his statement. “So you believe there’s a ghost heaven?”

“Not for ghosts, specifically,” Hoseok replies, finding a wall and leaning his shoulder against it. He looks down at his camera, adjusts it a little, then looks around the basement. “Just the same as our heaven, if there is one. Or maybe just… nothing.” He looks back at you, watches almost expectantly as you nod once more, not really saying much. “You don’t think so?” You notice Jungkook sidestep into your peripheral vision, camera pointed at your face as an expectant silence falls.

You shrug, letting your gaze travel around the room. Dark and musty, cold. If ghosts existed and you could become one, you could think of a few other places you’d like to spend the rest of time in. “You already know what I think,” you tell him with a small smile, though you humour him, “If you’re dead, you’re dead. There’s no in-between.”

He smiles a little, even letting out a soft chuckle as he pushes himself off the concrete wall. “That’s the show, right?” he says with a smile, giving you a high five as he approaches you.

“That’s the show!” you repeat in confirmation, glad for the small attempt at lightening the mood.

Hoseok is wearing a small smile as he turns to the room you’re supposed to be moving towards. “Right, so we’ll start with the common room, then,” he decides. “Kind of a break room slash living room for servants, as the name suggests. They spent a lot of time in there, maybe more than they did in their own bedrooms.”

“Well, at least they had each other to complain about their job to, right?” you try with a sigh, trailing behind Hoseok, adjusting the GoPro in your harness just a little so it’s at a better angle.

Hoseok chuckles a little. “Yeah, at least they had that,” he admits with a nod, continuing on his way and stopping right in the middle of what apparently used to be the common room, relatively secluded from the upstairs area. There are a few weathered couches here and there, some old and rickety coffee tables to accompany them. It looks like a break room, more than the upstairs bedroom did a bedroom. Old and dusty and not necessarily welcoming, but a break room nonetheless.

You open your mouth to speak, but you swallow your words when your flashlight stutters a little. You quickly shake it to try to get it back to normal, but it keeps flickering, even when you hit it. Hoseok has noticed your struggle and steps a little closer, brows furrowed.

And then, your flashlight completely turns off.

“Seokjin, you replaced the batteries, right?” you ask cautiously, looking up at him.

The man in question nods slowly, frowning a little. “I think so. You want to put in new ones, just to be sure?”

You hum and shake your head, shaking the flashlight again and hitting it once more. “No, just checking,” you reply absently, busy with trying to get the light to work again. “It might just be broken, then.”

“Or it’s something else,” Hoseok says slowly, moving his weight from one foot to another and looking around the room. “Is there anyone here with us?” he asks loudly and clearly, though he’s standing so close to you that the volume makes you wince a little. “Could you turn the flashlight back on for us, please?”

You roll your eyes, continuing to shake and hit the flashlight. “It’s not a ghost, Hobi. Just a cheap and unreliable flashlight.” You hit the object again at your last word and, lo and behold, it jumps back to life, giving off light like it never turned off in the first place. “See? It’s working again.”

“I did ask the spirit to turn it back on,” Hoseok defends, letting his own flashlight illuminate his surroundings.

“And of course it listened,” you return sarcastically, turning to once more inspect the room. “Ghost, was that you?” you ask. “I really don’t appreciate you messing with my light like that, but I’ll give you a pass, since we’re here to gather proof of your existence, I guess,” you lightly chide, a small smile on your face. “I think my friend Hoseok here would love it if you did that again, actually,” you add, pointing at a now wide-eyed Hoseok. “And even if you don’t succeed today, you can just come along with us back to our hotel, it’s only a few blocks away. Much nicer than thi-”

“Y/N! You don’t just invite spirits to ‘tag along’!” Hoseok hisses, lightly hitting your shoulder. “Sorry about that, spirits,” he says with an awkward chuckle. “Please don’t come with us, though.”

You chuckle a little, shaking your head – but that chuckle quickly dies down when, in the corner of your eye, you see a flash of white. A figure, standing in the middle of a doorway and staring at you.

Before you can really look at it to make sure, though, you blink, you turn your head – and it’s gone.

Frowning, you blink a few more times. Hoseok makes a comment in the background, but you don’t really catch it, walking closer to the entryway instead. Even upon closer inspection, the supposed figure doesn’t return, nor do you see it anywhere in the dark room the doorway leads you into.

“What’s wrong?” Hoseok asks from behind you, excitement seeping through his voice.

You turn to look over your shoulder. “Nothing, I think,” you reply, looking back into the room. Your flashlight catches the cabinet in the middle of the room and the light bounces back from the shiny surface. It was probably that, you tell yourself. Nothing more.

“I thought I saw something for a second, but it was just a reflection of my flashlight,” you tell Hoseok, turning around to walk back to him and subsequently bumping into his chest.

He takes a single step back, looking on as you put your GoPro back into the right position. “What do you think you saw?”

You look up, narrowing your eyes at him, almost reluctant to admit to the illusion. “It was nothing, Hoseok,” you reassure him, at which he just crosses his arms. “I thought I saw someone standing in this doorway, but it was too fast to even tell.”

“So you’ll just dismiss it as nothing?” he questions, a little exasperated.

Sending him a smile, you shrug and step around him to move back to the centre of the common room. “Pretty much. You can edit it all you like in post, but I’m not going to start freaking out about a ghost right now, because I honestly don’t believe I saw one.” Do I?

“You are impossible,” Hoseok says through a sigh, trailing behind you. You swear you can hear a little tremble in his voice, though it could also just have been your imagination. “Let’s just move on to the last part before I run away screaming.”

“Because of me or just because you’re terrified as hell?”

He pauses for a moment. “Bit of both.”

Chuckling, you pat his shoulder. “Sounds about right.” With a breath, you clap your hands together, scanning your surroundings. There are no figures you spot this time and you feel yourself being a little relieved. “So, what’s the last part got in store for us, huh?”

“The workshop,” Hoseok replies lowly, wagging his finger in the direction of the supposed workshop. His tone is suddenly so serious that you frown a little, planting your face next to his finger and following the line of vision. There’s just an old door you see, nothing that looks as terrifying as he makes it sound.

“And?” you ask after a beat of silence.

Hoseok drops his hand back to his side and takes a breath, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I already hate this so much.”

He’s often reluctant, but almost never this much – and there’s only one thing that could explain his behaviour. You gasp dramatically, looking up at him. “Is it a demon or something?”

“You sound way too enthusiastic for this,” he simply replies, though that doesn’t deter you from walking straight towards the doorway. “Y/N, wait, don’t you –“ Before he finishes his sentence, you hear his dejected sigh, followed by his footsteps right behind you. “Never mind, of course you don’t want to hear about the shit that happens in here, because you’re a reckless sceptic.”

Spinning around to face him, you turn and start to walk backwards. “A good point you make there, but do tell,” you return with a smile, disheveling his hair, a gesture at which he only scowls a little. “What’s to be found in this creepy workshop?”

“You know, one of these days, I’m just going to leave you hanging and do a voiceover for the entire episode,” he returns, one eyebrow raised.

You put a hand to your chest, shaking your head. “But how can you expect me to make my amazing and highly content-specific quips, then?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out,” he replies with a smile, though that quickly fades from his face when you arrive at the entryway of the workshop. “Right,” he mutters through a sigh. “I’ve been dreading this shit since I stepped over that threshold, dammit,” he whispers, though you figure the words are aimed at himself.

“I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned it more, then,” you comment, grinning, and you spin around to face the doorway, opening the door a little. It’s dark and you can’t really see that far inside, but it looks as decayed as the rest of the building, safe for the workbenches lining the walls, a single axe in the corner, and a few other small tools littered around the room. “So are you gonna tell me what’s up with this room or what?”

He hums, though it’s abnormally high-pitched. You turn to look over your shoulder to check on him, just to be faced with wide, terrified eyes, looking past you to scan the workshop. You wait for a few seconds, which seems to be enough – he blinks a few times, clears his throat, and jumps out of his frozen state to speak, “Right, so this workshop was also for the servants, just to fix everything that needed to be fixed. Clothes, furniture, that kind of thing.“

“Did they also fix lives, or…?”

He laughs a little, shaking his head. “That would be really great,” he says with a smile. “But unfortunately not, no. Just material stuff.” You let out a small sigh, shaking your head in exaggerated disappointment as Hoseok continues, “Today, people have seen tools knocked off the workbenches, and someone even saw the axe floating for a hot minute.”

You narrow your eyes, looking between Hoseok and the axe in the corner. “How far above the ground?”

Hoseok shrugs. “It didn’t say,” he replies, tilting your head and raising an eyebrow. “Would you believe it if I could give a concrete answer, though?”

Chuckling, you nod. “Right, good point,” you admit. “Do continue.”

“People also report getting scratched in here, especially if they challenge any spirits that might happen to be in here,” he replies. You’re awfully aware of how he’s still standing behind you as he looks into the room, as if he’s using you as a human shield just in case something does happen to attack. “The only thing is –“ A shuddering sigh escapes his lips, one that makes you turn to him once more.

“The thing is?” you very subtly encourage, tilting your head in curiosity, though you have a feeling you already know the answer.

Hoseok’s eyes flutter open, slowly. “The thing is that no one really… died in here, at least not specifically in the workshop. And it seems the spirits in here are very adamant about staying in the rooms they’ve died in.”

You nod slowly. “So?”

“So, people have speculated…” Hoseok sighs once more, shaking his head and looking up at the ceiling. “Some people think it might be a demon.”

“Oh, okay.”

With a sigh, his shoulders slump. “I shouldn’t even be disappointed,” he mutters at your reaction.

You return a sweet smile. “No, you shouldn’t,” you say with a light pat on his shoulder. “Let’s go inside, shall we?”

As you start to move towards the entryway, you notice Hoseok is staying rooted in his spot, looking a little too scared for his own good.

“What’s wrong?” you ask him, frowning. “You’ve done demons before, it’s no big deal.”

He jumps back to life, taking a single step towards you, a single step closer to the demon hole. “First of all, demons are always a big deal,” he starts, holding up one finger before he adds one more. “And secondly, I don’t want to go in there because it’s three fucking AM and I couldn’t get any holy water because all three churches I went to today were closed.”

With a light chuckle, you turn and step into the workshop. “Why are you always so much more scared at three?”

“I’ve told you like a million times,” he replies, finally following you into the room. “Three AM’s the prime hour demons to do their thing. Supposedly to mock the holy trinity or something like that.”

“And that’s supposed to be scary, why?”

He raises an eyebrow at you. He knows damn well you’re playing innocent, and that you’ve asked this question a thousand different ways a thousand different times. But he still answers. “Because it’s like entering a bullfighting arena just when they’ve released a particularly angry bull, without anything to protect you.”

You send him a grin. “So all we need is a red tablecloth and we can get to the fun stuff, eh?”

Hoseok lets out a sigh, though you can see him smiling, even in this darkness. “How have you not even been scratched yet?”

You grin up at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep trying until I do,” you reassure him. “Shall I do the lockdown first?”

He looks incredibly glad to get to leave the room, even though he’ll only have to get back inside later. “Be my guest,” he says, already taking a step back towards the entryway. “I won’t give you the spirit box, since I know you won’t use it,” he adds pointedly, raising an eyebrow as if he’s silently telling you to still take the thing from you.

Letting that opportunity pass you by, you nod and wave. “Sounds good to me. Bye, Hobi! Try not to get attacked out there, either, yeah?”

He just returns a wave, spinning around and rushing out of the room. Jimin hands you a small camera, one he’s already turned on and put on the right setting to help the process along. “Good luck,” he tells you with a smile and you return a ‘thanks’ along with a chuckle before everyone exits and leaves you alone in this empty room for ten minutes.

You could just take a nap in here, considering your surroundings are doused in darkness and complete silence, so much so that you can almost hear your blood rushing through your veins. But, of course, you have a job to do.

“Hey there, demon,” you start, looking around the room. It’s small, something you somehow haven’t really noticed before. You put your flashlight on the workbench behind you, knowing you won’t see much with it, anyway. After clearing the workbench’s surface from stray tools and a layer of dust as best as you can, you plop down on it. “It’s me, ya girl,” you add. “Sitting on your workbench, just messing up all the tools you so… carefully arranged here,” you say, letting the camera Jimin handed to you film the room from wall to wall. “How do you like that, huh?”

Except for the hushed voices of the crew outside, there’s nothing in particular that you hear, nothing that Hoseok could interpret as being a demon, nor a spirit. Though he’ll probably find something to be scared about after the umpteenth time of listening through the footage at twelve AM on a Monday with the volume on eleven.

“So my friend Hoseok is standing outside right now. As you’ve probably noticed, he’s pretty terrified of you, but I’m really, really not, to be honest. So I guess this is your opportunity to prove me wrong.” You pause briefly, continuing to pan around the room. “I’m inviting you to do whatever you feel necessary to do that. Whisper in my ear, scratch me, throw me across the room, whatever you feel like doing. I’ll be silent for ten minutes, so this is the best chance you’ll get.”

Picking your flashlight back up, you turn it in your hand until you find the power button. “Going silent now,” you announce, “Please do try to kill me.” And with that, you switch off your flashlight.

You carefully put it back onto the table, even the small thump of the metal hitting the wood incredibly loud in this ear-deafening silence. Everything is dark around you now and you’ve lost all sense of your surroundings. All you have left is feeling and smell, though the cold, wooden surface of the workbench and the musty smell of the workshop don’t exactly give you much.

As is always the case, seconds seem to stretch themselves out into centuries. According to your GoPro, it’s only been a minute or two, but you’re already incredibly bored. You know you should’ve made your introduction speech longer – rookie mistake, really. You keep forgetting that you –

There’s a loud clattering.

Your heart skips a beat and you reach for your flashlight, blindly patting around in a frantic search. When your fingers finally close around it, you turn it on right away. Jumping off the workbench, you take a few deep breaths to recuperate from your second jump scare of the night, face contorting into a scowl when you taste dust on your tongue. Mind doing its own thing, it briefly flashes back to the figure in white you thought you saw just a few minutes ago, though you force that out of your mind and put on a little smile in the hopes that it’ll get you back to normal. No one wants to see you turn into a second Hoseok.

“You’re really trying, hm, demon?” you tease, approaching the corner you thought you heard the metal clanking, flashlight aiding you in your attempt to look for the logical cause for the disturbance.

There’s some more clattering, just to your left, and your head snaps into the direction of the sound. You’re not as shaken at the breaking of silence this time, though you’re growing pretty determined now to find whatever is behind this – you’ll refuse to admit to Hoseok that this is evidence, dammit.

Upon the third instance of metal clinking against metal, your flashlight finally lands on the source of the sound and you let out a breathy chuckle, almost relieved.

It’s a fat rat scurrying away from the beam of light you shine on it in an attempt to hide from you. “Caught you, buddy,” you say through another chuckle, turning away from the workbench and returning to your temporary seat.

“If that was your rat, I suggest you try to do something yourself,” you suggest to the empty room, wiggling in your spot to make yourself at least a tiny bit more comfortable. “You see, I won’t really believe in your existence otherwise.”

Once again, silence takes over the room. You don’t even hear the voices of the crew outside anymore. A cold draft makes its way into the workshop, likely from underneath the old door that barely covers the entryway and you shiver a little.

“Though I’d love to see how my friend Hoseok reacts to that, so you should do that again a bit later, when he’ll be forced to stew in his fear for ten minutes straight,” you add, legs swinging freely, toes only just grazing the floor. “He’s an easy target, really. Whisper a vowel in his ear and he’s finished. You can have some real good fun with it.”

“I heard that!” you suddenly hear from outside. You stifle a laugh with your hand, glancing at the screen of your night camera to see if you’re still holding it right.

“See? Easy,” you say with a smile. “Might be fun to try to scare him out of the room before his ten minutes are up.”

“Stop trying to get a demon to murder me!”

The smile doesn’t fade from your face as you turn to the doorway to reply, “Can’t talk, sorry, I’m in a very important conversation right now!”

“One minute left, so you better finish that up,” Hoseok returns and you throw an ‘okay’ back at him.

“Right, so I’m gonna go soon. If you still wanna kill me, please do so now, or latch onto me and follow me home to do that later. It’ll just be more efficient to do the former, though, so last chance.”

Even the very last minute ticks by slowly, flashlight steady in your hand. Your legs start swinging again and you focus on filming the room, just trying to lessen your boredom for these last few seconds. There’s no disturbance you can notice, no weird sounds or sights, no weird feelings, nor smells. Just an old, empty, and silent room, with a rat scurrying around somewhere.

“That’s ten minutes!”

You let out a soft ‘woo!’ as you slip off the workbench, calmly making your way back over to the door and carefully turning the doorknob, peeking outside and squinting when you’re faced with bright lights. “I don’t think I want to talk about what happened in there,” you say, letting out a little sigh. “I think these demons have really upped their game.”

“I know you’re just trying to scare me more,” Hoseok returns shakily.

“Is it working?”

“I won’t dignify that question with an answer.”

You laugh. “The sooner you get in there, the sooner it’s over.”

His lips turn downward into a scowl and he shivers a little. “Not helping.” Nevertheless, he reaches for the doorknob and twists, door opening slowly. “If I scream for help, you better get me the fuck out of there.”

You nod, frowning to match his serious tone. “You want me to tie a rope around your waist like last time, just for safety?”

With a curt shake of his head, he looks down at you. “We didn’t bring any rope.”

Pursing your lips to hold back the laughter you feel bubbling in your throat. “Alrighty then, so just give me a shout when you need saving.”

Hoseok nods quickly, takes a breath, and then takes the camera you hold out to him, slipping inside the workshop. You glance at Seokjin. “You’ve got the time, right?”

Seokjin nods, turning the screen of his phone to you to show you the running stopwatch, just as you hear Hoseok settling into the room, accompanied by some weird sounds he always makes when he wants to distract himself from being scared.

“I think I spooked him with my spider story,” you conclude seriously, looking straight into Jungkook’s camera. There are a few soft chuckles that follow and you smile a little. “He has been pretty scared tonight, right? Or is that just me?”

Namjoon hums and nods. “He told me when we were finishing up the script,” he replies, arms crossed. “You know he hates demons. It’s all he’s been able to think about today.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t let it slip earlier,” you wonder aloud, glancing at the door of the workshop when you hear the spirit box turn on, loud enough to sound like it’s right next to you.

“I think he’s trying to be brave this season,” Yoongi replies with a grin.

You chuckle a little. “Not exactly getting that done, is he?”

Everyone falls silent as they listen to the quick bursts of white noise, only overpowered once in a while by Hoseok asking a question. There are no particular squeaks or shouts you hear, though, meaning he’s coming up empty with this attempted conversation.

“How far along is he?” you ask after a while of staring at the tips of your boots, counting the small pebbles littering the floor.

“Almost eight minutes,” Seokjin replies after glancing at the screen of his phone.

Your hum thoughtfully, your hand flying up to your chin, fingers stroking an imaginary beard. “He hasn’t exactly let himself be silent, though, has he?” you muse, one eyebrow raising as you send Seokjin a mischievous grin.

He just narrows his eyes. “What’s your plan?”

You pause for a moment, trying to judge how much support you’ll get for your proposal. “Double his time, let him really feel it,” you finally say, crossing your arms as you await judgement.

Seokjin simply chuckles a little. He shakes his head, though does type something on his phone. “It’s your head when he gets annoyed.”

You nod firmly. “Deal.”

And so you double his time. At ten minutes, he turns off his spirit box, then asks you if it’s time to leave already, though you innocently reply that it’s ‘just a few more minutes’. At twelve minutes and thirty-three seconds, he asks it once more, seemingly counting down the time until he can storm out, though you just tell him to wait a little while longer and to shut the fuck up so the demon can talk. At fifteen, he speaks up again, voice a little smaller, but you smile and tell him he’s almost there.

When you finally tell him it’s time to leave, he lets out a loud breath, rushing out of the workshop. He exits with his hands full – spirit box, flashlight, and the camera he’s somehow balancing along with them. “I’m gonna go ahead and guess that that wasn’t ten minutes,” he says, closing the door with his foot and walking up to you. Jimin quickly takes the camera from him, giving him a little more room to put the spirit box back in his backpack, with the flashlight in his pocket.

You smile sweetly. “We thought it’d be a good idea to let you stay in there a little longer, really let you get the full experience, you know?”

“With a demon?” Hoseok asks with a glare, the look in his eyes telling you that he’s either about to literally kill you or run away screaming like he promised.

Either way, you send him a bright smile. “But hey, we’re done!” you say, holding up your hand for a high five. “And not one of us died.”

Hoseok’s annoyance fades a little and he breathes a laugh, shoulders slumping in apparent relief. “No thanks to you,” he mutters, though takes you high five.

“No comment,” you reply with a laugh, spinning on your heels to head back towards the stairs. Hoseok follows you with the crew right behind, footsteps echoing loudly.

“Okay, so I’m sure this is a useless question,” he starts, catching up to you quickly. “But do you think this place is haunted?”

Your eyes briefly flicker towards the doorway you remember seeing a flash of white in, though you once again push that out of your mind and put on a smile. “Nah,” you reply with a shrug. “You?”

“Oh, most definitely,” he replies with a firm nod. “But we’ll never agree on that, will we?” he adds with a small smile.

You nod in admittance, chuckling. “Then I guess it remains…”

Hoseok smiles back at you, eyes twinkling even in the little light there is in here. “Unsolved.”

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a/n: thanks for reading, I hope you liked it! There’s only the epilogue that comes after this :) let me know what you thought of this series and what you might like to see in the epilogue, or if you possibly want to see more from these characters! Have a great day/night wherever you are :)

series masterlist | bangtanstanst masterlist

#bangtanarmynet #bts fanfic #bts fluff #hoseok fanfic #hoseok fluff #bts halloween #bts horror #hoseok halloween #hoseok horror #seokjin fanfic #namjoon fanfic #yoongi fanfic #jimin fanfic #taehyung fanfic #jungkook fanfic #bts x reader #reader x bts #bts #my fics

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cunyappliedtheatreblog · 6 years

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Countdown Profile: Week 4 Alexis Jemal (’21)

Alexis Jemal, JD, LCSW, PhD, clinical faculty member at Hunter’s Silberman School of Social Work, and member of the MA in Applied Theatre class of 2021, talks with Michael Wilson (’11) about her hunger for justice, finding applied theatre, and how she’s just getting started.

Okay, we’re recording

The first thing I want to put out there is that I don’t have all the answers or know how all these pieces fit together. I consider this journey to be a work in progress. That’s how I’ve always led my life and have ended up where I am today. It may sound, I don’t know how it will sound at the end, whether it seems it all fits together…

I’m a many-interested person myself, from anthropology to theatre, and now photography. There’s a connective logic I feel intuitively, but it might not look like it from the outside. I do believe that we attract passionate, interdisciplinary people to the program.

Exactly.

I welcome that complexity.

It is complexity! Which I have found not always welcome or understood. Even in my doctorate program, for example, they’re trying to fit you in a box. They’re trying to say who you are as a researcher. Do you do this, do you do that?

At first, I started out in law, because I wanted to help people. The main message in my personal statement for law school was: “stealing bread is wrong, whether it’s done by the king or the man living beneath the bridge.” I had read this passage in a sociology textbook. That made me think about inequity, and how, well, the king will never be prosecuted for stealing bread…

I went to law school because I wanted to be an advocate for the man, woman, child, person who lives under the bridge. I loved law school. But then I had a bunch of internships at places, like in the chambers of a Federal District Judge, at the New York Civil Liberties Union, at MFY Legal Services in New York that provides legal services to indigent people, and the Public Defender’s Office in my home county in New Jersey. And I kept seeing injustice after injustice after injustice. A person who is getting evicted from their house, yes, you could help them not be evicted, legally, but that wouldn’t help with their mental health issues, or their substance abuse issues. It wouldn’t help with the trauma they’ve experienced in their family history, or the macro sociopolitical issues that are harming them.

So I figured, social work is where I really want to go. I ended up first working at this place at Rutgers called the Center for Behavior Health Services and Criminal Justice Research. That’s when I learned I was interested in research, because we were testing psychosocial interventions within the women’s prison in New Jersey. I was really seeing the intersection [between] the intrapersonal, interpersonal, the mezzo, the macro…everything was interacting. I thought, this is what I want to do. I want to be on the frontlines but I also want to be a researcher. I was one of two students that were admitted to the first PhD MSW program that Rutgers started—one foot in front of the other, the stars just kind of aligned… In my doctorate program, I was not planning to go into a professorship. I wanted to do more the non-profit route. But I began to consider how going into social work education could be advocacy in a way that I get to help shape future social workers. I could be that change that I want to see in social work.

Thank you for sharing that. I’m inspired by that.

It all intersects. To me, social workers have no excuse. We are the only field, as far as I know, to have an ethical mandate to address oppression. When any social injustice occurs, we should be the first responders. Instead, we’re trying to be psychologists, or something.

Technically, at Silberman School of Social Work, I am clinical faculty. I get to, in my class, bring the message of how clinical work and social justice need to be integrated and practiced. Like: “I get it, you guys want to go out and you want do therapy, but you will be interacting with multiple systems, and there’s no way around it. So how are you going to practice with an anti-oppressive lens?”

So that’s the teaching. I’m also a researcher, right? My interventions are always grounded in critical theory, liberation health models, restorative justice-type practices. They’re always about developing critical consciousness.

For my dissertation, I wanted to create a scale of Paolo Freire’s critical consciousness. As a doctoral student I was developing an intervention called Community Wise, that’s grounded in critical consciousness theory. Community Wise is a group intervention, it’s fifteen two-hour weekly sessions, for people who were recently released from incarceration. It’s supposed to reduce HIV STI risk, criminal reoffending, psychological distress, and substance use. And it’s grounded in critical consciousness theory, meaning that we have these critical dialogues, and we have capacity building projects, where the participants work on some type of project together.

The theory is called transformative potential: a scale of critical consciousness. The heart of the theory is that…when people [social workers] design interventions, like substance abuse interventions, they’re trying to get these people to use substances less, but really, what we’re arguing, is substance abuse is a symptom. It is not the issue. The issue is oppression. If we can find ways to get at the root of the issue, then substance use will decrease.

And there’s the Freirian piece: you’re there to challenge people to develop critical consciousness, that’s about reading the world.

Exactly. We’ve all been socialized to blame the individual. The participants have been socialized that way, as well. “When I come out of prison I should be able to get a job, I should be able to do this…I have all these skills, I have all these certificates.” And it’s like, “dangit, you don’t need another certificate. What you need is for people to stop discriminating against you and give you a job!”

One of the questions I ask people sometimes is, “could you have done everything right and still things have gone wrong?” And the answer is, well, “yes.” And that tells you it can’t be 100% about you.

I am concerned with the health of marginalized people. I want my work to be a healing agent. And it always has to be multi-systemic.

So, that’s what brings me to applied theatre.

How?

I saw psychodrama at a social work conference. And I was immediately impacted by it. Everything started to collide in my head. From, role theory…we’re all on the stage, different roles that we play…to, just that art itself, whether it’s dance, whether it’s painting, just has a way of breaking down boundaries. How I see applied theatre fitting in [my work] is that it integrates healing from trauma that’s associated with oppression AND raising consciousness and getting people to act against inequity.

And I have always been a creative writer…I’ve always felt I didn’t know how to integrate my academic and creatives sides…but applied theatre is the perfect way to integrate both aspects of myself. It seemed to all merge here.

I have several ideas. I wrote a story when I was thirteen or fourteen about hair. I know that for, especially black women, there’s so much trauma at the roots. Every time I read this story I can’t help but to cry. It’s a tear jerker. I think about how this [the exploration of hair] could be used with theatre as a healing agent for the people who participate in the drama, devising [an original piece of theatre around hair], but also it can impact people who are watching it.

Telling your story is healing, but also empowering. And unifying. It could build empathy, you could know people in a way that you didn’t know them before.

Thank you. Thanks for bringing me up to what seems to be a frontier for you now.

Yes. It seems to bring together all of my interests, from education to consciousness raising to community organizing to healing, to health. To creativity.

Now switching gears, what does it take to keep going as an interdisciplinary person in a world of siloed work?

Yeah, that’s…I believe that my work will be more effective [because it’s interdisciplinary], I guess. But I do battle. You know, it’s not like just going into carpentry, where I can just work with the person’s mind, and forget their health, because you know…people can’t be sliced. People can’t be separated like that. We’re complex and we’re a mess and that’s humanity.

What gets you up each day to keep doing it?

People are fascinating to me. I could sit and people stare, and guess, what happened there? When I’m driving and see a home, and I can kind of see in laughs—like I’m peeping—I wonder, does that family eat dinner together? Is there violence? My mind wanders. And, I’ve always been a person about justice. I’ve always been a champion for people who didn’t have power, since I’ve been young. To stand up for people, to stand up for justice. I don’t like people to be in pain or to suffer. My name, that’s connected to Alexander, defender of mankind. And that’s how I’ve felt. I’ve always been about justice and equity.

Okay. Well, as I’m listening, I’m so struck by your accomplishment and knowledge. I really admire what you’re up to.

Thank you. People think I’m humble or something, but I don’t feel like I’ve done much, yet. People are always in awe of the DEGREES. It’s like, yeah, but the degrees mean nothing if you don’t do anything with them. So I’m hoping that I do make a difference…so far I feel like I’m laying groundwork. I’m in the preparation stage.

Rapid fire round. A fiction author or book that’s lighting up your imagination?

That is hard to say, because, I’m so ashamed to admit this, but I don’t read as widely as I’d like. Because, I’m usually reading journal articles and papers.

Alright, fine. But did you read Octavia Butler at all?

So that’s the funny thing. I just took this writing course at Medgar Evers in October. It was every Monday night. And I write kind of sci-fi stuff.

Aah [of course, just like Butler].

That’s my genre. I started looking up African-American sci-fi writers, and of course she pops up. So I have several of her books on my kindle but I have not read one yet. But I do know who she is.

There’s someone else who was perpetually fascinated. And so personal…so interested in each person’s wounds and psychology, and also so curious about social change. She used dystopias that are not so far away as a metaphor for interrogating the present. She used the arts as a reflecting surface for society.

I’ve been warned that I sound a lot like her…the teacher was like, “I don’t know if you should read her, because it may…” So I’m like, “do I or don’t I?”

Well you’ve given me a writing challenge, because I have a full article here on your work on critical consciousness and a full article on your reflections on the value of theatre.

And so I’ll tell you this last part so it wraps it up. I have this research project I’m starting to get into now…with women, they’re going to do auto-ethnography. Researching their own lives and experiences with different types of oppression. And the last part that I’m hoping they do—I’m going to present it to them, but it’s up to them—is to do something with applied theater. Somehow incorporating what they’ve learned from their autoethnographies into some type of applied theatre format. So that’s kind of where it’s going. That’s it.

For now. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening.

#mainappliedtheatre #cunymainappliedtheatre #criticalconsciousness #blackgirlmagic #JD LCSW PHD #huntercollege #silbermanschoolofsocialwork

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theculturedmarxist · 6 years

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THE popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man.

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, how ever, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part.” Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense.

Thus Dante’s motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: “Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.”

That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent.

Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in Together; Pinero, in Mid-Channel; Eugene Walter, in Paid in Full, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony and understanding.

The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig down deeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous.

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every union is doomed to failure.

Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not---as the stupid critic would have it---because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman’s rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be any thing more humiliating, more degrading than a life long proximity between two strangers? No need for the woman to know anything of the man, save his income. As to the knowledge of the woman---what is there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made out of his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow.

Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul---what is there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greater her asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in her husband. It is this slavish acquiescence to man’s superiority that has kept the marriage institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming into her own, now that she is actually growing aware of herself as a being outside of the master’s grace, the sacred institution of marriage is gradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation can stay it.

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive field---sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up because of this deplorable fact.

If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a “good” man, his goodness consisting of an empty head and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature’s demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a “good” man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love.

Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their fathers for love when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions young people allow themselves the luxury of romance they are taken in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become “sensible.”

The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has aroused her love, but rather is it, “How much?” The important and only God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? Can he support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shopping tours and bargain counters. This soul-poverty and sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution. The State and the Church approve of no other ideal, simply because it is the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and women.

Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars and cents. Particularly is this true of that class whom economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in woman’s position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage-earners; six million women, who have the equal right with men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million age-workers in every walk of life, from the highest brain work to the most difficult menial labor in the mines and on the railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete.

Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women wage-workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really independent in our economic tread mill; still, the poorest specimen of a man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate.

The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize women than men. “Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have a home.” Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task.

According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee “on labor and wages, and congestion of Population,” ten per cent. of the wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the drudgery of house work, and what remains of the protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the middle class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband. There she moves about in his home, year after year until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go. Besides, a short period of married life, of complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not?

But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories over crowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from “loving” parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it!

Marriage may have the power to “bring the horse to water,” but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him in convict’s clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to “justice,” to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of its father’s stripes.

As to the protection of the woman,---therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever condemn this parasitic institution.

It is like that other paternal arrangement ---capitalism. It robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in ignorance, in poverty and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the last vestige of man’s self-respect.

The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life’s struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.

If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman’s nature, what other protection does it need save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love.

Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death.

Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing.

The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine, --- and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex-awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in that manner alone call she help build true manhood and womanhood.

Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life’s joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.

In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love’s summit.

Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.

#love #marriage #capitalism #socialism #anarchism #emma goldman #anarchist theory #poverty #slavery #henrik ibsen #motherhood #childhood #children #child bearing #womanhood #woman #man #manhood

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beinglibertarian · 6 years

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Shortcuts & Delusions Special Edition: The Absurdity of Gary Johnson

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutly free that your very existance is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus

Obituary:

Libertarian satirist and vengeful deity Dillon Eliassen (spelled with an E for comedic purposes), whose work I sincerely admire, has died. Spiritually. Only spiritually. He is to be succeeded in spiritual death by a micronation of homeless people, his fellow members of the Fictitious Cement Workers’ Union, and Being Libertarian’s very own Editor-in-Chief Martin van Staden.

Dillon “The Jesuit” Eliassen (née Ottovordemgentschenfelde) was probably born on Christmas morning 1949, somewhere in Canada. Known for his youthful shenanigans, Dillon brought a smile to the faces of all who encountered him at San Quentin. While fighting for our freedom on the blood-soaked soil of Vietnam, Dillon gave birth to a mostly healthy yet premature appendix, and he named it me.

Let us begin.

Introduction:

Dillon left off with an in-depth analysis of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ a very real ‘condition’ that ‘I’ have personally heard firsthand accounts of on multiple occasions. This was a fitting place to conclude. The torch was not passed to me, but I am hereby picking it up off the ground, wiping the dirt and canine feces from its gleaming bronze exterior, and running with it in the exact opposite direction of any achievable goal.

I am Nathaniel Owen. If you don’t recognize my name, it’s because I am legitimately the least important person you’ve never heard of. I’m unknown for my efforts to bear the heaviness of the Imperial Antarctic Crown, and my occasional bouts of productive cyber-vigilantism. In 2014 I made a mistake, and today that mistake is Being Libertarian. They locked me in the CEO’s office until I pay for this crime.

Like my obvious relatives, Nathaniel Bacon, Nathaniel Branden, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, I am a revolutionary. I haven’t got a Che t-shirt, and I never attend the meetings. But like many communist tovarisch, I do have an iPhone. In the postmodern age, that’s a clever weapon to have! Climate scientists, for instance, have indicated that it’s really all the humble revolutionary needs these days. I am constantly confused as to the value of my executive role at Being Libertarian but remain the least confused as to why I maintain this position.

Today is my favorite day of the year, second only to New Year’s Eve. For me, today acts as a reminder of the closest thing I have ever encountered to universal truth; a realization that haunts, comforts, astounds and enchants me. Yesterday, we were but individuals rolling boulders up a hill. Today, we will try again to roll the boulders up that hill. Tomorrow, yet again, we will return to this habit. You have been doing this with me since the day you were born.

I like to count the number of seconds it takes the boulder to reach the bottom of the hill each sunset. In the morning, we will start over.

We Are All Sisyphus:

It’s quite pointless, analytically speaking. You probably don’t remember being born, nor were you an integral part in making that happen to you. No number of artifacts can preserve the complexity of an individual human being, and even if one could live immortally in the memory of others, time turns existential into the mythological.

The universe is dying. It will live scarcely longer than we will. You appear to have come into existence at random, in a time and place inherently foreign. As a child, you wander into a adulthood without happening on the answer key to any questions relating to how or why you exist in the first place. Much less, how or why the universe itself exists. A consequence of this is that We, The People tend to convince ourselves conveniently that the answers to such questions not only exist, but can be found in such subtle hiding places as your local political party, whatever holy book you were raised to read, your arbitrary interpretations of the signs and seasons presented to us by the light of the cosmos, or even in our own imaginations.

And we know because we can’t avoid knowing, that whatever facade we’ve sold ourselves is, in fact, still a facade even if we fall for it.

Every day spent living is a performative affirmation that something about you, even if you can’t figure out exactly what it is, still wants to find those answers. If this weren’t the case, the players of this game would be dropping like flies when they discover that there is no point in playing and no conceivable way to win and that eventually there will be no evidence that you ever played at all. In short, that life itself is highly unlikely to be worth the trouble.

Albert Camus, French philosopher, and journalist, was plagued with thoughts like those stated above. Camus became a constitutive inspiration of the Existentialist Movement (a tradition of philosophy asserting the importance of human experience in the appraisal and interpretation of ideas), partially during the Second World War, while serving in fierce defiance as the Editor-in-Chief of the French Resistance newspaper ‘Combat’ amidst the Nazi occupation of his homeland, and continuing this roll into the post-war world.

Though such matters in the realm of fundamentals and absolutes can be difficult to define, you may have wondered similar things about yourself, and perhaps continue to. Camus was particularly perturbed by the sheer fact that the universe itself and all that exists within it have no objective meaning or purpose. The rational insights we are both blessed and cursed with poke holes in all our mortally limited attempts to invent meaning of our own, and in the Modern Age, the old ideas of Abrahamic deities, universal truth, and inherent ethical rules, each of which having been rudimentary to the shaping and formation of modern society in some way, have been penetrated into philosophical Swiss cheese.

The Non-Aggression Principle is a rather useful little limerick when one doesn’t overthink it. But like all things implying morality, thinking it all the way through will lead you to fundamentals that cannot possibly be confirmed or denied. What, exactly, makes murder wrong? What about robbery? Or socialism? Or the unfairness of free markets? When all is said and done, is it really going to matter whether every little thing we chose to do was right, or wrong, or equitable, or unfair? At the top level, with capital crimes especially, it is not hard to find that the supermajority of humanity agrees on some basic ethical positions. But when applying these basics, they become more complicated. By the point that we are discussing the specific rights and wrongs of typical human behavior, no two people will find themselves in agreement on the application of what they may believe are universal, self-evident principles.

Camus asserted, rather poignantly, that suicide has always been an option. And the scariness, confusion, and uncertainty of existing in such an uncertain world have apparently not driven you to it. And why shouldn’t we die now? It all adds up to the same summary. Nothing is permanent. It’s very possible that nothing matters. Yet we, practically all of us, seem to be making the conscious choice each day to live on. It’s as though if we pull away some of that upstanding rationalism gifted to us during The Enlightenment, there is some other part of us playing such an integral role in our existence that it stabilizes and confirms our will to exist at all.

Camus was a hero in several ways, and today is his day. There are very few people who want to legalize murder, yet droves of people who wish to legalize marijuana, and to many hearty fundamentalists, these may be comparable issues. Sin is sin, oppression is oppression, and aggression is aggression. To many libertarians, and to what should be our collective shame, such things as unionizing the local labor force, stealing a sandwich from a street vendor, violently raping a helpless victim, and aborting the fetus conceived in such tragic circumstances are all comparably “aggressive,” and may not even be considered in terms outside of “aggression” regardless of how useful a new approach or perspective may be when considering such cases.

At the risk of losing all of my libertarian acquaintances, I will admit that once upon a time, I charged my iPhone (yes, my revolutionary weapon of choice) using a stranger’s charging cable without asking when he wasn’t around. I aggressed. I haven’t repented and I’m not sure my soul will be where yours will be on judgment day.

The point is, it makes so little difference whether we are right or wrong about what is “aggression” and what is not “aggression,” that it’s a wonder anybody even cares to discuss it for more than a few than a few minutes.

I do not care who builds the roads, or who decides what color to paint the bathrooms at Beacon Hill, or which Union and/or Confederate heroes/villains are memorialized in stone. I do not care to pay taxes of a meager nature. Of course, I will consistently support lower taxes; it’s my own self-interest at stake. I will not, however, declare that anyone who doesn’t concern themselves with it as deeply as myself to be a “sheep.” Sheep are blind followers. To the best of my knowledge, I have never met anyone who doesn’t fit that description, and yes, this includes myself. I’m no determinist, but I know that I know essentially nothing about the mechanics of what REALLY makes something moral or immoral. I also know that you don’t know either.

The universe you live in doesn’t care what you think. It doesn’t “care” in any way about anything, as far as we can tell. Clinging so staunchly to principles may as well be escapism from the dread and uncertainty of having existed in the first place. Cults operate by exploiting this inherent dread, and unlike the average man on the street who will immediately deny any experiences of being uncertain about his own existence, cults can see through this bullshit. The Liberty Movement should be no cult.

“The Absurd” is a boulder. Every second you live is an exercise in pointlessness. Searching for meaning, embracing the experience of uncertainty, and cracking a smile as your shoulders yet again shove that boulder up the hill… these are exercises in defiance. It is no coincidence that Albert Camus, espousing the conviction (or lack thereof) that no objective truth or purpose may ever be identified, was willing to put his life on the line to dignify and endorse the French Resistance Movement, and despite his eventual death in a car crash, his words live on.

We libertarians are the quintessentially anti-establishment political identity. When our fists are clenched around the chains of dogma and theoretical universal principles we may as well be chained to the same despotic foundation we’re trying to help others liberate themselves from. To think for one’s self, one must realize the degree to which the nuances and practicalities of the world we live in influence us. Peddling promises of applying some universal ethic that we, as representatives of the Liberty Movement, can’t even agree on the parameters of is no different than selling a religious experience; a method by which to keep the conscience clean, and supply some convenient, flimsy certainty that will never stand up to the scrutiny of the skeptical. If our universal truths were as permanent as they are constructed to be, we would never change our minds or opinions.

This rant will resume in 365.25 days when National Absurdity Day returns in all its glory, memento mori, and calendarial obscurity.

And speaking of scrutiny, I’m going to have to toss in a trigger warning. This isn’t even my first trigger warning. I’m a professional.

**TRIGGER WARNING** What you are about to read may cause severe bouts of Trump Derangement Syndrome. If you are a leftist, please do not read the following paragraphs while in close proximity to sharp objects. Symptoms may include blood shooting from the eyes, indecipherable screaming, close encounters of the fourth kind, and varying degrees of irritable face syndrome. Please notify a physician if you encounter itchiness of the spleen, cirrhosis of the autobiographical memory, or diarrhea of the oral cavity.

Why We MUST Defeat Gary Johnson You’re probably wondering about the guy in the title of this article who, thus far, has been absent from said article. In fact, he’s absent from things quite often, I’m told.

Gary Johnson is not a real libertarian. Why libertarians get starry-eyed in his presence is beyond me, with his espousal of blatant communism and acceptance of homonormative deconstructionist Islamomarxism. Johnson as a representative of libertarianism is a clear sign that the left is invading the liberty movement, further eroding private property norms and propping up support for the deep state agenda of the globalists.

Johnson has pretended to support unfettered free market capitalism, and even went as far as to insist that tearing down barriers of entry could give the average person better, fairer access to goods and services. “The model of the future is the sharing economy. It’s Uber. It’s Airbnb. I think it’s gonna be Uber everything.”

“Uber everything” sounds like a great idea until you take your morning Red Pill and see that this is just code for white genocide. Without a heterogenous government of the people, who will stop immigrants from driving Uber taco trucks and parking them on every street corner, forestalling traditional values and private property norms. Americans would lose their jobs, possibly to immigrants. Even libertarian heroine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sees through Gary Johnson’s thin veneer of egalitarian lies!

He ran for president. Twice. On the second try, he broke every Libertarian Party presidential vote count record in the party’s history, surpassing even the likes of Our Lord and Savior Dr. Ron Earnet Paul. Mark my words, we will never forgive Gary Johnson for not being Ron Paul. His tax cuts were clearly a Democrat ruse to give spending power to the politically correct internationalist cabal of globalist elites like George Soros, Walt Disney, and Oliver Cromwell.

After making the Libertarian Party lose twice, Gary Johnson snuck in one more attack on libertarian legitimacy by losing in New Mexico in a Senate race where he only claimed 15.4% of the vote, singlehandedly handing victory over to communist Democrat Vladimir Len- I mean… Martin Heinrich (if that’s his real name).

Gary Johnson must be stopped. He cannot be allowed to run for office again, regardless of what degenerate socialist feminazis say about “free speech” and “democracy.” Democracy is a secret codeword known to the Fourth International for white genocide and subversion of private property norms. To Make America Great Again

, we must Physically Remove

this man that even the Democrats recognize as a tyrant. Socialists say that Gary Johnson is no threat to the system. This means Gary Johnson is probably a socialist (and a threat to the system the Founding Fathers put in place to protect our freedoms) because everything socialists say are lies.

What further evidence do you need? So far, I have used some of the most Red Pill buzzwords on the market, and even considered using “optics,” “LOLbertarian,” “SJW,” “libertine,” “postmodernism” and “open borders.” Libertarianism is an obvious right-wing ideology. We have standards, you know.

I won’t keep you here. Now that I’ve owned you with facts and logic, you are free to go.

Outro: Left intentionally long and with minimal editing, everything written above makes a single point that, in context, doesn’t mean anything. Most things, and probably all things, don’t mean anything. But that observation is no taskmaster; true freedom is the freedom to waste your time, and the time of others, in a way that is archetypically you. There are no strict parameters here. Drifting a little off the straight and narrow shouldn’t be cause for panic. If there was a takeaway in this article, I don’t know what it is. Perhaps there is a Gary Johnson in all of us, rolling a boulder up Mount Everest just to watch it roll back into the ravine, much like the Libertarian vote count will in 2020.

Do as thou wilt, and don’t overthink it.

Happy National Absurdity Day, comrades.

سُبْحَانَ اللہِ

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xtruss · 3 years

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The Top Reason I Hate Masks Is They Force Me To Live By Lies

Being forced to wear a mask is being forced to communicate that I support treating COVID-19 as if it should take priority over everything else in life. That's not only false, but evil.

— By Joy Pullmann | September 8, 2021 | Source: The Federalist

Throughout the last year, I’ve read a lot of masking arguments but none that broached my top objection: mask mandates force me to communicate what I believe are very dangerous lies.

Even if masks ultimately do provide some small reduction in coronavirus spread without imposing additional harms, a contentious claim, to me that is almost beside the point. The point is the security theater, which assumes that drastic government micromanagement of our lives and indefinite curtailment of our liberties are not only ever acceptable but in fact the moral thing to do.

I’m not talking about high-risk situations like nursing homes or hospitals or the homes of cancer patients, where I am willing to mask and sanitize and so forth for the chance it may indeed protect highly vulnerable people. I’m talking about in normal life, in public settings. Despite what people have been shanghaied into assuming, these are low-risk environments and should be treated as such.

Far above and beyond any health considerations, masking is a symbol. It is a talisman, a ritual, a communication of premises that I utterly reject. Being forced to wear a mask to me is the equivalent of being forced to wear a T-shirt that supports legalized abortion, which I believe is mass murder.

Wearing a mask communicates that I accept the premise that everyone should wear a mask, even if vaccinated, even if possessing natural antibodies, even if a child to whom the flu is more dangerous, even if an adult who believes living with risk is part of human life and that attempting to eliminate risk is more dangerous than accepting it. It communicates that the entire world should look like a hospital, a fearful and sad place where people are desperately sick, even if they don’t know it.

It communicates that I believe harassing the living hell out of Americans is a justified response to a disease with a 99.5 percent survival rate or better for those younger than 65. It communicates that it is reasonable to worship health as an idol, and to control citizens with fear. Well, I simply don’t believe any of that, and I’m not going to be forced to communicate that I do.

Yes, I could be wrong both about abortion, masking, and every other thing I believe. But it used to be considered an American thing for others to “defend to the death” my right to express what I believe, even by those who vehemently disagree with the content of my beliefs and speech.

Now I’m told by people who identify even as libertarians that I do not have the right to my own opinion about the post-totalitarian COVID regime, or that if I may hold my opinion privately I certainly cannot live in accord with my beliefs. Clearly, America has fundamentally changed. I oppose that fundamental transformation, too.

I’ve recently been reading and rereading communist dissident Vaclav Havel’s famous essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” in an attempt to make more sense out of how to live in our time. I find myself applying his insights to multiple current issues, including this one.

Havel famously uses the example of a greengrocer putting the Marxist slogan “Workers of the world unite!” in his shop window to analyze the power dynamics in what he calls a “post-totalitarian” society. It was a little startling to me how closely his observations of living in a Communist Bloc country paralleled my daily experiences under the COVID regime.

Havel makes it clear that whether the grocer believes the slogan is immaterial. Probably, he says, the man does not. But he conforms to the demands made of him, even when they contradict reality and good sense, because if he doesn’t he will be punished.

In posting signs of affirmation of their regime, “The greengrocer and the office worker have both adapted to the conditions in which they live, but in doing so, they help to create those conditions,” Havel writes. “…Quite simply, each helps the other to be obedient. Both are objects in a system of control, but at the same time they are its subjects as well. They are both victims of the system and its instruments.”

As with the masks, whether “Workers of the world unite!” is true is beside the point. The point is signaling compliance out of fear, not an honest discussion of the evidence, or persuasion, or any mechanism respecting the informed and open consent of the governed.

“The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of,” notes Havel. “This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don’t want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security.”

This is what mask mandates achieve — a false signal that dissenters don’t exist, that everyone buys into the indefinite suspension of our rights “because COVID,” no matter how much it harms people, nor how weak its alleged rationales. This was confirmed for me when my governor finally let his mask mandate lapse. Suddenly, after I had been for months nearly the only person I ever saw without a mask, now almost nobody wore them.

And it wasn’t because everyone was vaccinated, as government statistics show the majority are not. So it was clear that the vast majority of my fellow citizens were obeying the mandate simply because it was a mandate, not because they fully supported it. Yet their compliance communicated the falsehood that the COVID regime had mass support. And that is exactly the point.

Citizens’ assistance to a lying and oppressive regime, Havel says, changes those who corrupt themselves in this way: “they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may — with no external urging — come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society.”

In other words, falsifying reality brings about more of that falsified reality. It’s the same dynamic as gang initiations requiring initiates to commit crimes. Once people have compromised themselves, they are more likely to identify with their compromise, because it’s embarrassing to admit you were wrong. So instead, people double down. They heap onto their initial cowardice the additional cowardice of refusing to admit they could have been wrong.

This also helps account for the viciousness with which people often treat dissenters. Dissenters are living proof that everyone does not have to comply, that it is possible to live in the truth. This shames those who have chosen temporary comfort over noble sacrifice.

The greengrocer who does not display the sign, Havel says, is soundly punished by his peers precisely because “He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.”

The crumbling of the Soviet Union began when people “came to realize that not standing up for the freedom of others, regardless of how remote their means of creativity or their attitude to life, meant surrendering one’s own freedom,” Havel writes. There came a point when more people realized that the price of staying silent, of accepting lies, was too much.

Do we need an Afghanistan-level catastrophe for more Americans to realize their acceptance of lockdowns, which mask-wearing signals, is just as deadly? Statists are more than happy to oblige. But the longer we take to wake up, the worse the suffering must be.

— Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her newest ebook is a design-your-own summer camp kit, and her bestselling ebook is "Classic Books for Young Children." Sign up here to get early access to her next full-length book, "How To Control The Internet So It Doesn’t Control You." A Hillsdale College honors graduate, @JoyPullmann is also the author of "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books.

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

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Lena Horne, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump

Back in the Golden Era of Hollywood* white folks would point to Lena Horne as an example of how America wasn’t racist, America offered opportunities for everyone.

“Look at her! She’s a movie star! She appears in big movies!

“How could she do that if we were racists?”

Every society, no matter how stratified or hidebound, has space for a few socially approved outliers.

You can always afford one rigidly controlled exception to the rule, who can paradoxically serve as both a reassurance that there’s room for others and as an easily dismissed distraction should they arouse too much or the wrong kind of attention.

Lena Horne was an exceptionally beautiful singer-actress in a time and place where beautiful singe-actresses were the norm. She appeared in dozens of major movies from big studios, and was well respected by her co-workers and peers.

And she was -- or rather the role she occupied in America was -- totally fake.

Ms Horne never had a substantial role or dramatic scene in any movie that did not feature a predominantly African-American cast.

The big budget musicals she appeared in, the ones aimed at mainstream audiences -- white audiences -- typically cast her as a specialty number: In the middle of a big show within the movie, the camera would pan over to her standing in front of a curtain where she would belt out a show tune.

And white Americans would say to foreigners who criticized the US for its racism, “What about Lena Horne? Look at all the movies she appears in!”

She appeared as an appendix, a wholly superfluous addition whose presence or absence didn’t affect the film one whit.

Her musical numbers in mainstream (i.e., white) musicals were filmed and edited into the final picture so they could be cut out!

See, there were parts of the US that did not care for Ms Horne’s skin color one little bit.

And when her movies played there -- snip-snip.

Out she came.

That way no lily white audiences ever had to be offended that a n[FL play]er dared sully their lily white screen.

Why was she in there in the first place?

As a sop to the African-American community, to lure them into the theaters so they could have five minutes enjoying a performance by somebody who looked like them.

And to a lesser degree, as a sop to those few white Americans who, while not exactly “woke”, were at least stirring restlessly in their sleep. “Hey, we can’t be all bad if we let a colored girl sing in a movie, can we?”

[SIDEBAR: You wanna see what Ms Horne was capable of, track down Stormy Weather, an all African-American musical that I rank as the 3rd best movie musical ever made, trailing narrowly behind Singin’ In The Rain and The Band Wagon.]

Barack Obama was 21st century white America’s Lena Horne.

“Hey, how can we be racist if we elected a black president?” was white code for “We want you black people to shut up about the injustices you have suffered and continue to suffer.”

White America wanted Obama to be their Oreo: Black on the outside but white on the inside.

They wanted him to champion white values and interests.

Not American values and interests.

White values and interests.

“Hey, we elected a black president…”

”…so we don’t have to do anything about the disproportionate justice meted out against African-Americans.”

“Hey, we elected a black president…”

”…so we don’t have to do anything about inner city communities that are still reeling from the effects of hundreds of years of dehumanization.”

“Hey, we elected a black president…”

”…so we don’t have to do anything about addressing the needs and concerns of people who have been deliberately and consciously excluded from the American dream.”

No, Obama was supposed to be the magic cure-all, the ultimate placebo that would get those pesky minorities to stop complaining so white folks could like their lives in ease and comfort and not have to worry about how non-whites were being treated.

Just stand up against that curtain, Barack, and sing…

But Barack Obama didn’t do that.

Barack Obama said, “Hey, we still have a problem if police accost an African-American in his own home and accuse him of being a burglar even when he can prove he lives there.”

And ya know what?

We do have a problem if that can happen.

Because in order to reach the relatively mild level of just getting falsely arrested by a police office who doesn’t believe your identity, we first have to undercut your basic rights as a human being and as a citizen of the United States.

We have to pre-judge you on the color of your skin, to assume you are intrinsically criminal and hence worthy only of suspicion and distrust.

We have to assume you are not educated enough to hold a job that would pay enough for you to buy the home we’re accusing you of burglarizing.

Many white people voted for Obama because they wanted to shut up minority critics.

And to their surprise and horror, Obama basically said, “No, they’ve got a point: There still is a lot we need to work on to make this nation what is claims it wants to be.”

White people lost their shit over that.

Things got worse as the #BlackLivesMatter movement started.

White folks really lost their shit over that!

Most white people do not hate minorities…

…but they do fear them.

They fear minority crime, but not in the way one thinks.

White people are the biggest criminal threat to other white people.

Rather, they fear minorities because they ultimately fear a loss of status.

As I’ve noted previously, white identity defines itself by whom it excludes.

Barack Obama had one white American and one black Kenyan parent.

In the eyes of white America, that made him black.

And to many white Americans, it made him Kenyan as well.

White Americans define themselves by whom they exclude, never by whom they include.

Also as noted previously, despite its claims to be a classless society, America is very much a class-oriented society, one in which white people were guaranteed at the very least working class status by the simple fact non-whites were automatically regulated to lower class status.

When non-whites achieved skills and education that enabled them to climb out of their lower class status, they were only allowed to climb to higher status within their own communities.

An African-American lawyer might be able to plead a case in a white court, but only for a black client, never a white one.

Middle and working class whites feared losing their status; middle class whites feared slipping down to working class, working class feared becoming lower class.

Only if there was a built-in cushion, a concrete floor they were guaranteed they could not fall below, did whites feel comfortable.

(The astute reader will note this also applies to matters of gender, and orientation, and religion; we focus on race in this post because it’s the most obvious example, but it’s far from the only one.)

That floor was a ceiling for the minorities trapped below it, and the cracks that allowed some minorities to rise above it terrified whites who feared they’d slip through it.

Laws and customs and traditions and practices that kept minorities at arm’s length were the spackling that plugged those cracks.

Police and law enforcement and the judicial and penal systems were part of those plugs.

Minorities were treated more harshly, and penalized more severely, that whites who committed similar crimes.

Whites justified this by saying minorities were, by nature or nurture, more dangerous…more violent…more criminal than mainstream (read “white”) culture, and as such were inherently deserving of such treatment.

A white college student caught with a gram of cocaine would likely get A Very Strong Talking To by the judge and perhaps even have to perform some token community service, but a ghetto kid with a joint?

Five to ten.

But as whites excluded more and more people from their group -- their own children and grandchildren from matings with non-whites -- the number and voice of minorities grew.

#BlackLivesMatter quite literally and explicitly means “Black lives matter as much as all other lives” but the white community couldn’t have that.

First they deliberately lied, and said #BlackLivesMatter meant “only black lives matter’.

I’ve said elsewhere that some people project so much they should really pay union dues to IATSE. #BlackLivesMatter is a response to the “only white lives matter” attitude found among too many people in law enforcement and the judicial system.

Second, whites claimed #BlackLivesMatter was anti-police (no, it only calls for the police to treat all persons with the same degree of courtesy and respect).

They framed that fake anti-police stance as a desire among the African-American community to wreak harm and havoc on innocent whites (though, as noted elsewhere, how innocent are you if you help maintain a system that harms others for your benefit?).

Nobody ever posted #AllLivesMatter or anything like it prior to #BlackLivesMatter making its first appearance, yet the sentiment found in #BlackLivesMatter can be traced back to the earliest calls for racial justice in this land.

Finally, whites promoted #BlueLivesMatter, a completely bogus straw man argument that places the lives and safety of the police above those of common citizens.

Whitey, please…

Being a police officer is a stressful and dangerous job -- though far from the most dangerous job in America (you wanna risk your life on a daily basis, become a roofer).

Being a police officer isn’t even among the top ten most dangerous jobs in America -- and most law enforcement on the job deaths are the result of traffic accidents (not surprising considering how much time the average officer spends on the road).

Being a police officer means one is entrusted with an awesome and terrible responsibility: The authority to carry a lethal weapon and to use it against anyone the officer deems to be a clear and present danger to the lives of others.

That is absolutely an authority police officers should have…

…but not all police officers today are worthy of that responsibility.

There is nothing wrong or outrageous about African-American and other minority communities insisting the country’s police officers treat all people they encounter with the same courtesy and respect.

There will be people of all races and genders and ages who will respond to the police with defiance, perhaps up to and including armed resistance.

Fine, that’s why we give the police their authority to carry and use a weapon.

But they need to approach every situation based on what the person is doing at that moment and not whether whether they think or they fear the person may do them harm.

We are employing them -- in every sense of the word -- to put their lives on the line, and to risk their safety in order to preserve the public safety.

And most times, this means waiting until you know what the person you’re dealing with intends to do before acting yourself.

Frankly, if you’re inclined to shoot someone because you’re afraid they might do something, police work is not the career for you.

If unarmed, unresisting whites were treated as callously at so many unarmed and unresisting minorities are, if police gunned down a 12 year old white child without warning while playing in a public park the way they killed Tamir Rice, the white people in this country would go berserk and demand systemic changes top to bottom.

Which brings us to Donald Trump.

If Obama was the homeopathic placebo that white people thought would give them the “Get Out Of Racism FREE” card they longed to have, Trump was to be their purge to drive all the toxins they perceived out of the system and to restore them to their previous lost status.

Make American Great Again was their motto.

And yet when you asked them what that meant, it never referred to real measurable metrics such as changes in purchasing power, increases in productivity, spiraling health care costs, etc.

It always came back to re-establishing a mythical golden social order, where whites felt safe and secure in their (disguised) middle and working class status, and never feared dropping below the concrete floor that held so many others down.

Several years ago I wrote about the fast approaching year 2048.

That’s the year the census bureau projects the number of people identified as “white” Americans will drop to 49.99%.

The year the white majority vanishes…

…replaced by one large minority…

…but a minority nonetheless.

Knowing this day approaches, we will see more and more acting out by white people.

Uglier and uglier.

Sicker and sicker.

Deadlier and deadlier.

In a perverse way, we are lucky to have Trump now.

A competent racist demagogue could do far more damage.

He will taint the white political waters for at least a decade.

And that will shave white majority status ever narrower.

Remember, don’t feel sorry for whites; they are causing this by excluding their own descendants.

What they do to their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will eventually be visited upon their own community.

The day they fear will finally arrive.

They won’t be anything special.

They’ll just be like everybody else.

E pluribus unum = “Out of the many, one.”

Maybe that will finally come about when there is no longer an arbitrary racial barrier to divide us by class.

* Well, post-WWII era Hollywood; the real golden era ran from the end of WWI to the start of WWII.

#race relations #white privilege #white supremacy #politics #government #Lena Horne #Barack Obama #Donald Trump #ethics #America #American values #BlackLivesMatter

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