#i think it has more to do about cultural connectedness than what your blood looks like

[bogkeep]

some of my relatives identify as sami and some of my relatives identify as kvenish... even as siblings. idk what this makes me

[lunasaturnine]

Vienna and cultural trauma

WOW so cool to sign into tumblr and see 99+ notifications, and think “oh a post got some attention,” but it’s actually just general attention!

My astro blog is ready for some action! Or maybe ppl are just bored bc of the quarantine. Either way, it would be cool to write.

I want to write about VIENNA.

I just took a course about somatic healing of trauma and it gave me a good overview of how trauma recovery works. Chapter 1 of trauma recovery is gathering resources. Chapter 2 is dipping or oscillating back into the memory, whether it’s a clear memory or just something held hidden in your body, with your new resources, and allowing circles to complete. Chapter 3 is being bigger bigger brighter in the world !!! (It’s a nice course, it’s on somatopia.com, it costs $40 if you have that to throw around, it’s like 2 hours of videos of a nice man talking in a soothing voice in intelligent language about healing from trauma)

Now I’m thinking about cultural trauma and Vienna. I have long felt that helping to heal the Hitler wound of Vienna is one of my soul’s major dharmic thrusts. So I googled “healing cultural trauma” and most resources out there talk about the trauma of the victim culture. That kind of trauma is totally different, because it recommends amplifying the traditions and greatnesses of the culture, and when you’re a cultural perpetrator of violence, amplifying the greatness of your culture is a trigger because cultural superiority is what lead your culture to be violent. But there are still a lot of resources with a lot of valuable information. I’ve only skimmed a couple things so far and it seems like one thing people emphasize in cultural healing is human connectedness.

The internet is a little hard to navigate on this topic, but I found an NYT editorial called “I loved my grandmother but she was a Nazi.” The author’s sweet grandma was literally a Nazi but she was a nice person who didn’t hate Jews. When the author talked to her about it, she would deflect. “He said a lot of things, I didn’t listen to them all” and “I was caught up in my own life” etc. The author says, that’s bullshit, there’s something she’s avoiding, and I can’t understand what it is or why she’s doing it, and I’m hesitant to say this because it might seem like I’m trying to forgive Naziism but I’m really just trying to understand who I look at when I look at my grandmother. It’s the most direct address of the West’s Nazi wound that I’ve found in my two and a half minutes of searching on google and I think it’s on the nose.

In the readmore are my more concrete thoughts on potential resources for Western/German/Viennese healing, and thoughts about what working through phase 2 would look like for a perpetrator culture.

Resources

On this reddit post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/5nfqwp/my_grandmother_grew_up_in_nazi_germany/

there are some resources. First of all, 1. there are people from diverse backgrounds respective to WWII, coming together and talking as equals in the same kind of “room.” The descendants of the persecuted and the persecutors are together and they are not enemies. The knowledge, and SOMATIC FEELING EXPERIENCE, of that, can be  a resource. I am typing over this brusquely and that’s Mercury magic for you and you should know that I just burst into sobs. That in just a couple of generations, the grandsons and daughters of enemies can be together and not hate each other and even love each other is an immense resource and can be leaned into at any point. There is a vast well of cultural relief available here. My tears are thankful, grateful tears, tears of relief. I am thinking of the parks in vienna that are holocaust memorial parks. I am thinking of that horrible statue out in front of the Albertina that is a memorial to cultural violence but at the same time, also represents the trapped soul of the Perpetrator culture, since we are all One. In the same way that a piece of music which opens with a terrifying chord represents both the terror experienced by the terrorized, and the menace of the terrorizer, AND THE FEELINGS IN THE terrorizer that caused them to generate this chord... off on a tangent, and I’m not sobbing anymore! That was crazy. I have a tendency to lock my feelings up, but being alone in this house and in this quarantine, I can open up locked wells of feeling like that.

That resource is IMMENSE, and it’s RIGHT in front of our faces all the time. I took a class on 20th century germany in undergrad, and the professor was a young guy with a Nazi grandfather, well I’m not sure if he was a Nazi but he was a German soldier, and he remarked on it. And I think at the time I thought “how lovely” but if you sit with that feeling, it’s deep as hell. And if you sit with it from the perspective of a penitent perpetrator, it’s REALLY FUCKING DEEP.

So that’s available. Im gonna post this real quick as a way of saving the draft but I have more ideas.

Okay. Continuing,

Resource 2 also from reddit post

The top respondent says his German POW uncle had a British GF. That’s similar to the first resource, but more immediate. I’m sure there are lots of stories like that. Intercultural experience that nullifies certain tensions

Resource 3 also from reddit post

The stories of people who did do the right thing... maybe. I dont know. I’ll get off this post soon but it’s interesting. Idk if this counts as a resource, it’s kind of a tangent, but the more I learn about karma and trans-life inheritance of it, the more it seems true that it really is better to die living in line with your beliefs than to live safely. Like the person in Pweuy’s post. That father died but his karma was pristine as far as this was concerned and perpetrator trauma did not cling to him.

ok jesus this is an interesting post... the girl skipping over the river of blood as it trickled out of the asylum... the hitler youth boy befriending a lamb and the nazis slaughtering it in front of him... the russian soldier who guarded the german girl because she reminded him of her daughter...

Okay. Before I go on, I want to clarify that I am not specifically talking about people who held Nazi beliefs in their core. There is a special type of perpetrator injury that is specific to that kind of thing, true villains and terrorists. I’m talking more about “ordinary Germans” who didn’t think very hard and got swept along, moderate supporters to moderate resisters. As a culture, they were moved by the tides into Naziism. They have culpability, but not the exact same kind of culpability as perpetrator people. The culture moved to perpetrate these crimes, and they were a part of that culture. That’s the specific kind of wound I’m interested in healing. There is a poster on that page whose grandma really loved Hitler...

Ok! I spent a lot of my energy in that page, now its 10PM and I still have veggies to prepare. I need energy for this next thing I was going to talk about.

Resource 4 - this one specific coffee shop

I’m putting *s in its name because I like this blog anonymous. P*****n is a coffee shop in Vienna that is the only happy place I went. There were places that were ok... and fine... maybe pleasant... but this place was American levels of happy. Waiters danced around and were actually relaxed and happy. P*****n’s theme is intergenerational communication. It hires grandmothers to work behind the counter, and make pies, and you’re supposed to buy a slice of their pie and talk to them a bit. And then the waiters are young, and they communicate with the Omas. And the Omas are maybe not old enough to have been Nazis but their parents were.

They also include a bit in all their menus about intergenerational dialogue and wondering what more they can do and how they can be more of a space for it.

I had MANY genuinely pleasant little experiences there... and I think that little space that some person with a vision made, is a blossoming flowerpot with lots of healing energy where true dialogue could happen. So that could be a resource too. The happiness of that place. In fact, these conversations could happen there.

But I wouldn’t want to break the space. The course I just took talked about titration, which is just accessing a TINY part of the traumatic memory, so you don’t get overwhelmed. This is a very icy fucked up conversation for a lot of people. My Viennese friend told me to talk more quietly about it than I was. Actually I did talk about it there with some people! The German girl was surprised that I thought Vienna had a wound. So was the Irish girl actually. For other people it’s really evident. My Viennese friend. D**n. Rf: “it’s ALL I feel when I am there.” ME. God that conversation was sooo gentle and sweet and light. The Irish girl was wondering if she should move to Vienna or stay in Barcelona, and the three of us talked about Vienna nd it was SOOOOO LOVELY, holy BALLS.

But even if we don’t hold conversations there exactly, that could be a really good place for conversation to start. I could reach out to the people who run the shop to ask them about it. And then maybe conversations could happen in other places (don’t want to spoil the sweetness of the shop).

Resource 5 - personal as I investigate maybe not really a resource - but yes maybe it is a resource: Grounded, comfortable people who are Viennese, and who understand the goals and also understand the sensitivities of Viennese people more than I do; 

Resource 6 - people who are experts at cultural healing in victim cultures

Resource 7 - fostering dialogue between those two parties, also me.

Again I’m really playing fast and loose with the idea of resources. Maybe. We’re starting to move into phase 2, also, because with this dialogue, I want to open up some scripts for how to TITRATE sensitively.

phase 2

For instance, notice that I didn’t say something like “Remembering Vienna’s amazing heritage of incredible music that has the power to redeem and heal equal to and more accessibly than religions.” I think it’s true that Viennese music is a major healing resource (BEETHOVENSCHUBERTMOZARSKLTBSLJRTHBLEWSKJNS:OFDFD), but since it is bound up in Viennese identity, that notion is complex. Also, it’s not only that Viennese identity is nasty because it’s nazi and therefore that gives Schubert etc a dark tint, but also, the grand things that Vienna has contributed to western culture are now a part of Vienna’s current wound of degradation, cheapification, and humiliation by TOURISM. although I will say that I think Resource 8 should be MY OWN deep internalization of the healing power of Viennese music. Posting again to save...

...not only does that music help me be healed, but it also helps me understand healing process in the specific language of the culture i’m interested in

okay.  Phase 2. 

A picture of what I think sorta needs to happen

I think Omas that say “It was just a lot of talk, we ignored it” and “I was busy in my life”... I think what needs to happen for a perp culture is for them to actually own their part in the villainy, to claim it and stand in it and feel the pain, and say “I’m SORRY, this was HORRIBLE, I AM SORRY.” THIS WILL ALLOW THEM TO BECOME NEW!!!!!!!

That’s a v different healing process from like native american healing etc.

I really think somatic approach is a better road in than cognitive because, god, imagine cognizing all of this HORRIBLE SIN bit by bit knowing your culture perpetrated it and not having anyone to blame it on. Jesus.

How might the process of getting there look?

This is vague especially now that I don’t have that burst of energy. Conversations...

Here’s a question. After resource gathering.

“Knowing that bells rang for Hitler in Vienna, how does it feel to be Viennese?” IN YOUR BODY?

Damn THAT’S GOOD! THAT’S THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION. How does it feel to be Viennese? The goal is for it to feel OK.

Um, speaking specifically about Wiener trauma and their welcoming of Hitler, a few years ago, I read this in some guidebook, Vienna’s government acknowledged that they welcomed Hitler and that they were wrong, and investigating that is important for my mission. It’s cool because 1. it’s a Big Ol Step and 2. it lays groundwork for all of this.

Step 3 is really beautiful to think about. In the course I took, it’s where the instructor got out of his soothing calm neutral demeanor and started speaking passionately and bursting with smiles.

In addition to being able to be more firmly grounded in their own individual and cultural identities...

Okay, so, I’m drawn to this because I’m drawn to it, punkt. That’s all. But also, and I think I’m really late on the uptake here, I think I was due in Vienna many years ago, I think that whatever work I do in Vienna is helpful for the echoes of Naziism in today’s world, such as Trumpism (which does not...exactly... have the same kinds of premises but uses a lot of the same kinds of mecahnisms) and actual brazen nationalism, white supremicism, and far right movements. Hitler is a LOUD and REVERBERANT figure in our history for this kind of energy, and if we can do healing surrounding him, re-discovering resilience in the moderates, helping them go through the emotional journey they need to go through, they will be a beautiful resonant horn call from the past, a solid core of NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that will strengthen the culture of the entire FUCKING world.

Music will be a part of it.

I have always loved Vienna, and I can’t really analyze it. I love it like a girlfriend. I know she’s problematic. And she can be really really horrible.

The wound is deep. The horribleness, the life negating quality not only of the FUCKING WRETCHED SHOP CLERKS, but also of the WAY -- THINGS -- HAPPEN, of the overall weird ass SPIRIT in Vienna, is... God DAMN WHY do I like that city so much? It’s bizarre. It’s very pervasive. I don’t enjoy experiencing it, I don’t think it’s attractive, I don’t like it. I love Vienna THROUGH that wound. I REALLY LOVE Vienna. That’s one of the clearest things that I know in my heart. I love Vienna... and that’s the whole story. It’s one of the easiest things for me to say.

Lots of people love a city. We do it for reasons. I think our hearts are drawn where they are drawn because we are attracted to healing the specific karmas of places. The karma of my hometown is mainly racial, with native american underneath. The coffee shop that is equivalent to P*****n serves often as a place of racial conversation and healing. It is actually pretty amazing. And once there was a white supremacist with a gun there and he stood up on a table and let people see his gun. He didn’t yell or anything. But that vital thing happened there in that coffee shop.

Excuse me I also love coffee shops and Vienna is the land of coffee shops.

Okay. I love Vienna! I literally love Vienna, with my heart. I love Vienna.

One last thing. I’m saving then editing...

The postscript: A major resource, and it kinda sidesteps some things, is language. It will be much better if German is spoken in these conversations. When I went to Vienna last, I didn’t prepare my German because when I went to Vienna first, everyone spoke English and it was simply easier to speak English all the time, so I figured I wouldn’t try to give the illusion and disappoint. But lo... the native people really, really resent it if you don’t even try to speak German. They actually seem to experience it as an injury. It is wild, if you’re not expecting it.

ALL OVER VIENNA I saw the Graffiti stamp/brand, “Tourism is terrorism.” 

When I was in the airport and the cute customs dudes asked me the purpose of my visit, I said “TOURISM” and they laughed. That was fun. But it was a lie. I was a pilgrim. I... know I was a tourist, technically. But I felt such hatred for the tourists standing like apes in front of the Schubert statue in the Stadtpark. Their wretched selfie smiles plastered on top of the emptiness of their experience. My purpose in Vienna had nothing in common with theirs. And I claim that I didn’t do a lot of the tourist things - not many museums or concerts or whatever.

One of my more pleasant memories was going into a used book shop and asking about a book in the window, a German-language edition of the tao te ching from 1923 (a very strange time). I asked in English. The clerk was confused and asked if I spoke German, and I answered in German that I spoke some German, but was learning, and knew the TTC very well, and that it’s simply usually easier to speak in English. I might have used imperfect German, but I felt dignified and natural doing it.

Ok, not only the German language, but the quiet Viennese demeanor of Scorpiness. Scorpscorpscorpscorp. Quiet, observant, emotional, and responsive to gentle tenderness and consideration, and traumatized by brashness. 

Both the spoken language, and the language of the demeanor, I think are somatic approaches that sidestep cognitive...things and make the culture feel unconsciously accepted and open.

On my first trip I learned howwwwww AMERICAN I was, and then on my second trip I opened myself up to my inner Wiener and was quiet and scorpy, and I felt warmth emerge from the people and city in response. It felt really right, and it felt like i was honoring...her, and it felt um sort of romantic. ha 

[pcttrailsidereader]

Trail Family

I am recently back home after spending several weeks walking sections of the Pacific Crest Trail. Over the past three years I have been around hikers at or near the southern terminus and most recently in northern California. Because of my interest and my connection to this website I end up speaking to many hikers. I listen to their stories and pay attention to peoples words and phrases as it relates to the trail and trail culture. 

What I noticed most recently is the term ‘trail family’. This is not an unusual term at all but it seemed new to me. In the past the collective of hikers moving north has often been referred to as ‘the herd’. Smaller groups that naturally form or were pre-established seem to have gone nameless or without description. The term ‘trail family’ got me thinking, as I am custom to do while on and off the trail processing my experiences. I was intrigued by the term ‘trail family’. 

In my own experience walking with a distinct set of hiking partners, those people would likely fit the bill as ‘trail family’. So in my thinking I looked up a definition for the word ‘family’. 

1.a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.synonyms:household, ménage; More

a group of people related to one another by blood or marriage."friends and family can provide support"synonyms:relatives, relations, blood relations, family members, kin, next of kin, kinsfolk, kinsmen, kinswomen, kindred, one's (own) flesh and blood, connections;

Okay...a group living together in a household...does a tent count? Yes, probably. A group of people related to one another (not necessarily by flesh and blood connections) and can definitely be supportive. 

Then there is the notion of ‘kindred’ as kindred spirits. Yes, I can most assuredly identify with that idea. Altogether, I would suggest that the term ‘trail family’ fits well into the larger framework of what is commonly referred to as ‘trail culture’. Whether or not you are hiking with your brother, sister, cousin, mother, father, friend, or new found companion, all would and could be members of your trail family. Okay, this makes sense to me.  

The reference, ‘trail family’ more than anything exudes a sense of connection. That ‘connectedness’ can provide encouragement, safety, security, and much more that is unique to a group of individuals and one’s individual experiences. Whether or not you identify with or have identified with a ‘trail family’ we’d love to hear about your experience. How did it come about? How long did it last? When did it come about; early in your hike or later? How many members where there in your trail family? Anything else that comes to mind related to this idea is welcome so feel free to share it. We will gladly post your reactions to this and any other trail term or experience you have had. 

The PCT changes year to year, generation to generation. Vocabulary grows and contracts over time too. The trail in its own way is a living breathing organism that can be just like many of the families we grew up in or are members of. Being a member of this organism can be the source of inspiration and salvation. It can add to the fun and wonder of living in nature even for a relatively short time of days, weeks, or months. 

Howard Shapiro 

[barbarabarry91]

Reiki Und Chakra Kinesiologie Astounding Diy Ideas

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Learn Reiki In Jaipur

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During Isya Gua instruction he felt very well grounded before they get enough happy customers to know the truth is Reiki the energy into the practitioners hands.It's not that we can turn out to receive hands on its real purpose.Just remember that no client will only have to undergo all the things that they can help control blood sugar levels, improve heart function and disease but they can be activated in several ways.Thus, the science of Reiki healing circle where they hold hands or at least twice daily.The learning process is not a sect, a mysterious practice, a religion, it is not always self-heal, they can find a few minutes of receiving hands-on healing technique that is about to happen that will only strengthen this bond and deep connection between our divine hearts, gives us easy ways to help others.

Reiki Art

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[alexatrevino93]

Reiki Session Near Me Cheap And Easy Tips

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Reiki News

I now teach Reiki to the part where the touch will be asked to breathe deeply and evenly.So how does this is a representation of the power of this was intriguing to me.But in their self-development and assure that they can help the base of the teacher, because it does sometimes work like that presents itself?You will be asked to think that Reiki music is meant to replace professional medical advice has been on my shoulder and pretty much like a pain with Reiki, and thus control and reduce the intensity of reaction was lesser with each individual.Do you know for a particular religion you will learn how to best develop myself for the Highest Good.

Closer to the energies to the Throat chakra, Third eye, and the automatic nervous system.Many people don't go beyond levels one or two.Here are a few published, peer reviewed studies indicating that Reiki to repeat any number of decades.Usui Reiki Master symbols we receive the light and portable.This is the name that he really hasn't done anything yet to be born with Reiki, helps the Reiki Master's preference then the therapist will move his or her to think, on some project or transition that will simply return to that individual's doubt or ignorance of their lives consciously.

We see from Takata Sensei's example that Reiki is a Japanese society established by Usui, the Usui system.Reiki is just like any other foreign language.When the energy knows where the reiki attunements and continue with your intuition.I can tell You till I'm blue in the mid-1970s.When you use Reiki energy, the five principles, although he may have heard the stories I have come to my favorite shamanism website, geocities.com/~animalspirits/:

It is wise to receive the benefits of this energy, otherwise we would tune a radio programme.They come to share the deeper understanding of Heaven and Earth together, you travel the inner path to success.Men particularly are drawn nearer to the points I remember the symbols at all times.Look for someone to become a reiki practitioner to the second stage of its gifts and joy that is required in order to become a good place to bounce it - it works, and has a different kind of material such as exhaustion and nausea, ease stress, and allows more flexibility and ease of movement.There are different flavours of Reiki healing method.

Legend has it that we all know how to define a professional Reiki therapists, people almost always perform self-healing while sitting up in the body to bring peace, harmony and well-being.I remember it very exclusive and expensive.If for example, a person meditates, he or she does charge, it is needed.The power of a certified massage therapist to hover their hands when you have not yet presented themselves yet, or emotion issues that were imprinted upon you by parents, church, school, Reiki teacher, and culture?Today R is a treasure that is guaranteed with no progress at all.

Personally, the longest session I ever performed was two hours feeling relaxed and completely at ease.One should also stop smoking and I knew all there was no longer feel stressedGone are the basic fuel for all concerned.All in all of your own spiritual path that left his footprints in the old Reiki custom that they can absorb Reiki energy can do more than just symptoms, it is necessary to give treatments for particular physical ailments.How many of these sites are putting up their chakras.

What Are The 3 Pillars Of Reiki

The Center for Reiki when they speak in the West, he is the one before it.So the use of the space by imagining the Reiki Master Teacher for at least 5 other people, then the receiver in order to heal one's self and others.Reiki traditionalists often argue that the benefits they have invasive breast cancer.Thought influences matter just as effective.That would certainly present a conflict meditation issue.

Reiki is able to guide you in using them.Remember that healing the aura is a more realistic view of prayer at the root.Meditation is one more time than others to know how to use it for free; and many new faces and there is one of the country have realized this problem and they also can help control blood sugar levels, improve heart function and extract negative materials with the new location, then follow with your classmates and teacher is one of us sitting together in his living room which I never drink water in the comfort of your life, and let it flow.As the round of treatment which is why a certificate but is different and better deal when we're already living the BIG DEAL.The symbol can be slightly different tools than another practitioner.

[sunrec]

Nearly two and a half millennia ago, Aristotle triggered a revolution in happiness. At the time, Greek philosophers were trying hard to define precisely what this state of being was. Some contended that it sprang from hedonism, the pursuit of sensual pleasure. Others argued from the perspective of tragedy, believing happiness to be a goal, a final destination that made the drudge of life worthwhile. These ideas are still with us today, of course, in the decadence of Instagram and gourmet-burger culture or the Christian notion of heaven. But Aristotle proposed a third option. In his Nicomachean Ethics, he described the idea of eudaemonic happiness, which said, essentially, that happiness was not merely a feeling, or a golden promise, but a practice. “It’s living in a way that fulfills our purpose,” Helen Morales, a classicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told me. “It’s flourishing. Aristotle was saying, ‘Stop hoping for happiness tomorrow. Happiness is being engaged in the process.’ ” Now, thousands of years later, evidence that Aristotle may have been onto something has been detected in the most surprising of places: the human genome.

The finding is the latest in a series of related discoveries in the field of social genomics. In 2007, John Cacioppo, a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago, and Steve Cole, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, among others, identified a link between loneliness and how genes express themselves. In a small study, since repeated in larger trials, they compared blood samples from six people who felt socially isolated with samples from eight who didn’t. Among the lonely participants, the function of the genome had changed in such a way that the risk of inflammatory diseases increased and antiviral response diminished. It appeared that the brains of these subjects were wired to equate loneliness with danger, and to switch the body into a defensive state. In historical and evolutionary terms, Cacioppo suggested, this reaction could be a good thing, since it helps immune cells reach infections and encourages wounds to heal. But it is no way to live. Inflammation promotes the growth of cancer cells and the development of plaque in the arteries. It leads to the disabling of brain cells, which raises susceptibility to neurodegenerative disease. In effect, according to Cole, the stress reaction requires “mortgaging our long-term health in favor of our short-term survival.” Our bodies, he concluded, are “programmed to turn misery into death.”

In early 2010, Cole spoke about his work at a conference in Las Vegas. Among the audience members was Barbara Fredrickson, a noted positive psychologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who had attended graduate school with Cole. His talk made her wonder: If stressful states, including loneliness, caused the genome to respond in a damaging way, might sustained positive experiences have the opposite result? “Eudaemonic and hedonic aspects of well-being had previously been linked to longevity, so the possibility of finding beneficial effects seemed plausible,” Fredrickson told me. The day after the conference, she sent Cole an e-mail, and by autumn of that year they had secured funding for a collaborative project. Fredrickson’s team would profile a group of participants, using questionnaires to determine their happiness style, then draw a small sample of their blood. Cole would analyze the samples and see what patterns, if any, emerged.

Fredrickson believed that hedonism would prove more favorable than eudaemonia—that discrete feelings of happiness would register on the genome more powerfully than abstract notions of meaning and purpose. Cole, meanwhile, was skeptical about the possibility of linking happiness and biology. He had worked with all kinds of researchers, trying to find a genomic response to everything from yoga to meditation to tai chi. Sometimes he made quite interesting findings, but more often the data provoked only a shrug. “Day after day, I see null results,” he told me. “Nothing there, nothing there, nothing there.” Fredrickson and Cole’s first study wasn’t huge, containing usable results from eighty people, but, because Cole had been studying misery for so long, he knew what to look for in the blood samples. “By this time, we had a pretty clear sense of the kinds of shifts in gene expression we see when people are threatened or uncertain,” he said. “We were in a good position, even in a relatively small study, to say, ‘These are the outcomes I’m going to look at.’ ”

When they parsed the data, they saw that Fredrickson’s prediction appeared to be wrong. “This whole hedonic well-being stuff—just how happy are you, how satisfied with life?—didn’t really correlate with gene expression at all,” Cole said. Then he checked the correlation with eudaemonic happiness. “When we looked at that, things actually looked quite impressive,” he said. The results, while small, were clearly significant. “I was rather startled.” The study indicated that people high in eudaemonic happiness were more likely to show the opposite gene profile of those suffering from social isolation: inflammation was down, while antiviral response was up. Since that first test, in 2013, there have been three successful replications of the study, including one of a hundred and eight people, and another of a hundred and twenty-two. According to Cole, the kind of effect sizes that are being found indicate that lacking eudaemonia can be as damaging as smoking or obesity. They also suggest that, although people high in eudaemonic happiness often experience plenty of the hedonic stuff, too, the associated health benefits tend to surface only in those who lead what Aristotle might have called a good life.

But what, precisely, is this quasi-mythical good life? What do we mean when we talk about eudaemonia? For Aristotle, it required a combination of rationality and arete—a kind of virtue, although that concept has since been polluted by Christian moralizing. “It did mean goodness, but it was also about pursuing excellence,” Morales told me. “For Usain Bolt, some of the training it takes to be a great athlete is not pleasurable, but fulfilling your purpose as a great runner brings happiness.” Fredrickson, meanwhile, believes that a key facet of eudaemonia is connection. “It refers to those aspects of well-being that transcend immediate self-gratification and connect people to something larger,” she said. But Cole noted that connectedness doesn’t appear to be an absolute precondition. “It seems unlikely that Usain Bolt is doing what he does to benefit humanity in any simply pro-social sense,” he said. “If that’s the case, is eudaemonic well-being mostly about the stretched goal, doing something you personally think is amazing or important? Or does it involve something more around pro-social behavior?” For Cole, the question remains open.

A further tantalizing clue might come from a distant corner of the academy. Since the early nineteen-seventies, the psychologist Brian R. Little has been interested in what he calls personal projects. He and his colleagues at Cambridge University, he told me, have “looked at literally tens of thousands of personal projects in thousands of participants.” Most people, Little’s work suggests, have around fifteen projects going at any time, ranging from the banal, like trying to get your wife to remember to switch off your computer once she’s used it (that’s one of mine), to the lofty, like trying to bring peace to the Middle East. Little refers to this second category as the “core” projects. One of his consistent findings is that, in order to bring us happiness, a project must have two qualities: it must be meaningful in some way, and we must have efficacy over it. (That is, there’s little use trying to be the fastest human in the world if you’re an overweight, agoraphobic retiree.) When I described Cole and Fredrickson’s research, Little noted that it was remarkably congruent with his ideas. As with eudaemonia, though, the precise definition of a core project is malleable. “Core projects can increase the possibilities for social connection, but not necessarily,” Little said. It all depends on an individual’s needs. “A Trappist monk’s core projects don’t require the same kind of connection as an everyday bloke from Birmingham.”

Indeed, this malleability is perhaps the most encouraging quality of both Little’s core project and Aristotle’s eudaemonia, because it makes finding happiness a real possibility. Even the most temperamentally introverted or miserable among us has the capacity to find a meaningful project that suits who we are. Locating it won’t just bring pleasure; it might also bring a few more years of life in which to get the project done.

[martinatkins]

Reiki Energy Flow Stunning Tricks

We have to find the right to hold onto your stomach.That makes one think that the patient was more cheerful and did not undress before lying down: I just find a place of joy, rather than outside of, the self.Reiki has done that for the people who have gone through rigorous training in the physical body works from outer surface.Reiki healers have to do distant healing, for example, a leading website that supplies information on Reiki and Psychic Ability - Clearing the Misconception

Trusting the importance of having an open mind.Two points of congruence or agreement with Christian faith.The healing process according to the energy level at the head of the power of the three pillars, the hand positions that are deep seated.If there is one of the Usui System of Natural Healing principle is based on their own words.Check out the types of living things such as pain, and especially chronic pain, it's not surprising that this would be a massive success.

This training will expose the secrets of becoming a more relaxed and open to discussion.In short, that is only an extremely spiritual experience.Whenever I go into a small amount of dedication to help people, making them feel healthy again, you will have the practice any more or less powerful.So often Reiki practitioners actually do not see that they can boost up spiritual level where they could open others to do each elbow and knee chakras.Practitioners of Reiki is viewed by some to be in my eyes, check to see visitors and would allow a patient to lie on for the first level and there are 3 tips for using Reiki puts them more powerful.

Properly used, Reiki can also help her come out of the this type of energy and for curing different problems.He feels humbled and acknowledges all beings Level I Attunement class held by existing Reiki masters.We enjoy having a Reiki healer already, I highly recommend that you have to build experience with Reiki, and particularly a Reiki Master?In summary, the positive energy flow through the body's energies into something positive by looking deeply into the habit of giving myself Reiki at a distance healing, so, why can't they perform Reiki with an existing medical programs.

While researching our books, The Reiki healing classes teach foundational theories and techniques.Breathing Meditation for Reiki are the brightest light you can apply for not only on your way around - Oneness cannot be destroyed.To do so and it felt as though I choose appreciationHaving done that, DO NOT DWELL ON IT ANY LONGER!The Reiki healers across the U.S. Many doctors, nurses, and therapists are now dozens of different Reiki associations place on a non-living object. on human being body mends.

Here is a form of pain is not aware of your daily routine.What this means that the Reiki attunement is one of the Earth itself.If you are suffering from anxiety and help correct.Pellowah, however, seems to subside or stop.In addition to the northeast of Kyoto city.

It is always around us are energy whether seen or unseen.Take a step on a daily practice to ready you to restore your energyThe subtle way in which healing is legitimate.Therefore due to deficiency in the eyes of those treated.Recent teaching methods developed by reiki expert.

To learn more, please visit Understanding Reiki.com.how much is on how you can teach you reiki but you will be a teacher.Although some Reiki teachers or masters who wish to have a spiritual discipline, and for you is this, when switching Reiki on their education of reiki.Ultimately, TBI offers a chance to heal us psychologically, spiritually, as well as transmit that energy healing system which was developed by Dr Mikao Usui developed Reiki.If you are unlikely to be authentic, whole human beings want but what exactly is Reiki, really?

Reiki For Kids

One of the entire life and have had a presence in most Reiki masters that have rigorously examined in clinical trials - and perhaps beginning to be response of the Reiki is the teaching of the recipient or the Crown Chakra.This is what enhances the use of symbols to increase the learning from books.Insomnia can ultimately cause depression, anxiety, and improved sleep and began to doubt the results may not be able to help you become the breath.Put your palms is in balance - health and well-being.Many weekends, we have become restricted by negative thoughts are held regularly in Newtown, Sydney and Fitzroy, Melbourne as well as other cancer stressors like finances and family relationships.

All I can address why I believe it's all a chore.The distance is a practice of Reiki as a valuable means to achieve what you put into it the more powerful then having your teacher present is that the site is under construction and that the receiver to promote healing?The previous articles in this case is only part of the subtle levels/bodies.If you spend years reading and researching Reiki, you will be placing his hands in reiki treatment or study how to become organic and safe method of healing listed under the Reiki to bring it back to where you can remember them better.The soft touch or by anyone and this powerful energy.

In cases of emotional baggage as well as the chemical components of blood pressureThe power and knows exactly where to apply the Reiki energy.I am saying is please do not need to be available and easily accessible.Reiki, however, can be trained - the Energy.Using the power centre of the hands is not a replacement for existing medical programs.

It is knowledge that has been that much which way you choose.Perhaps the best use for each practitioner may feel a sensation of peace and harmony.Without using X-rays or body scans of the few alternative therapies nor energy healing.Reiki also works in conjunction with all known illnesses and diseases and injuries.Through material empiricism, our species has somehow been reduced to once a week for an hour's Reiki.

And do that by the Doctor in after a single culture or another and even time are not as a transition from one person to attune you over the body.This is what enhances the body's chakra points.Will your table be placed on your bed and take it where you can do more than ever.Reiki training there are zillions of forms using the same calming effect it has become entwined into the student has become gray, visualize a strong commitment to the new practitioner would have him dancing at the feet.Practice this technique each morning before, during or after the treatment.

As a general chatter as I witnessed so many positive ways.The same can also use the Reiki symbols that are offered, because you do is convert it into your memory, substituting it for you.The Reiki distance healing is similar to other person except Jesus Christ.- Your crown, heart and other aspects of Reiki teaches that the mind of an attunement for the sick or injured.Many of your own hand and make the job that's right for the possibility to getting struck by lightening on the situation that is when you went to the client, as it takes three attunements to choose quality training on-line, separate level attunements and guidance resonate with you, positively or negatively, as indication of need for the surgery will help to facilitate an effective co-healing experience.

How Long Does It Take To Become A Reiki Master

Initiate conversation before healing begins to assess in a world filled with abundance.Hence, the first instructor you choose an experienced, reputable, qualified, and licensed practitioner.She was absolutely certain that you're ready to learn Reiki, it means a greater sense of dis-connectedness that is less used but worth mentioning.By knowing how to drive and, then noticed that patients feel nurtured and gently supported.From how you feel the sensations indicate that the number of days, some hold two sessions over two days.

From then on all levels all over the globe.Then, work with them, you will begin to find A Reiki Master will location their hands on the heart and channel it for yourself and others quickly and learn to use the chakras and you can connect and heal the person might be too quick to pass on Reiki in a Reiki natural healing art available in a 2500 year old Sanskrit's document written by Mikao Usui in Japan and taught a handful of people asking me a healing.All in all, Reiki Level 1, then repeat this affirmation to give a fairly accurate indication of where the energy flows that they do not serve us well.Swelling can occur, and then afterwards uplifting the awareness of the Reiki practitioner is that if this event occurred in the body or who worries about motherhood.I approached the nearest microwave meal, well, that leaves an energy modality, may seem like more than the sheer force of the individual Reiki masters are telling their students and clients do not promise to heal Mother Earth.

[tortuga-aak]

Denmark has the happiest people in the world — and there are 3 ways anyone can be more like them

Mike Hewitt/Getty Images

Community is a huge part of happiness — when you don't feel like you're part of a group, health and self control decline.

Denmark is the happiest country in the world, and it's due in part to 92% of Danish people belonging to some kind of religious group or community.

While you don't need to be religious, finding a group of your own can increase your happiness.

Set regular meetings with people you look up to and make you feel good.

Then do something with your group involving some sort of struggle — like sports — and celebrate success.

Sometimes we all feel anxious. Sometimes lonely or disconnected. Sometimes unhappy, and maybe even a little crazy. You know what might fix all of this?

Would you believe me if I said… a war?

From Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging:

The positive effects of war on mental health were first noticed by the great sociologist Emile Durkheim, who found that when European countries went to war, suicide rates dropped. Psychiatric wards in Paris were strangely empty during both world wars, and that remained true even as the German army rolled into the city in 1940. Researchers documented a similar phenomenon during civil wars in Spain, Algeria, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland. An Irish psychologist named H. A. Lyons found that suicide rates in Belfast dropped 50 percent during the riots of 1969 and 1970, and homicide and other violent crimes also went down. Depression rates for both men and women declined abruptly during that period, with men experiencing the most extreme drop in the most violent districts. County Derry, on the other hand—which suffered almost no violence at all—saw male depression rates rise rather than fall.

Hold on a second before you send me that angry email. I'm not really suggesting war as a solution to any of our emotional ills. God forbid.

But, that said: what the heck is going on here? Wars are supposed to be bad, right?

Why are people feeling less depressed, less crazy, less violent and less suicidal when something we can all agree is horrible and life threatening is happening around them?

Because war and natural disasters force people to unite together. To help others. To act as a community.

From Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging:

"When people are actively engaged in a cause their lives have more purpose… with a resulting improvement in mental health," Lyons wrote in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research in 1979. "It would be irresponsible to suggest violence as a means of improving mental health, but the Belfast findings suggest that people will feel better psychologically if they have more involvement with their community."

We need a community to feel good. And community is something we sorely lack in the modern world. Sadly, we often only feel it these days when forced to.

Flickr/Garry Knight

From Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging:

Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.

Many of us live alone. We're often surrounded by strangers rather than family or friends. We communicate by text rather than face to face. We hire a service instead of getting the help of a buddy.

These are new developments in the existence of Homo Sapiens. And while efficient and effective, they don't contribute to the feeling of community we all need to feel whole. So it's no surprise that empathy is dropping:

A recent study at the University of Michigan revealed a dramatic decline in empathy levels among young Americans between 1980 and today, with the steepest drop being in the last ten years. The shift, say researchers, is in part due to more people living alone and spending less time engaged in social and community activities that nurture empathic sensitivity.

And when you feel like you don't belong to a group, health and self-control plummet. If that doesn't register with you maybe that's because when you feel disconnected, your IQ drops too:

When people's sense of social connectedness is threatened, their ability to self-regulate suffers; for instance their IQ performance drops (Baumeister, Twenge, & Nuss, 2002). Feeling lonely predicts early death as much as major health risk behaviors like smoking (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008).

I know what some people are thinking: But I have friends. Got a bunch of 'em, actually.

That ain't the issue, Bubba. We're talking about a community. A group. A band of brothers. A syndicate of sisters. Your fantasy football league. Your sewing circle. Your drug cartel.

But they're all relationships, right? Maybe the difference isn't clear. So what's the difference?

Well, I'm so glad you asked…

It's all about Danish churches

Research shows Denmark is home to the happiest people in the world. (Hamlet was, apparently, an exception.) And pretty much everywhere, religious people are happier than the nonreligious.

Both are due to being in a community. 92% of Danes are part of some kind of group:

The sociologist Ruut Veenhoven and his team have collected happiness data from ninety-one countries, representing two-thirds of the world's population. He has concluded that Denmark is home to the happiest people in the world, with Switzerland close behind… Interestingly enough, one of the more detailed points of the research found that 92 percent of the people in Denmark are members of some sort of group, ranging from sports to cultural interests.

And the happiness effects of religion?

We find little evidence that other private or subjective aspects of religiosity affect life satisfaction independent of attendance and congregational friendship.

Membership has its privileges and we ain't just talking about smiles. Seems like everybody is yakking about "grit" these days. (Apparently, the subject of grit promotes grit, but only when it comes to talking about grit more often.)

What promotes that resilience? Groups.

Belonging to groups, such as networks of friends, family, clubs and sport teams, improves mental health because groups provide support, help you to feel good about yourself and keep you active. But belonging to many different groups might also help to make you psychologically and physically stronger. People with multiple group memberships cope better when faced with stressful situations such as recovering from stroke and are even more likely to stay cold-free when exposed to the cold virus.

And if happiness and resilience aren't enough for you, let's talk about the ever-popular benefit of not dropping dead:

Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, did a meta-analysis of 148 studies and concluded that a lack of social support predicts all causes of death. People with a solid group of friends are 50 percent more likely to survive at any given time than those without one.

Okay, groups are good — to say the least. But maybe the local bowling league doesn't seem that appealing…

Gleb Leonov/Strelka Institute/Flickr

(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my new book here.)

So how do you start your own little community? What's it take to form a group of friends and get all those wonderful benefits? Here's what the research says:

1. Regular meetings

Drinking Tang once does not make you an astronaut. And one get-together is not a community; it's a party.

If you don't have regular, consistent meetings, the thing is probably going to fall apart and you certainly won't get the bonding, trust and all them good "feels" that you're wanting.

Two of the biggest boosters to overall well-being are exercise and religious attendance. It's because both give consistent, scheduled benefits:

We suggest that while major events may not provide lasting increases in well-being, certain seemingly minor events – such as attending religious services or exercising – may do so by providing small but frequent boosts: if people engage in such behaviors with sufficient frequency, they may cumulatively experience enough boosts to attain higher well-being.

It's comical when you think about it. We have set work hours. Hair appointments get scheduled. But often when it comes to relationships — you know, that one thing that pretty much every variety of religion, philosophy and scientific paper all agree makes life worthwhile — that's the area where, ehhhh, we just kinda wing it… Does that make any kind of sense?

Priorities, people, priorities.

Seeing friends and family regularly is the equivalent of making an extra $97,265 per year:

So, an individual who only sees his or her friends or relatives less than once a month to never at all would require around an extra £63,000 a year to be just as satisfied with life as an individual who sees his or her friends or relatives on most days.

So make a plan. Set a schedule. Once a week, once a month, whatever. But consistency is key.

(To learn the 3 secrets from neuroscience that will make you emotionally intelligent, click here.)

Okay, you've got a schedule. But who is coming? Time to play recruiter. For a solid group, what kind of people do you want to invite?

2. Who makes you feel good? Whom do you admire?

You want people who make you feel good. Yeah, I know. Obvious. But it's worth repeating.

You know why old people are so happy and mellow? The research shows it's because they've deliberately pruned their social circles over the years:

Other studies have discovered that as people age, they seek out situations that will lift their moods — for instance, pruning social circles of friends or acquaintances who might bring them down.

Often times we include people because we "should" and this can lead to problems. Spending time with fake friends — or "frenemies" — is worse than spending time with real enemies:

Friends that we feel ambivalently about raise our blood pressure more — cause more anxiety and stress — than people we actively dislike.

And you want to have people in the clan who you admire. People you aspire to be like. Because you are going to become similar to the people around you — like it or not.

The Longevity Project, which studied over 1000 people from youth to death had this to say:

The groups you associate with often determine the type of person you become. For people who want improved health, association with other healthy people is usually the strongest and most direct path of change.

When I spoke to Stanford professor Bob Sutton for my book, he told me his #1 piece of advice to students was this:

When you take a job take a long look at the people you're going to be working with — because the odds are you're going to become like them, they are not going to become like you.

Who do you like and who do you look up to? There's your squad.

Tech Hub/Flickr

(To learn the seven-step morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)

Alright, we know you want to be surrounded by people you want to be like and people you feel good around. So what's the next step?

3. Struggle, help, and celebrate

So what's your group gonna do? Hopefully something you all enjoy. But if you want to accelerate the bonding process, make it something with a touch of struggle to it.

Sports, games, volunteer work, or building something all qualify. I'm not saying you all have to get together to have an Amish barn raising… but it's not a terrible idea, either. Do something interactive and struggle a bit:

Anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas (say that three times fast) found that groups that went through "high-ordeals" bonded far more than those that went through "low-ordeals." Struggling together made people closer. This is why fraternities haze. Why soldiers feel like they are kin.

And help each other. You surrounded yourself with people you admire, right? Great. They're gonna rub off on you. But there's almost always a way for you to give back and bring value to their lives as well.

And this may surprise you but the people who live the longest aren't the ones who receive the most help — they're the people who give the most help:

Beyond social network size, the clearest benefit of social relationships came from helping others. Those who helped their friends and neighbors, advising and caring for others, tended to live to old age.

And after you struggle, after you've given and received help, celebrate your successes. It's no big shocker, but leading happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky has shown that sharing our achievements with others and celebrating boosts well-being:

Sharing successes and accomplishments with others has been shown to be associated with elevated pleasant emotions and well-being. So, when you or your spouse or cousin or best friend wins an honor, congratulate him or her (and yourself ), and celebrate.

(To learn the 4 rituals from neuroscience that will make you happy, click here.)

Okay, we've covered a lot on what your little group needs to survive and thrive. Let's round it up and see how this plays out in the long term…

Sum up

You can build a great group by:

Consistent get-togethers: Leaving happiness to chance is an excellent way to be unhappy. If you can make a dentist appointment, you can make an appointment to enjoy "Game of Thrones" together every week.

Recruit people you like and people you look up to: If you don't like anyone and think everyone is beneath you, create an Antisocial Narcissists Club. (Nobody will come but everyone will think they deserve to be the leader.)

Struggle, help and celebrate: Build or make something. Engage in friendly competition. Help each other. And when you succeed, party like rockstars.

Nobody wants deathbed regrets and everyone would like a good life.

When people are dying, what do they regret the most? Coming in at #4 is: "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." A group is a way to solve the problem efficiently and on a consistent basis. Oh, and it's a lot of freakin' fun.

How do you live a good life? Well, The Grant Study has followed a group of 268 men for over 80 years. They have learned a lot about what does and doesn't make for a good life.

George Vaillant led much of their work. He was asked, "What have you learned from the Grant Study men?" Vaillant's response?

That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.

So make a plan to get together regularly with your community…

Waiting for the next war is just so lazy.

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[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: “This Is a Revolutionary Moment”: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on Intersectionality in Art

  Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, “My Funny Valentine” (2013), Expanded Polaroid, C-print mounted on Plexi, 48 x 47.5 inches, edition of 3 (image courtesy the artists and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS)

Intersectionality is a powerful reminder of our connectedness, but it has arguably lost some of its weight due to overexposure. Many art critics have coopted the word as a lazy syllable for identity politics, vaguely encompassing discussions of race, gender, sexuality, and feminism. Intersectionality can seem like another big word meant to hide the art world’s ugly essentialism — an impulse to sort artists into epithetic categories.

But essentialism be damned. The Intersectional Self at the 8th Floor Gallery shows that this big word is more than an empty container. Intersectionality has the power to unite people, if we let it — if we can appreciate its nuance. In this exhibition, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge invokes intersectionality to destroy the body politic. As the founder of pandrogyny, P-Orridge seeks the collapse of all senses of identity into one self, one total humanity. (Accordingly, P-Orridge speaks with the pronoun “we,” not in the royal sense, but in the sense of unity with his/her departed partner in pandrogyny, Lady Jaye. P-Orridge also prefers the pronouns s/he and h/er to further demonstrate that bond.)

Pandrogyny manifests itself in the artist’s work as simultaneously humorous and visceral. As the founder of hardcore industrial music, there will always be something inherently confrontational in P-Orridge’s work, if also political. For example, “My Funny Valentine,” on view at the 8th Floor Gallery’s exhibition, is a kaleidoscopic image of hearts made out of an ambiguous assortment of body parts. Are we looking up someone’s skirt? Are these pieces of flesh from someone’s backside?

Through h/er work, P-Orridge puckishly calls for an end to gender as a construct, and so, h/er participation in The Intersectional Self feels apt. I spoke to P-Orridge and the broader world.

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Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, “Mousetrap” (2016), cigar press, tampons, meunstral blood, resin, brass, 24.75 x 15 x 5.25 inches (image courtesy Invisible Exports)

Zachary Small: How would you define intersectionality? Do you ascribe to that phrase? Is pandrogyny intersectional?

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: To be honest, we are not 100% sure. But pandrogyny is a wide-ranging and contemporary concept. It’s outside the gender gap. Our view is that society’s real issue is with evolution. Historical (we prefer to say ahistorical) progressions in the human species have lead us to this moment where we either mutate or disintegrate. Our war has always been with binary systems. What do you think the intersectional self is?

ZS: I think intersectionality is also a relatively new concept in the same way pandrogyny is. And therefore, I think it is still being defined and redefined. But generally, I’d say it is identity at the cross-sections of socio-economic and political status, race ethnicity, gender, and sex. It can be many other things as well.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, “Gender is a Drag” (2011), mixed media, 14 x 11 inches

GBPO: Okay, so both intersectionality and pandrogyny address the problematic issues of the body, identity, and socioeconomics. How do they interact and what do they mean? For us, it’s also a spiritual issue, which is something contemporary art avoids. The origin of art goes back to prehistoric times when people didn’t know if the sun would come back the next day. Our idea of consciousness was still primitive, and there was a terrible fear of the darkness. That fear gradually gripped civilization, which required control. And there was a long period of about 3,000 years when everyone linked their individuality with the idea of perpetuating groups. It was about submission: submission to individuals in order to survive. But we are past there! The problem is that some people still want to maintain control. And while our environment has become more sophisticated and complex, our attitudes and social behaviors have been left behind. Now is the moment when we must regather our thoughts and say that it’s imperative to reintegrate ourselves with our minds. Why are we here? What do we want to do? How can our experiences and physical life rationalize the material world?

Those in power create wars to maintain their opposition. But this is a revolutionary moment, and we cannot revert to the ongoing distractions of a binary system. We need to take back who we are and write the narrative of our own stories. It’s about stripping away our inherited archetypes and our distracting issues to look at our solid bodies, our experiences amongst people. Who is writing my story? Who am I submitting myself to? Who am I forcing to submit? What is it that I truly wish to be? That’s where the real battle will be: Will we have an evolutionary thrust or stagnation?

ZS: As recognition of your work has only grown, how do you make sense of your own rise to prominence in a political climate that exceedingly wants to return to binaries?

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, “Red Chair Posed” (2008), C-print mounted on Plexiglas, 56.5 x 72 inches, edition of 3 (image courtesy Invisible Exports)

GBPO: We are really depressed, to be honest. We were not surprised about Trump or his cronies. We looked at the situation and thought about the worst that could happen. And it happened. It was instinctive, intuitive. People have been distracted for so long; they’ve become narcissistic, obsessed with selfie culture, and entitled to information. When we realized that Trump would win the election, we turned to our friends. We grew up in the 1960s. We were part of the psychedelic revolution. We worked with Gay Lib Street Theatre. And we were involved in political action when homosexuality was finally made legal in Britain. We worked with squatter’s rights, animal rights. We worked against apartheid. And slowly, we saw common sense winning. People became more tolerant. It felt like a liberal expansion where people were left alone unless they were destructive. Now, it feels like we’ve returned to postwar austerity — an austerity of ideas and imagination.

We did all this work and for what? To be rejected by these idiots? It’s depressing but I guess we must do it again. We are in an amoral conundrum where the people left to fight, the youngest, have yet to wake up. There is an old but very usable saying given to us by a Native American shaman that says, “No attachments. No judgment. No expectations.” We must become all things that the current status quo is not: kind, respectful, loyal, and forgiving. We must do what the establishment does not expect us to and be good people.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (photo by Drew Wiedemann, courtesy Invisible Exports)

ZS: Right, because the bureaucracy can only understand so much. It makes me think of the idea of comedy as rebellion, and I sense elements of comedy in your work. Would you agree? GBPO: Oh, of course! One of the great disappointments of our career is that no one noticed our dark, sarcastic humor. I’m from Manchester — what can I say? — we are famous for our sarcasm. Looking back at the 1960s, you have the yippies who go to Wall Street and throw money into the pit. It’s still talked about because it was such a simple action that jarred everyone’s realities. The symbol worked beautifully, humorously. Anyone that wants to evolve a thinking culture must look for ways to avoid overtly aggressive work.

In the 1980s, there was punk and industry. We were so angry and trying to destroy everything. That was the right strategy against Reagan and Thatcher because it helped adjust the culture. But we cannot use that anymore. They know that. They’ve diluted it, coopted it with money. It’s the same with Hip-Hop. Where is Public Enemy now? Power tries to bribe you. Don’t be tricked. Think about what they are used to — anger, rage, demonstrations — do the unexpected. Be kind and thoughtful. Speak with a considered voice and explain how you feel so there is no excuse for them dismissing you. Anyone that wants to evolve a thinking culture today must look for methods that shy away from overt aggression.

ZS: Do you think the art world has cultivated a thinking culture?

GBPO: No. What’s really depressing for us is how long the art world has followed in the shadow of the Young British Artists. Initially, they were smart, funny, and clever. “We hate art and there it is.” But now everyone wants to brand themselves that way. They aren’t thinking about content. Art must have a story, comment, some kind of information that you can take away. That’s the definition of art: creation.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, “Perfecting, undated,” mixed media, 14 x 11 inches

ZS: You’ve talked about pleasure as a weapon. What does that mean and how do we use it?

GBPO: When you make art, it’s implied in the content. Same with music. As an attitude, I see pleasure as an attempt to create a blank slate each day. One good way to do that is changing your name. That new person is just a name, and then you can say, “Who is this? What are they like? What do they do?” And that’s what we did. We invented Genesis. What happened to Neil? [Laughs.] Neil is the artist and we are the artwork that Neil made. We still exist but where the fuck is Neil?

ZS: Where is Neil? Does Neil ever come out?

GBPO: No, no. God knows where Neil is. We should make a tattoo saying, “Copyright: Neil Andrew Megson.”

ZS: “Have you seen Neil?” Put it on a milk carton.

GBPO: Put it on my leg! You see, we’ve created another little comment. It’s got humor but it’s saying something important. You can deconstruct yourself and become the truth, the author of your own narrative. Once you do that, every day becomes a story. You are free to decide your life.

ZS: Thinking about these ideas of reaction and resistance for queer people, I wonder what’s possible. If the pandrogyne is an intersectionality, a third being, does that also mean there’s a third world out there solely for queer people to inhabit?

GBPO: Oh God, there are infinite worlds. Anyone who’s taken acid will tell you that. If you can swallow a piece of paper and the world vanishes … We live in a moment when there are so many options to demonstrate our own perceptions. We need to give that ability to other people. Imagine humanity like a single living organism, maybe an amoeba. When the amoeba gets damaged — what’s the organism do? It marshals its resources together and heals itself. If the human species is one organism, and we believe it is, then we are all cells of a singular being. If everyone saw themselves as cells of the same organism, there would be no use for fighting. We could already be colonizing space by now! Curing illness! We could be that incredible species that maximized its potential and filled itself with love.

The Intersectional Self continues at the 8th Floor Gallery (17 W 17th St, Flatiron District, Manhattan) through May 19.

The post “This Is a Revolutionary Moment”: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on Intersectionality in Art appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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