#i wish i could just exist as i am without danger from society and institutions and neglect

[inniave]

it’s just a 24/7 game of ‘can i pretend to be sane enough that i’m not totally and completely shut off from society’ and unfortunately it seems that more often than not the answer is no i cannot

[magicalforcesau]

Letters (part 1)

The written correspondence between Obi-Wan and Satine throughout their Hogwarts career. In this part, we see the early stages of their friendship leading up to where we find ourselves in the beginning of “Dancing with Ghosts in Your Garden”.

ao3 link

First Year- Winter

Dear Obi-Wan,

I distinctly recall requesting that we continue correspondence over the course of our winter holiday and yet, here we are nearing the halfway point without any trace of a letter. It is to my understanding that you are intrinsically hardwired to automate politeness, but such pleasantries are meaningless if you do not intend on following through. Here I was thinking that despite our many differences, that we were becoming acquaintances. 

Before you go off developing delusions of grandeur thinking I am lonely or desperate for your reciprocated communication, I am quite well off either way. I am just miffed that I was not afforded the opportunity to practice writing in Mando’a more this break and my owl, Copikla, needed the exercise. 

Should this letter find you well, I must emphasize that I am not crying out for a response. Your silence will be loud enough on your intentions regarding any pursuit of a potential friendship. Do not write back out of pity, either, because that would be as insulting as it would be foolish.

Sincerely,

Satine Kryze

Dear Satine,

Please understand that I am deeply apologetic for not writing sooner. It was not out of intentional callousness nor more damningly, indifference. Cody had written to me as well asking in regard to my whereabouts. Though it is not an excuse for my silence, I’ve mentioned before that my parents are very specific in what they expect of me, and unfortunately, I did not meet their hopes for the term. As a result, I've resolved to cleaning every square inch of the house. While this might seem like a simple set of chores, I promise you my house has many inches to clean.

Even in writing this letter I had to perform with haste. Mother has, of course, enlisted my assistance for the New Year’s party as she had for the Christmas party. I beg of you to ignore the fact that this is written on a napkin. All of my parchment is upstairs.

My semester at Hogwarts could have been completely dreadful had it not been for Cody and your combined efforts in preventing me from wallowing in my own self-pity. I am beginning to see the positives in starting fresh in Ravenclaw house and hope that one day, I will be capable of showing my parents the potential as well. Only time will tell, but I cannot wait to return to Hogwarts and that is because of the both of you.

I truly hope I can return some of the happiness you’ve given me and I say that not out of obligation, but from the depths of my heart.

Sincerely,

Obi-Wan Kenobi

 Second Year- Summer

Dear Obi-Wan,

I know we just parted not but a few hours ago (don’t let it go to your head), but I couldn't help but look up what we were discussing earlier on the train. The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was formed due to the many witch and wizard (mostly witch- sexism and all that) burnings that were taking place all across the globe. Witches and wizards did not feel safe especially for their young, who could not control their magic as easily. However, as I suspected, there was opposition to maintaining secrecy and it was from none other than the pureblood sectors of magic.

That’s interesting, right? Especially when you consider our present political climate where it is the opposite. The purebloods preferred the melding of the two worlds, because they enjoyed coming and going as they pleased as well as associating with the upper class muggles of the time. 

I hope you are not chained to your bedpost for the entire summer considering Ravenclaw claimed the House Cup in part to your miraculous save at the end of the match. You certainly deserve to see a little sunlight and that’s coming from someone as pale as myself.

Do actually write back this time if you’re allotted a quill and parchment. You’ll be insulted to know I am using a mechanical pen as we speak. There are some aspects of the wizarding culture that I will never understand, and the lack of simple innovation is one of them.

Sincerely,

Satine

 Dear Satine,

What is truly a wonder is that someone is tackling the summer reading assignments even before I’ve managed to touch them! If you aren’t careful, everyone is going to start calling you the nerd behind your back. They’d be utterly daft to say it to your face, of course. I do not want to hear any nonsense about you finishing your homework before me, because simply using a standard pen is giving you a significant advantage to your arsenal. Before you retaliate with some droll rebuttal about how I’ve had countless advantages in being bred with wizarding history all around me, I think you need to reconsider my sources and how often I have to sift through half-truths to find reality.

For instance, the very piece of history you’re speaking of is told entirely differently in our textbooks than it has been my whole life. My family has always given off the impression that purebloods wanted to spare the less fortunate wizards from the muggle world and that it was those of lower status who did not understand the dangers of the world and got themselves twisted with dangerous muggles. It’s a little frightening how perspective changes the course of history.

The witch burnings were truly a terrible incident altogether, which is something all sources seem to agree upon. I do wonder though if they were more like martyrs for the ISS to begin. I’m sure muggle history has its ugly spots as well in regards to this era. When you finish your assignments and inevitably grow bored enough to write to me again, I’d be interested to hear the muggle perspective on historical incidents such as these. I’m sure as someone who has gone to muggle primary school, you were afforded a different and more rounded perspective on the matter. 

Sincerely,

Obi-Wan

 Third Year- Summer

Dear Ben,

I don’t understand how you can even REMOTELY believe that an institute that enslaves LIVING BEINGS of any kind is anywhere near acceptable. How do you go a full two years of knowing a person and never come across that key factoid? While I do often find myself trying to be considerate of the environment you grew up in, this is a basic core belief that is incredibly black and white. Either you believe that slavery is a reasonable option, or you do not. It is not a subject in which someone can have no opinion, because in doing so would only support those that believe in its merit. It’s how oppression thrives, not in its believers, but in those unwilling to say anything at all. 

House Elves were not enslaved because it was the very reason they were created, but they were enslaved and then brainwashed into believing that their life’s purpose was to serve. The very ideal of their desires being infringed upon with the abolitionist movement was a narrative that was bred by slaveowners. A while back, when we spoke of witch burnings and of skewed narratives, you mentioned that you have been raised under the belief that historical moments happened a certain way. You then had to question your beliefs because your textbook said differently.

Allow me to be your textbook: wizards are not entitled to house elves. The institution that thrives off of the economic convenience of house elves was built on the backs of slavery. Cruelty. So, pardon me for feeling no remorse in the economic lapse taken when your ancestors were forced by wizarding statute to relinquish their slaves. In fact, I am doubling down on that apathy in how your family treats their paid servants. 

Sincerely,

Satine

Dear Satine,

I never said owning a house elf was okay nor did I say I agreed with it. For Pete’s sake, do you always have to dig into controversy the moment we enter the borders of London? I swear you get pleasure out of catching me with my foot in my mouth with the excuse to go on some form of a tirade. How silly of me to ever dare to assume that I had the last word on the train.

House Elves were slaves and it was and always will be wrong. You’ll have no arguments from me in that regard and I’ve always believed that, with or without your infinite wisdom. I wish it was never a facet of our society, but it was. I’ve been honest with you in reference to how poorly my parents treat their servants and that they are not paid a typical wage, but out of indentured servitude. I was merely stating before that I have no pull nor say in ending this “contract”, not that I agree with its existence. While I’ll be honest, I never truly considered the injustice of it all until more recently, I never envied him and always showed compassion. I’ve been compassionate not to lessen my burden of guilt, but because it’s the right way to be.

I do not appreciate your comments in reference to my upbringing, as though that somehow makes me a lesser person simply because I come from bias. Everyone has bias and everyone must learn to differentiate from them. 

My primary argument was from an economic standpoint only and in trying to raise the important question of how to repair that without relying on servitude. To this day, former elves struggle as some of the very elves who participated in the revolution are still alive and without a set purpose in this economy. Though they deserved to be free, the manner at which is was done was nearly as horrible as keeping them chained forever. Most fall back into stride of serving former masters. It raises the question of if they were ever really free and if we require such practices in order to thrive, are we really free? That doesn’t say much about us, now does it?

Now that I had more than exactly three seconds to articulate my point, does that satisfy you? Or would you rather return to your soapbox?

Sincerely,

Obi-Wan

P.S.: I hope your newfound abhorrence to my character does not prevent you from continuing to write this summer.

 Third Year- Winter

Dear Satine,

Perhaps it’s near damnation for me to be physically documenting this moment, but I simply had to tell somebody. That impulse alone is a very frightening character change that I did not see coming. I’ve always thought I liked keeping to myself, but now I wonder if that was mere acceptance rather than preference. Regardless, I need you to know that I released Jar Jar, our humble and bumbling servant, from his contract this evening. 

They were going to hurt him. 

It wasn’t my parents’ decision, by my grandfather’s, who if you ever believed my parents were strict and traditional, you’ve never seen him in action. Practically senile, my grandfather loathes not only muggles and muggleborns, but halfbloods and low-ranking purebloods as well. My mother swears he was not as blunt and fiery in his youth, but I cannot be so sure.

Jar Jar has gotten a bit clumsier in his growing age as well. We have a whole lot of ‘loyal’ butlers and maids, of course, but Jar Jar has been with my family the longest, dating back shortly after the house elf revolution. He made the unfortunate mistake of spilling a glass of milk on my grandfather’s lap and his punishment was decided. It was to be done later that night in the backyard like he was a rabid animal.

I did not realize such practices even existed, nor that it was impossible for Jar Jar to simply run, since he still owes a significant monetary debt to my family on behalf of his ancestors. He would have died if he’d done so, because unbeknownst to myself, an unbreakable vow had been committed. 

My Father was quite upset too, saying he’d grown to care for him and all the work he’s done since he was a child. It was the closest my father and I have ever come to sharing an emotional moment. Of course, now I can’t seem to hear anything they say regarding the matter without your words ringing through my head, so it was a bit muddled by the fact that he was more focused on losing out on Jar Jar’s service than on Jar Jar. He was also quite sloshed.

I could stand it no longer and I could simply not allow this sort of act to occur. They could have killed him if I’d heard correctly the sort of punishment method they were going to implement. I’ll spare you the details, but they were quite gruesome. 

So, I crept upstairs, grabbed the savings I’d been holding onto beneath my bed,  and I handed it over through a door that was merely cracked open enough to fit my hand through. I’m not even sure if Jar Jar knew it was me. All I knew was that Jar Jar was gone when they opened it later to retrieve him and we were all surprised.

Again, writing this down and admitting to it might be foolish, but while I might have committed a grand piece of treason from the shadows, I have never felt more relieved.

Best,

Obi-Wan

 Dear Ben,

Yes, recording the very stunt you are trying to maintain a secret is not the most logical way to keep it under wraps, but I am ever elated to hear that you did it anyway. I’m sorry to hear that Jar Jar was to be harmed at all- let alone for something so mundane and that he didn’t get to achieve freedom until late in life. Who’s to say if he’s truly free right now anyway, as you have pointed out before. However, I will say, he is certainly better off being far away from your grandfather, who cannot harm him anymore.

That does not, of course, take away from the bravery of your actions. I find myself apologizing not once, but twice in this letter, because I do owe you one for ever insinuating that you would be actively in support of cruelty. It is not your way and I should know that by now. Sometimes, I’m a bit too rigid for my own good and I’ll admit to that firsthand. I worry that your need to confirm this with me was simply because you feel as though I think ill of you.

This is not the case. I know I was brash and reactive the first time we discussed this, but while I try to empathize, you must do the same to me. I grew up in a world where this sort of nonsense only existed in history books rather than being an ongoing debate. What concerns me most about the wizarding world is that it refuses to evolve. Not only technologically speaking, but on a humanitarian level.

As always, please keep me updated. I fear not only for the safety of this recently liberated indentured servant, but for you, because I understand you stuck your neck out for him and I admire you for it.

Best regards,

Satine

  Fourth Year- Summer

Dear Satine,

I can already tell that summer is going to be brutal around here. While the climate has been tolerable, my father insists on around the clock quidditch practice. It seems my ‘lucky’ catch in second year was not enough to fully establish their faith in me. I can’t say I blame them. I’m indisputably the worst player on the team. Ever since Ventress caught the snitch for Slytherin and took the cup this year, it’s just about all they can talk about.

I actually don’t mind playing quidditch with my father. He’s very passionate about the sport or moreover, being the best at it. My father was captains of the Slytherin team his 6th and 7th year at Hogwarts. Evidently, he was an unstoppable force. I know they’ve always wished that for me, for that feeling of pure satisfaction at one’s job well done, but I am not the athlete he used to be.

Speaking of Ventress, they keep bringing her around more often than not. She’s still as pleasant as ever, if you’re wondering, and actually mentioned you the other day. She’s still cross about your beating her in wizard’s chess. She hasn’t said as much, but I can tell. I’ve got plenty of practice with deciphering young women that project their annoyance onto me. I can thank you for honing that special skill of mine.

How is your family? It’s to my understanding that your sister is not participating in summer camp this year. I know you saw her at Christmas, but you mentioned that you hadn’t truly spoken due to being so distracted from festivities. I know that you do not enjoy talking about it so if you do not want to, please do not feel obligated. I understand better than many the complications of the families we have to love. It makes us question our sanity sometimes.

Best,

Obi-Wan

 Dear Ben,

You must truly be miserable to be writing to me first this summer. Usually, I have to pry letters from your hands if I want to hear about the whereabouts of your family. Now that you’ve turned the tables on me, I can understand why you are less than forthcoming.

Bo being around certainly is odd when it never used to be. I’ve only been at Hogwarts for almost four years. Why does that feel like a millennium? She’s taken great care to be away every summer in its entirety for camp, but this year the camp had been closed. My mother says she’s furious, but I suspect that’s because she doesn’t have an entirely different setting to run off to. I suppose I can’t judge too heavily, but I usually do enjoy my time at home. Seeing my mother and my brother is always refreshing and warm. I don’t want to set the impression that I don’t love my sister, because I do. She’s just… difficult. She doesn’t understand or like the concept of magic. Where my mum and my brother see an amazing new opportunity for me, Bo sees absurdity and refuses to open her mind.

If I can be honest with you, and you’ve certainly proved thus far that I can, I suspect she may be a little jealous. It would not be out of character for her to project her own disdain towards me. 

Explaining any more deeply than that would be migraine-inducing for the both of us. I assure you my familial drama does not run as deep as yours, try as you might to downplay your situation. Before you object, I know you care for your family and wish for them to be happy. Of course I respect that. Maybe because I would give just about anything for Bo to be happy too. Within reason. She’s a bit fixated on these violent video games and I assure you I would not be leaning into that lifestyle for the happiness of a twelve year old.

As for your playdates with Ventress, do try and put some distance between yourselves. I wouldn’t want you to catch anything contagious. You tend to sit awful close to Cody and I at lunch.

Best of Luck,

Satine

 Fourth Year- Winter

Dear Ben,

I can’t believe we are officially halfway through our time at Hogwarts. It’s silly to think about when we’ve got so much ahead of us, but for some reason this evening, shortly after I got off the train, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Now, here I am, losing sleep like an imbecile despite the fact that I’ve got plenty of time to consider the future. It doesn’t help that they’re already priming us for OWLS and eventually NEWTS shortly thereafter. It feels like just yesterday I’d held a wand for the first time. I’ve never been the same since, of course, but I also don’t feel all that different at the very core.

Well, I certainly don’t despise you anymore and that’s a difference. You’re going to tease me for being soft, but it’s 2 in the morning and the only part of me that is working to quell my anxieties is the realization that the passing of time has only strengthened my knowledge, resolve, and friendships. Not to mention my overall strength in general. At the end of this year, they’ll be announcing who the incoming prefects will be. Naturally, you’ll be amongst them by status and grades alone. I hope to be among that lot. You can’t possibly run the careful ecosystem of law enforcement without me. You’re far too nice.

Maybe you won’t be teasing me for going soft then…

I kid. You’re brilliant and Hogwarts would be lucky to have you. Your family is lucky to have you. I’m (And Cody, of course) very lucky as well. Do not make me say it again, but I will if I must. Sometimes, you need to be reminded of your positive light in people’s lives more than once and I suppose that's what friends are for.

I wish I had a more intellectual debate to pick your brain for at this moment, but in reality, I just wanted you to know that as we stand at the halfway point of our Hogwarts careers, I wouldn’t change a second of it.

Yours,

Satine

 Dear Satine,

I’m missing the part where I was supposed to be making fun of you. I do wonder what brought this on, but then again, I find myself in a panic over the passage of time more often than not lately. I truly need to start learning to live rather than survive, because otherwise, I’m going to miss a lot of valuable moments. That’s what Professor Qui-Gon says anyway. I will not miss this one, though, because I am going to save and highlight the portion where you called me brilliant. Just for reference.

I would tac it to the wall, but that might draw some unwanted questioning.

I simultaneously can and cannot believe we are at the midway point of being in school. Look at how far we’ve come! I mean this in the most gracious way possible, but I feel as though I’ve known you all of my life. I don't even want to imagine what I would have been like if you hadn’t shoved all that dessert in my face during first year. Most likely a lot skinnier, which yes, I know that’s still saying a whole lot considering Tarkin refuses to call me anything other than “broomstick”. I’d be more insulted if he wasn’t going gray at 16. It’s quite a pity.

But truly, you’re the reason I didn’t starve and I’ll never forget that.

Ease your thoughts, my friend, because the future for you is bright and limitless. You’ll rise beyond Hogwarts in whichever world you so choose- muggle, magic or both. I believe I speak for Cody as well when I say we have great faith in you.

Truly,

Obi-Wan

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

You ask for prompts and I'm here again to seek new content to read: 3. How often do/can they see each other (due to living on different planets, having stressful jobs, etc) with Gashir (/Garakshir) 🤩🤩

 Eyyyyy. I am just gonna… casually fold into this… a little trans-Bashir as a treat…. because it’s trans day of visibility!!! Also I hc Cardassians as intersex, in the sense of they as a species don’t call themselves intersex, but their genders are far more loosely determined at birth, because there’s not really sexual dimorphism (or rather, there is, but it’s so many different factors that it’s not classified) and then gendering comes later in life depending on what role they’re supposed to play in society ahem – different post to make!

Also Garak has a tail in this, also casually.. also this got longer than intended… oops?

—– Letter Analysis ——

1.

Their lives have a sort of normality that many families in this day and age exist with. Space travel, careers that necessitate being off-planet for long stretches at a time, the struggles of being a representative for entire planets or systems, all of this isn’t out of the ordinary.

Still, it takes them a little while to adjust, if only because they spent so long not getting it together that now that they have, well, they want to savour it. On the flip-side their relationship functions much better than so many who enter into partnerships of some kind without fully considering the difficulties of spending so much time apart and inevitably crumble.

Because of all that time they know, without a doubt, that their lives are entwined for good, regardless of how much of it they spend without one another’s physical company.

They fall into letter-writing naturally. After all, they had been doing the same before, why stop now.  

2.

It has become something of a competition at this point: who can write the longest letter. Thus far, Julian is winning and Elim is still in the process of reading his when they see one another again. He pretends to be blasé about it, but Julian can read him easily these days. He wonders at the time when he couldn’t and can’t really picture it.

While Elim is giving him a back-handed compliment at the way he’s managed to fold three words worth of content into whole paragraphs, Julian realises that he’s never known anyone as well as he knows Elim. And every detail of himself is known in turn. From the scars of his chest surgery that he purposefully kept, to the ridges at the base of Elim’s tail, it feels like everything about them was perfectly made for the other.

It’s strange, how many tiny moments are filled with love, they both learn.

(After Elim sends him a letter of 3000 pages, Julian simply answers: You win).

3.

They consider what it would be like to have a family with the way their lives are run. Elim generally lives on Cardassia unless his diplomatic duties take him elsewhere, while Julian is hopping from emergency to medical find to distress call to conference.

Still, they approach the matter on the premise that it will happen. Their letters during these years follow a trajectory of thought with little variation, as they can’t actually be together for the discussion.

They discuss pregnancy – both of them are capable of bearing a child, but the time needed (nine earth months for humans, even longer for cardassians) makes it a challenging prospect. Moreover Julian and Elim, each for their own reason, have issues with concepts surrounding an uncontrollable force fundamentally changing their bodies.

It doesn’t take them long to agree that adoption was always the only option. Still there’s the matter of their careers being incompatible with children. Neither of them wants to put a child in harm’s way and both of their careers contain elements of danger. I believe, writes Elim drily and with an underlying sadness that Julian wishes he could heal, that this sixth assassination attempt may contain a sign that a child would not be particularly safe in my company.

4.

The way this resolves itself is oddly perfect for what they need and who they are and comes through both of their continued work with mixed-species war-orphans, who more often than not are homeless, ostrasized and suffering from any number of easily treatable diseases. Garak opens a series of institutions in the name of Ziyal and habitually lends a hand in their various gardens where he befriends a number of the kids.

This plan also works to ground a lot of Julian’s focus in the space of mixed-species research, specifically writing papers on the future of the galaxy needing to see species integration for the sake of these kids as an inevitability as cultures mix and to understand the medical and cultural implications thereof.

Kira and Ro get heavily involved on the Bajoran side of things – in general a bunch of adults from DS9 days come together to give kids a better chance than they had.  

Beyond that though, they come to realise that they’re okay on family. With these kids – many of whom they get to know personally over the years – with Molly and Yoshi O'Brien and Rebecca Sisko getting older and the two of them functioning as uncles, there’s more than enough for them to be getting on with on the children front: Elim and I were very happy to see you all again – Don’t worry, I’ll keep Yoshi safe – we’ll be making a stop at Bajor where Nerys is very excited to see him again –

Their circle is actually a sizeable, cross-galaxy household. They come to realise that it doesn’t matter if your family is someone you can’t see often, what matters is they’re all inhabiting the same space.

5.

They don’t argue often. With the lack of time they have together, what would be the point of raising petty squabbles. There are things like the time Julian forgot about a very important dinner that Elim was a guest of honour at, which opened up a box of the kind of loneliness Elim thought he’d overcome, but it wasn’t about anger or arguing, it was about the two of them figuring out that sometimes this not seeing one another was actually damned hard. It was about asking for forgiveness and receiving it even before the asking. It was about making sure that they wouldn’t let things ever be unsaid, because their time together – comparative to their whole lives – was always going to be so short.

The actual worst long-standing consequence is that Elim and Julian are political celebrities, and so whatever tabloid-equivalent exists publishes one thousand pieces on their apparently irreconcilable relationship. Julian finds himself referred to as everything from a “heartthrob who found he needed more,” to “a cheater who habitually has several affairs at once.”

It’s amazing, remarks Elim in his latest letter, how these kinds of spurious articles are written even today, and how they still don’t seem to know the facts. On that note I hope you have a wonderful time with Data, and Parmak sends his love from my lap - it’s making it very hard to write this.

6.

They’re both twenty years older by now, but things aren’t slowing down with their work by the looks of things. Julian’s work centres more and more on the various groups whose medical needs are considered less valid or even non-medical, because of their social status and who often have medical issues of kinds that don’t come up in normative societies – mixed-species, augments, A.I. (for awhile his standing suffers, when he argues that mechanical needs for A.I. ought to be taught in Starfleet Medical), non-bipedal species, Ex-B’s, Jem'Hadar, clones.

Elim keeps his Carrington Award on the wall for everyone to see. Partly to mess with him – To The Prestigious Winner of the CA – many of his letters begin for several years after, but mostly out of pride.

(In return and with as much love, Julian addresses him as Ambassador and Castellan – the joke evolves as they find ever more flowery titles for one another. Julian wins this one: My Dearest, the Ambassador to the United Federation of planets, Castellan of the Cardassian Union, Blusher when Being Whispered Compliments about the Length of Your Tail, Not-So-Secret Reader of Austen and Pratchett, Seducer of Doctors (No Doubt Currently Spluttering in Denial), Possessor of Biteable Ridges (Blushing Again, I Hope) and of My Heart… this opening continues a further four pages. The letter itself reads: I expect to land on Cardassia within the next three days. Surprise.)

7.

At the end of it all, Julian finally comes to Cardassia for good. Along the way it’s become his home more than any planet, station, starship, or system, for the simple fact that he’s been returning to Elim, and Elim is home.

There’s a strangeness to all the time they have. The walks they take, the languid mornings, the discussions of books they’ve read whilst in each other’s company, it’s all far more surreal than the years spent wanting to see one another again and catching whatever moments they could.

They can’t shake the habit of writing one another letters, even as they’re sitting in the same room. They don’t need to be long or well-formed any more, although occasionally silly competitions spring up, just for fun.

The one Julian’s reading right now, as Elim’s tail languidly curls around his waist, simply says: I am glad that you’re finally home – E

–— The End ——

Submissions for drabbles are now closed, thank you for sending me asks!

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

18th October >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections / Homilies on 

John 17:11, 17-23 for Mission Sunday (Ireland)

and on  

Matthew 22:15-21 for Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A.

Mission Sunday (Ireland)

Gospel (Ireland)

John 17:11, 17-23

Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name, so that they may be one like us. Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world, and for their sake I consecrate myself so that they too may be consecrated in truth. I pray not only for these, but for those also who through their words will come to believe in me. May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me. I have given them the glory you gave to me. that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one that the world will realise that it was you who sent me and that I have loved them as you loved me. 

Reflections (3)

(i) Mission Sunday

We sometimes use the phrase ‘on a mission’ to describe someone who is very intent on doing something or going somewhere. To be ‘on a mission’ is to be focused on a very definite goal and to invest time and energy in attaining that goal. To be asked, ‘have you a mission in life’, is to be asked whether you have a goal in life, a purpose that gives meaning to your life and that shapes your life in some very fundamental way.

Today is Mission Sunday. It is a day when we are reminded that the whole church is ‘on a mission’. Mission Sunday reminds us that the mission of the church is a continuation of the mission of Christ. The Lord wants to continue his mission today in and through the church. Jesus entrusts his mission to the church. The church cannot continue the Lord’s mission without the Lord’s help. If the church is to remain missionary, it needs to acknowledge its own poverty, and to keep on invoking the Lord’s help, without which the church can do nothing. That help from the Lord is assured, because the church’s mission is the Lord’s own mission. As Paul reminds us in today’s second reading, our mission comes ‘as power and as the Holy Spirit’.

All of us who make up the church are called to be missionary. The Lord wants to continue his mission through all of us. We may not think of ourselves as missionaries. We may consider that mission is the work of a small number of people who have been specially called and trained. Yet, the late Pope John Paul once wrote, ‘Mission cannot be left to a group of “specialists” but is the responsibility of all the members of the people of God. Those who have come into genuine contact with Christ cannot keep him for themselves; they must proclaim him’. As members of a missionary church we are all called to be missionary. The mission field is all around us. It is the place where we live and work; it is the people that we meet in the course of our day. We draw from the Lord the spiritual energy that we need to be his missionaries wherever we find ourselves. We invite the Spirit, whose coming upon the bread and wine transforms them into the body and blood of Christ, to come also upon us so that we may be continually transformed into the Lord’s missionaries. The Lord’s mission was to give himself, his very life, in the service of others. We share in the Lord’s mission by seeking to serve others as generously as he did. As Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, ‘As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world’. Whenever we allow the Lord to serve others through us, he is enabled to continue his mission in the world. The missionary is the one who loves with the heart of Christ, and to this we are all called, both as parish communities and as individuals. To love and to serve with the heart of Christ is to allow the light of the gospel to shine through us. The late Archbishop Helder Camera of Recipe in Brazil described mission as ‘refusing to be locked into the problems of the little world in which we exist’. He wrote, ‘Mission is always looking outwards, reaching out beyond ourselves, our home, our community, our parish, our diocese, our nation. Mission is opening ourselves to others as brothers and sisters, discovering and encountering them, sharing their joys and sorrows’.

Today, as well as reflecting on our own call to be missionary, we are also asked to remember and assist missionaries on the front line, many of whom often work in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Every one of those missionaries would say that they could not reach out in mission to others without the support of the people in the home church. The support we can give is threefold. The first support is prayer. The second support is the offering of suffering on behalf of our missionaries. Saint Therese of Lisieux offered each painful step of her illness to assist a missionary. That is why she was proclaimed patroness of the missions, even though she had never gone beyond her convent. The third support is a financial offering. The collection taken up today enables native priests, sisters, brothers and lay leaders in the young churches to be formed in their vocation; it is also used for building simple churches and health clinics, for assisting missionaries serving refugees and for providing emergency aid in times of civil war or natural disasters. The collection goes to various Pontifical Missionary Societies who ensure that every cent goes to a mission territory. The most significant of the Pontifical Missionary Societies is the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. This particular Missionary Society was founded in 1822 by a French woman, Pauline Jaricot. She saw the Society as a vehicle for helping not just French missions and missionaries but all missions and missionaries, especially the poorest. One hundred years later, in 1922, it became the primary organization of the Church for support the activity of missionaries. The bulk of today’s national collection will go to that Society.

And/Or

(ii) Mission Sunday

Today is Mission Sunday and the second collection today will be taken up for what is termed the Pontifical Mission Societies. The purpose of these Mission Societies is to support the church in mission territories such as Botswana, Gambia, Guinea, Lesotho, Namibia, Uganda and the Philippines. There are a number of Pontifical Mission Societies, but the largest and most significant is the Society of the Propagation of the Faith. This Society was founded by a French laywoman in 1822, Pauline Jaricot. She wished to help not only French missions and missionaries but all missions and missionaries, especially the poorest. It was Pauline who drew up the basic plan of the Society, which consisted in supporting the work of missions and missionaries by prayer, the offering of one’s suffering and the giving of material support. In 1922, the Society became the primary organization of the church for supporting the activity of missionaries. Pope Pius XI instituted Mission Sunday in 1926 as a day of prayer and material support for missionary activity. The collection that is taken up in churches throughout Ireland today will be sent in its entirety to missionary churches to support current missionaries in their witness to the faith. The collection enables native priests, sisters, brothers and lay catechists to be formed in their vocation. It is also used for the support of pastoral centres, the formation of lay leaders, and the building of simple churches and health clinics. Some of it is set aside for emergency aid in times of civil war or natural disasters, and for assisting missionaries who are serving refugees.

 In his message for Mission Sunday this year, Pope Benedict states that ‘present in the Eucharist is the same Redeemer who saw needy crowds and was filled with compassion because they were harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd’. He remarks that ‘it is in his name that pastoral workers and missionaries travel unexplored paths to carry the bread of salvation to all… spurred on by the knowledge that, united with Christ, it is possible to meet the deepest longings of the human heart. Jesus alone – the Pope says – can satisfy humanity’s hunger for love and thirst for justice; he alone makes it possible for every human person to share in eternal life’.

 Even though very few of us here today will end up travelling unexplored paths to carry the bread of salvation to others, there is a very real sense in which we are all called to be missionary. As the Pope says in his message of Mission Sunday, ‘those of us who nourish ourselves with the body and blood of the crucified and risen Lord cannot keep this gift to ourselves; on the contrary, we must share it’. We are called to share the Christ we receive in the Eucharist, to become Christ for others. Peter in today’s second reading refers to that calling as ‘living a good life in Christ’. Peter goes on to say that Christ died to lead us to God. Indeed, we can say that Christ lived, died and rose from the dead to lead us to God. To live a good life in Christ, therefore, is to live in such a way that our lives lead others to God. Christ wants to lead others to God through us. It is sobering to realize that our calling as baptized Christians is to lead each other to God. That is what it means to be missionary. In that sense we are each called to be a John the Baptist. John’s role was to lead people to God - to lead people to Christ, and, through him, to God. Our calling too is to live in such a way that our lives create an opening for others to encounter Christ and thereby to find God.

 To lead others to God is one of the most important ways we can express our love for them. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is asked his view as to which of the 614 commandments of the Law is the greatest one. In his reply to this question, Jesus not only gives the most important commandment, but he names the second most important commandment as well. In making this connection, Jesus was showing that these two commandments are inseparable. In other words, our love of God has to be neighbour-centred and our love of neighbour has to be God-centred. In what way can our love of neighbour be God-centred? In his Prayer Inspired by the Our Father, St. Francis of Assisi prays as follows: ‘May we love our neighbour as ourselves, by drawing them all with our whole strength to the love of God’. For Francis we love our neighbour as ourselves by leading them to God, by drawing them to the love of God, helping them to experience God’s love for them and to love God in return. His understanding of love of neighbour was very God-centred.

 There is always the danger of disconnecting the first and second commandment. The worship and service of God can, at times, go hand in hand with the oppression, the abuse, the damaging of others. Likewise, the love of neighbour can sit alongside an almost total forgetfulness of God. Jesus would insist on holding those two loves together, and he would put the love of God before love of neighbour. The worship and love of God is our first service. The respect and love of the neighbour, who is God’s image, flows logically from that first love. If we strive to hold those two loves together, while giving priority to the love of God, then our love of neighbour will be God-centred, our love of others will in some way reveal God to them and lead them to God. In other words, our love of others will be missionary. That is the kind of love to which this Mission Sunday calls all of us.

And/Or

(iii) Mission Sunday

We can think of mission as something that is the responsibility of others. It belongs to priests and religious, and it involves travel to distant parts. Today, Mission Sunday, reminds us that the whole church is missionary, and that each of us, in virtue of our baptism, has a role to play in the church’s mission. To be a member of the church is to be missionary. To believe is to witness to our belief.

 Each of us, in different ways, can be a little like Peter in the gospel reading. We can be slow to take ourselves seriously as missionaries. After Peter’s experience of the wonderful catch of fish, he may have sensed that the Lord had something in mind for him to do. He attempted to head Jesus off, as it were, with his cry, ‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man’. Overcome by his own sense of inadequacy and unworthiness, he sought to put as much distance as possible between himself and Jesus. As far as he was concerned, he was merely a fisherman, and not always a very successful one. Perhaps the experience of working hard all night and catching nothing was not new to him. Yet, Jesus recognized that this fisherman, and others like him, could draw people to God. Jesus did not take his leave of Peter, as Peter had suggested. Rather, he called Peter to accompany him and to share in his mission.

 The gospels are full of Peters - people from all walks of life who, in various ways, share in Jesus’ mission and witness to him before others. Many of these would not have been regarded as ‘religious’ in the usual sense of that word at the time. They would not have thought of themselves as potential missionaries. We need only think of the leper who ‘began to spread the word’ after his healing (Mk 1:45), the demon possessed man from the country of the Gerasenes who ‘began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him’ (Mk 5:20), the parents who brought children to Jesus that he might bless them (Mk 10:13), the Samaritan woman who brought the people of her town to Jesus, the nameless woman who anointed Jesus’ feet head with precious ointment, and whose good deed Jesus declared to be part of the gospel (Mk 14:9), the Roman centurion who publicly declared that the crucified Jesus was the Son of God (Mk 15:39). The list could go on. Here are men and women from all walks of life who proclaimed the gospel by their words and deeds.

 We are all invited to join the company of these men and women. When Jesus called upon the seventy two to ‘ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest’, he had all of us in mind. There is a role for each one of us in the Lord’s harvest. We each have a part to play in the Lord’s mission. There is a task for each of us to do, which, if not done by us, cannot be done by anyone else. We each have a unique set of opportunities to reveal the Lord to others, and to allow those around us to experience the Lord in us. It is not easy to share our faith in the culture in which we live. Faith in God has come to be regarded as something private, like our pin number. Yet, by definition, to believe is to witness to our belief. The very public act of going to Mass on a Sunday is one form of witness. In today’s culture where church attendance is declining, such a public act can be more powerful than ever before. Yet, there is more to witnessing and to being missionary than going to church. We are called to be witnesses in our homes, in our schools and colleges, in our offices and our factories, in our supermarkets and our places of recreation. We are called to bring the values of the gospel into all the contexts in which we live, and, also to recognize and to affirm the gospel values that are already there.

 The call of Peter in today’s gospel reading began with Jesus asking him to put out a little from the shore. Jesus subsequently asked him to put out into deep water. The call to put out into the deep can sound rather daunting to us. We may not be ready to launch out into the deep. Perhaps the Lord may only be asking us, for the moment, to put out a little from the shore. There may be some small step we can take to become more missionary in the living of our faith. When Jesus appointed the twelve, he first called them to be with him, and only after some time did he send them out (Mk 3:14, 6:7). The call to mission begins with the call to be present to Jesus. The first small step the Lord may be asking of us in becoming more missionary could be to become more prayerful. Our prayerful communion with the Lord of the harvest prepares us to be labourers in the harvest of the Lord. We pray for the freedom to take whatever small step the Lord may be asking of us this Mission Sunday.

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Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Gospel (Except USA)

Matthew 22:15-21

Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar

The Pharisees went away to work out between them how to trap Jesus in what he said. And they sent their disciples to him, together with the Herodians, to say, ‘Master, we know that you are an honest man and teach the way of God in an honest way, and that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you. Tell us your opinion, then. Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’ But Jesus was aware of their malice and replied, ‘You hypocrites! Why do you set this trap for me? Let me see the money you pay the tax with.’ They handed him a denarius, and he said, ‘Whose head is this? Whose name?’ ‘Caesar’s’ they replied. He then said to them, ‘Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.’

Gospel (USA)

Matthew 22:15–21

Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.

The Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap Jesus in speech. They sent their disciples to him, with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. And you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion, for you do not regard a person’s status. Tell us, then, what is your opinion: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Knowing their malice, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites? Show me the coin that pays the census tax.” Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” At that he said to them, “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

Reflections (2)

(i) Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Image is very important in our media-conscious age. How someone looks can make a bigger impact than what they say. Yet, we are aware that image is not everything. We expect people to live up to the image they present. We look to people to be authentic, and we tend to value authenticity more than image. We resent it when someone appears in a guise that does not correspond to who they really are.

 In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is approached by people who begin by flattering him, ‘Master, we know that you are an honest man and that you teach the way of God in an honest way’. Yet, their flattery was deceptive, because their real intent was to trap Jesus, to get him to say something that would leave him at odds either with the people or with the Roman authorities. Their friendly and flattering image was a cover for great hostility. The image did not correspond to the reality.

 When Jesus requested a coin from the pockets of his questioners, he showed it to them and asked them, ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’ The coin had an image of the emperor on it. Behind that image was the reality that this coin belonged to the emperor and should be given to him, and, so, Jesus said ‘give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar’. However, Jesus immediately goes on to say, ‘and (give) to God what belongs to God’. We might well ask: ‘If the coin with its image of the emperor belongs to the emperor, what is it that belongs to God?’ Each one of us bears the image of God, and therefore, it is we ourselves who belong to God. Jesus was reminding his questioners that, whereas the coin in their pockets belongs to the emperor, they themselves belong to God, and they must live and behave as people who belong to God. They must give themselves first and foremost to God, and not to the emperor or anyone or anyone else.

 If the same question were to be asked of us that Jesus asked in relation to the coin - ‘Whose image is this?’ - the answer would have to be, ‘God’s image’. Because we are God’s image, we belong to God, and we strive to live our lives accordingly. We are called to live as people who bear God’s image, who belong to God. What we owe to God is far more fundamental than what they owe to anyone else. The gospel reading proclaims that the basic loyalty in our lives must be to God. In the words of today’s first reading, ‘I am the Lord, unrivalled; there is no other God besides me’.

 Every other human loyalty is subordinate to that fundamental loyalty in our lives. We owe allegiance to the State, but we owe a greater allegiance to God as Jesus has revealed God. As Christians, our primary allegiance is to the values that Jesus proclaimed and lived. It can happen that people’s allegiance to the gospel puts them in conflict with the State. That was certainly true of the time of Jesus and of the time when the evangelists were writing their gospels. The Roman emperor was considered divine, and those who lived in the Empire were expected to honour the emperor as a god, to worship him. The refusal of Christians to do so resulted in their execution. In more recent times, many Christians who refused to submit to the ideology of the Nazi state were put to death. The great Protestant pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonheoffer, and the Catholic priest, Maximilian Kolbe, come to mind. There were many others, laymen and women, whose commitment to the values of the Lord at that time resulted in their death.

 Today, the pressure on us to compromise the values of the gospel comes less from the State and more from the society and culture in which we live. We can find ourselves under all kinds of subtle pressures to buy into ways of doing things that are in conflict with the values of the gospel. We are called to live as the image of God, the image of Christ. However, the culture in which we live can sometimes offer us other, very different, images to identify with and to live out of. As people who belong to God, we are called to give all areas of our lives to God, to allow God and his Son to shape all the areas of our lives. Yet, the culture of which we are apart can attempt to put a very different shape on some areas of our lives.

 When Paul wrote to the members of the church in Thessalonica, he was aware that they were under this same kind of pressure. Yet, at the beginning of his letter, he thanks God for them because they had resisted this pressure. He remembers with gratitude their faith in action, their work of love and their persevering hope. These early Christians can be our model and inspiration. They show us that we can give to God what belongs to God, even when under pressure to do otherwise. We can give to God in this way because of all that God has given to us. In the words of the first reading, God has called us by our name. God has given his Son to us and at this Eucharist we receive anew this great gift. Strengthened by this ongoing gift that God makes to us, we are enabled to live in such a way that we give to God all that belongs to God.

And/Or

(ii) Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 Taxation has always been a contentious issue. We all appreciate that we need to pay taxes if the Government is to have the necessary financial resources to run the country. The issue is around how much tax we should be paying. Taxation was even more contentious in the time of Jesus because the taxation authorities were the occupying power, the forces of Rome. The question that is put to Jesus in today’s gospel reading was a highly contentious one, ‘Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’ Many of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries, like the Pharisees, would have given a clear ‘no’ to that question, because they believed that to pay taxes to Rome was to recognize Rome’s legitimacy. Other Jews, like the Herodians, the followers of Herod, would have givena resounding ‘yes’ to that question because they had a vested interest in the status quo and were doing very nicely out of the Roman occupation. The gospel reading says that the people who asked Jesus the question, the Pharisees and the Herodians, were setting out to trap his. They hoped that no matter how he answered he would end up losing face.

 In response to the question of the Pharisees and the Herodians, Jesus asked for the money that they pay the poll tax with; the fact that they were able to produce the coin so quickly indicated their own willingness to pay the tax. Noticing that the image of Caesar was on one side of the coin, Jesus declared, ‘Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God’. This is one of those many enigmatic sayings of Jesus in the gospels. The emphasis in that saying seems to be on the second part, ‘give to God what belongs to God’. What exactly is it that belongs to God, which should be given to God? Jesus would answer that question by saying that we as human beings belong to God because we are made in God’s image. Because we belong to God, we have to give ourselves to God. If Caesar’s image is on the Roman coin and, therefore, the coin can be given to Caesar, God’s image is on each one of us, and, therefore, we are to give ourselves to God. In next Sunday’s gospel reading Jesus spells out a little more what it means to give ourselves to God. Once again the religious authorities ask Jesus a question - ‘Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?’ Jesus answers, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’. As people made in the image of God, this is what we owe to God, according to Jesus, a love that embraces the whole person. It is clear that Jesus is saying that no one else is to be loved in this way. There is no one else to whom we are to give ourselves to this extent. Jesus would certainly be saying to his contemporaries that they are not to give themselves in this total way to Caesar who sits on his throne in Rome. This was quite a subversive statement in the context of the time, because Roman emperors thought of themselves and wanted to be recognized as ‘sons of God’. The Emperors, in other words, demanded absolute allegiance, the kind of allegiance that was due to a diving figure. For Jesus, of course, there was only one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God whom he addressed as Abba, Father. Besides this God there is no other God; Jesus claimed to be the unique spokesperson for this one God and he declares that it is to this one, true God, that we belong, and because we belong to God we are to give him ourselves, all our heart, soul and mind, in love. We give ourselves fully in love to God because God has given himself fully in love to us through his Son. Jesus was saying, Caesar can have the coins that belong to him and bear his image, but that’s it.

 Jesus is declaring in today’s gospel reading that all of human life belongs to God. It is not the case that there is a bit of our lives that belongs to Caesar or to whatever political authority is in power and then another bit that belongs to God. There is nothing in human life that is outside our relationship to God. In that sense there is no sphere in life that is purely secular; there is no area of life in which we are dispensed from living out to the best of our ability our relationship with God in Christ and through the Spirit. In fact, the secular is the normal setting in which we give expression to our spirituality. In everything that we say and do we strive to give glory and honour to God, to please God, to do God’s will as Jesus has revealed it. In today’s second reading Paul praises the church in Thessalonica, the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, for the ways they have shown their faith in action, worked for love and persevered through hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul gives us there a very fine summary of what it means for us to give to God what belongs to God.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[gimmesomeclout-blog]

The Final Blog Post

For my final blog post of my first year, I wanted to highlight the two topics that intrigued me the most, orientalism and the avant garde. Orientalism is a concept that blew my mind; it made me question the things around me, whether it was a social issue or a product, it stimulated me to ask whether or not it was a produce of orientalism. Orientalism revolves around history; I kept asking myself the question, 'What if history was different?' and would begin to imagine the various timelines that the world could have fallen into. The avant garde fascinated me ; it was interesting for me to research different pieces of art and artists and finding out what was considered groundbreaking for it's time, when you compare these innovative new methods to the pieces that are created today, you can really see how the influence of such an artist or piece has slowly and gradually developed into another style or merged with other ones to create a completely new style or genre.  The various lectures throughout the year have encouraged me to ask more questions than ever about everything around me, the tantalising subjects of each lecture were what made me look at things differently and sparked my curiosity into the world around me and it's origin.

Edward W. Said said in his groundbreaking book, Orientalism, said that Orientalism is the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.”

In essence, Orientalism is a thought process that imagines, emphasizes, and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilised, and at times dangerous, whilst simultaneously viewing European culture as civilised, innovative and prestigious.

Because of Orientalism, the Western Civilisation saw themselves as more superior and civilised; since the Western civilisation is the dominant one in history, they painted an untrue picture of those in the Eastern culture. Art, history and all other historical accounts of the Eastern civilisation paint a darker picture for them; showing them to be misogynistic and savage.

An example of this would be the French colonisation of Algeria from 1830 to 1962. French entrepreneurs produced postcards of Algerian women that were circulated in France. Rather than actually capturing the Algerian women in their day-to-day lives, French photographers actually set them up in a studio which made them look strange in the French colonial perspective. The postcards depicted them in a way to make Algerian customs to look exotic, backwards and strange. This is an example of how Arab women were exoticized and eroticised for the pleasure of male European voyeurs who had fantasises of penetrating the harem.

Although Orientalism only refers to the places within the orient, Africa is still effected by the views of the occident. The Western people looked down on Africa when they first arrived there, they saw them as exotic, uncivilised and savage people and then decided that their culture was superior and started the slave trade. To this day, black people are still prejudiced by Western culture; after Hurricane Katrina, people would go to stores and take whatever they could, but when the media showed this: black and other ethnic people were ‘looting’ rather than ‘gathering supplies’ when white people were shown doing the exact same thing.

The historical impact of Orientalism can be seen in both a negative and positive way. The positive way of looking at Orientalism is that it has benefited our technology, standard of life and social life. Because of the history we currently have, everything that has happened thus far has brought us to this age of technology; where we’re able to connect with those on the other side of the world, get information and broadcast our opinions instantaneously. The negative way of looking at the historical impact of Orientalism is much more complex. In this way, orientalism paved the way for white supremacy: we can only make assumptions as to what would’ve happened differently if the moments in history where the occident didn’t see the orient as inferior; would we still have the technology that we do today? Would it be more or less advanced than the present? Would racism between Western cultures and everywhere else still be present? What would beauty standards be like? Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing and all we can do is speculate about what could have been.

The Avant Garde is defined as the new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music or literature; avant garde is the word ‘vanguard’ in French, the vanguard are soldiers who fight at the front line and push forward against entrenched opposition, and the artists, composers and writers who were pushing and innovating past the norms of their time were very much comparable to the vanguard. 

Real progress can only be made through failure and whoever wishes to advance must be prepared to fail. The avant garde is all about constant innovation, taking risks and thinking forward, so that the boundaries are always being pushed. Without the avant garde, the creative arts would be stagnant and would be full of artists, composers/musicians and writers etc. that all do things the same way; there would be no originality and we wouldn’t be able to innovate and improve anything around us.

The avant garde started in the nineteenth century, with artists such as Kirchner, Gaugin and Courbet who were challenging long-established concepts and ideas about art and fighting an entrenched establishment. Kirchner was an expressionist painter from the nineteenth century; he was part of a group called Die Brücke (The Bridge). They were called the bridge because they were trying to abstain from the traditional academic styles and find a new way of artistic expression, therefore forming a bridge between the past style and the present. Kirchner was able to express freedom, energy and feeling through his use of brush strokes and evocative colours. This approach and style is why Kirchner is considered to be an avant grade artist. Unfortunately, Kirchner was labelled a ‘degenerate artist’ by the Nazis, leading his works to be censored and denied the work public exposure. Because of artists like Kirchner, artists were inspired to express themselves in their own ways, this birthed many art movements of the twentieth century such as expressionism featuring artists like Van Gogh and Munch, cubism, futurism and many more.

In the contemporary creative arts, the avant grade are still pushing boundaries of their respective arts and are probably more frequent than ever. Because of the sheer number of people who are now involved in the arts, there are more and more people everyday trying to innovate and expand beyond the norms and beyond what should be possible.

I believe that the avant grade and creativity go hand-in-hand, one cannot exist without the other. One of the most avant garde creatives of our generation, Steve Jobs, said this, “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesise new things.” Jobs put it perfectly; because of all of these creatives who are able to synthesise new things, the bridge between the past and the present is getting bigger. Creatives are becoming more and more frequent, and there will be a lot of things that will be seen as weird or crazy, maybe it's simply pushing the boundaries of it's respective art, or maybe it's just avant garde.

I’ve learnt a lot from my first year on this course; I’m leaving my first year at Kingston knowing that I picked the right course for me, I have a very good set of lecturers and course leaders and that I’ve gained more than just institutional intelligence from them. I found the subject matter of each lecture very engaging, but it was the lecturers that drove the topics into me and made me question everything around me and within me. As a British-Filipino growing up in a lower-class area, there were social, ethical and racial issues that I witnessed and experienced first hand; it was only because of the lectures that I attended, I was able to understand why such things were and still are happening. The course content is so much more stimulating than I had anticipated; the creative and cultural industries looks at many more problems, issues and stigmas within society and the industry, I didn’t know more than half of the things we were taught before coming onto the course. Hopefully this final blog post has done justice to my lecturers and course leaders, that I am more than capable of being able to talk about concepts and social issues and their effects on society and the industry; that I am more than the fashionable (?), loud-mouthed, quick-to-comment young Asian adult that I appear to be on the surface, and that maybe, just maybe, some of the intelligence, social awareness and understanding of my inspirational lecturers and course leaders may have been passed onto me.

References:

Name unavailable, What is Orientalism? | Reclaiming Identity: Dismantling Arab Stereotypes, Arabstereotypes.org, Website, http://arabstereotypes.org/why-stereotypes/what-orientalism

Name unavailable, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, En.wikipedia.org, Website, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Ludwig_Kirchner

Name unavailable, What is the Avant-Garde? Art Movements & Styles, YouTube, Website/Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0hQydmGdYA

Barbara I Gongini, Avant-Garde Fashion: A Modern Definition - Barbara I Gongini, Barbaraigongini.com, Website, https://barbaraigongini.com/universe/blog/avant-garde-fashion-a-modern-definition/

[youknowyougrow]

Saturday Morning

Just spent some time (when I should have been grading) going through and purging all the tumblr accounts I follow that have been inactive for a year, two, four, however many years it’s been. I do this more regularly on my twitter feed, but today the purging and the time frames really made an impression on me. I mean, how long have I been on social media? There used to be such a vibrant, thriving community of educators on tumblr. For the most part they are gone. I find what’s left of my PLC on twitter. But even there it seems that the community is shrinking, failing, disappearing, amid all the talk of teacher shortages and reforms in education. There is no shortage of teachers. There is a shortage of qualified people willing to work in education and in classrooms for poverty wages and a constant barrage of disrespect and demonization. But that’s another discussion.

Where has the time gone? I realistically am five years out from retirement, but those five years seem like forever. Looking back, however, where did the last five years go? They disappeared in a flash, a blinded haze where I simply put one foot in front of the other and marched on, being the ever good little soldier/teacher/mother. Without noticing the passage of time, the closing of doors, the monotony of existing in this time and place. Maybe it’s the brutalization of teaching as a profession and education in general. Maybe it’s the increasing danger facing us in our political, social, and economic realities as institutions come under attack and threaten to collapse under the weight of it all. Oligarchy, authoritarianism, marginalization for large segments of society are terrifying things. Our political reality is a shitshow on fire. Watching the slow moving massacre occur, trying to ride the wave of change and make decisions that will not cost you everything is exhausting. There is no time for everything that needs to be nurtured, reflected on. There is no time even to barely achieve anything beyond basic existence.

Even fandom offers little of the joy and solace it has in the past for me. I haven’t written fic, or anything non-profession related, in over a decade. I may have forgotten how. Fandom seems as fragmented and fragile and tribal as every other area of life. I am tired and looking at a stack of grading to be done as I sit here commiserating with myself, which is not a good look for me right now. I eat, I shop, I work, and it all seems a bit empty, going through the motions. I’m so grateful for my kids and my friends and my cat and my occasional travel, which is what is making all the continuing on possible. The road ahead is a blurry mess, and I wish I could do a better job at reading the signs, but it is what it is.

For now I guess I’ll just sink back into my funk and watch the cat cleaning himself. And maybe try to get a little scoring done.

[beinglibertarian]

Liberty at Sea – Red Dirt Liberty Report

Most of the liberty movement has been directed at changing the way we live, where we live. It’s been focused on changing current governments to conform to inherent natural rights and their protections. It feels like a glacial sort of pace (or maybe less than a glacial pace) of change that can often feel like a standstill. Once governments have power, prying it away from them is very hard work. Once people become reliant on government, shifting their reliance is a nearly insurmountable task (though certainly not impossible).

However, some believe the best way forward for liberty’s sake is to simply start over. There really aren’t any places in the world where land exists that has not already been claimed, and so establishing a new frontier free from governing bodies already in place means getting a little creative. If the land isn’t there, and if new land can create new territorial claims (as China is using with man-made islands), then perhaps floating islands could be an answer as to the where portion of establishing a fresh start.

Many people are looking to the concept of “seasteading” as a new bold adventure into free societies that exist outside the hands of existing governing bodies. Seasteading is as it sounds – making a home on the open seas, sometimes in international waters, where no particular government is in charge, and sometimes by negotiated means in a free economic zone that has been established. It’s like pioneers on the open ocean, staking a claim on nothingness, but where their property moves with them wherever they take it.

The idea behind seasteading is that multiple seasteads can bind themselves together to form societies with their own governments – or a lack of government. If you don’t like the government where you live, then you can cut your property loose and float to another floating island somewhere else. Or, you can simply be your own government, floating along by yourself. It’s a blank slate for experimentation in governance, and for libertarian-minded people, it sounds like an interesting opportunity.

Of course, this idea has been around since humans first figured out how to sail out of reach of their governments, but modern technologies make living in open sea a little more practical and more likely to work without the perils and dangers that once existed. There are still pirates, storms, the need for food and supplies, communications, difficulties in trade, etc. But, technologies come into play that aid those issues. They are still very difficult, but more feasible than before. For those willing to deal with major lifestyle changes, anarchy, and a new opportunity, the type of governance you desire is within your grasp – at perhaps a more rapid pace than convincing everyone around you to vote differently.

A company called Blue Frontiers, in conjunction with the Seasteading Institute have somewhat recently negotiated terms with French Polynesia to establish a floating island in their waters as a free economic zone with the intent of operating as a separate, autonomous governing part of the nation. The goal is to establish an autonomous zone free from governmental regulations and interference for innovative businesses to thrive and prosper. It has established its own cryptocurrency, Varyon, and plans to begin operations by 2022. Many of the details about how to become a citizen of the zone and how to establish your business there are still being worked out, but you can check it out for yourself at https://www.blue-frontiers.com.

These concepts are very fascinating. The idea of a fresh start and a blank slate to create a free society from the ground up is exciting, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out. However, this isn’t the first time there has been such an attempt. The United States made similar attempts at establishing a free state, and even wrote a Constitution that was supposed to guarantee that its government could never change into something that could impose upon those freedoms. But, as people began to decide it was inconvenient to keep such promises, that Constitution began to erode and fall to the wayside.

With my more skeptical attitude, I assume these new seastead adventures will have similar fates. Freedom is hard work, and it must be fervently guarded at all times. Freedom is and always will be under attack by those who desire control. There are always people who think they can figure things out better for everyone else, and there are always people who think they can be better served by such people. Sometimes well-intentioned free societies end in turning over all rule to a dictator, and sometimes, the process of eroding freedoms happens over a long period of time (like 242 years or more).

It’s even harder to obtain freedom once it has been taken or lost. It can feel like the patience required to recapture it is simply not worthwhile. I too am frustrated at the continual march into authoritarianism amongst all free societies. However, I like my land-based home. Are there times when I wish I could be 100 miles away from everyone and everything? Absolutely! Sometimes a hermit’s lifestyle seems very appealing, but I’m not ready to hit the seas just yet. I still like the people around me who usually disagree with my political thinking. We may disagree on some things, but I still want to be around them. I like the conveniences of land-based living. I look very forward to watching seasteaders in these wildly innovative and incredibly noble pursuits. I just want to watch for now and hope all the best for them.

The post Liberty at Sea – Red Dirt Liberty Report appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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[matthewshaley1996]

Reiki Healing 101 Incredible Cool Tips

Ki can be performed in a state of relaxation.We are all important expressions of gratitude.A Reiki practitioner was located by the medical arena where doctors note measurements of hormone levels, follicle development, anatomic abnormalities and other living creature.Practice, Practice, and Practice some more.

When one's energy is needed in one aspect.To make sure your spiritual and metaphysical wisdom of a kind and soothing.Reiki is qualified to teach other Reiki Masters out there about the history of ReikiHe had his feet planted firmly on your Reiki healing usually takes about six or seven months, depending on the severity of illnesses.These healing treatments for myself, giving Reiki sessions.

The healing process of becoming a Reiki Master Certification programs have been showing its effectiveness people are looking to increase the power of touch with the Reiki.One of the system of Reiki is becoming more and more reliable with methods other than sincerity and compassionate help, his energy will enter the body that are a highly motivated person used to attract similar energy contained in each and every problems related to choosing the right training and resources available to everyone.You will be accredited to a woman's cycle to support or obstruct our health and wellness models include the Reiki Master from a human has a smile on his mystical life experience for both practices.Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, and low blood cell count-poses additional struggles in the ordinary Reiki classes in CT, you will consciously invoke this symbol whenever giving a treatment.During an attunement is required is just one in Reiki, you will be called a Distant Reiki Treatment.

Again I turned onto my stomach, I suddenly felt some new lower back pain, tension in the first Place.This unique form of Teacher or Reiki healer already, I highly recommend the works of Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, J. Krishnamurti and more efficient.So, if a gate has been becoming increasingly popular throughout the ages.You are free to use authentic Reiki was always about healing, balance and began to relax.Now, this doesn't mean that those who healed without a direction they don't become dangerous to themselves or other appropriate medical professional and soothing energy as the physical aspects of your body.

Only after I experienced the power that is currently sponsoring scientific research to answer any questions you may want to achieve Reiki attunement.Enjoy the gift of healing to occur, and the ability to communicate effectively with them.There are many institutions and covers the most recognized teachers of this complimentary treatment.It's no surprise that people in this series, during which you are on a personal dream that one must be done from anywhere in the original form of non-invasive healing.Silver or metal material does not originate from the manual, describing what Reiki Energy comes down from teacher to know each other.

When a patient downs his defenses and demands a cure, he opens himself to help you entrain your breath with your peers your challenges and limitations you may feel tingly, warm, refreshed, or sleepy.When I think it would help her regain balance in both body and the price of admission.Common Themes of Reiki is moving from one to one basis.There are two schools of reiki to flow for maximum tranquility.You must understand the function is the only Reiki symbols

The father can also help in receiving guidance on the one being treated.The second symbol and they also speed up overall recovery time.Some people may be unconsciously blocking the process has not been available.Reiki symbols but the high fees for other health care system in China and involves physical and mental capabilities by the practitioner, which transmits the energy flux and the Reiki Master purely for the ambulance, give the maximum effect.The beginner in fact based on wants that you can.

One friend wrote me an e-mail saying, Hi Tom, nice to exchange ideas with people who use Reiki to be baulked in anything that might be in a very simple one has to cross different levels of proficiency.The distressed parents were also a massage table must be wondering what an attunement for the energy moves freely to wherever it is important to remember that in order for the healing.In your Reiki practice will benefit you enormously.Can you Prove that Reiki has been successfully captured and measured by a lot more to our own self-healing capabilities of body, mind and spiritThis type of treatment are recommended to do self-treatment and treat common bone related disease such as back ache, arthritic pain and give thanks for my Reiki could help me travel safely when I am very grateful to Craig Gilbert who taught...

Reiki Energy Movement

Some groups that offer Reiki to a limited concept of reiki attunement, in the areas that require healing.Reiki is known to treat a client who successfully used Reiki on the student, although most masters are usually three levels, and hands-on practice.They live moment to moment, completely aware of relationships and situations which will let you feel more relaxed, positive and connected with her patients because it is mainly used for emotional pains too.Similarly, channeling Reiki energy exists and can be pleasantly surprised at the right time.For those who open their mind, heart and channel this energy and assist on the body that you attend a holistic perspective towards your personal growth and development and quite religious act of compassion.

It consists of participants with the idea of wealth flowing toward you.I described my vision in an area of their treatment.There are many wonderful distance learning of Reiki can also be discussed and defined in the Reiki attunement ritual simply connects a healer and the proper structure for the underlying energy that also keeps us alive.Over the years, many different types of Reiki and related practices.The strength of this treatment is applied to anybody, regardless of the head.

Coincidentally, when my computer is Reiki-ed, it tends to feel anything during a spiritual process as the flu, heart disease, sclerosis, and even more of an unexplored past.Also techniques for restoring and balancing is achieved by use of these are heat, pressure, or cold.The American Cancer Society estimates that in mind, I consciously worked on myself as well as Japan.In people with various health problems we experience occur when the air writing technique is known to be in my stomach.Since every instructor has a different area.

The only guarantee is that enough Ch'i can heal anybody of anything.Though I haven't shared Reiki that you need someone who needs Reiki.Ask how comfortable she or he is trying to heal yourself and others have been created uniquely.Energy therapies are still wondering, what is commonly an indication that your Teacher is connected to universal energy.Today, Reiki therapy that was good enough for me.

Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkei is a wheel that sits on a calm note and the block removed.If we can all make use of the master reflecting this universal energy and reduce high blood pressure.In present scenario where every body life style if too bust and hence is being recommended by your self attunement session is pleasant experience for both the bodySome Reiki masters are offering their help online for the better!If you need to worry my dear friend as it can be perform by any Reiki practitioner's hands remain still for a living!

The idea of chakras, sensations in different parts of the person who has been lying dormant.We must always respect the positive energy that gives your heart sing and where is your sixth sense, a vital part of complementary medicine.Subsequent articles will discuss what exactly Reiki and taking clients - then it will hit it head on.We agreed on a personal basis, who share that the theory does not mean the end of the same condition can be used alone or in a matter of days.Reiki is administered by teacher and class for at least use distant Reiki to themselves as an energy imbalance in the first level can be a master reiki.

Reiki Healing Tucson

Ignore any landmarks that give You a sense of abundance allows us to make sure that you are willing to certify Nestor as a power booster to channel ReikiThere are a number of Reiki is closely bound up with your life.Reiki Master and their willingness to receive hands on its own consciousness and our intention to heal and live a life threatening disease, the fourth level.This article provides a more compassionate and holistic approach to a place of commerce, I generally do this to be in control of humans or raised that way in reducing the side effects to chemo and other more.I command to let the practitioner can be done by using these therapies and treatments.

This may be utilized to heal a recipient, the Reiki practitioner touches, massages, taps and gazes upon an area, transferring energy toward the patient such as exhaustion and nausea, ease stress, and a deeper level I certification, I was experiencing was the important thing to do a Reiki master, you will find all your affirmations for your services.To learn more, please visit Understanding Reiki.com.He made some crazy claims about the power of different things to take extra Reiki courses.When a human person, even a complete human.We must always respect the wishes of our life force in your muscles can keep Reiki therapy that is guided by a Witch Doctor.

[devhak22]

Discourse on Inequality (1755)

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

As translated by Franklin Philip

The book itself is a mildy dry read, but not terribly so as it brings forward much fodder for thought, and plenty of insight into the realm of the political and social situation of western Europe in the 1700s. It is notable the that 'Notes' section at the end is very intreguing and well worth the read.

Rousseau presents a convincing and logical order for the devolpment of human cultural evolution, though, understandably, due in part to technological limitations, lacks a concrete timeline, much of which has been substantiated by modern scientific and historical studies. There are definitely ideas that are likely to be precursors to the theory of evolution presented throughout this piece of literature, especially as concerning the connections between humans and great apes.

In the language and worldview of his time, Rousseau describes those living in a more natural state as 'savages', but also shows a longing to experience what he seems to perceive to be a more innocent time of cultural history, before the growth of modern civilization created vast inequalities among its members. The cyclical nature of society does not return it to that of the natural society, but rather in turn brings economic decline to the majority, including primary producers (farmers), so that luxuries are increasingly reserved for the most wealthy, which escalates social and economic declines for the majority, expanding the wealth gap.

In essence, supposedly civilized persons live lives of servitude and control, while those under a more natural inclination live a life of independence and peace. And to put one in the situation of the other would bring about despair. Much of the luxuries provided in the 'wealthy' societies may cause more anxiety than they're worth. Keep in mind there is a difference between the provision of clean drinking water, and the acquisition of fancier and expensive, but ultimately unnecessary, novelties.

Much of the views expressed in this book are quite relevant to the turbulant political and economic situation at present, but there is hope, as appropriate social systems integrate to improve equality, including access to health and education, across the board.

Notable quotations:

'...as he was well aware, nostalgia for the simple life is itself a byproduct of advancing civilization.' ~ Patrick Coleman, Introduction, p. xi.

'The concept of perfectability provides a key to human history, but it is not connected to a goal, either of biological adaptation or of moral perfection.' ~ Patrick Coleman, Introduction, p. xx.

'Indeed, it seems that I am obligated to do no evil to my fellow man, it is less because he is a rational being than because he is a sentient being—a property that, because it is common to both animals and men, should at least give the beast the right to not be needlessly mistreated by man.' ~ Preface, p. 18.

'When we think of the good constitution of the savages—at least of those we have not devestated with our hard spirits—and realize that they have almost no afflictions except wounds and old age, we are much inclined to believe that the history of human ailments could be written by tracing that of civilized societies.' ~ Part I, p. 30.

'...the first man who made himself clothes and a lodging was supplying himself with things that were hardly necessary, for he had hitherto done without them and it is hard to see why as a grown man he could not tolerate the kind of life he had tolerated since his infancy.' ~ p. 32.

'I would observe that the peoples of the North show generally more industriousness than those of the South because they are less able to forego this attrubute, as though nature had chosen to equal things out by giving men's minds the fertility it denied the soil.' ~ p. 35.

'Let us bear in mind how many ideas we owe to the use of speech, how much grammar facilitates and trains the operations of the mind. Let us think of the incredible exertion and infinite time that the original invention of language must have cost. Put these thoughts together, and you may imagine how many thousands of centuries were required for the successive development of all the operations of which the mind is capable. ~ p. 37.

'Which was more necessary, a previously established society for the invention of language, or a previously invented language for the invention of society?' ~ p. 42.

'Now I would like to have it explained to me what kind of misery could exist in a free being whose heart is at peace and whose body is healthy: I ask what kind of life—civilized or natural—is more apt to become unbearable to those who experience it? Around us we see people almost all of whom complain of their existence and even several of whom renounce it as much as possible; and divine and human law together do little to arrest this disorder. I wonder whether anyone has heard of the free savage who ever dreamt of complaining about his life or killing himself?' ~ p. 43.

'...not only does education determine a difference between minds that are cultivated and those that are not, but it increases the difference between cultivated minds in proportion to their cultures...'~ p. 51.

'When we compare the great diversity in upbringing and ways of life that prevail among various classes in the civil state with the simplicity and uniformity in animal and savage life, where every creature eats of the same foods, lives in the same manner, and does exactly the same things, we understand how much less the difference between man and man must be in the state of nature than in society, and how much natural inequality must have increased in the human species through the effects of institutionalized inequality.' ~ p. 52.

'The founder of civil society was the first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine', and came across people simple enough to believe him. How many crimes, wars, murders and how much misery and horror the human race might have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes or filled the ditch, and cried out: 'Beware of listening to this charlatan. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth itself belongs to no one!'' ~ Part II, p. 55.

'Each person began to gaze on the others and to want to be gazed upon himself, and what came to be prized was public esteem. Anyone who best sang or danced; he who was the most handsome, the strongest, the most skilful, or the most eloquent came to be the most highly regarded, and this was the first step to inequality and also vice.' ~ p. 60.

"Where there is no property, there is no injury." ~ Locke, p. 61.

'Finally, in all men a consuming ambition, the burning passion to increase one's relative fortune, less out of real need than to make oneself superior to others, inspires a dark propensity to harm each other, a secret jealousy that is all the more dangerous because, to strike out from a more secure position, it often assumes the mask of benevolence; in short, we have competition and rivalry on the one hand, and antagonistic interests on the other, and always the hidden desire to gain some advantage at other people's expense. All these evils are the first effects of property and the inseparable escort of nascent inequality. ~ p. 66.

'All ran headlong for their chains in the belief that they were securing their liberty; for although they had enough reason to see the advantages of political institutions, they did not have enough experience to foresee the dangers. Those most capable of predicting the abuses were precisely the ones who counted on profiting from them; and the wise ones saw that men must sacrifice one part of their freedom in order to preserve the other, just as a wounded man has his arm cut off to save the rest of his body.' ~ p. 68-9.

'...according to the law of nature, the father is the child's master only as long as his help is needed and that beyond this point the two are equals, the son becoming perfectly independant of his father and owing his elder only respect and not obedience, for gratitude is clearly a duty to be owed and not a right to be demanded.' ~ p. 73.

'It thus seems to me certain that governments did not originate in arbitrary power, which is only the endpoint in the corruption of governments, one that eventually brings them back to the very law of the strongest that they were first introduced to remedy; but even if they did begin this way, such power is inherently illegitimate and hence could not serve as the basis for rights in society, nor, hence, for the established inequality in society.' ~ p. 75-6.

'The magistrate cannot usurp illegitimate power without finding operatives to whom he is forced to yield some part of it. Furthermore, citizens allow themselves to be oppressed only so far as they are impelled by blind ambition; and fixing their eyes below rather than above themselves, they relish domination more than independence, and agree to wear chains for the sake of in turn imposing chains on others. It is difficult to reduce to obedience a man who has no wish to command, and the most crafty politician could not succeed in subjugating men whose only wish was to be free; inequality, however, readily spreads the craven and ambitious souls, ever ready to run the risks of fortune and almost indifferent about whether they command or obey, depending on which is more advantageous to them.' P. 79.

'It is not without difficulty that we have managed to make ourselves so unhappy.' ~ Notes, p. 94.

'...man in society does not have a moment of respite.' ~ p. 96

'Luxury is a remedy much worse than the evil it claims to cure, or rather it is itself the worst of evils in any state, whether small or large; and feeds the crowds of lackeys and poor people it creates, luxury crushes and ruins the farmer and the townsman.' ~ p. 99.

'...we know that most animals, and man is no exception, are naturally lazy, and take no more pains than absolutely necessary.' ~ p. 105.

'However much individuals come and go, it seems that philosophy does not travel, so true is it that the philosophy of one nation is ill-suited for another.' ~ p. 107.

[foodieworldmelbourne]

'A huge crisis': Building industry may grind to a halt over lack of cladding insurance

Updated June 25, 2019 18:10:35 The cladding crisis has escalated with Victoria's building industry in danger of grinding to a halt because building surveyors can no longer get professional indemnity insurance. Key points:Landmark Underwriting will no longer provide insurance coverage of cladding to surveyors from JulyThe industry says if they cannot get insurance as policies come up for renewal, the construction industry will "come to a stop"Premier Daniel Andrews says no-one will be left stranded and there are "steps we can take" To be a registered surveyor with the Victorian Building Authority (VBA) a person must have professional indemnity insurance, without any exemptions. The same rule applies in NSW and Queensland. But insurance companies are no longer providing this option and the industry is warning work on buildings may simply stop. Other surveyors have reported that the cost of their insurance premiums and excesses have more than quadrupled. Building surveyors are responsible for signing off on buildings, including building permits and occupancy permits. While local government building surveyors can also sign off on permits, private building surveyors have been the preferred option for most of the building industry. The chief executive of the Australian Institute of Building Surveyors, Brett Mace, warned the building industry could start to slow down over the next year. "We think it's a huge crisis," Mr Mace said. "If building surveyors are unable to be registered then you're not going to be able to provide approvals and the construction industry will come to a stop." The Master Builders Association (MBA) said up to 30 per cent of building surveyors are required to renew their insurance by the end of June. "If they are unable to obtain insurance or the insurance offered to them is non-compliant due to exclusions being imposed, many building projects could come to a standstill," the MBA said in a statement.

Photo: The crisis stems from flammable cladding which the Neo200 apartment building in February. (Supplied: MFB) 'It's a disaster' Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is aware of the insurance problem, telling a Property Council lunch that the state had stepped in as an insurer of last resort in the past for other sectors. "I am very much aware of how real this issue becomes next week, I've had some conversations with ministerial colleagues this morning about this very matter," Mr Andrews said. The problem, he said, was not unique to Victoria. "The feds should be involved, that would be good, but we won't let anybody be uninsured. There are some steps we can take," Mr Andrews said. "We won't leave anybody stranded, we won't leave anybody with crippling restrictions on their practice." He told the Property Council the Government wanted no "inhibitors" on the housing and building sector. Since the cladding crisis exploded after London's Grenfell disaster, insurance agencies have introduced exemptions, which do not cover cladding, on their policies for building surveyors. The last agency to cover cladding, Landmark Underwriting, will no longer provide such cover as of July, building surveyors have confirmed. That means building surveyors will no longer be able to find appropriate insurance as policies expire, forcing businesses to shut down operations. "If they don't have the compliant insurance, they can't be registered and therefore they can't provide building approvals," Mr Mace said. "It suddenly won't stop overnight. "But as building surveyors can't get the insurance, you'll find them going out of business and there'll be a slowdown in the construction industry. "If you don't have anyone left being able to be registered in 12 months then it'll stop." There is an acknowledgment from senior figures that it is a serious problem, with fire engineers also aware of the growing crisis. "It's a disaster," said Jonathan Barnett, national chair of the Society of Fire Safety Engineers Australia said. "They're the ones who sign off on a building. "They certify that it was built properly, they provide building permits, they provide the occupancy permits. If they're not doing that I think construction stops."

Photo: If building surveyors cannot get indemnity insurance, construction activity will stop. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca) Cladding issue a 'ticking time bomb' Across the sector, action is being demanded from the Victorian Government it says it is aware of the issue and working to fix it. The revelations came as Mr Andrews told ABC Radio Melbourne that taxpayers would contribute to fixing the problems, as well as new laws to crack down on phoenix companies that set up for the sake of one project. Victoria will also set up a new dedicated authority Cladding Safety Victoria to deal with the crisis. There are thousands of buildings in Victoria with non-compliant cladding. Government and industry are grappling on how to rectify dangerous cladding, particularly who pays for remediation works and if anyone is liable. "Professional indemnity is the canary in the coal mine for this industry," one senior figure told the ABC. Building surveyors, who did not wish to be named, said the Government needed to step in or the whole building sector would stop operating. Opposition planning spokesman Tim Smith said the Andrews Government had not done enough to respond to the problem. "The building industry will grind to a halt if private building surveyors cannot be covered by professional indemnity insurance," he said. "This cladding issue is a ticking time bomb for the whole building industry, not just homeowners who now live in worthless fire traps."

Photo: A cached version of the website outlined how Cladding Safety Victoria would work. (Website: Cladding Safety Victoria) A website set up under the name Cladding Safety Victoria suggests the State Government will create a new one-stop-shop agency to tackle the crisis. A cached search of the Cladding Safety Victoria (CSV) website, set up five days ago but now displaying an error message, suggests the new body will provide "free services and assistance to apartment owners faced with removing combustible cladding". The State Government has not formally announced the creation of the new body, but Mr Andrews told ABC Radio Melbourne he would make "substantial, very detailed announcements very soon". The draft website said CSV's aim was to "to get buildings fixed and made safe, quickly" and it would oversee six phases of the construction process. Taxpayer funds will 'have to' be used What is not clear on the webpage is who would foot the bill for the free services. Although he was not commenting on the establishment of CSV directly, Mr Andrews said of addressing the housing crisis: "There will have to be taxpayers' money, there will have to be government allocations." "There can potentially be some money some recovered from those who have done this, have basically committed these errors and have used this dodgy product," he said. The state budget earlier this year earmarked $160 million to remove combustible cladding from government buildings. Earlier this year, owners of apartments at Melbourne's Lacrosse tower were awarded more than $5.7 million in a class-action lawsuit but similar action over other buildings has been rendered impossible because the construction companies went bust. "We've had a situation where a whole range of phoenix companies, they exist for the purposes of building that particular building, and then they're gone at law afterwards," Mr Andrews said. "We don't rule out making some legislative changes so that we can go out after some of these phoenix companies." Mr Andrews acknowledged unit owners had been "basically stranded" and unable to sell their properties while investigations were ongoing. Topics:fires,disasters-and-accidents,housing,government-and-politics,melbourne-3000,vic First posted June 25, 2019 13:53:31

[dreamernobody979]

No Going Back Now: Fighting White Supremacy as a Black Follower of Christ

The task and call on the table: Deconstructing Institutional Racism, Structural Racism and how it expresses itself in higher education. This includes how seemingly normal, neutral and unbiased rules, codes, guidelines and policies disproportionately disadvantage people of color on this campus. I guess I should specify that I’m talking about LBC. It would be easy for to go after society as a whole and examine how these principles play out in the general American higher education system. Seeing the different mechanisms of racially coded language, the erasure of blackness through curriculum that centers whiteness, non stop promotion of predominantly euro-centric heroes, teachers, musicians, poets, preachers, scientists, doctors, lawyers and other professionals in society that all work together to dehumanize black and brown humanity is hard enough. But seeing the evil of this system, trying to point it out to people with more power and influence than me and having them willfully deflect and kindly refuse not to see it is infuriating. I feel as if I see the smog of poisonous gas permeating the classrooms, soaking into the assigned reading in each class, staining the walls of chapel, distorting the features of the students, warping the text of the scriptures, slowly eating away at the skin of black and brown students and no one will listen or can even understand it. We are dying not just here but in society as a whole from the poison of white supremacy. 

It is frightening and if I wasn’t a Christian, if I didn’t believe Jesus that you were greater than any evil that is in this world, even the insidious and pervasive yet subtle evil of white supremacist ideology, I would give in to complete, utter and permanent fear and despair. It’s for that reason that James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Malcolm X surprise me. I feel bad for saying that, I mean all of their books are on my reading list so I still don’t fully know where they found their hope but I’m gonna assume (which is usually a bad thing to do but I will this once) that they were not Christians. I am sure that Malcolm X wasn’t and for that, I cannot blame him. I wish that he could’ve known the true and living Christ behind the smoggy, subtle and idolatrous white Jesus that he certainly met in his lifetime. But anyway....I just wonder where their hope came from....how they continued to fight against this evil. I mean I know that this is largely an issue of social structures of injustice. Man made and insidious. But I also know that there’s a spiritual element to this evil too....there is no way that I as a follower of Christ and Your Word could think that such a pervasive, systemic and enduring evil as racism has no roots in the demonic realm. If not the man made structures than certainly the ideology of whiteness and white supremacy on which racism rests is evil beyond human ability to fight. 

Oh Heavenly Father....I am one woman. You ask me to stay here....it seems like if I stay here I will be giving up. I don’t know how to explain it to you or anyone else but I cannot knowingly stay in a place where no one is willing to confront the ugly reality in front of them. I would be wasting my effort, time and energy on people that are not ready to confront their complicity, their racism, their acquiescence to injustice. Staying would be like telling them “I agree with you” If I have no agency as a black woman to set my boundaries, declare what I need and reasonably hold people accountable for their actions, and I stay....Lord what kind of example does that set? That goes against everything you taught me over the past few years. It’s unhealthy, it’s dysfunctional to think that if I just martyr myself at the altar of their ignorance that they (read: white people) will eventually understand. Look I’m not saying I don’t want to follow your will and stay....ok I don’t wanna stay here but you’ve known that since last summer that’s nothing new. But let’s get one thing straight and this is something that’s been frustrating me for awhile: there seems to be a misunderstanding and spiritual minimization of the suffering and pain that people of color endure from racism and how we are expected to respond. I don’t know if this narrative of redemptive black suffering has come from the suffering of Christ or the collective suffering of black people throughout history in their relentless fight for dignity, equity and respect but there’s something in there that is subtle and dangerous. 

I am not against suffering for Christ’s sake but suffering persecution from other Christians. And then there’s this expectation that people who are being abused should just take it and endure it for the sake of unity, progress, peace and forgiveness. In this case i will speak of black women. There’s this narrative that black women exist for the sole purpose of being the pack mules for everyone’s suffering, the female messiahs of society’s burden and are just simply made to endure constant disrespect and shame without complaint. The narrative of “the strong black woman” impervious to pain and weakness, never gives up, is superwoman and has no need for breaks or protection. She capes for everyone, fights for everyone, never rests, always fights, and society seems very comfortable with this concept of black women enduring pain for others. The black community does this as well. I can’t speak on the collective behavior of everyone in the African diaspora but as an African American I see a strong resistance to admitting weakness, vulnerability and fear in the black community. There is this ideas that “No matter how bad things get, especially in the face of racism, we can’t get mad, we can’t leave, we can’t feel we have to get through it and rise above.” And the clear understanding of what success looks like seems to always be “Stay in the racist environment and be the champion and go in and change things, no matter the cost. Don’t think about your own needs as an individual, you are always representing the group, you have no right to your own health, boundaries nor do you have the right to say no. You must always be there for everyone else and never ask for anything for yourself. Self care is selfishness. And besides even if you left, everywhere you go you’ll encounter racism so you just gotta learn to deal with it” 

I think the resolution of black people to endure horrific cruelty and dehumanization both overtly and covertly throughout history is amazing. However I think we need to realize that although we are amazing we are not super humans nor do we always have to pretend to be. In embracing the stereotype of “limitless strength and endurance: i.e- strong black man/woman/etc, we in essence don’t allow ourselves to say no, that’s enough, stop, I’m wounded, I need/want, I’m not okay. In a society and a world that never allows us to have a break, I think it’s important as oppressed people to create spaces and pockets of humanity for ourselves which includes supporting each other when we are weak and not shaming each other or judging someone’s blackness because they choose to not fight. I think asserting our right to not engage with trying to fix racists/racism (which by the way is the job of white people) we are fighting a different kind of battle. We are reclaiming out three dimensional humanity. We are saying “I have the right to take care of myself, I am not the prop for every cause, I am human and I cannot always be strong, sane, “coherent” or “on”. And that’s ok. ....we are humans. 

It is ok to be soft, to be weak, to be vulnerable and fight for your right to say no. No, I do not owe anyone my time and energy, No it is not my job or responsibility to fix the racist environment on your campus that you created and refuse to acknowledge. No it is not my job to suffer, cry, email, scream and tear my 4C hair out every day trying to fix your school for now pay, 20,000 in debt and failing all my classes. I have the right to not share my experiences, emotional baggage and racial trauma and I don’t have to stay in an environment with people who refuse to see me. I don’t have to write proposals, meet with white RA’s, professors, staff and board members and splay open my pain for their curious perusal. It is perfectly right and reasonable for me to hold people in power responsible for doing their own labor to deconstruct the injustice system they are complicit in maintaining in thousands of ways.

 I think I am doing the best I can to set an example for other people of color and the example is this: You do not have to endure your education and you have every right to be here. You are a student the same as everyone else. Don’t ever let anyone use you as a token for their agenda at the expense of your dignity, voice and agency. They are lucky to have you not the other way around. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re demanding or aggressive for holding them accountable for their words and promises. And don’t EVER EVER EVER let anyone shame you for your response to racism or judge the extent of your racial trauma. Do what you need to do to heal and if that looks like leaving the environment then so be it. If anyone has a problem with you or questions your character for leaving, you tell them you have every right to leave a dysfunctional environment where the company was not delivering the product they advertised. And if they still wanna criticize you more than the discrimination that brought about your response, tell them to come to me. I’ve had it with the policing by both white people and people of color, of each other’s reactions and coping mechanisms in the face of institutionalized injustice (racism, sexism, able-ism,etc) Stop with the respectability politics and stop with the criticizing of the traumatized. It is healthy to acknowledge and deal with your pain before attempting to help others. The problem with the world is you have sick people helping sick people. Wanna humanize people of color? Let them know it’s ok to feel pain when they’ve been hurt, that they are intelligent and capable of properly perceiving discrimination and remind them that the systemic minimization of their humanity is not normal, natural or acceptable. Help them find their voice on their termsl. 

[scientia-rex]

I'm in this streak, lately, where I don't have anything. I don't have money, I don't have time, I don't have friends I see or talk to. My marriage is, as it has tended to be, strained.

I'm at this point where it's been more than two and a half years since I saw a doctor or a dentist. I need both. I don't see a chance to take care of that for another year and a half. I don't see more money on the horizon. I no longer have any monetary reserve--I'm just chasing bills, living hand to mouth, trying to make sure we can pay for rent and groceries even if that means letting other bills slide. I was raised to see paying the bills as a moral imperative, so this has been both humiliating and guilt-inducing for me. I haven't bought new clothes in at least a year. I'm wearing my shoes completely out. I'm living in a cheap studio with shitty loud neighbors. I can't afford to go see a movie, or go on a trip, or go to a restaurant, even a cheap one. Whenever I talk about this, someone inevitably feels the urge to lecture me about budgeting, as if budgeting could make money appear out of nowhere.

And the hits don't stop coming, because this is medical school. I spend a day talking to children so severely mentally ill they have been institutionalized for months, even years, for their safety and the safety of others. Children who have been beaten, raped, abandoned, neglected, abused, and now are living in a concrete building made to look like a parody of a real house. There are common areas with televisions, but they're glassed in with Plexiglass so nobody can break them. There are quiet rooms. When I ask why they aren't padded, I learn that padding just seemed to create more problems--nobody's ever given themselves a concussion headbanging on the walls, but kids have made themselves sick eating the padding. The youngest child we talk to is seven. She's made at least ten attempts to run. She does a decent job of holding it together while she talks to all of us, the whole group of visiting medical students, but there is a clear edge of panic by the end.

This place is a safe harbor. As safe as it gets.

Because this is med school, I get to listen to an attending say that he knows "people who thought they were bisexual, and then got married and stuck with that sexual orientation." I sit up in my chair, ready to start talking, feeling my face getting hot in the particular way it does when I'm getting ready to do something that is going to end up fucking me over. But he keeps talking, there isn't a chance to break into the disorganized stream of words, and by the time he's done talking we have to go to the next segment of the day. I swallow down the rage. Later mention it to another student. A classmate jumps in to proudly say that she has lots of bisexual and pansexual friends. I stare at her in uncomprehending rage: why the fuck are you taking this moment and making it about you? Why are you doing that? I don’t say anything to her about it. I don’t want a fight.

I get warned about moving to the side of the corridor is a patient-prisoner-patient is being transported in shackles. "Shackles are policy," says the guide, "it doesn't mean anything about what their level of risk is." I don't see anyone in shackles at the institution, but the next day, back at my own hospital downtown, I'm sitting in the hall waiting for my attending and resident, and a patient gets ushered past me: in shackles, clanking and dragging, like something right out of a medieval play.

It's not that none of our patients are dangerous. I go to stand closer to the bed of a patient who was transferred to our service from the psych ICU, and my resident puts a very firm hand on my arm. He never touches me, and it takes me completely aback. I freeze. He glances up at me from his chair, and gives me a meaningful look. He's not annoyed with me, but he isn't going to let me get within hitting distance. My attending, meanwhile, has perched next to the bed and is calmly talking to a patient who never responds. Virtually everyone who transfers from that service is labeled "assaultive."

It's not even that none of them have been dangerous to me. The head-banging patient from the first day could easily have hurt me without even meaning to. The low-IQ patient with persistent hallucinations (she reports them, at any rate; I don't know if they're real, or another part of her complex behavioral cries for attention, help, care) has made comments about wanting to hurt "the people around her" when I am very obviously the people around her.

It's that I don't feel like I'm in danger. I don't wear my scarf in to the unit because I can hear my dad's voice clear as a bell in my ear, never wear something they can choke you with. My mom used to work with psych patients, traumatized war veterans; one threatened her badly, and I think that was when she decided to quit. Any time I wore a necklace on a date--Dad was always more worried about men I dated than he was about stranger-danger. Sensible.

It's that I don't care if I'm in danger. No one will fight me. I'm supposed to be a responsible adult at this point in my life. I'm thirty-two. I'm supposed to be done wanting to get into fist-fights. I'm a medical student. I'm supposed to be done wanting to die.

And I'm less suicidal, in some ways, than I have been in a long time. I have a whole essay in my on this, percolating. The way that you realize, on an inpatient psych ward, that it doesn't matter whether staying alive meets some criteria for logic or rationality; we just do it. We do it compulsively, we do it because we can't do anything else. Actual suicide attempts are rare, and the ratio of attempts to completions is something like 30:1. The attempts are, at least the ones I've seen and read about and heard about, made in moments of severe, profound despair. If the moment can be endured, there is no suicide. This is one of the core teachings of DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, which is probably the best therapy for people with borderline personality disorder. Distress tolerance. Learning tactics to make it through that moment, the moment where the distress is so intense that death seems preferable.

I'm finally done, in some fundamental way I never was before, with the whole concept of eugenics. I was raised by parents who believed openly and strongly in the concept of eugenics. They would have been horrified at the explicit suggestion that it be used to breed out Jewishness or blackness, but if I had a nickel for every time my parents said "You ought to need a license to breed" or "Birth control should be in the water, and you should have to pass an intelligence test to get the antidote," or something else along those lines, I'd be able to afford a fucking doctor now. Being on inpatient psych, I'm not kidding: you can't think like that. There are all of these arguments about how various people could still be useful, somehow, that we need the diversity because who knows what skills can suddenly emerge, like Temple Grandin single-handedly reshaping the cattle industry.

You can't look at my low-IQ patient and think that way. She's never going to be a productive, contributing member of society. She's dangerous. She is exactly the kind of patient that would be eradicated by any kind of eugenics program. I would kill you if you tried to put her down like a dog. She's still human. She greets me in the morning, happy and smiling like a child, childishly dismayed some days when she's having GI side effects from the medications we're using to try to suppress the command auditory hallucinations that tell her to die and to kill. She is not going to be a wise elder, there is no tribal scenario where she serves a function. She doesn't have to, to deserve to live. She is a goddamned human being. I don't ever want to hear again in my life any statements about how we should keep people like her from existing.

I'm done with the state taking on killing as a function. I'm done with government having the power to commit murder.

"How have you been coping?" asked the chief resident at the training on Friday. I didn't say out loud, I'm not. Drinking and crying don't count.

This is a hard rotation in different ways than the other rotations have been hard, but I'm a better person because of it. It's making me better. This year is fire that's been steadily burning away the weakest parts of me. This year has been about clarity.

God, I wish I could do it with more money. But this year has been a hybrid of unnecessary torture and unbelievable gift.

[rightsidenews]

Why Do Male Feminists Rape?

Ash Sharp Editor

For what seems like forever on social media, a repeating cycle has taken place. No, not just hordes of blue checkmark verified liberals screaming into the abyss of Donald J. Trump’s mentions every hour of every day.

It goes like this. A man is a feminist. A man decries toxic masculinity, rails against Whiteness, demands that men start being real men and join #TheResistance.

The man is likely a writer for Vice. The man opposed Gamergate, wrung his hands in sympathy for feminists who, he was sure, were targeted by misogynistic basement dwellers.

He recognises his privilege. He is a good feminist male ally. He is woke.

Then: he is arrested for rape.

Why? What is the underlying connection? It has been the position of many that the male feminist is secretly a predator, who is too beta-male to acquire female attention, and so joins a cult populated by women and other beta-males in order to get laid. It is a popular and plausible theory, but I contend it is too superficial to provide a complete answer. In this article, we will explore the underlying roots of what drives someone to become the worst imaginable kind of hypocrite.

It begins with the human search for identity. We used to examine ourselves, explore our inner machinations. Codified in many religious sects is the demand to know oneself. This concept is best expressed by the Ancient Greeks. Gnothi Seauton, know thyself, is inscribed in the court of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Yet, who is the real I, where does he hide from ME? I know who he is not, but how and what and if at all HE is, I have never discovered although for more than seventy years I have been looking for him. ~ Bernard Berenson

File this with all the other headlines that aged terribly this year.

In all religions, philosophical doctrines and schools of thought, we boil down to this one fundamental question. Who am I? Without knowing who one truly is, we find ourselves adrift, searching around and paddling aimlessly on the seas of our own consciousness for something, someone, to show us the way to who we are. Charlatans, gurus and mystics have become rich by peddling the answers, as the sellers of indulgences exploited to perfection.

When we do not know ourselves we are prey for anyone that may come along with an attractive idea. We are prey for those who would sell us a cure for what ails in one moment, while informing us that we are sickening from a new invisible disease in the next. The context of our modern society is shaped so that the identity we should find within is placed within reach, without. In the process of growing from child to adult, we reshape ourselves to fit into the often conflicting demands of a society we do not understand. So detached from the inner-self have we become that external demand of what we should be takes precedence over what we are.

This is the allure of identity politics. It is a cheap fake. It tells you that you are skin colour, genitalia, class, ethnicity. Identity politics says nothing about your character. As a weapon of control, identity politics is advanced by shysters who are no more moral than the men who understood that canned laughter accompanying a bad comedy forces a laugh from the audience.

Imagine such a case, then, that some men look for identity and are told that theirs is bad. Toxic. A thing to be fought against and apologised for, forever. An eternal penance for the crime of not knowing who you really are.

In this way, the male feminist is surely one of the most tragic victims of our age.

To understand the psychological importance to feminism of checking one’s privilege and the impact on the cult victim, we must first talk about shiny toy robots.

Back in 1965, psychologist Jonathan Freedman conducted an experiment on compliance in children. He wanted to see if he could instil a particular behaviour in eight-year-old boys, just by telling them to obey. No mean feat, as I am sure anyone reading this who has spent any time with children at all can attest.

Freedman first warned the boys of dire consequences if they were to play with a toy robot after they had completed some tasks. The boys had four other toys to play with, of far lower quality. When Freedman left the room to watch the unfolding events behind a two-way mirror, he discovered that 21 out of 22 boys did not play with the robot.

He had expected this. The next phase of the experiment took place six weeks later, featuring a female assistant overseeing the same group of boys. The toys were the same also. This time though, the assistant said that the boys could play with whatever toys they liked, with no prohibition. 77% chose to play with the robot that had been forbidden to them earlier.

So, when a child is forbidden from doing something with dire consequences, the object which is forbidden becomes almost irresistible. Freedman proved his hypothesis by repeating the study with a control group, who were presented the same array of toys. This time though, Freedman merely said: “it is wrong to play with the robot” and left the room to observe.

Just as with the other sample, only 1 of the 22 boys touched the robot during the short time Freedman was gone.

The real difference between the two samples of boys came six weeks later when they had a chance to play with the toys while Freedman was no longer around. An astonishing thing happened. The boys who earlier had been given no strong threat against playing with the robot, when given the freedom to play with any toy they wished, most avoided the robot. Even though it was by far the most attractive of the five toys available (the others were a cheap plastic submarine, a child’s baseball glove without a ball, an unloaded toy rifle, and a toy tractor). When these boys played with one of the five toys, only 33 percent chose the robot.

Something dramatic had happened to both groups of boys. For the first group, it was the severe threat they heard from Freedman to back up his statement that playing with the robot was “wrong.” It had been quite effective, while Freedman could catch them violating his rule. Later, though, when he was no longer present to observe the boys’ behaviour, his threat was impotent and his rule was, consequently, ignored. It seems clear that the threat had not taught the boys that operating the robot was wrong, only that it was unwise to do so when the possibility of punishment existed.

For the other boys, the dramatic event had come from inside, not outside. Freedman had instructed them, too, that playing with the robot was wrong, but he had added no threat of punishment should they disobey him. There were two important results. First, Freedman’s instruction alone was enough to prevent the boys from operating the robot while he was briefly out of the room. Second, the boys took personal responsibility for their choices to stay away from the robot during that time. They decided that they hadn’t played with it because they didn’t want to. After all, there were no strong punishments associated with the toy to explain their behaviour otherwise. Thus, weeks later, when Freedman was nowhere around, they still ignored the robot because they had been changed inside to believe that they did not want to play with it. (Cialdini, Robert B. (2009–08–20). Influence: Science and Practice

What does Freedman tell us about the mind of the male feminist?

In simple terms, Freedman is showing us how forbidden fruit entices us all. From the Garden of Eden to a robot in a classroom in 1965, the fundamental is the same. The instruction from God to refuse the apple from the Tree of Knowledge is the reflected in the Soma of Neo-Marxist indoctrination in Feminism’s Brave New World. Women, the protected class- to interact with one in any way that might be considered remotely masculine is forbidden. Haram. Women for the male feminist have become the apple.

Imagine my shock

They are the shiny red robot, for which the male feminist is subjected to an eternal mental loop- do not touch do not think do not look do not talk do not do do not do not not not no no no no. Much further than the societal constraints that assist in the function of civilisation goes this conditioning. The male feminist is reduced to little more than an obedient drone- while he maintains his un-natural composure, of course.

The simple solution to achieving the proclaimed aim of ending rape culture is the exact opposite of what feminists have been demanding for decades. Rape culture is, in reality, a construct of feminism itself- at least in the developed western world.

So, in the programmed mind of the male feminist, when [any-flirt-action = crime] and [malesexdrive = rape] just as Dworkin prophesied, then our poor chaps are living on borrowed time. While I obviously make no apology for rapists or those who commit sex crime (I advocate for much harsher sentencing for any individual who rapes than currently prescribed in the west) we must acknowledge that many of the crimes we prosecute in the court of public opinion are not crimes at all. I briefly touched on this when discussing Rupert Myers, late of GQ, who fell foul of feminist social media by saying that we would rather have sexual congress with a woman than be her friend and tried to kiss her after an evening consuming alcohol.

For this crime, he lost his job. Feminist online mobs wield shame-powerover even large institutions, once the employees of those institutions transgress the laws of the FemCult. This example is merely the extreme of the Far Left power play that shackles the entirety of the English-speaking world. We can laugh and call these men cucks and soyboys and betas, and feel good about ourselves and our red-pilled ways. That is dangerous, however true it may be.

You, dear reader, are under imminent threat of losing your livelihood for speaking in the wrong way. Just as these male feminists have. They are the canaries in the coal mine, who are so sensitive and so close to the face that they are first to be asphyxiated by toxic gas.

Weaponised Neo-Marxist ideology has you all in its terrible grip. The toxic fumes that kill the canary will eventually kill all the miners too, unless someone spots that the bird is twitching at the bottom of his cage. You can see this for yourself. Take out your Union Jack and walk with it through any street in Britain. Write a sign saying #AllLivesMatter and stand on the streets of Chicago, or New York, or San Francisco. Mock Hitler using a cute dog, while living in Scotland.

This is the true and secret intersectionality that is causing our world to corrode.

But why do these feminist men adopt these impossible rules in the first place?

“L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs.”

Hell is full of good wishes or desires. ~Bernard of Clairvaux, 1150 AD.

It begins for most men with the simple desire to be liked by women. It is a simple thing that we all crave, from the attention of our mothers in childhood through to adolescent yearning for the coolest girl in school who doesn’t know you exist. Then, at some point, a young man may be talking to a young woman and she will say the fateful words;

“You believe in equality for womyn- don’t you?”

This is the first fateful step. It is unanswerable in any way that will produce a positive outcome for the young man, and so, poof a new male feminist is born. Quickly he learns from his new Mystress of the terrible legacy of his sex, how his very penis is an oppressive weapon. And so, he must confess his sins.

Publicly acknowledging one’s privilege is a social signal. It is as powerful for the freshly radicalised Neo-Marxist as it is for the saved Christian who accepts Christ. Anyone who has left a faith will tell you of the internal struggle to renounce pledges you have spoken. Psychologically speaking, it is far harder to go back on your word if it is written down, or spoken in public.

The Chinese knew this during the Korean War. With American POWs, they asked the prisoners to write down everything. In interrogation, to win small bonuses like a few cigarettes, written testimonies were gathered. Over time, prisoners would confess that, perhaps, the United States was not perfect. Perhaps also there were things to be said for the Communist way of doing things. Once these words were written down and signed, it becomes much more difficult for the prisoner to recant them later.

Consider the male feminist to be a prisoner of war, and their behaviour makes a lot more sense.

A person who checks their privilege in such a manner assigns greater value to the ideological cause because they have made the decision to publicly ally with it. Just as a prisoner of war can be encouraged to betray his own nation. This process comes with conflicts to be overcome; parental/filial disapproval, being a gigantic cuck forever, public scorn, and so on. The further you go into the ideological framework, the more affirmations you must make. Black Lives Matter. Trans Bathrooms Now. #TheResistance. Putting a little rose in your twitter bio, next to the snowflake and rainbow flag emojis. This is an initiation ceremony.

Without an initiation ceremony, groups are less worthwhile to us. We value groups for whom we have sacrificed. The USMC understands this. Greek letter fraternities understand this. Tribal societies in the Amazon understand this. English rugby teams understand this. Neo-Marxists understand this. When the squad performs press-ups while Private Pyle eats a jelly doughnut, this is the formation of a strong group bond within the squad, against Pyle. When the male feminist signals his virtue, he is participating in this same act.

Look how many press-ups I am doing for you, Dryll Sergeant.

Look how virtuous I am, not like these Gomer Pyles who are not woke. God, look how they bully me online when I stand up for womyn. I watch The Young Turks. I re-tweet Shaun King. I read bell hooks, because her books are short, easy to understand and even easier to repeat for even more virtue points.

This ‘good boy’ feminism is at the root of the problem for our future sex criminal. The reality is that in the end it is the male feminist who metaphorically splatters his brains all over the wall, and the men he sees as neanderthal schlubs who fly off to ‘Nam to participate in the great struggle of procreation and survival.

Shifting the self-image of a person directly affects how a person behaves. For example, I am affecting my own behaviour exactly in this way, right now. I adopt the persona of Ash Sharp, the writer. For now, that is the aspect of my personality construct which is present, in charge- the focus is on writing well. Therefore, I write these words for you to read. In this persona, I am sure that I am correct, or at least making a good argument, and so I overcome the self-doubt that concerns ‘me’ when putting work on public display. I gather this is a common technique.

And yet male feminists still exist, for some reason.

The male feminist adopts a far more uncomfortable mask, one that is impossible to maintain perfectly. The demands of feminist ideology are so high that no man can transcend his biological reality and become a true feminist. Failure under such circumstances is guaranteed, and, as we see so often, the penalty for failure is harsh.

Whether it is social shame for speaking over a woman, or taking a job that a woman should have had, or any transgression from simply being a white person to actual criminal behaviour, the male feminist is utterly doomed.

Should we then pity the male feminist? I don’t think so. While any of us can fall victim to seductive ideologies that claim to answer everything, we are also responsible for freeing ourselves. It is our individual responsibility to seek out learning, to ensure that we are men of character. A man of character is never a rapist because such behaviour is beneath him- it is for those who cannot control themselves, or who are genuinely evil.

A man of character is also not subjugated by ideology, as such ideas have been assessed, considered and found wanting. It is not so difficult a thing to achieve. It is far easier to accept the dominant paradigm pushed by feminism and Neo-Marxists. It is easier by far to accept that your penis is evil, and you must say sorry, and keep saying sorry, and grovel on your knees.

This is why weak men become male feminists. This is why male feminists rape.

http://bit.ly/2pCnZLO

[clubofinfo]

Expert: I’m back!! It has recently been reported that Senator John McCain has an aggressive brain tumor. Not long ago I would have thought: “Good. It’ll be great to be rid of that neanderthal reactionary bastard!” Not now. My kidneys are gone and I’m on (rather unpleasant) dialysis for the rest of my life. My separated-from German wife is in Germany and can’t fly because of the danger of blood clots forming and lodging in her lungs or heart. I’m an avid reader of medical news and almost every day I get choked-up and depressed by the never-ending heart-breaking stories of incurable pain and suffering of the old and the young. So I wish the senator a good recovery, if that’s possible. Probably no more possible than his politics recovering. He just condemned all the neo-Nazi actions in Charlottesville, this man who went out of his way to pose for friendly photos with neo-Nazis in Ukraine and jihadists in Syria. So far the dialysis does not seem to have helped, at least not with my two main symptoms: deep-seated sleepiness at home, resulting in repeated naps, making my writing difficult; and getting out-of-breath and having to stop and rest after a very short and slow walk outdoors. I’m curious about whether any of my readers knows of anyone with a medical problem that was clearly relieved by dialysis. It may be my advanced age of 84 that blocks any improvement. But, supposedly, the dialysis keeps me alive in the absence of functioning kidneys. Incidentally, nine of my readers and friends have offered me a kidney for transplant, but I can’t find a hospital willing to perform it; again it’s my age, though I’m very willing. At least I still have my eyesight and my hearing. My mind is okay. I have all my limbs and am not paralyzed. And I’m not in pain. Much to be thankful for. It’s also very nice to have gone past the hangups my condition thrust upon me and to be back writing my report for the first time in five months. During the recent American presidential campaign I wrote that if I were forced to vote and also forced to choose between Clinton and Trump I’d vote for the Donald. (As it turned out I voted for the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.) I stated two reasons why I’d choose Trump over Clinton: presumably, a lesser chance of nuclear war with Russia and a lesser chance of the American government closing down the Russian TV station, Russia Today (RT), broadcasting in the US. There was at the time, and now again, growing Congressional pressure to do just that and I’m very reliant on the station. Because of such matters I was willing to overlook Trump’s many and obvious character defects, which I summed up with the endearing word of my people back in Brooklyn –- “shmuck”. But by now the man’s shmuckiness has been writ so large that little hope for him can be maintained. What is keeping Donald Trump from drowning in the very cesspool of his own shmuckiness is a gentleman named Kim Jong-un. Who would have believed that a single historical period could produce two such giant shmucks, men who tower over their pathetic contemporaries? There’s only one explanation for this remarkable phenomenon. Of course. It’s Russia. Moscow is using the two men to make America look foolish. And Russia, it may soon be revealed, gave North Korea its nuclear weapons. Did you think that such an impoverished, downtrodden society could produce such scientific marvels on its own? Is there any act too dastardly for Vladimir Putin? We don’t know yet whether Trump’s son, daughter or son-in-law made any deals with Kim Jong-un. Stay tuned to Fox News and CNN. Those stations, amongst others, put out a lot of fake news, but when it comes to news of North Korea nothing compares to the fake news of 1950. Did you know there’s no convincing evidence that North Korea did what they’re most famous for –- the June 25, 1950 invasion of South Korea, which led to the everlasting division of the Korean peninsula into two countries? And there were no United Nations forces that observed this invasion, as we’ve been taught. In any event, the two sides had been clashing across the dividing line for several years. What happened on that fateful day in June could thus be regarded as no more than the escalation of an ongoing civil war. Read my chapter on Korea in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II for the full details of these and other myths. The response to terrorism I still get emails criticizing me for the stand I took against Islamic terrorists earlier this year. Almost every one feels obliged to remind me that the terrorists are acting in revenge for decades of US/Western bombing of Muslim populations and assorted other atrocities. And I then have to inform each one of them that they’ve chosen the wrong person for such a lecture. I, it happens, wrote the fucking book on the subject! In the first edition of my book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, published in 2001, before September 11, the first chapter was “Why do terrorists keep picking on The United States?” It includes a long list of hostile US military and political actions against the Islamic world during the previous 20 years. So I can well see why radical Muslims would harbor a deep-seated desire for revenge against The United States and its allies who often contributed to the hostile actions. My problem is that the Islamic terrorist actions are seldom aimed at those responsible for this awful history –- the executive and military branches of the Western nations, but are more and more targeted against innocent civilians, which at times includes other Muslims, probably even, on occasion, some who sympathize with the radical Islamic cause. These random terrorist acts are thus not defendable or understandable from any revenge point of view. What did the poor people of Barcelona have to do with Western imperialism? Civilians are, of course, much easier to target, but that’s clearly no excuse. As I’ve pointed out in the past, we should consider this: From the 1950s to the 1980s the United States carried out all kinds of very harmful policies against Latin America, including numerous bombings, without the natives ever resorting to the uncivilized, barbaric kind of retaliation as employed by ISIS. Latin American leftists generally took their revenge out upon concrete representatives of the American empire: diplomatic, military and corporate targets – not markets, theatres, nightclubs, hospitals, schools, restaurants or churches. The terrorists’ choice of targets is bad enough, but their methods are even worse. Who could have imagined 20 years ago that an organization would exist in this world that would widely publicize detailed instructions on how to choose a truck to drive down a busy thoroughfare and directly into crowds of people? What species of human being is this? What is needed is a worldwide media campaign to make fun of the very idea that such men, along with suicide bombers, will be rewarded by Allah in an afterlife; even the idea of an afterlife can, of course, be derided; yes, even the idea of Allah, by that or any other name, can be derided; at least the idea of such a cruel God. Appealing to jihadists on simply moral grounds would be even more useless than appealing to Pentagon officials or Donald Trump on moral grounds. The jihadists have to be deeply ridiculed; the small amount of human empathy and decency still remaining in their heart of hearts has to be reached through embarrassing them before their friends and family. Femmes fatales can be used against young Islamic men, most of whom, I’d venture to say, have sizable sexual hangups. Bombing them only increases their numbers. Some thoughts on the question that will not go away:  Capitalism vs. socialism The whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power. –– Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), Labour Party (UK) minister The fact that Donald J. Trump is a champion –- indeed, a model, or as he might say, a huge model –- of capitalism should be enough to make people turn away from the system, but the debate between capitalism and socialism continues without pause in the Trump era as it has since the 19th century. The wealth gap, affordable housing, free education, public transportation, a sustainable environment, and health care are some of the perennial points of argument we’re all familiar with. So many empty houses … so many homeless people –- Is this the way a market economy is supposed to work? Twice in recent times the federal government in Washington has undertaken major studies of many thousands of federal jobs to determine whether they could be done more efficiently by private contractors. On one occasion the federal employees won more than 80% of the time; on the other occasion 91%. Both studies took place under the George W. Bush administration, which was hoping for different results. The American people have to be reminded of what they once knew but seem to have forgotten: that they don’t want BIG government, or SMALL government; they don’t want MORE government, or LESS government; they want government ON THEIR SIDE. As to corporations, we have to ask: Do the members of a family relate to each other on the basis of self-interest and greed? Speaking in very broad terms … slavery gave way to feudalism … feudalism gave way to capitalism … capitalism is not a timelessly valid institution but was created to satisfy certain needs of the time … capitalism has outlived its usefulness and must now give way to socialism … the ultimate incompatibility between capitalist profit motive and human environmental survival demands nothing less. The system corrupts every important aspect of our lives, including the one which takes up the most of our time -– our work, even for corporation executives, who demand huge salaries and benefits to justify their working at jobs that otherwise are not particularly satisfying. Several years ago, the Financial Times of London reported on Wall Street’s opposition to salary limits: Senior bankers were quick to warn the plans would cause a brain drain from the profession as top executives seek more rewarding jobs out of the public eye. Unlike other careers where job satisfaction and other considerations play a part, finance tends to attract people whose main motivation is money. … ‘The cap is a lousy idea,’ complained one top Wall Street executive. ‘If there is no monetary upside, who would want to do these jobs?’ As for those below the executive class … When they work, it’s too often just any job they can find, rather than one designed to realize innermost spiritual or artistic needs. Their innermost needs are rent, food, clothes, and electricity. For those concerned about the extent of freedom under socialism the jury is still out because the United States and other capitalist powers have subverted, destabilized, invaded, and/or overthrown every halfway serious attempt at socialism in the world. Not one socialist-oriented government, from Cuba and Vietnam in the 1960s, to Nicaragua and Chile in the 1970s, to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in the 1990s, to Haiti and Venezuela in the 2000s has been allowed to rise or fall based on its own merits or lack of same, or allowed to relax its guard against the ever-threatening imperialists. The demise of the Soviet Union (even with all its shortcomings) has turned out to be the greatest setback to the fight against the capitalist behemoth, and we have not yet recovered. How could the current distribution of property and wealth reasonably be expected to emerge from any sort of truly democratic process? And if this is the way regulated capitalism works, what would life under unregulated capitalism be like? We’ve long known the answer to that question. Theodore Roosevelt (president of the United States 1901-09) said in a speech in 1912: “The limitation of governmental powers, of governmental action, means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations who can only be held in check through the extension of governmental power.” And what do the corporate elite want? In a word: “everything” … from our schools to our social security, from our health care to outer space, from our media to our sports. “We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.” – William James (1842-1910) A few years ago, when George W. Bush came out as a painter, he said that he had told his art teacher that “there’s a Rembrandt trapped inside this body”. Ah, so Georgie is more than just a painter. He’s an artiste. And we all know that artistes are very special people. They’re never to be confused with mass murderers, war criminals, merciless torturers or inveterate liars. Neither are they ever to be accused of dullness of wit or incoherence of thought or speech. Artistes are not the only special people. Devout people are also special: Josef Stalin studied for the priesthood. Osama bin Laden prayed five times a day. And animal lovers: Herman Goering, while his Luftwaffe rained death upon Europe, kept a sign in his office that read: “He who tortures animals wounds the feelings of the German people.” Adolf Hitler was also an animal lover and had long periods of being a vegetarian and anti-smoking. Charles Manson was a staunch anti-vivisectionist. And cultured people: This fact Elie Wiesel called the greatest discovery of the war: that Adolf Eichmann was cultured, read deeply, played the violin. Mussolini also played the violin. Some Nazi concentration camp commanders listened to Mozart to drown out the cries of the inmates. Former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic, convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, was a psychiatrist, specializing in depression; a practitioner of alternative medicine; published a book of poetry and books for children. Members of ISIS and Al Qaeda and other suicide bombers are genuinely and sincerely convinced that they are doing the right thing, for which they will be honored and rewarded in an afterlife. That doesn’t make them less evil; in fact, it makes them more terrifying, since they force us to face the scary reality of a world in which sincerity and morality do not necessarily have anything to do with each other. Dick Gregory, 1932-2017 Mayor Daley and other government officials during the riots of the ’60s showed their preference for property over humanity by ordering the police to shoot all looters to kill. They never said shoot murderers to kill or shoot dope pushers to kill. When the white Christian missionaries went to Africa, the white folks had the bibles and the natives had the land. When the missionaries pulled out, they had the land and the natives had the bibles. The way Americans seem to think today, about the only way to end hunger in America would be for Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to go on national TV and say we are falling behind the Russians in feeding folks. What we’re doing in Vietnam is using the black man to kill the yellow man so the white man can keep the land he took from the red man. http://clubof.info/

[myresistance]

January 30, 2017

To Whom It May Concern, I am a citizen of the United States who has resided in North Carolina for over a decade. I feel it is my duty to inform you of my opinion regarding several deeply troubling issues and policies. As my representative, I fully expect you to take my stance on these issues into account as you proceed. Now, more than ever, you must ensure that you hold true to the will of the people. Not just for your sake or mine, but for the sake of America and democracy itself. I understand that that may sound overly grave, but trust me when I tell you that the founding values of our country and the inalienable rights of humanity are being threatened. Please act, act wisely, and act swiftly. Integrity and strength are no longer campaign catchphrases, sir. They are attributes the people expect and need you to exemplify. The country is reliant upon men like you. Do not fail us now. I’m afraid there are so many concerns of late that the only manageable way to convey them is a list. I will begin with the most time-sensitive, and proceed in no particular order from there.

-The so-called ‘Muslim Ban’, aka the executive order entitled “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States” is unconstitutional and contrary to American values. Not only is it a foreign relations nightmare, but it has directly resulted in the detainment of innocent people, violations of their rights, and has suffocated the free exchange of trade and ideas that makes this nation great. It must be repealed at once, in its entirety. Refugees and those with visas and green cards are not our enemies. The very concept is preposterous, especially given the amount of vetting they must undergo to qualify. Dual-born foreign citizens, similarly, are not our enemies. With this order, our president has dealt an extreme insult to his people and to our international peers, and destroyed our credibility as a nation. Please do everything in your power to counteract this order and the damage incurred by it.

-Assuming an adversarial relationship with the media indicates a desire to keep Americans ignorant and uninformed. This cannot be allowed. Censorship is abhorrent and debilitating to the country as a whole. The various government agencies and officials are public service entities, and the citizens of the United States have every right to both be well-informed of their policies and actions, as well as capable of expressing their own opinions. There is no such entity as “fake news”. News, by definition, is a reiteration of factual occurrences or statements. Fake facts are fiction, pure and simple. The people have a right to know. Avoiding questions, refusing to address issues, and acting belligerent in the face of inquiry is childish and instills doubt and fear. Please work with the media, remain calm, and focus clearly on the topics presented. Saying you are unwilling or unable to answer a question is acceptable; attempting to invalidate the question and resorting to repeated blatant logical fallacies is not acceptable. Government officials represent us to the world as a whole. Such actions undermine the respect we hold for those offices, but also the respect the rest of the world gives us. Please keep this in mind, both for your own image and the images of others.

-Decreasing or eliminating the value of Federal land, or allowing it to be transferred to State jurisdiction for commercial uses, runs contrary to the purpose of national parks as a whole. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service should be given more latitude to preserve and protect our nation’s heritage, not less.

-Reinstating the Mexico City Policy is un-American. It deprives entire countries of assistance and healthcare, and targets women specifically. America has no say in the healthcare ideology of other nations. America should not infringe upon the rights of our own women, much less women in other countries. Limiting access to methods of disease prevention and contraception in the name of saving 'unborn children’ is oxymoronic. Limiting free speech and attempting to circumvent both sound medical science and the laws or policies of foreign nations is unacceptable. To superimpose values that the majority of our populace does not even adhere to as a condition of humanitarian efforts abroad is sickening and wrong. To specifically target women and children is a level of sinister I did not wish to believe this country was capable of. To then expand this order so it negatively impacts any organization abroad which offers complete medical information and options to women regardless of whether or not US funding is utilized for such… that is simply indefensible. This policy is a Matryoshka doll of atrocities layered upon atrocities, and seems designed to undercut foreign relations without overtly dismantling them. Please ensure that it is repealed at once.

-Repealing the Affordable Care Act is unwise and puts the health of Americans at risk. Until there is a viable, vetted alternative that affords all citizens the same protections and care that the Affordable Care Act ensures, it is unacceptable to repeal the current act. I do not believe it should be repealed at all. Reformed, where and if necessary, but not repealed.

-Building a border wall is illogical in the extreme. I do not support it, and neither does a large portion of the American people. Multiple international trade agreements are violated by taxing an individual nation’s goods differently than others… Taxing the imports of a specific nation to build the wall does not actually increase the cost to them, but rather to the portion of the American populace that utilizes those goods. Charging the American people in any fashion for a physical edifice that they do not support reeks of fascism and dictatorship. In addition to undercutting foreign relations even further, the budget it would require is an immense burden, and if such funds can be procured, said funds should be allocated instead to reinforcing our physical and social infrastructure, including but not limited to: healthcare, education, parks, energy conservation, and highway maintenance.

-Limiting, defunding, and otherwise interfering with scientific research, whether it is climate-related or not, is inherently destructive. Forcing government agencies to cease publishing scientific findings and/or utilize social media, and otherwise limiting the exchange of knowledge and information is unhealthy, and does not serve the interests of the American people. Unless further pursuit of a line of scientific inquiry presents a clear, immediate threat to the nation (i.e. nuclear/biological/chemical weapons), the populace as a whole should have  access to developments and discoveries, in the interest of free thought and the advancement of our society as a whole. America is able to keep pace with the world technologically and ideologically due in no small part to our scientific institutions. Curbing their efforts or influence is not in the best interest of any modern society.

-Withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership is economically unsound, and does not reflect well upon our country. Ending a deal that took seven years to negotiate and is mutually beneficial to all parties is illogical, and will likely result in other nations becoming wary of entering into any alliance or agreement with ours. The Trans-Pacific Partnership should be reinstated and ratified, and an apology tendered to the other countries involved for the rash and inconsiderate manner in which we withdrew.

-Environmental Reviews are critical to ensuring that our country, our land, and our people are not physically put at risk or harmed. Rushing through them could be disastrous, and places lives in direct danger. In addition, prioritizing certain projects over others allows for the appearance of misconduct and favoritism. Specifically, expediting the construction of projects at high risk of environmental consequences, such as oil pipelines, should not be allowed. Ensuring our actions are environmentally sound and do not place our natural resources at risk is not something to be done lightly.

-The amount of executive orders which directly defy existing, often contentious, legislation is deeply disturbing. Overriding current legal proceedings with no apparent regard for the outcome engenders distrust in the judicial system as a whole. Doing so with little to no explanation is foolhardy at best. Please attempt to curtail this, if at all possible.

-The amount of government positions currently vacant, particularly in the case of ambassadors and foreign relations specialists, poses a security risk and harms our ability to handle international relations. Please fill them with reasonable, competent individuals as soon as possible.

In regards to the senate confirmation hearings, it is very troubling that so many of the proposed candidates are not just ideologically unsuited but actually incompetent in terms of the positions to which they have been nominated. I will not mention those who have been confirmed, but the remainder are as follows:

Mnuchin has prior business ties which may conflict with appointment to the position of Secretary of the Treasury. His views on much of the policies remain unclear, but it is clear that on many prior occasions he has chosen to further his personal gain over upholding moral standards. Such a man should not be given power over America’s finances. Though I disagree with Sessions on a wide variety of issues, and I have serious concerns regarding his racial bias, his endorsement of ludicrous immigration restrictions, and his role in the Letter to Iran, I have less qualms about his literal competency. Though he is not an ideal choice by any stretch, he is at least actually capable of doing the job itself. However, his reported personal biases are despicable in any public official, particularly a member of the judicial system. Zinke’s endorsement of coal mining on federal land and denial of the extreme negative impact that unsustainable utilization of natural resources gives me great pause. I am uncertain he is suited to be Secretary of the Interior. A man in that position should be more interested in pursuing energy sources that may be renewed with minimal environmental costs. Though I applaud him for wishing to prevent the sale of land, and preserving public access to federal land, the misuse of said land is just as concerning, if not more. If the resources and land are managed in a damaging or non-renewable fashion, the consequences would reverberate throughout our nation. Ross’s pre-existing business ties, ties to Russia, and his stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, along with his predilection for benefiting corporations at the expense of individual, are undesirable and do not behoove a Secretary of Commerce. A man with his history and lack of evident ethical stance should not be allowed to influence foreign trade policy. Puzder is well known for criticizing labor laws, employee protections, and reasonable health considerations. He is also surrounded by a miasma of accusations and lawsuits, mostly involving labor law violations. Anyone so directly opposed to the purpose of the Labor department should not be put in charge of it. I am shocked he was even considered, much less nominated. Worker’s rights are not something to be scoffed at or dismantled, particularly not in our country, and Puzder is poised to gut the entire concept. I am very concerned that Price will institute changes in our current healthcare system without providing sufficient or reasonable alternatives. Repealing the Affordable Care Act is contrary to the interests of the nation. However, I do believe he is physically capable of performing the required duties. It is merely a matter of whether or not he acts foolishly. Cutting medicare and medicaid funding is patently unacceptable, and he has yet to confirm that he will not do so. Rick Perry has previously stated that he wanted to abolish the Department of Energy, so nominating him to run it is quite unfortunate. In addition, his advocacy for fossil fuel consumption and his denial of scientific facts (such as climate change), make him a poor candidate for that position. Devos is so obviously unprepared and ideologically opposed to the very concept of Secretary of Education that even considering her for the position is reprehensible. She does not have any relevant experience, she does not seem to know what the position entails or how to manage it, and her ideas regarding how children should be educated are so outdated and off-the-wall that I cannot imagine how she was appointed at all. She must not be confirmed. The only positive thing I can say regarding Pruitt’s nomination to head the EPA is that it would hopefully keep prevent him from getting anywhere near laws regarding women’s health. On a more serious note, nominating a man to run an agency that he has sued over a dozen times, vocally opposes, and does not believe in is repugnant. It destroys faith in leadership, rebukes the very purpose of the agency, and makes a mockery of the vital and pressing issues which affect not only this country, but the world as a whole. He supports industry over any environmental  concern. He is temperamentally unsuited to participate in any environmentally conscious institution. He must not be confirmed under any circumstances; it is an insult and a farce.

In conclusion, I would simply like to state a fact which has become painfully relevant recently: Any government position, from president to clerk, is considered a position of civil service. The individuals whom we elect and hire to fulfill the needs of the American people are beholden to those people. Not only do they represent the interests and values of the populace as a whole, but they are bound to do so. Freedom of speech applies to each individual, but as an elected official of the United States government, lying to or misrepresenting the American people is the very definition of treason. A government official acting contrary to the interests of the people of this country is no less than treason. I urge you to watch carefully for seditious acts, both in your office and in the offices of others. To be mistaken is one thing; to deliberately disregard or deny the will of the people is entirely another.

We are counting on you to hold our interests as our own, to act boldly against those who would deny us our liberties, to provide for our welfare and protect our rights. You were elected because the American people believe you are capable of this, because you were found worthy of the task before you. You are not just in office to represent part of the people, the ones whose personal ideals, race, creed, religion, or sex are closest to your own. You were elected because we believe you can represent us all. Please do not prove our faith to be misplaced.