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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 2 years ago

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Scared of Leaving?

HWDYKYM got this in our ask box about seven years ago:

“I’m a second gen from Australia, and I’m currently questioning the beliefs and customs of the unification church. I just wanted to ask, when you left the church, did you feel scared at all? Did the thought of ‘what if all they taught was right’ ever cross your mind? I’m currently stuck between leaving the church or staying, and am currently exploring other more ‘normal’ religions. Many thanks.”

I decided to share this with some other second generation who left the church and here are some of their responses:

I legitimately wondered if I was going to get struck by lightening or run over by a car for the first year or so. My mom had had a spiritual child that left and then drowned a few months later, so as a kid she drilled into me that that’s what happens when you leave. Plus I was terrified to tell people about where I “came from” because I thought I would be judged or thrown out (like in so many establishments on STF) so it took me a long time to develop my family of choice.

When I was younger I had told my parents that I wanted to explore other religions, and they all but forbid me from doing it. They explained that since they knew that following the church was the right path, there was no point in me exploring others. My response was, “Well if it’s right, then there’s no harm in looking elsewhere, because I’ll obviously find my way back,” but they wouldn’t have it. Whether out of fear or just plain stubbornness I still don’t know. To me that is evidence of the total control the church exerts over its members. It forbids them to have empathy or open-mindedness, and it prevents them from experiencing all the goodness this world has to offer. The Divine Principle teaches that the purpose of life is to attain happiness, and I was anything but happy in the church. Yes I terrified for months before and after I “left,” although I can’t pinpoint an exact event or time. It was more of a series of lifestyle changes that gradually brought me away, but also made me happier and improved my quality of life. As things got better, my fear eventually subsided. My advice? Go explore! Committing to a life of faith is a big decision and should be taken seriously. Land in a place where you are comfortable to be free, express yourself, and explore your unique potential.

I always come back to this answer to the original question: ‘If your parents got to choose their own faith that their parents probably didn’t agree with, why can’t you?’ Isn’t that part of growing? Would they have discovered the UC if they didn’t explore other religions, different from their own parents’? Also the “pure blood lineage” scenario runs through some sects of the Jewish, Muslim, and basically Judeo-Christian teachings, so the UC is not special in that sense. That’s how the church kept me in fear of disbanding. It’s a false-privileged old way of controlling someone, and it’s the very definition of conditional love. I would let this person know that practically all of 2nd gens I know have left the church, because we found that the world is bigger than the narrow confines of the UC. It’s okay to question things just like Martin Luther did with starting the Protestant Church, and Rev. Moon did with the UC, and what the Pope is doing right now.

Something I find comfort in is the idea that good people are good people, that goodness is goodness, regardless of affiliation or belief. It’s your character and your actions that matter, that determine the quality of your life and the impact you can have on the world, much more than your creed. Even the DP teaches that people with good hearts are the ones actually closest to God, rather than “whitewashed tombs” of people who claim the truth. Even if it turns out that you’re “wrong” in what side of the fence you decide to jump down on, it doesn’t really matter as long as you live your life well. It’s hard to know or sure what’s true. We just have to do our best with whatever knowledge and certainty we do have. If there is a Heaven, I think all the people who are truly loving, generous, and courageous are the ones who will end up there – be they atheists, Hindus, Mormons, or even Unificationists.

From a young age, I knew the cost of being a Unificationist was big, especially if you really believed in it. I’m not one to half-ass anything, and if Moon was the messiah, I wanted to get matched by him, do at least two years of STF, convert all my friends, make the Principle known, create a perfect heteronormative family under the reign of Cheon Il Guk, and pay indemnity for my Japanese sins. But for some reason, I was always suspicious of it all. I felt like I didn’t have enough reasons to believe. I would do conditions of 210 bows for 40 days, cold showers, fasting, etc., to receive an undeniable confirmation that Moon was truly the Lord of the Second Advent, like the myths we heard from early UC history. Nothing ever came. What kept me in for so long was the fact that I never experienced a love like I did among church members. That was my testimony and the reason I put my faith in Moon. Eventually, when I discovered the atrocities done in the name of Moon and by Moon, especially after I read Nansook Hong’s book “In the Shadow of the Moons” I knew I couldn’t stay much longer. I was scared of leaving because of my parents, of course, but also because I thought I’d never have friends like I did in the UC. We constantly heard that rhetoric that friendships outside the Church are pointless and what BCs share is unique, etc. After I left, though, I developed deeper friendships than I had in the church. I had friends who loved me no matter what my views on spirituality were and loved me when I fucked up and I found out what true love—that unconditional love we were told about at camp—was really about. I somehow ending up forming convictions in God, Jesus, etc., that I couldn’t ignore, and despite my cynicism and fear of organized religion, I ended up in a progressive Christian community that could support me in my faith (and me with theirs) and live out these convictions presented by Jesus together. All that to say, it may be really hard leaving, but it will be worth it. Explore your convictions, your ideas, and be the best you. It fucks with Moonies’ heads when they see somebody so clearly living out true love and not buying into their crap—and outright rejecting it.

First I would tell he or she that “religion” should not be perceived as a social group that one just joins. Even though, that’s basically what it is on the surface. You should look deeper inside yourself. Find something you truly believe in. For me it’s God. I’m not religious. I’m spiritual. Which is something all religions can help you discover within your self. But you should not have to need/depend on a religious group to find/keep your spirituality. I mean that’s just my perspective. Just be an open person. Be infinite. Take everything in. And live your life. I was horrified at the beginning. But then you’re just free. And that’s awesome.

I was afraid whenever I’d go against the church’s rules, but I found that more often than not I wouldn’t feel the repercussions of sin that were promised. The more I went against the church, ultimately the less afraid I became. There was a lot of questioning and doubt, I certainly wondered what would happen to me, and what if they were right. I think it’s good to seek out truth for yourself. Ultimately if you find the church is your answer then you can go back. They’re desperate for more members anyway.

While I was questioning my beliefs, I felt a lot of shame and guilt about being ungrateful for TP, and doubting them so much. I feared God would be disappointed in my lack of faith. But the more evidence I found that the faith itself was inconsistent and false, the more boldly I was able to think for myself and discover who I am. It’s terrifying at first to think that everyone you know and all the adults you’ve looked up to are wrong. But it also gives you freedom, when you can ascertain your own beliefs instead of just checking in with what “Father says”.

There are a million and one religions that purport that they are “right” and “the one”. I don’t think God (if you believe in God) would screw the rest of the groups based on what religion they belong to or what specific traditions they encourage, but rather the love we offer to others. Isn’t that unconditional love?

For me leaving the church was a very big deal. I would say that the fear was more to do with losing something I had invested my time, energy and person into. Eventually the cognitive dissonance becomes too strong and the overwhelming conclusion that what the UC teaches is not true just becomes your new normal. The process is real, it takes time though. Joining other religions can help as a kind of a ‘step down’. I’ve explored a few Christian churches and found that in some circles, having been part of another religion that I believed in and left, has made me far more skeptical than most of the congregation. In others I’ve met people who have had a similar journey from conservative faith into something more complex (and liberal).

Not so much fear for me. Maybe little fleeting twinges of it early on. But it was a slower transition and more gradual over time which I’m sure made it easier. Two points to remember: 1) I’ve never seriously considered that I could permanently lose my relationship with my mother. We’re related by blood. We disagree at times, but if anything threatened my life. She’d only be closer to me, no matter what had divided us. She’s my mother. She loves me. How much more would that apply to my father in heaven. Who not only gave me physical life, but a spiritual nature as well. 2) Would it make sense, if you invested in my business, that I would tell you… "Don’t trust information from anyone else but me. Because only my information will help you understand my stock and make the right choice about investing in it. The more you trust my information, and ignore all other information, the better financial decisions you will make!” That doesn’t work for ANYTHING you can name in life! The more diverse information you receive, the more thoroughly you will understand something, and the better decisions you will then make. So why is it that the ones who claim to have the highest, most important truth want to prohibit you from getting information from anyone but them? What are they afraid of? People that have FACTS on their side, never fear any information that would seem to contradict them, because if they have enough facts on their side, they can easily handle any challenge offered. But the UC fears such challenges, and wants you to believe that being fully informed is even “evil” and can undermine the supposed greatest truth there is! But that is ridiculous of course, seeing as how, in ANY question in life—finances, house purchasing, medical issues, intimate relationships, science… ANYTHING… the more informed I am, the more thoroughly I understand something, the more I can make the best informed decision! Hope this helped. God bless!

Fear is not a good reason to stay in the UC

Indemnity is a Moon Trap

conformity

Bending Truth – Cognitive Dissonance

Sun Myung Moon’s theology used to control members

Fear and Loathing at Cheongpyeong

Where Sun Myung Moon got his theology

The Korean background of Sun Myung Moon’s church

The Moon church is unequivocally not Christian

#2nd gen #Unification Church #leaving the UC #Sun Myung Moon #Hak Ja Han #Family Federation for World Peace

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral.

This is not what we find. If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case?

This post started as an investigation into Woke Capital, one of the most important developments in the last decade or so of American politics. Although big business pressuring politicians is not new (the NFL moved the Super Bowl from Arizona over MLK day), the scope of the issues on which corporations feel the need to weigh in is certainly expanding, now including LGBT issues, abortion laws, voting rights, kneeling during the national anthem, and gun control.

…

As I started to research the topic, however, I realized there wasn’t much to explain. Asking why corporations are woke is like asking why Hispanics tend to have two arms, or why the Houston Rockets have increased their number of 3-point shots taken over the last few decades. All humans tend to have two arms, and all NBA teams shoot more 3-pointers than in the past, so focusing on one subset of the population that has the same characteristics as all others in the group misses the point.

I think one reason Woke Capital is getting so much attention is because we expect business to be more right-leaning, and corporations throwing in with the party of more taxes and regulation strikes us as odd. We are used to schools, non-profits, mainline religions, etc. taking liberal positions and feel like business should be different. But business is just being assimilated into a larger trend.

Corporations are woke, meaning left wing on social issues relative to the general population, because institutions are woke. So the question becomes why are institutions woke?

…

Through the lens of ordinal utility, in which people simply rank what they want to happen, we are about equal. I prefer Republicans to Democrats, while you have the opposite preference. But when we think in terms of cardinal utility – in layman’s terms, how bad people want something to happen – it’s no contest. You are going to be much more influential than me. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics and see it as a small part of their lives, yet a small percentage of the population takes it very seriously and makes it part of its identity. Those people will tend to punch above their weight in influence, and institutions will be more responsive to them.

Elections are a measure of ordinal preferences. As long as you care enough to vote, it doesn’t matter how much you care about the election outcome, as everyone’s voice is the same. But for everything else – who speaks up in a board meeting about whether a corporation should take a political position, who protests against a company taking a position one side or the other finds offensive, etc. – cardinal utility maters a lot. Only a small minority of the public ever bothers to try to influence a corporation, school, or non-profit to reflect certain values, whether from the inside or out.

In an evenly divided country, if one side simply cares more, it’s going to exert a disproportionate influence on all institutions, and be more likely to see its preferences enacted in the time between elections when most people aren’t paying much attention.

…

Here are two graphs that have been getting a lot of attention

What jumps out to me in these figures is not only how left leaning large institutions are, but how the same is true for most professions. Whether you are looking by institution or by individuals, there are more donations to Biden than Trump. Yet Republicans get close to half the votes! Where are the Trump supporters? What these graphs reveal is a larger story, in which more people give to liberal causes and candidates than to conservative ones, even if Americans are about equally divided in which party they support (and no, this isn’t the result of liberals being wealthier, the connections between income and ideology or party are pretty weak). Here are some graphs from late October showing Biden having more individual donors than Trump in every battleground state.

…

In the 2012 election, Obama raised $234 million from small individual contributors, compared to $80 million for Romney, while also winning among large contributors.

…

In September 2009, at the height of the Tea Party movement, conservatives held the “Taxpayer March on Washington,” which drew something like 60,000-70,000 people, leading one newspaper to call it “the largest conservative protest ever to storm the Capitol.” Since that time, the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington has drawn massive crowds, with estimates for some years ranging widely from low six figures to mid-to-high six figures. March for Life is not to be confused with “March for Our Lives,” a pro-gun control rally that activists claim saw 800,000 people turn out in 2018. All these events were dwarfed by the Women’s March in opposition to Trump, which drew by one estimate “between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people in the United States (our best guess is 4,157,894). That translates into 1 percent to 1.6 percent of the U.S. population of 318,900,000 people (our best guess is 1.3 percent).” Even if the two left-wing academics who did this research are letting their bias infuse their work, there is no question that protesting is generally a left-wing activity, as conservatives themselves realize.

People who engage in protesting care more about politics than people who donate money, and people who donate money care more than people who simply vote. Imagine a pyramid with voters at the bottom and full-time activists on top, and as you move up the pyramid it gets much narrower and more left-wing. Multiple strands of evidence indicate this would basically be an accurate representation of society.

Another line of evidence showing that the left simply cares more about politics comes from Noah Carl, who has put together data showing liberals are in their personal lives more intolerant of conservatives than vice versa across numerous dimensions in the US and the UK. Those on the left are more likely to block someone on social media over their views, be upset if their child marries someone from the other side, and find it hard to be friends with or date someone they disagree with politically. Here are two graphs demonstrating the general point.

…

There’s a great irony here. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of pure democracy, and believe in individuals coming together and forming civil society organizations away from government. Yet conservatives are extremely bad at gaining or maintaining control of institutions relative to liberals. It’s not because they are poorer or the party of the working class – again, I can’t stress enough how little economics predicts people’s political preferences – but because they are the party of those who simply care less about the future of their country.

Debates over voting rights make the opposite assumption, as conservatives tend to want more restrictions on voting, and liberals fewer, with National Review explicitly arguing against a purer form of democracy. Conservatives may be right that liberals are less likely to care enough to do basic things like bring a photo ID and correctly fill out a ballot. If this is true, Republicans are the party of people who care enough to vote when doing so is made slightly more difficult but not enough to do anything else, while Democrats are the party of both the most active and least active citizens. Yet while being the “care only enough to vote” party might be adequate for winning elections, the future belongs to those at the tail end of the distribution who really want to change the world.

The discussion here makes it hard to suggest reforms for conservatives. Do you want to give government more power over corporations? None of the regulators will be on your side. Leave corporations alone? Then you leave power to Woke Capital, though it must to a certain extent be disciplined and limited by the preferences of consumers. Start your own institutions? Good luck staffing them with competent people for normal NGO or media salaries, and if you’re not careful they’ll be captured by your enemies anyway, hence Conquest’s Second Law. And the media will be there every step of the way to declare any of your attempts at taking power to be pure fascism, and brush aside any resistance to your schemes as righteous anger, up to and including rioting and acts of violence.

…

From this perspective we might want to consider this passage from Scott Alexander, who writes the following in his review of a biography of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The normal course of politics is various coalitions of elites and populace, each drawing from their own power bases. A normal political party, like a normal anything else, has elite leaders, analysts, propagandists, and managers, plus populace foot soldiers. Then there's an election, and sometimes our elites get in, and sometimes your elites get in, but getting a political party that's against the elites is really hard and usually the sort of thing that gets claimed rather than accomplished, because elites naturally rise to the top of everything.

But sometimes political parties can run on an explicitly anti-elite platform. In theory this sounds good - nobody wants to be elitist. In practice, this gets really nasty quickly. Democracy is a pure numbers game, so it's hard for the elites to control - the populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything - media, academia, culture - so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic - for example, shut down the regular media and replace it with a government-controlled media run by its supporters.

When elites use the government to promote elite culture, this usually looks like giving grants to the most promising up-and-coming artists recommended by the art schools themselves, and having the local art critics praise their taste and acumen. When the populace uses the government to promote popular culture against elite culture, this usually looks like some hamfisted attempt to designate some kind of "official" style based on what popular stereotypes think is "real art from back in the day when art was good", which every art school and art critic attacks as clueless Philistinism. Every artist in the country will make groundbreaking exciting new art criticizing the government's poor judgment, while the government desperately looks for a few technicians willing to take their money and make, I don't know, pretty landscape paintings or big neoclassical buildings.

The important point is that elite government can govern with a light touch, because everything naturally tends towards what they want and they just need to shepherd it along. But popular/anti-elite government has a strong tendency toward dictatorship, because it won't get what it wants without crushing every normal organic process. Thus the stereotype of the "right-wing strongman", who gets busy with the crushing.

So the idea of "right-wing populism" might invoke this general concept of somebody who, because they have made themselves the champion of the populace against the elites, will probably end up incentivized to crush all the organic processes of civil society, and yoke culture and academia to the will of government in a heavy-handed manner.

To put it in a different way, to steelman the populist position, democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population. Populists, in order to bring institutions more in line with what the majority of the people want, need to rely on a more centralized and heavy-handed government. The strongman is liberation from elites, who aren’t the best citizens, but those with the most desire to control people’s lives, often to enforce their idiosyncratic belief system on the rest of the public, and also a liberation from having to become like elites in order to fight them, so conservatives don’t have to give up on things like hobbies and starting families and devote their lives to activism.

#richard hanania #substack

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shintorikhazumi · 4 years ago

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I Have Two Sisters?! Chapter 1: Three Sisters and The Bastard Father (An LWAxRWBYxStarira Crossover)

A/N: What’s crazier than me writing a crossover I can’t get out of my head at 2am while still having multiple wips?

Writing a three-way crossover until 3am!!! (Ended at nearly 5am tho)

GAHHHHH.

Btw, this is a non-magic au. So Diana has no magic, and Weiss has no… semblance. Yes. Because the world of RWBY always goes “???!! OHMG, magic?!” Quite ironically. They become impressed at people turning into birds, but never flinch at Ruby who can separate herself on a molecular level. Sure.

I’ll be updating this sporadically, tbh. The updates will be as random as the coming of this idea. I do like it a lot, so I look forward to working on it. Just have to prioritize the wips.

[DO CHECK OUT THE END NOTES FOR SOME OF THE AU DETAILS AND BACKGROUND]

Still, I couldn’t let the concept pass me by so…

Enjoy?

~Shintori Khazumi

I Have Two Sisters?! Chapter 1: Three Sisters and The Bastard Father

The wind blew strong outside, rain water cold against her bleeding cheek. The numbness was her only relief from pain nowadays. She’d lost count of how many bruises she’d gotten this week. If only her mother hadn’t passed… If only she hadn’t had a bastard of a father.

Then maybe Diana’s life would have been much better than the shell that it now was.

He left her and her mother just as she turned three, the only support she got in the form of random gifts and her financial needs. Her father was nothing of a father. The man that… helped make her was never there. He never showed he cared. Everything he gave her felt obligatory. She hated it. Heck, she didn’t even know his last name, much less remember what he looked like. She did try looking it up at some point, but it seemed as if he was some kind of bigshot she couldn’t name.

Neither her mom nor her aunt had divulged his identity, so she had long since drew a blank to the man’s identity. All she knew was that his name was ‘Jack’ or something of the sort. She had long since adopted her mother’s as it didn’t feel right to take the name of a man she never knew.

All she knew was that he was the cause of all her sorrows. That wretched man had left her and her mother to fend for themselves. Even though her mom was of a strong, well-known medical lineage here in Britain, the fact that she had gotten pregnant out of wedlock labelled her as a shame to the Cavendish name, and she had been cast out to a vacation home in the outskirts of the foreign country, Japan.

After her death, however, the women who Diana now saw as practically witches with how cruel and evil they were decided that because their blood ran through her, took over their small land that she and her mother had cried blood and tears to call their own, and exploited the underage girl, believing she might be of some use as a pawn at the very least, for the sake of the Cavendish name.

And she was. For some time, until she had injured her arm, and was no longer capable of becoming the kind of doctor they wanted her to be, her hand slowly losing its immaculate dexterity, becoming constantly shaky, rendering her as only half the worth she originally was, and thus completely useless besides being their punching bag. Quite literally.

Diana Cavendish found herself spending the better part of her life being abused, and hiding in tool sheds, and escaping her dreaded household at every waking moment, just as she was doing right now.

She hardly believed in any religion, but she found herself always praying to get away from this hellish nightmare. She’d hope that even if she only had a jerk of a father, he’d soon realize that she was his flesh and blood that needed saving.

A hard knock came on the wood of her shed’s door. She flinched, no sound escaping. Had they found her?!

“Miss Cavendish? Miss Diana Cavendish? Are you in here?” An unfamiliar voice called for her, bold and confident sounding, but with kindness and worry interlaced. She felt like it was someone she should respond to. The situation felt like it was some kind of divine calling she should answer.

With legs shaking, she stood up, unlatching the bar that held the door closed and stepping out into the now late night that reeked of hot pavement, rain having stopped while she was lost in thought.

A police officer, clad in uniform and raincoat smiled at her in pity. She was both grateful for- and hated- that gaze. She wished it had come sooner, but at the same time, she disliked being thought of as sad and pathetic.

“Your aunt and her family have been arrested, Miss.” Her ears perked up at the voice and the message they conveyed. Looking up from the ground, she stared into the truthful eyes of the cop. “You’re safe now.”

And she truly hoped she was.

//-//-//-//-//

“Weiss.”

At the mention of her name from that familiar voice, she rolled her eyes internally, holding in the urge to snap at the man she called ‘father’.

“What.”

Maybe her control wasn’t as good as she thought.

“Don’t give me that tone. I know you hate me, but I am still the one that raised you!”

“You mean, you’re the one that paid for me.” The ex-heiress pointed out. Her father gritted his teeth, frown deepening as he stepped forward in an attempt to exert his dominance.

Weiss only raised a brow in challenge.

“Anyway.” Jacques continued. Weiss would have smirked as he neither acknowledged nor denied her statement, but she felt it wasn’t the best time. “You are yet to turn twenty, and as you aren’t considered an adult yet-“

“But I’m nineteen, father.” Weiss stated, confused, her raised brow now raised in question. “I’m of legal age, to drink even.”

“Not in Japan you aren’t.” He replied with a smirk so evil, Weiss would have loved to slap it right off if her mind wasn’t thrown in a state of emergency, dreading whatever plans her father had. Even if she wanted to do as she pleased, she couldn’t completely go against him as she was at the moment. Their family name was too widespread and known in the business world, and she feared the consequences of running away from her father who currently had her safety- and practically her life- in the palm of his hand.

“What are you planning.” She narrowed her eyes at him, fearing for the worst, but expertly masking that fear.

“I’ll be sending you away, just as you’ve always wanted. I’ve prepared you an apartment close to a school of my choice to pursue the arts as you so strongly desired,” He spoke in a mocking tone. “And I’ll let you have your way there.” He ended with a smile that sent chills down Weiss’ spine. It sounded too good to be true, her dream being accepted like this. It was like a carrot on a stick being waved in front of her, only to always be out of reach.

“What’s the catch?”

“Catch? My, Weiss, my child, are you questioning your father’s benevolent heart?”

“What’s there to question?” Weiss shot back. “You don’t have one, now do you?”

She grinned at her little victory as she watched him gnashing his teeth, clearly seething in anger. Her smile dropped however as he gave her his own.

“I mentioned Japan’s legal age before.”

And Weiss already knew what he meant.

//-//-//-//-//

Life in Seishou had been the dream. Her first two years of high school were the peak of her life, she’d proudly say. She had wonderful friends and comrades who battled side-by-side, pushing one another to greater heights, and… she had someone she adored just a little more than friendship allowed. She had never admitted it, though. Then, a school back in Paris, the place where her mother had blossomed as an actress in the past, offered her a scholarship as an exchange student there.

And like she always did, Claudine excelled. So much so that multiple colleges offered her full rides to attend their institutions. Even highly prestigious universities. Her opportunities were broad, her future looking bright-

-And then news came. Her mother had fallen terminally ill.

She had to go back. She had to see her. She had to be by her side as long as possible.

She had to repay her for the love, for the dream she had given Claudine. She had to be the family her mother had been for her in the absence of a biological father she never knew, and the loss of her adoptive Japanese father at an early age. The lack of a male figure in their family was no cripple to Claudine, but she also missed the presence of the man she knew as her papa. She knew her maman missed him too.

So she had to do this for her mother.

She had to… in the event that… she’d lose her soon as well.

God forbid, Claudine prayed.

She had to return to Japan, study and… get a job, find some way to help her mother pay the increasingly expensive hospital bills, their little family’s saved money steadily disappearing.

She wondered if she should just drop school all together and apply for a troupe. Earn both money and experience.

She had enough rapport both in Japan and France. She could probably get enough opportunities, and she would succeed like she always had…

But…

There was something she wanted to see through, going into university.

When she left for Paris, she had gradually lost contact with all her friends, the culture slowly choking her time, eventually disconnecting them from her.

She’d receive and return the occasional message, but… things were different. She knew she’d drifted apart from everyone.

So, when she found out that they would all be attending the same Arts Institute, and when she had decided to return to Japan for her mother’s sake, she believed it wouldn’t all be that bad if she could apply for a scholarship to the same place, and possibly rebuild everything that was slowly crumbling away.

She wanted to be with everyone again.

And though she believed herself capable of attaining what she wanted on her own, she might require a little assistance from a miracle.

…

And a miracle- could she call this monstrosity of a situation that?- came in the form of a letter that had documents that signified she was the daughter of some ‘Jacques Schnee’ currently undergoing some sort of trial, and because of this, some of the accusations led to the revelation that he was neglecting a daughter, not sending support, and now as some form of bribery and compensation or whatever, he had paid the court to shut up about it if he took responsibility for her now.

Claudine scoffed in disbelief and utter disgust.

So this was her damned biological father? Some apparently bigtime tycoon who slept around and left a woman to fight for herself while carrying his- Claudine would suppose she was now an- illegitimate child.

This… was certainly news she’d never have expected in a million years.

She laughed mirthlessly at it all.

Well, at least her financial crisis had been averted. For better or for worse… she hoped it wasn’t the latter.

One upside was that she now had a clear ticket to that university she wanted to get into, it seemed. Her ‘father’ had taken the liberty of enrolling her there coincidentally. At least he could do something right, Claudine guessed.

“Well… I suppose it’s time to pack.” She sighed falling back onto her current apartment bed, staring at the ceiling.

It wasn’t so bad, maybe. Her newfound reality.

“Japan, I’m coming home to you.”

//-//-//-//-//

Diana glared at the letter in her hand angrily. There, in neat script, she saw the name of the man who had caused all her misfortune.

‘Jacques Schnee.’

“I want to hate you for as long as I live…” She gripped the paper so hard, creases were forming and the agent currently assigned to her worried she’d rip it into shreds. “What is this garbage? And why am I… Why can’t I… refuse… this ugly form salvation…” She choked on her sobs, a hand sympathetically rubbing her back.

“Let’s get you ready, Miss.”

Diana nodded in agreement.

-----

All her bags now in her hand after being dropped off by the cab driver, she stared in awe at the slightly modest, but clearly high-end house.

What the hell, did her dad just get her a house?!

Regardless of its size, couldn’t he have… like… gotten her an apartment or condo, at least?

How rich was this asshole father of hers? Was money the only good thing about him? Not that even that was necessarily a good thing.

With a groaning sigh, she unlatched the gate, walking up the little pathway. There were small flowerbeds already present around the yard, and decorations were tastefully placed.

It at least looked the part of cozy.

Once she got to the door, however, angry sounds coming from inside made her question that.

-Wait. This was her house, right?

Why would sounds be…

In a panic, she unlocked the front door with the key that came with the letter, bursting through it like a mad man, blue eyes flickering about the room, shocked to see two pairs of eyes, wide and intense, staring back at her with equal surprise.

“Who…”

“Oh, this is just great!!!” One with hair as white as snow exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air in clear exasperation. “Now we have another one!” She began marching around the room, palms rubbing her face aggressively and scratching through her hair. “That little fuck-“

“-Language.”

“Shut up! I don’t even know who you are, and why you were in my house when I arrived. And you say you aren’t a burglar or whatever, but what is up with your sword play? Even if you were using the curtain pole. Are you some kind of spy or assassin the corporation has sent to finally get rid of me?”

“First of all, this is my house, not yours. And you came at me with a rapier!” A silver-gold blonde replied in equal stress. “You could have killed me!”

“I would never!” The first girl gasped with faux emotion. “At most, you’d lose an ear.”

“Umm…” Diana remained awkwardly fidgeting at the door, her usual bravery and confidence lost in the moment of shock.

“What.”

“I- I am simply here because… apparently my father purchased this place for me.”

Two pairs of eyes blinked once. Twice.

Then realization overtook them.

“Did you just say… father?” The golden-haired one stepped closer to her, a lot less hostile, but still aggressive looking.

“I- Um… yes?”

“Father… you say.” The lady with a rapier in her hand now approached Diana too.

These women were frightening, dear Lord. Diana slowly backed up, but stopped as her foot hit the bags she’d dropped in her frantic moments earlier.

“Can you tell me the name of this… ‘father’ of yours?” Rapier lady asked Diana who was beginning to wonder if she should look for a weapon to defend herself with.

“S-sure. His n-name is…”

“…”

“Is?”

“Fuck.”

Diana was not one to curse, but it surprised her that she did.

But she couldn’t help it, now could she? After all, her mind had been wiped clean as a white slate. A mental block was not what she needed right now, but just about anything involving that man seemed to bring about her misfortune.

At least the hands by which she’d die her early death were from very beautiful women it seemed.

She liked women, at least?

“Excuse me, um… are you alright?” Miss Golden hair was now very safe-looking and welcoming, Diana subconsciously stepped closer towards her.

“What is up with you? I just asked a question.”

“Perhaps, if you placed the sword down, and looked less like you were trying to murder her and look like you were willing to hear her out…”

Diana expected another heated retaliation, so it was a pleasant surprise to see the other woman sheath her weapon, and place it gently on a plastic-covered couch, clearly brand new.

“There. Happy?” She asked, glaring at the woman now gently holding Diana’s hand- and when had that happened?!

With a nod, the girl turned to Diana and asked again. “What is your father’s name. If you could tell us.”

Huh. She was a lot kinder than Diana had initially taken her for.

“I apologize. I can’t… remember at the moment. I- He hasn’t been around… for me until this point. I just… learned his name a few days ago but…” She hung her head in defeat, apologizing all the while. “Sorry I’m of no assistance to you…”

“No, it’s alright. Isn’t it?” The question was clearly not directed at her as she could only hear a grunt from the other side of the room.

“Yeah, fine.”

“Would your father’s name happen to be Jacques?”

At this, Diana lifted her head, another shocker delivered to her, hearing the familiar name, the cogs in her head clicking into place.

“Yes! Yes, that’s it! Jack, or Jacques or whatever. Snee? Shuni? Schee? I don’t quite remember, but something along those lines.” Diana found herself enthusiastic towards the prospect that some of her questions might be answered.

It seemed the other two shared the same sentiment.

“It’s Schnee.” The white-haired lady corrected, eyes furrowing, anger building up once more. “And… THAT BASTARD OLD MAN!” Grabbing her rapier she swung it around, probably to vent her anger. “He set me up! And what’s more…” She whipped her head about to carefully look the other two people over.

“What is it?” Diana said in a voice quite small.

“Seems he had big secrets to hide.” She sighed. Turning to the initial enemy she had, now turned… stranger? She wasn’t sure they were allies at this point, she stated rather than asked. “I guess it’s the same for you?”

The woman beside Diana nodded, expression looking a lot stiffer than her gentle demeanor as she dealt with Diana earlier.

“I see. I can’t believe this situation.”

“What do you me-“

A voice beside Diana delivered her fourth? Fifth? Sixth?- she’d lost count- Shocker of the day.

“Sisters. It seems we’re… sisters.” Turning to Diana, she held out a hand for a shake. “I’m Claudine.”

“I’m Weiss.” Was the grumble from the couch the woman had flopped on top of.

“…O-oh!” Breaking her stare from the hand, she looked into rose-red eyes. “And I’m-“

And the world suddenly turned black.

‘Hello, My Name is…

[Diana Cavendish]

[Weiss Schnee]

[Saijou Claudine]

-And it seems as though…

I have two sisters?!

A/N: If you’re asking, yes. Yes, Diana fainted.

Here are some details for this AU btw:

I’ve decided to make Jacques a half-Jap, half german.

So all of them have a quarter of that blood.

Diana is half brit, quarter jap, quarter german

Weiss is ¾ german because of her mom, and ¼ jap.

Claudine is half French, ¼ german, ¼ jap.

Also, if you want to know their ages, and their order, I decided it this way, and let me just quote how I typed it out in the raw idea draft.

“Diana April 30 16yro in anime 2017+3yrs (2020) she's 19 too omg jahahahaha (wrote this coz I’m currently 19 and was amused)

Clau august 1, 2001 19 at present

Weiss Currently 19 (in volumes 5-6) may 15th lmao hahsha. Perfect!!

Wtf Diana was the oldest? Hooo boi. I did expect and want Kuro to be youngest tho, tbh.”

Why their ages are pretty much the same will be mentioned next chap.

And that’s how it went. Decided with Weiss being the legitimate child coz Jacques was the only canonically mentioned dad between the three girls as far as I know. Or I just didn’t search enough.

But come on. I wouldn’t pass at the chance to beat up the dude in a fic so… hihi.

Feedback is super appreciated!

Thank you for reading!

~Shintori Khazumi

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robert-c · 4 years ago

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A Synopsis of My Thoughts (so far)

Rights only work if they can be equally applied to everyone. Therefor there can be no such thing as a “right not to be offended”. Expressing your offense at another’s ideas is one thing, expecting them to conform to yours is another and not one of your rights.

America is great because of a unique idea that has been lost for a while; the idea that people of different opinions might defend each other’s right to those opinions, and live together in liberty and freedom.

Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean other lives don’t – it just points out that those black lives haven’t mattered as they should and that is the focus we need to have right now to redress an injustice that has been going on for far too long.

All or nothing thinking is an immature and adolescent form of thinking and it is dangerous whether it comes from the right or the left.

Only criminals and tyrants want (or need) absolute personal loyalty. No good can come from a loyalty that supersedes principles or values.

Purely “for profit” health care and insurance will never be equitable. Insurance companies sell a fictional product called “coverage” and make more money by denying or limiting payment. Their ideal customer is someone who never files a claim. In order to work fairly, they need to be required to pool all the risks of claims. Providing the best health care only to those who can afford the best is the same as accepting a royal class system, believing that anyone who has more money must somehow be better and more worthy than others.

Police and the justice system DO have a racial bias built in, largely because of a belief that criminals of color are more violent and that most criminals are people of color. It will take more than training to undo this bias. We, as a society, need to quit imagining that the crimes of a Bernie Madoff are somehow less serious than a convenience store “stick up”.

Conspiracy theorists are like “true believers”; the facts only matter if they support a preconceived belief, usually one born out of distrust or fear. It may be the government, academia, or even the other political party. They may engage in this behavior for profit, fame or just to feel intellectually independent and superior. Since the motive is emotional it doesn’t matter if they have advanced degrees or are otherwise intelligent. Whatever the motive, you can recognize them by the following three attributes: any facts that seem to support their position will be used (or exaggerated), any facts that contradict their position will be declared false or made up (even if they come from the same source as ones they wish to use) and finally, and most tellingly, if there are no facts to support their claims they will say it is because the facts were suppressed. Don’t confuse passionate belief with factual certainty.

The second amendment to the US Constitution does not “guarantee” everyone access to any weapon free of any regulation. Gun control is the very first part of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. READ IT! It begins with “A well regulated militia…” Despite any conspiracy theories to the contrary, regulation does not necessarily mean a step toward banning all guns. How about actually examining each proposed regulation on its face, and not bring unrelated fears and issues into the rational discussion of what sort of regulation is needed for “the security of a free state.”

“Political Correctness” isn’t new, it just wasn’t always called that. Back in the days of “separate but equal” racial accommodations any suggestion that black people might be able to do the same jobs as whites, let alone as well or better, was met with a lot more than just peer disapproval. Those complaining about racial discrimination in housing and jobs very often found themselves on the receiving end of intimidation and violence. Maybe those who complain the most about “PC” are just afraid that the tactics they used might be used against them.

Abortion goes straight to the definition of when a life that the state should recognize with rights begins. Outside of religious or personal ethical beliefs, there is only one position that is reasonable and consistent with protecting the liberty and freedom of all citizens. That is, as long as a collection of cells is inside another’s body, then that individual should have the sole and final say about what happens to those cells. That position goes further than I would personally choose, but it is the only position consistent with avoiding religious definitions, and protecting the rights and choices of individuals who can support the state.

Obviously we should deny entry to this country to criminals and terrorists, where there is legitimate evidence of those allegations. Even with denying entry to those individuals we cannot take an unlimited number of others. Whatever criteria we use needs to be free of racial and religious prejudice. We need to be mindful of the fact that immigrants have always been the heart and soul of America; the people who believed in our ideals enough to abandon all they knew and all that was familiar to start over in a strange new land. If there are an overwhelming number of immigrants or refugees seeking asylum from particular other countries then we should look into the reasons. It is more likely than not, they we have contributed to the conditions giving rise to that increase, and if not then we have other ways to exert influence. Let’s be honest and acknowledge that we have installed and/or propped up a lot of nasty dictators because it served other interests, typically US business interests.

Capitalism and free markets are not a one-sided “good thing”. The capitalists who we presume are champions of free markets are actually in favor of monopolies, as long as they are the ones monopolizing the market. In order to ensure the competition that brings about better goods and services at better prices there must be regulation in order to ensure that there is a free and open market for competition. Certainly some regulations can be ineffective and silly, but a total lack of regulation is a monopolist’s dream and is no good for the broad consuming public.

There is a difference between imposing a legal and societal mandate of tolerance in public dealings in order to preserve everyone’s right to belief without persecution and the imposition of a personal religious belief on everyone else’s private behavior and choices. A mandate not to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, religion or creed in public dealings is not the same as telling you what to think or do in private. Some people take their willingness to impose their beliefs on others as proof of the sincerity of their beliefs.

#gun rights #second amendment #abortion #health care industry #insurance #drug companies #immigration #black lives matter #racial justice

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oldanddilis · 5 years ago

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Expletives, suppression of passion

I am convinced expletives have been given a bad name by people who dislike passionate displays of love, truth and emotion. Whoever linked them up with sexual innuendos must have been jealous, cowardly, frustrated, narcissists. In English a bar can mean many things, a rod, a drinking area, to prohibit something, a standard of measure. Expletive comes from the word explicit, words which make things explicit, they are a natural part of any language. The word @€ing for example can mean really/exceptionally etc it has nothing to do with a sexual act, when used as an adjective or adverb it emphasises the quality. "That was a great party" becomes an exceptionally good party when one says "€&@# that was a great party" or "that was a €&@#ing great party" there is no malice or vulgarity these are terms which express a level of passion. We all sense the passion, there's no malice so why have these natural powerful words which express passion been outlawed? My reckoning is that these innocent words initially began being demonised in courtrooms, when a Judge who was maybe a paedophile or a scob was faced with someone passionately innocent using such words the Judges were so frustrated that when they could find no crime committed but wanted to persecute that person they made it a crime to display passion by using expletives. Similarly in education when socially frustrated people in power were challenged by passionate displays of excitement and wonder it is likely that in their jealousy they sought to put that person down by saying they were vulgar using language as their reasoning. In fact it can be a very intelligent use of language to use expletives it often expresses in an instant what a thousand carefully crafted words can't, raw passion. They also can be and are used to great effect by people with limited access to education. For example while there exists a certain snobbery that whoever knows the most words (or understands mathematics) must be more intelligent than the average, this usually reflects the level of access to education rather than intelligence, a highly intelligent but perhaps less educated person might express qualities better with a much more limited range of words. For example someone well educated with a high volume of words in their vocabulary bank might say that pie was exquisitely, delicious and satisfying to the appetite another person not educated might say wow that pie was €&@#ing lovely, we instantly (well I do) sense the raw passion and I for one am going to try the €&@#ing lovely pie rather than the exquisitely delicious one that is satisfying to the appetite... why? The €&@#ing lovely pie obviously has something of a bit more kick in it. Expletives can be overused like many words, for example "right" "" you know" "like" "buddy" "ya hear" these can become a slight annoyance when someone uses them in almost every sentence but they don't get demonized and we usually don't notice them until they are pointed out (perhaps by someone trying to exert social control over (bully) the said person). My guess is they were originally despised by the colonial aristocracy of all nations who were probably so bound by rules of etiquette it drove them nuts seeing people with less material power so happy and able to express themselves, historically the ruling classes controlled the education and in order to gain access to education people had to conform to the rules and show less passion. It seems that this snobbery and discrimination still persists to an extent in academia. While everyone likes to think they are "cool and hip" there still is that unstated disdain. The word b@€&@# similarly does NOT mean a child born outside an institutional marriage. It means a despicable, selfish, evil person. We all know this so why is the meaning still associated with children who it cannot truly describe (because they are still limited by their circumstance much more than most adults) when it is in fact a term describing certain adults who are old enough to know better? My guess is this was used by certain people in power in religions to intimidate and bully people who fell in love and had children but didn't attend church or pay money to their coffers. What a despicable way to bully loving families by picking on their children. These religious people were/are the real b€&@#&s. As for the word cant, it is a fantastic word and nothing to do with a beautiful part of the female anatomy. My guess is it comes from the word can't, to describe those people who will say "no" to just about everything, no you can't do that or this, no that can't be done, I reckon they became known as a can't or cants but the accent changed over time to become a c@nt. We all know this yet some people, who probably are c@nts, say it is a bad word "you can't say that word it's a bad word!" "Yes I can, it's not a bad word, you just don't like it because you are a c@nt." No it is a fantastic funny word because it is so passionate and clear with such efficiency, the offence only happens in the c@nt's mind perhaps they are just a socially conditioned person a can't, now known as a c@nt. Things have come a long way but there is still more distance to go to get rid of the snobbery and discrimination, I reckon if we got rid of this politically correct oppression of genuine emotion and stopped the snobbery it would be another step towards equality across all divisions. I find women traditionally use less expletives reflective of the greater oppression of true emotion. We all know when someone is being nasty using these words offensively but there is no need to demonise the words. The words are not offensive they can't be they are just harmless sounds. It is in the mind of the critic where there is an offence committed or in the speaker if their intent is nasty. To express honest emotion is in reality something that should be encouraged rather than suppressed. Everyone knows it is in the mind of the critic where the offense is, if someone playfully says "€&@# you!" There is a certain innate intelligence that understands it is fun, similarly when it is used in a nasty way we similarly recognise the intent. That calls for a certain level of intelligence and awareness. Expletives whatever way you look at them are intelligent linguistic tools. One thing I don't like is them being used aggressively on children because it displays a level of intimidation which children don't deserve, aren't always eauipped to deal either and can be quite debilitating subconsciously. I know myself in order to survive violent teachers, predatory bullying religious clergy, unjust courtrooms etc I had to learn to silence my voice, curb my freedom, my happiness and obey the rules, restrict my passion or get even more beatings and persecution. The restriction of these words is actually against international law. The Universal declaration of human rights states everyone has the right to use their natural languages without discrimination yet we all know the reality, they are used as an excuse to discriminate, for example law enforcers very often persecute people for using them (while using them themselves.) To end on a historical fun note while studying religions I learned that the feet are symbols used as expressions of extreme distaste or offense in the middle east. In the Christian Gospels it is written that Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet when leaving a place where they are not made welcome to show how unwelcome these people will be in the kingdom of heaven, the modern equivalent is to give the middle finger as many people do when they are left out on the street, refused entry to a party or otherwise discriminated against.

This divide and conquer tactic has also been used to divide generations and disempower/discriminate against parents who freely use expletives and raise their children to express themselves similarly. I of course had to curb my passion in this post in case some can't complained to tumblr and used it as an excuse to hold back science. If anyone does a note to tumblr folks, because I solved the double slit experiment and unlocked the Theory of Everything my account here is likely to get you more new account sign ups in a week than you have maybe had in years and there's nothing in the post that we don't see in kids comics.

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bran098 · 5 years ago

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turtle crossing

I was saving the diapsids long before you VSCO girls made it trendy by ditching plastic straws in your venti Starbucks cups.

A couple of years ago, driving along my small stretch of road, I saw a turtle up ahead, smack dab in the middle of it. I slowed down, pulled off to the side, and looked both ways before stepping foot onto the asphalt. It was a rather small turtle, just doing its business, taking its time to cross the road. That is until it saw me. One look at this lumbering dude and it withdrew its limbs into its shell.

I picked it up and asked it not to bite me as I slowly and gently walked it across the road in the same direction it was headed. I hoped it wasn't the snapping kind. I didn't know much about turtles but was it possible it could whip its head around, elongated and angry, ready to strike my palm with its powerful jaw? Thankfully it never peeped out of its head hole and let me taxi it to the other side. Once it was safely out of rubber harm's way, I carefully set it down and stepped back a bit to see if it would come out of its shell. It eventually did and continued on its course.

I drive a lot and see a lot of dead animals in the road and it breaks my heart a little each time. I try to swerve to avoid as many as I can but not all animals can be avoided and it should always be done within reason. And I started to think about that "within reason" and realized most of us don't apply that logic to our day-to-day lives and routine activities. Consideration, kindness, and good deeds are all lacking in society. I've often wondered where that breakdown started to begin. Surely it's not just one factor but a multitude of reasons we've all become rancid.

One thing that I've noticed is we don't seem to be taught how to give and receive love. We all feel alone and alienated and bullied and often that bullying comes from a lack of love on the aggressor's part. We live in an iced coffee cancel culture where it's popular to point out everyone's flaws. We are quick to condemn an off-color comment but we don't try to correct it. It's instant damnation without education and no opportunity for growth.

It's easy to write people off and think the worst of them because when we realize people can make mistakes, we have to face the reality that we also make mistakes. And that's a hard pill to swallow because mistakes mean growth and change and it's more comfortable being petty. We don't expect people to do better because we don't want to do better ourselves.

We openly hate others expecting no consequence but expect retaliation when someone hates us. We are taught suspicion, paranoia, and protection. But it really just boils down to fear and ignorance, two qualities that are not only tolerated by #45 but encouraged. Because when you can create, orchestrate, and control someone's fear, you can stroll in as the savior and when people feel safe, they trust you. And when they remain ignorant and uneducated, they will never question you.

When I was in school learning about civil rights and segregation, I looked around at my mixed classroom, all shades of black and white, and I thought to myself, "I am so glad that's all over." I look back on that memory with a mix of fondness and embarrassment now because I was so naive and innocent and really thought racism was dead. If only it were true and if only I could still live in that fantasy world. But at the time, living in the south, I should have been old enough and astute enough to know better. I guess I always brushed off the random racist relative or neighbor as a one-off, some leftover ideology that hadn't quite been eliminated yet. But my generation was better. My generation knew of tolerance and acceptance and did not listen to their small-minded elders. I was so wrong.

What I only came to recognize later on was that racism and bigotry never left us. Neither did sexism or homophobia. I just don't think I've ever seen it displayed as openly and proudly as I do today. And when you put God into the mix, it's an even more dangerous combination because now people can justify their hatred by hiding behind a religion. *"I'm not pro-life. God is! I'm not pro-slavery. God is! I'm not pro-guns. God is!"* Everyone is quick to claim religious freedom unless it has to do with the freedom to practice a different religion other than theirs. Then all of a sudden it's a crusade against Christianity.

I've witnessed all this from afar and I've been guilty of apathy. As long as it wasn't bothering me, I didn't care too much. I figured it would all work itself out eventually. Good defeats evil, right? Actually, not at all. There is no force in the world that will help or shift the tide toward good. No force except the force that humans can exert to make those changes themselves. I don't want to sit back and watch the world quite literally burn. I don't want to see minority groups oppressed or omitted entirely. That's not what I've grown up wanting to be. I've always wanted to help, to unite, to connect not only myself to other people but connect those around me.

It seems like a monumental task to try to save a world that already has one foot in the grave. And frankly, I don't think I'm up for the task. But what I am up for is doing all that I can, this small, insignificant, fragile glass human, to try to make someone's day better and hope that whatever good comes from that will then be delivered to someone else.

I guess it's the little things that still matter, those niceties and favors that have gotten lost or forgotten over time. Like paying for someone’s coffee or giving a genuine thanks when someone hands you a burger through a drive-thru window or bags your groceries at the checkout line. When someone tells you a joke, when you ask how their day was, when someone breaks off a piece of candy for someone else to enjoy. It's thinking about others, being considerate, taking the time and energy to do something for someone else, be it big or small. 'Cause those little interactions can really make a big difference in someone's day.

Maybe people don't bother with manners anymore because many of us feel so insignificant ourselves that we feel we can't make a difference in anyone's day. That lending an ear or offering our skills or services wouldn't be worth anyone's time. But that's just not the case. For example, I think I'm the biggest waste of space but that doesn't impede me from trying to help others. I think it gives me a sense of purpose and helps me not feel so worthless. If I wasn't there to make someone smile, maybe no one else would have come around either.

I'm glad I came around for that turtle because not long after I set it down to safety, a semi-truck came barreling by. It would have surely crushed that creature into the concrete had I not intervened. It was no inconvenience. It didn't take more than a few minutes out of my day and I was glad to assist another animal in need. What I did might not change the world and maybe the turtle didn't know it was destined for certain doom but moving it was a practice of showing mercy and concern for something else, something I need to do more of, something we all need to do more of, all in hopes that our slow and steady deeds might just add up to something significant.

#writing

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lifecursed · 5 years ago

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i can’t continue talking about morgan and james’ kids without this dude first.

Name: Lucifer Morningstar Age: ageless Gender: whatever he wants Status: uhh...how do you?? alive???

Current location: Hell. Birthplace: To be named world. Relatives: Jesus ( son ; deceased ) , To be named ( daughter ; deceased ) , To be named ( son ; deceased ) , Eve ( wife ; deceased ) , Mary ( girlfriend ; deceased ) , Joseph ( boyfriend ; deceased ) , Morgan Harvey ( separated ; alive ) , Irvine Magnus Malcolmson - Wallace ( stepson ; alive ) , Lucifer has nothing much to do with Maria during his time with Morgan.

sexuality: whatever he wants.

very general and complicated bio : first off. don’t come at him with the bible or any kind of christian history. he’ll either laugh it off if he’s in a good mood, or he might immolate you if he’s in a bad mood. but most important of all he will tell you “ it’s all bullshit. fake news.”

god never existed.

neither did the angels.

he is the father of jesus.

lucifer is only here after being banished from his own world during the time of the dinosaurs. he didn’t even create the earth. it was already here. truthfully, lucifer is a fae / faery. he was banished by his queen tbn after an ongoing dispute reached boiling point. there is a version of humans where lucifer is from as well as morgan’s mother heather. they were the superior magic users when lucifer was in his homeworld, but they were terribly cruel and savage towards the other races. lucifer tried to start an uprising against the humans with many other magical creatures. but the queen insisted it was not yet time. the result left him with his wings being torn and sent away to earth.

demons are a result of lucifer’s first failed attempts to make man for his own companionship. and although they often turned cruel and manipulative, due to manifestations of his own anger at the fae queen during the creation process, he protected them deep underground in hell when the meteor came to wipe out the dinos. for this they have always been deeply loyal to lucifer and do as he asks of them. they may be assholes, but it is controlled to a degree.

Adam and Eve were the first two humans successfully created by Lucifer. And they were created equally, there was also no evil snake and stupid apple test involved. These are all man made stories of which he has no idea where they come from. apples didn’t even exist when adam and ever were made. anyway, adam turned out to be an asshole, and eve decided she actually preferred lucifer to adam. pissed about this, adam swore vengeance and tried to poison lucifer. it ultimately failed. adam was banished from the garden and eve lived in it with lucifer quite happily. Eve was not truly 100% human like we know. She was more like the one’s from his home world. A sort of fae / human crossover. the earth humans still came about from evolution.

But as the world began to slowly grow again many mannnnnyyyyy years after the meteor. Eve became unwell as her body could not quite cope with the environmental changes happening around her. Lucifer became enraged and thought to smite the world for taking his love away, but Eve pleaded with him to let the world be, to grow, to thrive, and that there would be more love for him to experience. Eve died happily and at peace much to Lucifer’s sadness.

He mourned for a long time but still explored this new world at Eve’s dying insistence. He helped the early people learn to create fire and shapes, build societies. but he also witnessed war and was horribly reminded of his own homeland constantly at war with someone over something.

as people grew and moved out over the planet creating civilisations, making the world their own. lucifer drew back to that first underworld place where he had sheltered the demons. a place that would come to one day be named hell. he started to create his own world there, far beneath the surface. one much like the world above. during its creation, lucifer was one day informed that humans from the surface were showing up in the demon’s space. upon further inspection it was clear the humans were dead and that for some reason they were unable to leave this place. lucifer has never truly discovered why his earth home became the place for the dead. it just did. he does research into it but has no solid theories as of yet.

lucifer’s next relationship concludes in the birth of Jesus, yes, Jesus. Lucifer is the father of a boy named Jesus who can perform miracles. Mary is his mother and Joseph his stepfather. Lucifer enters a polyamorous relationship with the two at some point after meeting them on one of his earth travels promised to eve. they are free spirited and mary is an outcast like himself.

when jesus is born, lucifer visits him from time to time as well as his lovers, but he is a busy being and hell has become a priority as well as managing the demons. he only learns of jesus’ death when he turns up in hell one day after over exerting his healing powers so much that they ultimately used up his life force. lucifer is devastated at once again not being able to save someone he loves. he doesn’t see mary or joseph again for shame of it all.

Hell is not the christian hell we think of. it doesn’t just contain the souls of bad people. it contains the souls of ALL the dead. there just happens to be shitty demons there that were there first and a grumpy old fae that is fucking tired of them all. hell is just an eternal continuation of your earth life....which in hindsight can be considered hell for many. if you commit a crime in hell you suffer for it which is now the demon’s primary function. they do operate on earth too as servants of magic users. they are essentially free agents to do as they please. lucifer is running this show on his own and can only do so much to keep things under control even if he is a very powerful being.

meeting morgan when he prayed for satan to take away his abusive father was coincidence. but it intrigued the tired fae for children never prayed to satan of all people! by this time he had become a demonised character in religion. it didn’t really bother him. some demons probably bs’d the whole thing to gain some wealth of treasure. think of it as a shitty tabloid that makes up stupid stories to sell more copies and get more money. demon’s sold lucifer out to humans to make a buck because it was just in their nature to do bad things.

the bible - helped created by demons.

christian mythos - started by demons to cause chaos and conflict.

lucifer is a very neutral being. he’s not especially evil, he’s not especially good. he’s too old and tired for earth bs. but morgan intrigued him in being one of the first children to pray to him. he answered after morgan began insulting him in prayer because he was failing to get results. and it was true, god did nothing when people prayed, because god didn’t exist. all they really had was him. a being from another world. trapped there without his wings.

after responding to morgan and scaring the shit out of him in the process. he kept an eye on the child swiftly growing into an adult that was so interested in following teachings he had never even really endorsed, practicing magic that even he didn’t truly know where it came from. but the people that professed to be followers of the lord satan reminded him of something from a long time ago. they reminded him of himself---rebelling against conformity and injustice. choosing to live their lives and they saw fit and not how society deemed it fit. he slowly became more involved with the ‘satanists’ and even began to enjoy getting attention after so long of being alone. morgan was especially attentive in his worship and had become a beautiful being from the scared child he met in a pantry years before.

though there is flirtation between the two and brief moments of passion over the centuries. the two don’t embark on a real relationship until james abandons morgan and irvine after causing the death of his other son. he sees morgan at a very low point and unable to really look after irvine properly because of their emotional state. lucifer offers a rare hand of kindness to make morgan the queen of hell in exchange for helping him run the place with their vast magical knowledge. stunned, morgan agrees. running hell, marrying lucifer, and keeping an eye on irvine keeps them distracted from thinking about james’ betrayal as much. plus, lucifer grows fond of irvine quickly. helping to raise him as if irvine was his own son. lucifer becomes aware of james searching for morgan and irvine, but never says anything of it for many years. the two start to grow apart in the early 20th century and morgan takes a break, leaving hell to go live in new york with irvine. the two amicably separate after some time though a divorce has never taken place.

lucifer’s has another blood child that is thought to be the anti-christ. but it is once again more demon and human propaganda collaboration. not much more if known about him at this point.

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urfavmurtad · 7 years ago

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p 1: hello! much appreciation for your work on here. i just have one question: does the term polytheists in the quran refer only to the arab polytheists of the time, i.e. nomadic people, zoroastrians, etc . . . ? and is polytheists a regional term in the quran as in it only refers to arab polytheists? or does it extend to other religions, such as hinduism buddhism etc? i’m very curious bc i know in the indian subcontinent there are some issues regarding hindu/muslim marriages / loves etc.

p 2: sorry i’m not too well versed on the details but it is something that has been bothering me for some time ….. thank you so much for your work and tireless details

Hey anon, no problem. There’s an easy answer to this and then a more complicated answer. The easy answer is that the term used to mean “polytheists” in the Quran is not specific to Mohammed’s contemporary Arab polytheists and refers to any form of polytheism, which is considered the worst possible sin. The word is also used in the rants of past prophets like Abraham (all of the prophets of Islam have the exact same style of speech as Mohammed), so it is not constrained to one time or place. Marriage with polytheists is categorically prohibited in Islam for both men and women.

Okay, now the long answer.

The general term for non-Muslims in the Quran is kuffar, which refers to general disbelievers. This category is split into essentially garbage tier and shit tier (both end up in hell), with the garbage tier being “acceptable” disbelievers. These are the Abrahamic faiths, namely Judaism, Christianity**, and “Sabianism” (no one knows what this is, it may be Mandaeaism, a John the Baptist-centric Gnostic faith, but there’s no way to prove it). In Mohammed’s era, these people were differentiated from polytheists and treated much better than they were. While Mohammed cleansed the entire Arabian peninsula of polytheism and issued a convert-or-die ultimatum, this was not the case with the “People of the Book”, meaning Jews and Christians (and “Sabians”). Mohammed commanded the conquest of Jews and Christians until they were made to pay tribute (the jizya tax) to the growing Islamic empire, but once they did that, they were entitled to safety. They did not have to convert, though they were given legally inferior status to Muslims and subjected to many petty legislations designed to coax them into converting (Christians more so than Jews, because of their large numbers). Giving someone “dhimmi” (protected) status means protected from death/attack in exchange for jizya, not protected from oppression.

The shit-tier faiths are the non-Abrahamic religions. To Mohammed, this meant mostly polytheists, who as I said were essentially 100% eradicated within 50 years of Islam’s creation. There really weren’t any other non-Abrahamic faiths where he lived, in what is now western Saudi Arabia. People in the Arabian peninsula seem to have worshiped all sorts of different gods, with South Arabians having a different pantheon than the ones further north, but all were considered the same (and equally bad). So here’s where the complicated part comes in. First of all, you brought up Zoroastrians… and it’s actually unclear whether they fall under the garbage or shit-tier categories! This lack of clarity is directly related to Hinduism too!

Mohammed seemed to know very little about Zoroastrians, as his trading career mostly involved him traveling in Arab and Byzantine areas, not Persian ones. He met some people raised in the faith, but didn’t seem to ask them much about their religion. Zoroastrians are mentioned only one time in the Quran, and they are only mentioned in the ahadith in passing. Nothing is said of their beliefs or customs except for one that comments on their, uh, facial hair. While clearly disbelievers, it’s unclear if they’re meant to be grouped with the Abrahamic faiths or the (Arab) polytheists:

those who believe (this revelation), and those who are Jews, and the Sabaeans and the Christians and the Magians (Zoroastrians) and the idolaters - Lo! Allah will decide between them on the Day of Resurrection.

Arguably, this differentiates “Magians” from “idolators”, because they’re mentioned separately. Zoroastrians consider themselves a largely monotheistic faith (early Muslims considered them at least vaguely polytheistic though), and while their religion is not Abrahamic, it did exert an influence on the development of Judaism. And a Zoroastrian king, Cyrus, is even called an “anointed one” the Bible. So do they really deserve to be grouped with the dogshit people?

Early Muslims were also very confused on this point–should they take the jizya from Zoroastrians in territory that they conquered, thereby grouping them with Jews and Christians? This became a serious issue during the conquest of Persia, which naturally resulted in many Zoroastrians being brought under Muslim control. The caliph Umar originally refused to accept jizya from them in return for their safety, reasoning that they were objectively not “People of the Book”. He believed they should be classified the same as Arab polytheists. But then one of Mohammed’s old soldiers, Abdul-Rahman ibn Awf, came through and informed everyone that the Zoroastrians of “Hajar” (on the Gulf coast) gave jizya during Mohammed’s lifetime when their territory was conquered. Now I have no idea if this is true or not, as all accounts of this seem to go back to Abdul-Rahman, and it sure the fuck is convenient that this one guy recalled such a detail that not even the caliph knew. But it was taken as the truth.

So after the Islamic conquest of Persia, that ambiguous status remained–Zoroastrians were not given a convert-or-die ultimatum and were made to pay jizya instead, but they were treated noticeably worse and degraded noticeably more than the Christians (and Jews) in conquered Byzantine and Arab Christian territories. The Islamization of Persia was noticeably faster and more ruthless through the Umayyad caliphate (up to 750 AD) compared to the slower Islamization of other newly-Muslim-ruled provinces. By the time of the Abbasid caliphate (into the mid 800s AD), persecution grew worse and worse and the Zoroastrians’ status as beneath both Muslims and Jews and Christians was codified. So while people never really agreed on whether they were “polytheists” or “People of the Book”, it’s long been established that Zoroastrians are sort of a middle ground between garbage and shit, shall we say. Dhimmis, but dhimmi-minus, not dhimmi-plus.

Hinduism is, in theory, easier to deal with. The term used to denote the practice of polytheism in the Quran is shirk, and polytheists (people who are guilty of shirk) are called mushrikun. The literal definition of shirk is “to associate (other gods with Allah)”. Obviously, the people around Mohammed practiced Arab polytheism. But nothing about the term limits it to any specific religion, and as I said, the Quran describes various past non-Arab polytheistic peoples as mushirkun–any system that has gods other than or in addition to Allah/The One True God is considered shirk. Mohammed neither commented on Hinduism specifically nor knew anything about it, but I am sure he would have hated it, as he hated idol worship etc. And non-Abrahamic mushrikun = unmarriageable.

Muslim women are prohibited from marrying any non-Muslim men, regardless of their religion. Sunni Muslim men can marry Jews or Christians (I believe there are some Shia scholars who believe that men cannot permanently marry any non-Muslims) but cannot marry polytheists due to verses like 2:221: “do not marry polytheistic women until they believe”. The term used there is, again, “women who commit shirk”. So this seems pretty cut-and-dry. Hindus are mushrikun, the Quran says you can’t marry mushrikun, therefore Hindu-Muslim marriage is not Islamically permissible unless the Hindu converts to Islam.

(Of course, not everyone born into a Muslim family follows all the rules of Islam, so there are plenty of Muslim-raised people who pursue romances with people they’re not religiously “allowed” to marry regardless. And I’m sure there are plenty of moderately-religious people who wouldn’t care if their son married a Hindu as long as his wife promised to raise the kids as Muslims. And in past times, there were plenty of Muslim rulers who married whatever woman they damn well pleased, including Hindu women. But that’s kind of irrelevant rn, bc who’s gonna tell a ruler “no”, especially when the marriages are carried out for practical reasons of alliance-building?)

While Hindus=non-Abrahamic mushrikun is really the only logical Islamic conclusion, once Muslims actually began to rule parts of India (this was in the early 700s under the Umayyads), they were faced with the same problem that the Arabs encountered when they conquered Persia: if we consider all these people mushrikun, are we supposed to just kill them all? When they greatly outnumber us, are spread over a huge area, and would probably desperately fight back and drag us into a long and expensive war? Wouldn’t it be easier to just say “y’all can stay if u give us jizya $$$”? I mean… this culture was completely foreign to the invading Arabs. They already had an enormous empire that needed to be looked after (for reference) and could not spent all their time fucking around in India. They needed native allies and people to run the place, and also needed, like… a population that was not all dead?? Many Muslim empires, the Umayyads included, were often very pragmatic in spite of Islam. (Some Umayyad rulers don’t even seem to have been particularly religious, but that is a separate topic!)

But unlike the earlier Arabs with the Zoroastrians, they couldn’t really say (or make up a story about how) Mohammed considered them dhimmis. And so the matter was harder to religiously justify. Now I’m gonna be real with you and tell you that I know way more about the early Arab inroads into India than I do about later Turkic and Mughal stuff, but I believe this is generally accurate: for reasons of necessity, Hindus were usually granted either dhimmi (paying the jizya/not being killed) status or something like it (like Zoroastrians) for the majority of the time they were ruled by Muslims. Many Islamic scholars thought that this was improper, but as the amount of territory ruled by Muslims increased, the practicality of treating Hindus the same as Arab polytheists drastically decreased. This does not mean that Hindus were not persecuted or anything–they were, and it got very bad at various points, like the Zoroastrians. I am aware of that, and the destruction of Hindu temples as well as the centuries-long legal and religious discrimination against Hindus is well-known. But they were still not subjected to the Quranically-mandated treatment for mushrikun (forced conversion of the entire population).

This was 100% a practical move that had no real basis in the religion itself. Some scholars did try to justify it by making half-hearted attempts to argue that Hindus legitimately were equivalent to the People of the Book, or rather a people of a book (largely based on mistaken beliefs about who the Sabians were), but this is nonsense. Others went with a different argument that at least has some grounding in history. The Islamic school of jurisprudence that grew to dominate Southeast Asia (Hanafi) takes the stance that any minority living in Muslim-ruled lands can theoretically be given dhimmi status even if they are not People of the Book and are mushrikun, so long as they pay the state whatever it demands (but the rate of the jizya tax sometimes got quite high, so this became problematic) and do not cause any trouble. This is based on the Zoroastrian thing I already mentioned. Since nothing in Islam explicitly calls Zoroastrians “People of the Book”, yet Mohammed supposedly granted them protected status anyway, they reasoned, there is no reason why other religions outside that category cannot be given protected status.

This is obviously a huge stretch, as Zoroastrianism’s “dual forces” (created by the one creator god) may have been seen as polytheism by Arabs but were not really comparable to the 274285372 gods of Hinduism, to say nothing of the clear idolatry present in the religion. Hinduism is objectively more similar to Arab polytheism than it is to Judaism or Christianity. (In fact, Arab polytheists themselves believed in more aspects of “the Book”, like Abraham/Ishmael and a father-god called “Allah”, than Hindus do.) But this essentially gave the Muslim rulers of India a way to rule the region without literally destroying it, while bypassing questions about how Hindus should be classified. At the same time, many Hanafi scholars believed that Hindus had to effectively be degraded and shown that their way of life was wrong, just… not to the point of killing them.

OKAY SO… THIS IS GETTING RLY LONG… why do I always do this… but I want to tie it back into what you uhh actually asked about lmao. Despite the Hanafi school’s allowance of Hinduism’s existence, this does not mean that they, or any other school of Islamic jurisprudence, accept Hindu-Muslim marriage. Hindus are unavoidably mushrikun, even if one does not believe that they all have to be murdered into embracing Islam. To my knowledge there is not a single school of jurisprudence, either Sunni or Shia, that allows such a thing. How can they, when the Quran outright says “don’t marry polytheists”? Like I said–if someone is born into a Muslim family (and lives in a country with civil marriage) but isn’t really religious, of course he or she can marry any person. But the religion itself prohibits it. The Quran says that polytheistic wives or slaves serve as invitations to The Fire. So… thousands of words later there’s your answer l-lol… also Buddhists are given the same status as Hindus, as far as I know.

**Christians in Islam have a weird position because they’re technically both mushrikun and People of the Book, owing to the Trinity (and Islam’s… odd… conception of it) being equated with polytheism. (Arguably, Islam’s version of Jews are too, but that’s only because Mohammed pulled this Ezra thing out of his ass when the Jews started pissing him off, and Muslim scholars tend to ignore it because it is clear nonsense.) But you can still marry them if you are a guy. Don’t ask me why Allah is okay with you sticking your dick in one sort of hellbound mushrik but not another. Lo! He is Unknowable.

#ask #anon #india #hinduism

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serafheljadeeeee · 3 years ago

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ENERGY UPDATE

Dear ones,

Throughout space and time, The Galactic Federation Team has seen a lot.

During our space travels between the galaxies, we’ve discovered planets beyond count, each with its own unique features and characteristics.

We have seen millions of planets with life and some of them have already ascended to a fifth-dimensional frequency. Everyone on those planets has reached the level of super consciousness.

They are incredibly compassionate individuals who live as co-creators with the Source of all Creation. They have no religious, political, color, or gender bias and see and love everyone equally.

The time is now for the earth to ascend into fifth-dimensional reality!

No longer can you cling to the third-dimensional illusion of separation, struggle, and hardship when your soul longs for freedom.

Tapping into the fifth dimension for the first time can be one of life's greatest experiences. Everything around you is altered, and you see nature differently.

You are finally awake to your true self. It is then that you see the world through different eyes, set a new life goal and make your soul dance with joy.

Ascending to the fifth dimension and using 5D energies is a simple phenomenon. It’s simpler than you ever imagined. It doesn’t take much work or time. Only you have to understand the knack of using it.

The issue is that we are unable to express this process in human language. It's impossible to put into words.

Can you explain what love is? You can talk about it intellectually, you can argue about it, you can make theories about it. However, you are unable to describe it. Because it's an experience, it's a phenomenon.

The only catch is that you must understand it. You must comprehend the underlying principle. You must have a good understanding of how to use it. Once you grasp it, you'll see how simple it is and how you've been missing out all this time!

All you have to do now is follow the strategies we'll show you to help you climb. These techniques are designed to purify and transcend the mind.

Put aside your previous knowledge, and any information you have gathered when you use these procedures. Set them away; they're nothing more than road dust. Approach these techniques with an open mind — awareness, yes, but not argumentation.

We're not asking you to believe everything we say. Simply put the techniques into practice and see what happens.

This isn't about religion; it's about science. It is not necessary to believe it.

You are the laboratory, and the entire experiment will take place within you.

Only the willingness to try new things, the courage to try new things, is enough; that is the beauty.

Even if you read hundreds of books to learn how to swim, you will not be able to grasp the concept. Even a good swimmer can't explain what swimming is or what he's doing. He is unable to justify his actions to you. He isn't doing anything at all. He's simply allowing himself to be in a close, responsive relationship with the river.

The books, on the other hand, can educate you on how to prepare for this procedure as well as how to use the techniques.

When you practice swimming, you understand that you must exert effort first. Once you get a feel for it, the effort is gone, and you can swim with ease. Then you'll have a better understanding of how to do it. It will become a part of you once you grasp it. It is something you will never forget.

Knowing comes from doing, and there is no other way to know. There is no answer until you do something unless you go into a different dimension than the intellect.

So, we shall continue to discuss many strategies. You put them to the test. Just have fun with them. When you come across the correct method, something explodes inside of you, and you know it was meant for you.

You have the power to control your experience and enjoy a greater existence. Don't wait for someone to open the door for you. Just follow the methods we teach you and enter into the fifth dimension.

The moment you enter into it, you are occupied with divine love energy. These waves of energy are empowering-they're rewiring your DNA, clearing your chakras, and amplifying your connection to the divine.

You'll experience a rapid expansion of consciousness as you evolve beyond the confines of what you know now!

A'HO

Divine blessings to all,

Aurora Ray

Ambassador of The Galactic Federation

Art by Aurora Ray

#galactic federation #awareness #spirituality #consciousawakening #consciousness #frequency #energy #positive affirmations #positive mental attitude #vibrationalalignment

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thornsickle · 7 years ago

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What is the end game for Rey and Kylo Ren, and how does it connect to the ultimate fate of the Force in the sequel trilogy?

With ‘The Last Jedi’ only a month away (a month guys!), I thought I would dive into something which might be viewed as a little too far-fetched to be discussing right now, but I think it’s crucial to put this out there before we have all seen ‘The Last Jedi’. Mainly because this could very easily be torn to pieces by the end of episode VIII (which I will embrace wholeheartedly either way, as I am sure that a compelling story awaits us all). So if you think this is all just moot to be talking about at this stage, or you’d rather not think about what will be the conclusion to the sequel trilogy concerning Kylo and Rey, then by all means skip this post. For those still here, I hope you read on and let me know what you think. Oh, and be warned, this is going to be a long post.

What will happen ultimately to Rey and Kylo Ren? At this point, given what has happened these past few months, I think ‘Reylo’, in the broadest of terms, is going to happen. Heck, it’s already started in TFA.

For me the more important question now is not if ‘Reylo’ is going to happen but rather, what is to become of their futures? Will they be together or won’t they? Right now we don’t know, and I don’t presume to know either, but I would like to talk about what could happen on a hypothetical level, given what we know about what type of story this is, and the narrative line, both on a symbolic and spiritual level.

Because to answer the question of how this trilogy will end, we have to ask what it is indeed about. And in order to answer that question, we have to ask what the sequel trilogy has to do in order to further the story of ‘Star Wars’.

The sequel trilogy is, in the end, about the Force.

But you see, I think the Force is going to have a much bigger role to play now, because the lore surrounding Star Wars needs to be expanded upon. We know this is coming because Luke has been trying to find out more about this mysterious Force which the entire saga revolves around, and I think we will get a lot more backstory on it in TLJ, judging by Luke’s books and the Force Tree we saw in the trailer. Heck, he’s on Achto, the original temple of the Jedi; if that doesn’t scream history and hoards of information just waiting to be found, I don’t know what does.

There’s a reason why episode VII was called ‘The Force Awakens’.

But how exactly will they expand upon the Force and how does this connect to the fates of Kylo Ren and Rey?

“Without the Jedi, there can be no balance in the Force.”

A simple, single line, which appears in the first scene of TFA. An old saying, which finds it’s roots in the original trilogy.

‘The mission’ if you like, for this sequel trilogy, will be to deconstruct this notion, and by the end of episode IX we should be able to see that what Lor San Tekka states here is, in fact, incorrect.

‘Dust’ and ‘the Force’

The similarities between ‘His Dark Materials’ and the notions of ‘the Force’ are not surprising. Both are inspired by religious sources; for Pullman it was Paradise Lost, for George Lucas it was more general, taking inspiration from all forms of religion, but this greatly informs their ideas of their respective sources of power in their worlds. ‘Dust/the Force’, the idea of power, for both these creatives, resides primarily in the idea of faith and more importantly, ‘the consciousness‘. Why is this so?

The fantasy genre for me exists, first and foremost, because we want to tackle the morally problematic issue that is ‘power’. Magic, lightsabers, rings, wands, time travel, super powers, you name it, these are all simply vehicles used to represent the idea of power. However, what makes both George Lucas and Phillip Pullman so interesting, is that their philosophy surrounding power goes beyond that of the classic, cautionary tale about the misuse of power (Harry Potter - ‘horcruxes & Voldemort’, Lord of the Rings - ‘the One Ring’) or how one becomes ‘worthy’ of power.

The biggest similarity between ‘Dust’ and ‘the Force’ is their nebulousness and anonymity within their respective stories. The characters in both worlds have very different ideas about ‘Dust/the Force’, both on it’s purpose and what should be done about it. They are forms of power which ultimately do not belong to either the ‘good’ or ‘evil’. If I was to describe how ideas of ‘the Force’ are to change, I would say that Philip Pullman’s description of ‘Dust’ gives a pretty good idea of where I think this sequel trilogy is heading.

“Dust is a mysterious force of which the powerful people in the story seem to be afraid.”

This quote was taken directly from an interview with Philip Pullman, but what is so fascinating is that he might as well be talking about ‘the Force’ as we know it in Star Wars. In fact, this could be seen as the premise for the entire saga.

Here is the link to said video. From 1:26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N6vzZuPy1s

In the prequels, Palpatine’s main goal was to take over the Galactic Senate and ultimately rule over the galaxy. However, he did so in a very politically strategic way; by instilling fear in the public and, by extension, fear of the Jedi. He distanced the public from ‘the force’ and shrouded it in mystery, instilling ignorance in those he ruled over. He went so far as to hide his own identity as a force user in order to do this. By taking this power away from the people, he was able to easily manipulate those around him. This is why he was able to take over and create his Empire as smoothly as he did, “with thunderous applause”. His true power was his perceptiveness; he could see into people’s weaknesses and understood how ‘power’ could be both utilized and suppressed.

Palpatine was intelligent in the sense that he knew ‘the Force’ was a powerful thing, however, as Pullman says in his quote, he ultimately feared it. We know this because, quite simply, he tried to control it; first by extinguishing the Jedi, and second, by manipulating Anakin Skywalker, the greatest force user at that time, into becoming his puppet.

In His Dark Materials, ‘the Magistrate’ exerts its power through similar means; their basic goal is to remain in power by making sure the public never learn of ‘dust’ and its various capabilities. They are responsible for the public’s general ignorance over what ‘Dust’ actually is, they only know it as something corrupt and to be feared. The Magistrate successfully created in this way a distorted image of ‘Dust’, labeling it as something ‘evil’ and ‘corrupt’ (if you like ‘original sin’). This is exactly what Palpatine did to the Jedi; you might as well exchange the ‘Magisterium’ for the ‘Empire’ and you probably wouldn’t see much difference.

On the other side, the Jedi during the prequels had grown ignorant over the true purpose of ‘the force’ and what ‘balance in the force’ really meant. This is why they ultimately failed Anakin Skywalker during his training to become a Jedi. George Lucas highlights the flaws within the council and we are therefore able to understand why the Republic fell. The Jedi only used one side of the Force, and believed the ‘Dark Side’ to be completely corrupt and therefore not to be embraced. They speak of ‘fear being the path to the dark side’ but ironically, it is that very avoidance of it, that ends up instilling fear of the ‘Dark side’ in force users and therefore sends either themselves or those around them down that path, becoming the very thing they swore to destroy. Philip Pullman also shows this in his trilogy but more on that later.

“Dust is a mysterious force of which the powerful people in the story seem to be afraid.”

Once again, we return to his statement. At first it may not seem this way, but the Jedi too, in their own way, feared ‘the Force’ and it’s capabilities. Like ‘the Magistrate’, they created an order, a set of rules, a moral code, in order to restrain force users and stop them from being ‘corrupted’. Someone like Anakin Skywalker, who found extreme conflict regarding this concept, was exactly the sort of person who the Jedi feared most of all.

Like ‘the Magistrate’, they grew increasingly frustrated because of their growing lack of connection to ‘the Force’. This is shown most prominently when Yoda states “impossible to see, the future is.” And yet, Anakin sees, with painful clarity, the future and the fate of the one he loves, because unlike Yoda, he does not fully reject ‘the dark side’ and therefore it does not cloud his vision. His connection to ‘the Force’ is very much like Lyra’s ability to read the alethiometer; she sees nothing but the truth, something no one else seems to be able to do. Rey in the sequel trilogy also holds this ability; her version of this comes in the form of ‘visions’.

The Jedi do not fully trust ‘the chosen one’, which means that they do not in fact trust ‘the Force’. Like ‘the Force’, Anakin Skywalker was someone who could not be controlled and yet, this is precisely why he was ‘the chosen one’. TLJ continues these ideas, with Luke fearing not only ‘Kylo Ren’ but ‘Rey’ as well, and I would guess this is because he does not understand ‘what’ either of them truly are, whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’, symbols of ‘the Force’ or, if you like for the purposes of this post, ‘Dust’.

It is important to note that one speaks of ‘the Force’ or ‘Dust’, we are talking about it as a whole. The Jedi may have embraced the Force as they knew it, but they didn’t in fact do so fully. Like the Emperor, they feared what might happen if ‘the Force’ was free and unrestricted. This is why we have seen through the saga the fall of both the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ side.

In ‘His Dark Materials’, ‘intercision’ is for me the equivalent of what happens to every Force user in the saga, may they be on the ‘light’ side or ‘dark’ side.

In Philip Pullman’s books, this is of course much more extreme; essentially ‘intercision’ is a form of lobotomy. In literature, lobotomy is often used as a symbol for the loss of freedom and individual thought – just look at Tennessee Williams’ ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ as the most blatant example of this. ‘Intercision’ is essentially the Magistrate’s way of preventing children from embracing ‘Dust’ as they turn of age, stopping from maturing. Instead they transform into vegetative states, with no free will of their own. The separation of the soul and body can also be linked to the concept of dementors in the Harry Potter series.

Snoke’s manipulation of Kylo is reminiscent of this. He is trying to stomp out the very humanity out of Ben Solo – hence Lor San Tekka’s line “something far worse as happened to you”, alluding to Kylo’s almost Frankenstein-like appearance which harkens back to Darth Vader and his journey. For Kylo however, his ‘intercision’ is not yet complete.

Looking at it from a certain point of view, both the Sith and Jedi prevented their students from developing the complete use of the Force, by allowing them to only use one half of it and, one can argue, only one half of themselves. Although each respective faction states they do this because the other side is ‘corrupt’, it is clear something is incorrect about their analysis, because the Force is in constant flux throughout the saga, unable to settle, perhaps because of it’s misuse by both sides. In ‘His Dark Materials’, this is exactly what is happening with ‘Dust’. At the end of ‘The Northern Lights’ Lord Asriel is able to travel from one world to another, but only by killing Lyra’s best friend Rodger in the process. This causes Lyra to reevaluate both her image of her father, but also of Dust. Unlike Lucas, Pullman shows us from the very first book, that ‘Dust’ is not only being misunderstood by the ‘Magisterium’ but also by those we see as the ‘good guys’.

If the latest trailer for ‘The Last Jedi’ is any indication, Luke may have caught on a little, as it seems he has discovered the Jedi were ultimately wrong about their teachings and beliefs concerning ‘the Force’. Hence his line, “it is time for the Jedi to end.” In Pullman’s books, the adults have a clear misunderstanding when it comes to ‘Dust’, largely because they know so little about it, and more importantly, because they are unable to control it. This is essentially what I think Luke has discovered or will discover in ‘The Last Jedi’.

“Lyra, who has been told all her life that dust is bad, has seen the adults around her doing terrible things in the name of getting rid of Dust as they think. She undergoes a moral crisis, and thinks ‘if these people have been doing these wicked things and they say that Dust is bad, then maybe Dust is good’.

This is exactly what I think will happen to Rey in ‘The Last Jedi’.

It leads her to connect with Kylo Ren because she witnesses what she sees as the misuse of ‘the Force’. In the original trilogy, the Death Star is the ultimate symbol of misuse of power. George Lucas even rubs this in by making the source of it’s power kyber crystals, which are in themselves symbols of the Force itself. This is heavily implied in Rogue One. This is just speculation at this point, but I believe the Resistance have been mining for some form of kyber crystals on Crait, and were perhaps building a sort of Death Star of their own. I’m not sure though if Lucasfilm is gutsy enough for that, but it would make a heck of a storyline.

With Rey, she sees that the light side of the Force is not entirely what she expected, and finding herself even more lost, wonders that perhaps ‘the dark side’ is not as corrupt as she is being led to think.

Yes, these are two completely different materials, but essentially, they are tackling the same themes. In Rey’s mind at present, there is ‘the Force’, but she is not yet aware that previous force users saw different ways it could be misused. Like Anakin before her, she will discover that her use of ‘the Force’ would have been seen as ‘corrupt’ by the Jedi, firstly because, on a practical level, she has not been trained and has little control over it, and secondly, because she utilizes both the Dark and Light sides of the Force. The several examples of this during TFA (see links below for examples).

http://sakurau121.tumblr.com/post/147314934255/im-calling-it-rey-is-going-to-turn-to-the-dark

http://sakurau121.tumblr.com/post/152902112780/so-heres-yet-another-theory-of-mine-about-how

http://sakurau121.tumblr.com/post/154378487925/reys-introduction-to-the-force-in-tfa-and-the

My opinion remains open, but these just give you observations on Rey’s use of the force.

I think one of the reasons why she will struggle with Luke, is because she will find his teachings restrictive. Luke’s ‘fear’ of Rey is completely justified, because, as we have established, the ‘adults’ in the fantasy genre often fear the young because they represent what is to come – the future of power. They fear this ‘force’ because they do not understand it. This is why, as Pullman shows, power is not just abused by the ‘bad guys’ but by the majority of the characters in his stories because they seek to exert control over ‘power’ itself (in his case ‘Dust’). This is what ‘His Dark Materials’ has most in common with the philosophy of Star Wars because all the force users in Star Wars also seek to control ‘the Force’, one way or another (which turns out to be their biggest mistake).

“Everything that is consciousness – human thought, imagination, love, affection, kindness, good things, curiosity, intellectual curiosity.”

This is Pullman’s description of ‘Dust’ and interestingly, there are many elements there which refer to both the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides of the Force. ‘Curiosity’, for example, is something which Yoda in fact tries to suppress in Luke – “there is no why”. Luke’s natural curiosity in the world around him, the possibilities that he sees, is in fact his greatest quality and the reason why he was able to save his father and help him fulfill the prophecy of ‘The Chosen One’. So, what does that say about Yoda and what would have happened if Luke had suppressed his true self?

For Rey and Kylo Ren, they will discover, as Lyra did, that power is being misused by pretty much everybody (hence all the characters in the promotion in TLJ being soaked in red). This is unsurprising, as far as ‘His Dark Materials’ go, because most of the characters in Pullman’s books are not necessarily ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Mrs Coulter and Lord Asriel are very good examples of this. Lyra herself is wild and has an almost untameable sort of quality about her, similar, I think, to both Kylo and Rey.

The power struggle between the old and new ways of thinking is not necessarily something new. In the original trilogy, Luke defies his masters because he does not agree with them. Once again, I think this will be repeated in the sequel trilogy. After all, fairy-tales in the end are about parents and children, and how children ultimately must move on and evolve, separating from their parents. The future must prevail, and progress cannot be stopped. Change inevitably happens, and therefore, the freedom of independent thought is essential. In Pullman’s trilogy, he shows this in the most powerful way possible, and this is where we delve into what I think will be Rey and Kylo’s ultimate fate.

Their fate will depend greatly on what happens to ‘the Force’ at the end of this trilogy which is why I’ve been barking on and on about its evolution and meaning in this post. So far, the Force has remained unstable, despite the fact that Anakin Skywalker restored ‘balance’ when he destroyed the Emperor. This is actually a very important thing to remember because it indicates that perhaps ‘balance’ is not necessarily the answer.

The Force as we know it must change and take on a different form. The sequel trilogy in many ways is about wiping the slate clean. I believe this trilogy will bring an end to ‘force users’ as we currently recognize them. Like ‘Dust’, one could argue that if ‘the Force’ had been left alone to thrive naturally and was not manipulated by man, then perhaps none of the events of the saga would have happened at all.

This idea of ‘the Force’ being free, the end of both the Jedi and the Sith, can only be demonstrated effectively enough through our two ‘protagonists’. This has been done before of course, and yes, ‘His Dark Materials’ is one example. This is only a suggestion but I think it’s entirely possible that Rey and Kylo will, in essence, let ‘the Force’ be free and no longer let others control it. It returns to how it was before force users were about. And so, ‘the Force’ as we know it, disappears and yet remains. Like Lyra and Will, Rey and Kylo lose their powers, and therefore, so does Snoke. This is how they ultimately defeat him. Like Noah, they must start anew, letting go of the old world in order to create a new one. However, in order to truly demonstrate the relinquishing of power, they must do one other thing.

At the end of ‘His Dark Materials’, Lyra and Will are forced to part ways – they cannot stay together. By relinquishing power, they also realize that because ‘said power’ can no longer be controlled, they cannot control their fate either. It is often the case that characters must sacrifice so that they can restore peace and balance, returning ‘power’ back into the world, so that people can embrace it in it’s purest form.

If you want an example of this, look no further than that of Chirrut in ‘Rogue One’. He presents an alternative way of embracing ‘the Force’. Pullman has said that ‘Dust’ needs people as much as people need ‘Dust’. One cannot exist without the other. Which is why that famous line in ‘Rogue One’ makes so much sense…

“And the Force is with me”.

This idea of returning ‘power’ back to the ‘world’ is a very universal idea and can be seen in many different forms. The film ‘Princess Mononoke’ ends with Ashitaka and San returning to their respective worlds after releasing the power back to nature. The forest is no longer as it once was and each must respectively follow their own path but remain connected to one another, even when they are apart. Lyra and Will clearly embody this; they are from two separate parallel worlds but both sit on the same bench each year, aware that the other is close by but still so far away. ‘Spirited Away’ ends with Chihiro returning to the human world; Haku says that he is ‘free’ but they still must part because they have come to the end of their journey together. That film is very much about these ‘two protagonists’ regaining their sense of identity. Sound familiar?

But why must Kylo and Rey part? You may ask.

Aren’t they supposed to meet in the middle and connect to create a new group of force users?

Perhaps. But it would go against everything that I have just said up until now. We cannot forget that while they will connect to each other, they represent opposites sides of a coin, like Ashitaka and San (’man’ and ‘nature’), Haku and Chihiro (‘spirit’ and ‘consciousness’). Ying and Yang, and while both connect to both sides of the Force, they will, in the end, embrace one side a little more than the other. They are two separate beings, and by finding their true ‘identities’ at the conclusion of this trilogy, they remember the past and realize they must do better than those who have come before them.

I do not believe Kylo and Rey will begin creating a new group of force users because they will finally understand the true nature of the Force. It is not something which can be taught; it must be felt and developed naturally, like ‘consciousness’ itself, allowed to expand and mature overtime. We don’t grow up when we begin to listen and do what we are told to do; we grow up when we start to make conscious decisions for ourselves and understand the consequences that come with that. Only then do we begin to know ourselves and therefore become in touch with who we inherently are. This is something which no one can teach you; ultimately you discover this for yourself and in fact, that is the ‘true’ source of power, the true power of ‘the Force’.

Self-discovery, which is what the fantasy genre is all about.

Here’s another reason behind why I think Rey and Kylo will part at the end of Episode IX.

‘Casablanca’.

True, this is not a fantasy film, but it is a story about taking initiative and trying to make the world a better place (famously it was released during WW2 when America was already involved, and this film hailed the idea of ‘responsibility’ and ‘commitment’ during a time when the world was literally falling apart).

It is a story about ‘redemption’ and I believe that is what the sequel trilogy will be about. The return of ‘the Force’ in its purest form through the redemption of those who use it, and that applies to everyone, not just Kylo Ren.

There are, however, clear parallels between the character of ‘Rick’ and ‘Kylo Ren’, which is not surprising as Humphrey Bogart embodied many traits which harken back to the idea of the Byronic hero, or ‘anti-hero’. As Palminteri said about Bogart, “he was able to wear a white hat and a black hat. He was the killer you sort of sympathised with.” Han Solo IS Rick in Casablanca you could argue, at first passive towards the political climate, hypocritical in the sense that he says he doesn’t care, when really he does.

Naturally, his son embodies this attitude as well and by the end of Casablanca, Rick has transformed his world view after reuniting with the love of his life, who is aptly part of the ‘French Resistance’. Is it only when he pushes her away, that he becomes truly selfless and he finally recovers his true sense of agenda and identity.

This is the key when it comes to Kylo Ren. The only way I believe to truly complete his transformation is for him to do the noble thing and protect the one he loves in the most selfless way possible. This is important because it becomes an integral part of his story arc. This does not however mean that he will die. That would be easy, but the harder thing to do, would be to live with the decisions he has made. This is one of the primary reasons why JK Rowling did not kill Harry Potter at the end of her series. Of course, another reason is because it has been done before, and unlike Darth Vader, Kylo’s story is tightly interlocked with that of Rey, more so than Luke’s ever was with his father.

Ebert describes Bogart thus; “he can play that hurt, that vulnerability, that guy who will never be able to bounce back and at the same time, you see inside of him that idealism. He has this cynicism that says ‘I’ll stick my neck out for nobody’ but at the same time he sticks his neck way out and it was that transition that Bogart was so good at.”

I have a hunch that Adam Driver is good at this too, and this is precisely why Kennedy cast him as Kylo Ren. I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that very specific expressionist cinematography was used during Kylo’s scenes in TFA; the use of film noirish side lighting to highlight his inner conflict and split-self, just as Rick is depicted in Casablanca.

Kylo and Rey will part ways but remain connected, coexisting. Ben’s love for Rey will echo the use of the Force by force-users, and therefore both must be relinquished in order to bring true peace to the galaxy. The bright side is it will leave the trilogy open-ended enough so that their story can continue and there is a possibility of them coming together once more, but I also think it makes for the most cohesive ending.

The Force does not need to be balanced, it needs to be set free.

‘Star-crossed lovers’, Rey and Kylo indeed literally will become I think.

But what do you think? Let me know in the comments and don’t forget to like and reblog so we can get a conversation going. Sorry for the extremely long post :D

#reylo #kylo x rey #the last jedi #star wars #reylo meta #kylo ren #rey #the force #episode IX #episode VIII

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ratherhavetheblues · 4 years ago

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ANDREI TARKOVSKY’S ‘SOLARIS’ “We don’t want to conquer space at all. We want to expand Earth endlessly…”

Ingmar Bergman, not widely known to praise other filmmakers, was, however, on one occasion, drawn to remark: “My discovery of Tarkovsky’s first film [Ivan’s Childhood, 1962] was like a miracle. Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease. I felt as if I was entering and encountering a range of stimulation. Someone was expressing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how. Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, as a dream.”

With Bergman, however, being a tricky hand-to-hand brawler, you have to look carefully about such a homage. Yes, Tarkovsky comes on the field as remarkably brilliant. His instinct for dynamics and mis en scene is truly inventive and revolutionary. But where do you think that new genius learned his chops as an exhaustive challenger of world history as it has enjoyed total and disastrous power since societies on earth began? Tarkovsky’s film today, namely, Solaris (1972), is about space discovery, the wonder of the “new,” in the bright solar awakening. But the solar, if you look at it, is a fury, a visitation of intensity (emotion) having been censored from the entirety of life, of nature; while religion and science have carved up everything in sight, despite being possibly, however, having much to do with the new. The protagonist, Kris Kelvin (a surname redolent of “hard” science and control of heat), does not, at first blush, present any hope of becoming a paragon of emotive innovation. His father, on the eve of Kris’s departure—to a Soviet space craft having encountered disarray, and which he seemed to be the right man to straighten it out—far from a radical but aware that there is more in life than science, remarks, “He reminds me of a bookkeeper, preparing his accounts… It’s dangerous to send people like you into space. Everything is fragile. Yes, fragile. The Earth has somehow become disgusting to people like you, although at what sacrifice! The Earth has somehow become adjusted to people like you. What, are you jealous that [someone else] will be the one to bury me, and not you?”

There are specific Bergman films which anticipate Tarkovsky films. They are not delivered in neon, but they shine for those who pay the price. The films, The Devil’s Eye (1960) and All These Women (1964), have meant a lot to Tarkovsky. He would have found nothing about science, let alone space travel, in those bemusing actions. What he was alert enough to see there was the problematic of pathos. Solaris is a saga of pathos, and how the powers of that sensibility embrace and improve the cosmos itself—especially, though, from afar. The Devil’s Eye presents a vicar’s wife being unfaithful one time only, to a suitor more spirited and loving than her husband, and which touches off the rest of the couple’s life in struggling to reach a cogently shared life. All These Women tracks a virtuoso musician (with a harem), seeing his craft being to be not enough for cogency. He had been loved from afar from his servant. After his death, she bids hopelessly (but with special assets) for a replacement at the music palace. This Isolde does not die young. Her pathos becomes what no one else will discover. And yet one very large heart will know and care. Sci-fi fans might not want anything about it. Though the unique and very beautiful pulsation can turn things around, given much concentration and courage.

The rest of the skirmishing, before Kelvin takes on deep space, involves, in Bergmanesque style, the disadvantage of struggling to maintain emotive sophistication in a world-history drunk with cheap advantage, cheap jubilation. Invited by the dad, there is a former cosmonaut, Burton, whose legacy is humiliation from mainstream science. (Humiliation having been frequently displayed by Bergman’s audacious minorities.) Burton brings a video of the inquisition where his career ended. (Before our chance to see the sentencing, there was the guest, appreciating the dad’s farm. “It’s so pleasant here.” The host tells him, “This house reminds me of my grandfather’s house. I really liked it. So I decided to build one just like it. I don’t like innovation…” (Is the ancient that lovely?)

Kelvin, not pleased to have the joke, visiting—“I’ve already seen it many times”—forces himself to see it once again, no doubt, however, enjoying seeing a pariah burned at the stake. Burton’s report does seem mad. But there are many angles in the universe, some of them magical. (Some, as with Tarkovsky, here, bringing to visuality the death of a wished-for affection [a pathos, of sorts], on the basis that, inasmuch as one is remembered, the figure is still, somewhat, in play, lingering, factoring within the matters of nature itself.) The outlaw’s account admits, “ [I] was in a state of shock. This was highly unusual for a man with eleven years of experience flying in space. I recovered in a couple of days, but I would never leave the station and refused to approach the window overlooking the Ocean” [of the maritime planet, Solaris]. “Later he wrote to us from the clinic. He was preparing a statement of great importance, one that would decide the fate of Solaristics.” His formal account is not taken well (despite a minority account hoping for pursuing the matter). With fog creating problems, he elicits circumstances for this saga: “When I looked down I saw shrubs, hedges, acacia trees, little paths. Everything was made of the same substance—plaster.” (In All These Women, a Madame Tussaud owns a lucrative wax museum. All of a piece! Compare and contrast.) “Then everything began to crack and break.” His film shows nothing but clouds. Burton insists, “This person had no space suit.” (Cut to Kelvin, no question to him!) With the embarrassment mounting, what began as a modest possibility roars into cheap melodrama. “He was about four meters tall. He had blue eyes and dark hair. He was naked, absolutely naked, like a newborn. He was wet, or rather slippery. It was disgusting…” The questionable seer declares, “The commission has not offended me, but it has offended the spirit of expedition… Therefore, I consider it my duty to announce…” [and so on].

The discussion the dad wanted Kelvin and Burton to have, goes, of course, nowhere. (Behind his back, the imminent voyager calls the overwrought surrealist [surrealism, meaning, “more real”], “What a ridiculous man.”) Which causes the dad to retort, “You have no reason to say that…” Kelvin’s aunt, Anna, one of many uncanny women in Bergman’s films who exerting, in one sense, bringing to bear difficult truths, and yet being named (Anna) the homicidal horror in other films, tries to convince Burton’s young son that the beautiful and lively horse at the farm is not a killer. Fear having saturated Burton’s nerve, and being left a worrier, the horsepower of the drive home, however, becomes a dash for the ages, if one allows it to be. Though his function, when alive, was a space pilot, now he’s using a chauffeur and we see him hunched in the death-seat failing to appreciate the series of freeways, most of them underground (his territory, you’d think) where the speed and lights should be galvanizing. At somewhat like Mach 1, the flights of the lights, twisting and turning, are a godsend. (Solaris, far less remote than humankind would have it.) However, that his care to revisit insult in hope to wakening the near-dead, constitutes a small but notable triumph of dignity.

Reaching the troubled phenomenon, Kelvin wastes no time in unlocking his ancient sleuth’s, deductive genius upon a skeleton crew of two. (Could there be something wrong about going to the well which has served for eons?) His sendoff by the corporation included the touch, “Don’t worry about anything. Have a great trip!” In entry, he had allowed himself to be a mite confused, with his pair of eyes (becoming upside-down), and all around, pitch darkness. The frequent instance of cliché throughout, being a strain of American filmic melodrama, a Bergman standby. On entry, Kelvin trips upon one of his boot laces. The American pall presages far more trouble than he could ever have imagined. (The dash through the freeways having upstaged the great frontier.) Kelvin’s position, on hands and knees from the fall, anticipates his long learning curve materializing toward his being on his knees in face of an erstwhile hated father.

The few darlings of scientific sobriety still standing there had already anticipated Kelvin being in for a reversal of more of the same. The core of the scenario reprises that long-ago humiliation of Burton, but with the action given more lucid power. It is not an exaggeration to realize that Bergman’s two studies of pathos have been intensified here on the prospect of eliciting a very different cosmos than that patented by thousands of years. The run-up to the singularity can be succinctly noted. Kris encounters Dr. Snaut, a renowned physicist, in his office/ studio, where he moots a shock coming for the visitor, but can’t bring himself to explain. “If you see something out of the ordinary, try not to lose your head.” Snaut’s name brings us the figure of the rhinoceros, in the Eugene Ionesco play, Rhinoceros (1960), with its baggage of Theatre of the Absurd in the service of a wake-up call, which Bergman would bring to bear, in his film, The Rite (1969). The Doctor leaves the troubleshooter with the notion that what will be striking, “depends on you.” The second scientist, Dr. Gibarian, comes to Kris in a video, the scientist having recently committed suicide. “Hi, Kris. I still have a little time left. (His office is heavy on Cubist art.) There are some things I must tell you and some things I must warn you about. By now you’re at the station and I know what has happened to me. What happened to me is not important. Or rather, it cannot be explained. I’m afraid what happened to me is only the beginning. I wouldn’t, of course, want it to happen, but this could happen to you and the others. It could probably happen to anyone. Just don’t think I’ve lost my mind.” He, having been a great friend of the ponderous protagonist, the pal goes on to propose, “heavy radiation,” to expunge the supposed hazard. (Pedants over their head. Wallowing in bathos.) Soon, on another visit to the boob-tube, we see that the Cubist has a young girl with him. The divided broadcaster sends out, “Do you see, Kris, how it’s not entirely absurd?” (That last word.) Just prior to that, Kris had made contact with the other one breathing, namely, Dr. Sartorius (a persistent chemist), and a name meant to elicit power. In an unhelpful interview, at the nearly closed door, a little boy pops out, to be quickly lifted back in. (Not only the Absurd; but, a crackling noire, sort of! Kelvin having picked up two pistols along the way. Crushed with bathos.) Also in that latter conversation, Sartorius tells Kelvin that Gibarian (“Barbarian”) was a coward, to commit suicide. He adds that the coward had failed his “duty to the truth.” The newcomer, showing how scientific he is, sneers at the issue of duty—”You mean to people… Your position is absurd.” At this point, then, Kelvin is nothing but a didactic brute. Sartorius concludes, “Your so-called courage is inhuman.” Only someone who has a lot to amends would visit the territory of our adventure. A beautiful woman flits by in the room of the big, crooked computer. Another rapid sighting, this time in the craft’s “intelligence” queue, clearly becoming someone to investigate. All he can think about there is that an invasion is underway, something to kill. However, he has an investment far more crucial than that. In a third impression, the infrastructure begins to reveal itself, as her half-covered, frozen apparition in that freezer, stored by Gibarian’s insistence to be given a traditional burial at some future day. Unable to sustain the mystery, he looks up Snaut and reports something clearly understandable, that Sartorius, “is a rotten person.” (What he thinks of the little boy, runs to “adult” toys.) The “sensible” man, admits, “I think I’m a little sick… What were you warning about? Was it a human being? Is she real? Can she be touched?” (He sees the woman racing passed. “Where did she come from?” the hasty cop asks. Snaut, a little less scientific than the others, provides the crucial ingredient: “It has something to do with conscience.” Kris is sweating. The blur of the girl continues.

Exhausted from the voyage, our protagonist comes to his bed and doesn’t sleep. Why? And though the straightforward answer would be, “conscience,” the takeoff here is multi-faceted. Only the agency of another could bring dignity to a creature like our protagonist. Conscience does stir, but almost as if the corpse in the morgue. The woman, now in his bedroom, is given an introduction as if, in the murky light, she is a horse being close-by, a figure which a coward would fear. Firstly, in the dim light, we could imagine an auburn mane. With more perspective, we realize that we’re in the presence of a woman wearing woolens. (Woolens [and sheep] being a vehicle in many Bergman films, where violence is a panacea to stanch the intrinsic hardness of life. She is seated, bemusingly, in one of the chic, Italian modernist chairs, perhaps due to the suicidal Cubist.) His arm and hand lie on the plastic mattress, being able, if alert, in the lexicon of Bergman’s triadic forces. Now, beside him in bed is Hari, his former lover, having been dead for 10 years, due to suicide. The transaction is elliptical, and yet a thrust of life, about material but something powerfully lucid. His eye loosens a tear. He gets up as if not having seen her. An apparition with a passionate history. A memory of unfaithfulness and violence. Hari is given the floor, in order to maintain a precinct by which creativity can thrive. All that, with one accomplishment—courage, complete courage. Tarkovsky’s dare: to take away our breath. And right at the get-go, the victim is adulterated. Her visage carries a snide smile. Where does she come off struggling to make amends?

Whereas Bergman’s studies of pathos stay within theatrical boundaries, Tarkovsky—minding that the target is far from romance—stages a surrealist “insurrection.” (Insurrection, requiring maturity to make true progress. Otherwise, true to dogmatic science, little people who will horrifically fail.) The gift, however, is a physical frenzy, dragging the thug and his remembered “love,” to portals which they lack commitment to digest. Kelvin’s way with heat has opened a metaphysical construction. The pathological lifer will, if we carefully scrutinize, disclose from afar the makings which their betters could deliver. Whereas tinctures, however, might be seen as drawn by the living, here it is a case of the tinctures driving the living. (Whatever crude appetite Kelvin had elicited here, his former partner was on the hook to clean up the mess.) After getting one of those pistols off the bed, and drawing from her, “Don’t, Kris, that tickles!” there is one more speed bump to negotiate. Her 60’s buckskin and long, easy, earthiness pigtail, discovers, amidst his gear a framed photo of a woman they had known, and disappointed. Before covering that matter, though, we’ll open up the gauntlet which the fixer presents to Hari, and displays his pathetic version of efficacy.

Kelvin’s initial overture is to attempt to kill the demanding entity. On a pretext of a joint adventure, he locks her into a vehicle which burns completely. “Get in, it started…” He undergoes some burns in her takeoff; she’s soon back as ever (as long as Kelvin keeps her in mind, however carelessly). The cheap melodrama on the move stalks her, and leaves a bad taste. Once again, it is Snaut who has a clue: “After all, she’s a part of your past.” The curse called Hari (as in harem, where a real harem, in the Bergman film, All These Women [1964], demonstrate how hard finding pathos is), is once again apparently welcome. “Come here,” the fixer asks, “don’t be afraid…” They embrace and kiss. In the morning, he leaves the room, and soon she wakens to find him gone. That lacuna drives her to mortal straits, attempting to leave the room and find her acolyte. Failing to understand the direction which the door opens, she rips into and beyond the entrance, leaving her becoming bleeding in many ways. The intent and power of that interface derives from the cosmos itself, a cosmos beyond science. On his return, his feeble effort to deal with the blood and ripped flesh is striking. She grasps his feet. “When I saw you weren’t there, I got scared.” In a third extremity, after hearing of what is in store for her, she ingests poison, and for a while she is the epitome of a corpse. After twisting and turning, she’s solvent again, but finding her true métier a nightmare. Her gambit being, therefore, “You don’t love me.” His reply: “Stop it, Hari!” To reach her work here being not about guilt but girth.

“Kris, what’s wrong with me?” the serious one asks. “Maybe it’s epilepsy?” As the systematic menfolk prepare for a grand finale to this “perversity,” Sartorius has to admit, “You’ve got a superb specimen.”/ Launching with what is in store for her, “That’s my wife… So, if I ever catch you…”/ The tall man of duty interrupts, “After all, you’re not guilty of anything.”/ Kelvin the paragon corroborates, “Of course.” Promptly after the conceptual saint maintains that, he becomes snagged in recalling, along with Hari, a video of his former father-in-law’s, supplemented by a bit of Kris’s’ camerawork. It’s snowing and a little girl is tending a small bonfire of scant warmth. A stilled swing is also in the story. A young Kris strikes a spicy tone. The woman, his wife, actually the woman Hari saw in the photo and had almost buried the recollection, is far from spicy. A cut to Kelvin’s father’s house shows Hari now in place. Cut back to the wife, morose. Cut back to Hari at the farm, waving happily. The show over, Hari, in the mirror of Kelvin’s space, looks at herself. She says, with Kris in attendance, “I don’t know myself at all.” He says, “I don’t remember.” Hari asks him, “Do you know yourself?”/ “Like all humans.”/ “That woman in the white coat hated me.” He chooses lightness. “Don’t make thing up. She died before you and I met…” She comes back with, “I don’t understand why you’re deceiving me. I remember perfectly. We drank tea and she kicked me out. Naturally, I stood up and left. I remember perfectly. What happened after that?”/ “After that I was away and we never saw each other again,” the man about truth maintains. “Where did you go?” she asks. / “To a different city.”/ “Why?”/ “I was transferred.”/ “Why did you leave without me?”/ “You didn’t want to come.”/ “That I remember!” (She spits on the mirror. Here we have a far more complicated vision of pathos. Kris may have had some enjoyable, even memorable frolics; but his pathos register would have had at best, a modicum. Hari’s quest, we realize now, is making amends to the other woman, despite needing Kelvin’s entryway. Not one but two suicides decorate this drama, along the scuzzy paths of melodramatic bathos. Whereas the Bergman’s figures as to pathos are allowed to toil in valid dignity, Tarkovsky, to his credit, and his powerful glee as to the surreal and the absurd, brings matters to the germane disaster of the preponderance of mankind. Hari the surreal and the absurd, maintains, that “I’m not Hari. Hari is dead. She poisoned herself. I’m somebody else [somebody more extensive]. How have you lived all this time? Were you in love with anyone?”/ “I don’t know. Did you think of me?”/ (He nods yes.) “Yes, but not all the times. Only when I felt unhappy.”/ (Hari’s tears.) She adds, “You know it feels like somebody is tricking us. No, not tricking.”/ “We argued toward the end. We argued a lot. I gathered my things and left… When you live with someone a long time, some things are necessary… But that has nothing to do with love. It might have much to do with technology.” (He had left some dangerous material.) “After three days, I couldn’t take anymore and I went to see her. My God, what’s the difference?”/ “You know, it feels like somebody is tricking us…”/ “How can I help you? Tell me! When I got there, she was already dead. There was a needle mark on her arm…” (Hari adds, “Like this?”)/ “She probably sensed that I didn’t really love her. But now I do…”

It’s Snaut’s birthday and she (noire-style) has ascertained that the fix is in for the minorities. Nevertheless, the birthday boy provides some tasty remarks within the menu. He shows up an hour and a half late, drunk, and with a dress suit with one shoulder missing. Many lighted candles, momentarily fine, but without impact (like the station). The tipsy genius begins by announcing, “It’s all rubbish! Mankind has lost the ability to sleep.” He finds a book he likes, and asks Kelvin to read the appropriate excerpt. “I know only one thing. When I sleep, I know no fear, no hope, no trouble, no bliss. The common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. There is only one thing about sleep. They say it closely resembles death.” Dr. Sartorius steps in. “I propose a toast to Snaut. To his bravery, to his devotion, to duty. To Science and Snaut.” Snaut is not having any of it. “Science? Nonsense! In this situation mediocrity and genius are equally useless. We have no interest in conquering any cosmos. We want to extend the Earth to the to the borders of the cosmos. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. We don’t need other worlds. We need a mirror.” (The boozy irony of a gift to himself, being shooting down classical rational majesty, because it has strangled the possibility of complementing lucidity. Hari’s adventure with pathos being a step in the right direction, while being directed [even by Snaut] to the gallows.) Snaut sneering against a “mirror,” a fan club. “We struggle for contact, but we never find it. We’re in the foolish-human predicament of striving for a goal that he fears. Man needs man… Gibarian was not frightened. He died of hopelessness…” Hari: “My God, all these heartbreaking lamentations, and nothing but second-rate Dostoyevsky.” Sartorius: “Man was created by nature” [bits], so he can learn her ways. In its endless search for the truth, Man is condemned to knowledge. Everything else is whim. Snaut, you spend all day lounging in bed with noble thoughts. You’ve lost touch with reality.” Then Hari, seeking the trail of the savage, Kris, who might bring tidings of the dead wife, by which to presents a canny trap, in the service of the uncanny. “I think that Kris Kelvin is more consistent than both of you.” (Kris Kelvin’s consistency is a function being lost from love.) “He has behaved humanely. It’s your conscience…” (Tarkovsky raising a homage to Bergman’s theatrical dialogue.) “And Kris loves me.” Sartorius bites. “There’s no Hari, she’s dead. You’re just a reproduction.” Knowing no one will comprehend, she pretends to cry and then, speaking to the dead, “I can feel just as deeply as you… I can already get by without him.” In her desperation, she knocks over a flaming candelabra. Dynamics injured. Snaut declares, “We’re losing our dignity and human character.” She declares, “I’ve really lost heart.”

By way of a flash-back of the little girl and the reduced wife, being farmed by Hari in the capacity of the almost complete cynicism of—wait for it!—Kelvin’s being a psychologist, the former harem exponent undergoes a nervous breakdown. During his swoon, Sartorius’ science imagines having put an end to whim, including his own “whim.” If the precinct has become sterile, the reason is that the sick man no longer dallies with the range of love. Snaut’s last thought being, “The more she’s with you, the more human she’ll become.” Before the breakdown, Kris had had a rare fantasy to stay with her on the station forever. Blotting out the previous thought, Snaut would insist, “Don’t turn a scientific problem into a love story. I had a feeling it would end badly.” He goes on to moot (in the spirit of ease and cowardice), “Little by little, everything will return to normal.” Kris onboard, tells Snaut, and us, “I’ll even find new interests and acquaintances. But I won’t be able to give myself to them fully. Never. Do I have the right to turn down even an imagined possibility of contact with this, which I have been trying to understand for decades?” (That last word being a sign of lostness. But this shake-up does bring, at the eleventh hour, a player on the road to pathos. Right at the get-go, he shoots himself in the foot: “The only thing left is to wait.”)

Reaching his father’s house, he falls to his knees in asking forgiveness to a superior thinker. At the beginning of the film, where the body of water appeared to be a large lake, a meteoric pink leaf shoots over the water, the hope being more than Kris’s capacity. At the same waters, at the end, we see, in overview, a tiny reservoir. Lifting off, from the house of woe (the roof leaking like a sieve, recalling the damaged roof and damaged life in the Bergman film, The Passion of Anna [1969]), we’re carried to a ruined house on rock, with water all around and signs of once having access to a road. Change or die.

#andrei tarkovsky

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 6 years ago

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What messages are behind today’s cults?

Cults are coming. Are they crazy or bearing critical messages?

From May 1997 APA Monitor

By Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D.

Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD, was professor of psychology at Stanford University and a former APA president. He has interviewed and worked closely with survivors of Peoples Temple and their family members, as well as former members of the Unification Church, Scientology, Synanon, International Churches of Christ and other cults.

How do we make sense of the mass suicide of 21 female and 18 male members of the Heaven’s Gate extra-terrestrial “cult” on March 23, 1997? Typical explanations of all such strange, unexpected behavior involve a “rush to the dispositional,” locating the problem in defective personalities of the actors. Those whose behavior violates our expectations about what is normal and appropriate are dismissed as kooks, weirdos, gullible, stupid, evil or masochistic deviants.

Similar characterizations were evident in the media and public’s reaction to other mass suicides in The Order of the Solar Temple in Europe and Canada, murder-suicide deaths ordered by Rev. Jim Jones of his Peoples Temple members, as well as of the recent flaming deaths of David Koresh’s Branch Davidians and the gassing of Japanese citizens by followers of the Aum Shinrikyo group. And there will be more of the same in the coming years as cults proliferate in the United States and world wide in anticipation of the millennium.

Avoiding the stereotypes

Such pseudo-explanations are really moralistic judgments; framed with the wisdom of hindsight, they miss the mark. They start at the wrong end of the inquiry. Instead, our search for meaning should begin at the beginning: “What was so appealing about this group that so many people were recruited/seduced into joining it voluntarily?” We want to know also, “What needs was this group fulfilling that were not being met by “traditional society?”

Such alternative framings shift the analytical focus from condemning the actors, mindlessly blaming the victims, defining them as different from us, to searching for a common ground in the forces that shape all human behavior. By acknowledging our own vulnerability to the operation of the powerful, often subtle situational forces that controlled their actions, we can begin to find ways to prevent or combat that power from exerting its similar, sometimes sinister, influence on us and our kin.

Any stereotyped collective personality analysis of the Heaven’s Gate members proves inadequate when tallied against the resumes of individual members. They represented a wide range of demographic backgrounds, ages, talents, interests and careers prior to committing themselves to a new ideology embodied in the totally regimented, obedient lifestyle that would end with an eternal transformation. Comparable individual diversity has been evident among the members of many different cult groups I’ve studied over the past several decades. What is common are the recruiting promises, influence agendas and group’s coercive influence power that compromise the personal exercise of free will and critical thinking. On the basis of my investigations and the psychological research of colleagues, we can argue the following propositions, some of which will be elaborated:

No one ever joins a “cult.” People join interesting groups that promise to fulfill their pressing needs. They become “cults” when they are seen as deceptive, defective, dangerous, or as opposing basic values of their society.

Cults represent each society’s “default values,” filling in its missing functions. The cult epidemic is diagnostic of where and how society is failing its citizens.

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. As basic human values are being strained, distorted and lost in our rapidly evolving culture, illusions and promissory notes are too readily believed and bought—without reality validation or credit checks.

Whatever any member of a cult has done, you and I could be recruited or seduced into doing—under the right or wrong conditions. The majority of “normal, average, intelligent” individuals can be led to engage in immoral, illegal, irrational, aggressive and self destructive actions that are contrary to their values or personality—when manipulated situational conditions exert their power over individual dispositions.

Cult methods of recruiting, indoctrinating and influencing their members are not exotic forms of mind control, but only more intensely applied mundane tactics of social influence practiced daily by all compliance professionals and societal agents of influence.

The appeal

What is the appeal of cults? Imagine being part of a group in which you will find instant friendship, a caring family, respect for your contributions, an identity, safety, security, simplicity, and an organized daily agenda. You will learn new skills, have a respected position, gain personal insight, improve your personality and intelligence. There is no crime or violence and your healthy lifestyle means there is no illness.

Your leader may promise not only to heal any sickness and foretell the future, but give you the gift of immortality, if you are a true believer. In addition, your group’s ideology represents a unique spiritual/religious agenda (in other cults it is political, social or personal enhancement) that if followed, will enhance the Human Condition somewhere in the world or cosmos.

Who would fall for such appeals? Most of us, if they were made by someone we trusted, in a setting that was familiar, and especially if we had unfulfilled needs.

Much cult recruitment is done by family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, teachers and highly trained professional recruiters. They recruit not on the streets or airports, but in contexts that are “home bases” for the potential recruit; at schools, in the home, coffee houses, on the job, at sports events, lectures, churches, or drop-in dinners and free personal assessment workshops. The Heaven’s Gate group made us aware that recruiting is now also active over the Internet and across the World Wide Web.

In a 1980 study where we (C. Hartley and I) surveyed and interviewed more than 1,000 randomly selected high school students in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, 54 percent reported they had at least one active recruiting attempt by someone they identified with a cult, and 40 percent said they had experienced three to five such contacts. And that was long before electronic cult recruiting could be a new allure for a generation of youngsters growing up as web surfers.

What makes any of us especially vulnerable to cult appeals?

Someone is in a transitional phase in life: moved to a new city or country, lost a job, dropped out of school, parents divorced, romantic relationship broken, gave up traditional religion as personally irrelevant. Add to the recipe, all those who find their work tedious and trivial, education abstractly meaningless, social life absent or inconsistent, family remote or dysfunctional, friends too busy to find time for you and trust in government eroded.

Cults promise to fulfill most of those personal individual’s needs and also to compensate for a litany of societal failures: to make their slice of the world safe, healthy, caring, predictable and controllable. They will eliminate the increasing feelings of isolation and alienation being created by mobility, technology, competition, meritocracy, incivility, and dehumanized living and working conditions in our society.

In general, cult leaders offer simple solutions to the increasingly complex world problems we all face daily. They offer the simple path to happiness, to success, to salvation by following their simple rules, simple group regimentation and simple total lifestyle. Ultimately, each new member contributes to the power of the leader by trading his or her freedom for the illusion of security and reflected glory that group membership holds out.

It seems like a “win-win” trade for those whose freedom is without power to make a difference in their lives. This may be especially so for the shy among us. Shyness among adults is now escalating to epidemic proportions, according to recent research by Dr. B. Carducci in Indiana and my research team in California. More than 50 percent of college-aged adults report being chronically shy (lacking social skills, low self-esteem, awkward in many social encounters). As with the rise in cult membership, a public health model is essential for understanding how societal pathology is implicated in contributing to the rise in shyness among adults and children in America.

A society in transition

Our society is in a curious transitional phase; as science and technology make remarkable advances, antiscientific values and beliefs in the paranormal and occult abound, family values are stridently promoted in Congress and pulpits, yet divorce is rising along with spouse and child abuse, fear of nuclear annihilation in superpower wars is replaced by fears of crime in our streets and drugs in our schools, and the economic gap grows exponentially between the rich and powerful and our legions of poor and powerless.

Such change and confusion create intellectual chaos that makes it difficult for many citizens to believe in anything, to trust anyone, to stand for anything substantial.

On such shifting sands of time and resolve, the cult leader stands firm with simple directions for what to think and feel, and how to act. “Follow me, I know the path to sanity, security and salvation,” proclaims Marshall Applewhite, with other cult leaders chanting the same lyric in that celestial chorus. And many will follow.

What makes cults dangerous? It depends in part on the kind of cult since they come in many sizes, purposes and disguises. Some cults are in the business of power and money. They need members to give money, work for free, beg and recruit new members. They won’t go the deathly route of the Heaven’s Gaters; their danger lies in deception, mindless devotion, and failure to deliver on the recruiting promises.

Danger also comes in the form of insisting on contributions of exorbitant amounts of money (tithing, signing over life insurance, social security or property, and fees for personal testing and training).

Add exhausting labor as another danger (spending all one’s waking time begging for money, recruiting new members, or doing menial service for little or no remuneration). Most cult groups demand that members sever ties with former family and friends which creates total dependence on the group for self identity, recognition, social reinforcement. Unquestioning obedience to the leader and following arbitrary rules and regulations eliminates independent, critical thinking, and the exercise of free will. Such cerebral straightjacketing is a terrible danger that can lead in turn to the ultimate twin dangers of committing suicide upon command or destroying the cult’s enemies.

Potential for the worst abuse is found in “total situations” where the group is physically and socially isolated from the outside community. The accompanying total milieu and informational control permits idiosyncratic and paranoid thinking to flourish and be shared without limits. The madness of any leader then becomes normalized as members embrace it, and the folly of one becomes folie à deux (shared psychosis), and finally, with three or more adherents, it becomes a constitutionally protected belief system that is an ideology defended to the death.

A remarkable thing about cult mind control is that it’s so ordinary in the tactics and strategies of social influence employed. They are variants of well-known social psychological principles of compliance, conformity, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, framing, emotional manipulation, and others that are used on all of us daily to entice us: to buy, to try, to donate, to vote, to join, to change, to believe, to love, to hate the enemy.

Cult mind control is not different in kind from these everyday varieties, but in its greater intensity, persistence, duration, and scope. One difference is in its greater efforts to block quitting the group, by imposing high exit costs, replete with induced phobias of harm, failure, and personal isolation.

What’s the solution?

Heaven’s Gate mass suicides have made cults front page news. While their number and ritually methodical formula are unusual, cults are not. They exist as part of the frayed edges of our society and have vital messages for us to reflect upon if we want to prevent such tragedies or our children and neighbors from joining such destructive groups that are on the near horizon.

The solution? Simple. All we have to do is to create an alternative, “perfect cult.” We need to work together to find ways to make our society actually deliver on many of those cult promises, to co-opt their appeal, without their deception, distortion and potential for destruction.

No man or woman is an island unto itself, nor a space traveller without an earthly control center. Finding that center, spreading that continent of connections, enriching that core of common humanity should be our first priority as we learn and share a vital lesson from the tragedy of Heaven’s Gate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo

#Philip Zimbardo

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lindafrancois · 4 years ago

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How to Start Meditating: The Ultimate Guide for Beginner’s Meditation

This article is from NF Team Member Taylor

It’s time to learn how to meditate!

Being mindful is practically a superpower, which is why we assign fun meditation assignments to our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Clients.

The Nerd Fitness Coaching program is changing lives. Learn more here.

Here’s what we’ll cover in our Beginner’s Guide to Meditation:

Why is meditation important? (The Rider and the Elephant)

What exactly is meditation? (The perils of being lost in thought)

How do you meditate? How long should beginners meditate?

What are the benefits of meditation?

How often should you meditate?

Getting started with a meditation practice (Next steps)

Go find a quiet place. Then let’s get started.

Why Is Meditation Important?

I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said meditation is practically a superpower.

Think of this superpower like the power of X-men’s Mystique, but for your mind.

Instead of the ability to alter your appearance to meet the challenges of any given situation, meditation allows you to alter your mind to conquer the day.

Why does this matter?

Because sometimes our minds can seem like they have a mind of their own:

When we are on our commute and someone is a jerk, we get angry. We don’t seem to have a choice in the matter – we just GET ANGRY.

When a friend says something stupid, we roll our eyes.

When they say something witty and intelligent, we laugh.

There is no deliberation, no Council of Elrond to decide how you should feel and respond.

That’s just how our brains work.

Daniel Kahneman, in the famed Thinking Fast and Slow, proposed we think about thinking in two ways.

System 1: Fast Thinking – automatic, frequent, emotional, subconscious.

System 2: Slow thinking – deliberative, effortful, infrequent, logical, conscious.

System 1 is responsible for most of what you do every day. This fast thinking does so much on your behalf, that you may not even realize it.

System 2 doesn’t kick in until you are tasked with something like solving a riddle, filling out a tax form, or walking at a pace that is unnaturally fast.

Another social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, describes these systems with a different metaphor: a rider on an elephant.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, he explains he selected this metaphor to demonstrate the power of the elephant (fast thinking), and the powerlessness of the rider (slow thinking). While the rider might feel in control, at the top of the elephant with reigns in hand, it is truly the elephant that is running things.

What Exactly Is Meditation?

Meditation is simply the practice of learning how to pay attention.

It’s not something magic.

It’s not a cult or a religion.

Meditation is just a mental exercise to strengthen your mind.

This mental exercise is increasingly necessary in the modern world.

It turns out, at any given time almost half of us are lost in thought unrelated to what’s in front of us. And when we are mentally wandering, we are significantly less happy.[1]

As Matthieu Ricard explains in his TED Talk – when neuroscientists looked at his brain while meditating, he scored “off the scale” in brain activity related to happiness, compassion, and altruism.

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At the end of the day, isn’t happiness what we’re all chasing?

That’s why we spend so much time with “mindset” in our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program. Sure, we help people lose weight and get strong, but we also assign fun “side quests” to help with mindfulness, gratitude, and general well being.

A Nerd Fitness Coach can help you get in shape, while also leveling up your mental well being. Learn more here!

How Do You Meditate? How Long Should Beginners Meditate?

To start, pick a time in your day you can regularly designate as your time to meditate.

It should be a time you can find a quiet place, without distraction or interruption.

As a beginner, you don’t need to meditate for long. Just five minutes a day is a great place to start.

Too much? Try TWO minutes.

The important part is building the daily habit. We can bump up the frequency down the road.

The meditation practice I’m going to describe for you below is a basic mindfulness practice. There are many different styles of meditation, but every type of meditation is about cultivating attention and awareness, or learning to be in the present moment without grasping. [2]

Be sure to set a timer before you begin. Time tends to slow down when in deep meditation, so when you’re just starting it may feel like 10 minutes…but it’s only been 5.

The timer will help here at first.

AS A BEGINNER, HERE’S HOW TO MEDITATE:

Find a place to sit that allows your back to be in an upright position. You don’t need to sit cross-legged, but you can if you wish. A chair or sitting against a wall also works well. Feel free to use a cushion under your bottom to help your posture and make yourself more comfortable. The goal is a posture that helps you stay alert, but is still comfortable. You can meditate with your eyes open or closed.

As you begin, take several deep, slow breaths to gather concentration. Inhale deeply, filling your lungs to the brim. Then slowly exhale. Follow your breath carefully with your attention through this process.

After a few breaths, or when you feel your concentration has settled, begin to breathe naturally. Notice the breath at a specific point, most commonly with the rising and falling of the chest, at your nostrils, or at your abdomen. Don’t force it. Don’t glue your attention there. Simply allow your breath to come and go naturally, following it as it naturally unfolds.

When you get lost in thought, simply return your attention back to the breath. Bringing your attention back to the breath is a central part of the process – think about it like performing an exercise repetition. Each time you do this you are rewiring your brain – no different from doing a repetition in strength training. So, don’t feel guilty or beat yourself up. You can’t control when you get distracted. But then magically, each time you realize you are distracted and you “wake up” – at this point, just return to the breath!

This is where we recommend most beginners start – a broad and basic breath concentration practice. Think about this no differently than starting with just the bar before adding weight, when learning to squat.

Three meditation apps that some at Team Nerd Fitness have had success with:

Headspace

Calm

Waking Up

These programs can help you get going with a simple mindfulness practice.

Here’s something else to consider as you get started:

Beginners often find it difficult to stay aware when thoughts arise, and find themselves noticing they have been thinking only after being lost in thoughts for several minutes.

This is normal!

When you notice this happening, just return to focusing on your breath.

One last thing to consider would be guided meditations, where someone’s voice guides and directs you through a mindfulness practice.

Guided meditation is great to incorporate into anyone’s meditation practice (beginner, intermediate, or advanced), and certainly when the mind is especially restless.

Here are 5 resources that may help with guided meditation:

UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center – Simple and effective mindfulness guided practice.

Ohio University guided meditations – a variety of styles to try.

UC San Diego’s Center for Mindfulness – a list of long and short guided meditations.

A compilation mostly mindfulness audio and guided meditations.

Doctor Who fans might enjoy Dalek’s Relaxation for Humans, although I can’t comment on its effectiveness:

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What Are the Benefits of Meditation?

The superpower meditation builds is the ability to be at the character selection screen, for any given situation, at any given time.

You see, because of how our brains work, it can be hard to exert a level of control in our lives – from our response to a social interaction, to changing fundamental aspects of our life.

When something happens, we just react.

That’s System 1.

There’s no conscious deliberative process when a cute girl/guy walks up to you, or some car cuts you off in traffic. It’s no surprise that we often feel frustrated with our reactions after-the-fact.

Imagine the ability to replay the events, and always act with a calm and collected demeanor, delivering the best response you have to offer. That’s what meditation can help do for you.

I’m not talking managing an emotion, or suppressing a thought.

This is not “serenity now, insanity later.”

This isn’t about dealing with things AFTER you get angry or sad, but the power to actually change both how you feel and how you respond.

That is true power.

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor uses anger as an example in her wonderful TED Talk:

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In her speech, Dr. Taylor explains that the physiological response from anger can only last 90 seconds.

Yet, as humans, we can stay angry seemingly FOREVER.

Why?

We are doing it to ourselves, by rethinking the thought and redoing the physiological response over and over. If you’ve ever gotten angry and let it fester, feeling angrier and angrier after, you know what she’s talking about.

As Dr.Taylor explains, we all have a superpower within us, but most of us surrender it.

Or as she puts us, we surrender our neurocircuitry:

“We are neurocircuitry. Your neurocircuitry is YOUR neurocircuitry, and you do not have the ability to stimulate and trigger my neurocircuitry without my permission. You cannot make me angry, unless I stick my trigger out there for you to pounce on and stimulate my neurocircuitry. If I give you the power to stimulate my neurocircuitry, then I have given you my power. And I give you my power, then I become vulnerable to you…”

This isn’t just helpful for our daily interactions, but for big life changes too – like cleaning up your diet or finally building that habit of exercise.

Through meditation, you can learn to focus your attention where you choose. As you begin the practice, you will start to notice your thoughts and feelings more consciously, and let go of the ones that aren’t useful to you. You will start to reforge the character of your choosing.

This might have real physiological benefits.

While there is obviously some hype going on with mindfulness (it’s over a billion-dollar industry in the U.S. alone), there does some to be some evidence of meditation providing “modest benefits” for certain conditions.[3]

Dan Harris does a great job summarizing some of the benefits of meditation here:

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Meditation may help:

Reduce stress. Studies have shown that a meditation practice can help users lower their stress levels. Although to be fair, it doesn’t seem to impact cortisol levels, our main stress hormone.[4] Still, being able to recenter can help you look at a stressful scenario with fresh eyes.

Alleviate depression. When we’re stressed, we release inflammatory chemicals called cytokines, which can lead to depression. A meditation practice may help limit the release of cytokines, reducing the risk of depression.[5]

Manage pain. Our perceptions of pain are tied to our state of mind.[6] Given this, it makes sense that a meditation practice can help alleviate certain types of pain.[7]

Plus, Wolverine meditates, so mindfulness may help you come to terms with the fact you were designed to be a mindless, soulless killing machine.[8]

Or…help you calm down after your flight is delayed for an hour. Same difference.

How Often Should You Meditate?

Now that you know how to meditate, you need to understand one final thing.

You have to train this power like a muscle.

Even if you have a good day or a good week in the gym, you need to be at it for months and months, and then STAY at it, to live with the benefits for a lifetime.

We’re doing the same thing with our meditation practice.

No different from squatting incrementally more weight, you are training your brain to get stronger.

Just like squatting, you won’t see profound benefits after a single session. Instead, you will level up after weeks and months of consistency.

The same way squatting regularly builds muscle, meditation literally builds gray matter in your brain.[9] Soon enough, that “automatic mode” or elephant we talked about will begin to change too (literally rewiring your brain).[10]

Much like groceries will slowly begin to feel lighter after strength training, so to will you gradually notice the benefits of meditation.

So how often should a beginner meditate?

Daily if possible.

It might feel intimidating now to think about, but just like with diet and exercise, once the habit is established, you won’t even notice:

Once you become someone who goes to the gym regularly, that’s just who you are now.

Once you become someone who meditates for five minutes a day, that’s just what you do.

Getting Started With a Meditation Practice (Next Steps)

We all know the story of Luke Skywalker, not because he had this power within him and chose to walk away from it, but because he seized the opportunity to understand the Force.

Don’t be the Jedi who is walking away from your potential.

As a kid, I always thought that comic books had it backwards – the superpower found the superhero (I’m looking at you Spiderman), rather than the other way around.

What if we all had the potential to develop our power, and only the true superheroes do? Now that would be awesome.

That’s what meditation allows us to do.

Not only does meditation boost your health in a range of tangible ways, but more importantly, it helps us to enjoy the here and now. You might call this loving the game, or enjoying the process.

That’s why today we’re issuing a meditation challenge:

Commit to meditating every day, for two weeks straight (using an app, website, or guided meditation if you wish).

It can just be for five minutes. Or two minutes.

The important part is establishing a new habit.

Then maybe we can all start bending spoons together:

I think that just about does it for this article.

Before I let you go, if you want to continue your journey with Nerd Fitness as you level up your life, I’ve got three great options for you to do so.

HERE ARE NEXT STEPS IF YOU WANT TO GO FARTHER!

#1) Our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program: a coaching program for busy people to help them lose weight, get strong, and level up their lives!

We believe that mindfulness is so important, we assign fun meditation “side quests” to our clients, to help build the practice.

Our coaching program changes lives. Learn more here!

#2) Exercising at home and need a plan to follow? Check out Nerd Fitness Journey!

Our fun habit-building app helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).

Try your free trial right here:

#3) Join our amazing free community, the Nerd Fitness Rebellion! Not only is it free to join, but we’ll provide you with loads of free goodies when you sign-up:

Get your Nerd Fitness Starter Kit

The 15 mistakes you don’t want to make.

Full guide to the most effective diet and why it works.

Complete and track your first workout today, no gym required.

Now, your turn:

What questions do you have about meditation?

What are your experiences?

Struggles?

Victory?

-Taylor

PS: Make sure you check out A Nerd’s Guide to Mindfulness for more tips and tricks on living in the here and now.

###

Gif source: Mystique, Smiling Brain, Mortal Kombat, Anakin Skywalker, Wolverine in rain, Spider-Man, Homer, Spoon

Footnotes ( returns to text)

Scientific America has a great article on the subject.

This article discusses the many different types of meditation if you’re interested.

Here’s an interesting warning on the hype of meditation, provided by 15 prominent psychologists and cognitive scientists. On the flip side, here’s the NIH on the benefits of mindfulness.

Read, “Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis.” Source, PubMed.

Read, “Effect of meditation on neurophysiological changes in stress mediated depression.” Source, PubMed.

Read, “Pain in Times of Stress.” Sources, PubMed.

Read, “Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation.” Source, PubMed.

HuffPost takes a look at Hugh Jackman’s meditation practice here.

Read, “Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.” Source, PubMed.

Read, “Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity.” Source, PNAS.

How to Start Meditating: The Ultimate Guide for Beginner’s Meditation published first on https://dietariouspage.tumblr.com/

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garywonghc · 8 years ago

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Compassion and the Individual

by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

One great question underlies our experience, whether we think about it consciously or not: What is the purpose of life? I have considered this question and would like to share my thoughts in the hope that they may be of direct, practical benefit to those who read them.

I believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. From the moment of birth, every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering. Neither social conditioning nor education nor ideology affect this. From the very core of our being, we simply desire contentment. I don’t know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness.

HOW TO ACHIEVE HAPPINESS

For a start, it is possible to divide every kind of happiness and suffering into two main categories: mental and physical. Of the two, it is the mind that exerts the greatest influence on most of us. Unless we are either gravely ill or deprived of basic necessities, our physical condition plays a secondary role in life. If the body is content, we virtually ignore it. The mind, however, registers every event, no matter how small. Hence we should devote our most serious efforts to bringing about mental peace.

From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion.

The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. This helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life.

As long as we live in this world we are bound to encounter problems. If, at such times, we lose hope and become discouraged, we diminish our ability to face difficulties. If, on the other hand, we remember that it is not just ourselves but everyone who has to undergo suffering, this more realistic perspective will increase our determination and capacity to overcome troubles. Indeed, with this attitude, each new obstacle can be seen as yet another valuable opportunity to improve our mind!

Thus we can strive gradually to become more compassionate, that is we can develop both genuine sympathy for others’ suffering and the will to help remove their pain. As a result, our own serenity and inner strength will increase.

OUR NEED FOR LOVE

Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else. The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others.

Interdependence, of course, is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.

It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others.

We have to consider what we human beings really are. We are not like machine-made objects. If we were merely mechanical entities, then machines themselves could alleviate all of our sufferings and fulfill our needs. However, since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. Instead, we should consider our origins and nature to discover what we require.

Leaving aside the complex question of the creation and evolution of our universe, we can at least agree that each of us is the product of our own parents. In general, our conception took place not just in the context of sexual desire but from our parents’ decision to have a child. Such decisions are founded on responsibility and altruism — the parents’ compassionate commitment to care for their child until it is able to take care of itself. Thus, from the very moment of our conception, our parents’ love is directly involved in our creation.

Moreover, we are completely dependent upon our mother’s care from the earliest stages of our growth. According to some scientists, a pregnant woman’s mental state, be it calm or agitated, has a direct physical effect on her unborn child.

The expression of love is also very important at the time of birth. Since the very first thing we do is suck milk from our mother’s breast, we naturally feel close to her, and she must feel love for us in order to feed us properly; if she feels anger or resentment her milk may not flow freely.

Then there is the critical period of brain development from the time of birth up to at least the age of three or four, during which time loving physical contact is the single most important factor for the normal growth of the child. If the child is not held, hugged, cuddled or loved, its development will be impaired and its brain will not mature properly.

Since a child cannot survive without the care of others, love is its most important nourishment. The happiness of childhood, the allaying of the child’s many fears and the healthy development of its self- confidence all depend directly upon love.

Nowadays, many children grow up in unhappy homes. If they do not receive proper affection, in later life they will rarely love their parents and, not infrequently, will find it hard to love others. This is very sad.

As children grow older and enter school, their need for support must be met by their teachers. If a teacher not only imparts academic education but also assumes responsibility for preparing students for life, his or her pupils will feel trust and respect and what has been taught will leave an indelible impression on their minds. On the other hand, subjects taught by a teacher who does not show true concern for his or her students’ overall well-being will be regarded as temporary and not retained for long.

Similarly, if one is sick and being treated in hospital by a doctor who evinces a warm human feeling, one feels at ease and the doctor’s desire to give the best possible care is itself curative, irrespective of the degree of his or her technical skill. On the other hand, if one’s doctor lacks human feeling and displays an unfriendly expression, impatience or casual disregard, one will feel anxious, even if he or she is the most highly qualified doctor and the disease has been correctly diagnosed and the right medication prescribed. Inevitably, patients’ feelings make a difference to the quality and completeness of their recovery.

Even when we engage in ordinary conversation in everyday life, if someone speaks with human feeling we enjoy listening, and respond accordingly; the whole conversation becomes interesting, however unimportant the topic may be. On the other hand, if a person speaks coldly or harshly, we feel uneasy and wish for a quick end to the interaction. From the least to the most important event, the affection and respect of others are vital for our happiness.

Recently I met a group of scientists in America who said that the rate of mental illness in their country was quite high around twelve percent of the population. it became clear during our discussion that the main cause of depression was not a lack of material necessities but a deprivation of the affection of others.

So, as you can see from everything I have written so far, one thing seems clear to me: whether or not we are consciously aware of it, from the day we are born, the need for human affection is in our very blood. Even if the affection comes from an animal or someone we would normally consider an enemy, both children and adults will naturally gravitate towards it.

I believe that no one is born free from the need for love. And this demonstrates that, although some modern schools of thought seek to do so, human beings cannot be defined as solely physical. No material object, however beautiful or valuable, can make us feel loved, because our deeper identity and true character lie in the subjective nature of the mind.

DEVELOPING COMPASSION

Some of my friends have told me that, while love and compassion are marvelous and good, they are not really very relevant. Our world, they say, is not a place where such beliefs have much influence or power. They claim that anger and hatred are so much a part of human nature that humanity will always be dominated by them. I do not agree.

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are “news”; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.

So far I have been discussing mainly the mental benefits of compassion, but it contributes to good physical health as well. According to my personal experience, mental stability and physical well-being are directly related. Without question, anger and agitation make us more susceptible to illness. On the other hand, if the mind is tranquil and occupied with positive thoughts, the body will not easily fall prey to disease.

But of course it is also true that we all have an innate self-centeredness that inhibits our love for others. So, since we desire the true happiness that is brought about by only a calm mind, and since such peace of mind is brought about by only a compassionate attitude, how can we develop this? Obviously, it is not enough for us simply to think about how nice compassion is! We need to make a concerted effort to develop it; we must use all the events of our daily life to transform our thoughts and behavior.

First of all, we must be clear about what we mean by compassion. Many forms of compassionate feeling are mixed with desire and attachment. For instance, the love parents feel for their child is often strongly associated with their own emotional needs, so it is not fully compassionate. Again, in marriage, the love between husband and wife — particularly at the beginning, when each partner still may not know the other’s deeper character very well — depends more on attachment than genuine love. Our desire can be so strong that the person to whom we are attached appears to be good, when in fact he or she is very negative. In addition, we have a tendency to exaggerate small positive qualities. Thus when one partner’s attitude changes, the other partner is often disappointed and his or her attitude changes too. This is an indication that love has been motivated more by personal need than by genuine care for the other individual.

True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.

Of course, developing this kind of compassion is not at all easy! As a start, let us consider the following facts:

Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and be happy is equal to one’s own. Now, when you recognise that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems. Nor is this wish selective; it applies equally to all. As long as they are human beings experiencing pleasure and pain just as you do, there is no logical basis to discriminate between them or to alter your concern for them if they behave negatively.

Let me emphasise that it is within our power, given patience and time, to develop this kind of compassion. Of course, our self-centeredness, our distinctive attachment to the feeling of an independent, self-existent “I: works fundamentally to inhibit our compassion. Indeed, true compassion can be experienced only when this type of self-grasping is eliminated. But this does not mean that we cannot start and make progress now.

HOW WE CAN START

We should begin by removing the greatest hindrances to compassion: anger and hatred. As we all know, these are extremely powerful emotions and they can overwhelm our entire mind. Nevertheless, they can be controlled. If, however, they are not, these negative emotions will plague us — with no extra effort on their part! — and impede our quest for the happiness of a loving mind.

So as a start, it is useful to investigate whether or not anger is of value. Sometimes, when we are discouraged by a difficult situation, anger does seem helpful, appearing to bring with it more energy, confidence and determination.

Here, though, we must examine our mental state carefully. While it is true that anger brings extra energy, if we explore the nature of this energy, we discover that it is blind: we cannot be sure whether its result will be positive or negative. This is because anger eclipses the best part of our brain: its rationality. So the energy of anger is almost always unreliable. It can cause an immense amount of destructive, unfortunate behavior. Moreover, if anger increases to the extreme, one becomes like a mad person, acting in ways that are as damaging to oneself as they are to others.

It is possible, however, to develop an equally forceful but far more controlled energy with which to handle difficult situations.

This controlled energy comes not only from a compassionate attitude, but also from reason and patience. These are the most powerful antidotes to anger. Unfortunately, many people misjudge these qualities as signs of weakness. I believe the opposite to be true: that they are the true signs of inner strength. Compassion is by nature gentle, peaceful and soft, but it is also very powerful. It is those who easily lose their patience who are insecure and unstable. Thus, to me, the arousal of anger is a direct sign of weakness.

So, when a problem first arises, try to remain humble and maintain a sincere attitude and be concerned that the outcome is fair. Of course, others may try to take advantage of you, and if your remaining detached only encourages unjust aggression, adopt a strong stand. This, however, should be done with compassion, and if it is necessary to express your views and take strong countermeasures, do so without anger or ill-intent.

You should realise that even though your opponents appear to be harming you, in the end, their destructive activity will damage only themselves. In order to check your own selfish impulse to retaliate, you should recall your desire to practice compassion and assume responsibility for helping prevent the other person from suffering the consequences of his or her acts.

Thus, because the measures you employ have been calmly chosen, they will be more effective, more accurate and more forceful. Retaliation based on the blind energy of anger seldom hits the target.

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

I must emphasise again that merely thinking that compassion and reason and patience are good will not be enough to develop them. We must wait for difficulties to arise and then attempt to practice them.

And who creates such opportunities? Not our friends, of course, but our enemies. They are the ones who give us the most trouble. So if we truly wish to learn, we should consider enemies to be our best teacher!

For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should feel grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us develop a tranquil mind! Also, it is often the case in both personal and public life, that with a change in circumstances, enemies become friends.

So anger and hatred are always harmful, and unless we train our minds and work to reduce their negative force, they will continue to disturb us and disrupt our attempts to develop a calm mind. Anger and hatred are our real enemies. These are the forces we most need to confront and defeat, not the temporary "enemies” who appear intermittently throughout life.

Of course, it is natural and right that we all want friends. I often joke that if you really want to be selfish, you should be very altruistic! You should take good care of others, be concerned for their welfare, help them, serve them, make more friends, make more smiles. The result? When you yourself need help, you find plenty of helpers! If, on the other hand, you neglect the happiness of others, in the long term you will be the loser. And is friendship produced through quarrels and anger, jealousy and intense competitiveness? I do not think so. Only affection brings us genuine close friends.

In today’s materialistic society, if you have money and power, you seem to have many friends. But they are not friends of yours; they are the friends of your money and power. When you lose your wealth and influence, you will find it very difficult to track these people down.

The trouble is that when things in the world go well for us, we become confident that we can manage by ourselves and feel we do not need friends, but as our status and health decline, we quickly realise how wrong we were. That is the moment when we learn who is really helpful and who is completely useless. So to prepare for that moment, to make genuine friends who will help us when the need arises, we ourselves must cultivate altruism!

Though sometimes people laugh when I say it, I myself always want more friends. I love smiles. Because of this I have the problem of knowing how to make more friends and how to get more smiles, in particular, genuine smiles. For there are many kinds of smile, such as sarcastic, artificial or diplomatic smiles. Many smiles produce no feeling of satisfaction, and sometimes they can even create suspicion or fear, can’t they? But a genuine smile really gives us a feeling of freshness and is, I believe, unique to human beings. If these are the smiles we want, then we ourselves must create the reasons for them to appear.

COMPASSION AND THE WORLD

In conclusion, I would like briefly to expand my thoughts beyond the topic of this short piece and make a wider point: individual happiness can contribute in a profound and effective way to the overall improvement of our entire human community.

Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress and behaviour, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on external differences, because our basic natures are the same.

Ultimately, humanity is one and this small planet is our only home. If we are to protect this home of ours, each of us needs to experience a vivid sense of universal altruism. It is only this feeling that can remove the self-centered motives that cause people to deceive and misuse one another. If you have a sincere and open heart, you naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.

I believe that at every level of society — familial, tribal, national and international — the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.

I try to treat whoever I meet as an old friend. This gives me a genuine feeling of happiness. It is the time to help create a happier world.

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cineresis · 8 years ago

Note

TumblrFrostbite's AU Questions: If the Joker had existed in the Earth-3 Universe (who had a different origin in how he became what he is) instead of the Jokester, would the Clown Prince of Crime be a bigger threat than Owlman in that 'verse's Gotham? Also, what happens if Jokester and Batman had coexisted together on Earth-0/New Earth?

(This gets very in-depth and incorporates various continuities. Jokester characterisation is inevitably influenced by incomparable AO3 author Kieron_oDuibhir; Jason characterisation is primarily extrapolated from Under the Red Hood. Warning for Owlman’s ableism, Heath Ledger’s Joker, Batman’s emotionally-stunted parenting, and lots and lots of nihilism.)

So we have, at base, two options: either Owlman creates the Joker, or he doesn’t.

Say he creates the Joker – in whatever way, intentional or not. What we have now is a man freed of the fetters of morality and sensibility, and who has the king of Gotham’s night to thank for it. It was Owlman who showed him that life is nothing more than irony and slapstick, that the universe is meaningless and chaotic and cruel and will kill you just because it can, so what can the Joker do but show his appreciation to the fullest extent of his ability? How better to honour that act than to demonstrate how well he’s learned everything Owlman taught him?

Of course he aspires to grandiosity, because along with all the other limits he’s discarded is the idea that he should be careful about how much space he takes up in the world, that he should restrain himself from unduly rocking the boat, that he should ever bother to do anything less than he is capable of. But in no known universe has the Joker ever been as great a threat as Owlman even in a mundane sense. In no known universe has he ever held as effective a stranglehold even over Gotham’s institutions and criminal element alike, much less over the world’s. Oh, he has ambition, certainly, and he has the drive and ruthlessness to fulfil it. But his primary threat is the threat of a terrorist, the threat of unpredictable wide-scale violence to sow panic and mayhem – he’s a bomb or a bullet shot into a crowd, not a knife or a rifle or a guided missile. He lacks focus.

(Not that Owlman is a threat to Gotham. You don’t piss where you eat, and in any case it’s never been terror that he craves – it’s control, and under that a desperate, howling need to matter, to make a difference and exert his influence on the fabric of reality, because safety is a fairy tale and he’s seen what the world does to the helpless and the insignificant. Fear is simply a means to an end, though a satisfying one. Within five years of routing and restructuring Gotham’s Court of Owls to his own ends, the city’s bureaucracy and law enforcement run like a well-oiled machine, even if the machine in question is Moloch.)

That lack of focus is the second reason Owlman dislikes the Joker. Owlman hates, as constantly and naturally as breathing. He despises the overwhelming majority of humanity for their self-deceptive lip service to cultural mores and the expectations of their peers, for the petty ways they sabotage themselves to stay within delineated bounds, for their uninspired ambitions, for the way they fearfully turn their gazes from the dark and put their hopes in false idols of law, love, religion, or a social contract that has any compelling interest in their well-being. None of these things, Owlman knows, will save them, and they will die unremarkable and unremembered deaths without ever having done anything worthy of note. The Joker recognises this, at least. He recognises that there is no human force greater than the will to power – aspiration and achievement, intent and the pursuit of it – but he lacks the necessary willpower to make his intent a reality, and Owlman hates incompetence almost as much as idiocy. The Joker is capable of incredible focus when he wants to be, but inevitably his obsessions lead him astray of his primary goal, to his detriment.And that’s the first reason Owlman dislikes him: that the Joker recognises his place in the universe, but he doesn’t take it seriously. Owlman’s not opposed to fun. He wouldn’t do what he does if he didn’t enjoy it. He’d still do everything he could to gain so much power he’d never again feel fear, but he doesn’t actually need to go out night after night to extort people and organisations and punish those who didn’t play by the rules. If he wanted to, he could easily fritter the rest of his life away on shameless hedonism, but what he wants is to be the next best thing to God and spite Death while he’s at it, and the fact that he wants it is what makes it important. But the Joker doesn’t even care about what he wants enough to focus on carrying it through to the end. The Joker is so invested in deceiving himself about his true goals that he’s barely better than the sheep Owlman exploits. He dresses like a clown, but it’s not the makeup and the gags that Owlman hates (aside from the humiliation factor, which he’d gut Joker for the second he dared to aim it in Owlman’s direction). It’s the farce.

Here’s another fact about Owlman: he creates his own enemies. He was wrought from the darkest depths of adversity, and he came out the other side as the obsessive power-hungry authoritarian that he is today. He can’t help but be curious: what could he do to someone, what confluence of circumstances must there be, in order to break them free of their complacency? What is it that turns someone from sheep to wolf? (And let it not be said that Owlman misunderstands the biological reality of that metaphor: he knows the importance of community when it’s founded on a functional social structure. A man must sleep, and it would be well to have competent allies invested in him waking up again.) What would it take to create a proper ideological opponent – one who can bring a more convincing case against him than the only arguments anyone ever seems to have against those who deviate from expected conduct, which always boil down to either “you’re insane” or “you’re an asshole”? (There is a reason he cuts Batman off so disdainfully on Earth Prime.) Owlman leaves people alive if he thinks they can learn from it. He mutilates them and lets them go, like catch-and-release irritants; or else he kills the idiots and lets their families live, to see whether they fall into line, seek vengeance, or simply fail to justify their continued existence too. So it surprises only those who don’t know either man when the Joker realises that peacocking and pulling on Owlman’s pigtails for attention isn’t having the effect he wants, and he goes to war in earnest.There are lots of ways this can go, and all of them are disastrous for Gotham, but sooner or later it comes down to only one possible outcome. Owlman is not Batman. In the prime universe, the Joker isn’t wrong when he says that it’s Batman’s reluctance to kill that is responsible for every additional crime he commits, because he will never stop so long as both of them are still alive. In this world, once the Joker is no longer useful or amusing enough to continue earning his stay of execution, the game will always end with two armour-piercing rounds to the chest to put him down and one in the head to finish him off. Owlman has better things to do than indulge someone who isn’t worth his time or effort.(Years later, when he looks at Luthor’s calculations and realises what he’s seeing, it is the most power Owlman has ever held: the power to travel to any timeline that branched off from the original Earth, and to affect each one limitlessly without concern for the consequences, because every action he takes is negated in the instant of taking it. It is the most powerless he has ever felt.)

But let’s say that Owlman doesn’t create the Joker. This is Heath Ledger’s Joker instead, who comes out of nowhere and whose terror is as much that of the unknown and inexplicable as that of violence. He does what he does because he is a nihilist down to every cell in his body, in the jargonistic Nietzschean sense of a person oriented toward avolition and the destruction of values rather than toward life and striving, and what he really wants is to force the world to see the same truth he does as he dances in the light of its conflagration. Look on these Works, ye Hopeful, and despair!(And that’s different and the same as Owlman, once Crisis on Two Earths comes to pass. Owlman is an existentialist and a perfect Nietzschean protagonist, not a devotee of entropy. It’s a strangely ubiquitous error. Owlman never does anything without a reason, and he doesn’t decide to destroy all existence just because nothing matters – he does it because control is his only defense against the terror of mortality, the dark night of the soul, and destroying Earth Prime is the only available course of action left whose outcome he alone can determine. It’s the only available course of action that matters. Nietzsche himself saw nihilism as an inevitable result of value systems outliving their ability to fulfill fundamental human needs, and therefore as both a necessary process and one necessary to overcome. When the moment of epiphany dawns and you realise that all you care about is empty of worth or meaning, you return to the core truth that there is no point to being alive except subjective self-definition and the will to power, and you define which new values give you sufficient reason to continue living. It’s not just vitriol that drives Owlman to strip humanity of its comforting illusions – it’s his instinctive dehumanisation of every person who wastes their life so damned intractably on a rickety edifice of social constructs and specious excuses that they may as well be dead, and the profound loneliness that comes of being one of the few people on Earth worth existing. Both Owlman and the Joker are forces of darkness seeking to corrupt the light until it is as dark as they, but at least Owlman has other projects at the same time.)

And let’s say that the Jester does exist in this world, because this Joker arises as a reactionary force and it’s much more interesting than using any other endlessly-recurring enemy when the first time the Joker shows his face is to waltz onto Owlman’s turf and say, I can help take care of that little problem of yours.Owlman looks at this warped parody of the clown with his Glasgow smile and his smeared, ugly warpaint, this funhouse mirror image shattered and reassembled by someone without the capacity for care, twitchy and restless and prowling the room with a bottomless hyena hunger, and he says, Prove it.The Joker licks his lips, a darting tic of a movement stretched out into something obscene, and he leans forward and says, See, he says, see, it seems to me that what you have is this thorn in your side that you just can’t get rid of, right? You try and you try and go around and around in circles, and this game of cat and mouse that you’ve got here, it just. Never. Ends! No matter what you do. And I think, what I think is, is that it’s because you don’t think about it the right way. Everything in that big beautiful brain of yours is like…exquisite Swiss clockwork, all ticking along with this perfect mechanical precision, a place for everything and everything in its place, et cetera. And your little problem is like a grain of sand in the gears and when you try to solve that problem, well, it all just goes to pieces. But me? He holds his hands out, open and empty, no weapons, ladies and gentlemen, nothing up his sleeves. I know how nutcases like that think.Because you’re one of them? Owlman asks, voice heavy with irony.No, the Joker says quietly, all mockery suddenly gone and leaving behind a sucking, deadly emptiness. No. I’m not. But, he adds, nearly as an afterthought, they’d sure like me to be.

Owlman understands how rationality that tends to skew wide of common convention can seem like madness to the uncreative. He’s also met his share of psychotics insistent on their sanity, so he isn’t laying any bets yet as to which category this joker falls into. He asks, So what do you get out of this?The Joker says, A partnership. He says, What you’re doing with this town, really, it’s inspiring. You’ve got the law running scared, and everyone else is so busy trying to stay afloat and keep from drawing attention from the monsters under the bed that they’d sell their families up the river the very moment you dropped a hint! I admire that, Owlsie.A crescent-shaped blade clips a layer of skin from the clown’s ear and buries itself an inch deep in the wall behind him.The Joker hacks out a skittery laugh, ha–! Touches the cut and dismisses the blood on his fingertips with a glance and an ugly, asymmetric grin. Message received. But let me get to, heh, to the point: I think we could do great things together, you and I. You with the vision, and me with the…technique. All I need is a go-ahead and your promise. You look like a man who keeps his word. And if you aren’t interested…well! I can promise you’ll never see me again.(This is, of course, a threat.)Owlman gives him a long look. And why should I offer you this opportunity?

I’ve heard about you, the clown replies, licking his lips in the space between sentences, feral with barely-suppressed anticipation. Everyone in this town knows to either bring you the Jester alive or not lay a hand on him. And some people might think that’s impractical, or territorial, or maybe just a teensy bit romantic—There is nothing in the multiverse that can shut this Joker up short of sheer existential shock, yet the sudden glint of metal in Owlman’s hand and the look of get to the point or lose your fucking tongue he levels at him through his expressionless owl mask briefly manages. (Owlman has no time for homophobia or other pointless bigotry simply because that’s a stupid way to run a business, but nor does he have patience for people without the sense necessary to keep their blood inside their bodies, and the Joker is gunning for a Darwin Award at 130mph in a stolen ice cream truck.) Another too-quick grin darts across the Joker’s face, insolent and nervy. But the important thing is, they’re all wrong. I know how that brain of yours works, and it’s not just about calling dibs. It’s about sending a message. And if you give me the honor of taking out your trash, I can guarantee you that no one in Gotham will ever feel safe around a face like this – a flutter-fingered gesture encompasses the clown makeup – again.So Owlman grants the Joker the courtesy of an audition: destroy the Jester both literally and symbolically, don’t get himself killed in the process, and Owlman will make good on their deal.

A cumulative hour in his presence, and he loathes this Joker more than he ever could the other one. It’s not just that he doesn’t take his goals seriously. Whatever his true aims are, this Joker is meticulous in his preparations, putting them together with the care and attention to detail of a chessmaster or, more precisely, a bombmaker. It’s that the man himself is a bad joke. Everything he says and does – the tics exaggerated to the point of lasciviousness, the mincing mannerisms interspersed with sexual implications and aggressive vulgarity, the intrusions on others’ personal space, the utter disregard for any concept of the truth in his self-contradictory anecdotes – every part of the persona is faked solely to disconcert and disgust, a cheap plastic veneer with nothing behind it except for the occasional momentary flash of sincerity, discordantly subdued in comparison. This Joker pokes adders’ nests and goads murderers without even gaining any particular satisfaction from it. The only real passion he ever shows is for destruction and, at one point, when a periodic check-in culminates in Owlman pinning him to the wall by his throat and calmly threatening to remove an eye if he takes another step out of line, as the Joker wheezes laughter and invites Owlman to observe the suicide-vest pull-ring suddenly looped taut around his thumb.

Why so serious? the clown reprises breathlessly, feet scrabbling against the wall for purchase, and Owlman is sorely tempted to remove both his thumb and the eye. Since he’s at the wrong angle to do that before the Joker blows them both up, he instead squeezes the carotid pressure points at the sides of the clown’s neck – not pressing on his windpipe enough to alarm him; let him think that Owlman simply has trouble controlling his temper – until a few seconds later his eyes roll back in his head and his body goes slack, hands dropping limply back to his sides. Owlman lets him fall and puts a steel-armoured boot into his ribs as a reminder to keep on-task. (Broken ribs: continuously painful, mildly disabling but not enough to interfere with his work, exploitable for more severe injury, and most importantly less likely to incite betrayal than as-yet unearned mutilation. Owlman doesn’t actually begrudge sensible precautions for self-defense, so long as they remain only a threat.) The vest is confiscated and disposed of, as well as any other weapons Owlman finds on him in a thorough pat-down the clown wisely refrains from commenting on beyond pained laughter and sharp protests of excessive roughness.

From this encounter Owlman concludes, firstly, that the Joker is profoundly sadomasochistic and only slightly less suicidal; secondly, that if he screws up this mission in a way that redounds negatively upon the Court of Owls, Owlman will make him beg for death before granting it; and thirdly, whether or not said mission succeeds, Owlman is going to fucking murder him. The man’s very existence is offensive almost beyond Owlman’s capacity to express without spitting.

When the mission goes down a few days later, it predictably goes off the rails, because that’s how this story goes: the Joker never gets to kill the hero. Inevitably, there are casualties – perhaps civilian, perhaps another member or several of the Jester’s circus of rogues, but either way the primary objective goes uncompleted and the Jester lives to grieve the losses and fight another day. Gotham will not easily forget the scars of this confrontation. The Joker, no doubt sensing the retribution headed his way, disappears with the materiel and manpower Owlman lent him. (Not much, nothing too closely associated with him, and nothing he couldn’t replace, though Owlman intends to find out exactly how the man managed to make anyone in his Court turn coat.)

Owlman hunts him down. It’s unexpectedly difficult to find an unkempt madman with livid facial scars, but the Joker doesn’t have half the Jester’s practice at guerrilla tactics and soon enough Owlman tracks him down to his current hideout. He materialises soundlessly from the shadows and slams the Joker’s head into the nearest hard surface, and then the next moment the Joker is bent double clutching at the bloody hole in his stomach – from gun or knife or diamond-tipped talons, it makes no difference, because all that matters is that Owlman isn’t going to let this Joker bleed out before he gets the chance to explain exactly why he deserves it.

The clown is surprisingly dangerous even with a couple of broken ribs and a soon-to-be-fatal gut wound, not to mention whatever other injuries he picked up from his failed character assassination, and he manages to get a knife in through one of the gaps in Owlman’s armour before Owlman breaks his wrist and kicks him to the ground. The brief, guttural cry as Owlman stomps his other hand into the floor for good measure is reasonably gratifying. Joker curls up around his injuries, giggling wetly and unceasingly except when he has to gasp for breath or make noises of pain, and Owlman has to uncurl him like a hedgehog and push him down onto his back so he can lean a knee into his stomach and force the clown to look at him, talons digging parallel red lines into the scars on his cheeks. He keeps giggling as Owlman talks, cackles uncontrollably when Owlman slaps him to make him pay attention, and only stops so he can wheeze, Hey – hey. Wanna hear a joke?Is it you? Owlman asks with vindictive disinterest.

Close, giggles the clown. Sustained pressure on the diaphragm is a reliable way to suffocate someone, and with the combination of pain and blood loss and Owlman’s weight on him the Joker is already having trouble focusing on Owlman’s face, eyelids fluttering deliriously. It’s more about the fact that this place is littered with explosives – as are quite a few of your offsite operations – and you have just made it impossible for me to type the cancellation code. He waggles his crushed hand, grin stretching horrifically serene across his face like a gaping wound, teeth stained red with blood. I set it for three minutes when you showed up – how much time is there left, d'you think?Owlman glances at the clock display in the corner of his HUD and knows immediately that it’s not enough to subdue the Joker and drag him out of the building, much less find the detonator on him and disarm it. He gets up off of his victim and runs. Wild, unhinged laughter follows him out as the first explosions make the air behind him shudder with a wave of searing heat, drowning out all other sound.Afterward, he does not find a body amidst the charred wreckage. It should have been impossible for the Joker to make it out of the building alive, but the fact remains: there is no body to be found, and nor will Owlman or any member of his Court ever find one.

But now for happier things: where does the Jester come from, in the positive-polarity universe? Was he a victim of one of Gotham’s mob families rather than Owlman, mutilated and left to shoulder the burden of a loved one’s murder because he made the wrong jokes, stepped on the wrong toes, didn’t heed the warning signs when he went too far? Was he a rehabilitation case spurred into turning his life around after an encounter with Batman, a hapless Red Hood who was only ever in it for a lack of other options, who fell from a catwalk due to a sheer confluence of bad luck and whose face as he fell never stops haunting Batman’s waking ruminations? Was he a random bystander who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did he simply appear one day with no name and no past and decide, just as in any other circumstance, that there was nothing for it but to fight darkness with light and cruelty with kindness and revel in the fact that life, that the very nature of being alive, brings with it the opportunity for growth and self-determination and connection with those around you?

(He alludes to his past on occasion, in vague and casual terms, and with little external evidence of any emotion other than the carefree self-deprecation of the Fool. Batman knows more about him than anyone except, perhaps, his family, and knows equally that it doesn’t make much of a difference – to the Jester, yesterday matters because it establishes the conditions for today, and today is what you make of it. Whenever someone asks about his origin – they’re usually bright enough not to mention his disfigurement, though it’s implied in the question – he pirouettes to face them with a bright, inhumanly wide grin: Why, I make it my life’s work to bring low the powerful and raise up the weak, to spread laughter and joy, and to never set foot in court without everyone knowing I don’t belong there! Whatever else would I have done with myself?)The Jester gets along best with Robin, for they are kindred spirits, the brightness and animation to Batman’s swift and silent shadow. And they both get along well with kids, sapping the monster of its aura of menace with fast-flying quips and dazzling acrobatics, reassuring them that they’re safe and turning black-caped vengeance into an unambiguous protector, a tamed beast that punishes the vicious and protects the innocent. J wishes he could calm tears with sweets and big bear hugs but it’s bad policy to train kids to accept candy from strangers, so he sticks to sleight-of-hand magic tricks and lets his audience keep whatever small items he conjures as talismans against the dark.

Dick likes him best of all the Robins, because he grew up in the circus and even if the Jester lacks the training of a professional clown, the attitude is there, the groan-worthy love of a sly dig or a terrible pun and the backbreaking, humiliating dedication to drawing out a smile. You have to really like people to make it as a clown. He has a performer’s love of the spotlight, too, and an easy personal magnetism that eats up attention like a particularly friendly gravity well. In a way that Batman never does, the Jester feels like home.(Did he come onto the scene before or after Robin started joining Batman on his nightly patrols? Again, it doesn’t make much of a difference – the two men work together when their paths happen to cross, but they both have their own beats and their own cases a lot of the time. Where Batman focuses on street crime and corruption, the Jester is more involved in community service and social support networks and mainly tends to kick bad-guy butt when he knows it’s affecting those with little to lose. Batman finds people jobs and directs them to shelters and makes anonymous donations to those who could use them; J helps repair leaky roofs and gets people in touch with friends who offer affordable daycare or can help you navigate bureaucratic hurdles pro bono.)

The Jester gets along surprisingly well with Batman, whose stern demeanour belies a dry, subtle sense of humour that tends toward a faintly British style of cynicism. (When J learns that Alfred the Actual English Butler works for the big bad bat, he is delighted. Batman’s batman, ha!) They make an amazingly effective straight man/funny guy duo, Batman setting him up almost undetectably so that J can then knock the punchlines out of the park. (This in itself is ironic, since the Jester is the only one of the pair who’s shown any compelling evidence of being straight by merit of falling in love with and subsequently marrying a beautiful, vivacious woman. Catwoman aside – J’s inclined to think that what’s going on there has more to do with the Dark Knight’s savior complex than heterosexuality per se, since otherwise Batman shows about as much sexual proclivity as a particularly introverted rock. Which is very professional, all told.)

(The first time the two of them cross paths for more than a minute or two, Batman is staking out a building from one of the Jester’s rooftops when a grating half-whisper a few inches behind his right ear says, Ooh, what are we going to do tonight, Brain? Batman suppresses the instinctive motion toward violence with only a small, barely-visible twitch. He lowers his binoculars for a moment to glance directly into a huge, ghoulish red grin that quickly backs off a few more inches at his expression. Contrary to ordinary laws of perspective, the grin gets bigger. There are little golden jingle bells sewn to the Jester’s cap and the scalloped edges of his collar and tunic, but they apparently lack clappers, which is both sensible and slightly irritating. Turning back to his target, he replies, low-voiced, The Russian’s started moving in on the drug trade in this area after the sting on Falcone’s crew the other week. I’ve tracked several of their dealers back here.Supplier, huh? The Jester perches comfortably on top of a nearby air-conditioning unit, kicking his feet slightly. So what’s the plan?

I go in, Batman says. You stay out here. I don’t need to be tracking someone else when there could be gunfire. (Someone he’s unaccustomed to fighting alongside, he means, considering that the whole Robin thing happens at some point.)J sticks out his tongue, which goes completely unappreciated by the giant man-bat cryptid staring intently across the street. Boo to you, too. Come on, I do this every night just like you – I can take care of myself. And anyway, these are my people. I have just as much right to help them out as you do.Batman doesn’t move in any way that J can tell, but something in his posture softens – inasmuch as the difference between diamond and corundum, at least – and he tells J the plan. J’s grin stretches nearly to his ears. Twenty minutes later, they move in and pull it off without a hitch. It is awesome. And there isn’t even much gunfire, so there.)

Jason, now. Jason likes the Jester because even if he doesn’t let the kid put himself in harm’s way like Batman does, he lets him get away with more, and when he wants Jason to do something he’s good at phrasing it so he feels included, important. Meanwhile, J loves the kid even more than he worries about him – for the way he glories in everything he does, glories in the doing of it and the power and freedom to do it, drinking life down like he never thought he’d get to. Jason is sharp-edged in a way Dick only ever was when a case hit too close to home: where Dick is a being of the air, light and swift on his feet and so defiant of gravity that he moves as comfortably in the vertical axis as the horizontal, Jason is fire, feverish and fearless and prickly and hungry for experience, for justice, for affection and validation even as he affects to disdain it. Jason grasps for everything he can hold, stakes a claim on the rare people he lets himself care about, acts on impulse and doesn’t hold back once he’s decided on something. J worries sometimes that he and Jason are too alike, that they both bring out each other’s worst qualities and one day he’ll forget himself and it’ll all end in tears.

(Don’t, Batman says when J mentions it to him. You’re the only one he always listens to. Unspoken: Batman trusts the Jester’s way of handling Jason more than his own. This is the night after J talked the kid down from beating a child trafficker into unconsciousness, so he sees where Bats is coming from, but given that his argument was yes, he deserves it and worse, yes, if the law doesn’t stop people like him then we have to, that’s why we do what we do and what you’ve done tonight has already saved those kids and others that would have ended up like them, so just hand me that crowbar for now…he’s a bit less confident.J stops pacing and throws up his hands. That’s my whole point!Batman gives him one of his many Looks, which here means that he should stop being foolish, as if that isn’t his very nature. J grumbles to himself and starts pacing again in agitation. The matter goes unresolved.)

As Jason grows older he becomes fiercer, less restrained, and J worries more and more until one day Jason shows up at the door of the abandoned toy factory that J set up as a base of operations, wearing an utterly emotionless expression that means he is inches from exploding.Disoriented by the sight of a Robin in the middle of the day, J stupidly says the first thing that comes to mind, which is Shouldn’t you be in school?Jason’s expression tightens, another millimeter closer to the explosion, and he shrugs and says, Dunno. I’m not sure I can afford it anymore.While J gapes, Jason pushes past him and into the factory to dump his duffle bag on one of the mismatched sofas in the improvised living area. He sits down beside it, elbows resting moodily on his knees as he glares through a pile of books that J should really get around to reshelving at some point and that certainly didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. Harley is out at work for the next few hours; J wishes heartily that she were here, but he’d feel too guilty taking her away from the people who need her. He’ll have to handle this on his own.(Oh, Harley. Harley Harley Harley. His bright, brilliant Harleen Quinzel, saddled with a pun name because her parents thought it was cute, worked her ass off all the way through medical school and sexism and mental-illness stigma of the worst kind just so she could do for other people what had been done for her; who did exactly that during J’s several-month tenure at Arkham following the whole…face thing…who introduced herself in precise, proper tones and then visibly braced for the inevitable joke.After a moment of careful thought, J said, Y'know…in the pantomime, the original Harlequin character was the male hero, pursuing the love of the beautiful Columbine. He grinned too widely, winced, then recovered airily, I’d much rather tell all my deepest, darkest insecurities to you.Dr. Quinzel stared at him, then conscientiously dropped her eyes back to his patient file before saying, like she didn’t know quite what to feel about it, You know, I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about my name.

She told him to call her Harleen, to think of her as a friend if he was comfortable with that, and called him Mr. J for lack of any name he felt a closer identification with. It was a little too easy to inadvertently make her retreat into scrupulous propriety, so he did his best not to say anything that would make her feel like she had to withdraw to a safe clinical distance; but then she told him that she was here to help him get better, it wasn’t his job to worry about her, and to say anything he wanted to talk about, so he did his best to obey and tried not to get attached to the little warm glow of self-worth that bubbled up in his chest whenever he managed to make her laugh. A month and a half later, she told him she would be resigning from Arkham the following week. Ethics reasons.But, he protested, Har– Dr. Quinzel – you shouldn’t just throw away your whole life! I’ll be out of here any week now, you said, and you do so much good here—Dr. Quinzel waited until he ran out of words, then said in that crisp tone, Mr. J, then smiled. I am not throwing my life away. With my credentials, I can get very nearly any psychiatric post I wish. We’ve both been as honest in here with each other as my position allows, so I hope I’ve managed to ensure a minimum of the kind of miscommunication that might cause ethical issues. And anyway, if we were to have a relationship, it would be inappropriate to continue holding a job where I’d still be counseling you beyond the scope of our doctor-patient relationship. She grinned at his expression, cheeks dimpling. I’ve been thinking of getting into social work. Kids and families, you know? That was my other top choice when Arkham hired me.)

He really wishes Harley was here.Jaybird, the Jester says cautiously, what happened?Jason shrugs again, that same hopeless one-shouldered rise and drop. We had another fight. The usual. I didn’t back down this time, so he fired me.The boy is fifteen years old and underneath the anger in his voice is so much pain that he refuses to let himself feel, so much that it hurts to draw breath, suffusing every line of his posture like he’s trying to armour himself in enough sharpness to cut anyone who comes near. The Jester sits down next to him, not too close, and when Jason’s body language doesn’t change he puts a tentative hand on the kid’s shoulder. Jason relaxes marginally under the touch, like he always has once he got used to J’s absentminded tactility, and J feels guilty again for no reason. He’s pretty sure the kid doesn’t do that for anyone but him and Harley. You can stay here as long as you need, he assures Jason, then asks, Want me to talk to him?Jason shakes his head. Not much point. We’ve already said everything there is to say.

J’s heart breaks. It’s not entirely anyone’s fault, not really, because Bruce has never really known what to do with his own emotions, much less other people’s, and Jason has more than enough emotions for the both of them, and neither of them knows how to deal with hurt feelings except through repression and control. Jason is a difficult kid, anyone would be a difficult kid with that kind of childhood, and J would bet dollars to doughnuts that Bruce felt he was compromising as much as he dared for Jason’s safety and couldn’t understand why Jason wouldn’t accept what he was trying to tell him – and meanwhile Jason would have felt more and more unheard, unfairly restricted, invalidated and patronised. On reflection, it’s not just the Jester that Jason is too similar to.What a mess. He could really use his wife’s skillset right about now.Jason is leaning just very slightly into the contact in a way that says he doesn’t realise he’s doing it, so J takes a chance and slides his arm around the kid’s shoulders, giving him something warm and solid to ground himself against. Gradually Jason melts into the touch, and they end up with the Jester’s arms wrapped around him and Jason breathing deep shuddering breaths against his collarbone, not crying, J can’t remember ever seeing Jason cry and as far as he knows the kid doesn’t. J pats him awkwardly and says stupid comforting reassurances, things like don’t worry and it’s okay, it’ll be alright and you’re okay, there’s nothing wrong with you, no one’s gonna make you leave and eventually those shuddering breaths slow and Jason says, muffled, into his shirt, Any chance you could use a sidekick?The Jester can’t say no. He does say, You know he cares about you, right? He worries about you so much. He doesn’t use the word love, doesn’t dare; Jason would never accept that, would never let himself believe it from anyone, and J’s never heard him say it to anyone, either. Too many scars.Sure, says Jason, and he just sounds exhausted now, wrung out from carrying and releasing more emotion than any person has the strength to hold, much less a lonely teen with PTSD and major trust issues. He just doesn’t see me as a person.There’s nothing J can really say in response to that.(He does, however, treat Bruce coolly and professionally when he sees him next, which is an unmistakable signal that the Bat has made his way neck-deep into the ball pit of rainbow-coloured clown poo. Bruce does talk with the Jester about it, and J answers completely and honestly, hiding nothing except what Jason would want hidden. Bruce accepts this in the critical spirit in which it is meant.)

(There is no Joker to kill Jason in this timeline, so does he die? Perhaps the Jester’s fears come true and he’s hoist on his own petard, burnt up by the same fire that drives him, or perhaps it’s someone else who dies – either way, the first time J attends the funeral of one of their own, Bruce finds him about a hundred feet away under a crabapple tree shading a scattered family plot, just within hearing range of the proceedings but far enough away to keep from obviously compromising the identity of the deceased. J is dressed up in as close as he gets to formal civvies, which in this case means a midnight-purple three-piece suit sharply tailored for a man closer to Bruce’s size and shape than his own, spats, and a wide-brimmed fedora to somewhat hide his unnatural pallor. Harley, who can at least pass unnoticed when she wants to, is perhaps among the mourners around the grave; he would have told her to go, if it were someone she was emotionally attached to. Both she and the deceased deserve that much.J gives Bruce a nod as he comes over, letting out a long breath as he looks out over the cemetery. After a moment, he comments, It’s kind of like that Pagliacci story, y'know? When your whole life’s about making other people feel better, there’s not really much room to have your own. He glances up at Bruce with a subdued smile, which is primarily distinguishable from his typical one by the lack of visible teeth. Anyway. How are you holding up?Bruce raises an eyebrow and gives J one of his Looks.J punches him in the arm, then shakes out the hand theatrically. Buddy my pal, I am married to a psychiatrist. Trust me when I say you in no way need to go there and we can stick to the tradition of sublimating our negative emotions into violence and risky behaviours, as is our prerogative as men.The eyebrow returns to its proper elevation and Bruce looks back out to the gathered mourners, posture changing not a jot. J can sense his relief.)(J is good at using his feelings to connect with other people, though. It’s probably because unlike Bruce and Harley and the rest of Gotham’s vigilantes, the law never even pretended to be on his side, so he got used to thinking of justice as something you had to make happen yourself, whether or not anyone gets punished. Everyone does the wrong thing sometimes, after all, and what matters is that they stop so it can be made right, not that they hurt for it. That’s why his first instinct is to validate why someone’s doing whatever they’re doing, whether or not he agrees with it.

The ancient Greeks had this thing, catharsis, that was the purpose of all those tragic plays. Everyone would get together to watch an hour-long portrayal of all the follies of man (and woman, &c.) and take comfort in the fact that they weren’t alone in their mistakes and their struggles, that everyone around them was feeling the same way they were, and they’d go home afterward and be a little more understanding with each other for a while, a little more forgiving of themselves. The Jester once talked Mr. Freeze down that way when Freeze had frozen him to the floor and he couldn’t reach any of his gadgets – just stood and acknowledged his pain, acknowledged the reasons he was doing the things he did, acknowledged that when you’ve been hurt and wronged so badly it’s impossible not to want to lash out and make everyone see what was done to you with no one to care. Freeze had stopped in his tracks, threatened him and his loved ones, ranted about the injustices he’d borne whenever the Jester gave him an opening to…and his expression became more and more confused when J kept agreeing with him, more and more unsettled and lost because he couldn’t imagine anyone being on his side, and by the end of it his face was all tight and creased like he would have been crying if he physically could and when Batman crept up in his blind spot to take his freeze gun (while J tried to communicate solely through eyebrow movements not to do anything aggressive) he just stood there and let it be taken, then slowly crumpled to his knees.

Nora, he said like the name was being physically dragged out of him, Nora, I’m so sorry. God, what I’ve done…she would hate me.

Batman hesitated so briefly it would have been unnoticeable to a layman, then laid his free hand on the shoulder of Freeze’s cryosuit and stepped into his range of vision so Freeze could see what he was doing even if he couldn’t feel the contact, and said in his low voice, Then you’ll have to become the kind of man she can love again, Victor.

I can’t, said Freeze, shaking his head in desperate denial. I’ve done too much. She could never forgive me.

You can, said Batman. I’ll help you.

And me! J chimed in, trying to look like the entire lower half of his body wasn’t going somewhat terrifyingly numb.

Batman Looked at him, then back down to Mr. Freeze, and affirmed, We’ll all help you, while the Jester beamed anxiously in the background.

It was one of the more nerve-wracking things J has done in his career of incredibly risky moves, and he spent the rest of the day under observation to make sure there wouldn’t be hypothermia damage; he absolutely never plans to have to try that kind of thing on someone like, say, Bane.)

Bruce originally picks up Jason a few months after Dick leaves for college, and the Jester will most certainly never contradict his insistence that it was coincidence and not empty-nest syndrome (aloud, anyway). Batgirl precedes Jason by about a year, and immediately drives the papers and news channels into a frenzy of speculation about the new auburn-haired Bat, where she came from, why she showed up now. Batman vouches for her; Dick gets a little more detailed and says she’s infuriating – a complete amateur – but all right, I guess. Whoever she is, she’s not part of the arrangement the Dynamic Duo have together: she doesn’t patrol with them, but appears more opportunistically in response to crimes noteworthy enough to make it into police radio dispatches or the news. J assumes she’s more law-oriented than he is and keeps out of her way, at least until he hears about her teaming up with Catwoman to bag Roland Daggett for museum theft and an attempted frame-up. When J learns the details, he chortles like a loon while Harley grins ear to ear and looks skyward as if thanking providence for the joke.

J likes Batgirl! It’s true that she’s an amateur early on, but everyone has to start somewhere and she’s sharp and puts every lesson into practice as soon as she’s learned it. She also trades puns with him and Harley, so that makes her good in his book. She bonds with Harley in particular, which is probably inevitable for a pair of intimidatingly brilliant and multitalented women, and Harley ends up subtly mothering her and pulling out her family-counselor tricks when Batgirl vents about certain unnamed figures in her life smothering and/or underestimating her.

Batman definitely knows who she is, and J and Harley have vague suspicions, but they courteously avoid looking any further into it until Dick has his falling-out with Bruce and leaves to establish his own brand separate from the Batman-and-Robin duo that’s defined nearly half his life. Batgirl starts showing up more, joining Batman on patrols and at the cave, and by the turn of the season it’s clear that she’s taken Robin’s place as Batman’s primary backup and civilian-reassurer. She also ends up taking over Alfred’s job of remote research and logistical support, to which Alfred professes sincere relief. At some point they tell J and Harley that Batgirl’s true identity is Barbara Gordon, Jim Gordon’s daughter; all Harley says is, Well, I s’pose it runs in the family, and J utterly loses it. Barbara has that strained look where she’s trying to hide supreme amusement at their reactions, so that’s okay.

She forthrightly big-sisters Jason as soon as he’s brought in on the family business, which works out because he reacts to her exactly like an irritated little brother. After Bruce fires him, she comes over to the factory to hang out and talk with him, even if Bruce doesn’t. He tolerates her, acts like he isn’t grateful she’s there, but he doesn’t try to make her leave. After the first attempt, she doesn’t try to convince him to come back.

Your esteemed author doesn’t read the comics and DCAU’s Tim Drake is more than half Jason Todd in backstory and characterisation in any case, so I can’t say much about the other Robins individually except that after already driving Dick to become Nightwing (cf. The New Batman Adventures ep. 17 “Old Wounds”), Bruce takes Jason leaving even harder than anyone was quite prepared for. The Jester and Harley are perhaps less willing to help support Bruce in this than they usually are, so it’s a clever, driven young photographer who sees his hero becoming impulsive and self-destructive and realises what he must do to fix it. Tim treats Jason coolly when they meet on the job, and Jason makes passive-aggressive or aggressive-aggressive allusions to Batman’s tyrannical tendencies, but when push comes to shove they find they can both appreciate each other’s focus on Solving The Problem by whatever means they have at hand.

(Jason models his new sidekick persona after Puck, perhaps, the perennial Robin Goodfellow, avatar of mischief and harbinger of painful ironies. There has always been an element of Pan in the character of Robin, innocent and Dionysian, revelling as easily in violence as in flight as he subdued criminals with the same boyish exuberance as Peter did the pirates.)

Later, Cass probably takes joy in the Jester and Harley’s body language – so alive, so in love, laughing genuinely even when they’re sad.

Damian probably can’t stand the Jester, but then he can’t stand most people. J doesn’t stop trying to make him laugh. One day, it works. Damian is horrified. J is so, so proud. (Harley brings her family-counseling A-game to interactions with the boy, but even she has trouble making a dent in the Great Wall of Damian’s Judgment at first. She eventually makes progress by gently leading him into considering others’ needs and points of view, which prompts a good deal of troubled self-reflection on Damian’s part…which then inevitably leads to him blaming the “giggling harridan” for trying to turn him against his mother and grandfather, which Harley uses to springboard a discussion that somehow, amazingly, ends in Damian sincerely apologising. Which is probably a miracle of some sort.)

The Jester doesn’t join the initial lineup of the Justice League. In most timelines, the League forms in response to a major world crisis, and in that kind of situation the Jester and his partners are going to be clearing the streets and rescuing trapped or disabled civilians, not getting into the thick of things with the heavy hitters. He’s an acrobat with a terrifyingly creative mastery of props and gadgets, not a superhuman, and moreover he’s a local guy. Gotham is his city, and he knows its streets and rooftops and boltholes and major players as well as he knows his own heartbeat. This is where he can do the most good.

And because he’s just an acrobat with a terrifyingly creative mastery of props and gadgets, whenever he’s needed for something outside his usual purview, he ironically does best in a guerrilla capacity despite the bells and motley. There’s nothing like a decade of experience at having nothing between you and real actual flying bullets except surprise and agility to really hone one’s stealth and ambush skills. Also, he’s very bendy! He’s no Ragdoll, but if you need someone to steal a vital component from a high-security facility, just give him a map and a radio uplink, point him at an air vent, and watch him go.

I’m not going to examine every change that comes of having a friendly clown instead of the Joker in this universe, but I can’t let pass one difference of note. The “World’s Finest” arc, after all, was precipitated by the Joker tracking down a twenty-pound statuette made entirely of kryptonite, stealing it, and selling his services to Lex Luthor against Superman.

Whereas if the Jester tracked the Laughing Dragon statue to an antiques store in Gotham, things would have gone a little differently. He would have paid for the thing, first of all – with Bruce Wayne’s money, admittedly, Harley doesn’t make that much, but J’s entirely certain that Bruce is aware of the checkbook he once pocketed from his desk and trusts him not to use it without good cause. Plus it cuts down on occasionally having to choose between stealing someone’s actual valuables or risking something important falling into dangerous hands.

While Harley goes into the shop to charm the proprietor with a pair of big baby blues and a forged check, the Jester pops over a few blocks to call the Daily Planet via payphone.

Hi, he tells the receptionist, uh, what do I do if I have an anonymous tip for Lois Lane?

The receptionist tells him she’ll transfer him to Ms. Lane’s private line. He taps his pointy-toed shoe restlessly as he waits.

When Ms. Lane picks up, the Jester says, Yeah, so, I have a question. How would you dispose of twenty pounds of radioactive green rock?

After a moment, Lois replies, incredulous, Is this a threat?

Ah, says the Jester, no. Nooo. I can assure you I have only the best of intentions, hence my asking your advice.

Because calling with an anonymous tip and then phrasing it like that is actually very ominous, Lois points out.

Right, says the the Jester. Sorry about that. I didn’t want to assume anything, so.

Assume anything? J can hear the raised eyebrow.

You know, says J, on the outside chance that, say, you didn’t actually want it destroyed because your friend’s heroic persona is a ruse and you’re being coerced into giving him good publicity. I didn’t want to say it aloud. He probably could have sent a letter instead, but super-sight and X-ray vision are just as much of a hazard in that sense.

Huh, says Lois. Usually when we get crank calls, we don’t get them from a real, live crank. I mean, every so often you get a conspiracist who trusts the media enough to come to us, but usually it’s just people who think the fact that they got screwed over means the whole system’s in on it.

I did say ‘outside chance’, didn’t I? J makes his voice indignant, but he’s not actually all that bothered. He’s a costumed vigilante, certain kinds of consideration are going to sound like paranoia to normals who aren’t used to it. Even if he would have expected better from Superman’s favourite journalist.

You’re right, admits Lois. That’s…very considerate. Thank you. I’m fine, though. I’ll…just go check on the answer to your question now. Can you hold?

A few minutes later, she’s back on the line: You can dissolve it in acid, such as hydrochloric acid at a concentration of about 30% or higher.

Awesome, says the Jester. Thanks. Good luck with your reporting.

They save a sliver, of course, and to prevent it from going astray they give it to Batman for highest-security safekeeping. Just in case.

#crisis on two earths #Earth 3 #owlman #the joker #batman #the jester #dick grayson #jason todd #harley quinn #barbara gordon #mr. freeze #lois lane #meta fic #(i'm calling the good clown the jester per usual because i’m coming at these characters via crisis on two earths)#(and because it's easier to differentiate him from the joker where relevant if their names aren't quite so similar)

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