#in all seriousness I don’t care to celebrate or condemn The Attempt itself

[notaplaceofhonour]

.

[mthvn]

Post-”Chaos Theory”: A Conversation with Flavia Dzodan and Metahaven

Metahaven Flavia, we've been talking about the Chaos Theory script even before the pandemic started. At the time it was a way of finding a voice (as every script is). Our friendship and collaborations have been major encouragements in completing the film the way it did. What do you think about the film now that you've watched it?

Flavia Dzodan I loved it! Chaos Theory made me think of some of Alexander Kluge's ideas about the artist as a seismographer, someone who anticipates what's to come through subtle, almost imperceptible changes on the ground. At the same time, Kluge talks about the artist as someone whose reactions are observed (like one observes a seismographer) to anticipate what is to come. In that sense, I see Chaos Theory as presenting us with a potential future, where the interdependencies are not merely acknowledged but central to the way we relate to one another and to our surroundings and ecosystems. I see the relationships in the film as not just from human to human but also in relation to the outside. To me, this is a film made of textures and invocations, a film about love yes but also about the kind of future we want to build.

Metahaven We've often talked about Tenet (Christoper Nolan, 2020) and its many quirks and features, including the female lead who, whenever it is announced that the entire world population will die, exclaims in despair: "AND MY SON!" Any thoughts? :)

Flavia Dzodan I've been thinking a lot lately about how narrating can often be a distraction from "feeling things." What I mean is that films are sometimes very preoccupied with the narration (i.e., telling a story) but such narration operates as a way to avoid dealing with the emotions or the feelings themselves. Since "feeling" is passé, sincerity has practically become an artefact or a curiosity rather than part of the process of telling a story. I do not think that Tenet is guilty of "ironic detachment"-that would maybe make the film interesting (or at least slightly funnier)-but instead, I believe Tenet is the guy at the bar who takes himself so seriously and will explain to you all the ways in which he is smarter than you. That's what makes Tenet tedious and stuffy and quite honestly, devoid of any kind of emotion. There was a point in the film when I was wishing for this supposed apocalypse to finally take place so that we could be free to go and do something else. I'd love to see Nolan attempt to make a comedy, something that doesn't need to constantly remind us how smart he is. Maybe Nolan shouldn't be so worried about saving the patriarchy via "BUT MY SON!" and instead should worry more about coherent storytelling that doesn't require a dozen forum posts to be understood. Who has time for that kind of sleuthing these days?  

In a lot of ways, and I think I've said this to you, I see Chaos Theory as a sort of anti-Tenet manifesto. Not only because there is no son to save from the end of the world but also because Chaos Theory is not structured as a narration to distract from emotions. On the contrary, Chaos Theory lunges at the sentimentality with a refreshing shamelessness. I am sure some might see this as a weakness but at a time when we mourn collective losses counted in the millions, I celebrate emotional sincerity as the only worthy form of engagement. I refuse to continue this pretension that we are objective creatures imbued by rational thinking. Capitalism and, specifically the neoliberal administration of life which is so dependent on budgets and accountancy practices, benefits from our emotional detachment: if we remain cool and ironically detached in the presence of suffering and cruelty, we are less reactive to injustice. Instead, I advocate for a radical sentimentalism that forces us to deal with the immense grief of this collective loss. I need more art that makes me cry rather than art that makes me shrug.

Metahaven What can be redeemed about emotion-and even about sentimentality-in the face of its constant use by conservative agendas?

Flavia Dzodan I don't know if "redeem" is the word I'd use. I believe it's worth making a distinction: not all sentimentality is created equal or is identical (even if the appeal to emotion might a priori appear to be so). Emotions can be evoked to connect us to one another, drawing out our best qualities. They can also be evoked to alienate and exacerbate exclusion. I'd be wary of condemning sentimentality as a whole just because conservatives made better use of its potential. In fact, I'd rather wonder why the more progressive or leftist side of the spectrum decided to eschew emotion and instead, attempt to appeal to a faux neutrality or detachment that are not even such. The problem is not "feeling things," the problem is how those feelings can be manipulated for a political end that is not inclusive or even caring but rather divisive and cruel. Just as much as the right can evoke rancid nationalistic sentiments, we should be able to remind ourselves that shared emotions are what connect us to one another.

Metahaven "The music that you heard, the poetry that soaked your soul, it is in no way ornamental. It is in no way decorative. It ought to be constitutive of who you are," Cornel West has said. How do you feel about these words?

Flavia Dzodan Again, I need to go back to this notion of humans as creatures guided by emotions. Poetry, music, beauty itself, then not as entertainment or distractions but as the core of who and what we are.

--- Amsterdam, July 1, 2021 This conversation was previously published on the Instagram profile of Boilerroom 4:3 It refers to the film work Chaos Theory, Metahaven, 2021

--- Flavia Dzodan is a writer, media analyst and cultural critic based in Amsterdam. She is a senior researcher and lecturer at Sandberg Instituut. Her research focuses on the politics of artificial intelligence and algorithms at the intersections of colonialism, race, and gender. In her research Dzodan examines the ways in which technology is created and deployed to reproduce historical patterns of social control. Her current research about beauty and ethics attempt to understand how cultural analysis may operate vis-a-vis semiotic codes, particularly in regards to teaching machines to identify highly subjective and culturally dependent ontologies such as those surrounding fashion and art. This work is a continuation of her previous research about "the coloniality of the algorithm," which situated Linnaean taxonomies at the heart of both colonial history and contemporary uses of technology. Dzodan is interested in ephemeral forms of publishing: she is the editor of the intermittent blog This Political Woman, where she has written about the rise of the alt-right, Big Data, networks, algorithms and community surveillance. Her work was published at Dissent, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, among others.

[madamlaydebug]

American Psychosis By Chris Hedges January 30, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - "Truth Dig" - Reality is under assault. Verbal confusion reigns. Truth and illusion have merged. Mental chaos makes it hard to fathom what is happening. We feel trapped in a hall of mirrors. Exposed lies are answered with other lies. The rational is countered with the irrational. Cognitive dissonance prevails. We endure a disquieting shame and even guilt. Tens of millions of Americans, especially women, undocumented workers, Muslims and African-Americans, suffer the acute anxiety of being pursued by a predator. All this is by design. Demagogues always infect the governed with their own psychosis. “The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental,” the psychiatrist Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in his book “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.” “Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand, retreats into the brute’s fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.” The lies fly out of the White House like flocks of pigeons: Donald Trump’s election victory was a landslide. He had the largest inauguration crowds in American history. Three million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally. Climate change is a hoax. Vaccines cause autism. Immigrants are carriers of “[t]remendous infectious disease.” The election was rigged—until it wasn’t. We don’t know “who really knocked down” the World Trade Center. Torture works. Mexico will pay for the wall. Conspiracy theories are fact. Scientific facts are conspiracies. America will be great again. Our new president, a 70-year-old with orange-tinted skin and hair that Penn Jillette has likened to “cotton candy made of piss,” is, as Trump often reminds us, “very good looking.” He has almost no intellectual accomplishments—he knows little of history, politics, law, philosophy, art or governance—but insists “[m]y IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.” And the mediocrities and half-wits he has installed in his Cabinet have “by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled.” It is an avalanche of absurdities. This mendacity would be easier to repulse if the problem was solely embodied in Trump. But even in the face of a rising despotism, the Democratic Party refuses to denounce the corporate forces that eviscerated our democracy and impoverished the country. The neoliberal Trump demonizes Muslims, undocumented workers and the media. The neoliberal Democratic Party demonizes Vladimir Putin and FBI Director James Comey. No one speaks about the destructive force of corporate power. The warring elites pit alternative facts against alternative facts. All engage in demagoguery. We will, I expect, be condemned to despotism by the venality of Trump and the cowardice and dishonesty of the liberal class. Trump and those around him have a deep hatred for what they cannot understand. They silence anyone who thinks independently. They elevate pseudo-intellectuals who adhere to their bizarre script. They cannot cope with complexity, nuance or the unpredictable. Individual initiative is a mortal threat. The order for some employees of several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research service, the National Park Service and the Department of Health and Human Services, to restrict or cease communication with the press or members of Congress, along with the attempt to impose 10-year felony convictions on six reporters who covered the inauguration protests, signals the beginning of a campaign to marginalize reality and promote fantasy. Facts depend solely on those who have the power to create them. The goal of the Trump administration is to create an artificial consistency that conforms to its warped perception of the world. “Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations,” Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda—before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world—lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.” Trump’s blinding narcissism was captured in his bizarre talk to the CIA on Jan. 21. “[T]hey say, is Donald Trump an intellectual?” he said. “Trust me, I’m, like, a smart persona.” “I have a running war with the media,” he added. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number one stop [in the new presidency] is exactly the opposite—exactly. And they understand that, too.” He launched into an attack on the media for not reporting that “a million, million and a half people” showed up for his inauguration. “They showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there,” he said about the media’s depiction of the inauguration crowd. “And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.” He has been on the cover of Time “like, 14 or 15 times,” Trump said in speaking of his criticism of the magazine because one of its reporters incorrectly wrote that the president had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. “I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?” [Editor’s note: Photographs or drawings of Trump were on the cover of Time 10 times in the last year and a half and once in 1989.] Trump’s theatricality works. He forces the press and the public to repeat his lies, inadvertently giving them credibility. He is always moving. He is always on display. He has no fixed belief system. Trump, as he consolidates power, will adopt the ideology of the Christian right to fill his own ideological vacuum. The Christian right’s magical thinking will merge seamlessly with Trump’s magical thinking. Idiocy, self-delusion, megalomania, fantasy and government repression will come wrapped in images of the Christian cross and the American flag. The corporate state, hostile or indifferent to the plight of the citizens, has no emotional pull among the public. It is often hated. Political candidates run not as politicians but as celebrities. Campaigns eschew issues to make people feel good about candidates and themselves. Ideas are irrelevant. Emotional euphoria is paramount. The voter is only a prop in the political theater. Politics is anti-politics. It is reality television. Trump proved better at this game than his opponents. It is a game in which fact and knowledge do not matter. Reality is what you create. We were conditioned for a Trump. Meerloo wrote, “The demagogue relies for his effectiveness on the fact that people will take seriously the fantastic accusations he makes, will discuss the phony issues he raises as if they had reality, or will be thrown into such a state of panic by his accusations and charges that they will simply abdicate their right to think and verify for themselves.” The lies create a climate in which everyone is assumed to be lying. The truth becomes suspect and obscured. Narratives begin to be believed not because they are true, or even sound true, but because they are emotionally appealing. The aim of systematic lying, as Arendt wrote, is the “transformation of human nature itself.” The lies eventually foster somnambulism among a population that surrenders to the magical thinking and ceases to care. It checks out. It becomes cynical. It only asks to be entertained and given a vent for its frustration and rage. Demagogues produce enemies the way a magician pulls rabbits out of a hat. They wage constant battles against nonexistent dangers, rapidly replacing one after the other to keep the rhetoric at a fever pitch. “Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go out and kill him in self-defense,” Arendt wrote. “This certainly is a little crude, but it works—as everybody will know who has ever watched how certain successful careerists eliminate competitors.” We are entering a period of national psychological trauma. We are stalked by lunatics. We are, as Judith Herman writes about trauma victims in her book “Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror,” being “rendered helpless by overwhelming force.” This trauma, like all traumas, overwhelms “the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.” To recover our mental balance we must respond to Trump the way victims of trauma respond to abuse. We must build communities where we can find understanding and solidarity. We must allow ourselves to mourn. We must name the psychosis that afflicts us. We must carry out acts of civil disobedience and steadfast defiance to re-empower others and ourselves. We must fend off the madness and engage in dialogues based on truth, literacy, empathy and reality. We must invest more time in activities such as finding solace in nature, or focusing on music, theater, literature, art and even worship—activities that hold the capacity for renewal and transcendence. This is the only way we will remain psychologically whole. Building an outer shell or attempting to hide will exacerbate our psychological distress and depression. We may not win, but we will have, if we create small, like-minded cells of defiance, the capacity not to go insane. Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

[libertariantaoist]

Reality is under assault. Verbal confusion reigns. Truth and illusion have merged. Mental chaos makes it hard to fathom what is happening. We feel trapped in a hall of mirrors. Exposed lies are answered with other lies. The rational is countered with the irrational. Cognitive dissonance prevails. We endure a disquieting shame and even guilt. Tens of millions of Americans, especially women, undocumented workers, Muslims and African-Americans, suffer the acute anxiety of being pursued by a predator. All this is by design. Demagogues always infect the governed with their own psychosis.

“The comparison between totalitarianism and psychosis is not incidental,” the psychiatrist Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in his book “The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.” “Delusional thinking inevitably creeps into every form of tyranny and despotism. Unconscious backward forces come into action. Evil powers from the archaic past return. An automatic compulsion to go on to self-destruction develops, to justify one mistake with a new one; to enlarge and expand the vicious pathological circle becomes the dominating end of life. The frightened man, burdened by a culture he does not understand, retreats into the brute’s fantasy of limitless power in order to cover up the vacuum inside himself. This fantasy starts with the leaders and is later taken over by the masses they oppress.”

The lies fly out of the White House like flocks of pigeons: Donald Trump’s election victory was a landslide. He had the largest inauguration crowds in American history. Three million to 5 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally. Climate change is a hoax. Vaccines cause autism. Immigrants are carriers of “[t]remendous infectious disease.” The election was rigged—until it wasn’t. We don’t know “who really knocked down” the World Trade Center. Torture works. Mexico will pay for the wall. Conspiracy theories are fact. Scientific facts are conspiracies. America will be great again.

Our new president, a 70-year-old with orange-tinted skin and hair that Penn Jillette has likened to “cotton candy made of piss,” is, as Trump often reminds us, “very good looking.” He has almost no intellectual accomplishments—he knows little of history, politics, law, philosophy, art or governance—but insists “[m]y IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.” And the mediocrities and half-wits he has installed in his Cabinet have “by far the highest IQ of any Cabinet ever assembled.”  

It is an avalanche of absurdities.

This mendacity would be easier to repulse if the problem was solely embodied in Trump. But even in the face of a rising despotism, the Democratic Party refuses to denounce the corporate forces that eviscerated our democracy and impoverished the country. The neoliberal Trump demonizes Muslims, undocumented workers and the media. The neoliberal Democratic Party demonizes Vladimir Putin and FBI Director James Comey. No one speaks about the destructive force of corporate power. The warring elites pit alternative facts against alternative facts. All engage in demagoguery. We will, I expect, be condemned to despotism by the venality of Trump and the cowardice and dishonesty of the liberal class.

Trump and those around him have a deep hatred for what they cannot understand. They silence anyone who thinks independently. They elevate pseudo-intellectuals who adhere to their bizarre script. They cannot cope with complexity, nuance or the unpredictable. Individual initiative is a mortal threat. The order for some employees of several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research service, the National Park Service and the Department of Health and Human Services, to restrict or cease communication with the press or members of Congress, along with the attempt to impose 10-year felony convictions on six reporters who covered the inauguration protests, signals the beginning of a campaign to marginalize reality and promote fantasy. Facts depend solely on those who have the power to create them. The goal of the Trump administration is to create an artificial consistency that conforms to its warped perception of the world.

“Before they seize power and establish a world according to their doctrines, totalitarian movements conjure up a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself; in which, through sheer imagination, uprooted masses can feel at home and are spared the never-ending shocks which real life and real experiences deal to human beings and their expectations,” Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda—before the movements have the power to drop iron curtains to prevent anyone’s disturbing, by the slightest reality, the gruesome quiet of an entirely imaginary world—lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world.”

Trump’s blinding narcissism was captured in his bizarre talk to the CIA on Jan. 21. “[T]hey say, is Donald Trump an intellectual?” he said. “Trust me, I’m, like, a smart persona.”

“I have a running war with the media,” he added. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number one stop [in the new presidency] is exactly the opposite—exactly. And they understand that, too.”

He launched into an attack on the media for not reporting that “a million, million and a half people” showed up for his inauguration. “They showed a field where there was practically nobody standing there,” he said about the media’s depiction of the inauguration crowd. “And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech.”

He has been on the cover of Time “like, 14 or 15 times,” Trump said in speaking of his criticism of the magazine because one of its reporters incorrectly wrote that the president had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. “I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like, if Tom Brady is on the cover, it’s one time, because he won the Super Bowl or something, right? I’ve been on it for 15 times this year. I don’t think that’s a record, Mike, that can ever be broken. Do you agree with that? What do you think?” [Editor’s note: Photographs or drawings of Trump were on the cover of Time 10 times in the last year and a half and once in 1989.]

Trump’s theatricality works. He forces the press and the public to repeat his lies, inadvertently giving them credibility. He is always moving. He is always on display. He has no fixed belief system. Trump, as he consolidates power, will adopt the ideology of the Christian right to fill his own ideological vacuum. The Christian right’s magical thinking will merge seamlessly with Trump’s magical thinking. Idiocy, self-delusion, megalomania, fantasy and government repression will come wrapped in images of the Christian cross and the American flag.

The corporate state, hostile or indifferent to the plight of the citizens, has no emotional pull among the public. It is often hated. Political candidates run not as politicians but as celebrities. Campaigns eschew issues to make people feel good about candidates and themselves. Ideas are irrelevant. Emotional euphoria is paramount. The voter is only a prop in the political theater. Politics is anti-politics. It is reality television. Trump proved better at this game than his opponents. It is a game in which fact and knowledge do not matter. Reality is what you create. We were conditioned for a Trump.

Meerloo wrote, “The demagogue relies for his effectiveness on the fact that people will take seriously the fantastic accusations he makes, will discuss the phony issues he raises as if they had reality, or will be thrown into such a state of panic by his accusations and charges that they will simply abdicate their right to think and verify for themselves.”

The lies create a climate in which everyone is assumed to be lying. The truth becomes suspect and obscured. Narratives begin to be believed not because they are true, or even sound true, but because they are emotionally appealing. The aim of systematic lying, as Arendt wrote, is the “transformation of human nature itself.” The lies eventually foster somnambulism among a population that surrenders to the magical thinking and ceases to care. It checks out. It becomes cynical. It only asks to be entertained and given a vent for its frustration and rage. Demagogues produce enemies the way a magician pulls rabbits out of a hat. They wage constant battles against nonexistent dangers, rapidly replacing one after the other to keep the rhetoric at a fever pitch.

“Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go out and kill him in self-defense,” Arendt wrote. “This certainly is a little crude, but it works—as everybody will know who has ever watched how certain successful careerists eliminate competitors.”

We are entering a period of national psychological trauma. We are stalked by lunatics. We are, as Judith Herman writes about trauma victims in her book “Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror,” being “rendered helpless by overwhelming force.” This trauma, like all traumas, overwhelms “the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.”

To recover our mental balance we must respond to Trump the way victims of trauma respond to abuse. We must build communities where we can find understanding and solidarity. We must allow ourselves to mourn. We must name the psychosis that afflicts us. We must carry out acts of civil disobedience and steadfast defiance to re-empower others and ourselves. We must fend off the madness and engage in dialogues based on truth, literacy, empathy and reality. We must invest more time in activities such as finding solace in nature, or focusing on music, theater, literature, art and even worship—activities that hold the capacity for renewal and transcendence. This is the only way we will remain psychologically whole. Building an outer shell or attempting to hide will exacerbate our psychological distress and depression. We may not win, but we will have, if we create small, like-minded cells of defiance, the capacity not to go insane.

[gracewithducks]

It’s Complicated: Faith and the in-between (Luke 24:44-53)

Mother’s Day isn’t the same when you’re a pastor. My kids already know that mom works on Mother’s Day, and messing with our Sunday morning routine isn’t going to earn them any favors. So instead of Mother’s Day, they’ve been celebrating Mother’s Week: we started with donuts last weekend, and continued through the week with extra hugs, with handmade gifts, reading books to me, showing love through interpretive dance and original songs, praising my cooking – apparently I’m especially gifted with mashed potatoes and Kraft mac-and-cheese… and all those praises and expressions of love have been peppered with constant fighting, two little girls turning everything into a competition, a helpful attempt to share macaroni and cheese with the potted plants, throwing angry cats on my lap, mixing cat food with milk and water, painting the walls with hand soap, “forgetting” that brushing your teeth is a thing we do, and refusing to use the bathroom without a hand to hold.

 Motherhood is special in all kinds of strange ways.

 Even before I became a mother, I’ve had something of an ambivalent attitude towards Mother’s Day. I love my mom, don’t get me wrong, and I sure hope she knows that. I grew up in a church that tried to include not just mothers but all women in its Mother’s Day celebrations – which means as a little girl I looked forward, every year, to getting a carnation of my very own.

 And then I got older. And I started to realize that life is a lot more complicated than it seems. There were years when I wasn’t sure if I would ever be a mother – and quite frankly, plenty of days since becoming a mother when I’ve wondered if I’m really cut out for the job. I’ve walked with friends through infertility, and miscarriage, and failed adoptions, and difficult decisions… I’ve walked with children of all ages with the loss of their mothers; I’ve walked with mothers through the loss of their children. And I’ve come to love families of so many different shapes and sizes, and come to realize that much like parenting itself, life is much more complicated than it ever used to seem.

 It’s exhausting, it’s painful, it’s stressful, it’s frustrating, it’s wonderful – and it’s also funny how, as kids, we think a donut and a carnation once a year is enough to say “thank you.”

 One of the hardest and strangest Mother’s Days in my own life came in our in-between year: it was the first Mother’s Day since the death of my son, but it also came just a couple of weeks after announcing I was pregnant with our daughter. And if I’m being honest, if I wasn’t a pastor, I probably would have just stayed home all day. But I didn’t have that choice… and people weren’t quite sure what to say or how to act around me. They tended to focus on the joy I must be feeling, knowing I would be a mother once again, rather than acknowledge the fear that accompanied that pregnancy, and the grief that weighted heavy on our home. Hope and fear, joy and grief, mingled together – that’s parenting, but also, that’s life.

 And it’s Mother’s Day again. I’ve always been ambivalent about this day. This year is no exception. I don’t know how many of you follow the United Methodist News Service – or if you even know that that’s a thing, but it is. A little more than a week ago, our Council of Bishops met to consider recommendations on how the church might move forward while we are so divided over issues of gender and sexuality, when we can’t agree on the question of who God welcomes, and who can love whom, and what a family looks like. And just this week, the same Council of Bishops received and counted votes taken by conferences all over the world on several amendments to our church’s constitution – again, that’s a thing. Two of those amendments dealt with adding affirmations around gender and equality. The first proclaims that “men and women are of equal value in the eyes of God” and promises that the United Methodist Church will “seek to eliminate discrimination against women and girls… in every facet of its life and in society at large.” The second amendment adds gender, ability, age and marital status to the list of characteristics that can’t keep anyone from church membership – in addition to race, color, national origin or economic condition, all of which are already named and protected.

 And this week we learned that both of those amendments failed to pass.

 I am so very tired of our denomination breaking my heart. And yes, some of you United Methodist news followers will know that the first amendment, at least, will be voted on again, due to an editing mistake… and maybe this time things will be different. But I sat through those debates a year ago, and I was shocked, appalled, at the fear and prejudice that were displayed – by our own colleagues and neighbors and friends. So many people who proclaim and claim to love Christ and to love their neighbors are nevertheless willing to speak hatred and pass condemnation and turn those same neighbors – especially the most vulnerable ones – to break them and turn they away.

 And now it’s Mother’s Day. While our church still tries to define what families can look like, while we failed to affirm that gender or ability or marital status doesn’t limit or define us… now we have the nerve to observe Mother’s Day, that day we set apart of parade and celebrate a certain set of women, women we lift up as models for Christian womanhood: those who’ve managed to reproduce. And I have to wonder, as much as I love my own mother, as much as I am humbled and challenged by being a mother – that’s not all that I am; is that all that women are ever going to be allowed to be?

 This week, many of my colleagues have challenged us to imagine our churches without the leadership and gifts of women. Without a woman’s faith, there would have been no incarnation. Without a woman’s boldness, the news of the resurrection would not have been shared. Right here at this church, without women, we’d lose most of our staff members – including both of our pastors. The chair of church council, and many other committee chairs, our lay leader, our members of Annual Conference, our lay servants, our Sunday school teachers, would be gone; more than half of our committee members, more than half of our members, period, would be silenced, all those gifts and voices and contributions lost.

 And I know that, by God’s grace, that’s not the case. I know that our ministries, our welcome, our affirmation didn’t change and wasn’t limited by any news statements released this week. And whenever we start talking about questions like this, inevitably someone raises the point that we shouldn’t have to take votes and amend official documents to affirm that women are people, and that our girls are gifts from God every bit as precious and powerful as our boys. We shouldn’t have to define or delineate by gender at all. I agree. We shouldn’t have to. But we do. The fact that those very statements keep failing – that’s exactly why we need to make them. Right here in our conference, there are still many United Methodist Churches here in Michigan that won’t accept a female pastor in their pulpit. And we live in a world where women are still paid less for doing the same work; where most of the power is held in the hands of men; where girls don’t get the same education and opportunities as boys. We live in a world where women bear the burden of unplanned pregnancies they had help in creating; where mothers are praised but a mother’s health, and the health of her children, are ignored, and women’s pain is not taken as seriously as men’s. We live in a world where girls grow up faster because they have to, where “boys will be boys” but “she was asking for it.” We live in a world where “you run like a girl” is still a devastating insult – even if you are one. We live in a world where my eight-year-old daughter can’t wear a sleeveless top to school because her body might be a distraction to the second grade boys around her. She’s already learning that she’s expected to take responsibility for someone else’s actions, and their education is more important than her own.

 It takes a lot of nerve for us to celebrate mothers on a day when immigration officials are separating families, when refugee mothers risk everything for their children’s future, where many mothers are starving themselves so their children can eat, and finding their sacrifice is still not enough.

 We can’t say we love mothers unless we fight to help women, to care for children, to protect and advocate for the programs that feed and clothe and house and heal so many of our most vulnerable members. Mother’s Day needs to be so much bigger than brunch.

 We shouldn’t have to say that women are people. There are a lot of things we shouldn’t have to say. But sometimes, we need to say them, anyway.

 So this is what needs saying today: God loves you. God loves you, no matter whether, when you were born, they dressed you in pink or draped you in blue. God loves you, no matter what pronouns describe you now. God loves you, no matter who you fall in love with, or how many times your heart’s been broken, or if you never fall in love at all. God loves you if you’re married, divorced, widowed, single – and if it’s complicated, God loves your complicated life; God loves complicated you.

 God loves you if you’re a parent who gave birth, or who adopted, or who fosters, if you stay at home, if you go to work, if have no choice but you do what you have to do to make it through. God loves you if your mother loves you, and even if she doesn’t, God still does. God loves you whether you’re a parent whose children adore you or whose children slam the doors and curse your name or whose children won’t return your calls at all. God loves you if you’ve struggled with infertility, if you’ve carried a child you never held, if you gave up a child for adoption, if you ended a pregnancy, if you’ve never been pregnant at all.

 God loves you if you’ve buried your mother. God loves you if you’ve buried your child. God loves you if you’re not sure who will bury you when your time comes.

 I hope you will hear me today: love is stronger than death, and love transcends the limits and labels we use, and love surprises us again and again. There is more than one way to create life in the world. There is more than one way to give love, and more than one way to receive it, and I hope that, by God’s grace, you’ve know a lot of love, and you’ll know a lot more.

 Today is Mother’s Day. And it always behooves us to remember that the tradition of Mother’s Day is much bigger than flowers and breakfast in bed. The roots of this day are found with women who decided to use what power they had to make the world a better place. It begins with Ann Jarvis, organizing Appalachian mothers to work to improve sanitation, to help keep their families and neighbors from dying from diseases carried by insects and polluted water. It begins with Julia Ward Howe, organizing mothers who yearn for peace after watching too many of their children march off to war. It continues with Ann Jarvis’ daughter, Anna, who wanted to honor her mother and honor all the ways that women continue to work to reshape the world. Today is for all those women who’ve learned the hard way that new life only comes through struggle and pain – and though it feels like it will tear you apart, the struggle is worth it when that new life enters in.

 Today is Mother’s Day. But in the church, today is Ascension Sunday – the day when we remember how, forty days after Easter, ten days before Pentecost, Jesus ascended into heaven. And it’s an ambivalent and complicated sort of day, too. Today we revisit the story of Jesus’ broken and resurrected body taking its place in glory… and there is joy as Jesus is lifted up, as he’s exalted, there is gratitude for his presence and all that’s been shared – and there is grief because he’s leaving, and something beautiful is ending, and no one really knows what happens next. The disciples enter into an uncertain season of in-between: Christ has risen, Christ will come again… but not yet. He’s gone, and he promises to send the Holy Spirit… but he Spirit hasn’t come quite yet.

 This is where most of our life, where most of our faith, takes place: in the in-between. And what does it look like, to praise God in the in-between? In the days when it’s complicated, when we’re ambivalent and torn? When joy and grief come hand in hand? Somewhere in between the dream and its fulfillment, between the sorrow and the reunion? What does it mean to keep the faith when love and loss flow mingled down? When the promises have yet to be fulfilled, and the story isn’t over yet?

 What does it look like to praise God when the scars are still fresh and there is still so much left undone?

 That’s where we live – in the in between. And it takes faith to believe we’re being blessed even when God seems further and further away. It takes faith to keep going when you just want to walk away. And it takes faith to keep praising God in the meantime when we can’t see God, can’t hear God, when we don’t know what happens next. All we have is the promise that we will not be abandoned or forsaken. Before leaving, Jesus promises, “I will not leave you orphaned,” so we hold onto faith that good-bye is not the end.

 In other versions of the ascension, the disciples are left staring, confused, gaping into heaven. But I love this telling from Luke’s gospel, because as Jesus goes, he offers blessing upon blessing – and the disciples go to wait, praising him,

full of faith for the in between.

 Motherhood has broken my heart. The church has broken my heart. But I’m still here. And I’m not giving up. I still have faith. I believe the story isn’t over yet.

 As we live in our own in between, may we be full of praises and full of faith

 May we keep saying the things that shouldn’t need to be said, because someone needs to hear them. May we keep doing the work that we thought was over years ago.

 Flowers fade – but faith, hope, and love remain. And in the end, love wins.

  Oh God, we struggle today – as we give thanks for the love we’ve seen and known in our own lives, as we give thanks for the love that we’ve given and received… and as we are reminded that there are still so many places and so many ways that hatred and injustice seem to be winning. Help us to have faith, as we live in these complicated and ambivalent days; help us to believe that you bless us, even in the in-betweens, and help us to have enough faith to keep praising you – and by your grace, by your power, to keep faithfully working for new beginnings and new life to enter in. In Christ’s name we pray; amen.

[ankurmutreja]

Amazon Hegemony Is Indie Authors' Death through Asphyxiation!

The Oligopolists’ Market: Amazon Hegemony

Amazon is the member of the internet oligopoly comprising Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon – most of the time internet is surfed on smartphones; therefore, Apple is included. Amongst these, Apple, Google and Amazon are also in the e-book publishing business. Microsoft also has a publishing wing, but it’s mainly into technology books. Of course, Amazon is the oldest player and has near monopoly in the business. It enjoys the loin share of the e-book retail business, very much like Google enjoys the loin share of the search engines business. Amazon hegemony in e-book publishing and retailing business is undisputed. Of course, all monopoly and oligopoly is bad, but I am most concerned about the publishing business because through it the oligopolists can control thoughts. Till now, traditional publishers ruled the roost. In fact, even now they are pretty prominent, and elsewhere I have opined that they shall remain ever important. But, as I see, they mostly cater to celebrities. A Twinkle Khanna may write gibberish but a Penguin will make that gibberish the best seller, which is acknowledged first at Amazon. Amazon may like to claim they only work by rules, and their algorithum decides the shelf space, but everybody knows what happens behind the scenes. Indeed, they promote books published by traditional publishers over those published by Indie Authors. In a way, Amazon is playing fraud with Indie Authors: it claims itself to be the guardian of Indie Authors but is facilitating the traditional publishers to swallow them Indie authors are at an obvious disadvantage to traditional publishers. They don’t get access to celebrity media reviewers. They don’t get press coverage. They don’t get covered on TV/electronic media. They don’t have deep pockets to sell through advertisement on social media. No wonder traditional publishers are so supercilious. An author’s most important tool is his writing, which gets acknowledged best by its readers. But the readers are so impatient these days that they don’t leave a review or rating even when they like a book. Also, there is a possibility that commercialization of reviews through Influence Marketing has made every ordinary person with any writing skills, whatsoever, a potential influencer and a reluctant reviewer – I think Influence Marketing is the worst manifestation of the rot that business’ takeover of the society has produced.

The Reviewers

A reviewer is the second most important tool of an Indie Author. He is the introductor of an author to the world of readers. But most of them charge fees these days, which brings them in immediate conflict with the interest of the readers. Nevertheless, there are some dedicated reviewers too, who write reviews out of their passion for reading and of course sans fees. Most of them can be found on Goodreads. But whether Goodreads per se is a platform worthy enough to enjoy the gathering of such dedicated reviewers is a question of great importance (My personal experience with Goodreads has been extremely bad, and I am adamant to teach them a lesson). It is not just incidental that Amazon has acquired Goodreads and now it owns it. In fact, Goodreads’ only source of income even earlier was affilate marketing mainly through Amazon. But now when Amazon has acquired it, Goodreads has ceased to be an independent platform for genuine reviewers, fully and finally. As is the usual practice, Goodreads may claim itself to be editorially independent, but the problem remains even if it is assumed to be as such: you can’t sell on Amazon if you have a conflict with Goodreads because you can’t sue Goodreads without making Amazon a party in the suit (and if it’s for defamatuon, it’s even worse). Even otherwise, everything that Amazon does is contrary to the reviewing process. The first and foremost necessity of the reviewing process is the possibility of providing free copies of the book to the reviewers, which in case of Indie Authors is mostly fructified through provision of e-books. But Amazon doesn’t allow even an author to download a free copy of his own book, leave aside the reviewers. Furthermore, it doesn’t allow free pricing of the book, which if done could attract reviewers through free give aways for a limited period. Unlike Smashwords, it doesn’t allow discount coupons, which may be distributed amongst reviewers. Its Amazon Exclusive program is a detterent to perfect competition, where only the reviews matter, and is indeed an attempt to monopolize Indie Author publishing, but, of course, nobody cares – I wonder if there is any more “Rule of Law” in the US or the world anymore: these tech entrepreneurs just don’t have any respect for law and rights, but nobody ever takes them to court unless it’s Europe.

The Conspiracy

I have observed that the growth of Amazon has also led to the emergence of businessmen writers like Amish Tripathi, Chetan Bhagat, Robin Sharma, etc, who though disguising themselves as liberals actually write conservative. It is a filthy combination of conservatism and liberantarianism, which does well to further corporate and business interest through promotion of ideas like Nationalism, Religion, Yoga, Hindutva, etc. My perspective is limited to India, but this might be happening similarly elsewhere as well. I have a conspiracy theory that the internet oligopolists are working in tandem to promote the above ideologies. They have delienated their infleunce areas and don’t interefere in each other’s territories, very much like Mafia. This compact has made them even stronger than Nations, and nobody dares to challenge them. Amazon has appropriated the territory of thoughts. The alternative thoughts are gagged immediately through multiple tactics like feigned ignorance, poor reviews, defamatory campaigns, and, most importantly, through denial of justice. The confirming thoughts are promoted through better shelf space, access to campaign reviewers, brand building through social and electronic media, etc. Writing has traditionally been the fiefdom of liberals, but it seems Amazon has orchestrated and executed a successful coup, almost silently.

The Solution

I wonder what can be a solution to the above problem. Indeed, there are numerous websites, which promote free e-books, but free e-books, irrespective of their quality content, always carry the tag of inferiority. It is very easy to condemn a free e-book as a poorly edited, shabbily written, pulpable text though the reality might be different – who has the time to read a book to qualify its content; people experience things out of the perceptions formed from other people’s user experiences. If the early adapters condemn a book as inferior quality, nobody gives it a second look, and the early adapters can indeed be sold-out negative influencers working at the behest of the oligopolists. So, I don’t think one can become an established author by selling free books. He can at max become a mediocre author with a respectable niche audience. Anything beyond that would be attacked and curbed immediately. So, the solution is not free books. Some Indie Authors have established themselves as big brands through sustained efforts though I am not sure how many of them are actually good writers – I haven’t read any; the first thing in my to-do list is to read atleast one of them this week; suggestions are welcomed. Furthermore, it doesn’t look like this brand building happens without substantial expenditure. It is all supply side economics, and Economies of Scale do matter. Is it worth the efforts, time and money to compete with traditional publishers’ promoted authors through brand building? Very difficult question to answer! More so because whatever the selection process, the traditional publishers do ensure that the books published by them look professional enough. Indie Authors often compile their books poorly and act lazily with editing. Most of them are indeed unprofessional, which gives futher ammunition to the oligopolists to even condemn a good Indie authorship. Same tactics apply here as in the case of free books. Is piracy the solution? It may seem paradoxical but piracy does help free writing. It is the best assistant of free books. Pirates hardly have any motivation to transgress the authorship rights. Their main motivation is money – sometimes I beleive they do it for revenge. Whatever, their acts turn out noble for the genuine authors, who won’t mind loss of income for brand building. However, the pirates help extremely creative writers only, who don’t spend anything other than their time and have other sources of income for sustenance. Pirates can be seriously detrimental to non-fiction, esp technical writing. I will have to admit I have read pirated copies of non-fiction writings without any qualms though in every deserving case I have included them in book reviews on my website – I hardly read fiction. So, this doesn’t seem to be the solution either because people like me also, who are concerned about good writing, don’t waste an opportunity to steal books, which makes further writing impossible if the author ends up dying of hunger. So, indeed there is a problem to which there seems to be no solution. But have I thought out of the box! Ironically, this box carries the mark “Amazon” on it and even then I didn’t think or see out of the box. Rather, I should have jumped out of the box immediately. But this doesn’t seem to be my unique problem. I have never seen anybody jumping out of the box. At the most they think or see out of the box, which doesn’t disturb the legitimacy of the box. Unfortunately, there are no out of the box solutions even to this problem. The only solution is to jump out of the box, and break the box thereafter if necessary. The Amazon hegemony is the biggest threat to Indie Authors, and unless they jump out of the box, they will keep losing breath inside, but the post-mortem report will never read: ASPHYXIATION. Click to Post