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thewhitefluffyhat · 2 years ago

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The Problems with Magius

To add context to my thoughts on the finale of the Magia Record anime, here’s a condensed version of a post I’d been meaning to put up a ages ago regarding my frustrations with the finale of the Magia Record game.

tl;dr: The problem with Magius as villains in the game was that doppels were legit and the heroes implicitly represented a return to Kyuubey’s status quo. As a result, Magius then kicked puppies to make up for the fact that the story as a whole lacked any cohesive argument or theme.

“The villains have a point, so the writers have them cross an unrelated moral line to justify the heroes defeating them" is a common yet unsatisfying writing shortcut, and Magius fits right into the pattern. Indeed, the reason I lost interest in MagiReco so drastically after the first anime season aired was that said Season 1 finale suggested that the anime would take that direction too!

It’s an offshoot of the general problem that the game’s writers seemed to have no idea what story they wanted to tell besides "Team Iroha good, Magius evil."

As-is, the game couldn't make up its mind on exactly why the Magius were evil. Was this a story about sympathetic kids who were genuinely trying to help everyone and went so far into "the ends justify the means" that they accidentally became what they hated: well-intentioned extremists like Kyuubey? Or was this a story of magic fascists who wanted to seize power for themselves and enact magical girl supremacy over humanity?

The basic outline of the plot (especially the whole Ui backstory which is foreshadowed from the start, and which made it inevitable that Touka and Nemu will be trivially redeemed) went hard on the former. But then the visual imagery and rhetorical trappings vaguely gestured at the latter and it suddenly got very messy.

And I do mean "vaguely." Touka gave a few speeches, but the plot never actually explored what "magical girl fascists" would even mean for the rest of humanity. The Magius leaders' ambitions weren’t especially threatening - even Touka's desire was to blast off and meet aliens rather than crush humanity in the grip of her iron fist. And the Magius grunts were either magically brainwashed, never knew about the "magical girl supremacy" angle, or talked about real problems like the prejudice against Kamihama’s Eastern districts. The end result was truly bizarre, a fascist cult that was not interested in fostering hate, fear, or control of the "other" they were supposedly targeting!

Instead, the Magius had correctly identified the true source of their struggles (Kyuubey's system), and had a functional solution that even the heroes admitted was already saving lives. So the Magius leaders got impatient and started kicking puppies because... well, because Touka is an immature 11-year-old, apparently.

Meanwhile, Magia Record as a game was fundamentally focused on magical girls vs magical girls, to the point where the non-magical girl characters didn’t even get detailed portraits. You'd think a story about magical fascism would prioritize the perspectives of the people they would hurt, right? At bare minimum, shouldn't they include a non-magical girl on Team Iroha? But in practice, neither the rank-and-file Magius nor Team Iroha actually showed any interest in this angle of the plot.

(The above scene where Team Iroha tries to come up with aspects of Kamihama they want to save and awkwardly list buildings instead of people makes the lack of non-magical girl characters especially blatant, in my opinion. Sorry Tsuruno, I really don’t care about some unnamed shopping center!)

The result was a nasty thematic tangle, where uhhh, I guess the Magius said they are magic fascists, except the game wasn’t going to talk about the day-to-day implications of any of that and also ultimately the system they created was so unambiguously beneficial for both magical girls and humans that the “happy ending” keeps it in place!

However… when your story ends with "the villain's system is a good thing, now that the heroes are in charge of it," maybe consider not equating the villains with fascists? Because now your heroes kind of look like fascists too, oops!

Also, reinforcing the "villains kick puppies because villains" problem was that just like other stories in that lazy mold, our "heroes" were fighting for a return to the oppressive status quo while only the antagonists were advocating for any change to address the genuine problems. It had always been a huge frustration for me that Arc 1 Iroha never, ever came up with her own alternative to Kyuubey's system. Even by the end of the story, when Team Iroha was attacking Magius grunts in their base, she had nothing to offer them but empty platitudes that amounted to "we'll work together to find a solution later! :)"

Though, to be honest, I was pretty lukewarm on Team Iroha since the beginning of the game. Their motivations started out as the incredibly boring and obvious "wow the shady bad guys look shady so we don't trust them." Now pile on the broad themes of the witch system. When witches are symbolically representative of darker emotions (and even maturity itself) being considered an ugly, uncontrollable thing in women, then it's not exactly a progressive look when your antagonists stand for "let's use witches to empower ourselves and overthrow our oppressors" and the best your protagonists can muster is a kneejerk "but witches baaaad" response.

So yeah. The magical girl supremacy aspect could have been an interesting story, but it would have required completely reworking both the Magius leaders and Team Iroha's backstories and characterization. In addition to rewriting the entire plot to actually focus on the "we want power" angle rather than the "legitimately beneficial alternative to Kyuubey's system" angle.

But I think if you wanted to salvage the wreckage of Magia Record’s Arc 1 Main Story, you'd be far better off deleting the fascism angle and just sticking to "kids messed with powers they couldn't control to tragic consequences." Sure, it's been done in other Madoka Magica spin offs before, but at least it would have been coherent with the existing characters and setting mechanics. And not, you know, requiring an unearned chain of multiple deus ex machinas in order to preserve the villain’s system that the heroes spent the entire story committing to destroy.

#magia record #magia record analysis #magius #satomi touka #tamaki iroha #magia record critical #magia record na #my ramblings #read more #you can tell this post is super old #given that I took screenshots for it while the NA game was live!#XD #not that my feelings have changed since then though...

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waterrunstogether · 4 years ago

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Rites of Passage in the Fifth World

I’ve been thinking lately about the absence of real rites of passage in modern “western culture”. A rite of passage is a sort of ritualized event (that may or may not be endorsed/organized by a community) in which a person is believed to exit from one stage of life and enter the next, usually from childhood to adulthood. Other than the humiliation of high school proms/frat hazing, or getting your driver’s license, or turning 21 and getting shitfaced, my culture in the United States has little to offer in the way of true rites of passage.

The result is a population of confused, somewhat disillusioned children driving around and going to work or university and pretending to be adults while hopelessly stuck in the liminal space between youth and adulthood.

~ 20 year old me pretending to know what’s going on ~

I have thought about quinceañeras and baptisms, religious rites of passage commonly practiced still, but considering the traumatic experience that my parents’ organized religion was for me, I don’t believe now that my baptism was a helpful event facilitating my transition into maturity. I think it was a blindingly painful event whose toxicity I needed to overcome in what I now believe was the true rite of passage.

I first dropped acid when I was traveling in Bulgaria. My partner was in her hometown across the country and I was visiting Plovdiv with a friend. We had just finished traveling the world, or at least Eurasia, meeting new faces and trying new things and taking wild risks in Thailand and Turkey and India and Malaysia, to name a few. I had also just escaped the cult I was born and raised in which had hammered into me from birth that my sexual and romantic orientation was an abomination, as a woman I was to obey men, God loved me and wanted me to fear him (that is to say, love = fear), the leaders of the church were to be obeyed and respected all the time (even if they were obviously wrong) and so on and so forth. It was an insane transition between being trapped in these religious handcuffs and learning that I could break free all along. In fact, I carried so much self hatred and internalized homophobia with me into my supposed new life that I didn’t know what to do with myself. Despite being outwardly happier than I had ever been before with a wonderful partner and community who truly loved and supported me for who I was, inwardly I was constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown due to all of the conflicting thoughts and beliefs I was carrying and creating within myself.

The experience of that first trip was an interesting one. Every step of the way my body seemed to pull me towards the letting go of all of the toxicity that was so thick and had built up like plaque in the arteries of my energetic being--yet, I remained me throughout the trip, at the end feeling somewhat empowered but not yet finished with the transformation.

A few months later I took psilocybin, AKA magic mushrooms, with my little brother on a rainy Summer day in D.C. The whole come up of the trip was talking to trees and observing the movements of leaves, running my fingers over the moss growing on the exposed, knotty roots of tree in front of our house. But at the end of the trip, something changed. Once again my body requested, begged me, to let go of the still-prevalent toxicity inside of me. My health was in rough shape, mentally and physically, and my body knew the culprit. But once more I felt I couldn’t let go just yet, it would be too much for me, I wasn’t ready. So I spent the entire come down and then some, maybe four hours, weeping uncontrollably on the basement floor.

The second time I dropped acid was yesterday, with my partner, here in Berlin. It changed everything.

During the come up I was taken aback by how strong the effect it had on me was. My partner, bless her heart, had taken a larger dose than me, yet felt no effect the entire time. Her tolerance has always been naturally higher than mine for every kind of intoxicating substance, and LSD was no exception.

As time went on I came to realize that her high tolerance was incredibly fortunate for me and my trip. The initial come up was amusing, as flashes of white light began to fill up my eyes, closed and open; but very quickly I began to get paranoid, strange little thoughts about being set up and targeted running through my mind as my sense of self slowly began to dissipate, just nonsense that the ego conjures up to protect itself. But my partner’s calming reassurances that she loved me and that I was safe effectively calmed me down.

Once I began to enjoy the ride up, holding a half of a pomegranate and appreciating its beauty, touching a slice of orange and loving how soft it felt in my hands, admiring the fractals of color creating all kinds of geometric shapes on the walls and snow outside the window, I became comfortable with my loss of identity. At some point I realized that I didn’t even know my name, and I didn’t care, because it was irrelevant. All that was relevant was experience.

Imagine experiencing and interacting with the world around you without the barrier of the thing that we are so used to that it’s difficult to think of it as a barrier at all: your concept of self. Ideas about names and races and gender and desire and anger and malice and hatred just made absolutely no sense whatsoever. In this state, all that made sense was goodness and beauty and love. All that I understood was harmony and mutually beneficial behavior. My preconceived notions about who I was and what that meant were being shattered and shredded before my very eyes, exposed for what they were: nonsense.

Once I plateaued and began to slowly come down after about four or five hours I was able to contemplate what these things meant, what they would mean for me going forward. I went into the bathroom around hour 7 and decided that it was time to look into the mirror.

Many people will tell you not to look into the mirror during an acid trip, that it’ll give you the dreaded “bad trip” and you’ll have a shit time. I completely disagree. If you are like me and need to come to terms with yourself through the wonderful, horrific, beautiful, terrifying experience that is an “ego death”, I’m afraid that you’ll have no choice but to look into the mirror at some point.

So, I stared myself down in the mirror and admitted what I couldn’t admit for so long, due to being taught that I was essentially evil since the day I was born. I’d called myself a sinner, wicked, worthless, ugly, an abomination and just about every other mean word in the evangelical dictionary. But as I stood there looking at my body in the mirror, egoless and impartial, I said, “You have done and thought some cruel things to yourself for some time now. But you know what? You are a kind person. You are a wonderful person. You treat people with respect and love, you treat everyone you’ve ever met with so much empathy, so much caring. You love the truth, you love to be generous, you love to be a good friend. You must begin to treat yourself the same way. I know you’ve had so much hatred in your heart contaminating your energy for so long, but that is enough. That is enough. No more. I am a kind person. I am a kind person. I love you. Remember that night so long ago? Beneath the stars, where they submerged you in the baptismal water and tried to destroy you, saying these sacred waters would wash all your sins away, along with your fragile, meaningless identity? Well, they simply added more to your ego, a darker side. You built up so much negativity for so long. Well, look at you now. Your identity, all of the ideas and concepts that you’ve built up around who you really are to protect you from the hurt of Life, it’s all gone. Now you’re going to baptize yourself again. You’ll be truly reborn, this time dedicated not to destroying yourself for the sake of a religion, but dedicated to renewing and becoming and becoming and becoming.” As I looking into the mirror my silhouette became filled in with the velvet black of the night sky, full of bright stars.

I turned on the water and was baptized once again, by my own hands.

When I returned to the room I felt happier than I had ever felt in my life, light as air, free. I told several people about how much I love them and described my love for them in detail, not as this thing that’s an extension of my own ego, but my love for them was a little bit of energy that I had the honor of holding in me, in this body, and sharing between us for a time, for the wonderful events that we call our lives. I could actually see love. I understood that I was not all of the concepts I’ve built around myself, but an expression of energy in this space and time, connected to every other expression of energy in all of history, from the beginning and until the end. My matter, my body, was simply a vehicle for the energy, and would be recycled into new vehicles after I die. My energy would be transferred into new vehicles as well. That’s what we perceive as death: just a simple transfer of energy and recycling of matter. My ego would not live on, thankfully. My consciousness as conflated with ego would cease to exist with me. But the underlying animating force behind all things in the universe, the true source of consciousness, would never be destroyed or created, simply recycled again and again and again and again. Becoming and becoming and becoming and becoming.

The hilarious and bizarre world of reality is hilarious and bizarre. It’s so beautiful and mystical and wonderful and honestly, nothing I write here could ever explain how I experienced being alive in that sixteen hour trip. Words don’t convey it, words can’t convey it. Reality is visceral, experiential, impartial and impossible to quantify in something as crude as human language.

All I know is that, today, I am a fundamentally changed person. I’d feared ego death for so long, feared that it would be too much, too painful. And it was so, so painful--but it was so worth it. I am happy and proud to exist, grateful for everything I have accomplished and can accomplish in this miraculous, tiny little vessel during this ephemeral event that is my life. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow if tomorrow exists, and unleash all of my love on everyone who’ll have it. Love is the energy that unites us with our own bodies and the entire world around us. How lucky and strange it is to be anything at all.

May you have a peaceful day. The universe smiles upon you.

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script-a-world · 5 years ago

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hello. i want to write a story set in a very religious place. like fanatic level of religious. in my mind, this place is ruled by what the church says but has a "cover" figure to "connect" with the people. the people of this place are devoted to their religion, meaning they know passages, go to mass, and shun those who don't support it. here is my question: how does one go about creating a religion that feels real? what do i need to take into consideration (i'm not religious myself).

Mod Miri Note: At the same time this came in we also received from the google form the question “How do I world build a religion?” I can’t confirm they’re the same anon, but we’re combining them for the answer.

Brainstormed: You seem to have a very… narrow perception of religion? If you aren’t religious yourself and you’re (presumably) from a Western culture, it makes sense that the Christian church and more specifically Catholicism are your go-to images of hyperreligion. Saying “mass” and “church” and “passages” kind of gives away the fact that you’re trying to base your religion off of at least your idea of an Abrahamic religion, but I’d ask you to reconsider. Right now it sounds like you’re trying to create a negative critique of these religions, and even if that is what you’re going for, you need to do a lot of research on their theology, history, and practices before you can do so with any competence.

I’d suggest doing some basic research on types of religions, like animism, pantheism, polytheism, general superstition, etc. There are plenty of spiritual worldviews that you might consider way over the top, but whose believers find it more bizarre when people don’t follow their teachings. Fanatics are never fanatics in their own mind, and especially among their own people, but also… fanatic might be a relative term. If you’re approaching this from a nonreligious background, then you might consider X-amount of religion in one’s lifestyle to be fanatic-level. Whereas a person who actively practices religion would consider X-amount to be perfectly normal, and only folks who take it to XX-amount plus some shadier practices are the true fanatics.

Remember, religions start because people want to make sense of the world. There is a deeper feeling of wonder and personhood and power, both within a human being and in the whole world around us, that drives spirituality and generates superstition. Religion, at least to start, is beneficial to people, otherwise no one but sadists would follow its teachings. Now, like anything else, religion can devolve into a means of power hoarding and control of a populace, but only because of the people in charge getting greedy. The vast majority of religions I’ve studied have had radical, freeing, empowering teachings applicable to everybody when they first sprang up, and only later did adherents twist those teachings into societal oppression. If there is no satisfaction or benefit in your religion, there won’t exactly be any incentive for people to follow it so closely, aside from whatever negative consequences occur for those who fall away. And negative consequences aren’t often enough to keep people in a religion. If following religion is more painful than the consequences of leaving it, plenty of people will jump ship.

Religion can also show up in every single part of life. According to Wikipedia:

A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of Western society. William James popularised the concept.

You look up and see a cloud, a spiritual person sees a portent, or a spirit, or a castle where the gods live. You take a break from work for a minute, a spiritual person now has time to mutter a prayer, or observe the mood of the world, or dedicate their work to their god. A person doesn’t have to be anywhere near a fanatic to have their religion be in every part of their life. Especially if they adhere to a more lax spirituality or superstitious worldview instead of an organized religion, the central spiritual experience of religious belief alters the perception of self and surroundings. It isn’t only a set of rules to follow.

It can even help areas of society that modern Western society considers nonreligious! Historically, medicine has always come under religion. Witch doctors, medicine men, witchcraft, even the hygiene laws laid out in the Christian Bible. Physical health has often been considered a reflection of spiritual health, which, in a way, is true! The placebo effect means tending to one’s mental and emotional health with the reassurance of religion will improve one’s physical health as well. Not only that, but the power of a “spiritual experience”, regardless of if you believe the supernatural is real, can cause religious ecstacy, something you might perceive as a serious psychological problem but those who experience it consider to be a deep form of spiritual expression to be treasured and sought after. The spread and preservation of information is also often aided by religion, even though that can change should those in power want to change history or obscure truth for their own reasons. Just look at the history of the printing press and how that was driven by the need for Bibles. Many cultures, most famously Australian Aboriginal peoples, have oral histories thousands of years long that tie in closely to their spirituality.

You also might be confusing religion with cults. If you think all religion is predatory, playing on people’s weaknesses and fears in order to coerce them into a miserable lifestyle of following strict laws and living under control of those in power, you definitely have conflated “religion” and “cult”. If you’d like to worldbuild a cult, go ahead! It’s likely to be smaller and less acceptable than an established organized religion, not very transparent to the outside world nor its members, and have a spirituality that is in fact just a veneer over gaining power, instead of genuine belief and devotion, and may in fact require people to murder or commit suicide. Just look at Scientology, or these, or even Jared Leto, and a more in-depth look from this organization covering many different kinds of cults.

On a more worldbuildy note, are those who practice this religion correct? Does their god(s) exist? Is the supernatural real? If yes, then are they really fanatics if they’ve been right all along? Even if they’re incorrect, the dedication and deep-held beliefs of religious people shouldn’t be mocked wholesale, in my opinion. Make sure to keep some genuine three-dimensional development for characters who are part of this religion, or include other religions with different practices, or the only thing you’ll accomplish is “waaaa religion bad believers dumb”. And if that is the story you want to write, feel free, but I can’t help you there.

Feral: What makes a religion feel real? Sincere faith.

Specifically among the leaders. I mean, sure, those lemming-like peasants who actually believe that superstitious nonsense will have sincere faith, but honestly? There is going to be a higher percentage of people faking it among the masses than among the clergy. Clergy members are generally required to go through rigorous studies and often take vows that can cause great discomfort. I am sure there are those who did it for the power - there are in atheist organizations as well, humans can be crap - but if you actually read the writings of important Church leaders of the past, not to mention rabbis, imams & mullahs, and archakas, you’re going to find that they have sincere faith.

Something you should always keep in mind when developing pre-modern religion in a Western context is that before the advent of modern scholarship, which starts to become a thing in the West during the Renaissance, all the important scholars were clergy. And again, those learned people either had to be really, really dedicated to their power-hungry ambitions or had to have sincere faith.

That does not make religions perfect by any means nor does it mean that the god they have sincere faith in is omnibenevolent (though the qualities of an omnibenevolent god will be strongly dependent on the culture that worships it). And religious leaders are absolutely capable of doing terrible, terrible things even if they profess to worship an omnibenevolent god, and politicians can definitely twist things around to suit their needs (again, this is not exclusive to religiosity). But your ask has this weird given that a major religion (on par with Catholicism/Christianity) in your world is a scam, and while yes, that happens in cults and alternative religions and in splinter groups*, as Brainstormed pointed out that’s just not how, at least, the four major religions of our world got started.

Yes, it’s true that bureaucracies of a certain size and age will inevitably begin to change focus to protecting its own existence. And yes, it’s true that ambitious sociopaths will be drawn to places of authority even if they are difficult to achieve. And yes, it’s true that an individual entering a toxic environment is more likely to be changed by the environment than to change the environment. But guess what! That has nothing to do with whether the organization is religious or not.

Why does a religion exist in the first place? It explains the universe in a pre-modern world; it provides organization and structure for community focus - in other words, many social programs have historically been run through religious organizations and leadership. And it provides hope and comfort in a very scary world.

Some clergy might be able to fake all of that for a little while, but a large bureaucracy with many clerics who are all in on the fake? No. Allow me to rephrase: hell no. People are not dumb. Maybe you believe that of all religious people, but you are wrong and they are not. The people in your world, if they’re anything like the people in our world, are gonna sniff out the bullshit if none of their religious leaders believe what they’re selling. There is a reason Scientology has to keep blackmail files on all its adherents, and I promise you, the Catholic Church does not do that.

*A note on cults, alternative religions, and splinter groups: Cults and alternative religions (their PR friendly name) are “religions” that are scammy and/or actively dangerous to the participants or others: People’s Temple, Branch Davidian, etc. Splinter groups are congregations that start as normal members of a large religion or denomination but its insular culture creates a divide that just takes things a little too far even for the most fanatical of the main sect (think terrorist groups that link themselves to religions). These types of religions might be what you are actually asking about. Groups like these can be highly, highly influential but in a very contained area. What cults often do is the leader settles in an area and buys property and builds a church and maybe a school and then encourages the members to all move either onto the plot of land if it’s large enough or to buy up surrounding land and homes and push out all the non-believers. That area can then be fortified or just have a de facto boundary with the rest of the world. Sometimes a group like this can become large enough to constitute an entire town, but rarely a city - groups that large will more often have centralized compounds but with the members living scattered among non-believers, as Scientology does. Obviously a group concentrated like that will have an impact on local politics, if they are allowed to participate, but it’s not going to go farther than the county line, so to speak. As we all know from the news, splinter groups like ISIS can become very large and globe spanning, but those types of groups have within them splinter groups and factions, and I don’t think that’s what you’re asking about anyway, so I’m just going to leave it there.

But frankly, your ask reads to me as “how do I create a fantasy!Catholic that is secretly evil and will show the audience how evil religion is in the real world? Opiate of the masses!” And my advice is… don’t. Because it lacks compassionate understanding of people of faith (many faiths), it lacks a factual understanding of how world religions differ and function, it totally lacks nuance, and finally, because it is absolutely, monumentally, extremely, really, very cliche.

Maybe the way your ask is coming across to me is totally not how you intended it. Maybe you only used the jargon you used because you assumed we wouldn’t know any other terms and maybe your understanding of world religions is actually quite sophisticated. Maybe you really do have this insanely clever way to spin a tired cliche into some new and original. In these cases, we strongly encourage you to come right back with as jargon-full and specific an ask as you can write, use our submission google form to do it. Otherwise, give our responses some thought and if after you’ve developed your religion, you want to come back with a specific ask other than “how do I world build a religion?” (which is a little too broad), please feel free.

#pylons #religion #Anonymous

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praeyrp · 4 years ago

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Lore Update: Factions;

Our factions are largely player-made and open to anyone, both in joining and creation! Here on FS we adore groups that allow our members to tie their characters to as many other characters as they’d like!

Below the cut are all our current standing factions; all of them are joinable by anyone and aren’t limited in numbers or opposition!

Factions;

Black Market

Leader: Justin Warrin

About: A long standing institution the local black market is a splintered transplant from New York, moved and led by Justin Warrin. As with its much larger sister operation in New York the SF black market deals in anything that’s needed and can’t be obtained through legal means. With several headhunters in its ranks the black market can be contacted to obtain anything that’s desired, for a price. Strict in his rule the SF black market is a well oiled machine, dealing smaller scale goods and services through the like-owned bar My Father’s Place the bulk of its wares are housed off site and rotated through a series of warehouses as needed. The daily operations consist of; arms dealing, gambling, drug dealing, underground fighting, rare reagents & grimoires. The market also houses a brothel off-site & tied into the basement of the local strip club, Bottoms Up.

Joining: joining ooc is loose and open, just contact Sarah! IC you'll need to prove your worth to the man in charge, but he's not all that picky so long as you do your job, you'll keep your head~

Syndicate

Leader: Demetrio Dimas

About: The Syndicate was founded in the early 1900's as a safe way for contract killers to be hired. A middle man so to speak, ensuring that client, and the contract killer never met, allowing safety and security on both sides. Clients are able to visit the various hotels around the globe, owned by Demetrio, to leave your job, and payment method and the Syndicate does the rest. Over the years they have breached out into more than just contract killing, handling organ harvesting and body disposal.

Joining: The Syndicate reaches out to prospective contract killers, are watched in action before being given the key to the kingdom so to speak.

The Blood Alliance

Leader: Diego Cortez

About: Founded in the early 1980's, the Blood Alliance, or, known by most, the Cortez Cartel, quickly became one of the most feared cartels within Mexico, eventually spilling out into various locations outside of Mexico. As they became one of the biggest hands within international drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime, shipping more cocaine into the Americas than any other cartel. They, themselves breached out appointing various Cartel Heads in various major cities to ensure that the flow or drugs and everything else they had their hands on, moved smoothly between the cities and Mexico. The Blood Alliance has their hands involved in everything, with information on various key members of the city and around the world, and holds strong ties with the Black Market.

Joining: A ranked member often brings in lower members to do the dirty work of the cartel.

The People's Temple & The Order

Leader: Matthias Irbson & Morgan Delvaux

About: The People's Temple has been a long standing fixture of faith within San Francisco, or at least it's congregation has. A popular place of worship for decades the little Catholic church burned down in an accidental fire eight years ago, leaving its Sunset district neighborhood and congregation without a place of worship. Five years later and several failed attempts to fund-raise by an old tired minister and an angel investor would wipe their deficit and then some, clean. A new temple was built a block from the old, re-branded, renamed, and within its walls its people and their faith in a new youthful minister, grew.

The Order consists of everyone who's either conscious of, or blindly willing to follow, the teachings of Morgan and Matthias (known to most as Judas, they don't question its symbolism) and their ministry. The main objective of the ministry is simply to gather willing souls for the end of days, something Matthias has convinced the order and via Morgan also the flock, is coming. The Order is just your run of the mill doomsday cult, masked behind the beautiful façade of a kind and giving temple of worship.

Joining: the temple is free and open to everyone. The Order however requires you to prove yourself to Morgan firstly, and if that works in your favor, you'll meet Matthias. A few exceptions will be made but you need to have worth and benefit to them in order for them to consider you for their inner circle.

Legion: the hunter order;

Leader: The council (NPC) > Regent Lord (NPC)

Creed: Legion is a fraternal order with one collective purpose; the survival of humanity through purification.

About: Where most people believe this means a vast and swift punishment to everyone that falls within the crosshairs of their hatred, the actual goal of the Legion is not to eradicate everything personally, but rather to topple the pillars holding up the foundation and then watch it fall on its own. They’re not here to become the overarching villains, they’re simply here to help protect what they believe is sacred; humanity’s claim to this world. This order is ancient, spanning generations; an order that’s secretive, elaborate, and hidden behind the veil of politics and careful steps. Every esteemed house within their ranks will have a beneficial member in politics; a family must be of benefit to the Legion or they’ll be extracted, period.

Hunters, as they’re known the world over, are not people who wander this world and brashly kill what doesn’t fit within their view, rather they’re tactful and exceedingly careful in every step they take. Their agenda and every step taken is handed down by The Council to the Regent Lord and finally to the Commanders (heads of households) who then command the foot soldier. It’s these soldiers that see things enacted; the actual hunters.

Organization Hierarchy: The Council (NPC) > Regent Lord (NPC) > Commanders > Foot soldiers

Commanders: the political heads of household; playable but will be monitored. Typically the parents or grandparents of the foot soldiers, they must have a political seat (local or national).

Foot Soldiers: the majority of the Legion are foot soldiers and are comprised of well trained family members of the Commanders. They’ll always have been born into this life in some part though late bloomers are possible, this is a highly opinionated and bigoted order so this must be taken into account for the late-bloomers.

As with any organization, there are bound to be rebels and pushback, just keep in mind that everything that opposes or threatens is dealt with swiftly, severely and above all, silently. There is no margin for error within the Legion; anything that goes against the order or fails to benefit their cause, is plucked like a weed.

Joining: In order to join Legion you need to be either well trained and catch their eye to warrant an invitation (will be absorbed into a family and made one of their own), or from one of the esteemed houses that make up their higher orders. One can not simply join Legion. Copy cats and self-entitled (false) members do happen, and as with anything that opposes the Legion, are dealt with in due time.

#update #FS update #fuguestateRP #lore #factions

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elizagailofhousestark-blog · 6 years ago

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A complete theory on the history and intentions of the lake entity in It Lives Beneath

(This information has been updated as of Chapter 10. The first part of this theory involves the history of The Power and the Cult in Westchester)

TL;DR: The ghost in the lake is MC’s grandmother

Beginnings of Pine Springs

In the year 1970, the AMC Gremlin car was produced and popularized. This was the vehicle which the journal author drove upon moving to a cabin in the woods near the river, which we can safely assume to be located in present-day Pine Springs. At that time, The Power was a “curious and playful” entity that encompassed the woods and waters in the neighboring towns of Westchester and Pine Springs. Within months after arrival, the journal author unintentionally established a connection with The Power, was compelled towards the house ruins in Westchester, saw Redfield, and met Cora.

Also in 1970, exactly fifty years prior to the Lake Day celebration in ILB, the town of Pine Springs was founded. According to Astrid, The Society– which is a cult that claims to be protectors of The Power in Pine Springs– was formed shortly after. Meanwhile, a development company attempted to buy the land which the journal author occupied. The author refused, and made a decision to protect The Power absolutely.

Eventually, the development company succeeded. Pine Springs became urbanized. A dam was built for water storage, irrigation, power generation, flood control, and other industrial uses. The flow of the river near the journal author’s home was restricted to create the dam– also known as a reservoir or an artificial lake. Later on, the water level in the lake was drained to make way for more mansions in the Lakefront Neighborhood.

Negative environmental impacts of dams

Now to make it clear, dams are highly beneficial to human civilizations. Dams do not pollute the water or air, and they are efficient substitutes to the more destructive fossil fuel consumption. However, constructing dams can also harm nature in numerous ways.

Dams take up a huge area of land for them to work. Entire forests need to be cut down.

The rivers which provide the water source for the dams need to have their flows obstructed, or reversed on opposite ends of the dam. Hydroelectric power plants also change the temperature of the water. These changes may disrupt the balance of ecological systems in the river and the surrounding land.

Migratory fish species are affected. In the Columbia River along the border of Oregon, salmon must swim upstream to their spawning grounds to reproduce but the series of dams gets in their way. Fish and other organisms can also be injured or killed by the turbine blades.

Due to sedimentation, reservoirs will have higher amounts of nutrients which cultivate an excess of algae and other weeds. These weeds consume large amounts of oxygen as they decompose, creating oxygen-starved dead zones incapable of supporting river life of any kind.

If too much water is stored in dams, downstream rivers can dry up.

Methane and carbon dioxide, strong greenhouse gasses, may also form in some reservoirs and be emitted to the atmosphere.

The town founders and the first members of The Society

At this point, it is clear why The Power would have been against the dam’s construction. However, Astrid, who is the current leader of The Society that claims to be protectors of The Power, is also a real estate company owner. Her husband Vincent, another cultist, is a corporate lawyer– a profession that protects capitalism and industrialization. In Chapter 10, Chief Kelley, also a cultist, confirmed that the town founders were the ones who dammed the river and cut down the forests. He also mentions that they would have been proud of him now for his services to the town.

Therefore, it is my theory that the cultists today are heirs of the town founders, who were also the first members of The Society. Those same people exploited The Power against its own interest of preserving nature. They harnessed power to gain wealth and influence, and to put themselves on top of the economic pyramid.

What happened to the first cultists?

Chief Kelley angrily asserted that the founders had to make a huge sacrifice for the town. What could have been this sacrifice?

In ILITW, the MC discovers that there were “two mass murders in Westchester, in the same woods, within 100 years of one another.” The first one happened on October 31, 1871. The fourteen members of The Arcane Society of Westchester communed to perform a ritual but Redfield attempted to hog The Power for himself, got consumed, and was turned into the monster in the woods. The second instance happened on August 22, 1976.

It is highly probable that the victims of that incident were the cultists/ town founders. As of writing, we have no way of confirming if it was indeed a massacre or a mass suicide– if they were murdered by The Power or if they sacrificed themselves. However, we do know two other instances of group deaths. One was in 1871 when Redfield became the monster. The ritual went wrong when Redfield hogged The Power. The cultists were massacred, then Cora and the few other survivors worked to bind Redfield later on. The second was in September of 2017 if you did not gain enough nerve points for your friends in ILITW. In that instance, Jane murdered the “cult members” in order to free herself. Both of those massacres resulted in someone becoming a new monster who is fused with The Power.

I theorize that the author of the journal, after getting the idea from Cora’s story about Redfield, desperately resorted to joining The Society. She also attempted to hog The Power for herself so she can stop her fellow cultists from using it for the wrong reasons. In the process, she became the ghost entity in the lake. But who is she?

The identity of the ghost in the lake

At first, we are led to believe that the journal author is male, because he was able to fix the house all by himself. Some popular theories claim that Grandpa Arthur is the journal author after all and the house he lives in is the same cabin in the woods. But if this is the case, then why would the journal entries present themselves to MC in the form of ghostly bottles? If Grandpa intended for MC to know about his history, he could have just told MC directly. Furthermore, Grandpa mentioned that he has been paying mortgage in the last 30 years, but the journal author owned the cabin and had no landlord.

Another hint that the journal author could have been female is when she wrote: “That development group has found a cunning new tactic: they sent a handsome man in a little bowtie to knock on my door. He had a nice smile and he was quick with the witty chit-chat.” (Of course, this could also be an evidence to the author being a male homosexual, but how could the development company have known that?)

If you pay close attention, you will notice that there are many significant parallels in the plot and timeframe of the events in ILITW and the ones in ILB. Because of this pattern, it would make sense that the journal author ended up becoming the female lake entity, just as Redfield– the letter writer– ended up becoming the monster in the woods.

Finally, the most compelling evidence I have that the journal author is the same person as the female lake entity is this: Noah/ILITW MC (the monster) knew that the way to communicate with the lake entity is written in a book found in Cora’s house. Since Cora is also a cultist who met the journal author, she would have known how to talk her.

Having established that, I will now leap into my theory that the lake entity is MC’s grandmother. (By the way, the ghost can’t possibly be MC’s mom because she died only 2 weeks before MC came to Pine Springs and her body can’t possibly be reduced to bones already. Plus MC and Elliot obviously would have buried their parents.)

The following are the evidences for my claim:

The lake entity had been drowning people in the lake for 20 years [acc. to Ned], and yet in Chapter 9, she somehow recognized MC who has only been in Pine Springs for a week. The only possible explanation for this recognition is if they share the same blood, or if the ghost can see a resemblance of her own daughter (MC’s mom) in MC.

It is the only plausible explanation of why Grandpa would choose to be associated to the cult. Perhaps he is looking for a way to free his wife or avenge her by infiltrating the cult. Note that he is the only one among them who is poor. As to his speech that he wanted to harness The Power to live longer, it seems hard to believe that an old man who has no family or riches would want to live longer in this world.

It has been repeatedly emphasized that the lake entity is angry about something that had hurt her. The ghost of the grandmother behaves similarly to MC and Elliot in this way:

MC is at least 18 years old because he/she is of legal age and is in college. When MC was seven years old, his/her biological father left his/her mom who ended up with Todd and gave birth to Elliot. Therefore, MC is at least seven years older than Elliot and Elliot is a pubescent teenager who is likely between ages 13-16. This puts MC’s age closer to 20 years or above. Now remember MC mentioned that they never met Grandpa Arthur. This means that their mom left Pine Springs at least 20 years ago. Perhaps she left Pine Springs to protect her unborn baby from the danger of knowing about the cult.

Now, I have no evidence for this, but I also think that a cult member needs an heir to pass his/her rank onto (or maybe to sacrifice later on). Astrid and Vincent Wescott have Imogen. Richard Sutcliffe has Robbie. Grandpa had MC’s mom. Perhaps Chief Kelley adopted Parker so he can be his heir. If this is true, it can explain why MC’s mom left Pine Springs: because she did not want her child to eventually be associated with the cult.

So why did the cult kill MC’s mother? Why did they save MC and Elliot from the lake entity? If the lake entity is their grandmother, why did she attempt to drown MC and Elliot?

Why the lake entity is drowning people

The ghost in the lake has been drowning people by luring them towards the water. According to Ned, his wife was the third victim that year, Kyle was the second this month, and it has been happening more frequently of late.

“The Power’s true strength comes from its connection with its followers. [Cora]” The more cult members there are and the more frequently they interact with The Power, the stronger both parties get. By trapping Dan in the clearing, Jane lured the ILITW gang into the woods so she can establish a connection with them and become stronger. When Goddard asked a member of The Arcane Society of Westchester if he could join them, the member was delighted and immediately agreed. Similarly, the cult in Pine Springs has been benefiting from recruiting more members, which is exactly how a pyramid scheme works.

In ILITW, a doctor took note of the pattern of an epidemic in Westchester which is characterized by an influx of coma patients, closely followed by the death of one or more people, and then a period of quiet. Cora revealed that when The Power grows too strong just as Jane did, it tends to feed on the life force of human beings who could fall into a coma or eventually die.

Perhaps The Power needs to feed on more people just as the The Society recruits more members. However, It does not make sense why the cult would want to put the ghost to rest because then, it would sever their connection and consequentially, their powers too.

What the ghost in the lake wants

It could be merely coincidental, but the drownings began 20 years ago, at the same time that MC’s mom left Pine Springs. This is a bold leap of intuition, but I think that the key to putting the soul of the grandmother to rest lies in her own blood or DNA. (Grandpa Arthur said this kind of power requires blood and sacrifice, and Imogen had to offer a drop of blood during the initiation.)

The only three people with whom the lake entity shares her blood are MC, Elliot, and their mother. When Vincent drove MC and Elliot home, he made sure to check if they have any other relatives, and MC confirmed that they do not.

Perhaps the cultists who betrayed the rest of The Society killed MC’s mom so that her blood could no longer be used to put the ghost to rest.

I do not have an explanation as to why Astrid saved MC and Elliot from the ghost and what the cult intends to do with them, but it is worth noting that the ghost tried to get her hands on MC five separate times, and on Elliot two separate times. Perhaps she recognizes them as her kin and perhaps she understands that their blood is the key to freeing her soul. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that she hasn’t killed Elliot yet.

Finally, we know that the lake entity and the cultists hate each other because of the massacre that happened in 1976, and when she repeatedly says “Kill them all”, she could be telling MC to kill all the cultists.

As the story progresses, we will see which cultists have good and bad intentions.

(Further theory: Proof that Vincent and Kelley are lying)

#Choices #Choices Stories You Play #playchoices #it lives beneath #ilb #it lives in the woods #it lives series #ilitw

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transcending-chaos · 7 years ago

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Writing Religions 101

Okay, so I’m not just gonna bitch about this tonight, here’s a quick 101 on writing these things. This is one heck of a long post, but hopefully it’ll explain things well enough.

CLASSIFICATIONS

There are measurements and rules as to what classifies/what is considered a religion, especially if you want to write an Organized Religion. As such, here are the definitions again, as well as what they entail:

Religion is a group of collected beliefs passed down either through generational storytelling, instruction, or conversion. These beliefs have significance, importance, and prevalence in the adherents’ society, social activities, personal lives, relationships, and world views

Basically, religions are (often) archaic or long-standing, established beliefs that have weathered the passage of time or transformed along with it. They spread via common story-telling, through writing, generational teachings, familial traditions, are have bearing in an individual adherent’s life in some form, even if it’s mild superstition. It is a cultural tool used to help inform a worldview, and teach the uninformed or uninitiated. Yes, this can be bad, and yes it can be good, but it needs to have impact that resonates with the masses- even if it’s contained to one area. The resonance and personal value is what quantifies it as a religion in the first place; yes this varies from person to person, but without that quality, validity, attachment, and lens to help view the world through, it is not considered a religion or faith.

If this sounds strange, that’s because you’re trying to measure and quantify feeling, emotional and spiritual attachment, and give it value to be measured by. It’s a hard thing to do, but it can be done. It’s the attachment of people and principles, their devotion, their community and connection with a cause and ideal that is bigger than themselves.

So, that’s the broadest definition I can give, now to the sub-categories.

Organized Religion is a religious structure, narrative, values, and set of beliefs specified in a formally established doctrine that has interpreters, leaders, and systems. These are post-literate, meaning written or containing documents, and can be read or translated.

Any religion with definitive text and interpreter (preacher, spiritual leader)

This means that the religion has been written down and there is a structure and format to the members. Be it a hierarchy with different tiers, a community with a single speaker who reads, defines, and provides context for the text, or a structure where people take turns, Organized Religions have to be organized. There are systems to keep order, often for the sake of keeping the message of the text clear and unified, and this is what allows Organized Religions to spread so easily when compared to their counterpart. They often have community outreach or influence, they have a tendency to be much larger than Folk Religions, as well as considered more ‘valid’ in the eyes of the law because of their prevalence and the beneficial value they bring to the masses.

Please note that Organized Religions do not always mean Theocracies, though if you’re going to make a believable theocratic structure, you might want to use this one because it’d be a larger threat.

Folk Religion is/are social concepts followed by groups of people often determined by old superstitions and regional practices.

This one is harder to define because it can be offensive or insinuate that a group’s customs or traditions are not a ‘valid’ religion. Everything from tribal religions, forgotten ancient customs that few still practice, to civil religions can be considered Folk Religion.

Folk Religions are like old wives’ tales that are specific to regions or smaller territories than Organized Religions, as well as not usually written down. These have a far greater emphasis on oral storytelling and generational teachings, and of the two, are the ones with more malleable symbols and structures, but ultimately the morals and messaging should reach the same conclusion. These tales are more like superstition, often subtle, and often very simple. Considering a black cat crossing your path as bad luck is an example, throwing salt over your left shoulder if you spill it is another. Heck, if a town has ghost stories that are shared and reiterated over generations, than that’s a form of Folk Religion.

Cult as a term used to refer to those devoted to certain sects of larger religions. (For instance those who were devoted to a certain Saint in Catholicism would be considered a cult, but they still followed the larger practices and doctrine of the Catholic teachings.)

New movements within larger religions were usually classified as cults before becoming established sects.

In the traditional sense, Cults really were just smaller facets of larger religions that were devoted to another god within a pantheon, a saint within the host, etc. Also, anything new or not established were considered cults, as they were not formally organized, as widespread, or long-standing as the other two types of religions.

In the modern sense, cults are groups that practice a predatory method of recruitment and extremist ideals. Cults can rise to the level of organized religions, but doing so takes great periods of time, devotion from followers, outreach, influence, etc.

WHY DO CLASSIFICATIONS MATTER?

Quite simply, it determines structure, influence, validity (as determined by law), acceptance by outsiders, and the gauge your characters’ faith will be measured by. These criteria are put in place so that no one can make up something and then just say it’s a religion to get out of doing something else or breaking a law; it’s a way of categorizing and verifying that something is indeed intrinsic to one’s way of life.

Religion *has* to matter to your world if you give it one; it must have impact in some way. Does this mean your character has to have faith? No, absolutely not. But if you mention religion or begin to hint at one, be prepared to at least write the basic ramifications/effects of it existing in your world.

WAYS RELIGION HAS IMPACT/THE ‘WHY’ OF HAVING RELIGION

Religions are forms of mythology, ways that were established to explain the world when people did not know much about it.

Religions pass down traditions and connect multiple generations of people

Religions can unify nations and create peace/community through common belief

Religions dictate morality, good conduct, bad conduct, and consequences for actions

Religions were used to maintain order during periods of great social change

Religions offered entertainment for the masses or distractions from hard work as most are filled with parables

Religions offer comfort, solidarity, and purpose to those who need/seek it (ie. ‘finding faith’)

These are all explanations of why we have religions to begin with; whether it’s an old mythology that was once used to explain the world, or a collection of stories that withstood the test of time and slowly was transformed into something greater, these are reasons we have religions today. You must have a why, be it because of people trying to make the world into something they could fathom, actual divine instruction/intervention, or something someone made up and established a long time ago to create an empire, there has to be a reason. There must be a catalyst: a prophet or leader, an event, an object, something that still holds great relevance and meaning in the current day and age.

If you want an old-world religion, then go with the myth, tradition, and morality reasons.

If you want a religion that’s being used to manipulate the way a certain group of people thinks and interprets the world (via a theocracy), then go the route of choosing unification, morality, maintaining order (to repress change), and comfort.

If you want more of a Folk Religion path, choose something more like morality and entertainment.

Yet whatever the case, keep in mind that in order for your religion to stay around in your world, it must have a redeeming value. This is why ‘comfort’ is on the list. People will ignore reason and fight for what makes them feel good. It’s a good scapegoat if you’re struggling to come up with other reasons.

IMPACT AND SYMBOLS

Here is where you let your creative side go nuts. Because your religion has relevance to groups of people and their worldview, it’s obviously impacted how they interact with the world. Your doctrine can be as broad or specific as you like, but it needs to have bearing on the world and/or it’s people. THERE MUST BE EFFECTS.

Symbols can be anything, for instance:

Christian Symbols:

-Christian Symbols focus predominantly on morality and the superiority of God

--Depending on what sect is using the symbols, certain images and techniques are more common

--Typically triumph Christian morals and viewpoints but these change based on the sects

-God Conquers All narrative

-Crosses (St. Peter’s Cross, the Crucifix) -humility, sacrifice, martyrdom, faith, carrying the weight of one’s sins

-Saints, Humans -servitude, reward, dedication, devotion, the images of God

-Angels -protection, devotion, messengers/heralds, divine interaction

-The Color Red -blood of Christ, sacrifice, fire and brimstone, hell and damnation

-The Color White -innocence, purity, virginity, perfection, divinity

-Theme of Unity and Edenic Worlds

-Theme of Virtue over Sin and/or Hypocrisy

-Theme of Conversion

Pagan Symbols

-Spirals and Knotwork -Pantheism, connection to all things

-Elements -Nature is Holy, Nature is God/powerful

-Magic -Transformation is necessary and natural, everyone and everything has power and importance

-Animals

--Predators are representative of savagery and forces greater than man

--Prey are humility, representative of humans, and how even the seemingly insignificant have important roles

--Sacrifices to or embodiments of God(s)

These symbols are highly malleable and change through the years to keep their relevance, but this is a rough outline of some very basic concepts.

Ultimately, choose your symbols with care and relevance to your created faiths.

WHY HAVE RELIGIONS AT ALL IN A NARRATIVE?

Aside from being a way to increase the scale of conflict to unfathomable and ancient wars between the very embodiments of good and evil, it’s a very easy way to get morals across as long as you’re clear in your messaging. Religions are very personal beliefs that are transcendental from culture to culture, relating themes in a concise manner (parables), and are often very human -because they have to relate to humans (I mean, in our world at least). They exist to fill needs, and whether those needs have gone and past are up to you in your narrative. Once again, they are cultural tools used to help inform a worldview, and teach the uninformed or uninitiated.

The possibilities are endless, but treat them with care.

For instance Religions can impact:

-Arts: fashion/visual arts/music/poetry/writing

-Sciences: the progression of how fields go forwards/sponsoring new fields of study

-Humanities: social structures/hierarchies/types of (un)favorable behavior/values of society

Literally anything and everything can be affected by religion, entire societies rise and fall with it.

These are just the most essential elements you need to write something that qualifies as a religion in your works. The broadness of the terms gives you a lot of room to explore, but it has to have substance, meaning, relevance, and an effect. Remember, you’re trying to validate and quantify things that are, by nature, unquantifiable.

#thoughts on writing #i will fix any typos later but holy heck man #this was long

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thevoxybunch · 7 years ago

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more thoughts on boxman’s parenting

its just more rumination and observations. i have a lot of thoughts about it and i kinda wanted them in one place. everyone is free to ignore or engage as they wish.

at first a lot of the bad parenting came across as really, really cartoony, and its only until more recent episodes that it took a dive for the worst. stuff like boxman throwing darrell's head in a furnace even suddenly seems inconsequential when you learn that darrell likes to explode his body for fun and that they're a hivemind of sort. and ive already mentioned how it feels out of place for boxman’s character, but it hardly changes that it is in fact boxman’s character.

there seems to be a strong emphasis in parenting in this show in general, too. i enjoy the fact we've seen all sorts of families in the show, both from villains and heroes. i know as someone who was raised by a single mom, ko and carol are really relatable. anyway. the show continues this emphasis in villains night out/in where in the same episode(s) we were shown examples of venomous’ good parenting in contrast to boxman’s bad parenting. a lot of the times i keep wondering what the ok ko crew wants to accomplish. there is after all as diverse parenting as there is children, and while i do not underestimate the intelligence a child audience is capable of, i do find myself wondering what they’re trying to pull off with cartoon characters parenting in the same style cult leaders do to keep loyalty in their inner circles. ok ko has depth, correct, but its also a show that's major appeal has to do with how much it doesn't take itself serious.

listen. okay. i think what im trying to say is that the reason i'm wary of all of this is that while boxman is a great character, my favorite even, how am i supposed to react to a show that portrays an abusive father as sympathetic and likable? its less about my feelings towards boxman as a character, but more about my feelings about the show's writing and the crew's choices.

what are the possible outcomes of this?

i keep thinking about how committed the ok ko would have to be in this topic. i think that's why im wary, im uncertain of their commitment to portray such a delicate topic to an audience of children. its not something thats black and white to actual abuse victims. its a delicate topic with a lot of nuance.

here's the thing, there are kids getting abused in real life. and im sure among some of them enjoy ok ko. and kids are really, really forgiving of their parents. even when they hurt them. its not really until they're a lot older and they have hopefully, ideally, have disentangled themselves from their parent's grip on their reality, that they must confront the decision of forgiveness with more open eyes. because as kids, we don't fully comprehend how a certain power dynamic is being abused, we just feel it. some of us don't even process our abuse as a survival tactic and it isnt until we become older that we have to relive those memories without filters. its only when victims really grow up is when they can understand and both sympathize and condemn their parents appropriately. they learn that it wasn't their fault. they learn that while perhaps one parent was suffering from a bad relationship, that doesn't mean the kid has to pay for it. basically, we see a fuller picture. we can see why a parent acted a certain way, without having to justify it or forgive it. and even those who forgive their abusers, are often fully aware they are under no obligation to provide forgiveness. if forgiveness is extended its because the victim still finds something beneficial in it, its for them is what im saying. but its never because an abuser is /owed/ forgiveness, by default, even if they have changed. look you see how complicated that all is?

like what im trying to get at is even if boxman suddenly becomes a better parent in the show it wouldn't change the fact that he had abused his kids in the past. we can speculate for days about why boxman parents the way he does, i've seen all sorts of interesting theories, but none of them would be close to enough justification for parenting vulnerable teenage minded robot children. when and if the changes in boxman's behaviors happen, how will it be portrayed? will we see the robot kids learning to carefully, very cautiouslly, demand better, providing a positive example for kids in these same situations? will they finally act out like kids being hurt often do? will everything be "okay" now and will boxman never, ever, mess up again? will the robot kids have the chance to see boxman unfiltered in a way thats usually, realistically, only accomplished by victims who become adults? how would the writers show what would happen if boxman slips up? will there a message to more adult audiences of the show that even if you can't change the past you can still change things now? that its not too late? but your kids still, will never, owe you anything?

listen. i know a lot of what im touching here may seem it as an exaggeration. and maybe it is. but im preoccupied with the fact that there are real kids out there, with confused, conflicting, feelings about their parents who have both hurt them and nurtured them. growing up like that is disorienting. it influences how you perceive love and affection and disrespect all the same. and because of this, i think about how those same kids might respond to whatever developments the show decides to do. i know for me, cartoons taught me things that no one else would. i learned how to communicate because of television. and i think if this bad parenting is supposed to be cartoony, they're doing a bad job at portraying it that way. many people have already touched upon how close to home some of boxman's scenes with his kids are. kids can probably laugh at a cartoon character throwing a robot in a furnace, but what happens when you have that same cartoon character manipulate his kids? one scenario is distanced from reality while the other is not.

listen. at the end of the day, its not even about boxman. i just feel like if you're going to have a show that portrays real abuse then you better show what real healing looks like too.

#long post //#lord boxman #abuse mention /#ok ko #vio rambles #ok ko critical #I GUESS????#i couldnt think of anything else appropiate

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exit-babylon · 4 years ago

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2020: Future of USA & Australia

Coming to a town near you ...

For before these days there was no hire for man, nor any hire for beast; neither was there any peace to him that went out or came in because of the affliction: for I set all men everyone against his neighbour. (Zechariah 8:10)

During the 1960s, KGB officer Yuri Bezmenov worked for the Communist equivalent of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, the Novosti Press Agency. Novosti produced disinformation: slanted and false stories to plant in the foreign media. Bezmenov specialised in aiding the infiltration and overthrow of foreign governments by deceiving (hand-picked) visiting international journalists and academics into falsely reporting in the West that life in communist Russia was healthy, even desirable and romantic. This was a means of spreading propaganda to the West and increasing the spread of Marxist-Lenin doctrine by Communist subverters in academia, journalism, Hollywood and politics.

Bezmenov attested to the truly hellish existence under ‘Soviet fascism’ where the government arranged marriages and sent independent thinkers to labour camps and firing squads. More than two people standing on a Soviet street corner constituted grounds for arrest and internment (just like today). Painting horses galloping against a tumultuous stormy background was grounds for arrest, since this symbolised uprising against the State.

In 1970, Bezmenov defected to the USA and changed his name to Tomas Schuman. There he spent his remaining life warning America to rid itself of the Marxist-Lenin doctrine infiltrating Western culture. In 1984, he wrote:[1]

My dear friends, I think you are in big trouble. Whether you believe it or not, YOU ARE AT WAR. And you may lose this war very soon, together with all your affluence and freedoms, unless you start defending yourselves. I hope you have noticed on your color televisions that there is in fact war going on right now all over this planet. This war has many faces, but it’s all the same — it’s war. Some call it “national liberation”, some title it “class struggle” or “political terrorism”. Others call it “anticolonialism” or “struggle for majority rule”. Some even come up with such fancy names as “war of patriotic forces” or “peace movement”. I call it World Communist Aggression…

The final stage of Communist aggression — military confrontation — has very little to do with rivalry for territorial or geopolitical gains in order to free and liberate. Communist world aggression is a total war against humanity and human civilization. In Communist propaganda terms, this is “the final struggle for the victory of Communism.

No matter how many problems you think the U.S. may have, believe me when I say that they are nothing in comparison to the troubles you will experience if the U.S. continues to agree and sympathize with communist/socialist doctrines…

IDEOLOGICAL SUBVERSION

The KGB’s main (85%) activity is subversion. In Soviet terminology, ‘subversion’ always means a destructive, aggressive activity aimed to destroy the country of your enemy. Subversion activities are overt and legal. A typical subverter is an exchange student, diplomat, actor, artist, a journalist. You can’t subvert an enemy who doesn’t want to be subverted. Bezmenov wrote:

An integral part of this war of ideology is IDEOLOGICAL SUBVERSION — the process of changing the perception of reality in the minds of millions of peoples all over the world. The late comrade Andropov, the former head of the Soviet KGB called this war of Communist aggression:

“The final struggle for the MINDS and hearts of the people.”

The art of duping the masses into doing things to their own disadvantage and making them believe it is “the will of people” is as ancient as mankind itself.

The essence of subversion is best expressed in the famous Marxist slogan, (if you substitute “proletarians” for a more appropriate word):

Useful idiots of the world – UNITE!

To achieve the desired effect, the subverter must first — make idiots out of normal people, and DIVIDE them, before turning the people into a homogenized mass of useful and united idiots. Tanks and missiles may or may not be needed at final stage. For the time being they are simply the means of terrorising people into inaction and submission.

500 years before Christ, the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu formulated the principle of subversion this way:

Cover with ridicule all of the valid traditions in your opponent’s country.

Implicate their leaders in criminal affairs and turn them over to the scorn of their populace at the right time;

Disrupt the work of their government by every means;

Do not shun the aid of the lowest and most despicable individuals of your enemy’s country.

Spread disunity and dispute among the citizens.

Turn the young against the old.

Be generous with promises and rewards to collaborators and accomplices.

Sound familiar? About 2500 years later we can read this very same instruction in a secret document, allegedly authored by the Communist International for their “young revolutionaries”. The document is titled “Rules of Revolution”:

RULES OF REVOLUTION

Corrupt the young, get them interested in sex, take them away from religion. Make them superficial and enfeebled.

Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial issues of no importance.

Destroy people’s faith in their national leaders by holding the latter up for contempt, ridicule and disgrace.

Always preach democracy but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible.

By encouraging government extravagances, destroy its credit, produce years of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.

Incite unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of the government towards such disorders.

Cause breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety, self-restraint, faith in the pledged word.

4 STAGES OF SUBVERSION

Bezmenov detailed the four stages of Soviet Ideological Subversion:

Demoralisation

Destabilisation

Crisis

Normalisation (Marshall Law)

Stage 1: DEMORALISATION

This is also called psychological warfare, ideological aggression, or propaganda warfare). It takes 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation because this is the minimum number of years needed to ‘re-educate’ a single of generation of students via Marxist ideology. There are three levels of demoralisation:

Ideas (consciousness)

Structures

Life.

Demoralisation of Ideas involves the subversion of vital areas including religion, education, media and culture. Communism (and its Marxist-Leninist dogma) is a distorted form of faith. Subversion of ideas involves substituting the traditional values of the Judeo-Christian heritage with “Marxist-Satanic faith.” To achieve this, subverters politicise and commercialise the dominant religions and turn them into forms of entertainment. Bezmenov said this included:

Development and spreading of various religious cults, including Satanic and Death cults; preaching moral relativity and removing religion (and prayer, ANY prayer) from schools; creating ‘personality cults’ in religion whereby the preacher becomes the center and object of divine worship, not God (often your religious charlatans claims to be ‘incarnations’ of God, or even God Himself) etc…

Let’s start with the most ‘innocent’ method of destroying religion, namely, making it ENTERTAINING. To attract people and MONEY to ‘established’ religious organizations some churches have literally become theaters conducting variety shows featuring celebrities from the entertainment ‘industry’ who perform for ‘fees’. The KGB Agents of Influence may or may not have to physically manipulate these entertainment arrangements. The indiscriminate choice of the ‘celebrities’ for these church ‘performances’ is usually quite pleasing to the KGB. A group of rock or pop-musicians with a message of ‘social-justice’ sugar-coated in popular ‘spiritual’ tunes can be actually more helpful to the KGB than someone standing in the pulpit preaching Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

COMMERCIALISATION of religion does the same thing. If the church has to SOLICIT your money and remind you over and over again in every TV show to contribute (with telephone numbers to pledge donations), that only means and infers that there is something basically wrong with your faith. Faithful people do not have to be ASKED for money, they tithe to their churches voluntarily and eagerly. Unhealthy competition for donations between various ‘electronic churches’ does two things beneficial to the subverter:

Makes religion dependent on the most successful ‘salesmen’ of God (not necessarily of the highest moral standards). Thus, truly moral and God-centred people are turned off by organized religion.

EMPTIES regular churches, where you have to practice your religion by personal physical presence and participation and involvement.

Politicizing religion is the most efficient method of demoralizing a target nation. The subverter uses moral values for dissemination and enforcement of amoral ideas and policies. Churches become involved in such things as ‘social justice’ and partisan political squabbles and loses focus on mercy and the grace of God. The most powerful instrument of this process is the KGB-infiltrated World Council of Churches.

Dr. Shafarevich in analysing the ‘dead’ civilizations of Egypt, Maya, Mohenjo-Dara, Babylon, etc., comes to an ominous conclusion:

EVERY ONE OF THESE CIVILIZATIONS DIED WHEN PEOPLE REJECTED RELIGION AND GOD, AND TRIED TO CREATE ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE’ ALONG THE SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES.

The Marxist-Leninist concept of education emphasizes ‘environment’ and ‘mass’ character of education over individual abilities and quality… The American romance with state-run education as encouraged by KGB subverters has already produced generations of graduates who cannot spell, cannot find Nicaragua on a world map, cannot THINK creatively and independently. The main methods of Soviet DEMORALISATION of American education include:

Flooding of campus bookstores with Marxist and Socialist literature.

Infiltration of schools and universities by radicals, leftists, and simply ‘disturbers’, often functioning unknowingly under the direct guidance of KGB Agents of Influence.

Establishing numerous ‘student’ newspapers and magazines, staffed with Communists and sympathizers.

Introducing NON-ISSUES is another means of demoralising at the level of Ideas. A non-issue is:

An issue, the solution of which creates more and bigger problems for majority of a nation, even though it may benefit a few, is a non-issue (civil rights of homosexuals is not an issue; defending sexual morality is the larger, real issue). The main purpose of non-issues and the devastating result of their introduction is the SIDE-TRACKING of public opinion, energy (both mental and physical), money and TIME from the constructive solutions.

Minority rights of artificially created divisions – women, gays, Muslims, or black, Indigenous, or Asian people – are an intentional distraction of ‘no importance’ considering the overall loss of human rights being experienced by all. Gay rights are of no importance compared to the rights of child sex trafficking victims – an issue crowds never protest.

Cultural subversion includes the promotion of garbage culture – i.e., anything that prompts teenage insubordination, confuses and frustrates parents, breaks down discipline, and encourages relaxation of authority. A main focus is developing obscure, talentless, immoral musicians and actors into teenage role models. Another focus is the embracement of Eastern spiritual practices, like meditation and marijuana, that encourage one to sit and do nothing. Similarly, Eastern practises in psychology encourage the individual to do nothing.

Demoralisation of the following socio/ political/ economical structures includes:

Judicial and law enforcement system. Promoting legalism instead of justice. Treating criminals as ‘underprivileged’ victims, creates mistrust of the police and courts, and makes people demand harsher punishments and stricter controls for fighting crime.

Public organizations and institutions dealing with relations between individuals, groups and classes of the society.

Security and defence organisations.

Internal political parties and groups.

Foreign policy formulating bodies (academia, think-tanks, Sovietology advisors).

Similarly, in the area of social life, by encouraging you to put your individual RIGHTS over your OBLIGATIONS (any obligations — private, financial, moral, patriotic etc.) the subverter achieves the desired effect: a society composed of IRRESPONSIBLE INDIVI- DUALS, each one “doing his own thing”, and acting according to the “law of jungle”. Such subversion of society is the first step to tyranny.

To demoralise law enforcement, Police were called ‘pigs’ and ‘fascists,’ police agencies watching over subverters and radicals were called ‘spies’ (by the American Union of Civil Liberties) and disbanded, criminals were recruited as police which destroyed police integrity and reputation. Consequently, within 20 years the public lacked civil laws or protection from criminals. The destruction of the police force justifies bringing in the army to replace them.

Demoralisation in areas of family life, health services, food consumption, inter-racial relations, population control, and distribution and labour relations. Marxist-Leninist ideology disguised as “social theories” have greatly contributed to family break-ups, to create children disloyal to families but loyal to the State.

Racial and ethnic interrelations is one of the most vulnerable areas for demoralization… [American] society is the least discriminatory. The Communist ‘solution’ for racial problem is ‘final’: they simply murder those who are different and stubbornly insist on remaining different. Stalin played with whole populations of ‘ethnics’ — ‘resettling’ Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians in Siberia, relocating Crimean Tartars from the tropics to permafrost and Koreans from the Far East to the Kazakhstan deserts…

The present day ‘solution’ to racial inequality is borrowed from Communist mythology: EQUALITY of all racial and ethnic groups LEGISLATED by the government and ENFORCED by state bureaucracies. We know perfectly well that neither races nor INDIVIDUALS are equal, in every respect. We know that every nation and race have its peculiar character, abilities, traditions, mentality, and ability to learn and its individual PACE OF DEVELOPMENT. By mimicking the Soviet ‘national policy’ of equality America simply erases the distinct racial characteristics that have made this country great.

The removal of private land is an important method of demoralisation because:

the poor farmer often is a greater PATRIOT than an affluent dweller of a large congested American city. Communists know this very well… the farmer will fight an invader until last bullet ON HIS LAND. “Underprivileged” or urbanized masses on the other hand, may feel like meeting an invader with flowers and red banners.

Concerning labour relations, the ideological infiltration of labour is well documented. Teachers are the best examples of whinging Marxists. Since Gough Whitlam’s communist cabinet in the 1970s, teachers have spent more time striking for more pay, less work, and more holidays, than producing kids that can actually read and write.

Stage 2: DESTABILISATION

Destabilisation takes 2 to 5 years. The focus here is on the country’s internal power structures, foreign relations, and economy. The first symptom of instability is expressed as the desire of the population to bring to power those politicians and parties who are charismatic, act like good “caretakers” and promise job “security” and “free” social services rather than protection from external and foreign enemies. Think Obamacare.

Stage 3: CRISIS

This stage takes 2 to 6 months. This is the stage we are globally now at.

At this third stage of subversion you will have all your American ‘radicals’ and Soviet ‘sleeper’ agents springing into action, trying to ‘seize power as quickly and ruthlessly as possible… If all the previous stages of Soviet subversion have been successfully completed by that time, the majority of Americans will be so totally confused that they may even WELCOME some ‘strong’ leaders…

The leaders will be given almost unlimited ’emergency powers’.

A forceful change of the U.S. system may or may not be accomplished through a civil war or internal revolution… But change it will be, and rather a drastic one, with all the familiar attributes of Soviet ‘progress’ being instituted such as NATIONALIZATION of vital industries, the reduction of the ‘private sector’ of the economy to the bare minimum, the redistribution of wealth and a massive propaganda campaign by the newly ‘elected’ government to ‘explain’ and justify the reforms.

No, no concentration camps and executions. Not yet. That will come later at:

Stage 4: NORMALISATION

To avoid ‘the bloodshed’, the subverter moves to normalisation. Normalisation is where a country is brought by force into the normal state of socialism. This is where dissidents are placed in camps and publicly or privately executed.

The New Order will need STABILITY and NEW MORALITY. No more ‘grass roots’ movements. No more criticism of the State. The Press will obediently censor itself.

So, Bezmenov predicted the systematic destruction of America’s Judeo-Christian democracy that would culminate in the violent riots occurring in America now, followed by Marshall Law and the instalment of a ‘Communist-fascist’ regime under which everyone will achieve the equality y’all were deceived into protested for – equal oppression.

I have spent my entire life resisting every point on this chart. I watched in horror and confusion as Marxist doctrine ruined my primary, secondary and tertiary education. Soviet Vygotsky stalked me in every course I studied, from gifted education to psychology, to law. The emphasis was on everybody being the same, even if that meant denying the special needs of high IQ kids. Everybody got the same result, no matter how hard they tried. Zero value was placed on creativity, individuality, or being right. There was no right – except in math and science – because ‘right’ depended on your frame of reference, your interpretation of reality. There was no one reality – oh, except in science, where eugenicist evolutionary theory was the only right, and believing in a Biblical God was so wrong. I was the only person who ever took a stand in social settings like the classroom, or work, or church. No one ever stood with me. It felt like those dreaded ‘group’ projects at school or university – I ended up doing the work of five people. And you know what, I’m tired of peoples’ apathy – and so is God.

For 50 years, I’ve watched my friends, family and peers stay perpetually drunk and stoned; worship grubby musicians whose ‘music’ grated on my nervous system; shag whoever and use abortion as birth control; marry just so they could play princess for a day – twice; dump their newborns in Soviet-style day care institutions for ‘socialisation’ and later wonder why their kids bit people; toss their marriages aside like fast food wrapping when things got a little tough; commit the same mistakes with a new batch of lives while leaving their first family feeling abandoned and suicidal; resort to plastic surgery to stay presentable for one last fling before they die; and ultimately blame a ‘non-existent’ God when everything went to shit.

And now, the entire world has gone to shit. And I will tell you who is responsible for our current situation:

Those who thought they were good people because they didn’t overtly harm others. What they didn’t realise was, their selfish actions contributed to the destruction of society.

Those who felt more passionate about basketball and soccer rather than justice.

Those who put more time, energy and money into campaigning for the rights of bilbies instead of aborted babies.

Those who preached against the evils of eating meat instead of supporting victims of child abuse.

Those who taught evolutionary theory to science students, and then embraced the idea that we were created by aliens – while mocking the concept of a Biblical Creator.

Those who ‘explored their sexuality’ (aka, became sluts), turned sex into their religion and replaced church with sex clubs (that surely transformed into pedophile kill venues after the ‘straight’ folks left for the night).

Those ‘millennial’ assholes I studied with, for whom selfishness is so normal it’s neurologically impossible for them to comprehend the concept of altruism.

Those who mistook church for a social club and tolerated the infiltration of Freemasons and Satanists.

Those morons who considered that Marxist mind-controlled imp Greta Thunberg a hero, when her social media pages were actually run by her father and a UN activist.

HISTORY ALWAYS REPEATS

The problem is that no one studies history anymore, which explains why we fail to notice history repeating itself. To illustrate, Bezmenov read the following information in KGB files:

The South Vietnamese city of Hue had been captured by the Hanoi Communists. When it was re-captured by the US Army and allied forces, only two days later, the CIA discovered to their horror that several thousand Vietnamese – teachers, priests, Buddhists, businessmen, and educated citizens – everyone who was ‘pro-American’ had been rounded up by the invaders and IN ONE NIGHT, taken out of the city limits and executed collectively. Some were shot. Others, with their hands tied by electric wire, were found with their skulls crushed-in by shovels and iron bars. ‘How could they possibly have located all of these people within only a few hours in a large city?’ – the Americans wondered. I thought I knew the answer.

Long before the invasion, there was an extensive network of Communist informers working under the guidance of the Soviet embassy in Hanoi — that is under the KGB. The Communists filed every bit of information: addresses, personal habits, political affiliations, expressed ideas, unexpressed thoughts revealed in informal and private conversations, even the names and addresses of relatives, friends, even lovers and mistresses of the future victims of ‘liberation.’

Everyone today is under similar surveillance, except now the ‘Communist-Fascist’ regime use Facebook and Twitter to identify dissidents and whistle-blowers. Those who press ‘Like’ on an anti-establishment social media post one too many times are tagged for the coming collective execution.

A TRUE PROPHET

A decade ago, Virginian John ‘Jack’ Johnson predicted exactly what is hitting America (and Australia) right now: unemployment, food shortages, inflation, riots, plus what is coming next. He wrote on his site (United States Prophecy):

We are going into a total economic crash and a great depression the likes that have never, ever come upon the earth. This is God’s justice! For every evil thing that befalls man, 90% of the time it is self-inflicted. We did not learn our lesson from World War II and the Nazi’s Third Reich, so now the Fourth Reich is coming into power right before our eyes. The Fourth beast, which is World Communism, has now come into play. This all could have been avoided had the church stood up against sorcery, witchcraft and communism! Thanks to the Clinton administration you now have over 800 FEMA Concentration camps for the Fourth Reich to imprison you, which one will you be going to? This does not even touch the tip of the iceberg for what this nation has done.

Jack saw a vision of America being invaded by Communist China and Russia and bombed with nuclear warheads:

During the same time as the vision about the state of Florida in July of 1995, God gave me a vision of a massive army coming down on America. He said, “John, I am going to allow the enemies of the United States to judge America. When America’s enemies come, they will have no mercy on the men, women and children. I saw troop movement and they appeared to be Communist Chinese and Russian troops coming into the United States. As they came in, America was no match. I saw churches and synagogues were being levelled by heavy artillery. As the churches were being blown up, I saw Jews and Christians being herded up and shot like cattle in front of their churches and homes. I saw the troops killing children and infants with their bayonets. I saw the American people tormented beyond imagination. The troops were void of emotions. Their objective is to take the nation and take it hands down. All able-bodied working people will be forced into slave labour. Some will be taken to other countries and some left here. The soldier’s main objective was to kill all Jews and Christians. As I am seeing all this horror I asked, “Lord, what is happening?” He said, “Because of the wickedness of the United States of America I am allowing her enemies to invade her lands.”

Judgement will begin with the church social clubs thanks to the ‘goat farmers’ – the pretend pastors who put on a rock concert every week instead of preaching and teaching about intercessory prayer and spiritual warfare. These goat herders rounded up the sheep flocks to slaughter. The churches and synagogues will be wiped out because that is what Americans chose. America has chosen Nazi-Communism over Biblical Christianity. Jack had a vision of the fate of these churches. God said:

“This is all entertainment and spectacle. They do not care about me or my teachings, it is all entertainment. Ninety-nine percent of the worshiping that you see with this rock and roll band and with the golden calf is sin in my eyes!”

After they hyped the people up with their worship, I noticed that not one song pertained to the cleansing blood of Christ Jesus for the remission of sin and for healing and deliverance. The worship was for entertainment and they deleted every song that pertained to the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. The reason is because they are in gross sin and the thought of the blood of Jesus makes them cringe. Without hearing of the blood of Jesus they would not be made to think of their sin.

Then the Father said “These are nothing but dead symbols, they do not impress me at all.”

The Pastor got up and read a few announcements and told how sweet everything is and how well everything is going. He spoke about the building funds and all that the church was doing…

He said “Let me explain something to you. The goat farmers never preach on gross sin or wickedness. They never preach or talk about eternal damnation. They preach prosperity gospel and never talk about going into the Garden of Gethsemane to be tested and broken…”

As I looked through the congregation they were all clapping and cheering. They were all very wealthy and were making some kind of confession of Jesus, but deep down inside they did not know Him…

The goat farmer pastor told the people/goats that God was going to bless everybody and told them to make sure they give their weekly tithe. He said to give ten percent of their weekly income and God would bless them ten fold.

What amazed me was that the goat farmers are riding around in 60 and 70 thousand dollar cars, living in $700,000 to one million dollar homes, plus all the perks and per diems that go with it….

I looked and beheld the prophets of the church, and they were prophesying about the great by and by and how great everything was and how God was going to bless them, and how God was going to take care of them and do all these great things, and that they were all going to have great wealth and prosperity…

The goat farmer Pastor then gave a lukewarm, watered down message to the congregation… He never mentioned repentance of gross sin, sexual morality, witchcraft, sorcery, idolatry, pride, hatred, bitterness, envy, strife, lust, fornication, adultery.

In the days to come, Russian T-9 tanks are going to level every church in the United States and this will be God’s justice because the church of the west has become so satanically and demonically corrupt that God’s red hot anger is burning at them and they are too stupid to realize it.

After this I went outside and there I saw the sheep hanging on the gallows blocks. I approached the sheep and started talking to them and I asked “Why have you been strung up by your hind quarters?” “Why are you hanging upside down here?” One sheep said, “I tried to warn the Pastor that the Satanists infiltrated the church and have set up shop here. I was told it was a bunch of nonsense and he told me not to talk such foolishness again and to get out and don’t come back to this church speaking that type of nonsense.”

I talked to another sheep and he said, “I tried to warn the congregation to repent of their sins and humble themselves and bow down like a bent reed and repent of their idolatries and witchcraft. I was thrown out and told to shut up and that I was a heretic”.

I spoke to another sheep that is a prophet and asked “Why are you strung up here?” He said, “Because I kept telling the pastor that the full and complete day of darkness is coming upon the world. I told the pastor that he needed to call the whole congregation to repentance and to be broken and contrite before the Lord because the great day of darkness is coming upon the earth. He told me to shut up that they didn’t want any doomsday prophets in their church.”

I went down the line talking to the strung up sheep and heard the horror stories of how they were abused and kicked out and how some of the sheep asked for humanitarian aid and groceries. The shepherds, these goat farmers, said “We don’t have enough money so we can’t help you.” Yet it is amazing that they can drive around in a 60,000 dollar car and live in a million dollar home with all the perks and per diems and couldn’t take $150 to $200 out of his pocket to give to one of his congregational member’s so they could get some groceries.

God’s red hot anger is burning at these shepherd’s and the leaders of HIS flock. Little do they realize that the scripture will soon be fulfilled, for on that day God will separate the sheep from the goats. (Mat 25:32-33)

However, a remnant of genuine Christians will escape this fate. Jack added (during a 2009 interview):

But, the sons and daughters of God are going to have a peace because God has been preparing for these past ten years for the things that are going to come. And we’re gonna be like a lighthouse… and the people are gonna see the light and they’re gonna come to those who have the light, and those that are earmarked for salvation, those are the ones, the stragglers who will be coming in. But as far as the rest of the nation and what’s gonna come next year and down the line, it will be like Revelation 12:18, Babylon is fallen, fallen. It says it twice: fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. And as the nation is falling, the sons and daughters of God are gonna rise up with the light, they’re gonna take the kingdom… God’s gonna carry us through. He carried Noah through it, he carried Lot out of it.

Other Christians have seen similar visions of America being bombed by Russia and China, including David Wilkerson and Dimirtri Duduman (the Christian pastor who was tortured in Communist Romania). Like Jack Johnston, Duduman also saw a vision of a man who provided a similar message of hope for God’s elect:

“I am the protector of America. America’s sin has reached God. He will allow this destruction, for He can no longer stand such wickedness. God, however, still has people that worship Him with a clean heart as they do His work. He has prepared a heavenly army to save these people.”

As I looked, a great army, well-armed and dressed in white, appeared before me.

“Do you see that?” the man asked. “This army will go to battle to save My chosen ones. Then, the difference between the Godly and the ungodly will be evident.”

* * *

BABYLON’S COMPLETE DESTRUCTION

“Listen! Hear the cry of Babylon,

the sound of great destruction from the land of the Babylonians.

For the Lord is destroying Babylon.

He will silence her loud voice.

Waves of enemies pound against her;

the noise of battle rings through the city.

Destroying armies come against Babylon.

Her mighty men are captured,

and their weapons break in their hands.

For the Lord is a God who gives just punishment;

He always repays in full.

I will make her officials and wise men drunk,

along with her captains, officers, and warriors.

They will fall asleepand never wake up again!”

says the King, whose name is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says:

“The thick walls of Babylon will be levelled to the ground,

and her massive gates will be burned.

The builders from many lands have worked in vain,

for their work will be destroyed by fire!”

* * *

Source: - Pedophiles Down Under, jun 18, 2020

#Babylon #communism #socialism

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dreamy-classpects-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Session #8

For an anon

Participants

Seer of Space

Page of Time

Knight of Light

Mage of Void

Thief of Heart

Rogue of Mind

Heir of Hope

Prince of Rage

Witch of Life

Maid of Breath

Sylph of Blood

An odd number of players, I see D: (add in one Bard of Doom and you've got a pretty swell session actually :?). Oh well you might encounter some weird technical shenanigans in your session but hey that's not for me to look into (not here anyway) :D

Seer of Space: the strategist of the session due to their amazing vision (mostly metaphorically), they would also be a pretty formidable offensive force as a sniper/something along those lines. They would actually handle frog breeding pretty well with their ability possibly see which frogs will be the best to select. They might also be a pretty good partner/support for the Page with their sight to help the Page with their poor grasp on Time and when to strike.

Page of Time: The one who is always late. They would likely have a horrible grasp on the idea that there is always a right time for everything and always messes the timing of stuff up, maybe even destroying stuff others have done in the process. As I've said, get the Seer to help them out with their progression, and keep the Sylph, Thief and Prince away from them since they could very possibly mess up the Page's progression.

Knight of Light: A formidable fighter and an amazing tactician, they would make a great strategic team with the Mage. Their presence in the session might indicate a lack of knowledge and/or luck in this session, but that should be remedied pretty easily between those two. Perhaps also partner them up with the Heir especially early game since the Heir's optimism could help with the Knight's low self-esteem and the Knight could in turn bail the Heir out of trouble whenever their initial naivety becomes a problem.

Mage of Void: The one always hiding in the shadows, gathering the secrets of others, the Mage would be another knowledge-based class for this session. They would likely spend much of the session being ignored or overlooked by their teammates, so it might be beneficial for them to be partnered with the Sylph, at least for some time, so the Sylph can perhaps foster some good bonds between them and the rest of the session. You also might want to keep an eye out because, especially at a higher level, they could be maintaining rather close contact with the Horrorterrors that might, one way or another, lead to at least one member of the session going grimdark.

Thief of Heart: The soul stealer. Keep them as far away as possible from the Page until they get fully realised, since you really don’t need the Thief stealing their self esteem and whatnot to boost their own. Try partnering them with the Sylph (whenever possible anyway) since the Sylph could keep them more or less in check and on good terms with everyone and they would probably compliment each other pretty well all things considered between the calm/quiet but passionate Sylph and the loud, over-confident thief. As for powers, they would definitely be an appreciable offensive asset for the team :D

Rogue of Mind: A little indecisive when the session first starts off, they would certainly benefit from a partnership with the Heir earlier on as they could instill in the Rogue some faith and belief in themselves. They could possibly take over the Knight's role of "Heir's personal bodyguard" after a while (when they've developed enough faith in themselves to actually take action when the Heir's in trouble) so the Knight can focus more on strategising and stuff :/ Speaking of which, the Rogue would also be on the intelligence team for this session, aiding the Knight and the Mage by stealing plans from the enemies' minds and relaying any information the Mage and/or Knight gathers directly to the rest of the team without any miscommunication.

Heir of Hope: (man this classpect is adorable) The naïve reality-shaper (a.k.a. that goddamn idiot curtesy of the Knight), they would start off happily walking headfirst into all sorts of dangers (as I've said, get them partnered with the Knight earlier on to make sure they don’t just go hug a basilisk or something. Besides being a great fighter, they would probably also be a pretty good diplomat later on in the session, since they're just so filled with Hope and there's almost no way you can piss them off.

Prince of Rage: The "cult leader" of the session, they always have one thing they firmly believe in and will aggressively destroy all skepticism towards that thing. I covered what a relationship between a Prince of Rage and an Heir of Hope would look like here, and as I've said, they're probably gonna end up with each other in one way or another so just keep an eye out to make sure the relationship doesn’t turn sour. The Prince's presence could also indicate an excess of doubt and skepticism in the session (and hey, between the Knight, Mage and Rogue that could also mean self-doubt? I dunno), though the Heir and the Sylph should help in making sure conflicts don't arise.

Witch of Life: The ultimate rule breaker, they would be you most powerful offense player with the abilities to tamper with Life and all things livings, and would have the ability to bring your dead players back from the dead after they godtier :D Keep them far away from the Page, especially early game in case she just decides to mess around with the Page for fun.

Maid of Breath: The directionless wanderer when the session first starts off, they would likely cling to the other players, depending on them for their sense of direction. Later on in the session, however, they would gain a much stronger sense of direction and independence, becoming completely self-reliant. As for powers, they would be a strong support/offensive player by generating Breath in the form of windstorms, tornados and the like. Out of all the players they could cling to early-session, perhaps the Witch would be the best idea, though later on they would just be completely independent.

Sylph of Blood: The ultimate diplomat, they're really good at getting people to make promises and take up obligations, and they would take said promises and obligations, be it their own or their teammates', very seriously. They would be quite stubborn, maybe even inflexible, but on the other hand they would often end up being the only calm and collected one in the middle of a sea of confusion. Let them keep an eye on the Mage and the Thief to help the Mage be more of a part of the session and the Thief not cause any trouble.

Overall, overlooking the odd number of players, you have a pretty great setup going on. There do seem to be a few foreseeable issues that will pop up sooner or later in the session, but with the players that you currently have they should be resolved pretty quick. Of course, getting another person into the session to balance things out definitely won't hurt :D

TL;DR

Odd number of players (11), which could definitely cause a problem

A number of issues (such as a lack of Light from the Knight, an abundance of Rage from the Prince and the possibility of someone going grimdark from the Mage), though you should be able to tackle those pretty well

Offence: Knight of Light, Thief of Heart, Heir of Hope, Prince of Rage

Defence: Seer of Space, Page of Time

Support: Rogue of Mind, Witch of Rage, Maid of Breath, Sylph of Blood

Tactician: (Possibly) Seer of Space, Knight of Light, Mage of Void, Rogue of Mind

Team leader: Knight of Light/Witch of Life

~Sylph

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crisontumblr · 7 years ago

Text

NaNoWriMo 2017 - Excerpt #4

Total Word Count: 23,415 (On Schedule!) Today’s Word Count: 2,328

Related Reading: Previous Excerpts | General NaNo Tag

This is why I don’t get discouraged if I start lagging behind in the first week. As long as you keep writing, the words will pile up, eventually. It also looks like that new rule I implemented is going a long way towards helping me out.

Correspondence 9276-a:

First of all, if you’re seeing this message, congratulations! You have been selected to join the team tasked with learning about SCP-9276. I am Dr. Emmett Mason, and I will be leading this project. Please make sure that you’ve altered your e-mail settings to flag messages from my e-mail as primary priority. Last thing we need is for someone to miss a crucial message, especially on days when we are running experimental procedures or exams. As to when those are happening; a tentative schedule will be going out via e-mail on Tuesday, but I will also be handing out a hard copy at the meeting on Monday, so plan to be there and don’t be late!

(I know some of you are currently on other research teams. I am in the process of talking with your current directors about having you fully transferred to mine. Until then, please call me directly if there’s a schedule conflict so I can e-mail all of the necessary materials for you to review.)

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t even a little bit excited about seeing what SCP-9276 has to share with us. Director Solomita has basically entrusted us to run this ourselves, with the assurance that we will be providing him with regular updates on our progress. That’s not to put any added pressure on you guys. If you have been selected for this team, it is because I know your work to be exemplary regardless of the task. I trust that, in working with me, things will be no different.

Now, onto the nature of SCP-9276. I have only had two distinct conversations with her so far, but I am beginning to develop a pretty decent understanding of her personality, which I think will be useful to us in the coming weeks and months. Here is what I can tell you thus far:

SCP-9276 likes to have the advantage of control.

She is affable in conversation, and well-spoken, but there is a sense that she does not like being challenged on her position.

SCP-9276 does not like having her questions ignored. She will humor you if you redirect the conversation to a different topic, but she will eventually point out that you did not answer her query.

She believes people instinctively fear her, and takes great interest in those who show none while interacting with her.

Above all else, she values her freedom and the will to do as she pleases.

With all of these things in mind, it is important that we do our best to keep her interested and willing to cooperate with us. Director Solomita expressed the possibility of practical application of SCP-9276’s abilities, but it is on us to find out exactly what those abilities are and then determine to what nature they might be best applied. I will be looking forward to hearing some of your suggestions at the meeting on Monday.

If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot me a message or stop by my office. My door is always open (especially if you show up with an extra cup of coffee you need to unload).

Let’s do some great work, everyone.

Dr. Emmett Mason Project Leader, SCP-9276

P.S. – I almost forgot!

SCP-9276 expressed disdain for the way in which she was brought to the Foundation, as well as for the week and a half in which she lay strapped to a bed on an I.V. line and Foley. I think it goes without saying that we do our best to avoid any strategy that seem even remotely similar to that. Keep them as a “Last Resort” sort of situation.

Correspondence 9276-b:

Mason:

Based on what I’ve read so far, I’ve already got at least one major concern. Seems like you’re interested in making her think she wants to help us by playing to her sense of needing to be in control all the time. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. Until we know exactly how powerful 9276 is—so far, according to the preliminary reports, it just seems like she can reanimate once-living organic tissue, which isn’t really all THAT distinctive—we need to make sure she understands just how little influence she has on the way things are at the Foundation. SCP-9276 has to know SHE does not run this place. We’re the ones in charge. We tell her where she can go, when she can go, and how long she can stay there.

The sooner she learns that, and the sooner she comes to respect it, the better off we’ll be. Trust me on that.

Have you seen some of the material they found at the mansion along with her? Seems like she’s a little too good at wrapping people around her fingers. I’m gonna recommend that for the next interview, you take a second person with you. Maybe seeing that you’re not the only one looking after her will give SCP-9276 something to think about between interviews.

Leah Carson

Correspondence 9276-c:

Leah:

Thanks for the heads up! Now that you mention it, taking a second or third person into the next handful of interviews might not be such a bad idea. Getting her familiar with the team could be beneficial on both our ends. The other researchers get a chance to have a “baseline” experience with her personality outside of experiments and testing. She gets to see who she will be interacting with on a regular basis. I can only imagine that will go some way towards easing any potential anxiety that comes with being in an unfamiliar place without any certainty on when she might be released—if she is released at all.

I have to (with a little bit of shame, actually) admit that I haven’t fully looked into the material they found at the mansion. From what I was made to understand, it’s mostly just maddened gibberish; a basic smashing together of various faiths and philosophies, the likes around which most infantile attempts at mystery cults are built. If there’s anything in particular that warrants an intense look, let me know and I’ll check it out.

By the way, thanks again for saying yes and signing on. I know the last couple of months haven’t been the easiest, but there’s nobody else in your field that I would trust on this. I just want you to know, though, that if it gets to be too much… You have my word on that. Your well-being comes first.

See you Monday. Let’s grab coffee beforehand!

- Emmett

Correspondence 9276-d:

Emmett:

I’ll bring copies of the relevant passages to Monday’s meeting for everyone to review. Might have to offer you a raincheck on the coffee, though. I’m still not quite ready to enter the cafeteria.

To be honest, Emmett, if anyone else with this project asked me to join their team, I would have told them to get fucked. (I know this is going to end up in your official records. Let me say up front that I do not care enough to censor myself. We are friends, have been for years. My frankness should not startle you, nor should it startle whatever Foundation higher-ups read this.) I said yes to you because I know you hired me for my work ethic and my skills. You understand what and how much I can handle.

And, to be perfectly honest, I said yes because someone has to make sure you don’t getting killed on your first outing as project lead. You owe me the story of how you managed that, by the way. Tell me after the meeting.

- Leah

#NaNoWriMo #NaNo 2017 #NaNo 2017 Excerpts #Original Fiction #Writing #Dr. Emmett Mason #Dr. Leah Carson

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loansinghfinanceblogme-blog · 6 years ago

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cabiba · 7 years ago

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In The Welfare of Nations, the decade-later follow-up to his The Welfare State We’re In, James Bartholomew – former leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail – takes us on a tour of the world’s welfare states.

It’s fair to say he isn’t a fan. He argues that the welfare state undermines old values and ‘crowds out’ both our inner resourcefulness and our sense of duty to one another – including our own families. Instead of aspiring to be self-reliant, the welfare state makes us self-absorbed. People aren’t encouraged to exercise responsibility anymore; instead, they are handed a plethora of ‘rights’. Welfare states ‘have diminished our civilisation’, Bartholomew concludes.

The welfare state has always been a problematic entity, from its modern beginnings in the nineteenth century with Bismarck’s cynical ‘state socialism’– built as much to placate the increasingly politically active masses as to attend to their welfare – to the vast systems maintaining millions of economically inactive citizens across the world today. The welfare state, as its advocates contend, always promises a better society, with higher levels of equality, but, as Bartholomew counters, it also tends to foster unemployment, ‘broken families’ and social isolation.

Some versions of the welfare state are better than others. Wealthy Switzerland has a low unemployment rate despite generous social insurance-based benefits. But, at the same time, the Swiss state imposes tough conditions: there’s no minimum wage and workers can be fired on the spot. Sweden’s benefit system is generous, too, but if you can’t afford the rent on a property, you have to move out.

In the UK, matters are equally complex. For instance, shared-ownership schemes, ‘affordable housing’ and planning regulations contribute to distinctly unaffordable house prices. Indeed, housing costs have risen from 10 per cent of average UK household income in 1947 to over 25 per cent. For the poorest sections of society, it is worse still. This is despite the fact that the state subsidises dysfunctional, workless households on bleak public housing estates.

And what of state education? Nearly one-in-five children in OECD countries is functionally illiterate. The best performing advanced countries have autonomous schools, ‘high stakes’ exams, quality teachers and a culture of discipline and hard work. Compare that to the US, where you can’t get rid of bad unionised teachers in the state schools.

Bartholomew convincingly argues that state schools’ ‘shameful’ inadequacy, for all the rhetoric to the contrary, breeds inequality. He fears that the success of the free- and charter-school movement is at risk, too, from ‘creeping government control’. Bartholomew is upfront about his own old-fashioned conservative views. He’s a kind of evidence-based Peter Hitchens, using ‘bundles of academic studies’ to show what he suspected of the welfare state all along. The care of ‘strangers’, he argues, is bad for children and aged parents alike, and damages the social fabric. Over half of Swedish children are born to unmarried mothers, whereas the family in Italy, he says approvingly, is ‘the main source of welfare’, with charity-run ‘family houses’ (no flats or benefits) for single mothers. At a time when Conservatives aren’t really very conservative, it takes Bartholomew to ask important questions about social change.

Again, southern Europe offers a useful contrast to the situation in northern Europe. Over half of single people aged 65 or over in Italy, Portugal and Spain live with their children. Just three per cent of single Danes do. Should individual autonomy trump the burden of caring for children and family members? What role should the state play? UK social workers are office-based, writes Bartholomew, and contracted care workers follow ‘rules rather than doing things from an impulse of loving care’.

By 2050 over a third of the European population will be aged over 60. Even though the age at which people are eligible for pensions is increasing, state pensions can’t be sustained, says Bartholomew. In Poland, Greece and Italy, pensions account for more than a quarter of public spending. The UK spends nine per cent of its national income on healthcare, the US an insurance-fuelled 18 per cent, and Singapore just five per cent (though Singapore has to put twice that into ‘personal’ health-savings accounts). ‘Wealth leads to better healthcare’, says Bartholomew, but the monopolistic UK system, despite the NHS’s officially cherished status, is one of the worst of the advanced countries for health outcomes, including, for example, cancer-survival rates. ‘Obamacare’ notwithstanding, millions of uninsured Americans – neither poor enough for Medicaid nor old enough for Medicare – struggle to pay for healthcare.

Democracies, says Bartholomew, are susceptible to the fantasy that welfare states can solve our problems without consequence or cost. This is despite US public spending increasing from seven per cent of GDP in 1900 to 41 per cent of GDP in 2011. In 2012, France revealed that public spending accounted for 57 per cent of its GDP.

But it’s Bartholomew’s critique of the wider welfare culture, rather than his carps at benefits systems, which provides an important corrective to what can be a narrow and mean-spirited discussion. He also offers practical solutions: let’s increase housing supply but abolish public housing; let’s have a system of ‘co-payment’ for healthcare between state and individual; let’s allow schools and hospitals to compete in markets; and let’s give individuals the opportunity to save and insure themselves to pay for social-care needs and pensions (albeit through Singapore-style compulsory bank accounts).

So what do we do with the welfare state? As Bartholomew puts it, the welfare state, rather than capitalism or communism, was ‘the ultimate victor of the turmoil of the twentieth century’. But Bartholomew makes clear that this is a hollow victory with many millions left idle and communities undermined. So yes, let’s cut the welfare state down to size and stop infantilising its dependants. But we also need to get more ambitious than Bartholomew allows. He thinks it’s too late to get our freedoms back and argues for a minimal ‘welfare’ state only. But why stop there? If the architects of the welfare state have anything to teach us, it is to be bolder in our visions.

Dave Clements is a writer, public servant and convenor of the Institute of Ideas Social Policy Forum. Follow him on Twitter: @daveclementsltd. Visit his website here.

Aquinas • 2 years ago

The Welfare State is the product of rationalism and the loss of religious faith. Man cannot live thinking that he is alone in the world, that he’s facing the cosmos on his own. For centuries, people lived under religious hope, but at the same time they knew that God helps those who help themselves and so the trust in God went together with a life of self-reliance and resourcefulness. Then religion was forsaken and all faith was transferred to science. The wonder of scientific discoveries made people think that if we can master the physical universe, we can also master our lives. Just like we can improve a machine through the use of the laws of science, we can perfect our lives through scientific evidence based social planning. The rearing of children, the planning of cities, the care of the elderly, the education of the young, everything is left to the central authority of the state. They have the knowledge, they have the expertise and they will act in the best interest of people simply because that’s what their job description says. We think that a God that cares about humanity is a religious superstition and we seriously expect state bureaucrats and politicians to benevolently and rationally do what is best for us.

The Welfare State is a great folly, a monumental case of self-delusion that has emasculated the whole of the West. It turns people into helpless serfs, it ignorantly treats human affairs as amenable to scientific programming. It has been a moral disaster that destroys families and civil society and an economic catastrophe that has left a mountain of debt. Its legacy is that of political activism, the cult of victimhood, effeminate emotionalism and generations of schooled ignoramuses.

Politicians make for poor gods and the only hope for a good life rests in one’s own unaided effort. Calvin Coolidge expressed it perfectly: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent”

Aquinas Guest • 2 years ago

I never said it was a Bible quote, I just said that's how people interpreted it. The Bible addresses individual people, it doesn't ever address institutions of authority like the government. It is your duty to help others but you must do it ethically. Forcing others under threat to help people is neither charity nor just. The history of the Welfare State has absolutely nothing to do with helping others in a moral sense, that's just a fantasy, There is never any attempt to actually elevate people, it's just cold bureaucracy and it is a tool of social control clothed in an array of cosy words. Why should David Cameron care more about the poor than you or me? By all means, go and help others, just do it with your own time, in your own way, help only those who you think are deserving and with your own money. That is always going to be far more beneficial for both the donor and the recipient. Just like the Salvation Army is much better than Social Services and me taking care of my mother in law is much better than her being looked after by the department of pensions.

#Welfare State #welfare #spiked

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thecloudlight-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://cloudlight.biz/vesak-day-celebrating-the-life-of-buddha/

Vesak Day: Celebrating the life of Buddha

Every spring, hundreds of clergymen acquire at the historical Borobudur Temple in Java, Indonesia, on the maximum important day in the Buddhist calendar: Buddha Day.

Also known as Waisak Day or Vesak Day, the vacation marks the birth of Gautama Buddha — the daddy of Buddhism, who’s liable for the faith’s center teachings. Robe-clad priests circle the ninth-century temple — the world’s biggest Buddhist temple and a UNESCO heritage website — to meditate, chant sutras and launch an ocean of sparkling lanterns into the night time sky. It’s simply considered one of many celebrations taking place across Asia this month as worshippers ring inside the holiday on the area’s maximum lovely temples, from lantern fairs at Seoul’s Jogyesa Temple to rituals at Yangon’s golden Shwedagon Pagoda.

Born in Nepal in 567 BC, Gautama Buddha

Or Prince Siddhartha Gautama at delivery — turned into the son of a tribal leader. As a person, he founded a sect of wandering ascetics and the network eventually advanced into a religion after his loss of life at eighty years old. Today, over 488 million people — or roughly nine% of the world’s population — exercise Buddhism, nearly ninety-nine% of which are located inside the Asia-Pacific location.

Each 12 months, on the full moon of the month of Vesakha (usually falling in May or June in the western calendar), thousands and thousands of Buddhists around the arena take part in Vesak Day celebrations. Not simplest does the date of Vesak Day trade yr after 12 months, however, it may also be special amongst cultures, relying upon which calendar they subscribe to. In China and Hong Kong, as an instance, which observe the Chinese lunar calendar, worshippers look at Buddha Day on the eighth day of the fourth month (commonly in early May). So whilst Buddhists in Hong Kong marked Buddha Day on May three this year, Thailand celebrates on May 10. The excursion is going with the aid of dozens of names — but many nations unofficially talk to it as Buddha’s Birthday or Buddha Day.

Thousands turn up at temple for rituals ahead of Vesak Day

More than 20,000 human beings became up at Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery to perform rituals in reverence of Buddha – the founder of Buddhism – the day prior to this on the eve of Vesak Day.

This year, the monastery placed on Bright Hill Road is marking Vesak Day for a month with the topic of “Season of Gratitude”.

Vesak Day marks the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha, and is widely known through Buddhists worldwide.

The festivities on the monastery consist of a Vesak Fair and iconic rituals together with the “three steps, one bow” ceremony and the Bathing of Prince Siddhartha ceremony. The “3 steps, one bow” ceremony is a long procession accomplished in repentance and reverence of Buddha. It began at around 5 pm the day past and ended early this morning.

Adherents acting it take 3 barefoot steps and then prostrate, repeating the manner around the perimeter of the temple for two-half hours every time. Groups of adherents take turns acting the procession thru the night.

A Traveler’s Guide To Celebrating Christmas In Dublin

1. Christmas Travel Guide:

Ahh, Dublin! The metropolis of one thousand welcomes! The capital of Ireland is famed for the hospitality of its people their vivacious and happy pass fortunate personalities. If you have got the chance to visit Dublin these holidays, then we deliver to you the perfect Christmas Travel Guide that will help you in having the time of your life! So % your baggage and get a price tag to Dublin. Here are the places that you actually need to visit if you’re in Dublin these holidays.

2. The Dromoland Castle

This castle has been in life since the 15th Century even though it changed into reconstructed often over the years till 1835 while it reached its completion. This set of this fortress is said to be domestic to Gaelic nobles for the reason that 5th Century. However, the fort has now been transformed into a high-priced five-star resort that is simply the place to spend your Christmas. The place is famous for being host to many famous personalities inclusive of the ex-President of America G. W. Bush.

Three. Bally David, County Kerry

Thinking about Ireland, all that comes to thoughts are the at ease small towns tucked into the nation-state. So if you’re trying to spend Christmas in an area like that, Bally David is the vicinity for you. This small city is placed on the brink of the Atlantic Ocean and it involves existence at some stage at Christmas time. The Wren boys come to the metropolis and a grand birthday celebration is held to keep in mind the historic Druid pageant. The Wren boys roam the streets in all their dressed up glory with all their track and great dancing. Go right here and feature fun with a Christmas filled with dressing up, marches, track and loads of laughter.

4. The Merrion Hotel

This resort is the epitome of grace and sophistication all through Christmas time with big open fireplaces full of crackling flames and massive Georgian fashion drawing rooms. This location is the best blend of historic magnificence and modern-day day generation and centers. So spend your Christmas in magnificence at the Merrion inn.

5. The Abbey Theatre

This historic theater has been running for the reason that 1904 and is the primary nation-subsidized theater of Ireland. The constructing turned into reconstructed after a heart in 1958 but this is the perfect vicinity to visit when you have an interest in appearing arts. This theater is associated with many iconic historical literary figures such Sean O Casey and many others. So have amusing this Christmas at this location if you want to experience a Dublin Christmas.

Lastly, in case you do not need to go to someplace fancy, worry now not. Just snatch a larger and step out onto the street and you will nevertheless have the time of your existence. So that is all the records you want from the Christmas Travel Guide for this Christmas. Just make certain, that something you do, you do it fully and with spirit. Make extremely good reminiscences on your existence starting now!

If you’re living in or traveling to Dublin for those vacations, the right here is the right Christmas Travel Guide for you! Read this and feature the time of your lifestyles in Dublin.

The Symbolism and Meaning of the Fat Buddha

Fat Buddha pictures aren’t representations of Siddhartha Gautama the first-rate well known “Buddha” at all. His corpulent frame is generally shown gluttony and the cult of extra as opposed to that of enlightenment and relatively austere route of the ‘spiritual’ Buddha. Tradition has it that a fat Buddha symbolizes blessings for a prosperous and rich future it is also thought that his photo is also associated with fertility (together with his fat stomach symbolic of a that of a pregnant female.)

One Fat Buddha statue located in lots of Chinese and Vietnamese companies is that referred to as Jambhuvala who’s the parent king of prosperity, Mi Fo. His fats and the jolly picture may be seated on a sack of cash and gold and he holds in his left hand a gold ingot this is very much like that of a boat or hat.

This statue is likewise related to a jewel

Spitting mongoose and may also be shown with a fan or an on foot stick, and conserving a ‘male’ in his left hand. There is likewise a Tibetan Fat Buddha counterpart that’s known as Namtoseh.

As already mentioned the “Fat Buddha” isn’t THE Buddha. When statues and pix of the Buddha began to be made numerous hundred years after his death no one knew what could have been his photo. However they did know that as a Prince the Buddha came from a noble Indian family and he was defined in the literature as tall, slender, and of “manly build”. A fat frame then as now in a few cultures become firmly associated with prosperity and appropriate good fortune and so the advent of a few ‘facts’ pics and statues of him would be an herbal route to take.

However, the photograph of a fat overfed “Buddha” is at odds with that of his his teachings, and that of an “enlightened one”. Buddhism reached China in around 100AD and became significant with the aid of 600AD from in which and while the legend of the Fat Buddha commenced seeing.

Three Theories in the back of the Fat Buddha

The first idea is that the fat frame represents a well-fed character of leisure. Enlightenment had caused cloth fulfillment and wealth and a function at least near the Aristocracy. There become also a perception that fits men were inherently beneficial in nature and demeanor, take Jolly Ol’ St. Nick as an instance. People frequently rubbed a fast guy’s belly in the desire of bringing luck and an abundance of meals.

The second principle is that of a Chinese Buddhist monk within the 6th century. He had a fat belly that shook like jelly. This jolly fellow dedicated himself to supporting others and became regarded because the incarnation of the Boddhisatva Metteya, the future Buddha who had reached nirvana, however, stayed around to assist the human beings.

Originally posted 2016-08-27 05:12:11.

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newstfionline · 8 years ago

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The Rise of Café Churches in South Korea

By Jason Strother, The Atlantic, May 8, 2017

The electronic keyboard and acoustic guitar kicked in as the junior minister opened this past Sunday’s service with a public prayer.

He spoke in a rapid-fire cadence as the 20 members of the evangelical church tried to keep pace, before rising to recite the Apostle’s Creed, a proclamation of their faith.

This house of worship in central Seoul is one of the tens of thousands of small Protestant chapels across the country that are trying to lure believers away from South Korea’s megachurches. Some, like this one, are doing so by satisfying the longing for a close-knit religious community as well as the craving for a cappuccino.

The church’s name is Jesus Coffee.

“Churches and cafés have the hardest time surviving in Korea,” said Ahn Min-ho, a 42-year-old ordained minister and certified barista. “Combining the two is mutually beneficial.”

South Korea is divided between Buddhists (15.5 percent), Protestants (19.7 percent), Catholics (7.9 percent), and non-believers. Among the large population of Christians, the model of the combined “café church” has taken off in recent years. These grassroots affairs provide a counterpoint to the massive, hierarchical, institutionalized megachurches in a country where many are distrustful of major institutions, both religious and political. Megachurches have lately been implicated in high-profile corruption scandals; the founder of Seoul’s Yoido Full Gospel Church, which claims a congregation of nearly 800,000 people and is the largest megachurch in the world, was convicted of embezzling $12 million in church money in 2014. In the political realm, former conservative president Park Geun-hye--whose father once served as president as well--was impeached in March for her alleged masterminding of a vast bribery scandal that has landed her in prison.

Customers at Ahn’s café church can peruse a selection of Christian literature while nursing their lattes, which are about a dollar cheaper than at some of the neighborhood’s big-name franchises. A cross-adorned wooden shed in the corner, marked “Prayer Room,” contains a desk with a Bible on top. The sanctuary is located in a windowless room in the back, behind the espresso machine and industrial-strength coffee grinder.

Ahn told me he welcomes newcomers who, like him, feel Christianity in South Korea has become “too institutionalized.” That seems to be a sentiment shared by many worshipers in their 20s and 30s, who are, according to reports, increasingly leaving their churches amid feelings of disillusionment with organized religion.

And many don’t hold the same political views as older generations.

“Christians over the age of 50 are more likely to vote for the conservatives,” said Ms. Lee, a 40-year-old mother of three who was slowly finishing an iced vanilla latte at Jesus Coffee after the service. “We think differently from them.”

This generational divide mirrors a rift among the general population: According to a recent Gallup poll, ahead of Tuesday’s election most South Koreans aged 60 or older preferred the conservative or centrist politicians who take a hardline policy on North Korea, while voters in their 30s overwhelmingly favored the progressive candidate and care more about clamping down on corruption. Indeed, in a survey conducted by local pollster RealMeter, 27.5 percent of respondents said that a candidate’s “intention to resolve deeply-rooted corruption” was the most crucial quality; by contrast, only 18.5 percent said “protection of national security and liberal democracy” was most important.

Unlike American evangelicals, who have long been considered a coherent voting bloc, Korean “evangelical voters are not a unified bloc, and the voting patterns are complex, but politicians pay attention because many voters are evangelical,” David Halloran Lumsdaine wrote in Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Asia. Survey data about the impact of religion on voting in previous elections is scarce, but interview data suggest that “Christians’ voting responds more to regional than religious affiliations,” Lumsdaine wrote.

Still, South Korean Protestants have long been reliable supporters of the country’s right wing due to a shared political ideology. The prosperity gospel and staunch opposition to communism are staples for many of Korea’s evangelical preachers, which align them with the agenda of pro-business and anti-North Korea politicians.

For the generation of Koreans who remember a time of war and poverty, these messages still resonate, but for those who have come of age in an era of relative peace and wealth, the prosperity gospel “doesn’t have the same magic appeal,” according to Brother Anthony, a longtime observer of South Korea’s religious movements and a member of the Taizé ecumenical monastic community, which counts both Protestants and Catholics.

Thus, in this election, the nation’s fractured conservative establishment cannot count on the Christian vote. Some of South Korea’s Christians were shocked by the Park Geun-hye scandal, which shed light on her relationship with Choi Tae-min, a cult leader who in the 1970s allegedly told the young Park that he could commune with her assassinated mother. That mentorship led to Park’s friendship with his daughter, Choi Soon-sil, who was later given unlawful access to government documents and was accused of extorting millions of dollars in donations from the country’s largest companies.

The latest surveys show that Moon Jae-in, a former human rights lawyer and candidate from the progressive Minjoo Party, has a strong lead over his nearest contender, Ahn Cheol-soo, a businessman-turned-politician whose centrist party is expected to pick up some of the conservative vote.

Governor Hong Joon-pyo trails in a distant third place. His party--the ruling party that changed its name to Liberty Korea after Park’s impeachment--has been tarnished by its affiliation with the former leader and will most likely relinquish its stewardship of the presidential Blue House, which it’s held since 2008.

None of the leading candidates is an obvious choice for the religiously devout.

Contrary to their American counterparts, South Korean politicians don’t typically profess their faith or affiliation while on the campaign trail; if they did, they would risk alienating a significant segment of the electorate, said Michael Breen, the author of The New Koreans. “It tends to be a non-issue,” he explained, adding that presidential hopefuls “have to be mindful that they’re trying to become president of all Koreans.”

Breen noted that one exception was former president Lee Myung-bak, who was an elder at a conservative megachurch in Seoul’s Gangnam district. Lee’s opponents often claimed his church had too much influence in his administration.

The conservative Christian Council of Korea, an organization that claims to represent 12 million worshipers, recently issued a statement saying that it will not endorse any particular candidate in this race. But the council did encourage voters to keep “national security” in mind when making their choice.

Brother Anthony noted that in light of the presidential corruption scandal, the misgivings that many young people feel are not exclusively directed toward the political and business elite; they’re also part of the reason why the large Christian denominations are losing congregants.

“Most of these megachurches are bogged down with rows over money and power,” he said. “Why should young people be attracted to that?”

Some pastors’ continued support for the ousted leader and her shattered party doesn’t exactly help win back the more progressively minded faithful, either.

Some pastors may think they wield more influence over their flock than they actually do, according to a survey conducted last month by the Korean Christian Press Forum. Results show that nearly 80 percent of the 1,028 Christian respondents between ages 19 and 60 answered “no” when asked if their ministers’ sermons impact who they vote for, and 65 percent of those polled indicated that churches should not make political endorsements.

But in an election season that many young voters hope will lead to the curbing of official corruption, even the café churches they frequent have drawn suspicion. Some churches in Seoul have been found to not report profits earned via their coffee shops. Ironically, worries of corruption plague not only the establishment symbols that the youth distrust--from megachurches to the Park family--but also the grassroots movements that have sprung up to counter them.

For his part, Ahn Min-ho, Jesus Coffee’s founding pastor, said he’s paid his taxes and has also stayed away from discussing the election at the pulpit. He added that Christians can “find a balance” between being spiritually conservative and politically progressive, and that social justice and improved economic livelihood are two of the issues that voters will strongly consider on Tuesday.

#South Korea #cafe church #Jesus coffee #Christian coffeehouses

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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The climate change battle dividing Trumps America

Climate change denial and energy conspiracy are high on the presidents agenda, but US scientists are fighting back

Ever since Donald Trump became US president, certain sectors of American society have felt particularly embattled. His statements on Mexicans and Muslims are notorious, but there is another community, less heard about, that has also been sent reeling: scientists.

If politics has never been a world that is overly respectful to empirical research, Trumps victory exploited a growing popular suspicion of expertise, and a tendency to seek out alternative narratives to fact-based analysis. Conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination campaigns and climate change deniers have all traded on this rejection of science, and their voices have all been heard, to differing degrees, in the new administration. But for the science community perhaps the most provocative act so far of Trumps short time in office was the appointment of Scott Pruitt, a Republican lawyer and climate change sceptic, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Id say a lot of Trumps cabinet picks are not ideal, says Shaughnessy Naughton, of the science activist group 314 Action. But Pruitt is really an offence to the organisation. Hes spent his career suing the EPA. Hes for state rights when its for polluters and against state rights when its for conservation or protecting the environment.

Naughton is the founder of 314 Action, which seeks to promote Stem science, technology, engineering and maths education and help scientists become politicians. The name refers to the first three digits of the mathematical ratio pi, a scientific imprint that occurs everywhere in life. But too often, Naughton believes, science has remained aloof from politics, while politics has grown less troubled about getting involved in science.

Pruitt is perhaps the most conspicuous example of this development. As attorney general for Oklahoma, he frequently sued the EPA in alliance with oil and gas lobbyists. Since taking over at the EPA, he has promised to weaken regulation of carbon emissions from cars and power plants, and has withdrawn requests for information on industrial production of methane.

A leading EPA official called Mustafa Ali, who is involved in environmental justice, recently resigned from the agency, complaining that there has been a concerted effort to roll back the positive steps that many, many people have worked on through all the previous administrations.

Science is under attack, says Naughton, and this administration is an example of that. If you look at the science committee in the House [of Representatives], its clearly hostile to empirical evidence. We are not going to win this battle by signing polite letters. We are going to win by getting a seat at the table. That means getting people that have pro-science agendas and scientific backgrounds elected at all level of government.

A former chemist who has worked in cancer research, Naughton has twice run for Congress, both times losing out in the Democratic primaries. She knows from experience a lot about the pitfalls and demands of American politics, particularly the vital role played by donors.

Though it has only existed since the end of last year, 314 Action has already had more than 3,000 scientists and people from scientific backgrounds sign up for training. One of them is Brian Johnson, a 32-year-old nuclear engineer. Johnson doesnt have much of a political history. He was an active supporter of the independent Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential elections, but thats about it. Now hes aiming to run for Congress in the 2018 elections. The more I look into it, he says, the more I realise it really is a huge commitment. I will probably have to resign from my job in order to campaign.

He will run as a Democrat. Isnt that a long way, politically speaking, from the libertarian Ron Paul? Johnson insists that, on all the critical issues, he supports the party line. But it is striking that his political stance is largely about what he is against rather than what he is for. And first and foremost hes against Trump.

Johnson says he waited to see if Trump would honour his campaign commitment to appoint the best people. When that didnt happen, Johnson got angry.

He appointed Rick Perry to be in charge of the Department of Energy, he says. Hes not exactly a nuclear engineer. Hes been looking to defund data collection on global warming. Hes just protecting his interest in fossil fuels, not serving the American people.

Perry, a former governor of Texas, is an enthusiast for extracting fossil fuels, does not believe that the human effect on climate change is a proven case, and is on record as wanting to scrap the Department of Energy, which is largely devoted to nuclear energy and its applications.

You know Donald Trumps views are not founded in evidence, says Johnson. They are founded in whatever feelings hes got. He doesnt really care if theres evidence for what hes doing.

Not all scientists agree with Johnson and Naughton. For instance, William Happer, the distinguished professor of physics at Princeton University, argues that global warming is not a problem, that climate science is a so-called science, that climate scientists are a glassy-eyed cult, and that increased C02 emissions are beneficial, because they are a boon to plant life.

Naughton laughs when I mention Happers name. Thats like talking about Andrew Wakefield, she says, referring to the British medical researcher, now based in America, who maintains, despite a wealth of contrary evidence, that the MMR vaccination is a cause of autism.

It would be wrong to compare Happer to the thoroughly discredited Wakefield, but its no coincidence that he has been touted as Trumps chief science adviser. Its as if the president is not interested in mainstream scientists who are proponents of widely accepted theories.

Climate change sceptic and now head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Enraged by the administrations appointments and Trumps immigration policy, Brian Johnson turned to 314 Action. But if he thought that his scientific background and opposition to Trump was enough, he soon began to realise what running for office in America involves. He discovered that a deep knowledge of nuclear fusion came a poor second to the ability to fundraise.

314 Action told me the steps I would have to take, how I would fundraise, who I would talk to, and the networks I needed to tap into, he says. Ive learned how to make myself a viable candidate that can run a serious campaign.

Some of what Trump and his cohort say can make the scientific establishment sound like a bastion of political correctness. But science is not only under threat from the right. For many years now the postmodern strand of leftwing thought has tended to view science as a social construct.

This outlook, exposed by Alan Sokals notorious 1996 hoax (in which a spoof scholarly article was published by an academic journal) has often dismissed emphases on empirical research as scientism, in other words as just another belief system.

Indeed, in some cases science has been accused of being simply a cultural pillar of western ideological hegemony. Perhaps the most notorious example of this kind of thinking saw the South African leader Thabo Mbeki reject the orthodox scientific thesis on HIV-Aids as a product of centuries-old white racist beliefs.

In such cases science is understood not as a neutral, or unbiased means of analytical observation and prediction, but instead as a deeply ideological interpretation of events. Both political extremes, for different reasons, have a history of questioning the science establishments political underpinning.

And both have employed the same method to discredit mainstream science: promoting the dissenting voice. Trump seeks out climate change deniers to support his agenda, just as Mbeke made use of the molecular biologist Peter Duesbergs controversial, and now discredited, theory that HIV did not cause Aids. Mbekes stance is estimated to have cost more than 300,000 South African lives.

That took place in a pre-internet age. Now the wonders of technology have made it even easier to disseminate an anti-science message through a medium the web that serves to flatten out hierarchies of empirical truth.

Naughton is familiar with the tactic of digging out heterodox opinions to justify bad policies. What I find completely remarkable, she says, are the people who reject all the experts and find an outlier with a PhD who says something that confirms their belief. It doesnt make any sense. There is a place for questioning everything. Thats important. But we do need experts, we do need to accept facts. Gravity is not something we debate. At a certain point, your opinion is not as relevant as the facts.

But of course its not always easy to distinguish opinion from fact, especially when accusations and counter-accusations of fake news dominate the debate. Scientists are used to a long process of peer review. Thats not how it works in politics.

Politics is much more emotional and volatile than science, says Molly Sheehan, a bioengineer, who is considering whether to enter the congressional race in the Philadelphia area. It moves a lot faster.

She too is using the know-how provided by 314 Action to inform her preparation. Although she is a longstanding political activist, she says it was Trumps election that galvanised her to look at becoming a politician. It went from a hobby to the feeling of I need to do everything in my power to ensure our country comes back to paying attention to reality and paying attention to fact.

Sheehan says the kind of scientific belief and optimism that America experienced under JFK in the 1960s has been replaced by apathy and cynicism. She believes that the US has been growing more anti-science for many years. Its just that Trump has made the drift definitive.

People dont remember how bad diseases were, she says They dont remember polio, or measles or mumps. They dont realise that medical science has had a huge impact on child mortality and morbidity. People dont have the emotional connection to science that they had in the 1960s.

But can scientists create that connection by becoming politicians? President Kennedy, after all, was not a scientist, but the space race he launched captured the public imagination. What can scientists bring to the political scene?

First of all, says Johnson, I think a scientist can really understand technical issues, whether its climate change or cyber security. Politicians like Trump make a decision and then go out and find the science to support it. If I were in Congress I would want to seek out the science first, and then have that inform my policies.

Its an admirable ambition, but is it one that will inspire the public? One of the criticisms that has been launched at politicians, not just in America but in the UK and Europe too, is that they have become too technocratic. Which is to say that instead of viewing issues from a personalised emotive basis, they are more likely to be dry utilitarians, allowing research to show the sensible policy.

The triumph of Trump was to portray that kind of politics as divorced from peoples reality and therefore insular, and most likely corrupt. It worked. But how long will it last? On the whole people tend to prefer trained pilots flying planes and experienced surgeons carrying out serious operations. In other words, when it really matters, we want expertise.

The question is whether the experts are the best people to argue for expertise. Scientists are good at winning the argument, but that doesnt necessarily mean they are good at winning over the people.

Sheehan sees the Trump election as an opportunity for scientists to reassert themselves. For while his presidency may at first be a backward step, Sheehan believes it will provide the impetus to force science back on to the national agenda. It might be the wake-up call thats needed for the pendulum to swing back the other way, she says.

The European temptation to look down on America and its more garish habits has proven particularly irresistible in recent months, but there remains an energy and optimism in the country that should not be underestimated. 314 Action is a fine example of a spirit that doesnt dwell in defeat but instead looks at practical ways of putting things right.

Trump should beware. The scientific revolution starts here.