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drarrily-we-row-along · 3 years

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Day 129: Pangea

cw: mentions homophobic slurs

It was their day off.

Their one day when they didn't have to work and their five year old was at the muggle nursery school. They often cleaned and did laundry on days like these, but they always made a point of spending some quality time together. Harry had realized shortly after they'd adopted Cassie that it really hurt their relationship not to have time they set aside for just the two of them.

Today they were headed to get some ice cream and talking about the slumber party they were going to be hosting in a few days and all of the arrangements that had to be made when Harry's mobile started to ring.

Draco watched curiously as Harry pulled it out of his pocket, "Hello?"

"Yes, hi, is this Mr. Potter Malfoy?" a woman asked.

He glanced at Draco and put the phone on speaker, "Yes, this is Harry."

"Hi," the woman said again, "This is Linda in the school office. We're going to need you to come pick Cassie up."

"What? Why?" Draco asked before Harry could reply. "Is everything alright?"

"Sorry, I have you on speaker so my husband could hear you."

The woman chuckled and Draco looked ready to reach through the screen and strangle her. "Everything's fine. She just had a little disagreement with one of the other students and is pretty upset. The head mistress will have a chat with you when you get here."

"The head mistress!" Draco hissed.

Harry laid a hand on Draco's shoulder. "Thanks for calling us. We'll be right in." He hung up and braced himself for the inevitable.

(Read more below the cut)

"What happened?" Draco asked immediately.

He rolled his eyes and turned around to walk back to their house so they could drive to school, "You heard what I heard," he said. "I don't know any more than you."

"Yes but you went to Muggle primary school!" he protested, walking quicker. "You should have some idea-"

"I don't."

"Do you think it was accidental magic?" Draco asked.

He shook his head. "That was not the sound of a call about accidental magic."

"Then what do you think she was fight about?"

"Draco, there are a thousand things to fight about. Muggle children are just as unpredictable as wizarding children." He reached over and took Draco's hand, "She's only five, how much trouble could she be in?"

----------

When they arrived Cassie was over talking to a different adult and the headmistress waved them in.

She seemed happy enough so Harry let her be and followed the headmistress in, Draco all but vibrating with nervous energy behind him.

"Mr. and Mr. Potter-Malfoy, thank you for coming."

"Harry and Draco are fine," he said.

"What happened?" Draco asked quickly.

Harry glanced at him, "Sorry. We've just never been called in before. Is Cassie in trouble?"

"This afternoon, Cassie told a story to her classmates about how the continents got separated."

"Gaia," Draco nodded. "It's one of her favorites, she likes to hear about how life thrives no matter what."

Harry took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Right," Headmistress Blake replied, "and that's great. Storytelling improves communication skills and it's great for students to share like that."

"So why are we here?" Draco asked.

"Jacob told her that Gaia wasn't real, that the whole story was made up, and tried to tell her about Pangea."

"Pangea?" Harry asked incredulously. "How old is this kid?"

She chuckled, "His parents are geologists."

"Still!" Harry said, "That's pretty advanced for a five year old." Draco looked completely befuddled as though he had no idea what they were talking about. "But I still don't understand why we're here."

"I'm getting to it," she said. "She tried to tell him that it was just a story that her father told her."

Draco nodded, "Should we not tell her stories like that?" he asked, sounding panicked.

"Not at all," she said, giving him a warm smile in an obvious attempt to diffuse his anxiety. "But Jacob called you a liar and used a bit of derogatory language."

Harry's entire body froze, "Excuse me?" He'd been hoping that she'd be in Hogwarts by the time other kids were old enough to understand the implications of having two dads. It wasn't a big deal in the wizarding world, but it mattered in the muggle world still.

Headmistress Blake nodded, "She told him it wasn't nice to talk about people that way and insisted that Draco wasn't a liar. When Jacob doubled down on the slurs, she punched him."

"Good." Harry covered his mouth, "Sorry," he said quickly. "Sorry, it's just-"

"We have taught our daughter not to hit," Draco insisted, glaring at Harry. And while this was true, they had, it was only because Draco was already teaching her the words for jinxes that would be more effective. She was going to be a terror once she got her wand. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid that I don't understand what sorts of slurs you're referring to."

The headmistress rubbed her eyebrow uncomfortably, "He called you poofs and said that fags can't be trusted," she said and Draco's jaw dropped, his hand clenching Harry's so hard that Harry was afraid he'd need a healing spell cast when this was over. "Other students overheard and told Miss Murray after the fact."

"We taught her not to hit," he said, "But we've also taught her that it's important to stand up for what is right," Harry said. "It sounds like she tried to use her words first and then when that didn't work she used a different means available to her."

"But the next step should have been talking to her teacher, not punching another child."

Harry nodded, "I can understand why you'd-"

"Excuse me, Harry," his husband interrupted, "But I can't," Draco said bluntly. "And here's why; we are raising our daughter to be strong and independent because Salazar knows that women are not taken seriously in this world. Teaching her now that there is someone to help her when she is being verbally assaulted will not help her when she is grown."

"Mr. Potter-Malfoy, I understand what you're saying but-"

Draco shook his head, "With all due respect, there is no but. If her teacher didn't notice that another child was shouting bigoted slurs at her because she has two fathers then no one was coming to her rescue."

The headmistress squared her shoulders, "Cassie's being suspended for two weeks."

"What?" Draco spat.

"We cannot set a precedent that allows for violence to be the answer."

"And what is Jacob's punishment?" Draco demanded.

She blinked at him, "He's got a broken nose."

"Setting aside that his actions still deserve a punishment from a source of authority so he doesn't continue to grow into a bigoted prick, let's just say for the sake of argument," Draco said, voice sharp as nails, "that she'd gone over and told Miss Murray about what he'd said what would his punishment have been?"

"He would to apologize," she replied.

"What? Just said he was 'sorry'?" he asked incredulously. "That's it?"

She nodded, "Yes. He's only five."

He turned to look at Harry completely outraged, "This whole school can fuck off," Draco said, standing from his chair and pointing at Harry, "I told you this was a bad idea."

Harry winced, he had in fact said this was not a great plan, just not for this reason.

"We'll be taking our daughter home today and she will not be coming back," he said. "And we will be telling this story to anyone who will listen."

"Mr-" she started, looking taken aback, since Draco had always been the polite one of the two of them.

"Oh, don't even start with me," he growled. "I run a very successful design business and while I do not understand how most of the social media works, I have someone who I pay to do it and she and I have been friends for a long time. Get ready to lose any family that you have that has a conscience, you can become the place for all backwards bigots." He started toward the door and Harry stood up.

"We'll sue you for slander," she said.

He looked over at her, completely unimpressed, "It's only slander if it's not true."

"It'll be your word against ours," she replied.

A pale eyebrow rose, "Yes it will. Lucky for me that I've recorded this entire lovely exchange," he said, twirling a pen that the Weasleys sold at the joke shop that did just that. "Feel free to contact our solicitor about anything else."

And with that he swanned out of the office.

Harry stared at her for a long moment, "Maybe you should consider educating your parents and students." Then he followed Draco out.

Draco was already squatting next to Cassie, murmuring softly to her, "yes, well done, my darling," he said pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"He was really mean, papa," she murmured.

His husband nodded, "I know, love."

"Hey, bean," Harry said, ruffling Cassie's curls and bending over to kiss her temple. "Let's get out of here, yeah? Do you have all of your things?"

She held up her unicorn backpack and nodded.

Harry helped her get her backpack on and then they set off, each of them holding one of her hands.

Cassie chattered away about the rest of her day, not even mentioning her run in with Jacob again.

-------------

After they put Cassie to bed they came back downstairs and Harry collapsed onto Draco on the sofa, resting his head in his lap.

"Pansy says that story is spreading like wildfire."

"Really?" Harry asked.

Draco nodded.

"S'kinda sexy," he said.

Draco laughed, "Sorry?"

He shrugged a shoulder, "You getting all livid and protective. It was sexy."

His husband's fingers combed through his fringe, "I'll always fight for you, for her, and for us," he promised.

"I know," he replied. "You're a good man Draco Potter Malfoy."

"It's only going to get harder," Draco said.

"Maybe, but we'll look for a more inclusive nursery school-"

Draco shook his head, "I mean when she heads to Hogwarts."

"I don't think so. People don't care about a man marrying another man," he said.

"But they care about the savior marrying a death eater and then disappearing for almost a decade and a half." He sighed, "I just wanted her to start somewhere where my sins wouldn't burden her and here we ar-"

"Hey," Harry said, sitting up and stopping the words coming out of his mouth. "You are not a burden to her and our marriage isn't a sin that could ever burden her-"

"I didn't mean to imply that you-"

"Listen to me," Harry interrupted. "Draco, you are a good dad," he said as he cupped his cheeks in his palms. "You are a good husband and you are a good person. We are both lucky to have you."

"Harry," he murmured, eyes downcast.

"You are," he promised. "I love you and Cassie loves you. and we are so blessed to have you."

"I love you too," he said, "But this isn't the last bully-"

"I know," Harry assured. "And we'll always be here for her, yeah?

Draco took a deep breath before nodding. "Yes. You're right."

"Ooh," Harry replied, crawling over him and straddling his hips. "I love it when I get to be right."

His husband rolled his eyes, "Just kiss me already."

And of course Harry obliged him.

Life wasn't always easy or perfect but they always had each other and Cassie always had two dads who would go to the end of the earth for her.

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Day 128: Snake | Day 130: Forfeit

#100 drarry drabbles in 100 days #one year of drarry drabbles #drarry ficlet #drarry drabbles #established relationship #married #parents #cw:mentions homophobic bigots

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holidaywishes · 4 years

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I Can’t Always Be Perfect

Summary: Having a sibling with a mental disability isn’t easy and can often be taxing, especially when things start to pile up at home and at work. So when things fall apart when (Y/N) tries their best to make things as close to perfect as they can, she has a bit of a breakdown.

Warning: angst, mild language, trigger warning for mention of anxiety and emotionally abusive parents

Author’s Note: So, I’m going through something right now. I don’t really know why I chose Willy for this, to be honest, but I felt like he might be a good one to make you feel better after you’ve had a rough time with things. He seems like the type to be able to make you laugh when you need it. This was a fic that came about because of things that have been building up for a while now and I’m lucky enough to have a few close people in my life that I can talk about these things with but sometimes, you just don’t want to burden anyone with your shit, so I wanted to put some of my personal drama and angst into a short little fic. I also want everyone and anyone to know that if there is anything they need to talk about regarding mental illness, anxiety, stressful home situations, anything, I’m here to be an ear and a metaphorical shoulder to lean on. Always. Also, I tried to keep this non-gendered so I used they so it would feel more inclusive. I’ll try to do this more in the future or use (Y/P/P) for Your Preferred Preference as I know that, even though it’s a small thing, it’s important. I love you all and I hope you enjoy this thing I wrote. Stay golden <3

masterlist

the other masterlist

You considered yourself a good person. Not perfect, not even exceptional, just good. You took care of things at home when your parents were at work, you cleaned up after your brother when he made a mess out of the entire house. You tried to do the right thing and tried to give back when you could, especially to causes that hit close to home, but that didn’t mean you were exempt from sometimes missing the mark and sometimes it meant taking a lot more than you had the capacity to take.

“(Y/N)!” your mom yelled from the kitchen and you ran to see what was wrong, “What is this?!” she asked, pointing to the mess on your carpet from your brother spilling his cereal on the carpet earlier in the day

“Carter must have.. I forgot to clean it up, I’m sorry” you whimpered

“I’m sick and tired of coming home to a dirty house!” she shouted

“I’m sorry” you repeated

“We’re at work all day, me and your father, the least you could do is make sure these things are done”

“This is just one time..” you said before squeezing your eyes shut, knowing that the words probably wouldn’t sit right with your mom

“ONE TIME IS ENOUGH!” she yelled, “You’re not working and you’re staying here, RENT FREE, so what the hell do you have going on that you can’t clean up a mess when it’s made?!”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” you tried, speaking softly to not upset your mom anymore than she already was, “I just meant that the house is usually clean and tidy and supper is usually made when everyone gets here. Today was... a mistake and I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say”

“DO BETTER!” she continued, snapping at you as you quickly tried to clean up the mess under her feet, “and stop being such a god damn brat!”

“HEY!” your dad shouted as he walked in the door, “what the fuck is going on?! I can hear you all from down the street!”

“I didn’t clean up after Carter today”

“And she’s been home all day, just moping around because she can’t find a job I’m sure”

“She lost her job because of the pandemic, Susan,” your dad argued, “it’s different for us. We’re both on the front lines. We can’t lose our jobs”

“I know!” she snapped, “and she should know how lucky she is that we’re letting her stay here without paying for anything”

“Stop it” your dad said, trying to get your mom to calm down but it didn’t work

“Don’t you start with me” she urged

“Can I just vacuum this? And then I’ll make supper, okay?” you tried, wanting to get away from everything

“Fine,” your mom yelled before stepping out of the room, “but that’s not the point! This should’ve been done before we got home!”

“She’s trying to do it now!” your dad yelled back, “let her do it!”

“YOU KNOW WHAT?!” your mom countered, grabbing the vacuum and pushing you aside, “I’LL DO IT MYSELF!”

“SUSAN!” your dad yelled

“MOM! STOP!” you shouted but she didn’t listen, tuning everyone out with the buzzing of the vacuum. You looked at your dad who only shrugged and you were forced to scoff at the reaction, walking away to your room because there was nothing more you could do, only to find your brother sitting on the couch listening to everything; you rolled your eyes at his complete lack of accountability and scoffed before shaking your head and walking to your room. Your hands were shaking and your body was buzzing, you didn’t know what to do. This had been a long time coming. The fighting, the arguing, the yelling. Everyone was stressed out and stretched thin and you were doing your best to keep yourself together so no one around you would feel like they had to take care of you on top of everything else but when a text came in, you couldn’t help but start to feel the stress build up in your chest

“Hey!” William’s text read

“Hey” you sent back, trying to be as casual as possible

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.. My mom’s just a little stressed out. Can I text you later?”

“Of course but are you sure you’re alright? I can come over, help out?”

“No!” you sent back quickly, noticing the ellipses pop up and you knew you had to back track, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to come over, I just need to sort somethings out and then I’ll text you, we’ll talk. Just... later okay?”

“Okay.” You sighed as you pushed your phone to the side, dropping your head in your hands to rub your temples; it wasn’t long before your mom barged into your room

“Why?” was the way she chose to start. No apology, no greeting, just straight into the same argument you had before, “why didn’t you clean it up as soon as you saw it?”

“I thought he would do it himself” you admitted

“You saw that he tried, you couldn’t have finished?”

“He vacuums his mess all the time,” you argued, “I thought that he’d say something or realize... I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think”

“You know his brain doesn’t work like ours” she said, glaring at you as she stood in the doorway

“I know,” you sighed, “I just had some errands to run this afternoon and when I saw that he spilled something, I thought that he was embarrassed to tell me and he needed a minute before he could clean it up. So I did the dishes and left the room, forgetting about the mess. Then you came home and found it”

“That’s not an excuse”

“I’m not trying to make up an excuse, mom!” you yelled, just once, before you settled down and composed yourself, “I’m just trying to explain what happened.”

“You know that your brother is different and that you need to do more to help him but you’re so concerned with yourself that you can’t manage to clean up one tiny mess!”

“Concerned with my--” you scoffed, “I do take care of this place when you’re gone. There have been so many other messes that I’ve been forced to clean up that you have no idea about -- including the many times he’s missed the toilet and peed around the toilet -- so one day, one mess not being cleaned up, does not mean that I’m so concerned with myself. This isn’t a gigantic mess that he can’t clean up, he vacuums all the time so excuse me for thinking that he would have the ability to clean up some dry cereal on the carpet!”

“He’s your brother!” she countered, “and he’s got mental delays so you have to be able to take care of him”

“AND WHAT HAPPENS TO ME?!” you finally snapped, “I do my best to take care of him and you and dad and make sure no one is stressed out more than they already are but I’m not a caretaker. I’m not the older sibling. He’s 10 years older than me, Mom, and sometimes I need to be able to walk away and do things that don’t require me to act like his mother!” The tears began to fall down your heated cheeks and you looked at your moms face which only seemed to shift slightly at your words, “I’m sorry that I didn’t spend every second of my day today cleaning every inch of the house to make it look that no one lives here. I’m sorry that I took a little bit of time for myself. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“You just have to do better” she said quietly and you shook your head, trying to hold back your tears

“I can’t always be perfect. I can’t always do everything. I missed something today and I’m sorry that it screwed up your day. But I shouldn’t be expected to do everything!” You finally got up, grabbing your phone, and pushed passed your mom so you could escape everything

“Don’t you dare walk away right now” she growled and you pulled your arm from her grasp, making your way to the door before finally meeting your dads stare

“Don’t leave, (Y/N),” he pleaded, “talk to us. Talk to me.” Part of you wanted to say something, to make him feel better, but you didn’t want him to see you cry anymore than you already were, so you ignored his attempt to make you stay; grabbing your keys and jumping in the car.

Willy’s P.O.V

“Can we meet somewhere?” (Y/N) finally texted you after nearly two hours and you were quick to suggest the rink. When you got there, you found (Y/N) huddled up, head against their knees as they waited for you

“(Y/N)?” you whispered, seeing the tears on their face when they raised their head

“Hi...” they replied

“What’s wrong?” you asked, rushing to their side

“I’m just feeling like I can’t do anything right today. Like, I’m supposed to never make mistakes and I failed today”

“Everyone makes mistakes...”

“You don’t...” they scoffed

“Have you kept up with my career at all?” you teased

“Sure but,” (Y/N) faltered, “I don’t know, Willy, I just hate having this pressure on me to be perfect. Feeling like I have to be a parent to my older sibling. I know that he’s gone through a lot and that his life is hard and that it will always be harder than mine. I know that and I try, I try so hard to make his life easier and my parents lives easier. But I have given up so many opportunities to make that possible. I deferred University for two years because my parents needed me to stay home. I didn’t apply to NYU because it was too far away. I didn’t take that amazing job at Massey Hall because the hours were too flexible. I gave up my personal life, my romantic life because it was too hard to make time for my brother with all of it. I sacrificed both my High School Graduation and my University Graduation so he could feel included. I got offered an internship in London that I had to pass on because it was too far away and my family needed me here. I love him, he’s my brother and I would die before I let anything happen to him but I just get exhausted sometimes, always having to worry about him and take care of him and make things easy for everyone but me. Then, I feel bad for getting exhausted and I overcompensate and exhaust myself even further.”

“You’re burnt out”

“Yeah,” they sighed, “I don’t wanna be. But I can’t ask for help or get my parents to understand why, if I don’t have a job, I am so burnt out”

“Want me to tell ‘em?” you joked

“No.” You noticed their eyes begin to tear and you tried to be there for them as best you could, letting them rest their head on your shoulder, rubbing their hand softly, “I just... I don’t know what to do anymore. Some days everything is fine and then other days, the smallest thing sets my mom off and I feel like she hates me and that she doesn’t think I do anything or that I haven’t given up anything. Like I should always be doing more...”

“I want to make you feel better,” you finally said, “tell me what I can do.” You waited in silence for a minute so (Y/N) could get their composure

“This.” (Y/N) said softly, “Just be here, with me. All this stuff, it’s my problem and I have to learn how to solve it. But you being here with me right now, letting me lean on you, helps.”

“So I have strong shoulders?” you joked and they laughed, “Is this me being your superhero?”

“Can you not?” they said, smacking your arm before looking up at you with a smile

“I’ll always be here to save the day” you smiled

“Yeah, you will won’t you?” they smiled back and you kissed their forehead, staying still in the cold ice rink until both of you were ready to leave.

#William Nylander #Willy Nylander #hockey #but also #not hockey #angst #William Nylander angst #William Nylander fic #William Nylander imagine #tml #nhl #masterlist #the other masterlist

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schraubd · 3 years

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A New Challenger Approaches!: Evaluating the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism

Yet another antisemitism framework has emerged, with the release of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) signed by around two hundred Jewish Studies scholars. This, of course, comes rapidly on the heels of the Nexus document on antisemitism (of which I was one of the drafters), meaning we now have two new antisemitism frameworks standing as potential complements (or alternatives) to the venerable IHRA definition.

The other day I made a handy table summarizing the similarities and differences between the three definitions. That was designed to be a pretty straightforward, "just the facts" presentation. But I also want to give my evaluative judgment on the Jerusalem Declaration in comparison to IHRA and Nexus (I wrote more on the Nexus document, specifically, in this post). Obviously, the fact that I was a Nexus author means I have a dog in this hunt, though I don't view these definitions as in competition with one another. And likewise, I don't have direct knowledge of the background and genesis of the Jerusalem Declaration in the same way I do for the Nexus document -- some of my comments will be based on inference and speculation. So take them with however much salt you think is appropriate.

This is a somewhat long post, divided roughly into three parts. First, I address differences in the orientation of the JDA compared to the other frameworks -- who wrote and who their audience is. Second, I examine the JDA's relationship to IHRA -- particularly IHRA as a symbol of (depending on who you ask) rallying against antisemitism or creating toxic policing of discourse on Israel -- and how that is mediating the reception (both positive and negative) of the JDA. Finally, I address where the JDA is substantively different from the other frameworks and where it isn't. Likewise, I identify a few important areas that neither the JDA nor IHRA address that are included in the Nexus document: the inclusion of conditions (alongside attitudes and behaviors) as a potential form of antisemitism, recognizing and objecting to the practice of routine and reflexive dismissal of antisemitism claims, and addressing how Jews who take the "wrong" (however defined) position on Israel see their Jewish identity denigrated or denied -- a form of harassment that especially targets Jews of Color.

I. The JDA's Orientation

At the outset, there are a few core differences in the orientation of the JDA in comparison to the Nexus document -- who wrote it and what it is targeting. The JDA has more of a European center of gravity, whereas the Nexus is more American; the JDA is primarily endorsed by academics, whereas the Nexus document was geared more towards "community leader" sorts. Obviously, these are generalizations -- the JDA has American signatories, the Nexus document had academics involved (such as myself). But I think these broad-stroke differences exert a noticeable impact in terms of what is and isn't prioritized, and who was and wasn't sought to be "included" in the definition.

In particular, the JDA seems to have been very invested in coming up with a definition that could get non- or anti-Zionists onboard alongside at least liberal Zionists (getting a document signed by Susannah Heschel and Richard Falk is no mean feat!). In doing so, the JDA gives the non-Zionist contingent a few very big wins: it expressly declares BDS not antisemitic, and it more or less declares calls for the dissolution of Israel to be not antisemitic (the constraint is that any alternative polity that is envisioned must be one that protects "the right of Jews in the State of Israel [or, I imagine, its hypothetical successor] to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews"). The Nexus document, by contrast, had as its target audience (more or less) the median American Jew -- envisioned as a Biden-style Democrat who identifies as broadly Zionist and pro-Israel but has his or her fair share of criticism. Accordingly, the Nexus doesn't speak directly on BDS, implicitly judging it by the other standards in the document, and contains a more robust defense of the right of Jewish self-determination than is present in the JDA (it is notable that challenging Israel's "right to exist" is viewed as antisemitic by an extremely wide consensus of American Jews -- more so than almost any other issue).

The JDA's audience is thus simultaneously broader and narrower than the Nexus': it reaches non-Zionist activists for whom it is exceedingly important that challenging Israel's existence as a Jewish state not be labeled antisemitic, but in doing so it may have language that's a veritable poison pill for rank-and-file Jews (at least in the US). The Nexus document was meant to be a viable set of guidelines for a Democratic administration that would let them handle antisemitism controversies while avoiding obvious shoals and pitfalls. The JDA (and I think this is true even if one agrees with it on its merits) would be more likely to provoke controversy simply because of its explicit language on BDS and its position that denying Jewish self-determination in Israel is not necessarily antisemitic. The JDA is I think more valuable as a tool of public discourse than something that could be "adopted" by a particular organization, especially (say) the Democratic Party (and the JDA is quite explicit that it is not meant to be adopted or codified as any explicit legal tool).

II. The Symbolism of IHRA

Speaking of provoking controversy, another defining feature of the JDA is its explicitly antagonistic posture towards IHRA. The Nexus document sought to position itself as primarily an interpretive resource -- a complement where IHRA was vague or incomplete (as Jonathan Jacoby put it, IHRA is the Mishnah and Nexus is the Gemara). The JDA, by contrast, is very much taking aim at the king. As I mentioned in my post on the Nexus document, IHRA has taken on such symbolic weight that one can generate almost reflexive support and opposition for a given initiative simply by presenting as a challenge to IHRA, and that's definitely occurring here. People who hate IHRA are cheering the JDA simply because it's the "anti-IHRA", even when their own conduct would seemingly be obviously indicted under the JDA's definition. As noted above, Richard Falk is a signatory even though he's endorsed materials which seem to cleanly fall under categories the JDA deems antisemitic. Jackie Walker praised the JDA too even though her antisemitism likewise would be covered by the JDA. It's doubtful that such persons are backing the JDA as a mea culpa for their past misconduct; rather, they see the JDA as a counter to IHRA's putative "weaponization" of antisemitism and endorse it on that basis. If or when the JDA does get cited to label them as antisemitic, I suspect they will be just as dismissive as they've been in the past.

Arguably, then, just like IHRA there is a risk that the JDA will be "applied" in a purely symbolic manner divorced from its actual textual mandates. Just as IHRA's language insisting that context matters has been roundly ignored, one can easily imagine persons accused of antisemitism "citing" the JDA for the blithe retort that "criticism of Israel is not antisemitic" while disregarding language in the JDA which arguably encompasses their particular "critique". As always, one suspects the most important interpretive canon in accept or applying any definition of antisemitism will be the overriding principle "me and my friends are not antisemitic."

The hegemony of IHRA's symbolism doesn't just afflict the JDA's defenders. IHRA's advocates also have gotten so invested in the importance of IHRA as a marker for "taking antisemitism seriously" that they are often unwilling to recognize IHRA has quite a few serious gaps and ambiguities. The core definition itself is nearly useless ("A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews" -- what does that mean?), and the illustrative examples, while helpful as far as they go (and IHRA itself says they only go so far as to be cases which "could, taking into account the overall context," be antisemitic), are significantly underinclusive even leaving aside IHRA's relative lack of guidance on what "context" can be used to assess whether any given speech or behavior that abuts one of the examples actually is antisemitic. As a symbolic gesture where a given organization says "we care about antisemitism", IHRA can stand alone (in large part because for that function it doesn't matter what IHRA says). As an actual substantive tool for identifying antisemitism, IHRA needs to be expounded upon, and that is a task that (in different ways) both the Nexus document and the JDA attempt to tackle.

Unsurprisingly, I prefer the Nexus' approach of not directly trying to overthrow IHRA but rather fine-tune, calibrate, and direct it. I have no desire to undermine the symbolic importance of IHRA, but I very much have an interest in alleviating the very real gaps and shortfalls present under any honest reckoning with IHRA's text. Even still, if I'm being honest I suspect that the JDA will prove more influential than Nexus simply as a function of polarization. The people who blame IHRA for creating a toxic atmosphere around antisemitism want something that directly challenges it. The people who are basically content with the way antisemitism discourse has proceeded around IHRA will stick with it, without seeing the need for modification. Even if substantively the Nexus does the best job of filling the pitfalls and potholes in IHRA while representing a vision of fighting antisemitism that aligns with the median American Jew, the seemingly inexorable pull of polarization will drive people into the arms of either IHRA or anti-IHRA (which is to say, JDA).

III. Substantive Similarities and Differences Across the Frameworks

You might have noticed that the above analysis actually doesn't concentrate that much on the actual substantive differences between the three antisemitism frameworks. One reason for that is that, as my table illustrates, there are fewer differences between them than one might guess from the heated nature of the JDA and IHRA's reception. Certainly, it is fair to focus on the areas where the definitions depart -- that's what should determine whether one prefers one over another -- but that focus can overshadow the significant agreement in a large set of cases regarding what is antisemitic amongst all three frameworks. All agree that criticism of Israel can be antisemitic insofar as Israel is a Jewish institution (and thus none indulge in the tritely true but banal point that "Judaism and Israel are not the same thing"), all agree that criticism of Israel is not always antisemitic, all agree that "tropes" (variously worded) are an important feature of antisemitism, and all agree that notions of Jewish collective responsibility for alleged Israeli misdeeds are antisemitic.

What are the key differences? I've mentioned two already: IHRA and Nexus both consider denial of Jewish self-determination rights to be antisemitic, while the JDA seemingly does not; and IHRA and Nexus don't speak specifically on BDS, while the JDA expressly says it is not antisemitic. These are both significant. BDS is a well-known third rail in Jewish politics, and Nexus' "strategic ambiguity" (to put it uncharitably) on the question is an attempt to traverse a cliff the JDA eagerly dives off. Likewise, as noted above the "Israel has no right to exist" position is one on which there is almost unrivaled Jewish consensus regarding its antisemitic character, so the JDA's dissident position here is risky indeed.

Beyond those two issues (and putting aside any nitpicking one can do about phrasing or word choices), the other big departure I see in the JDA is that it explicitly says that "double standards" are not antisemitic, whereas IHRA says they are. The Nexus tries to take a middle position here, agreeing that double standards are antisemitic but refusing the simplistic argument that any time Israel is concentrated on or even "singled out" in a discrete case that is evidence of a double-standard (as I've argued, AIPAC "singles out" Israel -- is that antisemitic? Of course not). The JDA's rejection of including "double standards" likely stems from the view that this language has been particularly abused by right-wing zealots who argue that essentially any Israel-critical activity that does not simultaneously tackle the entire world is per se antisemitic. That notwithstanding, the JDA's dismissal of double standards as even a potential form of antisemitism seems clearly incorrect. Disparate treatment -- treating likes unalike -- is perhaps the closest thing there is to the paradigm case of discrimination and it'd be simply weird for antisemitism to stand alone in not including this very intuitive case. If one can subject Jews or Jewish institutions to different standards than other comparable actors in global affairs without it being labeled "antisemitic", you've created a loophole you can drive a truck through.

It is also important flag a group of important components of antisemitism that are found only in the Nexus definition and are not present or discussed in either IHRA or the JDA. The first is that the Nexus definition is the only one which considers certain social conditions (on top of behaviors or attitudes) to be cases of antisemitism: specifically, those conditions "that discriminate against Jews and significantly impede their ability to participate as equals in political, religious, cultural, economic, or social life." I lobbied very hard to include this language, and in some ways I think it is the single most important point in Nexus' favor compared to other frameworks. Ironically enough (given that the Nexus document is nominally limited to the Israel case), the inclusion of this language is why the Nexus document is probably the only framework of the three which could explain why a proposed ban on Kosher slaughter would be antisemitic -- it does not fall within any of either IHRA or JDA's examples, but it would represent a social condition which "significantly impede[s] [Jews'] ability to participate as equals" in European society. Understanding antisemitism as not just a set of attitudes or behaviors but as a state of social affairs better aligns antisemitism with emerging understandings of racism and other forms of oppression, all of which have dedicated considerable attention to understanding inequality at least partially in those terms.

The second inclusion in Nexus not seen in the other frameworks is an acknowledgment of the epistemic antisemitism that occurs when Jewish claims regarding antisemitism are reflexively or cavalierly dismissed. The so-called Livingstone Formulation, where claims of antisemitism can be immediately brushed off by claiming they're actually attempts to "silence criticism of Israel," is one of the primary mechanisms through which Jews are impeded in their ability to be treated as valid and viable claim-makers in public discourse. Here, too, recognition of this practice as a form of antisemitism aligns antisemitism with other forms of oppression where it has been well-acknowledged that these sorts of reflexive dismissals are themselves manifestations of racism, sexism, or what have you (as in the infamous and ubiquitous "race card" retort). The opening entry of the Nexus definition is decisive on this point: "All claims of antisemitism made by Jews, like all claims of discrimination and oppression in general, should be given serious attention" -- which is not to say automatic acceptance, but not immediate eye-rolling dismissal either. Neither IHRA nor the JDA address this issue -- IHRA probably wasn't thinking about it at all, and the JDA it's fair to assume includes a good number of stakeholders who are at least sympathetic to the notion that antisemitism claims are regularly abused and so need tighter policing.

The final major feature of Nexus not found in its compatriots is an acknowledgment of a particular type of antisemitism that targets Jews for having the "wrong" view on Israel, at which point their status as Jews is called into question. Rudy Giuliani claiming that he's "more of a Jew" than George Soros is a high-profile case here. But the importance of including this as a form of antisemitism stemmed from the way in which this sort of marginalizing rhetoric is especially likely to be deployed against Jews of Color, who regularly are assailed as being "fake" or "lesser" Jews (even by non-Jews!) if they deviate from an imagined proper or correct Jewish standpoint on Israel. The Nexus document accordingly recognizes that "denigrating or denying the Jewish identity of certain Jews because they are perceived as holding the 'wrong' position (whether too critical or too favorable) on Israel" is a form of antisemitism, and I can say that language was included in specific recognition of dynamics one increasingly sees on social media where JOCs have been subject to brutal and persistent harassment along this exact dimension. It is a recurrent failing of Jewish efforts on antisemitism that we often are not thinking intersectionally -- and so the discrete experiences or problems faced by, e.g., Jewish women, or Mizrahi Jews, or Jews of Color, as Jews are overlooked or not incorporated. I'm sure the Nexus document can still improve on this front, but I am proud that it made at least a step in the right direction.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/3fka31c

#anti-semitism #discourse #Jews

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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IN-DEPTH: How The God of High School Revealed the True, Weird History of Taekwondo

If, like me, you found yourself yearning for some physical activity and breaks from the tedium of schoolwork as a kid, you might have found yourself wanting to learn some martial arts. Watching action stars like Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee, as well as anime, playing fighting games and more, left me with an interest in learning a martial art myself. I found myself at the door of a local Taekwondo school and was instantly hooked. Sadly, like many things, time and obligations got in the way and I had to give up my pursuit of martial arts, but I always found the subject interesting. When I started reading The God of High School, I was instantly hooked by the idea that Jin Mori used Taekwondo, but suddenly, I found myself questioning things: What did they mean, that there were multiple types of Taekwondo? Wasn’t all Taekwondo the same? What was “Renewal Taekwondo” and was it a real thing? The answer to that question is... sort of. Also: There are some light spoilers here! Be warned!

In The God of High School, the revelation that Jin practices “Renewal Taekwondo” serves as a shock to the cast, particularly the Judges and Park Mujin, as it reveals the fact that Jin’s grandfather, Jin Taejin, was not only still alive, but that he had passed on the incredibly powerful skills of Renewal Taekwondo to someone else. At this point in the anime, the reveal has played out far differently, although there’s no telling whether this might change as the anime progresses. We do know that Jin uses Renewal Taekwondo, but we don’t get the same backstory and discussion revolving around Jin’s grandfather, and the past regarding Taekwondo itself. In the WEBTOON series, Park Mujin reveals that “Renewal Taekwondo” was created by South Korean leaders following a defeat at the hands of North Korean “ITF” Taekwondo. And, suddenly, my childhood came back to me: I had learned “WT” Taekwondo, so what was “ITF?” Was it just something the web comic made up, like “Renewal Taekwondo?” As it turns out, this particular rabbit hole went a whole lot deeper, and weirder, than I ever imagined.

Perhaps the first, and most shocking, fact regarding Taekwondo is that it is less than 100 years old. Many historians agree there is some fluidity to a solid date, but as 4th Dan David Lo notes, Taekwondo likely began formally in 1955, when General Choi Hong-Hi named it after developing the first basic forms of the martial art. While many other popular martial arts, such as Karate, Tai Chi, or Kung-Fu often discuss their proud, long lineages, Taekwondo is often mistakenly assumed to be ancient; in fact, it is only perhaps somewhat related to Taekkyeon, which was nearly wiped out during Japanese occupation. After World War II, the Japanese occupation of Korea came to an end. During the occupation, Japan was particularly cruel to Koreans, suppressing their language, culture, and identity — extending this treatment to martial arts practitioners were forced to quit or go into hiding while Japanese Karate was taught instead. Taekwondo would come from the confluence of various martial arts, having more in common with Karate, mostly due to the violent banning of Korean culture.

Combining their knowledge with new techniques in Shotokan karate, Kung-Fu, and others, would begin to create schools, or “Kwans,” which would give rise to what we today recognize as Taekwondo. Scott Shaw, one of the eminent English authors and students of Taekwondo, explains the genealogy of the first 5, and subsequent 4, Kwans; these Kwans were fairly diverse, with nine divergent approaches and teachers developing their own takes on martial arts. In many cases, historians consider Song Moo Kwan the Kwan most responsible for eventual Taekwondo, with Byung Jik Ro called by some as the “father” of “modern” Taekwondo (more on that later) the original five Kwans — Song Moo Kwan, Chung Do Kwan, Moo Duk Kwan, Ji Do Kwan, and Chang Moo Kwan — were the birthplace of Taekwondo, but it would take another war, and social and cultural upheaval for Taekwondo to really emerge.

Song Moo Kwan and Chung Do Kwan were founded in 1944, with the other 5 founding Kwans appearing in the following 2 years. If we start Taekwondo’s timeline there, that means Taekwondo is only 76 years old (meaning there’s a good chance your grandparents might actually be older than Taekwondo!), but the “real” birth of Taekwondo would come a fair bit after these Kwans were founded. For that to happen, Korea would be forced into another protracted battle that would decide the course of its modern fate, and the dispersal of Taekwondo to the rest of the world: The Korean War.

Separating the country along the 38th parallel into what are today known as North Korea and South Korea, this civil war shaped Korea’s modern history in cataclysmic ways, separating family members, friends, and cultural identity. Like many aspects of Korean life, Taekwondo found itself straddling an uncomfortable and unclear line: The original Kwans were spread out across the Korean peninsula, with Song Moo Kwan being in what would now be North Korea. Following the Korean war, this would lead perhaps the most controversial figure in Taekwondo history to emerge: General Choi Hong Hi, the true “father” of Taekwondo.

Alex Gillis' A Killing Art reveals the life, warts and all, of General Choi. Born in 1918 in Hwa Dae (located in now North Korea), General Choi Hong Hi was sent to Japan by his father to study, ending up in the tutelage of Han Il Dong, a master of Taekkyeon, one of Korea’s oldest martial arts. Forced into military service by the Japanese, Choi would eventually find himself continuing to serve in the Korean military following the end of World War II and Japanese occupation, earning the title of major general in 1954 (and thus earning him both his title and nickname, “The general”).

Choi’s mastery of Taekkyeon and Shotokan karate led him to develop what he titled “Taekwon-Do,” or “foot, fist, art.” Choi is, as far as historians can tell, the first person to use the word “Taekwondo,” and rightfully seems to deserve the title. The controversy, however, comes from the disagreements between Choi (who, some authors note, was somewhat disagreeable and even deceptive) and other Kwan leaders and Taekwondo practitioners. This would lead to the eventual creation, and split, of Taekwondo into ITF and WT schools, among many other offshoots.

Whether Choi was or wasn’t a deceptive and deceitful person seems to be based on who you ask, and the most common perception of him was that he was complicated (as are we all). What authors and historians such as Lo, Gillis, Shaw, and others agree on is that without General Choi, there would be no Taekwondo, and the subsequent power struggle nearly destroyed, as Lo calls it, the “family” of Taekwondo. While it is perhaps more palatable to consider martial arts as monastic and scholarly, the reality is that they are practiced, created, and influenced by people, and Taekwondo’s somewhat ugly and public schism is a great reminder of this. Choi originally founded the ITF, or International Taekwon-Do Federation, in 1966; however, Choi’s attempts to control all aspects of Taekwon-Do, and the South Korean government’s insistence on “owning” Taekwondo, would create the split that saw Choi flee from Korea to Canada and South Korea creating the KTA (Korean Taekwondo Association), which would eventually give way to the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF, now known as WT), under the governing body of the Kukkiwon.

In the ITF version of this story, Choi simply decided to go “on tour” in 1959, before eventually creating the ITF in 1966. The WT version of the story is just as revisionist, claiming that Taekwondo has roots that supposedly go back 2000 years and that the WT was created in 1973 as the first governing body of Taekwondo. No mention of Choi or the ITF exists in the WT version of Taekwondo. Udo Moening, author of numerous papers about Taekwondo’s cultural and social significance, helps explain the disparity between these two stories by noting that Taekwondo is as much an object of political importance to the identity of Korea as it is a form of martial skill and discipline. Simply put, Moening argues, Taekwondo became a piece of the struggle for identity between South Korea and North Korea, and the eventual race to Olympic recognition would become a major victory in this battle for the WT and South Korea.

The schism in Taekwondo (or Taekwon-Do, in ITF’s usage) is perhaps even more interesting in the sense that one did not immediately replace the other; instead of the WT supplanting the ITF, the two schools of Taekwondo went about their own paths. Yet, Kukkiwon managed to obtain a significant victory over Choi and ITF Taekwondo: inclusion in the Olympics. In 1982, Kukkiwon was able to arrange a demonstration of Taekwondo for the IOC in 1988 and became an official event during the Asian Games in 1986. In 1994, Kukkiwon “won” the competition for Taekwondo legitimacy by being selected by the IOC as an official sport of the Olympics, joining Judo as the only other Asian martial art in the Olympic games, and debuting in the 2000 games in Australia.

Choi, however, had won in another way: his ITF Taekwondo spread across the world, and his somewhat ingenious method of sending Taekwondo “acolytes” to various places to form their own schools helped make Taekwondo popular and profitable. There are other forms of Taekwondo out there, including ATA (American Taekwondo Association), Jhoon Rhee Style, and the GTF (Global Taekwondo Federation), a split from ITF. Chuck Norris, during the height of his popularity in the '90s, even formed his own school that blended Tang Soo Do and Taekwondo called Chun Kuk Do!

While Choi was successful in spreading Taekwondo around the globe, and South Korea was able to claim “ownership” of the sport through political engineering and historical revision, Taekwondo in the United States would owe much of its growth and popularity to a different individual: Jhoon Rhee. Rhee, learning Taekwondo at the Chung Do Kwan in his childhood, came to America in the '60s to study engineering. Needing some extra money, Rhee began teaching Taekwondo, and through luck and hard work, launched the popularity of the martial art in the United States via television and Hollywood. Like all good and weird success stories, Rhee gained fame from his “viral” '70s commercial jingle, written by Nils Lofgren, guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band!

Rhee’s unconventional approach to success worked, taking his Taekwondo to both of America’s hearts: Hollywood and Washington DC. Rhee would go on to teach and demonstrate Taekwondo to various celebrities including Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee — even writing a book, Bruce Lee and I, in 2011. He also met with President Reagan and famously demonstrated Taekwondo to the United States Congress in 1965. There was even a sparring match between Republicans and Democrats!

But what do all of these different types of Taekwondo actually mean? When I was practicing, did I learn “the wrong” type? Well, the answer is… no! The major difference in schools seems to come down to forms, ranks, and some other small administrative differences — such as who can spar, and why, or what types of focus there is in learning Taekwondo in general. Perhaps due to the odd nature of Taekwondo’s spread outside of Korea, the sport is also highly “commercial;” the ATA and Jhoon Rhee schools, for example, were founded on the idea of both teaching the sport and also establishing chain schools that would funnel profits back to the original founders, essentially creating a business instead of the somewhat monastic idea of a martial art like the Kung-Fu or Karate that appear in movies and media.

As noted by Doug Cook, the forms, of Poomsae, are constantly changing, due in part to the various types and hybrids of Taekwondo, but also due to the somewhat infant nature of the sport compared to other forms. It would be hard, as many authors point out, to find a “true” strain of Taekwondo these days. Instead, the various approaches, forms, and inherent teachings all help create different, unique ideas of the original created by Choi in the '50s — itself a hybrid of various types of martial arts.

It's fairly common in martial arts stories to hear epic tales of the history and longevity of a martial art, but Taekwondo provides us with the unique and interesting experience of seeing that historical mythology evolve in real time. From the controversial Choi to the roots of the Korean search for identity following Japanese occupation and later civil war, Taekwondo serves as a mirror for Korea’s own evolution. While Taekwondo may not be an “ancient” form of martial arts, it is a uniquely Korean one, and one that has a complex history and personality, and thanks to The God of High School, I found myself falling into the rabbit hole of its story. “Reclamation” Taekwondo may not actually exist, but in many ways, Taekwondo was a form of reclamation for Korea: an attempt to create something new and unique in the face of years of brutal occupational rule and civil strife.

Did you know about the history of Taekwondo? What's your favorite style to practice? Let us know, and while you're at it, tell us your current fave WEBTOON series in the comments!

➡️ Watch The God of High School today! ⬅️

Nicole is a frequent wordsmith for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries. Here's that serotonin you ordered.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

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ashandboneca · 5 years

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heavenly-curse reblogged your post and added:

Im gonna have to be real here, banishing words like this is not a helpful step, especially considering that everyone’s path is different and their personal practices do not exist to please everyone. Context matters more than anything. Blind removal of words we personally don’t like is not a way to build a conscientious community.

Baby witch: I’ve never liked the term personally and have never used it to reference myself or others. But if people want to use it for themselves, it doesn’t hurt anyone. Let it be. It doesn’t need to be gotten rid of, just be mindful of how it’s used and call out anyone who is using it to be intentionally derogatory. If people want to use this as a self descriptor, leave them alone.

Fluffy Bunny: Yes, this one is mostly used as an insult. I agree that it truly has no place being used. But if people wish to attempt to reclaim it that’s their prerogative and im not going to berate them for it.

Elder: This is an important term in some traditions and if you don’t want to use it personally? That’s fine. However, many traditions defer to elders as teachers and places to seek guidance. It’s not our job to police someones language, especially considering this term is used by many indigenous religions. You can warn people of the signs of a dangerous religious authority without telling long established practices that they can’t have their own name for a long term practitioner.

Maiden/ Mother/ Crone: This is a practice specific term. Most forms of witchcraft or pagan religions don’t use this. It’s common in wiccan groups, but not always used. Regardless, there is a Male version too (though the roles tend to vary between traditions.

It can seem exclusionary in group settings unless all have agreed upon it, but if someone wants to use this in their personal practice as a reference to their journey, we have no business telling them not to. As long as they are not forcing the idea onto others, their practice is theirs and weve no right to tell them how to practice.

And no, posting about it on their personal blog doesn’t count as pushing it onto others just because others can read it.

THAT’S something that needs to be phased out in this community. Constant scrutiny of language used in another’s personal practice when they’re making no push for you to use it needs to STOP. Just because they post about it doesn’t mean you have to do anything with that post.

If it doesn’t connect with you and your practice, don’t reblog it. Or make your own post. It’s that simple.

Thank you for your thoughts. I disagree with you, and while thats fine, I’m just going to respond quickly.

I think that modernizing our language is important, because may terms used in paganism can be appropriative, exclusionary, and inaccurate. It’s not ‘policing’ language to ask people to use better and more inclusive terms.

I should also clarify that I am talking about using these terms in general, and not telling someone how to live.

As I have said in many clarifications, if people want to use baby witch as a self descriptor, cool. That’s their choice. I have no say in how someone chooses to identify. I managed a pagan bookstore for 7 years, and it is a term I saw used as an insult more often than not. YMMV.

Fluffy bunny, you know what, if people want to reclaim it, great. I have only EVER seen it used as an insult, and being dismissive of other’s paths. I don’t think this is a term that is in any way helpful, reclaimed or not. There are other terms that deserve to be reclaimed far more than this one.

My issue with elder is that it, by default, denotes a certain level of respect and authority, regardless of tradition. Practising for 20 years does not mean someone is an elder. If someone is an elder in one tradition, they are considered to hold that respect and deference in other traditions as well. Unlike the organizations that the term was appropriated from (christians, indigenous groups, etc), there is no central organization to hold these people to account should they become abusive, which has happened many many times. And while you do mention we shouldn’t police the language of indigenous groups, I did note that this list is specifically regarding pagan terms.

Regardless of whether m/m/c has a male equivalent, it’s still unnecessarily gendered. I wrote a whole post on degendering witchcraft practices for those who find the inherent sexual and gendered terms outdated, or folks who are trans or non-binary or asexual.

I think that pagans in general do not like to be questioned, not do we like to do the self examination of our traditions or practices. Whether that is because we don’t want to adhere to dogma, or whether we came from oppressive religious backgrounds, I don’t know. I do know that practice should be ever growing and changing, and no tradition is older than 70 years, and was created by people far less woke than us. Language is also ever evolving, and there are countless examples of language that used to be acceptable that is no long acceptable to use. Maybe there are not people forcefully pushing that language on everyone, but it appears in countless books and traditions, and younger or new practitioners should have a choice.

And, at the end of it, no one has to listen to anyone. People can do what they want, identify how they want. However, there are a heck of a lot of other people younger than me who are writing and talking about modernizing witchcraft, and those voices are so vital and important now. I have no more authority than anyone else.

#heavenly-curse

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machetelanding · 6 years

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Author's note: The unceasing, unjustified and often unhinged attacks against first lady Melania Trump make me want to offer her some words of comfort in the form of an open letter.

Dear Melania,

We’ve had many great first ladies, married to presidents of different political parties. These presidential wives have been known for different accomplishments and many have made positive marks on our nation, working for a range of worthy causes.

You follow in that proud tradition. However, I don’t know of any first lady who has had to endure the ferocity of rhetoric and sheer brutality of attacks that you have. I’m sure it isn’t easy.

When you suddenly found yourself cast into the role of first lady you managed to stay true to who you are in a world where the many in the antagonistic, combative and outright hostile media have constantly sought to play a game of “gotcha.”

When they couldn’t find anything of substance on which to fault you, members of the media and their friends in Hollywood went after your clothes, your accent and even your Christmas decorations. They’ve shown us just how low they’re willing to go, and it’s ugly down there.

Through it all, you’ve been an example of grace and silent strength. In spite of the onslaught of attacks, you’ve stayed focused on what’s most important to you and you’ve avoided being provoked by your critics.

This takes unimaginable restraint that most of us don’t possess.

You’ve kindly asked that your critics focus on what you do and not what you wear. What woman hasn’t experienced that feeling – judged by how we look rather than what we say and what we accomplish?

Those on the left are constantly telling us we need to do more to level the playing field for women. Asking that they focus on your actions and not your looks shouldn’t be such an unreasonable request in 2018.

But then again, you’re not just any woman. You’re the woman who married Donald Trump – Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of “the resistance.”

Your “Be Best” campaign addresses well-being, social media use and opioid abuse facing many of our nation’s children. These are serious issues and you deserve the thanks of all Americans for taking them on.

You’ve received a lot of backlash for promising to take on childhood cyberbullying in the wake of your husband’s confrontational Twitter habits. You haven’t been shaken, proving that you are your own person, and as first lady you are going to take on causes that are important to you.

Feminists – especially celebrity feminists – are always telling us that as women each of us needs to be our own person. But I guess that doesn’t count if the person is someone they don’t like.

The same celebrities who tell us we are a nation of immigrants and claim to be defenders of immigration in all forms have thought nothing of mocking your Slovenian accent. How many of them speak six languages, as you do?

Earlier this year late-night comedian turned anti-Trump stooge Jimmy Kimmel mocked the way you read a children’s book during the White House Easter Egg Roll.

Actress and bitter anti-Trump activist Chelsea Handler last year falsely stated that you can “barely speak English,” and for that reason, she’d never have you on her Netflix show, which has since been deservedly canceled.

And Victoria’s Secret model Gigi Hadid attempted a shameful imitation of your accent during her time on stage at the American Music Awards last year.

Hypocritical Hollywood and the wealthy stars who boast of being so inclusively pro-immigrant seem to have a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Over the last two years, your shoes and your clothes have been a source of fascination and fixation by the media. Most recently on a trip to Africa where you visited schools, shelters, and hospitals to focus on child welfare, it was your outfits on which the media chose to focus.

They compared you to Michael Jackson, Indiana Jones and Carmen Sandiego on Twitter after you wore a tan suit, black tie and hat on a stop in Egypt.

And who can forget what was infamously dubbed “stiletto-gate?" You were criticized for wearing heels while boarding a plane to visit Texas to tour the damage It’s been two years since your husband was elected president and America knew it was also getting a new first lady. Though it’s not a spotlight you sought, you’ve embraced your role, tuned out your critics, stayed focused on your family and won the admiration of many in this country.done by Hurricane Harvey.

That you changed into sneakers on the plane didn’t attract nearly as much media attention. Maybe they’re all just really jealous of your shoes.

It’s interesting how some of those who most strongly denounce sexism have no problem applying it to you. If Hillary Clinton had been elected president, can you imagine the media endlessly commenting on and criticizing the clothes, hats, shoes, and hairstyle of “first gentleman” Bill?

It’s in times of great adversity that we learn what we’re made of, and over the last two years, you’ve shown us who you are and what you’re made of.

We hear a lot of women tell us what it means to be a strong woman. By your actions, you show us what it means.

Keep being true to yourself.

Sincerely,

Lauren DeBellis Appell

On behalf of millions of Americans who are proud to have you represent our country.

#melania trump #first lady #donald trump #america #united states #politics #love #support #open letter #fox news #opinion #mainstream media #hollywood #make america great again #maga #respect #anti feminism #anti feminist #anti sjw

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spilledreality · 4 years

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Philosophers Are Unwitting Lexicographers: Introduction

“Linguistic Conquests” described a “narrow and conquer” method of concept factoring, where a narrow, specific sub-sense of a concept is taken to for its “true meaning” or essential {concept}-ness. Thinkers deploying this method make a claim to have “discovered” the true nature of a human concept like rationality or courage, when in “truth” there is no such nature—only a descriptive fact about the historical & hypothetical extensions of a handle onto referents. Instead, these thinkers have merely advanced a formal definition, which itself is only a crystallized pattern which covers “most” or many cases. In other words, the knowledge work being performed is more or less lexicographic. We can call this the “many threads” problem in theoretical discourse, since it arises when the Wittgensteinian motto Something runs through the whole thread—namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres is not properly taken to heart.

In “Reading ‘Ignorance: A Skilled Practice’,” I walked through Sarah Perry’s factoring of the “global knowledge game” in the social sciences, noting an erisological pattern akin to the old “three blind men & an elephant” parable:

Social science seeks to explain a broad phenomenon, like “learned helplessness.” A researcher chooses an activity which he believes encapsulates a larger phenomenon, such as: immobilizing dogs, administering electric shocks, freeing the dogs, and seeing if they attempt to escape when shocked once again. The resulting finding—that many dogs did, no longer, attempt to escape, ostensibly believing that they were incapable of it—is used, under the auspices of science, as a metonymic metaphor, more parable than global truth. The specific, contextual behavior—of dogs, no less—is taken as an indicator of some global truth about how learned helplessness operates in humans, indeed, as an indicator that we ourselves are inclined toward learned helplessness.

This dynamic is not identical to how “narrow and conquer” methods play out in philosophy and theory, but is related.

Unfortunately, much of philosophical discourse in the humanities, from literary theory to art theory to metaphysics, continues unproductively playing out this erisological pattern. Even self-purported realists, who would distance themselves from claims that the map is the territory literal, still treat human concepts like truth as if there were a fact of the matter—some essential, discoverable nature. Consider that the “correspondence theory” of the concept “truth” holds that the term describes a relationship between linguistic utterances and the state of the world, in other words, between a map and a territory. Another popular rival theory holds that truth is concerned with the inter-propositional coherence of a belief or utterance within a network of beliefs and utterances. In other words, the problem of “truth” seems always to arise only once the map exists, in other words, it is a feature of the map, and does not “exist” in “reality” anywhere.

Philosophers of the narrow-and-conquer strategy factor out formal criteria and rules, believing they have compressed the concept’s entire structure (or at least its “meaningful” parts) into two or three or fives rules—only to be contradicted by another philosopher’s presentation of an edge-case, a twin-world hypothetical or an impossible thought experiment in which we, the arbitrating readers, are asked to intuit whether we would apply the concept to a situation that would never, and has never, occurred. Then our intuition about whether it belongs in the category is treated as evidence. Recall Unger 1979:

...were we given a novel object & a corresponding nonsense word as its “handle” (e.g. “This is a nacknick”), we could quickly begin discerning between nearby (not identical, but merely similar) objects “of its type,” and those dissimilar enough to not be of its type. This boundary would be highly fuzzy but feel real. Note that such behavior should not be described as “recognizing” a category but as inventing it, from scratch. Though our language acquisition process may benefit from examples of native speaker usage, or reference to semi-formal definitions as in a classroom setting, we seem to do just fine extrapolating categories on our own. This portion of Unger’s paper serves as an elegant thought experiment for illustrating the inherent vagueness—or “radial cloud” of decreasing relation, birthed by even a single acquired example—which characterizes our concepts.

Now on the defensive, our original formalizer doubles back, like Ayer responding to challenges posed* against to positivism’s “Every meaningful statement is either analytic or verifiable”—“I’m just defining ‘meaningful’, man.” Often, the original position is seen as weakened after such admissions, but this repeated style of retreat cues us to the real state of all such claims: attempts at crystallizing a pattern behind the lingusitic extension of a term; turf-wars over different sub-meanings & carvings; attempts to lower the entropy of what are inherently high-entropy entities. Here I’ll discuss, informally, the discourses in art and literary theory that led me to hold this belief.

* The usual challenge being that the statement “Every meaningful statement...” is not, itself, analytic or verifiable, and is therefore meaningless.

i. Visual arts: But what is art, really?

Sam Rosen, in “But what are birds really?” argues that in the visual arts, a hundred years of controversy & subversion have held court over the question “What is art?” I think this portrait is somewhat simplistic; Sontag’s “Aesthetics of Silence” (and a hundred other tractates) offer very different factorings of the problem; but it is nonetheless clear in the historical record that questions about the boundaries and inclusivities of our concept “art” has undergirded modernist and post-modernist aesthetic discourse.

Such a question is not too far off from what I believe the discourse ought to be asking—more productive questions might include, What ought art to be? and Which legitimating bodies effectively shape our extension of the concept “art”? Indeed, many arguments to these effects, advancing answers to these questions, have been snuck in under the cover of explaining what art “is.” (We understand now, for instance, that the signature, the gallery, the art critic, the museum, and to a lesser extent, the public, all contribute to the legitimation process—though some idealogues claim that only one of these bodies is “legitimate” or “authoritative”—note the lingering essentialism.)

This, I think, is an important aspect of the “many threads” problem. Problematic discourses miss the most accurate, productive frame for the project they purport to engage in, and thus the quality and clarity of their answers are lowered. But along the way, many bright & efficacious individuals manage to nonetheless advance knowledge which does obtain to questions like How ought we factor concept X? or What are the differences that matter in our factorings of X? Many analytic philosophers, for instance, have worked—unwittingly!—in the lexicographic domain, searching for close-fitting formal criteria, or “crystallizing” patterns, which compressively describe the set described by (i.e. the “extension” of) a concept handle. (A handle which itself is often a superset of many subconcepts’ extensions).

But the fundamental confusion in frame remains to the net detriment of discourse; the varying modes of response only muddy the waters. As Dave Chalmers says about verbal disputes, the recognition of verbal disagreement—and by extension, we will add, model disagreement—may not “dissolve” the question, as some of LessWrong’s more ambitious pragmatists believe, but it at least “advances” it, & often by several steps.

ii. Literary theory: What is textual meaning, really? Who is the “authority” on the meaning of a text—author, reader, or scholar?

I spent a collegiate summer pouring over the 20th C Meaning Wars in literary theory, mostly texts between 1920 and 1980, and rarely saw the relevant, warring theorists acknowledge maybe there was an intended meaning of the author that mattered, and also an emergent meaning which came—structured but unique—to each reader upon engagement with the text produced through author intentionality—and also that, as must follow, there was some overlapping or common “meaning” for the “average” reader of a community, and that all these types of meaning could co-exist happily if we were to carve up the concept “textual meaning” into specific subterms (the “divide and conquer” method), instead of its ambiguous umbrella, its family of relations, its thread of spun fibers.

We could say that “intended meaning” was certainly partially conscious, having to do with some modeled hypothetical reader in the author’s mind (and where does this model come from?), and also partly subconscious, in that hidden agendas were likely acted out. (After all, in contemporary cultural production, the creations of an individual are taken as metonymic representations of him as creator. This is in opposition to many indigenous traditions, which believed a piece of bone, say, had an internal “essence” which the artist “discovered.” Very interesting, this reverberation of magical thinking.) We could say that the author who, writing a sentence, believes it to mean one thing, and then, upon reading it, decides (or “realizes”) it means something different, perhaps from erroneous construction, is operating here with a concept of “hypothetical reader meaning,” an “others in mind” mental model, and that the very fact he can recognize he meant to convey one thing, but that his words actually convey another—would be interpreted as other—is a testimony to this gap: an intended meaning, which gives birth to the utterance, and a conveyed meaning, what is received by the reader. We could say that intentionality structures response, and that readers’ search for intentionality further structures response, even if these responses are “consummated” by the reader (the genetic metaphor of mutual contribution & interaction seems apt).

And indeed, to give them their full due, all these observations and more have been made by literary theorists engaged in the so-called Meaning Wars, who have, between them, more or less factored out the literary process in full, from inception in the author’s mind, to interpretation by the reader, to the use of formal instruments like dictionaries as interpretive guides. But instead of attempting to understand when one type of textual meaning is more productive or ascertainable, instead of factoring out the relationships between these meanings, thought and energies were wasted in what amount, ultimately, to attempted linguistic conquests, fueled by the status awarded to victors of the global knowledge game. Nowadays, few theorists seem to care much about the meaning wars’ dispute—the subject’s been dropped, ostensibly for being self-frustrating. (Because they got it flipped around: they forgot they were factoring human concepts and thought they were discovering conceptual realities). And the lowercase-p pragmatic resolution is that people just refer to intended meanings and author meanings and don’t feel like they have to pledge allegiance to some totalizing camp where X is the only, narrow “meaning” that counts.

In other words, the mutual exclusivity of narrow-and-conquer strategies, with representatives arguing for their pet formalizations, was replaced by a divide-and-conquer strategy, with qualifiers appended to the umbrella concept.

It’s been some years since I investigated the Meaning Wars, & I intend to go back to my notebooks and re-read the canonical battles. Hopefully I’ll have a longer piece soon which explores, in depth—and with greater understanding than was possible at age 21—its dynamics as intellectual history.

In the post which follows, I’ll more formally work through a handful of philosophical and metaphysical dialogues from the past-half century, such as the conversation surrounding “collective intentionality,” which exhibit a “lexicographic” tendency.

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bakechochin · 7 years

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Book Reviews - The Masked City

The Masked City - Genevieve Cogman - It’s taken me a long arse while to understand that fantasy books can generally be organised into two general categories: serious well-thought out fantasy that you can actually talk about with people, and oversimplified dumb fantasy that you forget about as soon as you’ve completed (which, more often than not, all share the exact same character archetypes and all follow the same general lines) -> I felt the need to pick a book from the latter category, and I remember this book’s predecessor, The Invisible Library, having some pretty sweet stuff in it (plus it was either this or I finally read A Conjuring of Light, and fuck that) - I’ve got to admit that the setting of this series is pretty damn sweet; whilst the idea of the Library seems somewhat less cool now that I’ve got the inter-dimensional library from Lost in a Good Book as a reference point, but I do value this book’s inclusion of original characters as its agents of literature as opposed to Fforde just cribbing off of pre-existing literature for his cast -> Whilst I will argue that there really is too much in this world, and the overall concepts that define it (specifically the Fae and the Dragons) are pretty generic, it’s the kind of stuff that has just enough in the way of defined rules to allow for a shit load of cool stuff, and the stuff that the book does include regarding the Fae and the Dragons is all really fucking cool - This book recognises the fact that it’s dumb - it’s got kung fu wuxia dragons in it for fuck’s sake - and so when things actually get underway and the magical Fae-ruled Venice is introduced, this book pulls out all the fucking stops when it comes to low-brow but fun entertainment -> There’s blending into huge crowds at Carnival, there’s action sequences atop gondolas, there’s enigmatic black-clad mask-wearing assassins, and there’s an operatic villain with a dumb name who monologues at the protagonist with moustache-twirling glee from his opera house box, and it’s all great fun to read - I do like Irene as a protagonist, even putting aside the whole obvious author self-insert vibe that she exudes all the fucking time; she’s cool and collected and gets shit done through some pretty radical magical ways (and hell yes am I happy to say that the Language gets used a lot more in this book, and the excuses used when Irene can’t use her omnipotent superpower make more sense in the context and aren’t just cop-outs like in the previous book) -> Also similarly to in Moons Over Soho, this book recognises that the side characters (i.e. hunky men one, two and three) are nowhere near as interesting as Irene (two of them are generically polite and chivalric fighter types and the last one is a supernatural hunk), and so they generally get shunted to the sidelines so that Irene can get shit done on her own - As mentioned above, this is very oversimplified and very dumb fantasy, and whilst I’d argue that Cogman writes the best books in that very niche subcategory, it still suffers from all the tropes that I would expect -> Pretty much all the characters speak in exactly the same informal chatty tone (inevitably with a few flippant references to literary convention thrown in, ostensibly to keep up the illusion that this book is about books but realistically because Cogman wants to create her own bibliophile utopia), the protagonists are all either unflappable effortlessly amazing badasses or brooding angsty arseholes, there will inevitably be some sexy magical folk sauntering about (this position would usually be filled by vampires, but in this book we’ve got the Fae instead), and against all odds the antagonist will be defeated via deus ex machina means - The pacing of this book is pretty buggered, but in quite an interesting stop-start way; the book begins in media res with shit hitting the fan in literally the first few pages, but then the book goes back to explain the stuff that had happened prior which slows everything way the fuck down, and though all the important plot-progressing things occur very quickly, all of the unimportant fluff leading up to the plot-important moments are really bloody slow - I reread my review of The Invisible Library to see what my criticisms were, and apparently I was vexed that the future books in the series would probably all only take place in one world when I was interested in the world-hopping malarkey, but since then I have changed my tune somewhat -> I reckon that settings that make a point of having pretty much everything imaginable in them (like the OASIS in Ready Player One) suffer in that the book’s content will never be able to encapsulate everything (and any attempt to do so will result in something like Kraken, with too much shit in too short of a book); the previous book introduced the idea that there are pretty much infinite worlds, but we really didn’t get too see many of them so they may as well have not been there, and so I thought that this book would opt to instead set its story in one world that has a smattering of everything -> That’s how this book started, but before long we’re jumping right the fuck back on the world-jumping bandwagon, which I’m not sure if I like or not - The book ended on a cliffhanger, with Irene’s fate being left unknown, but honestly at that point I couldn’t bring myself to care; in any case, the overall storyline of Irene and the Library isn’t really the most complex or memorable overarching plot (at least not when compared with the individual adventures), so whatever - 6.5/10

I have a load of other book reviews on my blog, check that shit out.

#book reviews #the masked city #genevieve cogman #it was only when editing this review right before uploading it that i see that my autocorrect changes cogman to cowman #like why is cowman even in my dictionary #the concept of cowmen is quite frightening to be fair #i cannot put into words how little i want to read a conjuring of light #curse the obligations of trilogy completion

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bewarethebasement · 5 years

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On the Process of Dissociation to Integration

Amansinaya

Since I’ve started studying Creative Writing in Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA), I’ve been posed with the very demanding question of how to make my craft count. Conchitina Cruz had written in her essay The Filipino Author as Producer: “[t]he invisibility of Philippine literature globally, when generalized to a degree that downplays the hierarchy of literatures locally, also reinforces the valorization of writing as a struggle in itself and thus in itself an explicitly politicized action.” I have realized that I’ve been too engrossed with the idea or the difficulty of pursuing Creative Writing in the type of milieu our country offers that I’ve overlooked one problem.

I will attempt to introduce you to the situation: I’ve been living in Los Baños since 2017. I stay in PHSA during the weekdays, where I am currently a Grade 8 student, and I spend my weekends in a housing in University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). If you were to make an inquiry with me regarding the art in LB specifically, I’ll be able to make a few comments, and possibly share my personal experience with one or two zine events I’ve attended. Other than that, you’ll probably find that I am highly unfamiliar with the local arts community here, and I think that there might be something amiss with that entire scenario.

There might be some practical factors in play with this situation, including how I spend most of my time in Mount Makiling, which is a considerably isolated place. I would even say it could be because of the unavailability of LB art, if I were unaware of the remarkable progress it’s been going under-- public art spaces and independent collective organizations have gradually become more concrete and accessible. It is still questionable that an artist would be disconnected or removed from the artistic space-- or more importantly, the general non-artistic space-- she moves in.

We can afford to be detached from the LB community because of our privilege of studying in an isolated boarding school. As a Creative Writing student, it’s fairly easy to write a politically charged poem, be contented with it, and not embed myself in the struggle that inspired the creation of that work-- finality makes things easier to be ignored. Out of sight, out of mind. Additionally, there might possibly be a thin line between that and being politically informed and constantly responding to national and local issues by writing about it. In the same essay by Cruz, she says that “[s]uch gestures seem to restate even as they conceal the division between aesthetics and politics. There is something amiss in collective action when all that comes out of it is more poetry.”

In hindsight, fifteen years of living and two years of a somewhat-professional pursuit in the arts may be too short of a time for self-assessment on the role I play or how I contribute to Philippine art. But my current behavior has a high chance of foreshadowing some future errors on my part. And to go back to a previously mentioned point, it might be productive to compare the fact that my school is remarkably isolated and is, at times, quite disconnected from the outside world to my lack of regular participation within the local population.

I don’t think this is a matter of not being politically aware and being ignorant to the implications of inaction and disconnection-- emergent national and local issues are often discussed in many subjects in our classrooms, although it is still remarkably difficult to be able to tackle sensitive topics in class. Carol Ann Tomlinson, in the magazine Educational Leadership, said that “[i]t’s tricky business for teachers to tackle issues that are highly charged. There’s no easy path to listening, empathizing, understanding diverse views on critical issues”. Taking this into consideration, we should ponder if the main discussion is about how students can actively participate in classroom discourse effectively, and how teachers can find better ways to address politically and culturally sensitive topics in their classrooms.

It could be more of the lack of recognition of the immediate communities surrounding our school, and of our opportunities in engaging and responding to both the artistic and non-artistic public as a collective student artist body. In this context, maybe it’s time as artists to focus on the concept of using our art and our craft as an inclusive, interactive, and humane research practice instead of constantly missing our opportunities in engaging with the community by confining our art education to mere celebration. To quote Paulo Freire, “[t]he vocation of human beings is to achieve its full potential to be human and humane.”

Similar to my aforementioned unfamiliarity with the LB community, more than half of the population in LB-- as well as those outside of LB-- are barely aware of PHSA’s existence. By now it’s clear that one of the main problems here is lack of connection despite proximity and the abundance of exclusivity.

There is a current existing outreach program in PHSA called “Pambansang Handog Sining At Iba Pa” that has already conducted workshops and the like in Baguio, Legaspi, Mindoro, et cetera, but rarely facilitate any events in LB. There is a lot of potential in this program that could be taken advantage of as a conscious way of including the rest of the LB population in the artistic learning processes and activities that PHSA undergoes, especially for the multiple schools that surround the area, if given the opportunity.

I find this possibility similar to two projects organized by former residents of Palawan that had been started in the past called BITUON which mainly focused on theater and sports, specifically Ultimate Frisbee, and its derivative, DiscArte El Nido, as a way to engage with the local youth. DiscArte’s mission states the use of “[u]ltimate [frisbee] as a development tool to raise personal and societal resilience in El Nido, Palawan in the face of local impacts of changing global climate”, and I personally think this could be a useful reference for PHSA’s future outreach projects, especially if they were to decide on focusing on the LB community.

So how can a local art school become an active part of the community? A good start would be to become aware of what the community has, what it needs, what it lacks, and direct responses can stem from there. This does not mean that we need to pursue a need to educate anyone, but more of that we, as artists, should consider pursuing the need to learn from the people we interact with. Once we recognize the importance in simply being where the community congregates, that is when our process of transitioning from our state of disconnection to effective educational integration begins.

Constantly addressing and keeping the conversation about integration within the general public going, as well as actually taking action, has, like any other collective concept, great potential in forming a concrete, inclusive community that has a clear idea regarding the purpose of why us artists do what we do. There are many more possible questions to contemplate in this dilemma that I think can apply to various other situations and environments, and there are a few that come to mind: what kind of citizens do PHSA, LB-- and the art community in general-- need? What exactly do we want to be known and remembered for? And to cite Prendergast and Saxton (2009), “how do we value what we do? By what criteria do we judge the effectiveness of the work? What are the implications of short-term results when laid against what traces remain years later? What claims can we make for “transformation” when the money has run out, the project is over and the facilitators have moved on? What is the language we are using to describe what we do and how is it helpful?”

REFERENCES

Cruz, Conchitina. “The Filipino Author as Producer.” Authoring Autonomy: The Politics of Art for Art’s Sake in Filipino Poetry in English. Diss. State University of New York at Albany, 2016.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. 2007.

Prendergast, Monica & Saxton, Juliana, editors. “Participation, Aesthetics, Ethics and Assessment.” Applied Theatre: International Case Studies and challenges for Practice. Chicago: Intellect. 2009.

Tomlinson, Carol Ann. “One to Grow On/Citizenship at Its Core.” Educational Leadership, vol. 75, no. 3, Nov. 2017, pp. 90-91.

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Amansinaya is an 8th Grade student studying Creative Writing in PHSA. She believes in constructive self-criticism as self-care, small-scale revolutions, productive procrastination, and dogs. twitter.com/silangbuwan instagram.com/silangdagat

#bewarethebasement #thebasement #issue03 #apr2019

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riverflowsthroughit · 7 years

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Correctional Peace Officer, Writer, Activist, San Francisco

I was driving down the mountain in a 4x4, alone and on a road so bumpy it felt like off-roading. Basically I was off-roading on the Haleakala mountain, but I didn't even notice. I was listening to a podcast where a woman was pouring her heart out, and I heard her. Her struggles, brutal honesty and feelings of despair and triumph. And the more I listened the more I wanted to understand her story and interview her. Several searches, tweets, messages and I was sitting across from Ms. Hauwert in San Francisco, eating fish and chips. She had a day off from working as a first transgender correctional officer in San Quentin State prison and I was honoured that she decided to spend couple of hours with me. Opened in July 1852, San Quentin is the oldest prison in California with population of about 3,774 as of December '16. The state's only death row for male inmates, the largest in the United States, is located at the prison. I had so many questions and I was also intimidated to meet a person who handles herself so well among population of mostly men, in a tough environment. I did not need to worry because Mandi in person was even more lovely, kind and warm than the woman I heard over the speakers. Below is the very honest and unapologetic q/a where I learned something and was left with at least 100 more questions. 1. Name Mandi Camille Hauwert 2. Where is your hometown? Port Hueneme, California 3. What is your profession/career/title? Correctional Peace Officer—Writer 4. I first heard you talk about your journey / transitioning on a podcast interview where you describe the difficulties in personal and professional life. Can you describe what are some of the differences between feeling acceptance in your personal and professional sphere (at home vs. at work)? I believe that acceptance is vital to a successful transition. In my life, I am both a transgender woman and a peace officer; yet, within each of those environments, I am somewhat of an outcast. Inside the prison system, social progress is stifled. They remain decades behind the societies in which they reside. Racism, sexism, and homophobia find a home here—not that recent political events in the USA haven’t uncovered many of the same rampant forms of bigotry prevalent in our culture. It is no surprise that those working inside the justice system would find the idea of a transgender woman to be unnerving. The outside world is, only recently, coming to terms with the existence of transgender people. It is as if they are being told that the world they thought they knew, is no more; in fact, it never was. To my trans-family, being in law enforcement is either the most heroic thing that I can do, or it makes me a traitor to our cause. I have become an oppressor, in their eyes. It is an incredibly isolating experience to work in an environment where you are always fighting to gain acknowledgment. To better the very system you find yourself in. In the interim, you have to defend that career choice to those in the transgender community who, quite frankly, have every right to question and be wary of anyone who would call themselves an officer of the law. I am not hated by every co-worker, just as I am not hated by every transgender person; however, it is for those who would throw me to the very depths of hell itself, that I continue along my path to bettering myself and my world. I am most fortunate to be in a position where I can even begin to make those changes, to a brighter, more inclusive society. 5. Biggest feeling of accomplishment since making the decision to transition? My most significant accomplishment—thus far—would have to be the four and a half years I spent working toward gaining the acceptance of my parents. Going from, “You killed our son.” to, “This is our Daughter, Mandi.” My parents have made a substantial transition, perhaps more than my own. They had to come to terms with the idea that they were not losing a son; but, gaining a daughter. That I was still their child—their miracle baby. 6. What are the challenges you face as a female managing men and what has helped you to overcome those challenges? It was kind of interesting to see how the inmates reacted to me as a male versus a female officer. For one, they tend toward softer more calming voices—I learned later that it’s their attempt at flirting indirectly. I struggle, now, to have men take my authority seriously—in just about everything. I don’t think they notice; but, they explain things to me now, things, I already know—better than them usually. Although, I will say that I am not treated as a woman by all. To some, I am that “tranny.” A sideshow attraction. To overcome or deal with many of my newfound problems, I looked to other female officers. I asked odd questions, like how to ward off unwanted male attention, or how to survive when you’re awash in a sea of testosterone and male aggression. Most people I think forget, I was never a man—at least not from my perspective—and though I’ve always been a woman, I have not always been treated as one. In other words, I had a lot to learn about being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; I am still learning. 7. What are some stereotypes about your line of work that are true and which are unfair (not true)? Stereotypes are a funny thing; often they can be alarmingly close to reality—others—they miss the mark entirely. The problem with stereotypes is grouping. When they get applied to an entire sub-group of people as being immutable facts or qualities. For example, when many people think of correctional officers—prison guards—they’re imagining something akin to the guards in The Shawshank Redemption; lumbering knuckle draggers who revel in inflicting pain and suffering upon another human being they see as scum. Do these type of guards exist? Absolutely; however, in today’s modern prison system, those sorts of individual quickly go from wearing a badge to dressing in a prison jumpsuit. My experience of most correctional officers is they tend toward conservative viewpoints, chauvinism, and a strong sense of justice. Like all of us, they are flawed; they have qualities which are not best suited for working in prison. Yet, for balance, we need all sorts. I am a communicator; I talk my way out of bad situation. But, there are situations where talking just isn’t going to work, where a harder approach is warranted. As an officer, my job is to ensure the safety of those in my charge and to make sure that the will of the people, through the courts, is carried out—namely, that those sentenced to incarceration, serve out their time. I was not hired to make their lives a living hell or to pass judgment upon them. 8. What was the biggest disappointment and plan to overcome it? I’m assuming you’re referring to my biggest disappointment since transitioning. For me, it has to be my potential as a writer. I’ve had some success, and writing about my journey has given me so much to write about; yet, I remain blocked somehow. There are barriers that I seem unable to defeat. Really, it is the desire to contribute something of significance to the transgender movement—more than simply coming out at San Quentin. While that is indeed an accomplishment worthy of attention (ahh—so egotistical), it does not feel quite right. I have more to offer; I am more than an intriguing headline. A talent that I have been fostering my whole life has been my writing. I make no particular claim as to the brilliance or ingenuity of my prose; but, it is all that I know, all that I am, and all that I have to give. 9. Advice for other men looking to transition (related to thriving as a transgender woman) and Advice for other women (trans and not) who may be looking to enter your line of work? First I need to address the usage of language in the question itself; I would be derelict in my duties as a trans advocate if I did not. When you ask about advice for transgender women—referring to them as other men—I understand the confusion in pronoun usage; after all, before transitioning, they are typically living and presenting as men. Yet, I would advise any individual, writing in the transgender sphere, to avoid using the assumed pronouns of the trans person(s) in question—unless it is absolutely vital to tell the story. It would be the same for transgender men—not referring to them as other women. Sorry—preaching. For those who may or may not be transgender, looking to enter into corrections, I would first ask—do you have any other options? Kidding aside (Am I?), Working as an officer in prison is, tedious, stressful, and dangerous. We need all sorts of personalities wearing a badge; diversity in policing is incredibly important in creating a better environment for all—or at least as good as a prison can be. Be prepared to see things that may disturb you, frighten you, or shake you to your core. And if any of that sounds ominous, then corrections is not for you. Remember, those in our care are human beings and deserve respect afforded to that title. If you cannot separate your personal feelings toward their crimes—and do your job—then you will struggle. We are not here to be their friends; but, neither are we here to be their tormentors. And to the transgender hopefuls, know, that things are still improving; the department of corrections has a few miles to go yet. If you can, transition before you apply. If you come into your own while wearing the uniform, I can only hope that your experience is better than mine and those who’ve come before. We are here—I am here; should you need to reach out for advice or a friendly ear, I am always willing to listen. 10. Where in the world do you feel “tallest” (i.e. where is your happy place)? My happy place, is not so much a place, as it is an activity—writing. Specifically, scribbling in my notebook with a good’ole pen or pencil. With a piece of paper, I am God. I hold the fate of each blank page in my hand. Before me is infinite possibility waiting for my thoughts to give it form and purpose. Even the act of regarding the beauty of a blank page gives me satisfaction. With a pen and a piece of paper, I can control the fate of my deepest, darkest, thoughts; my heart tore open upon the page for others to read, to ponder, and perhaps—to learn. 11. What extra-curricular activities/hobbies are you most proud of? Why? I’ve had so many hobbies, it is hard to know what to chose. Learning martial arts rates high on my list of activities I’m most proud of. However, my reasoning for taking it on in the first place has to do with my childhood. I used to get picked on and beat up. The worst of which happened during shower time after P.E. I wasn’t comfortable undressing in front of boys—I am a girl—and that made me weird, and outcast. And around junior high, I began to notice my attraction to males; the bullies too, noticed me, noticing boys. I was the target of regular beatings, usually while kids yelled homophobic epithets. It was a kid on the playground that saved me one day; literally sailing over my prone form and kicking my assailant. It was his intervention and the knowledge that he possessed such knowledge thanks to the study of martial art, that moved me to seek training. In the years that followed, I gained a Sandan (third-degree black belt) in Shorin-Ryu and a high rank in Wing Chun Gung Fu. Over 20 years of hard work and long days punching and kicking—all so I could walk through life without being in fear of my life. I’m not too shabby at Close-up Card Magic either. 12. What is the future goal/challenge (career and/or life goals in 5-10 years)? I’ve always said, that at my ten-year mark with corrections, I’ll promote; I am well on track to that goal. My ultimate career goal, however, has to be living and working as a writer, and author. I love it. Toward that goal, I have made progress, and I need to continue pushing forward. Perhaps a biography is in my future—though I love writing the stories of other trans people as well. 13. What fears are you still hoping to overcome? I want to, desperately, overcome my fear of living. For decades, I’ve suffered from depression. In fact, I couldn't say for sure whether or not I’ve ever been happy. Having to deal with Gender Dysphoria and all of the fears that come with it, have left me spent. While my darker emotions come quickly, I find it hard to connect to the brighter side of my psyche. I have—and continue to—suffer from suicidal thoughts and ideations. I am a survivor of more than a few attempts. More than anything, I want—need—those self-harming thoughts to stop. The scariest part of it all is that I have no idea—short of medicating myself into oblivion—about how to end this deadly cycle. 14. Anything you'd do differently (if you had another go at life)? Can I be born a girl? If not then —no. The reason? There is no guarantee that my life would have been any better today, had I come out at a young age. During the 80’s and the 90’s, the treatment for transgender people was shock therapy. They’d literally attach electric contacts to your skull and turn up the juice. Besides, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to do many of the things I’m doing today—like making history as the first openly transgender correctional officer at San Quentin. (ps…I was born a girl; I just didn’t tell anybody right away.) 15. What inspires you? The unending creativity of the human mind gives me hope for the future; I draw from its wellspring to turn the void into being. It is from the example set by my progenitors that I draw my inspiration. 16. What are you hopeful about? Hope is a fickle friend for me. I sometimes feel that the more I hope something, the further it races from my grasp. If there is hope in me, it would have to be for the bright future of our young transgender family. 17. What are you reading now? (what books do you gift most and what are your favorite reads?) I mostly read non-fiction—science, psychology, and philosophy. I do love Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett as my go to fiction authors. The book I’ve gifted most—even going to the store to buy new copies just to give away—is Gavin-De Becker’s The Gift of Fear. Mostly it teaches people to trust their instincts in dangerous situations; that we often notice more about the world around us than we give ourselves credit for. 18. Who is a “WOW Woman” in your life who inspires you (and why)? Perhaps it’s cliché; but, my WOW woman is my mother. She has overcome so much in her life and still managed to raise loving, caring, and compassionate children. I would say more about her story; however, I do not want to tell it, until she is ready for the world to hear it. She is far from perfect; she has flaws which I would never admonish; though I have yet to run across a better woman to look toward, to show me what a woman is—a decent person. 19. Where can others find you/your work (links to websites, blogs, etc.)? My HuffPost Blog

#Wow Mandi #WOW Woman #WowWoman #blog #Photography #tumblr photographers #Amazing women #Strong women

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equalmeasurefiction · 8 years

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You’re Oppressing Yourselves: An exploration of interpretations, bad writing, and missed opportunities

Responders and Writing Techniques

There is a method to my madness. Part of that method is to introduce an idea and then bring it up again only a few posts later to help me explain my logic.

So let me begin this meta by explaining that I’m a #4 in terms of how I engage with a piece of media—I’m a responder. So, my first instinct is to try and make sense of a work within the framework that has been provided by the creator, or to provide my own framework in order to achieve a better understanding of what I’ve just absorbed.

This is why I tend to write fanfiction before I start writing metas. I can’t actually ‘see’ a work until I’ve chewed it up and reprocessed it/responded to it.

As a result of this particular quirk, I’m less likely to point out ‘bad writing’ right off the bat. When I come across something ‘inconsistent’ or ‘out of character’ for a given character in a fictional work, my first instinct is to try and figure out what the writer is trying to tell me about the character. Now, most of the time, my approach falls flat, because there are many inexperienced or rushed or frustrated writers in the world and when a character does something dumb or out of character it’s usually because the writer didn’t think things through, didn’t like the job, or is simply lazy.

That said, my tendency to try and read into inconsistencies isn’t entirely unfounded. Creating character inconsistencies is a valid writing technique, and it can be very effective when properly deployed. This technique can be used a foreshadowing, a means of setting up backstory, or even a proverbial Chekhov's gun. Character consistency and inconsistency is immensely important to character development, so any action that is ‘out of the ordinary’ for a character is a big deal.

Okay, now that I’ve put a bit of framework in place, let’s dig into Legend of Korra. This is, after all, a show so full of character inconsistencies that it’s the only standard character trait. We’re going to be focusing on a particularly inflammatory line from Season 1, Episode 1.

I’m going to provide a bit of critical analysis before digging into my perspective as a responder, because it’s important to point out bad writing in all its forms.

The Scene

Equalist: Are you tired of living under the tyranny of benders? Then join the equalists! For too long the bending elite of this city have forced non-benders to live as lower class citizens! Join Amon, and together we will tear down the bending establishment!

Korra: What are you talking about?! Bending is the coolest thing in the world!

Equalist: Oh yeah? Let me guess, you’re a bender!

Korra: Yeah! I am!

Equalist: And I bet you’d just love to knock me off this platform with some water bending, huh!

Korra: I’m seriously thinking about it!

Equalist: This is what’s wrong with the city! Benders like this girl only use their power to oppress us!

Crowd: *General Outcry and Agreement*

Korra: What?! I’m not oppressing anyone! You’re-you’re oppressing yourselves!

Critical Analysis

When I look back on this scene, I can’t help but think that everyone should have realized that Legend of Korra would never really be able to measure up to Avatar: the Last Airbender and adjusted their expectations accordingly. There are some very serious writing problems in this first episode and, for me, this scene captures them perfectly. All of these problems stem from one incredibly important, but often ignored fact: this is the first episode.

First episodes are ‘introductory’ episodes. They’re the ‘first chapter’ of a story and it’s important to set the status quo. While it’s certainly possible to drop a group of characters into the midst of crisis in the first episode, it’s important that you establish character during the crisis. Unless a writer is pulling some big, fancy flash-back sequence, it’s too soon to start including character inconsistency moments (unless you want to establish ‘inconsistency' as a core character trait, which is what LoK did).

This scene is a character inconsistency moment. It is built up over the course of several previous scenes and comes to a head in this particular character interaction. ��The sequence begins with Korra trying to buy food off a food vendor and being told off for not having money…

It continues the thread with Korra meeting the homeless man and being surprised by his poverty...

These two scenes both set a thematic tone and reveal important information about Korra’s character.

The thematic tone that’s been set by these first two interactions is ‘money and poverty in a city.’ The audience is watching as Korra stops, listens, and learns from the people she encounters. Korra is surprised at what she encounters, revealing her ignorance of the greater world, but at the same time, she does not become combative with the people who are ‘educating’ her. She accepts what she’s being told as truth and places her trust in the locals…

In light of the thematic setup and the characterization provided by the previous two scenes, I think it’s readily apparent that this scene makes no sense in the context of episode. Korra was not confronting non-bender oppression in the scenes leading up to this, she was encountering economic realities. This scene disrupts Korra’s characterization as someone who is capable of listening and growing an awareness of the problems of others.

Even Korra’s interjection in this scene, which opens her conversation with the equalist is completely out of left field. The equalist is talking about benders oppressing non-benders. Korra, however, ignores the discussion of oppression (which is surprising considering her temperament and approach to ‘solving problems’ in the very next scene) and argues that the act of bending is great and amazing. This has absolutely nothing to do with the point that the equalist was making, which goes against everything that we had been shown about Korra’s character up until that point.

All the same, this scene would have been fine if the writers had actually done something with Korra’s reaction in the course of the series. But there is no exploration or examination of Korra’s behavior in this instance. They gave the audience Chekhov’s gun and then did nothing with it—that’s one of the biggest sin’s a writer can commit. A good editor would have nixed this scene before it made it to production.

So, this is a scene that is thematically inconsistent and creates character inconsistencies and traits which are never resolved in the course of the series. Why does this scene exist?

I think it all comes down to one line: ‘You’re oppressing yourselves!’

That line carries a huge amount of emotional and psychological baggage for anyone who has ever been part of a minority group and has been shouted down by someone else. Many have been conditioned to react to that line negatively because their lives have been flooded with it and similar sentiments. That line is loaded with ‘shock value’ and was probably included to provoke a reaction.

Its inclusion isn’t just bad writing, it’s a blatant attempt at making a ‘statement’ through a character. And making a statement through a character without ‘follow-through’ (making sure that Chekhov’s gun goes off) is bad form.

Responder Analysis

But this scene can make sense in the context of the series. However, making it make sense would involve Bryke actually writing a loving family and exploring the dynamics of that family. I’m not convinced that Bryke knows how to do that.

I’m going to pull a little from personal experience here.

Now, I’ve seen ‘you’re oppressing yourselves’ tossed around online for ages, but I’ve only ever heard anyone say anything remotely close to it in real life once. A friend made the comment after we left a lecture that discussed theories on civil liberties and the development of certain aspects of oppressive language in regards to a specific group. We ended up talking about it and I was really surprised to learn that they had a close relative who was part of that ‘you’re oppressing yourselves’ group.

This relative was a family matriarch, had a lot of power within their community, and was a financially successful business person. For my friend, the idea that someone who was like that might suffer any form of oppression seemed absolutely ridiculous. How could one of the most influential and powerful people in my friend’s life possibly suffer any form of oppression when they commanded so much power and authority within their community?

Back to Korra. Up until this particular scene, Korra blindly and blithely accepts what she’s told, because she doesn’t know much about Republic City. The writers are showing her lack of knowledge. If Korra accepts what she’s told when she has no knowledge on a topic, then why would she argue against the idea that non-benders were oppressed unless she felt that she knew a thing or two?

Now, I doubt that the White Lotus took the time to explain bender/non-bender relations to Korra (one of the many, many baffling holes in her education…), so that means that whatever understanding that Korra has about non-benders comes from personal experience. That means that there must have been a strong, non-bender in Korra’s personal life who informed Korra’s understanding of the relationship between benders and non-benders.

The first and most obvious strong non-bender in Korra’s life is Pema. The wife of Aang’s son, Tenzin, who has no fear of her husband and who, on occasion, bosses him around.

But Pema and Korra don’t really share much screen-time and they rarely share much time talking about anything (outside of ill-fated romance). So, that means that the tough-as-nails non-bender might be a little closer to home.

Let’s talk about Senna, the Avatar’s mother who is never shown to have any bending ability in any existent season of Legend of Korra. Tonraq is a powerful bender, and someone that Korra clearly respects and admires. If Senna, his wife, were a non-bender and Korra spent the first five years of her life in a household where her non-bender mother actively argued with, bossed around, and was respected by a powerful and formidable water bender what conclusion would she naturally reach?

This is why I favor the theory that Senna is a non-bender. Korra’s outburst is out of character for her, unless it’s a defensive reaction to having her understanding of a close, personal relationship with a non-bender disrupted. It can be painful and difficult for a child, particularly a sheltered child, to be made to recognize the vulnerability of a parent or provider, especially when the child is put on ‘the side’ of the oppressor.

But Senna is not a non-bender. This scene only serves to tell the audience that the lead character is an ignorant, unlikable brat. And it really bothers me that this scene, which could have set up for some incredibly powerful mother/daughter moments and an exploration of family dynamics, was nothing more than a pointless dig at the audience…

Which why I’m ignoring Bryke’s canon and going with my own head canon where Senna is concerned. So, tough non-bender Senna is my jam.

#Senna #Korra #you're oppressing yourselves #Avatar: Legend of Korra #Meta #Bad Writing #Critique #benders #Non-benders #Equalists #Season 1: Epsiode 1 #A:LoK #Analysis #Writing Techniques #Character inconsistencies

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laurelkrugerr · 4 years

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Stop Talking About Empathy, and Start Acting On It

July 13, 2020 15+ min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

During my last full-time job as an executive leader, my colleagues and I were asked to stand in front of the entire company and talk about which of the organization’s corporate values resonated with us the most. Our choices: self-awareness, positive energy, judgment, intellectual honesty, and empathy. These values, along with others like integrity, courage, passion, and fun, might look familiar. They’re the list of company values taped up in corner offices and corridors around the world, even if most employees never know they exist.

“Empathy,” said the woman two seats down from me. “Because people say I’m good at connecting with other people.” Several nods from the crowd of supportive employees. “Empathy,” said the guy next to her, one seat down from me. “I care about other people, and do my best to treat them as I want to be treated.” More nods, and a few spontaneous claps. “Intellectual honesty,” I said. “Because I’m pretty good at cutting through the bullshit.” I got a few smiles and nervous laughs but was mostly met with bewildered silence. I think I was supposed to say “empathy,” but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. As a branding and leadership executive, with a background as an academic psychologist, maybe I knew a little too much about what the word empathy means. Or, rather, how it can mean so many different things—yet absolutely nothing—at the same time.

For a word that didn’t exist in the English language until the 20th century, empathy has emerged as a linguistic superstar. Since 2004, Google searches for the word have risen steadily, with frequency more than doubling over the past decade alone. With the explosion of the global coronavirus pandemic—along with escalated racial tensions—empathy has embedded itself in the public discourse, often with reference to which political leaders have demonstrated it and which have not.

Outside the political ring, corporations, big and small, have become downright obsessed with empathy. Some leaders, like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, have a long track record of touting empathy as a central guiding force. “There is no way we are going to be able to succeed…if we don’t have a deep sense of empathy,” he has said. More recently, multiple news organizations heralded Airbnb’s CEO Brian Chesky as empathetic for the way in which he communicated staff layoffs due to COVID-19. “I have a deep feeling of love for all of you,” he wrote in an internal company memo. Leaders understand that this is good for business. A recent poll from Ipsos (on behalf of PepsiCo Beverages North America) reports that how brands respond to the coronavirus pandemic will impact shopping intentions of more than half of Americans, and that Americans see it as more important now for businesses “to demonstrate empathetic qualities.”

This all makes intuitive sense. Like puppies and rainbows, empathy is one of those things that seem like a pure, absolute positive. As professor Paul Bloom jokes in his book Against Empathy, “You can never be too rich or too thin…or too empathetic.” From my perspective, though, too much is lacking from this empathy discourse. As I felt when I stood in front of that room to talk about my favorite corporate value, I still don’t know exactly what everyone is talking about. Empathy sounds good, but how are we defining it? Empathy is ubiquitous, but are all businesses talking about the same thing? Does being an empathetic organization mean taking an action of some kind, or just having feelings?

In the corporate world, answers to these questions are hard to find. While empathy increasingly appears as a part of companies’ mission statements, hardly any define what they actually mean by it. The overriding assumption is that the word simply speaks for itself. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.) The issue with companies touting empathetic messages is that while it’s easy to talk about doing good things for employees and customers, it is far more difficult to generate and sustain positive corporate behaviors. In the past, organizations might have gotten a pass, or even praise, for communicating empathetic messages internally and to the public. But set against the backdrop of uncertainty about the future of business, and of life in general, people are taking notice of how companies’ messages match up with their actions.

There is a tremendous amount of collective anxiety about what our individual futures hold. Some authors have pointed out that this particular period of time may be bringing up feelings of grief and trauma at scale. At a time when most of us are thinking about roughly the same things and having many of the same conversations, the concept of widespread empathy is imperative. So it is no surprise that businesses, as part of our cultural fabric, are striving to be part of the conversation. Most of them use social media channels to tell us that they care about us as employees and customers, and that they are there for all of us during times of crisis. But often those messages are unsubstantiated, and the intentions behind them are frequently muddied.

What is becoming clear is that the risk of companies simply talking about empathy without translating those words to measurable, tangible outcomes can result in catastrophe. Study after study has shown that employees, especially younger ones, will quit to work for companies that better align with their personal values. And, similarly, customers are more than happy to spend their money elsewhere, choosing to align with organizations that are willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Empathy might be one of the most popular topics of scientific inquiry of our time. Within the past decade, Google Scholar—which indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across formats and disciplines—gives nearly 600,000 citations for just the term empathy. Most of the academic curiosity around empathy focuses on exactly what it is and, correspondingly, how to measure it.

In their effort to make sense of the scientific characterization of empathy, social psychologist Judith Hall and research scientist Rachel Schwartz published an article in 2019 that analyzed the state of the concept across nearly 500 independent studies. What they concluded is that often the word empathy should be bypassed altogether because there is widespread disagreement about what it means. Instead, they argue, people should refer to what they are actually talking about, be it feeling another’s feelings, reading their emotional cues, caring about others’ distress, listening to their stories, or any of the other various elements that comprise the empathy laundry list. “Our point was not to find fault,” write Hall and Schwartz, “but to illustrate the many ways authors attempt to deal with a construct that is essentially intractable. The challenge to theoryis compounded by the fact that empathy is alternatively treated as a process, a trait, a capacity or competency, a response or reaction to observing another’s experiences, and interpersonal behavior itself.” In other words, the research overwhelmingly shows that it’s dangerous to assume that we know exactly what anyone is talking about when they talk about empathy.

The business world is hardly clarifying things. The word is applied liberally to what companies are saying and doing, especially as we all continue to grapple with the ambiguity that lies ahead.

Companies are blasting messages about caring about each other during uncertain times, with the common refrain that “we’re here for you” and that, above all, “we are in this together!” In response to the senseless police murder of George Floyd, along with many more, other companies are following similar templates to talk about how they “stand in solidarity,” “stand up against racism,” and “show support for the Black community.” In a viral tweet, video game writer Chris Franklin poked fun at the deep uniformity of brand messages:

“We at [Brand] are committed to fighting injustice by posting images to Twitter that express our commitment to fighting injustice. To that end, we offer this solemn white-on-black .jpeg that expresses vague solidarity with the Black community, but will quietly elide the specifics of what is wrong, what needs to change, or in what ways we will do anything about it…We hope this action encourages you to view [Brand] positively without, you know, expecting anything from us.”

Within a few minutes of spotting that tweet, I saw another from CBS telling me that they “stand in solidarity with our Black colleagues, creators, partners, and audiences and condemn all acts of racism, discrimination, and senseless acts of violence.” And another from Pixar letting me know that they “stand for inclusion.” Fantastic. But what does it mean?

Don’t get me wrong; some companies are doing more. Several organizations have committed to donating real money to fuel the fight against injustice. Walmart, as one example, announced that it will contribute $100 million over five years to create a new center for racial equity. Others, like Ben & Jerry’s, created useful resources for employees and consumers to get involved with political movements. This is progress. Still, the vast majority of organizations seem satisfied with lip service alone—and they do so at their own peril.

This is not the first time that corporations have found themselves in this position. The term greenwashing emerged in 1986, back when consumers first began gravitating toward environmentally friendly companies. The term described an organization that spends more time and money on marketing agency itself as eco-conscious than it actually works to minimize its environmental impact. Mega conglomerate Nestlé, for example, has faced wide-scale criticism—and a growing pile of expensive lawsuits—for contributing to human rights violations and global plastic pollution. Yet the company has spent millions marketing agency itself as creating positive impact and “shared value,” without sufficiently addressing its core business practices.

Similarly, we’re now seeing a version of this we can call kindwashing: It’s when an organization spends more time and money on marketing agency itself as empathetic than it does on minimizing practices that alienate or take advantage of employees and consumers. And in a strange way, the word empathy enables this because it is so ill-defined. If nobody can pin down exactly what the word means or what it looks like, then businesses don’t have to worry about managing employee or consumer expectations. Words and actions are left up to interpretation.

But people are watching, and a gulf is growing between corporate leaders and the people who make businesses run. For the past four years, the corporate benefits company Businessolver has released annual reports on the state of workplace empathy. Results from its 2019 study point to a notable trend: While 92 percent of CEOs say that their organizations are empathetic, only 72 percent of employees agree. Meanwhile, employees are clear about where their priorities lie: Ninety-three percent of employees are likely to stay with an empathetic employer, and 82 percent would consider leaving a job for a more empathetic organization.

Businessolver’s authors skirt around clear definitions of what they mean by empathy—it is, after all, such a slippery word. But employees are clearly recognizing the absence of it. Within the past year alone, several high-profile companies—from WeWork and Away to Outdoor Voices and Pinterest—have endured employee outrage and worker attrition due to unempathetic business practices that contribute to work environments that have frequently been described as toxic.

The message to organizational leaders is that they need to invest more care and effort to engage their employees. This makes good business sense because research shows that taking care of employees is a necessary precondition for building and sustaining a customer–first culture. This can’t happen until leaders commit to defining what empathy means to them, and how that leads to specific, observable actions.

This is what it means to stop kindwashing, and to start being kind.

Throughout the global pandemic and the escalating Black Lives Matter movement, we have heard from hundreds of companies expressing empathy across every known medium. For the most part, though, organizations are reacting—perhaps because they feel compelled to, but perhaps also because “empathy” (of any definition!) isn’t an honest part of their core. Without a clear understanding of who they are or why they exist, business leaders’ words will always ring hollow, and their operations will become disorganized and ad hoc. A crisis will only magnify those problems.

How does an organization fix this? It doesn’t react to the moment. It looks deeply inward.

Organizations need to build and install what I call a human operating system. In technology, an operating system (OS) supports basic functions that enable more complex tasks to happen. Without iOS or Android, we can’t play Candy Crush. Similarly, a human OS serves as the structural glue that encodes how values like empathy propagate through all organizational operations, from internal behaviors, processes, and communication to external messages and actions.

At the heart of a human OS is a core essence, a central idea. It’s what that company or person is about—and it’s critical for flawless execution at all levels, during a time of crisis or not. From that central idea, an operating system has space to grow. Building a human OS fortifies the connective thread from that core to an organization’s vision, mission, and values. This requires business leaders and their companies to commit to articulating a clear purpose and point of view that results in more than words in a presentation or on a corporate website.

After codifying these foundational elements, installing a human OS translates words into action, ensuring that every aspect of an organization’s efforts is synchronized and consistent. Just as a technology operating system controls every part of a computer, a human OS drives business actions holistically—from hiring and performance management evaluation to programs, offerings, services, thought leadership, partnerships, customer experiences, brand expression, and external communications. Building and installing a human OS is what allows businesses and their leaders to align what they say they’re going to do with what they actually do. This is a first step to putting a stop to kindwashing.

Organizations that talk about the concept of empathy typically do so because a senior leader in the company—usually the founder or the CEO—believes that caring about employees and customers is not mutually exclusive with making a profit. At the very least, that should be their ambition. So, a challenge to organizational leaders across companies of all sizes: If your HR or marketing agency team is going to express empathy as a company value, it is incumbent on a leader to model that behavior. This asks leaders to do the work of explicitly clarifying what empathy means to them, and then laying out specific actions that they’re going to take for employees and customers to demonstrate their commitment to those actions.

In a recent LinkedIn article, for instance, H&R Block’s president and CEO, Jeff Jones, responded to the Black Lives Matter movement on behalf of the senior leadership team, by pledging action. “This is much more than a moment—this is a movement,” he wrote, and promised, among other fixes, to expand the company’s hiring practices. I called him to ask about H&R Block’s process, and he said it begins with an honest review of where the company has gaps. “Filling those gaps means going deep on where the issues are,” he says, “and setting clear, specific goals by function. It’s not political; it’s about focusing on people, individuals.” That last part is key. Jones is demonstrating that the best way to model behavior is to do what most of us were taught back in first grade: Listen. No, really. Listen.

Carl Rogers and Richard Farson coined the term active listening in 1957, writing that “active listening is an important way to bring about changes in people…[it] brings about changes in peoples’ attitudes toward themselves and others; it also brings about changes in their basic values and personal philosophy.” Hearing someone is easy; active listening is hard work. It requires our full mental capacity, so active listening is as draining as it is rewarding. Yet at a time when companies are confused about how to behave, it is important to remember something so simple, so basic. Active listening means paying deep and close attention to how employees and customers are doing. It means taking the deliberate time to understand how they might be feeling, and why they might be feeling that way. This isn’t about investing shrinking budgets into big research studies. It’s about taking the time required to understand what problem empathy is trying to solve before jumping to a presumed solution.

When massive cultural moments take hold, brands are quick to react, respond, and post. There almost seems to be a hidden, driving belief that moving the fastest will win the grand prize of higher employee retention and deeper customer loyalty. That’s why we got all those “We’re here for you” emails from brands we hadn’t interacted with in years during the initial spread of COVID-19. The reality is that active listening requires deliberate time and effort. It means having difficult conversations with employees and customers. Intention, discussion, and commitment are all at the heart of what it means to engage in active listening for employees and consumers alike.

Not only that, but active listening is at the core of what it means to build, install, and activate a human OS for an organization or an organization’s leader. News across the past several months has left behind a trail of cautionary tales. One is of Elon Musk, who repeatedly made decisions against the will of his employees. In one case, he reopened a California Tesla factory in defiance of local health officials. He said employees weren’t obligated to return if they were uncomfortable, but two Tesla employees claimed they were fired when they chose not to return. Later, when Musk was uncharacteristically silent as the Black Lives Matter demonstrations began, Tesla employees threatened to stage a peaceful rally to commemorate Juneteenth. This prompted Musk to announce that Juneteenth “is henceforth considered a U.S. holiday at Tesla and SpaceX”—but unlike at major companies like Nike, Target, Adobe, Lyft, and Spotify, which simply gave employees the day off, Musk said his employees would have to take a vacation day to commemorate Juneteenth.

Musk is well-known for his eclectic views on a wide range of topics, but his actions as a leader are under scrutiny because he demonstrates a failure to listen—to healthcare experts, workers, and consumers. Musk may have conviction in his beliefs, but he’s holding on to an outdated OS that clashes with employer and customer values because he is not taking the time to understand what other people are feeling. Failure to do this may or may not impact Tesla’s financial performance, but it will result in more employees speaking out and leaving his companies for ones that better align to their personal values.

Compare Musk’s leadership style with that of Kenneth Chenault, who served as the CEO and chairman of American Express until 2018. He was said to consult often with his teams, asking questions like: “Who is listening to you? How many people respect you?” He applied a similar method toward listening to American Express customers, often organizing impromptu listening tours and engaging with customer service teams to better understand the quality of service and support that consumers would receive, and how to continually improve it. This is what allowed him to demonstrate kindness and care through measurable, observable, outcome-driven actions—and the company thrived during his 17-year tenure as the company’s leader.

Sometimes I reflect back on corporate life, and I think about that meeting where I was asked to explain my favorite company value. If I had been given the proper time to think about it, I might have answered differently instead of trying to make an unmemorable joke. I might have said “empathy.” Then, I might have gone on to say something like: “I’m going to say empathy because I think it’s really important. But I don’t know—because I’m not sure what we really mean when we say it. I wonder if this would be a good time for us to define what empathy means to us, and then discuss how we’re going to hold ourselves accountable to it.”

That response may not have earned much empathy from my colleagues. But at least it would have come from a good place.

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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The Last Works Before the Renaissance

By 1993, textual interactive fiction was reaching the fag end of the unsettled, uncertain half-decade-and-change between the shuttering of Infocom and the rise of a new Internet-centered community of amateur enthusiasts. Efforts by such collectives as Adventions and High Energy Software to sell text adventures via the shareware model had largely proved unfruitful, while, with the World Wide Web still in its infancy, advertisement and distribution were major problems even for someone willing to release her games for free. The ethos of text and parsers seemed about as divorced as anything could possibly be from the predominant ethos in game development more generally, with its focus on multimedia, full-motion video, and ultra-accessible mouse-driven interfaces. Would text adventures soon be no more than obscure relics of a more primitive past? To an increasing number even of the form’s most stalwart fans, an answer in the affirmative was starting to feel like a foregone conclusion. Few text-adventure authors had serious ambitions of matching the technical or literary quality of Infocom during this period, much less of exceeding it; the issue for the medium right now was one of simple survival. In this atmosphere, the arrival of any new text adventure felt like a victory against the implacable forces of technological change, which had conspired to all but strangle this new literary form before it had even had time to get going properly.

Thankfully, history would later mark 1993 as the year when the seeds of an interactive-fiction rebirth were planted, thanks to an Englishman who repurposed not only the Infocom aesthetic but also Infocom’s own technology in unexpected ways. Those seeds would flower richly in 1995, Year Zero of the Interactive Fiction Renaissance. I’ll begin that story soon.

Today, though, I’d like to tell you about some of the more interesting games to emerge from the final days of the interstitial period — games which actually overlap, although no one could realize it at the time, with the dawning of the modern interactive-fiction community. Indeed, the games I describe below manage to presage some of the themes of that community despite being the products of a text-adventuring culture that still spent more time looking backward than looking forward. I’m fond of all of them in one way or another, and I’m willing to describe at least one of them as a sadly overlooked classic.

The Horror of Rylvania

The hiking trip across Europe has been a wonderful experience for two recent college graduates like yourself and your friend Carolyn. From the mansions of England to the beaches of Greece, you’ve walked in the footsteps of the Crusaders and seen sights that few Americans have ever seen.

Carolyn had wanted to skip the Central European nation of Rylvania. “Why bother?” she’d said. “There’s nothing but farmers there, and creepy old castles - nothing we haven’t seen already. The Rylvanians are still living in the last century.”

That, you’d insisted, was exactly why Rylvania was a must-see. The country was an intact piece of living history, a real treasure in this modern age. If only you hadn’t insisted! As night fell, as you approached a small farming village in search of a quaint inn to spend the night, the howling began. A scant hundred yards from the village, and it happened...the wolves appeared from the black forest around you and attacked. Big, black wolves that leaped for Carolyn’s throat before you could shout a warning, led by a great gray-black animal that easily stood four feet at the shoulder. Carolyn fell to the rocky path, blood gushing from her neck as the wolves faded back into the trees, unwilling, for some unknown reason, to press their attack.

If she dies, it will be your fault. You curse the darkening sky as you cradle Carolyn’s head, knowing that you have little time to find help. Perhaps in the village up the road to the north.

The Horror of Rylvania marks the last shareware release from Adventions, a partnership between the MIT graduate students Dave Baggett and D.A. Leary which was the most sustained of all efforts to make a real business out of selling interactive fiction during the interstitial period. Doubtless for this reason, the Adventions games are among the most polished of all the text adventures made during this time. They were programmed using the sophisticated TADS development system rather than the more ramshackle AGT, with all the benefits that accrued to such a choice. And, just as importantly, they were thoroughly gone over for bugs as well as spelling and grammar problems, and are free of the gawky authorial asides and fourth-wall-breakings that were once par for the course in amateur interactive fiction.

For all that, though, the Adventions games haven’t aged all that well in my eyes. The bulk of them take place in a fantasy land known as Unnkulia, which is trying so hard to ape Zork‘s Great Underground Empire that it’s almost painful to watch. In addition to being derivative, the Unnkulia games think they’re far more clever and hilarious than they actually are — the very name of the series/world is a fine case in point — while the overly fiddly gameplay can sometimes grate almost as much as the writing.

It thus made for a welcome change when Adventions, after making three and a half Unnkulia games, finally decided to try something else. Written by D.A. Leary, The Horror of Rylvania is more plot-driven than Adventions’s earlier games, a Gothic vampire tale in which you actually become a vampire not many turns in. It’s gone down in certain circles as a minor classic, for reasons that aren’t totally unfounded. Although the game has a few more potential walking-dead scenarios than is perhaps ideal, the puzzles are otherwise well-constructed, the implementation is fairly robust, and, best of all, most of the sophomoric attempts at humor that so marked Adventions’s previous games are blessedly absent.

That said, the end result still strikes me more as a work of craftsmanship than genius. The writing has been gone over for spelling and grammar without addressing some of its more deep-rooted problems, as shown even by the brief introduction above; really, now, have “few Americans ever seen” sights advertised in every bog-standard package tour of Europe? (Something tells me Leary hadn’t traveled much at the time he wrote this game.) The writing here has some of the same problems with tone as another Gothic horror game from 1993 set in an ersatz Romania: Quest for Glory IV. It wants to play the horror straight most of the time, and is sometimes quite effective at it — the scene of your transformation from man to vampire is particularly well-done — but just as often fails to resist the centrifugal pull which comedy has on the adventure-game genre.

Still, Horror of Rylvania is the Adventions game which plays best today, and it isn’t a bad choice for anyone looking for a medium-sized old-school romp with reasonably fair puzzles. Its theme adds to its interest; horror in interactive fiction tends to hew more to either H.P. Lovecraft or zombie movies than the Gothic archetypes which Horror of Rylvania intermittently manages to nail. Another extra dimension of interest is added by the ending, which comes down to a binary choice between curing your friend Carolyn from the curse of vampirism, which entails sacrificing yourself in the process, or curing yourself and letting Carolyn sod off. As we’ll shortly see, the next and last Adventions game perhaps clarifies some of the reasons for such a moral choice’s inclusion at the end of a game whose literary ambitions otherwise don’t seem to extend much beyond being a bit of creepy fun.

The Jeweled Arena

You let out a sigh of relief as you finish the last paper. “That’s the lot.”

“Good work, ma’am,” says Regalo, your squire. “I was almost afraid we’d be here until midnight.”

“Don’t worry, Regalo, I wouldn’t do a thing like that, especially on my first healthy day after the flu. In any case, Dora wants me home by eight. The papers look dry, so you can take them to Clara’s office.”

As Regalo carries the papers to the adjoining office, you stand up and stretch your aching muscles. You then look through the window and see a flash of lightning outside. It looks like quite a storm is brewing. “I’m beginning to think my calendar is set wrong,” you say as Regalo returns. “Dibre’s supposed to be cool, dry, and full of good cheer; so far, we’ve had summer heat, constant rain, and far too many death certificates. Perhaps this storm will blow out the heat.” “I hope it blows out the plague with it, ma’am. I’ve lost three friends already, and my wife just picked it up yesterday. No one likes it when the coroner’s staff is overworked.”

“It doesn’t help that Clara and Resa are both still sick. If we’re lucky, we’ll have Resa back tomorrow, which I’m sure your feet would appreciate. I presume Ernando and Miranda have already left for the day?” “Yes ma’am.”

“Now I’m really worried. The only thing worse than being the victim of one of Miranda’s pranks is going a day without one of her pranks -– it usually means you missed something. Perhaps she decided to be discrete [sic] for a change.”

“I didn’t get the impression her sense of humor was taking the day off, but I don’t know what she did. It can wait until tomorrow. Is there anything else you need me to do before I leave?”

Written by David S. Raley, The Jeweled Arena was the co-winner of what would turn out to be the last of the annual competitions organized by AGT’s steward, David M. Malmberg, before he released the programming language as freeware and stepped away from further involvement with the interactive-fiction community. Set in a fantasy world, but a thankfully non-Zorkian and non-Tolkienesque one, it’s both an impressive piece of world-building and a game of unusual narrative ambition for its time.

In fact, the world of Valdalan seems like it must have existed in the author’s head for a long time before this game was written. The environment around you has the feeling of being rooted in far more lore and history than is explicitly foregrounded in the text, always the mark of first-class world-building. As far as I can tell from the text, Valdalan is roughly 17th-century in terms of its science and technology, but is considerably more enlightened philosophically. Interestingly, magic seems to have no place here, making it almost more of an alternative reality than a conventional fantasy milieu.

The story takes place in the city of Kumeran as it’s in the throes of a plague — a threat which is, like so much else in this game, handled with more subtlety than you might expect. The plot plays out in four chapters, during each of which you play the role of a different character. The first chapter is worthy of becoming a footnote in interactive-fiction history at the very least, in that it casts you as one half of a lesbian couple. In later years, certain strands of interactive fiction — albeit more of the hypertext than the parser-driven type — would become a hotbed of advocacy for non- hetero-normative lifestyles. The Jeweled Arena has perhaps aged better in this respect than many of those works have (or will); it presents its lesbian protagonist in a refreshingly matter-of-fact way, neither turning her into an easy villain or victim, as an earlier game might have done, nor celebrating her as a rainbow-flag-waving heroine, as a later game might have done. She’s just a person; the game takes it as a given that she’s worthy of exactly the same level of respect as any of the rest of us. In 1993, this matter-of-fact attitude toward homosexuality was still fairly unusual. Raley deserves praise for it.

Unfortunately, The Jeweled Arena succeeds better as a place and a story than it does as a game, enough so that one is tempted to ask why Raley elected to present it in the form of a text adventure at all. He struggles to come up with things for you to really do as you wander the city. This tends to be a problem with a lot of interactive fiction where the puzzles aren’t the author’s primary focus; A Mind Forever Voyaging struggles to some extent with the same issue when it sends you wandering through its own virtual city. But The Jeweled Arena, which doesn’t have a mechanic like A Mind Forever Voyaging‘s commandment to observe and record to ease its way, comes off by far the worse of the two. Most of the tasks it sets before you are made difficult not out of authorial intention but due to poor authorial prompting and the inherent limitations of AGT. In other words, first you have to figure out what non-obvious trigger the game is looking for to advance the plot a beat, and then you have to figure out the exact way the parser wants you to say it. This constant necessity to read the author’s mind winds up spoiling what could have been an enjoyable experience, and makes The Jeweled Arena a game that can truly be recommended only to those with an abiding interest in text-adventure history or the portrayal of homosexuality in interactive media. A pity — with more testing and better technology, it could have been a remarkable achievement.

Klaustrophobia

You are standing at the top of an ocean bluff. Wind is whipping through your hair and blowing your voluminous black cape out behind you. You can hear the hiss of the surf crashing far below you. Out towards the horizon, a distant storm sends flickers of lightning across the darkening sky. The last rays of the setting sun reflect red off the windows of the grey stone mansion to the East. As you turn towards the house, you catch a glimpse of a haunting face in one of the windows. That face, you will never forget that face......

> wait The surf and cliffs fade from sight............ You awake to find yourself in your living room,lying on the couch. Your cat, Klaus, is chewing and pulling on your hair. Static is hissing from the TV, as the screen flickers on a station long off the air. You look at your watch and realize that it is 3 AM. You must have fallen asleep on the couch right after you got home from work, and settled down to read the newspaper.

I noted earlier that the Adventions games are “free of the gawky authorial asides and fourth-wall-breakings” that mark most early amateur interactive fiction. That statement applies equally to The Jeweled Arena, but not at all to Carol Hovick’s Klaustrophobia. The other winner of the final AGT competition, its personality could hardly be more different from its partner on the podium. This is a big, rambling, jokey game that’s anything but polished. And yet it’s got an unpretentious charm about it, along with puzzles that turn out to be better than they first seem like they’re going to be.

What Klaustrophobia lacks in polish or literary sophistication, it attempts to make up for in sheer sprawl. It’s actually three games in one — so big that, even using the most advanced and least size-constrained version of AGT, Hovick was forced to split it into three parts, gluing them together with some ingenious hacks that are doubtless horrifying in that indelible AGT way to any experienced programmer. The three parts together boast a staggering 560 rooms and 571 objects, making Klaustrophobia easily one of the largest text adventures ever created.

Like the Unnkulia series and so much else from the interstitial period, Klaustrophobia is hugely derivative of the games of the 1980s. The story and puzzles here draw heavily from Infocom’s Bureaucracy, which is at least a more interesting choice than yet another Zork homage. You’ve just won an all-expenses-paid trip to appear on a quiz show, but first you have to get there; this exercise comes to absorb the first third of the game. Then, after you’ve made the rounds of not one but several quiz shows in the second part, part three sends you off to “enjoy” the Mexican vacation you’ve won. As a member of that category of text adventure which the Interactive Fiction Database dubs the “slice of life,” the game has that time-capsule quality I’ve mentioned before as being such a fascinating aspect of amateur interactive fiction. Klaustrophobia is a grab bag of pop-culture ephemera from the United States of 1993: Willard Scott, Dolly Parton, The Price is Right. If you lived through this time and place, you might just find it all unbearably nostalgic. (Why do earlier eras of history almost invariably seem so much happier and simpler?) And if you didn’t… well, there are worse ways to learn about everyday American life in 1993, should you have the desire to do so, than playing through this unforced, agenda-less primary source.

The puzzles are difficult in all the typical old-school ways: full of time limits, requiring ample learning by death. Almost inevitably given the game’s premise, they sometimes fail to fall on the right side of the line between being comically aggravating and just being aggravating. And the game is rough around the edges in all the typical AGT ways: under-tested (a game this large almost has to be) and haphazardly written, and subject to all the usual frustrations of the AGT parser and world model. Yet, despite it all, the author’s design instincts are pretty good; most of the puzzles are clued if you’re paying attention. Many of them involve coming to understand and manipulate some surprisingly complex dynamic sequences taking place around you. The whole experience is helped immensely by the episodic structure which exists even within each of the three parts: you go from your home to the bank to the airport, etc., with each vignette effectively serving as its own little self-contained adventure game. This structure lets Klaustrophobia avoid the combinatorial explosion that can make such earlier text-adventure epics as Acheton and Zork Zero all but insoluble. Here, you can work out a single episode, then move on to the next at your leisure with a nice sense of achievement in your back pocket — as long, of course, as you haven’t left anything vital behind.

Klaustrophobia is a game that I regard with perhaps more affection that I ought to, given its many and manifest flaws. While much of my affection may be down to the fact that it was one of the first games I played when I rediscovered interactive fiction around the turn of the millennium, I like to believe this game has more going for it than nostalgia. It undoubtedly requires a certain kind of player, but, whether taken simply as a text adventure or as an odd sort of sociological study — a frozen-in-amber relic of its time and place — it’s not without its intrinsic appeal. Further, it strikes me as perfect for its historical role as the final major statement made with AGT; something more atypically polished and literary, such as Shades of Gray or even Cosmoserve, just wouldn’t work as well in that context. Klaustrophobia‘s more messy sort of charm, on the other hand, feels like the perfect capstone to this forgotten culture of text adventuring, whose games were more casual but perhaps in some ways more honest because of it.

The Legend Lives! A pattern of bits shifts inside your computer. New information scrolls up the screen. It is not good.

As the impact of the discovery settles on your psyche, you recall the preceding events: your recent enrollment at Akmi Yooniversity; your serendipitous discovery of the joys of Classical Literature – a nice change of pace from computer hacking; your compuarchaeological discovery of the long-forgotten treasures that will make your thesis one of the most important this decade. But now that’s all a bit moot, isn’t it?

How ironic: You were stunned at how *real* the primitive Unnkulian stories seemed. Now you know why.

David Baggett’s The Legend Lives! is the only game on this curated list that dates from 1994, the particularly fallow year just before the great flowering of 1995. The very last production of the Adventions partnership, it was originally planned as another shareware title, but was ultimately released for free, a response to the relatively tepid registration rate of Advention’s previous games. Having conceived it as nothing less than a Major Statement meant to prod the artistic growth of a nascent literary medium, Baggett stated that he wished absolutely everyone to have a chance to play his latest game.

Ironically, the slightly uncomfortable amalgamation that is The Legend Lives! feels every bit as of-its-time today as any of the less artistically ambitious text adventures I’ve already discussed in this article. Set in the far future of Adventions’s Unnkulia universe, it reads like a checklist of what “literary” interactive fiction circa 1994 might be imagined to require.

There must, first and foremost, be lots and lots of words for something to be literary, right? Baggett has this covered… oh, boy, does he ever. The first room description, for the humble dorm room of the university student you play, consists of six substantial paragraphs — two or three screenfuls of text on the typical 80-column monitor displays of the day. As you continue to play, every object mentioned anywhere, no matter how trivial, continues to be described to within an inch of its life. While Baggett’s dedication is admirable, these endless heaps of verbiage do more to confuse than edify, especially in light of the fact that this game is, despite its literary aspirations, far from puzzleless. There’s a deft art to directing the player’s attention to the things that really matter in a text adventure — an art which this game comprehensively fails to exhibit. And then there are the massive non-interactive text dumps, sometimes numbering in the thousands of words, which are constantly interrupting proceedings. Sean Molley, reviewing the game in the first gush of enthusiasm which accompanied its release, wrote that “I certainly don’t mind reading 10 screens of text if it helps to advance the story and give me something to think about.” I suspect that most modern players wouldn’t entirely agree. The Legend Lives! is exhausting enough in its sheer verbosity to make you long for the odd minimalist poetry of Scott Adams. “Ok, too dry. Fish die” starts looking pretty good after spending some time with this game.

And yet, clumsy and overwrought though the execution often is, there is a real message here — one I would even go so far as to describe as thought-provoking. The Legend Lives! proves to be an old-school cyberpunk tale — another thing dating it indelibly to 1994 — about a computer virus that has infected Unnkulia’s version of the Internet and threatens to take over the entirety of civilization. The hero that emerges and finally sacrifices himself to eliminate the scourge is known mostly by his initials: “JC.” He’s allegedly an artificial intelligence, but he’s really, it would seem, an immaculate creation, a divinity living in the net. An ordinary artificial intelligence, says one character, “is smart with no motivation, no goals; no creativity, ya see. JC, he’s like us.” What we have here, folks, is an allegory. I trust that I need not belabor the specific parallels with another famous figure who shares the same initials.

But I don’t wish to trivialize the message here too much. It’s notable that this argument for a non-reductionist view of human intelligence — for a divine spark to the human mind that can’t be simulated in silicon — was made by a graduate student in MIT’s artificial-intelligence lab, working in the very house built by Marvin Minsky and his society of mind. Whatever one’s feelings about the Christian overtones to Baggett’s message, his impassioned plea that we continue to allow a place for the ineffable has only become more relevant in our current age of algorithmization and quantization.

Like all of the Adventions games, this one has been virtually forgotten today, despite being widely heralded upon its release as the most significant work of literary interactive fiction to come along since A Mind Forever Voyaging and Trinity. That’s a shame. Yes, writers of later text adventures would learn to combine interactivity with literary texture in more subtle and effective ways, but The Legend Lives! is nevertheless a significant way station in the slow evolution of post-Infocom interactive fiction, away from merely reflecting the glory of a storied commercial past and toward becoming a living, evolving artistic movement in its own right.

Perdition’s Flames *** You have died. ***

All is dark and quiet. There is no sensation, no time. Your mind floats peacefully in a void. You perceive nothing, you feel nothing, you think nothing. Sleep without dreams.

All is hazy and gray. Sensation is vague and indistinct. Your mind is sluggish, sleepy. You see gray shapes in a gray fog; you hear distant, muffled sounds. You think, but your thoughts are fleeting, disconnected, momentary flashes of light in a dark night. Time is still frames separated by eons of nothing, brief awakenings in a long sleep.

All is clear and sharp. Sensation crystalizes from a fog. You see, you hear, you feel. Your mind awakens; you become aware of a place, and a time.

You are on a boat.

Last but far from least, we come to the real jewel of this collection, a game which I can heartily recommend to everyone who enjoys text adventures. Perdition’s Flames was the third game written by Mike Roberts, the creator of the TADS programming language. While not enormous in the way of Klaustrophobia, it’s more than substantial enough in its own right, offering quite a few hours of puzzling satisfaction.

The novel premise casts you as a soul newly arrived in Hell. (Yes, just as you might expect, there are exactly 666 points to score.) Luckily for you, however, this is a corporate, postmodern version of the Bad Place. “Ever since the deregulation of the afterlife industry,” says your greeter when you climb off the boat, “we’ve had to compete with Heaven for eternal souls — because you’re free to switch to Heaven at any time. So, we’ve been modernizing! There really isn’t much eternal torment these days, for example. And, thanks to the Environmental Clean-up Superfund, we have the brimstone problem mostly under control at this point.”

As the game continues, there’s a lot more light satire along those lines, consistently amusing if not side-splittingly funny. Your goal is to make the ascent to Heaven, which isn’t quite as easy as your greeter implies. Achieving it will require solving lots and lots of puzzles, which are varied, fair, and uniformly enjoyable. In fact, I number at least one of them among the best puzzles I’ve ever seen. (For those who have already played the game: that would be the one where you’re a ghost being pursued by a group of paranormal researchers.)

Although Perdition’s Flames is an old-school puzzlefest in terms of categorization, it’s well-nigh breathtakingly progressive in terms of its design sensibility. For this happens to be a text adventure — the first text adventure ever, to my knowledge — which makes it literally impossible for you to kill yourself (after all, you are already dead) or lock yourself out of victory. It is, in other words, the Secret of Monkey Island of interactive fiction, an extended proof that adventure games without deaths or dead ends can nevertheless be intriguing, challenging, and immensely enjoyable. Roberts says it right there in black and white:

Note that in Perdition’s Flames, in contrast to many other adventure games, your character never gets killed, and equally importantly, you’ll never find yourself in a position where it’s impossible to finish the game. You have already seen the only “*** You have died ***” message in Perdition’s Flames. As a result, you don’t have to worry as much about saving game positions as you may be accustomed to.

I can’t emphasize enough what an astonishing statement that is to find in a text adventure from 1993. Perdition’s Flames and its author deserve to be celebrated for making it every bit as much as we celebrate Monkey Island and Ron Gilbert.

Yet even in its day Perdition’s Flames was oddly overlooked in proportion to its size, polish, and puzzly invention alone, much less the major leap it represents toward an era of fairer, saner text adventures. And this even as the merciful spirit behind the humble statement above, found buried near the end of the in-game instructions, was destined to have much more impact on the quality of the average player’s life than all of the literary pretensions which The Legend Lives! so gleefully trumpets.

Roberts’s game was overshadowed most of all by what would go down in history as the text adventure of 1993: Graham Nelson’s Curses!. Said game is erudite, intricate, witty, and sometimes beautifully written — and runs on Infocom’s old Z-Machine, which constituted no small part of its appeal in 1993. But it’s also positively riddled with the types of sudden deaths and dead ends which Perdition’s Flames explicitly eschews. You can probably guess which of the pair holds up better for most players today.

So, as we prepare to dive into the story of how Curses! came to be, and of how it turned into the seismic event which revitalized the near-moribund medium of interactive fiction and set it on the path it still travels today, do spare a thought for Perdition’s Flames as well. While Curses! was the the first mover that kicked the modern interactive-fiction community into gear, Perdition’s Flames, one might argue, is simply the first work of modern interactive fiction, full stop. All of its contemporaries, Curses! included, seem regressive next to its great stroke of genius. Go forth and play it, and rejoice. An Interactive Fiction Renaissance is in the offing.

(All of the games reviewed in this article are freely available via the individual links provided above and playable on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux using the Gargoyle interpreter among other options.)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-last-works-before-the-renaissance/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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writing-talkadvocatesul-blog · 5 years

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When is a Title a Tail Wagging the Dog?

By Lawrence Cleary, Co- director, Regional Writing Centre, UL.

Is there anything more frustrating than conjuring a title that communicates everything you want it to communicate? It seems that most of the online wisdom about coming up with a good title is from bloggers, an anxiety that appears close to every blogger’s heart. A close second is from those online who have cracked writing titles for scientific papers. We won’t even go into the number of title generators you can find online. The Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota is the only writing centre that I found in the first five pages of my search results that provides some thoughts on creating a good title. A good title ‘predicts content’, ‘catches the reader’s interest’, ‘reflects the tone or slant of the piece’, and ‘contains keywords that will make it easy to access by a computer search’.

The problem that I had with manufacturing a good title for the Regional Writing Centre’s upcoming symposium on writing was, at least, three-fold. One, it doesn’t help if you are not clear in your mind about what the symposium is intended to do—what ideas and concepts will be debated, what conclusions those attending might leave with. Two, my audience is to be from diverse, even opposing backgrounds, technical language no doubt posing difficulties for some. And, three, when there is depth and breadth to the concepts and issues involved, it is difficult to get it all in.

Our 2012 symposium was titled The role of the higher education in preparing writers for the workplace: encouraging real engagement with writing at third level. The problem was that, this year, we will be inquiring into the same thing, so the new title had to distinguish itself from our 2012 symposium. One difference was that in the 2012 symposium there was an unstated assumption that if we could teach students to write well in their discipline, we would be preparing them for writing in the workplace. This year, we will be challenging that idea that writing in one context transferred easily and transparently to the next. This was, in the parlance of the UofM’s Center for Writing, the ‘slant’. My first attempt at a title was composed for a letter seeking funding:

An inquiry into how the writing know-how that brought students academic success fails graduates when writing for industry?

Because the intended audience is to consist of equal numbers of three groups, academic subject specialists, academic writing support specialists and communication specialists in industry, I felt the need to resist overly technical language. ‘Writing know-how’ avoids more technical phrases like ‘competency’ and ‘proficiency’. Altogether, the title would be hard-pressed to be less technical. Lacking, though, is any inclusion of key words that would show up on a computer search. Who searches ‘writing in industry’ or ‘writing know-how’ when looking to find scholarly works on the concepts covered by this symposium? And we haven’t even begun to talk about how long the title is. Initial feedback from colleagues was that the title was ‘a bit long’. A good title, colleagues confided, shouldn’t be more than 10 to 12 words long; mine was 18 words if we count the hyphenated term as one word.

I got the title down to 15 words with Writing Transition for Employability: Replicating the Complexity of Workplace Writing in a Higher Education Context, but I felt like the title was communicating that it had a hard and fast solution to offer, when in fact, what I wanted to convey was that the audience should expect to leave not with a framework, but frameworks, ways of thinking about the problem, giving them ways of approaching writing situations in which transfer was problematic, but not sure fire ways.

My next iteration was conjured with that wish in mind: Why writing competency often doesn’t transfer: What can be done to ease the transition? I hated this title almost instantly. My title was getting shorter and closer to conveying the idea that transition was something towards which both sides could work, but it wasn’t exactly catchy. In fact, it sounded a bit like an aspirin commercial, whiney.

Then I had a brainstorm. My thought was to give the symposium context by linking it to a forty-year old conversation. I began thinking about how many of today’s conversations on writing began with Merrill Sheils 1975 Newsweek article entitled ‘Why Johnny Can’t Write’. Though the article’s attribution of a decade long decline in the reading and writing skills of students, from elementary all the way through to third-level graduates, to greater access to television eerily parallels today’s grumblings over the intrusion of texting and sexting and snap-chatting into today’s novice writers often ill-suited writing style, there is little today to parallel the other attribution made: that “subtle shift of educational philosophy away from the teaching of expository writing”. If anything, today, the pendulum has swung perhaps too far the other way. But that’s another argument for another time. Another current parallel to the environment to which that article responded was the fact that many of the complaints registered by the industries of the time also sound, perhaps less eerie, but disappointingly familiar. The article was almost a metaphor for the situation that our symposium was meant to address.

My first attempt at a title that linked itself to that Newsweek article went thusly: Why Dr. Johnny can’t write for the workplace: Debunking the notion that writing competency in academic contexts prepares graduates for writing in workplace contexts. Without denying that the title is too long, I liked it because it stated the issue in plain English and it had catchy elements. Everyone would understand the terms ‘writing competency’, ‘academic contexts’ and ‘workplace context’. If it had a failing, it was that the symposium was more than just about debunking that fallacy. It was about understanding those contexts, how writing worked in those two seemingly incongruous contexts, who wrote, who ‘authored’, what ‘authorship’ meant in each context, how the texts functioned—their purpose, how production proceeded, what strategies assisted writers in moving the texts forward… In essence, given ours and our colleagues’ assumption that all writing is socially situated, the symposium was about assessing each context to learn the extent to which workplace situations could be replicated in academic contexts, where there is an obligation to measure student competencies in terms of both subject knowledge and the associated literacies on which the acquisition, storage and dissemination of that knowledge rely. We wanted to identify what situations could be replicated as a way of preparing students for those situations, and we wanted to specify some typical workplace situations that were impossible to accommodate in academic contexts.

My next attempt, Why Dr. Johnny can’t write for the workplace: Can third-level education teachers and business communication managers develop a framework for teaching writing that transfers across contexts?, communicates that the responsibility for change was not only that of academic and support staff in writing centres, but of industry representatives as well. I avoided phrasing like ‘teaching writing transition’ for fear that not all attendees would know what that meant. I said ‘teaching writing that transfers across contexts’ instead, ‘third-level education’ and ‘business communication managers’ hopefully clarifying the meaning of ‘contexts’. At least, that was my thinking. But, alas, feedback from colleagues confirmed that it was way too long—27 words, too much of a mouthful.

Why Dr. Johnny can’t write for the workplace: Developing a framework for teaching writing that transfers from 3rd-level education to workplace contexts, my third iteration, stayed with the idea of ‘a framework’. I was avoiding ‘pedagogical framework’, but that was what I had hoped was inferred. I wanted the audience to come away with ways of framing their conversation about teaching writing that transferred across contexts. I took the title down from 27 words to 23—still too long, but less of a mouthful. The worst news possible, however, came from a colleague who interpreted the title as suggesting a pejorative view of Dr. Johnny, inferring from the title that I was claiming that PhDs can’t write. The one thing that had not occurred to me was that this iconic, mid-seventies American essay on the then present decline in US reading and writing competency and prospects for the future of an ‘educated’ workforce did not translate into an iconicity with which the Irish psyche was familiar. I had to lose the allusion.

Exhausted, I came up with Why good academic writers perform poorly in the workplace: Teaching for transfer across contexts of writing. Still very long at 16 words, ‘Dr. Johnny’ displaced by ‘good academic writers’, the ‘good’ performance of these writers in academics was starkly contrasted with their ‘poor’ performance in the workplace. ‘Teaching for transfer’ was back in, but in the context of the prepositional phrase that followed, ‘across contexts of writing’, the meaning could be easily inferred. It was technical, but there was enough in it to make in clear to even the uninitiated. I resigned myself to the notion that representatives attending from industry would probably not see any value in teaching transfer from their side, but at least they could evaluate our proposed frameworks and identify what might work and what might not and way.

My colleague can attest to the number of hours I spent trying to come up with a title that did the job. It was hours and hours over days and days. Each of the titles that I present above also went through their own evolutions, iterations, changing phrases and wording, back and forth, just trying to get it right. I didn’t want anyone attending to have any other idea of what the symposium was about but that stated in the title. With months to go, one more speaker to identify and, it is hoped, a slew of abstracts for presentation, my hope is that this title says it all as I am now committed. It has been advertised. If it is wrong, will the symposium be revised to fit the title? Such is the anguish of titles.

#academic writing #college #writing

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