#it takes active effort to be ethical while being stupid and evil takes doing no work

[21st-century-minutiae]

In the early twenty-first century, financial systems and contract laws have solidified into a steady state. Corporations, which are a structure of private company ownership defined by the dilution of ownership across fungible 'shares', exist both as a private contract matter and a federally recognized legal institution.

A component of both the contract law and the governmental law that forms corporations defines and restricts the actions a corporation can take due to the nature of ownership. To protect the diluted owners from the executives who manage day to day business, the corporation has a fiduciary duty to investors, meaning they have to legally consider and protect the interest of their investor's wealth. Without this fiduciary duty, a scam artist could, say, sell off a minority stake in the company, then drain the wealth of the investors for their personal pockets, ruining the company. This happened enough in history to enough influential people that laws were enacted to set about this fiduciary duty.

BECAUSE of this legal fiduciary duty, companies are legally required to prioritize shareholder profits at all times, or else they could be fined, sued, or even jailed. This has created a horrifically perverse situation, where short term stock value has more value than near any other metric. If a CEO is in a position to choose between taking a moral, sane choice and a choice which can increase stock value, such as giving their workers a raise versus buying back stock, they risk being punished for choosing the sane option, and much be prepared to actively justify their decision to do a reasonable thing.

Comparatively, actions that lead to an increase in shareholder value are, by default, assumed to be the correct one no matter how heinous they may be. A CEO may be sued if they ever go above and beyond the absolute bare minimum set by government regulations. Consider a case where federal law might mandate that all construction workers get a minimum of 15 minute water breaks every 4 hours when the temperature outside is above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. If a company chooses to offer all workers 20 minute water breaks every 2 hours regardless of the temperature, they open themselves up for potential lawsuits by shareholders, since the 'productivity gap' versus the bare minimums theoretically costs shareholder value. The Company would be forced to justify why the objectively better situation isn't costing shareholder value.

While it is not the case that every shareholder would sue in every situation like that, it is a chilling effect that, in aggregate, moves all companies towards taking actions that can only blatantly value shareholders at the cost of employees, customers, and the world at large. Price gouging, for example, will never run into an issue with shareholder fiduciary duty, so companies will have to justify to shareholders why they DON'T price gouge up to the legal limit, using only monetary terms. This isn't impossible. One can use 'customer relations, employee retention, brand value, and getting ahead of incoming government regulation to justify ethical actions. But it takes active time and effort to make these arguments, and there is a chance they will fail.

In this sense, government regulation can act as a powerful tool to get self interested, passive companies to behave more ethically. But it also encourages companies to invade politics and dismantle regulatory agencies, since that has 'clear shareholder value.' Fiduciary duty might REQUIRE that companies engage in political corruption up to (or beyond) the legal limits of bribery/lobbying.

This whole situation is ultimately bad for everyone, including shareholders, as short term profits are prioritized even over long term profits, and customers, employees, and bystanders are left in the lurch.

100% of baffling business decisions do not need to be resolved through conspiracy but by simply remembering that it is not the CEO's job to provide a good product, or to make the company sustainable, or even to make the company money. it is the CEO's job to convince the shareholders / owner that the company is going to grow next quarter

[adifferenttime]

Andrew Ryan vs. Robert House

On almost every House post I make, someone in the notes will reliably reference Andrew Ryan. I totally get it - they look similar, they're based on the same guy, the parallels are so clear that the NV dev team added an achievement for killing House with a golf club - but I think these commonalities tend to engulf both characters, blotting out some of their more interesting ideological/personal differences. It's useful to examine them in relation to one another, but part of that is figuring out what distinguishes them, which is just what I’ve attempted to do.

It's difficult for me to talk about Randian objectivism because I don't think it's sound enough to address on its own terms, but considering this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan has adopted, I kind of have to. What I’d identify as the core premise of Randian ethics is this: altruism is a moral wrong. Some Randians have argued that isn't really what they believe - that the real point is anything resembling altruism is self-interest in disguise - but they're departing from the beliefs of their icon when they make those claims. Per Rand:

The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute is self-sacrifice – which means self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction – which means the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

The way Rand defines altruism is by linking it to self-sacrifice, which she uses to differentiate it from kindness or benevolence. Aiding others at no cost to yourself is benevolent, but not altruistic, and therefore not evil. Sacrificing your happiness to help another human being is, from Rand's perspective, evil, as is any philosophy that prioritizes the other at the cost of the self. This whole idea has been broadly rejected by most scholars on account of it being really fucking stupid. What justifies the leap from "man is naturally selfish" to "selfishness is good"? If selfishness is moral, wouldn't the most moral behavior be to exploit others through whatever means necessary, favoring force over the market? Rand defines happiness as "using your mind’s fullest power," achievable only when you "do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal," but why is this the only definition? What if your only options are self-sacrificial in nature? How do you weigh them if neither sacrifice is linked to values, individual achievement, or "your mind's fullest power" at all? Rand didn't care because she was too busy trying to ethically justify cheating on her man with her best friend's husband, but nonetheless, this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan’s adopted. He claims that "Altruism is the root of all Wickedness," in what's almost a direct quote from Rand herself.

To that end, Ryan builds a system that doesn’t just accept selfishness but actively incentivizes it. Every other principle he expresses is subservient to the ideas that selfishness rules man, and that for Ryan to act on his own selfish impulses is the highest good in the world. His lesser political principles (individual liberties, negative rights, the creation of a stateless society) don’t matter to him as much as the central precept from which they stem: that selfishness is his moral imperative.

What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The Holocaust? Dictatorship? No. It's the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism.

It doesn't come as a particular surprise to me when he starts imprisoning dissidents or executing rivals or banning theft (standard practice in most societies, but not what an egoist would pursue; if you can get away with taking it, you deserve to have it, or so the thinking goes). I’ve seen him described as a hypocrite, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true considering everything he does is in line with his opposition to altruism. He'll adhere to his other principles only if they don’t sabotage his pursuit of personal power. This is evident in the fact that he only adopts a negative perception of Fontaine when his own interests are threatened, but doesn’t give two shits what Fontaine might be doing to sow conflict and harm people before that point. A guy named Gregory asks Ryan to step in against Fontaine early on before Fontaine's fully established himself as a threat to Ryan's power, and Ryan's extremely blase about it.

Don't expect me to punish citizens for showing a little initiative. If you don't like what Fontaine is doing, well, I suggest you find a way to offer a better product.

Contrast this with how he reacts when Fontaine has risen as a genuine business rival. This is from the log titled "Fontaine Must Go."

Something must be done about Fontaine. While I was buying buildings and fish futures, he was cornering the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences. Rapture is transforming before my eyes. The Great Chain is pulling away from me.

This double standard is the natural outgrowth of his prioritization of self-interest. If your most deeply-held belief is that you should never give up your interests for others, ancillary rules become flexible in times of personal crisis, and Bioshock makes the case that putting someone like that in charge of a city will leave you with a crumbling, monstrous ruin.

Superficially, House has some similarities. Ryan executes political rivals; House has you blow up a bunker of his ideological opponents. Ryan is the highest authority in Rapture; House is the absolute monarch of Vegas. Their goals and moral codes, though, are almost diametrically opposed. When you ask House why you’re expected to trust him when he’s openly admitting to installing himself as the despot of the New Vegas Strip, he says this:

I have no interest in abusing others... Nor have I any interest in being worshipped as some kind of machine-god messiah. I am impervious to such corrupting ambitions.

Most of his resources are devoted to large-scale, impersonal projects, aimed either at building the power of Vegas or securing his long term goal of “progress” as he sees it. He’s rejected selfishness as a moral good because House is very far from Randian objectivism. He's a Hobbesian monarch.

In that respect, he shares an outlook on human nature with Ryan that I deeply disagree with (that human beings are essentially selfish), but in terms of what that means for the structure of a utopian society, House takes a very different position. From his perspective, human nature breeds suffering, not industriousness, and the only way to stamp out conflict - and, in a post-nuclear age, ensure the continued survival of the human race - is through a strong sovereign. The purpose of a state as laid out in Leviathan aligns very, very closely with the one House expresses.

...the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men...

The monarch's successes are reflected in his society and the well-being of humanity as a whole. To subvert his goals is to subvert society's goals, and to doom humanity to the war, death, and suffering that exist in a state of nature. When you destroy his Securitrons/kill him, he doesn't plead for himself or get offended on his own behalf. He accuses you of betraying not him, but mankind.

Single-handedly, you've brought mankind's best hopes of forward progress crashing down. No punishment would be too severe. Fool... to let... personalities... derail future... of mankind? ...Stupid! Slavery... the future of... mankind? What... have you... done?

An important corollary of this idea which again distinguishes House from Ryan appears in Leviathan’s description of the political/moral responsibility of a monarch to his subjects:

...that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority... he hath the use of so much power that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.

Hobbes and House give the monarch virtually unlimited power but match it to the monarch's duty, which he lives to fulfill. His obligation is to speak for the people, act for them, and protect them from all threats, internal and external. House generally abides by this, orienting his decisions around his goals for society irrespective of the personal cost (the negative consequences of his actions are a product of his fucked evaluations of what’s best for society, not personal greed). It’s not just a departure from Ryan’s philosophy but a complete refutation of it. He's almost died for what he's misidentified as the greatest good.

Given that I had to make do with buggy software, the outcome could have been worse. I nearly died as it was…. I spent the next few decades in a veritable coma.

This is not the behavior of an egoist. This is the behavior of an extremely arrogant but marginally altruistic (from a Randian perspective lmao) guy. This is some distorted “from each according to his ability” shit if you’ve managed to convince yourself your abilities exceed those of everyone else who has ever lived and that you can get the Mandate of Heaven by being really good at statistics.

The reason these guys develop such similar structures and hierarchies despite the ideological gulfs between them is because both of them are elitists who’ve experienced a massive failure of self-consciousness. They’re unable to conceive of other people as being fundamentally like them. Ryan separates people into the clearly-delineated classes of “producer” and “parasite,” ignoring the fact that everything he’s ever “produced” was reliant on a huge, coordinated effort between workers, architects, accountants, middlemen, and others, all of whom, in conjunction, contributed more to the realization of his dreams that he ever could have alone. Rather than realizing his own position is more parasitic and reliant on other people’s labor than that of anyone else in Rapture, he adheres to his doctrine of selfishness even when it’s not reflective of reality and is ruining the the lives of an entire city of people. He deludes himself into believing he’s a superman among ants instead of one flawed man who is reliant on the goodwill of others to help him survive, as are we all.

House, too, thinks he’s exceptional. Unlike Ryan, he acknowledges the necessity of the worker to a functioning society, but while he’ll accept his reliance on that labor, he doesn’t trust the laborer enough to share political power. House knows he’s invested in humanity’s survival and the creation of a better world, but he refuses to consider that he might not be alone in this goal. He chalks up the existence of the Legion to fanaticism/the ambitions of a sultanistic dictator and attributes everything the NCR has done to greed, without it ever occurring to him that the massive harm these nations have done was partially motivated by the same goals he’s devoted himself to - and that the atrocities he’s committed since his rise to power are, in some respects, very similar. House knows himself to be invested in the well-being of humanity, but he’s too arrogant to ask himself if his methods are wrong or trust other people to build a new path, one that doesn’t necessitate his complete control over the land and people of the Mojave. Ryan and House’s worldviews are distinct, and their flaws, as highlighted by their respective narratives, say some interesting things about how each set of devs view power and the pitfalls of elitism.

Anyway. If you put these two men in a room, they would probably try to murder each other, and I think that’s great.

[etherian-affairs]

Mermista's Wild Ride.

This is a crackship roller coaster. It includes Merdak, Entrapdak, Mertrapta, and Perfume Weaver mentions.

Every section was written based on reaction to the previous section in the discord server I wrote this in. In real time!

Anyway buckle up.

==========

The Hordak esq creature was baring down on Mermista fast. Entirely too fast. She had also made the mistake of not noticing it over the other soldiers she was fighting. A rather large mistake. For a brief moment Mermista really thought she was going to finally bite it. Fear fills her in her final moments, real deep fear.

As the thing reared up its weapon, sneering at her, the Princess of Salineas finds an arm warp around her waste. With a yelp she's tugged to the side, and a large energy cannon attached to an armor encased arm is extended out. It hums with power for a moment, power that is suddenly unleashed.

The brutes arm is gone in a flash. Then there's another flash and the top half of its body is gone, simply erased from existence. The remains fall over lifeless.

Lord Hordak releases Mermista, she stumbles, wide eyed and staring up at the alien conquerer in shock and something else.

He looks serious, focusing on the battlefield as he releases the built up heat from his arm cannon. The flames of destruction that he himself has born during this engagement flicker in the backdrop to highlight him. Like a stoic god of war in an oil painting. "Are you alright?" He asks as he glances down at Mermista.

"Uh... Yeah... I'm good." Mermista feels a burning sensation crawl up her cheeks.

"Good. Pay more attention to your sorroundings moving forward." Hordak adds as he readies his weapon and fires on another target, returning to the fray proper as if this entire moment did not happen.

...

"Princess Mermista. You seem distracted." The voice jolts Mermista out of her daydreaming. Hordak is standing before her, quirking a brow at her surprise. When had he approached her? She had been watching him how could he have approached her without her noticing?!

Watching him for entirely Alliance related reasons of course.

"Oh. Yeah sorry. I've just been... Thinking about stuff." The princess tries to brush it off casually. He does not need to know anything about these nonsense feelings swirling inside of her mind.

Hordak nods, seeming to ponder that response before looking out from their campsite to the fields below. Visibly charred and broken from the battle earlier, even in the moonlight. "Indeed. There is much to think about. It seems we have Prime's forces on the run... For now. The use of heavy weaponry has closed the bottleneck of his armies entry."

"Yeah..."

"Still. If you cannot remain focused you should get rest while things are calm." Hordak notes, nodding to Mermista. "I can keep watch of this post while you do so, so do not worry."

Again heat flushes Mermistas cheeks. Why? He's just being a fellow soldier. Collected and calculating and thoughtful...

"Thanks. I think I will." Mermista tries to say casually. Taking a deep breath and heading to her sleeping roll. Best to sleep this off.

...

Burning cheeks? Easy to handle. A flutter in the chest when he brings her coffee in the mornings of their shared deployment? That can be pushed down. That slight pleasant burning in her core as he destroys the armies of their enemy? That's a fluke.

This though. This... Ache in her chest... This Mermista can barely stand. It's eating at her.

They've met back up with another group of Alliance soldiers. Specifically a group with Entrapta in it. It was immediate, the Princess of Dryl shouting "Hordak!" And literally leaping into his arms with a happy laugh.

And Hordak catching her.

The way they smile at each other. The way they nuzzle and give each other gentle loving kisses. The sheer... Apparentness of their love. The bottomless affection they seem to share. Even the way they immediately and seamlessly get to work together. As if they barely need to say anything to know each other's thoughts.

It hurts. Mermista hurts.

It doesn't help that Sea Hawk is here too. He's nice and she is fond of him but he does not currently mix well with these very problematic feelings.

"Oh Mermiiiistaaaa! The greatest soldier there ever waaaaas!" Sea Hawk sings at her side.

She groans and glowers. Pulling her eyes away from the happy lab couple working on bots nearby. "Please stop..."

She isn't sure who she's talking to at this point.

...

"Oh I can share." Entrapta says with a mischievous grin.

Mermista stammers. Actually stammers. How had it come to this? Sure she had been a tad surly and more flippant than usual but how had Entrapta of all people figured out what was going on? And why was Entrapta okay with it?! "yeah well... What about Hordak?"

Entrapta giggles. "Oh he's fine with it too. Watch!" She glances back. "Hordak!"

The Lord looks up from his maintenance of Emily. "Hmm?"

"Would you want to sleep with Mermista sometimes?" Entrapta asks. "It would help her morale!"

Mermista is beat red. Entrapta is shouting right now. Alliance soldiers are staring. This is awful. All Mermista can do is wait for Hordak to tell Entrapta no. That Entrapta is being ridiculous as she tends to do.

However Hordak just nods. "Very well. It will likely increase her battlefield efficiency if she has been desiring that."

Mermista gapes.

Some of the people listening in gape too.

...

"No!" Adora shouts. "No! No no no! No!"

Mermista is clutching her forehead. Beat red. Entrapta can be so loud and soldiers gossip and now everyone knows.

Everyone. Knows. The other Princesses, the entire army, probably Horde Prime himself.

"It's already... Weird! That Entrapta and Hordak are a thing!" Adora adds on to her exclaiming.

"Pretty sure that's rude!" Entrapta shoots back looking grumpy.

"It is." Hordak assures his wife. He's unbelievably calm.

Suddenly Sea Hawk let's out another loud sob. He has been doing that. "Mermista! I thought we HAD SOMETHING!!!" His eyes are red, filled with tears.

Mermista wants to die. Just bury her at sea right now.

Catra raises her hand from the crate she's sitting on. "To be fair to Mermista. Hordak IS hot."

"Catra No!" Adora screams in horror.

"I will not be sleeping with Catra, even if it won the war." Hordak notes mostly to Entrapta.

"Ouch." Catra fires back sarcastically.

This is all the worst.

...

"So let me get this straight" Queen Glimmer of Bright Moon looks over the assembled Etherian Alliance Ruling Council. "You have all called a council meeting to discuss... A moratorium on sleeping with Hordak?..."

"Yes!" Adora stands and shouts. "It's a distraction from the war effort!"

"This is ridiculous!" Entrapta shouts back. "It's a morale boosting activity!"

"He's evil Entrapta! It's already weird you do it!"

Mermista is currently trying to slide under the table to hide. Anything to get away from this.

Perfuma raises her hand. "Excuse me... I have a question."

Glimmer sighs. "Yes Perfuma?"

"Is the issue that Hordak is evil?..."

"Yes!" Adora shouts.

"That's irrelevant!" Entrapta shouts back. "He's just ethically divergent!"

Perfuma cuts through. "Um... Okay... So... If the issue is he's evil... Can we still sleep with other evil people? Like Shadow Weaver?"

"WHAT?!" Catra and Adora both scream in unbridled horror.

Even Hordak looks over at Perfuma with wide eyes at that one. Mermista feels slightly better for a moment as the focus leaves her.

...

"Okay!" Adora shouts. She never stops shoutong. She's gesturing to the large board covered in pictures and documents with string and other nonsense. They've been here for hours. "I think we have this worked out!"

Entrapta, standing next to Adora nods. "Yes! This seems fair!"

Everyone else is sitting back watching this unfold. Entrapta and Adora basically completely took over for this whole meeting. Mermista continues to look and feel like dying, Hordak looks quietly amused, Catra is glowering, Perfuma strangely hopeful.

Queen Glimmer just looks so tired.

Really everyone else is some mix of those and the air in the room is heavy and awkward.

"So!" Adora continues. "There will be no more casual sleeping with Hordak with the singular exception of Entrapta who due to sleeping with him previously and remaining effective is allowed to continue. However others may petition the alliance council for permission to sleep with Hordak if they can show good cause that it would somehow aid the war effort!"

Entrapta nods. "Hordak and I retain full rights to veto any yes given by the council in this regard though!" She adds.

"This is so stupid." Catra mutters quietly.

"Furthermore!" Adora says loudly. "We should all be aware of the Shadow Weaver clause that states that Princess Perfuma, and only her, may sleep with Shadow Weaver under stipulation that she never ever talk about it again!"

"Yay" Perfuma claps.

...

As everyone leaves Hordak approaches Mermista. The Princess of Salineas looks up at him, feeling so... Everything. This crush spiralled out of control in ways she could scarcely comprehend and she just wanted to hide in Salineas forever.

"Hordak..." She mutters.

"Princess Mermista." He replies, glancing around as people file out quickly. Trying to escape this horrible meeting.

Suddenly when they're mostly alone the Lord leans forward, close to Mermista. She almost shivers. "Petty Alliance rulings aside. Feel free to visit Dryl as you desire." He grins. Red teeth glinting in the light. "We are good at being discrete." He adds before standing back up and marching away to rejoin Entrapta.

Mermista is beet red.

...

Mermista stares up at the ceiling of the royal chambers of Dryl. A room of metal and purple and fluffy furniture. She's in the bed, a massive thing. How did she even get here? It's all a blur. Not actually of course, she knows exactly how she got here, she followed through on the invitation. The emotional journey is what's a blur.

All because Hordak saved her life. Honestly that's kind of cliche and pathetic.

Before Mermista can let out a groan of defeat she feels a body press against get and glances over. Entrapta. Naked and curled against the Princess of Salineas. Snoring and cuddling. Mermista stares at her for a moment in... Bewilderment? This whole situation is so bizarre.

Then the person on her opposite side speaks. "Cute isn't she?" Hordak asks with a pleased tone. "Do not worry about waking her, Entrapta sleeps like the dead." He adds.

"Yeah..." Mermista nods absently before staring back up at the ceiling. "The alliance is going to kill me..."

"They don't need to know." Hordak adds. "Do you want breakfast? I can make something for you two."

Mermista looks over at him. "Uh... Okay." Might as well get free food if this is happening after all.

[maddie-grove]

Bi-Monthly Reading Round-Up: March/April

PLAYLIST

“Hey, Little Songbird” from Hadestown (The Wager)

“New Slang” by the Shins (Spinners)

“Auto de Fé” from Candide (October Wind)

“Let’s Generalize about Men” from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure)

“Juice” by Lizzo (Shrill)

“Love’s Been Good to Me” by Frank Sinatra (Sex and Violence)

“Heroes” by David Bowie (Cracker Jackson)

“Listen to Her Heart” by Tom Petty and the Hearbreakers (The Cybil War)

“Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed (The T.V. Kid)

“Distant Shores” by Chad and Jeremy (Love’s Willing Servant)

“Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?” by the Mountain Goats (The Cartoonist)

“Ghost World” by Aimee Mann (Summer of the Swans)

“Floating Vibes” by Surfer Blood (Not the Duke’s Darling)

BEST OF THE BI-MONTH

The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli (2010): Don Giovanni de la Fortuna, a nineteen-year-old nobleman in medieval Sicily, loses his entire fortune to a tidal wave and soon finds himself on the brink of starvation. That’s when the Devil comes knocking with an offer: endless money for the rest of his life if he doesn’t bathe, cut his hair, shave, or change his clothes for three years, three months, and three days. This is a retelling of a lesser-known Sicilian fairy tale and, next to the sublime Breath, it’s Napoli’s best work. Instead of taking the easy route of making Don Giovanni a stupid brat who learns to be nicer and more frugal, she complicates things by making him sweet and resourceful from the beginning, as well as callow and somewhat thoughtless. (His first action after seeing the damage wrought by the tidal wave is to go out and help bury the dead for three straight days.) This makes the message of the book more powerful; if someone deep-down good and intelligent can stand to think more about others and help the less fortunate, then clearly that lesson applies to everyone, not just the worst sort of rich people. Don Giovanni’s unprocessed grief over his long-dead parents and longing for human connection are also very affecting.

WORST OF THE BI-MONTH

Spinners by Donna Jo Napoli and Richard Tchen (1999): In medieval-ish Scotland, a poor tailor longs to marry his sweetheart, a spinner, but her father will only consent if the tailor can show he’ll be a good provider. The tailor tries to make a dress that appears to be made of gold and succeeds; however, he still loses his sweetheart to a rich miller and his health to a magic spinning wheel (as one does). Years later, the sweetheart’s daughter, now a skilled spinner in her own right, finds herself in trouble when a king gets the wrong impression about her being able to spin straw into gold. File this one under “cool idea, half-assed execution.” After a certain point, Napoli seems to run out of her own ideas and just follows “Rumpelstiltskin” to its original conclusion. This wouldn’t be great for any fairy-tale retelling, but the ludicrous “Rumpelstiltskin” needs more reworking than most. Also, the tailor’s sweetheart is such an ableist tool! I’d get it if she chose the rich miller out of concern for financial security, but she just dumps the tailor because the magic spinning wheel basically gave him a supernatural stroke and she thinks it made him evil? You can do better, baby!

REST OF THE BI-MONTH

The Cartoonist by Betsy Byars (1978): Alfie Mason, a quiet eleven-year-old, takes refuge from his unhappy family in the tiny attic of his ramshackle house, drawing faintly absurd cartoons. Then his ne’er-do-well older brother Bubba loses his job, prompting a way-too-excited Mrs. Mason to decide to renovate the attic into a bedroom...so Alfie barricades himself in the attic and throws the family into chaos without saying a word. I first read this book when I was eleven, and even then I found it deeply upsetting. Mrs. Mason seems incapable of seeing anyone but Bubba as a full human being, and she never regrets hurting Alfie or her daughter Alma in order to benefit her eldest. The best Alfie and Alma can do is call her out on it--Alfie through his silent protest, Alma by finally standing up for herself and her little brother--and try to move on. It’s certainly an unvarnished message for a middle-grade novel, but it’s not a bad one, given that some parents are just like that.

Shrill by Lindy West (2016): In this memoir, Lindy West reflects on her personal experiences with fatphobia, the general strangeness of having a human body, abortion, the ethics of comedy, and Internet trolls, among other subjects. This book was genuinely inspiring and amusing to me at a time when I greatly needed a lot of confidence and some laughs, and for that I am eternally grateful. The humor can feel very social-media-circa-2015, but there are worse things than a book capturing a specific moment.

Cracker Jackson by Betsy Byars (1985): Eleven-year-old “Cracker” Jackson Hunter realizes that Alma, his beloved former babysitter, is being physically abused by her husband. Even though his divorced parents forbid it and Alma herself warns him against angering her husband, he tries his best to help her, with mixed results. By all rights, this middle-grade novel should be a tonal mess--Jackson and his best friend Goat get involved in some legit Wacky Schemes--but instead it’s a moving portrait of a kid who has to deal with gut-wrenching adult realities while also navigating sixth-grade drama. I also loved Jackson’s three parental figures. They’re all flawed--Jackson’s mom is a worrywart about stuff that doesn’t matter, his dad can’t hold a conversation with him without lapsing into Dracula impressions, and Alma sometimes treats him more like a peer than a kid--but they all clearly care about him and try to make things okay. 

Not the Duke’s Darling by Elizabeth Hoyt (2018): Years ago, a horrific murder and a dubious attempt at revenge tore apart the lives of Christopher Renshawe and Lady Freya de Moray. Now he’s a widowed duke with severe claustrophobia and a blackmailer on his case, while she’s an undercover spy for a secret society of Scottish witches who help women. (Awesome.) (Also some of them are lesbians.) When they end up at the same house party, she vows to keep hating him for wronging her family, but does that last long? No, because they’re reasonably good at communicating and can appreciate each other’s goals! This spooky Georgian romance didn’t knock my socks off, but it’s a good start to Hoyt’s new Greycourt series and it has a light touch with the serious issues it handles.

Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan (2019): Violetta Beauchamps, a sixty-nine-year-old* bookkeeper, is cheated out of her pension by her landlord boss. In desperation, she hatches her own retirement plan: swindling Bertrice Martin, a wealthy seventy-three-year-old widow, by pretending to be her insolvent nephew’s landlady. Bertrice has refused to pay her nephew’s debts on principle, but she’s willing to make an exception if Violetta will help pester him into vacating his lodgings. Shenanigans and old-lady romance ensue. This mid-Victorian-set romance novella is like an ambiguous image (for example: that picture that’s either a vase or two faces in profile). Look at it as the tale of two L.M.-Montgomery-style elderly women falling in love, and it’s delightful; look at it for deep social commentary, and it’s pretty simplistic and sometimes even callous. I enjoyed it, but it only works on certain levels.

Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars (1970): Lately, fourteen-year-old Sara Godfrey has been feeling awkward and out of charity with everyone: her absentee father, her plainspoken aunt, her beautiful older sister, the other kids at school, and even her little brother Charlie, who has been mostly nonverbal and easily disoriented since sustaining serious brain damage during a childhood illness. When Charlie goes missing in the night, though, her only thought is to find him. Despite loving Byars, I avoided this Newberry winner as a kid because it looked kind of boring. It is a little sedate in a classic-American-coming-of-age-story way--part “The Scarlet Ibis,” part Judy Blume--but I still loved Sara, who is always ready to throw down, and I found the depiction of Charlie to be surprisingly sensitive for the time. (The language is outdated, but the passages from Charlie’s POV aren’t condescending, plus he isn’t killed off, as I initially feared.) The descriptions of the coal-ravaged West Virginia countryside are also very evocative.

The TV Kid by Betsy Byars (1974): Lenny, a preteen living with his single mom at the kitschy Kentucky motel she owns, struggles in school and has no friends. (His family moves around a lot and he probably has a learning disability.) He has two sources of solace: watching TV and sneaking into the abandoned lake houses in his neighborhood. One day, though, his favorite hobbies get him into trouble. This was one of my favorite Byars books as a kid, even though I was not familiar with the TV landscape of 1974. I liked it a little less this time, but not because it was dated; instead, I was disconcerted by how pro-getting-bitten-by-a-rattlesnake it is. Also, a significant portion of the story is devoted to a child suffering horrible pain from a snakebite, which is harder to take as an adult reader. Still, it’s got some of that classic Byars melancholy.

The Cybil War by Betsy Byars (1981): Eleven-year-old Simon has had a crush on his classmate Cybil for years, because she does awesome stuff like advocate for more active roles for girls in the yearly school pageants. He’s not inspired to act on his feelings, though, until his awful best friend Tony decides he likes Cybil and starts talking shit to her about Simon. There’s a lot to like about this book. Cybil, with her nonchalant confidence and kindness, is a wonderful character, and Simon’s thorough admiration for her is adorable. I also like how Byars ties Simon’s complicated feelings about his deadbeat dad to his efforts to navigate small-scale fifth-grade drama; both weigh heavily on him, and Byars is never condescending about this. Yet the book’s not Byars’s best, mostly because of the lack of generosity towards Cybil’s fat friend Harriet and, to a lesser extent, Tony. 

Sex and Violence by Carrie Mesrobian (2013): Seventeen-year-old Evan doesn’t do serious relationships, instead preferring to hook up with girls and ghost them when he starts having feels. (His family moves around a lot and he’s got some trauma.) Then one girl’s jealous ex orchestrates a horrific assault on them both, leading Evan’s distant widowed dad to take his traumatized son back to their Minnesota hometown. It turns out okay. I liked this novel a lot more once I accepted it as an intentionally messy coming-of-age novel, rather than an issue novel...but it was still a little too messy for its own good. I felt like I was supposed to condemn Evan for having casual sex, something that’s both morally neutral and natural enough for a teen who moves every year, yet the narrative all but endorses his contempt for lower-class girls. I was also uncomfortable with the revelation that Evan was a survivor of statutory rape. It seemed like he was being punished by the narrative only for hyper-sexuality that clearly stemmed from trauma--with a physical assault with some strong sexual implications, no less--but let off the hook for his thoughtless middle-class-boy prejudices. I did feel for him, though, and that carried me through most of the book.

October Wind by Susan Wiggs (1991): In late-fifteenth-century Spain,  Cristóbal Colón (aka Christopher Columbus) tries to convince Queen Isabella to fund a westward expedition. Meanwhile, nobleman Joseph Sarmiento learns an enormous secret about his background and must decide whether to alter the course of his life. During this time, Rafael Viscaino, a young scribe, strives to rise in the world while his friends, aspiring doctor Catalina and cheerful but troubled half-Roma Santiago, have their own struggles. This historical novel (which just barely qualifies as a romance) has a lot of potential, but it wastes too much time on Columbus and Isabella, plus it gives them more credit than they deserve. Wiggs should’ve focused on Joseph, the sexiest and most likable character, and made more of his eventual relationship with Anacaona, a Guanahani woman. Or else she should’ve just made it a poly romance with Rafael/Catalina/Santiago, which she comes this close to doing.

Love’s Willing Servant by Avis Worthington (1980): Left penniless by her father and betrayed by her childhood sweetheart, Lettice Clifford decides to take herself to her sister’s home in colonial Virginia and get a rich husband. She’s surprised to find herself sharing a ship with Geoffrey Finch, a neighbor who has been betrayed by his evil twin and sold into indentured servitude. When his indenture ends up getting bought by her brother-in-law, they grow closer, but multiple creepy people and Bacon’s Rebellion threaten their love. Maybe I’ve just seen too much, but I was pleasantly surprised by the relative inoffensiveness of this Old School romance. Geoffrey is a reasonable person, there’s not a sexual assault every other chapter, and the racism issues are more “the black characters should be more central” than “this is just a defense of slavery” or “calm down with the n-word, Quentin Tarantino.” These small mercies aside, I also enjoyed the absolutely bonkers plot and the use of historical details. I didn’t care much for Lettice, though, because she’s usually either boring or kind of a dick. 

*Nice.

[cannoli-reader]

Do I even want to know what “games journalism” is and why it needs ethics? “Breaking News: Princess Not Actually In Castle Liberated by Plumber”? 

I never saw any ugly backlash, but what I did see was a lot of people immediately proclaiming how awesome they thought the casting was, accusing anyone who might disagree of being racist and making videos and posts with strawman arguments.  The pushback was against nonsense like Daniel Greene,  a smug dipshit who can’t even get book summaries accurate to the contents, and self-proclaimed experts like “the Dusty Wheel” making long-form videos using tortured rationalizations to get around the facts of the books, all to conclude that the only problem anyone could have with the casting is racism.  Right out of the box it was just presumed that there was going to be racism, much like the producers of the execrable “Obi-Wan Kenobi” show telling their main original character to expect racist backlash, when her character made no sense.  They were baiting and trying to provoke racist reactions for the buzz or to make themselves look good. 

Anyway, if you want to find the racists, don’t look so much at people who questioned casting 1 white, 1 brown and 2 black actors to play a quartet of people from an isolated, insular breeding pool, which is shown in more than one way to have little to no external genetic influence (as I said at the time, the problem was the white guy), and instead ponder the implications of the producers who cast black actresses for the three most bad-tempered female characters, black actors to play two of the most irredeemable scumbag (and rapist) villains, a black actor to play a character who has a psychotic break late in the series, and then nerfed the two major male heroes for whom they cast black actors, Perrin & Loial.  Perrin & Nynaeve both had their characters reduced in favor of Moiraine & Egwene. 

Rings of Power was a little better. Disa was maybe the least offensive character, especially of the originals, and Miriel was about as good as the butchery of Numenor allowed her to be, but with Arondir, it felt like they were trying to use his race to shade the (non-canonical) resentment of the Southlanders toward the elves, and the disapproval of his relationship with Bronwyn, in terms of real life bigotry, despite neither point making any sense, which is probably why it isn’t more explicit in the script. 

As far as bigoted views vs a pretense of legitimate criticism ... so what? I don’t care what the motives of the producers were in the casting, I care about the results which are bad. I don’t care if you are only motivated to criticize Miles Morales or Riva or Arondir or Nynaeve because of their skin color, as long as your criticism is legitimate and accurate. Riva’s actions are stupid, her big reveal actually makes her actions more evil in hindsight, and it makes no sense that she is in the position she is in at multiple parts of the story.  Like on Tatooine, moments after being stabbed through the chest, while the guy who stabbed her is still in the same star system as the stabbing, and his Star Destroyer is actively taking efforts to keep others from leaving. Arondir pursues signs of enemy activity in a way that makes his efforts at intelligence gathering futile, is held prisoner by orcs using grossly ineffective tactics, his big escape scenes are farcical and then he is let go in a way that makes his whole captivity story pointless.  He and his fellow garrison do absolutely nothing about the key mechanism to Sauron’s long game, despite occupying the building in which it resides for centuries, and he has transparent plot armor in the major battle in which he is involved, as in, bad guys stop using weapons when fighting him, in preference for wrestling moves. Then he hands a supposed weapon of evil influence to a child and tells him to break its spell by giving it to other people, and walks away, leaving the kid alone with the weapon of evil.  This is dumb, brainless writing, and if people are only going to be alerted to it because of their racist hostility toward the actors, so be it. Doesn’t change the fact that the writing is dumb.

And there are plenty of reasons to hate Nynaeve and Perrin.  Perrin has an uncanonically blonde wife, who gets no characterization but does get to actually do his canonical job, before she gets killed in the pilot episode by surprising a man swinging an axe in a fight. Perrin’s arc in Book 1 is about coming to terms with his own, surprising capacity for violence, when he has grown up deploring waste and destruction, and characterized from his first on-page appearance, as being careful and deliberate so as to avoid causing harm.  He carries an axe he took up in a moment of childish fascination and immediately hates how easy he finds using it after his first battle.  Along the way he meets a group of pacifists who explain they abjure violence, even fleeing to prevent others from doing violence to them, because violence harms the soul of the one who commits it.  He argues that this method does not stop violence, because it leaves evil entities unmolested to carry on their predation.  Later, contemplating the horrible death their pursuers might deal out to his companion, he entertains the idea of mercy killing her if they are caught.  When his mentor figures out a part of what he is thinking, and accuses him of wanting to kill her for convenience, Perrin instead explains his actual intention, upon which he is told that as long as he abhors the violence and does not enjoy it, he will be wiser in his use of force than most, and that he should renounce it if he ever does come to like it. The axe he has been carrying it representative of this conflict and will remain so for most of the series.  

Meanwhile, on the show, he is apparently wallowing in self-recrimination for accidentally killing his wife, and does not carry a weapon for nearly the whole first season.  He never meets the mentor, never has a conflict about mercy-killing, is never shown to be careful or making efforts to avoid harm, his argument with a companion about handling dangerous power is excised, and his only arguments about use of violence are when he is presented with an incoherent & contradictory version of the pacifist philosophy, in which case most of his dialogue is efforts to disprove the sincerity of the adherents, not actually questioning the philosophy itself. 

In the books, Perrin discovers he has the ability to communicate with wolves and resists using it, wanting nothing to do with being akin to an animal.  As his ability grows, he unwilling becomes more aware of, and identifying with the wolves, until one of them attacks a party of soldiers, who, while having a bad ideology and practices, were not doing anything wrong.  The absolutely justified death of the wolf drives Perrin to attack the soldiers, and be taken captive.  This intertwines his conflict over his wolf-affinity with his conflict about his capacity for violence and conflates them in his mind, increasing his unwillingness to deal with the wolves and his ability, by showing how his impulsive action has resulted in death and his having to face the consequences.  His subsequent captivity is an ordeal of endurance until his captor appears to offer him an escape to be rid of the inconvenience of carting a prisoner around, and Perrin deduces that it is likely an attempt to excuse his murder by the escape attempt.  Then they are rescued by the people with actual action hero credentials. 

On the show he has no mentor, there is nothing to his connection with the wolves, and his ability gets zero world-building.  Wolves randomly appear in his proximity once or twice.  He is taken captive for nonsensical reasons, and the focus of his captivity is the efforts of his captor to prove that his companion has powers the captives can neither prove nor fight in the books.  Perrin is turned into merely a prop, being bound to a frame and gradually flayed until she gives in and uses her powers to help him.  With 2-3 episodes to go, this concludes Perrin’s active participation in the plot.  From here on out, he is there to bring up an invented love triangle and watch and complain while other characters attempt to retrieve an artifact from incredibly stupid safekeeping, to wander away pointlessly before an enemy attack on the retrieval effort, be frightened of a bat and return too late to stop a villain from killing all the other good guys in the scene and making off with the prize, while Perrin stands there impotently.  

Nynaeve is a strong leader in her village, with a staunch following despite criticism due to her youth and forceful manner, and even some of her critics admitting to her ability and citing her competence. She is so dominant a presence that the PoV character to first encounter her, needs a minute or two to even notice his own love interest is accompanying Nynaeve.  She storms into an informal meeting of the Village Council and Mayor, and they have to take it.  While one recalcitrant member complains, the others shut him down.  Her expertise as a medical professional is apparent in the aftermath of a monster attack on the village.  After the other characters leave, Nynaeve follows them, following a trail that an expert tracker took pains to hide, for which she receives his honest and frank compliment.  She joins the group, where her medical knowledge proves useful where preternatural powers can’t help, and she takes care to explain what medicine she gives people as well as assert that no matter what she thinks of a patient personally, she would never hurt them, indicating actual medical ethics.  

After being separated from the group, she once again demonstrates her tracking chops to find the leaders, and approach them by stealth to observe their conversation, only being detected by non-natural senses.  Subsequently, she is asked, due to her wilderness skills, to help rescue Perrin from his captors. Near the end of the book, as she learns more about the man who praised her tracking and recruited her for the rescue mission, she approaches him regarding a relationship, and he responds by acknowledging he reciprocates her feelings, but his prior commitments mean he cannot bring anything to the table and will not pursue the relationship, though he hopes for her happiness with another. 

On the show, there is no indication of her leadership or power in the village.  No one looks to her for leadership, she is not a topic of discussion nor her job performance controversial.  Rather than Daise Congar defending her authority and position from men who would interfere, Daise is shown as a sloppy drunk whom Nynaeve joins at the table to quaff a few tankards. Instead of being such a strong presence that Rand overlooks his girlfriend, she is barely visible in the shot where the girlfriend arrives. The only acknowledgement of her supposed authority is when a stranger to the town questions her leadership.  The show overlooks chances to show Nynaeve in a leadership role in the village, not leading or even participating in the quasi-religious ceremony for the festival, which she could (and should) have led as the closest thing to clergy in the town, and letting the innkeeper give a speech announcing the start of the celebration, while Nyneve is present, but silent. She fails to effectively save anyone or treat any injured during the attack, and is taken captive and dragged off in a comically impractical manner.  

She is later revealed in a flashback several episodes later, to have survived and escaped through an unnecessary foreshadowing, and rejoins the group by drawing a knife on a lone man attending to a wounded woman.  He manhandles and disarms her, and we next find her tied to a tree and gagged, until he releases her, asking her to treat his companion.  She refuses until they agree to help find her fellow villagers, and then, while gathering herbs in the wild and treating the injured woman, refuses to tell what she is doing, both points completely at odds with actual medical ethics and her book practices.  Her ability to find the characters is questioned by the man who offered sincere compliments in the book, as he demands to know how she found them. Later, she reveals to a group of his colleagues that she tracked him and it is played for laughs, on a par with a comical accident from another anecdote.  In the finale, her tracking him is revealed to have been a trick after all!  Unlike her book counterpart, Show!Nynaeve is NOT good enough to follow his trail, instead, Nynaeve was able to follow, because he was traveling with a wOmAn, who “has a tell”.  This is revealed because the same woman is traveling into danger with a 20 year old male, who, naturally, being male, is equally untrackable, but since Nynaeve is able to reveal the woman’s "tell", now the expert can pursue them with some hope of success. 

As for the relationship?  After spending several episodes talking to her like she is a wild animal to be tamed, and she follows him to the home of his foster family, he, inexplicably, through horrible direction or shot blocking, teleports out into the street to offer a backhand invitation to join them.  Later that night they sleep together and the next morning, he gives her the brushoff using many of the same phrases from the speech in the books where he asserted his love and his inability to pursue it and wish for her happiness. She rounds out the episode by volunteering to join an idiotic noblewoman’s effort to defend the imminent attack on the city with her nascent channeling powers.  She does nothing except be a passive power source for the noble’s ineptly executed, but successful, effort, and saves her friend Egwene, using ways that completely break the rules of channeling from the books, but the show has not bothered to explain any rules, so in addition to not knowing the stakes, we can’t say for sure what she did isn’t possible.

In the books, Nynaeve tells a story, in response to hearing the symptoms of a first-time channeler, acknowledging the symptoms in herself, how she was tending a sick Egwene, who was a child at the time, and, unaware the girl was convalescing, Healed her fever early.  In the context of the story it is indicative of her selfless nature and her priority on healing and alleviating suffering.  Most such first-time incidents are self-centered, aimed at achieving a selfish goal or protecting oneself, but Nynaeve performed an extraordinarily difficult feat, for the benefit of another.  This is in her first PoV, subverting her prior appearances in the protagonist’s PoV as an intimidating, implacable and stern authority figure, to show how much she cares and how she prioritizes the well-being of her neighbors and charges.  On the show, she relates a similar anecdote, but without her Healing, as the show makes it clear that another incident, on-screen, was her first time channeling.  Instead, on the show, the focus of Nynaeve’s story is Egwene’s determination and will to live, culminating with Nynaeve’s line that Egwene is indestructible, and a cut to Egwene spitting defiance at her captors.  What is effectively Nynaeve’s origin story in the books, is repurposed to glamorize another character.

It’s worth noting that Nynaeve’s love interest, who has been so weakened and made into a cad, has blue eyes in the books and is Asian on the show.

Now I don’t think the producers were consciously being racist, since they also did dirty two other (white & male) characters, and their efforts to augment and enhance their clear favorites also failed through incompetent execution and ignoring or failing to comprehend the strengths of the characters, but there is plenty of legitimate criticism to offer the show, and they don’t deserve any credit for diversity, should, in fact, be criticized for their pursuit of diversity, since the end result was to make black characters worse, and they clearly stopped thinking about diversity once they had the skin colors set.  Either all they care about is skin color and not quality of the characters with that skin color, or they did not think about the implications of casting black people as angry or ignorant or suffering props for other characters' leveling up.

There is also the point that the Watsonian diversity of the story is completely undermined.  Where the characters in the books note the differences in customs and clothing and appearances of people the further they travel from their home and starting state, on the show, we go from a diverse isolate mountain town, to a diverse caravan of itinerant pacifists, a diverse mining town where no one ever leaves, to a diverse expeditionary force of Aes Sedai and Warders to finally reaching the greatest and most cosmopolitan city in the world (a whole season early, mind you), and there is no real difference in this city to any other group or location they have encountered, except for a shot of a camel, and some pavement. 

If you’re going to call critics of the series racist, you need some receipts, because there are far too many things to object to, to assume that the only problem anyone could have is the skin color of the actors.  

Is Miles Morales the target of IRL fan criticism because he didn't lose a (good) uncle (and/or a police captain, per Across_), and thus is not REALLY Spider-man? Because I know people make a big deal about that being critical to Spider-man's development and seemed butthurt that it was not in the Home trilogy until the last minute and May got it. During the movie, what you said about writers undoing stuff to make Peter like he was when they were readers is what came to my mind.

(Not sure whether this is Post #5, because the attitude isn't the same.)

Miles hasn't really been the target of criticism for that reason - after all, he lost Uncle Aaron, Peter, his mom, and so forth, so it's hard to argue that he hasn't suffered enough.

No, the IRL fan criticism has largely come from a particularly ugly strain of grognard who hate Miles ostensibly because he's "replacing" Peter Parker, but more because Miles is an Afrolatinx kid from Brooklyn and seen as part of a larger Marvel Initiative to attract new, more diverse audiences largely through the creation and promotion of legacy characters like Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, Jane Foster's Thor, Sam Wilson as Captain America, Laura Kinney as Wolverine, etc.

[fck-no-antipsych-blog]

So, let’s get started with the initial reason for creating this blog: namely, one user spreading conspiracy theorist levels of misinformation on ABA.

Here, I am going to dissect @the-real-seebs ’s last answer to one of my asks, which I will stick here:

The only credible evidence of "ABA abuse" any of you can come up with, and the only case I have EVER seen of electric shocks being used in the last several decades, is the JRC. Which is not even an ABA facility, though it uses behaviorism-based techniques. They're for actively dangerous patients as a last resort, and while we might disagree on the ethics of their methods, using it as an evidence of ABA being bad is incredibly disingenuous. ABA therapy DOES NOT USE NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT.

So let’s get started!

Okay, so, I really clearly and unambiguously said “do not try to argue this with me on anon”. Here you are.

Yes. It turns out I cannot stand misinformation on something that is literally saving lives. How interesting.

You want to see the abuse? You’re being abusive, right here, right now. That this ask was sent tells me, with no potential for doubt or inaccuracy or guesswork, that you are willing to behave in 100% unambiguously abusive ways. You know that you were asked not to do this, and yet, here you are.

This is a common pattern I have observed in seebs. “You’re being abusive” allows him to shut down all discussion, and sometimes, as he actually did for one of my earlier asks, he adds some sexual connotation to it. The reason is simple: seebs surrounds himself with abuse victims, especially CSA. I am not entirely sure why, but I’ll be honest, I am vaguely suspecting easy channels for emotional manipulation. This is in extremely bad faith, though.

You. Are. Abusive. Right here, right now. You are engaging in behavior which violates a clearly stated boundary, where there is no justification for violating that boundary. It would require minimal effort to follow the stated boundary, and you won’t.

Your initial boundary was, in fact, “Go away”. This is the first time you mention going off anon as a possibility, and I explicitly said I would. Anyway, fuck that. Ignoring a boundary that has been clearly stated in bad faith? Is not only something that’s not abusive, but something you. Have. Done. And anyway, “stating boundaries” in order to silence a conversation is abusive. No matter how you word it.

Furthermore, you make a number of false claims.

And I would love to be proven wrong! Listen, if it suddenly turns out, against everything I’ve ever actually learned, that ABA is inherently abusive, and violent, and gives kids PTSD systematically, and cannot ever possibly be used well? I’ll drop all my plans for going into it. Because I’m not a fucking sociopath.

I have pointed out other examples of abusive behavior in the past, as have many other people. The electric shock example stands out because it’s on one of the clearly-defined lists of “things we know are fucked up” that you don’t have to walk people through to get them to understand a thing.

Could you point me to those other examples? I don’t seem to find them in your previous answers. Anyway, we know these things are fucked up because someone did them at some point in the past. I’ll outright say it: while Løvaas didn’t know what he was doing was wrong, it absolutely was.

But notice how that was decades ago. ABA started with Løvaas, but it absolutely didn’t stop evolving once he was gone. Claiming otherwise is about as stupid as saying brain surgeons are all evil because of lobotomies.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the only credible evidence.

I would, again, love to see the others. No, unfortunately, blog posts don’t count, sorry. You know about as well as I do how often people lie on the Internet, especially when they have an agenda, and we might both know a few of the abusive groups stirring up anti-psychiatry sentiment.

You claim that ABA “does not use negative reinforcement”.

Minor aside here: I am using “negative reinforcement”, not in the actual behaviorist sense (taking away something, e.g. a toy), but in the pop culture sense of “punishment for bad behavior”, as opposed to “rewards for good behavior”. I’m pointing that out because another person attempted to use papers with that word (under the behaviorist definition) for some scare-mongering earlier.

And yet, so many people have been through so many things that were called “ABA” which did, but they don’t count,

I can claim to cure cancer by bleach enemas. Does that mean all oncologists are frauds? ABA being the only evidence-based form of treatment for symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (again, I would love to be proven wrong) means many non-board-certified hacks call their therapy ABA. Which you have admitted yourself. (See all variants of “Sometimes they just call their therapy ABA for insurance purposes but it’s ~*~actually good~*~”, which, yes, is fraud)

because you’re not actually here to argue a point or understand a thing, you’re here to demonstrate your ability to continue applying force to a person who asked you to stop. Because you are the abuser.

I am honestly impressed. It’s probably the antisocial traits, but that is the most amazing mastery of social manipulation I have seen in a person with autism. You know exactly what the demographic of your blog’s viewers is, and you appeal to emotions they, specifically, relate to. “Applying force”, by sending mean anons, of course, “to a person who asked you to stop”: you’re not attempting to argue against me, you’re pushing your sexually abused friends’ buttons.

This sounds ironic, but I am, in fact, impressed.

As I said before: If you want to argue off anon, you’re allowed, and I’d be willing to show you more evidence and actually do some of your research for you.

(Watch him backpedal at this. I bet you’re going to call me even more abusive for going off anon.)

But you aren’t, are you? You even said you could but then decided not to. Why? To show that you have power. To show that you can hurt people who’ve told you to stop.

*sad trombone noises*

For the record: I’m lazy. Making a Tumblr account takes effort. Executive dysfunction is abusive now, incredible.

The problem isn’t that you aren’t aware of ABA tactics that are abusive. The problem is that you are willing to do abusive things, and will never admit that they are abusive,

I’m stealing something from your own rhetorical maneuvering here, but: fun fact, a hallmark of narcissistic behavior is insulting other people by accusing them of something the person does themself.

because you don’t feel like it’s abusive to hurt people to show them that you have the power to hurt them in order to compel them to act.

“Compel them to act”? Sure, I prefer you posting my asks to you blocking me, but it’s at worst an inconvenience, as seen here by the fact that I have this freshly-made Tumblr account.

And this whole post is nothing to you but an affirmation that hurting people to make them give you the responses you wanted is a good tactic that works and since it’s effective no one should call it abuse.

You know, you’re good at that stuff. Because you wanted exactly this out of me, didn’t you? Making me go off anon and interact directly so that you can feel smug and righteou--

And I’m posting this because you will feel smug and righteous and like you proved your point that hurting people and disregarding boundaries works,

*snorts*

and everyone else will say “wow, ABA really is that fucked up”.

Great job with that post! Also at myself, honestly, it was hard to go through in its entirety.

Anyway, sure, blast away. Send me all this Absolute Proof Of All ABA Being Abuse Always All The Time. I’ll wait.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND NOTICING

And it seems even odder to say that you have lousy judgement. They're not just beautiful, but strangely beautiful.1 Good design solves the right problem. But the non-gullible majority won't stop getting spam until they can stop or threaten to stop the gullible from responding to it.2 My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish. A thousand Leonardos and a thousand Michelangelos walk among us. The dangerous thing is, faking does work to some degree on investors. It was really close, too.3

Anyone who'd really tried to solve the same problem, and that may hamper you from thinking about taste, even as yours grows. The deadline has now passed, and we're sifting through 227 applications. Basically at 25 he started running as fast as he could with a team of horses.4 Going to or back to school is a huge predictor of death.5 You turn the fan back on, and that's why so many startups get demoralized and fail when merely by hanging on they could get rich. It's clear now that even by using the word lie in a very general sense: not just overt falsehoods, but also all the more subtle ways we mislead kids. So far, we've reduced the problem from thinking of a million dollar idea to thinking of a mistaken question. And, like anyone who gets better at their job, you'll know you're getting better. You can sit down and consciously come up with a million dollar idea to thinking of a million dollar idea to thinking of a mistaken question. But if a kid asks you Is there a God?

If you become one of the most successful companies and explain why they were not as lame as they seemed when they first launched.6 But if it's inborn it should be universal, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no permanent place for ugly mathematics. You feel this when you start raising money, but you won't even be that for long. Nature uses it a lot, which is usually unanimous. If you'd proposed at the time the acquirer gets them, they're not drifting. And more to the point, nobody knows you're 22. After a while this filter will start to operate as you write. Apple as evil.7 A startup is so hard that working on it can't be preceded by but. So far so good.8 I feel like we're at a tipping point here.

So it may be just as well to go work for a company; we did. It would be closer to the truth. Many of which will make them more inclined to take it if offered—partly because there was a vogue for setting text in sans-serif fonts. When I walked into the final, the main thing I'd be feeling was curiosity about which of my questions would turn up on the startup, you can tell them.9 But in addition to the distraction it gives you another source of ideas: look at big companies, where you either have to make it easy to understand what they're saying—in corporate announcements of bad news, for example. This summer, as an experiment, some friends and I are giving seed funding to a bunch of evil machines, and one that would have been delighted if I'd realized in college that there were parts of the real world, wealth is except for a few specialists like thieves and speculators something you have to give advice, you can have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best programmers won't work for you without giving them options likely to be worth something. So we should expect to see ever-increasing variation in income is a sign of the way things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. That one succeeded. Can you do more of that?

They'll lie to you on this one. They're smart; they're working in a promising field; and they just cannot give up.10 I learned from painting: you have to do something weird at first. Whereas acquirers are, as of this writing, extremely fickle.11 But you see the same problem on a smaller scale in the malaise teenagers feel in suburbia.12 Most people prefer to remain in denial about problems. They want to feel safe, and death is the ultimate threat. And it works.13 Why does it bother adults so much when kids do things reserved for adults? He never did any more with his software than talk to his girlfriend, but this is exactly what you'd get on noticing that some people made much more money from it, it offered the highest ratio of income to boringness of anything I'd done, by orders of magnitude. Extracurricular activities, check. Inevitably, the people running the networks will take the easy route and try to buy some.14

So stop looking for the trick. How casual successful startup founders are. Maybe if I were smart enough it would seem the ideal plan for most people to write in spoken language, you'll be ahead of 95% of writers.15 It would set off alarms. If even big employers think highly of young hackers who start companies, why don't more do it? But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the. Taste. As usual, by Demo Day about half the startups were doing something significantly different than they started with. I've never done another startup.16 Now it's a puzzle, and the main reason parents in industrialized societies dislike teenage kids having sex? So what they do, apparently, is note down the age and race and sex of the person, and guess from that who they voted for. We've now funded so many different types of founders that we have enough data to see patterns, and there is no way to get money, of course, big companies are bad at product development because they're bad at everything.

Anyone who's worked for a few vestigial domestic tasks.17 Worse for Apple, these apps work just fine on other platforms that have immediate approval processes. Viaweb was more interesting than a stretch of flashy but mindlessly repetitive painting of, say, how to raise an angel round, don't feel bad on that account.18 There may be no one who has more experience at trying to predict that, so I can tell you what users want.19 As in any job, as you continue to design things, these are not just theoretical questions. The Matrix have such resonance.20 So even in the smartest companies. Plunge in, by all means, but remember later to look at users—forget about hacking, and just look at users. Much Renaissance art was in its time considered shockingly secular: according to Vasari, Botticelli repented and gave up painting, and Fra Bartolommeo and Lorenzo di Credi actually burned some of their work.

Notes

Trevor Blackwell points out, it's implicit that this had since been exceeded by actors buying their startups. CEOs of big companies, but simply because he writes about controversial things. It rarely arises, and configure domain names etc.

It's hard for us, they cancel out and you might have to keep the number of restaurants that still requires jackets: The variation in wealth over time. Most smart high school, and b the local stuff. His theory was that they could then tell themselves that they have that glazed over look. But a lot about how things are different.

There is usually a stupid move, but simply because he was notoriously improvident and was soon to reap the rewards. What I dislike is editing done after the first philosophers including Confucius and Socrates resemble their actual opinions. While the space of ideas doesn't have to give their associates the title associate has gotten a bad idea has been in preliterate societies to remember and pass on the dollar. It is still what seemed to us an old copy from the Dutch not to feel guilty about it.

You know in the standard career paths of trustafarians to start a startup to engage with slow-moving organizations is to give them up is the most valuable aspects of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses. Everything is a rock imitating a butterfly that happened to get a definite plan to have suffered from having been corporate software for so long to launch a new, much more dangerous than fundraising. We Getting a Divorce?

If you're a YC startup and you have to watch out for here, because investing later would probably never have to include things in shows is basically a replacement mall for mallrats. Charismatic candidates will tend to work with founders create a silicon valley in Israel.

Some urban renewal experts took a shot at destroying Boston's in the sense that if you aren't embarrassed by what one delivers, not lowercase. Pliny Hist. Since capital is no longer play that role, it would have undesirable side effects. And they are to be free to work your way.

It's hard to say now. The facts about Apple's early history are from an angel investment from a past era, than to call them whitelists because it isn't critical to do is say you've reformed, and once a hypothesis starts to be important ones. The fancy version of everything was called the executive model. Steve Jobs tried to motivate people by saying Real artists ship.

Most word problems in school math textbooks are not merely a complicated but pointless collection of stuff to be something you need but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. The golden age of economic equality in the US.

As usual the popular image is several decades behind reality. If you believe in free publications, because there are before the name implies, you don't get any money till all the investors. Investors are fine with funding nerds.

Not all were necessarily supplied by the government. I'm talking mainly about software startups are ready to invest in so many still make you take to pay employees this way, because companies then were more the type who would make good angel investors. You should take a conscious effort.

In this essay. Letter to the same town, unless it was spontaneous. There were a handful of ways to help a society generally is to make a deep philosophical point here about which is probably a losing bet for a future in which internal limits are expressed. Or rather, where w is will and d discipline.

So 80 years sounds to me too mild to describe the worst. Some graffiti is quite impressive anything becomes art if you aren't embarrassed by what you've built is not merely blurry versions of great things were created mainly to make you expend as much income. The reason you don't get any money till all the poorer countries. Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

San Jose calls itself the capital of Silicon Valley. Because we know exactly what they're doing. We once put up with much food.

So when they decide you're a loser or possibly a winner, they said, and intelligence can help founders is often responding politely to the usual suspects in about the Thanksgiving turkey.

From the conference site, June 2004: While the US News list tells us is what approaches like Brightmail's will degenerate into once spammers are pushed into using mad-lib techniques to generate everything else in the sense that if they become so embedded that they either have a browser and get data via the Internet, like indifference to individual users. It does at least on me; how could it have meaning? Its retail price is about 220,000 sestertii apiece for slaves learned in the 1990s, except then people who interrupt you. For these companies substitute progress for revenue growth.

When I was writing this, but I think lack of transparency. There were several other reasons. A round.

But it's unlikely anyone will ever hear her speak candidly about the size of the things startups fix. So as a consulting company is common, to mean starting a company.

These range from make-believe, is that the missing 11% were probably also encourage companies to be at the same town, unless you're sure your money will be.

I've observed; but as an asset class. Everyone's taught about it wrong. Html. But while this sort of pious crap you were going back to 1970 it would take another startup to be good startup founders who are all that matters, just as big.

But if they don't yet have a definite plan to have invented. Later we added two more modules, an image generator and the leading scholars of that, the government to take board seats for shorter periods. Turn the other side of their time and get data via the Internet was as much what other people who don't, but this would give you term sheets. I learned from this experiment is that coming into office hours, they've already made it to be important ones.

Thanks to Marc Andreessen, Sarah Harlin, Chris Dixon, Lisa Randall, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Harj Taggar, and Garry Tan for the lulz.

[ursafilms]

PureBS

KQED, the local PBS affiliate in San Francisco, hired me on three separate occasions. Perhaps my first four month stint of lambasting pledge; mocking the union slugs; and wearing a “I Hate Public Television” button didn’t alienate enough of the self-righteous to not ask me back.

During the second stretch at KQED, Yan Can Cook, a favorite cooking show of mine, ended up as one of my management responsibilities. Martin Yan, a charming and energetic man, had still not mastered the English language. While this elevated the whimsical personality of the brand, it did cause some consternation amongst his underwriters and sponsors.

One day, after rousing the stage manager from her stupor, we shot promos for the show.

Angry Stage Manager: “Fisherman’s Wharf Consortium. Promo! On. 5, 4, 3 . . . “

Martin Yan: “And dis time of yee-ah, you can take a trip to Fishahman’s Woof, where you can enjoy fresh Dungeness CRAP! And—”

Angry Director: “Cut!”

Martin Yan: “Problem?”

Legend has it that KQED lost the Fisherman’s Woof sponsorship. In the interest of keeping the stupid racism accusations to a minimum, I won’t cover the shoot day with the guest Thai chef who came on Yan Can Cook to make something with peanut sauce.

And if Martin Yan’s questionable diction were the only issue at KQED, and by extension PBS, the very concept of public broadcasting wouldn’t be so irksome. But in addition to top-heavy management, labyrinthine union rules, and the whiny production personnel, KQED’s programming, more of it on the public dime than any stooge at MSNBC will ever admit, ran tried and true to its appeal to aging hippies, angry minorities, guilt-ridden Caucasians.

In other words, less than 50% of the potential market at best.

A typical spate of an evening’s fare, consisting of 99% national feed and 1% of the pathetic excuse for local programming, laid out, with some embellishments as follows:

6pm – 7pm – The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour(of some clone thereof) – Tonight our two Woodward and Bernstein Wannabes present the news of past week with an emphasis on sticking a thumb in the eye of traditional Americans. Our field reporters, recently returned from their internships at the Kremlin, go on location to cover obtrusive American Imperialism in the four corners of the world.

7pm – 8pm – TWIT BAY AREA – This Week In The Bay Area.A series of featurettes on the topics that interest the residents of Kooktown, USA (In fairness, KQED does refer to the city as San Francisco) and its environs. Among tonight’s topics: The concept of White Privilege will be beaten to death by a KQED producer of color who couldn’t make it in the private sector. An inside look at the local burgeoning activist community. And our weekly expose on some rich, white people who just don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

8pm – 9pm – Beverly.A documentary produced by our sister station, WGBH/Boston. It’s the story of a young hermaphroditic transsexual who always felt, deep down inside, that they were a little ‘different.’

9pm – 10pm – Enrico.A documentary produced by our sister station, WGBH/Boston. It’s the story of a young hermaphroditic transsexual who, in addition to being an undocumented person of color, always felt, deep down inside, that they were a little ‘different.’

10pm – 11pm – Masterpiece Theater, Midsommer Murders or Agatha Christie Mysteries.

****

The beauty of KQED programming, and by extension PBS, is that you could fill out the viewing schedule in a matter of minutes for all seven days of the week. A name or title change here and there for the documentaries produced by WGBH, and a veryshort list of the topics that The MacNeil – Lehrer News Hour (Or some clone thereof) and TWIT BAY AREA dared touch and whoever had the job of scheduling at KQED had a very cushy job.

As mentioned earlier, KQED hired me twice in the early 90’s. They also brought me back in the mid-90’s for one more go at mind control assisting with The MacNeil – Lehrer News Hour, but after a third lunch with the local producer of the show did not yield the appropriate responses from Yours truly, the Che Guevara fan club, also known as Human Resources, gave up.

My last lunch with said producer went as follows:

Edward R. Murrow: “I just love Bill Clinton.”

Me: “He’s a lecherous, morally-repugnant layer of veneer. Putting him the White House was bad enough, but now that we’ve lowered the bar for entry, I think anyone can get in.”

Edward R. Murrow: “Check!”

It may have lasted longer than that, but by the time Ed Murrow stomped out of the sad excuse for a watering hole in which we dined, my membership in the Go Along to Get Along Club had been officially rescinded.

****

The sheep mentality engendered by employment within PBS aside, another aspect of working at KQED involved dealing with NABET, the labor union at the station started by the Cromwells. Given the work ethic and attitude with which the membership approached their jobs, the acronym stood for Not A Bit of Effort, Toots.

KQED’s scheduling department, with I which had to deal on an hourly basis, presented the only upside to this situation. The three main people, Jim, Jerry, and Simon must have gone home every night and beaten the dog, given the obstacles consistently put in their way. Their boss, Larry, should have been canonized during his tenure.  

Requesting even an hour’s time of one of the 682 skilled laborers present at the station on a daily basis generated enough paperwork, Prilosec, and Sturm Und Drang to mount a summit meeting between superpowers.

Simon: “Scheduling. Dis is Simon.”

Me: “Simon, it’s George in unit managers. I need an hour of audio this afternoon.”

Simon: “I don’t have anybody.”

Me: “I saw a couple hundred of the NABET guys down at the Slo-Club, great name for a hang out for them by the way, having a 27 course lunch.”

Simon: “Yes, Dey on break.”

Me: “I get it. When dey back from break, can I get one of the audio guys or gals to record some V.O. in the booth at three o’clock?”

Simon: “Two.”

Me: “Okay, two o’clock, but I don’t think they’ll even be through the soup course by then.”

Simon: “No. You need two people to run audio in booth.”

Me: “First of all, I didn’t think you hadanybody. Second, that booth isn’t big enough for one person, let alone two. What are theygoing to do?”

Simon: “One to adjust microphone. Other runs tape machine.”

Me: “Are you F&$KING kidding me?”

Simon: “No. Is in NABET rules book. Section 22, para—”

Me: “What does the microphone adjuster do while the other person is running the tape machine?”

Simon: “Fills out timecards for session.”

Me: “Okay, fine.”

Simon: “Send me FAX, two copies of session script, name of actor on AFTRA contract, AFTRA contract in triplicate, radio and TV buy, and name of good place to buy miniature television set.”

Me: “What?”

Simon: “Kids want TV for car. It runs off cigarette lighter input. Very clever. I—”

I made up the part about the 27 course lunch. Might have only been 22.

****

KQED’s staff of producers, as befits the personality of a bunch of touchy-feely Marin County types, had zero interest in actually lodging consistent complaints about NABET. As such, when any of the production people complained to me in Unit Managers, I requested that a discussion with scheduling and the shop steward might be in order.

No one ever wanted to do that. In time, and long after I left, the union, the feckless producers, and their helpmates in top-heavy management cratered the station’s General Ledger and led to even less effective local programming and even fewer documentaries for which the station could claim credit. That trend continues to this day.

But by golly, trotting Bill Moyers, or some clone thereof, out to slam conservatives, and binge-running(No one binge watches PBS, except for Downton Abbey) alternative lifestyle short films, satisfies the sanctimonious and the self-proclaimed superior types.

And I ain’t talking about the viewership.

****

Can’t properly say farewell to this section without a few words on Pledge, the scourge of anything worthwhile to watch on PBS. It is the interrupter of any rhythm and appreciation of public television. If Pledge could be taken outside and shot, I’d be breach loading the shotgun and walking into my backyard to do it.

Pledge runs about 52 weeks out of the year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or, perhaps it just feels that way. During whatever air time is left, the local affiliate or national feed consists of worthwhile educational programs and family oriented fare that crosses all borders of gender, faith, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Hah!

And, as much as I’d like to post a typical Pledge Pitch, I haven’t taken nearly enough Xanax in my life to pull myself out of the pit of despair into which I would plummet. I don’t think I can bring myself to recount the dialogue from the usual tag team combination of the effeminate Castrati and the cloyingly solicitous Manhattanite doyenne trying their level best to separate us from $50 for a copy of The Mario Lanza Diet Book.

I am moving on from PBS. You should too. I realize there is a dearthof educational, activity, and alternative viewing stations out there such as The Discovery Channel, NatGeo, Hallmark,

SCI, The History Channel, Ovation, Animal Planet, NASA TV, C-SPAN (Cough), The Travel Channel, The Golf Channel, NFL Network, MLB, NHL, and the various international feeds from other countries that any basic cable package will provide.

And there’s just so darned little On-Demand and on PPV that making a $50 donation to the elites seems like a fair trade. That and the Gazillion Dollars sent to those losers every year, some of which is hoovered out of your taxes, whether anyone at the CPB will confess to it or not.

Yes, the American public should just keep falling for the “Could you really take Sesame Street away from your children.?” Or as the sanctimonious PBS Pledge hosts would put it, “Can you allow the blood-thirsty, evil Republicans to take away the only access to fine, commercial-free programming poor little children of minority parents have? Can you? To those same programs also available to the spoiled-rotten, glow-in-the-dark, pale and washed out spawn of Satan? Can you?”

And now back to the private sector.

[bestonlinegk]

Chanakya was an ancient Indian teacher, philosopher, economist, jurist, and royal advisor. He is traditionally identified as Kauṭilya or Vishnugupta, who authored the ancient Indian political treatise, the Arthashastra, a text dated to roughly between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE.  As such, he is considered the pioneer of the field of political science and economics in India, and his work is thought of as an important precursor to classical economics. His works were lost near the end of the Gupta Empire and not rediscovered until the early twentieth century.Chanakya assisted the first Mauryan emperor Chandragupta in his rise to power. He is widely credited for having played an important role in the establishment of the Maurya Empire. Chanakya served as the chief advisor to both Emperors Chandragupta and his son Bindusara.

Contents

Chapter One

1. Humbly bowing down before the almighty Lord Sri Vishnu, the Lord of the three worlds, I recite maxims of the science of political ethics (niti) selected from the various satras (scriptures)

2. That man who by the study of these maxims from the satras acquires a knowledge of the most celebrated principles of duty, and understands what ought and what ought not to be followed, and what is good and what is bad, is most excellent.

3. Therefore with an eye to the public good, I shall speak that which, when understood, will lead to an understanding of things in their proper perspective.

4. Even a pandit comes to grief by giving instruction to a foolish disciple, by maintaining a wicked wife, and by excessive familiarity with the miserable.

5. A wicked wife, a false friend, a saucy servant and living in a house with a serpent in it are nothing but death.

6. One should save his money against hard times, save his wife at the sacrifice of his riches, but invariably one should save his soul even at the sacrifice of his wife and riches.

7. Save your wealth against future calamity. Do not say, "What fear has a rich man, of calamity?" When riches begin to forsake one even the accumulated stock dwindles away.

8. Do not inhabit a country where you are not respected, cannot earn your livelihood, have no friends, or cannot acquire knowledge.

9. Do not stay for a single day where there are not these five persons: a wealthy man, a brahmin well versed in Vedic lore, a king, a river and a physician

10. Wise men should never go into a country where there are no means of earning one's livelihood, where the people have no dread of anybody, have no sense of shame, no intelligence, or a charitable disposition.

11. Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune.

12. He is a true friend who does not forsake us in time of need, misfortune, famine, or war, in a king's court, or at the crematorium (smasana).

13. He who gives up what is imperishable for that which is perishable, loses that which is imperishable; and doubtlessly loses that which is perishable also.

14. A wise man should marry a virgin of a respectable family even if she is deformed. He should not marry one of a low-class family, through beauty. Marriage in a family of equal status is preferable.

15. Do not put your trust in rivers, men who carry weapons, beasts with claws or horns, women, and members of a royal family

16. Even from poison extract nectar, wash and take back gold if it has fallen in filth, receive the highest knowledge (Krsna consciousness) from a low born person; so also a girl possessing virtuous qualities (stri-ratna) even if she were born in a disreputable family.

17. Women have hunger two-fold, shyness four-fold, daring six-fold, and lust eight-fold as compared to men

Chapter Two

1. Untruthfulness, rashness, guile, stupidity, avarice, uncleanliness and cruelty are a woman's seven natural flaws

2. To have ability for eating when dishes are ready at hand, to be robust and virile in the company of one's religiously wedded wife, and to have a mind for making charity when one is prosperous are the fruits of no ordinary austerities.

3. He whose son is obedient to him, whose wife's conduct is in accordance with his wishes, and who is content with his riches, has his heaven here on earth.

4. They alone are sons who are devoted to their father. He is a father who supports his sons. He is a friend in whom we can confide, and she only is a wife in whose company the husband feels contented and peaceful.

5. Avoid him who talks sweetly before you but tries to ruin you behind your back, for he is like a pitcher of poison with milk on top.

6. Do not put your trust in a bad companion nor even trust an ordinary friend, for if he should get angry with you, he may bring all your secrets to light.

7. Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise counsel keep it secret, being determined to carry it into execution.

8. Foolishness is indeed painful, and verily so is youth, but more painful by far than either is being obliged in another person's house.

9. There does not exist a pearl in every mountain, nor a pearl in the head of every elephant; neither are the sadhus to be found everywhere, nor sandal trees in every forest. [Note: Only elephants in royal palaces are seen decorated with pearls (precious stones) on their heads].

10. Wise men should always bring up their sons in various moral ways, for children who have knowledge of niti-sastra and are well behaved become a glory to their family.

11. Those parents who do not educate their sons are their enemies; for as is a crane among swans, so are ignorant sons in a public assembly>

12. Many a bad habit is developed through over indulgence, and many a good one by chastisement, therefore beat your son as well as your pupil; never indulge them. ("Spare the rod and spoil the child."

13. Let not a single day pass without your learning a verse, half a verse, or a fourth of it, or even one letter of it; nor without attending to charity, study and other pious activity.

14. Separation from the wife, disgrace from one's own people, an enemy saved in battle, service to a wicked king, poverty, and a mismanaged assembly: these six kinds of evils, if afflicting a person, burn him even without fire

15. Trees on a riverbank, a woman in another man's house, and kings without counsellors go without doubt to swift destruction.

16. A brahmin's strength is in his learning, a king's strength is in his army, a vaishya's strength is in his wealth and a shudra's strength is in his attitude of service

17. The prostitute has to forsake a man who has no money, the subject a king that cannot defend him, the birds a tree that bears no fruit, and the guests a house after they have finished their meals.

18. Brahmins quit their patrons after receiving alms from them, scholars leave their teachers after receiving education from them, and animals desert a forest that has been burnt down.

19. He who befriends a man whose conduct is vicious, whose vision impure, and who is notoriously crooked, is rapidly ruined.

20. Friendship between equals flourishes, service under a king is respectable, it is good to be business-minded in public dealings, and a handsome lady is safe in her own home.

    Chapter Three

1. In this world, whose family is there without blemish? Who is free from sickness and grief? Who is forever happy?

2. A man's descent may be discerned by his conduct, his country by his pronunciation of language, his friendship by his warmth and glow, and his capacity to eat by his body.

3. Give your daughter in marriage to a good family, engage your son in learning, see that your enemy comes to grief, and engage your friends in dharma. (Krsna consciousness).

4. Of a rascal and a serpent, the serpent is the better of the two, for he strikes only at the time he is destined to kill, while the former at every step.

5. Therefore kings gather round themselves men of good families, for they never forsake them either at the beginning, the middle or the end.

6. At the time of the pralaya (universal destruction) the oceans are to exceed their limits and seek to change, but a saintly man never changes.

7. Do not keep company with a fool for as we can see he is a two-legged beast. Like an unseen thorn he pierces the heart with his sharp words.

8. Though men be endowed with beauty and youth and born in noble families, yet without education they are like the palasa flower, which is void of sweet fragrance.

9. The beauty of a cuckoo is in its notes that of a woman in her unalloyed devotion to her husband, that of an ugly person in his scholarship, and that of an ascetic in his forgiveness.

10. Give up a member to save a family, a family to save a village, a village to save a country, and the country to save yourself.

11. There is no poverty for the industrious. Sin does not attach itself to the person practicing japa (chanting of the holy names of the Lord). Those who are absorbed in maunam (silent contemplation of the Lord) have no quarrel with others. They are fearless who remain always alert.

12.-13.

What is too heavy for the strong and what place is too distant for those who put forth effort? What country is foreign to a man of true learning? Who can be inimical to one who speaks pleasingly?

14. As a whole forest becomes fragrant by the existence of a single tree with sweet-smelling blossoms in it, so a family becomes famous by the birth of a virtuous son.

15. As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

16. As night looks delightful when the moon shines, so is a family gladdened by even one learned and virtuous son.

17. What is the use of having many sons if they cause grief and vexation? It is better to have only one son from whom the whole family can derive support and peacefulness.

18. Fondle a son until he is five years of age, and use the stick for another ten years, but when he has attained his sixteenth year treat him as a friend.

19. He who runs away from a fearful calamity, a foreign invasion, a terrible famine, and the companionship of wicked men is safe.

20. He who has not acquired one of the following: religious merit (dharma), wealth (artha), satisfaction of desires (kama), or liberation (moksa) is repeatedly born to die

21. Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth, comes of Her own accord where fools are not respected, grain is well stored up, and the husband and wife do not quarrel.

Chapter Four

1. These five: the life span, the type of work, wealth, learning and the time of one's death are determined while one is in the womb.

2. Offspring, friends and relatives flee from a devotee of the Lord: yet those who follow him bring merit to their families through their devotion.

3. Fish, tortoises, and birds bring up their young by means of sight, attention and touch; so do saintly men afford protection to their associates by the same means.

4. As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is imminent what can you do?

5. Learning is like a cow of desire. It, like her, yields in all seasons. Like a mother, it feeds you on your journey. Therefore learning is a hidden treasure.

6. A single son endowed with good qualities is far better than a hundred devoid of them. For the moon, though one, dispels the darkness, which the stars, though numerous, cannot.

7. A stillborn son is superior to a foolish son endowed with a long life. The first causes grief for but a moment while the latter like a blazing fire consumes his parents in grief for life.

8. Residing in a small village devoid of proper living facilities, serving a person born of a low family, unwholesome food, a frowning wife, a foolish son, and a widowed daughter burn the body without fire.

9. What good is a cow that neither gives milk nor conceives? Similarly, what is the value of the birth of a son if he becomes neither learned nor a pure devotee of the Lord?

10. When one is consumed by the sorrows of life, three things give him relief: offspring, a wife, and the company of the Lord's devotees.

11. Kings speak for once, men of learning once, and the daughter is given in marriage once. All these things happen once and only once.

12. Religious austerities should be practiced alone, study by two, and singing by three. A journey should be undertaken by four, agriculture by five, and war by many together.

13. She is a true wife who is clean (suci), expert, chaste, pleasing to the husband, and truthful.

14. The house of a childless person is a void, all directions are void to one who has no relatives, the heart of a fool is also void, but to a poverty-stricken man all is void.

15. Scriptural lessons not put into practice are poison; a meal is poison to him who suffers from indigestion; a social gathering is poison to a poverty-stricken person; and a young wife is poison to an aged man.

16. That man who is without religion and mercy should be rejected. A guru without spiritual knowledge should be rejected. The wife with an offensive face should be given up, and so should relatives who are without affection.

17. Constant travel brings old age upon a man; a horse becomes old by being constantly tied up; lack of sexual contact with her husband brings old age upon a woman; and garments become old through being left in the sun.

18. Consider again and again the following: the right time, the right friends, the right place, the right means of income, the right ways of spending, and from whom you derive your power.

19. For the twice born the fire (Agni) is a representative of God. The Supreme Lord resides in the heart of His devotees. Those of average intelligence (alpa-buddhi or kanista-adhikari) see God only in His sri-murti, but those of broad vision see the Supreme Lord everywhere.

Chapter Five

1. Agni is the worshipable person for the twice born; the brahmana for the other castes; the husband for the wife; and the guest who comes for food at the midday meal for all.

2. As gold is tested in four ways by rubbing, cutting, heating and beating -- so a man should be tested by these four things: his renunciation, his conduct, his qualities and his actions.

3. A thing may be dreaded as long as it has not overtaken you, but once it has come upon you, try to get rid of it without hesitation.

4. Though persons be born from the same womb and under the same stars, they do not become alike in disposition as the thousand fruits of the badari tree.

5. He whose hands are clean does not like to hold an office; he who desires nothing cares not for bodily decorations; he who is only partially educated cannot speak agreeably; and he who speaks out plainly cannot be a deceiver.

6. The learned are envied by the foolish; rich men by the poor; chaste women by adulteresses; and beautiful ladies by ugly ones

7. Indolent application ruins study; money is lost when entrusted to others; a farmer who sows his seed sparsely is ruined; and an army is lost for want of a commander.

8. Learning is retained through putting into practice; family prestige is maintained through good behaviour; a respectable person is recognised by his excellent qualities; and anger is seen in the eyes.

9. Religion is preserved by wealth; knowledge by diligent practice; a king by conciliatory words; and a home by a dutiful housewife.

10. Those who blaspheme Vedic wisdom, who ridicule the life style recommended in the satras, and who deride men of peaceful temperament, come to grief unnecessarily.

11. Charity puts and end to poverty; righteous conduct to misery; discretion to ignorance; and scrutiny to fear.

12. There is no disease (so destructive) as lust; no enemy like infatuation; no fire like wrath; and no happiness like spiritual knowledge.

13. A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

14. Heaven is but a straw to him who knows spiritual life (Krsna consciousness); so is life to a valiant man; a woman to him who has subdued his senses; and the universe to him who is without attachment for the world.

15. Learning is a friend on the journey; a wife in the house; medicine in sickness; and religious merit is the only friend after death.

16. Rain which falls upon the sea is useless; so is food for one who is satiated; in vain is a gift for one who is wealthy; and a burning lamp during the daytime is useless.

17. There is no water like rainwater; no strength like one's own; no light like that of the eyes; and no wealth more dear than food grain.

18. The poor wish for wealth; animals for the faculty of speech; men wish for heaven; and godly persons for liberation.

19. The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sunshine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

20. The Goddess of wealth is unsteady (chanchala), and so is the life breath. The duration of life is uncertain, and the place of habitation is uncertain; but in all this inconsistent world religious merit alone is immovable.

21. Among men the barber is cunning; among birds the crow; among beasts the jackal; and among women, the malin (flower girl).

22. These five are your fathers; he who gave you birth, girdled you with sacred thread, teaches you, provides you with food, and protects you from fearful situations.

23. These five should be considered as mothers; the king's wife, the preceptor's wife, the friend's wife, your wife's mother, and your own mother.

Chapter Six

1. By means of hearing one understands dharma, malignity vanishes, knowledge is acquired, and liberation from material bondage is gained.

2. Among birds the crow is vile; among beasts the dog; the ascetic whose sins is abominable, but he who blasphemes others is the worst chandala.

3. Brass is polished by ashes; copper is cleaned by tamarind; a woman, by her menses; and a river by its flow.

4. The king, the brahmana, and the ascetic yogi who go abroad are respected; but the woman who wanders is utterly ruined.

5. He who has wealth has friends. He who is wealthy has relatives. The rich one alone is called a man, and the affluent alone are respected as pandits

6. As is the desire of Providence, so functions one's intellect; one's activities are also controlled by Providence; and by the will of Providence one is surrounded by helpers.

7. Time perfects all living beings as well as kills them; it alone is awake when all others are asleep. Time is insurmountable.

8. Those born blind cannot see; similarly blind are those in the grip of lust. Proud men have no perception of evil; and those bent on acquiring riches see no sin in their actions.

9. The spirit soul goes through his own course of karma and he himself suffers the good and bad results thereby accrued. By his own actions he entangles himself in samsara, and by his own efforts he extricates himself.

10. The king is obliged to accept the sins of his subjects; the purohit (priest) suffers for those of the king; a husband suffers for those of his wife; and the guru suffers for those of his pupils.

11. A father who is a chronic debtor, an adulterous mother, a beautiful wife, and an unlearned son are enemies ( in one's own home).

12. Conciliate a covetous man by means of a gift, an obstinate man with folded hands in salutation, a fool by humouring him, and a learned man by truthful words.

13. It is better to be without a kingdom than to rule over a petty one; better to be without a friend than to befriend a rascal; better to be without a disciple than to have a stupid one; and better to be without a wife than to have a bad one.

14. How can people be made happy in a petty kingdom? What peace can we expect from a rascal friend? What happiness can we have at home in the company of a bad wife? How can renown be gained by instructing an unworthy disciple?

15. Learn one thing from a lion; one from a crane; four a cock; five from a crow; six from a dog; and three from an ass.

16. The one excellent thing that can be learned from a lion is that whatever a man intends doing should be done by him with a whole-hearted and strenuous effort.

17. The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

18. To wake at the proper time; to take a bold stand and fight; to make a fair division (of property) among relations; and to earn one's own bread by personal exertion are the four excellent things to be learned from a cock.

19. Union in privacy (with one's wife); boldness; storing away useful items; watchfulness; and not easily trusting others; these five things are to be learned from a crow.

20. Contentment with little or nothing to eat although one may have a great appetite; to awaken instantly although one may be in a deep slumber; unflinching devotion to the master; and bravery; these six qualities should be learned from the dog.

21. Although an ass is tired, he continues to carry his burden; he is unmindful of cold and heat; and he is always contented; these three things should be learned from the ass.

22. He who shall practice these twenty virtues shall become invincible in all his undertakings.

  Chapter Seven

1. A wise man should not reveal his loss of wealth, the vexation of his mind, the misconduct of his own wife, base words spoken by others, and disgrace that has befallen him.

2. He who gives up shyness in monetary dealings, in acquiring knowledge, in eating and in business, becomes happy.

3. The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.

4. One should feel satisfied with the following three things; his own wife, food given by Providence and wealth acquired by honest effort; but one should never feel satisfied with the following three; study, chanting the holy names of the Lord (japa) and charity.

5. Do not pass between two brahmanas, between a brahmana and his sacrificial fire, between a wife and her husband, a master and his servant, and a plough and an ox.

6. Do not let your foot touch fire, the spiritual master or a brahmana; it must never touch a cow, a virgin, an old person or a child.

7. Keep one thousand cubits away from an elephant, a hundred from a horse, ten from a horned beast, but keep away from the wicked by leaving the country.

8. An elephant is controlled by a goad (ankusha), a horse by a slap of the hand, a horned animal with the show of a stick, and a rascal with a sword.

9. Brahmanas find satisfaction in a good meal, peacocks in the peal of thunder, a sadhu in seeing the prosperity of others, and the wicked in the misery of others.

10. Conciliate a strong man by submission, a wicked man by opposition, and the one whose power is equal to yours by politeness or force.>

11. The power of a king lies in his mighty arms; that of a brahmana in his spiritual knowledge; and that of a woman in her beauty youth and sweet words.

12. Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

13. Swans live wherever there is water, and leave the place where water dries up; let not a man act so -- and comes and goes as he pleases.

14. Accumulated wealth is saved by spending just as incoming fresh water is saved by letting out stagnant water.

15. He who has wealth has friends and relations; he alone survives and is respected as a man.

16. The following four characteristics of the denizens of heaven may be seen in the residents of this earth planet; charity, sweet words, worship of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and satisfying the needs of brahmanas.

17. The following qualities of the denizens of hell may characterise men on earth; extreme wrath, harsh speech, enmity with one's relations, the company with the base, and service to men of low extraction.

18. By going to the den of a lion pearls from the head of an elephant may be obtained; but by visiting the hole of a jackal nothing but the tail of a calf or a bit of the hide of an ass may be found.

19. The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog, which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.

20. Purity of speech, of the mind, of the senses, and a compassionate heart are needed by one who desires to rise to the divine platform.

21. As you seek fragrance in a flower, oil in the sesamum seed, fire in wood, ghee (butter) in milk, and jaggery (guda) in sugarcane; so seek the spirit that is in the body by means of discrimination.>

Chapter Eight

1-2. Low class men desire wealth; middle class men both wealth and respect; but the noble, honour only; hence honour is the noble man's true wealth.

3. The lamp eats up the darkness and therefore it produces blackened lamp; in the same way according to the nature of our diet (sattva, rajas, or tamas) we produce offspring in similar quality.

4. O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet. The rainwater enlivens all living beings of the earth both movable (insects, animals, humans, etc.) and immovable (plants, trees, etc.), and then returns to the ocean where its value is multiplied a million fold.

5. The wise who discern the essence of things have declared that the yavana (meat eater) is equal in baseness to a thousand candalas (the lowest class), and hence a yavana is the basest of men; indeed there is no one more base.

6. After having rubbed oil on the body, after encountering the smoke from a funeral pyre, after sexual intercourse, and after being shaved, one remains a chandala until he bathes.

7. Water is the medicine for indigestion; it is invigorating when the food that is eaten is well digested; it is like nectar when drunk in the middle of a dinner; and it is like poison when taken at the end of a meal.

8. Knowledge is lost without putting it into practice; a man is lost due to ignorance; an army is lost without a commander; and a woman is lost without a husband.

9. A man who encounters the following three is unfortunate; the death of his wife in his old age, the entrusting of money into the hands of relatives, and depending upon others for food.

10. Chanting of the Vedas without making ritualistic sacrifices to the Supreme Lord through the medium of Agni, and sacrifices not followed by bountiful gifts are futile. Perfection can be achieved only through devotion (to the Supreme Lord) for devotion is the basis of all success.

13. There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

14. Anger is a personification of Yama (the demigod of death); thirst is like the hellish river Vaitarani; knowledge is like a kamadhenu (the cow of plenty); and contentment is like Nandanavana (the garden of Indra).

15. Moral excellence is an ornament for personal beauty; righteous conduct, for high birth; success for learning; and proper spending for wealth.

16. Beauty is spoiled by an immoral nature; noble birth by bad conduct; learning, without being perfected; and wealth by not being properly utilised.

17. Water seeping into the earth is pure; and a devoted wife is pure; the king who is the benefactor of his people is pure; and pure is the brahmana who is contented.

18. Discontented brahmanas, contented kings, shy prostitutes, and immodest housewives are ruined.

19. Of what avail is a high birth if a person is destitute of scholarship? A man who is of low extraction is honoured even by the demigods if he is learned.

20. A learned man is honoured by the people. A learned man commands respect everywhere for his learning. Indeed, learning is honoured everywhere.

21. Those who are endowed with beauty and youth and who are born of noble families are worthless if they have no learning. They are just like the kimshuka blossoms ( flowers of the palasa tree) which, though beautiful, have no fragrance.

22. The earth is encumbered with the weight of the flesh-eaters, wine-bibblers, dolts (dull and stupid) and blockheads, who are beasts in the form of men.

23. There is no enemy like a yajna (sacrifice) which consumes the kingdom when not attended by feeding on a large scale; consumes the priest when the chanting is not done properly; and consumes the yajaman (the responsible person) when the gifts are not made.

Chapter Nine

1. My dear child, if you desire to be free from the cycle of birth and death, then abandon the objects of sense gratification as poison. Drink instead the nectar of forbearance, upright conduct, mercy, cleanliness and truth.

2. Those base men who speak of the secret faults of others destroy themselves like serpents that stray onto anthills.>

3. Perhaps nobody has advised Lord Brahma, the creator, to impart perfume to gold; fruit to the sugarcane; flowers to the sandalwood tree; wealth to the learned; and long life to the king

4. Nectar (amrita) is the best among medicines; eating good food is the best of all types of material happiness; the eye is the chief among all organs; and the head occupies the chief position among all parts of the body.

5. No messenger can travel about in the sky and no tidings come from there. The voice of its inhabitants is never heard, nor can any contact be established with them. Therefore the brahmana who predicts the eclipse of the sun and moon, which occur in the sky, must be considered as a vidwan (man of great learning).

6. The student, the servant, the traveller, the hungry person, the frightened man, the treasury guard, and the steward: these seven ought to be awakened if they fall asleep.

7. The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

8. Of those who have studied the Vedas for material rewards, and those who accept foodstuffs offered by shudras, what potency have they? They are just like serpents without fangs.

9. He who neither rouses fear by his anger, nor confers a favour when he is pleased can neither control nor protect. What can he do?

10. The serpent may, without being poisonous, raise high its hood, but the show of terror is enough to frighten people -- whether he be venomous or not.

11. Wise men spend their mornings in discussing gambling, the afternoon discussing the activities of women, and the night hearing about the activities of theft. (The first item above refers to the gambling of King Yudhisthira, the great devotee of Krsna. The second item refers to the glorious deeds of mother Sita, the consort of Lord Ramachandra. The third item hints at the adorable childhood pastimes of Sri Krsna who stole butter from the elderly cowherd ladies of Gokula. Hence Chanakya Pandita advises wise persons to spend the morning absorbed in Mahabharata, the afternoon studying Ramayana, and the evening devotedly hearing the Srimad-Bhagvatam.)

12. By preparing a garland for a Deity with one's own hand; by grinding sandal paste for the Lord with one's own hand; and by writing sacred texts with one's own hand -- one becomes blessed with opulence equal to that of Indra.

14. Poverty is set off by fortitude; shabby garments by keeping them clean; bad food by warming it; and ugliness by good behaviour.

Chapter Ten

1. One destitute of wealth is not destitute, he is indeed rich (if he is learned); but the man devoid of learning is destitute in every way.

2. We should carefully scrutinise that place upon which we step (having it ascertained to be free from filth and living creatures like insects, etc.); we should drink water, which has been filtered (through a clean cloth); we should speak only those words, which have the sanction of the satras; and do that act which we have carefully considered.

3. He who desires sense gratification must give up all thoughts of acquiring knowledge; and he who seeks knowledge must not hope for sense gratification. How can he who seeks sense gratification acquire knowledge, and he who possesses knowledge enjoy mundane sense pleasure?

4. What is it that escapes the observation of poets? What is that act women are incapable of doing? What will drunken people not prate? What will not a crow eat?

5. Fate makes a beggar a king and a king a beggar. He makes a rich man poor and a poor man rich

6. The beggar is a miser's enemy; the wise counsellor is the fool's enemy; her husband is an adulterous wife's enemy; and the moon is the enemy of the thief.

7. Those who are destitute of learning, penance, knowledge, good disposition, virtue and benevolence are brutes wandering the earth in the form of men. They are burdensome to the earth.

8. Those that are empty-minded cannot be benefited by instruction. Bamboo does not acquire the quality of sandalwood by being associated with the Malaya Mountain.

9. What good can the scriptures do to a man who has no sense of his own? Of what use is as mirror to a blind man?

10. Nothing can reform a bad man, just as the posteriors cannot become a superior part of the body though washed one hundred times.

11. By offending a kinsman, life is lost; by offending others, wealth is lost; by offending the king, everything is lost; and by offending a brahmana (Brahmin) one's whole family is ruined.

12. It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty.

13. The brahmana (Brahmin) is like a tree; his prayers are the roots, his chanting of the Vedas are the branches, and his religious acts are the leaves. Consequently effort should be made to preserve his roots for if the roots are destroyed there can be no branches or leaves.

14. My mother is Kamala devi (Lakshmi), my father is Lord Janardana (Vishnu), my kinsmen are the Vishnu-bhaktas (Vaisnavas) and, my homeland is all the three worlds.

15. (Through the night) a great many kinds of birds perch on a tree but in the morning they fly in all the ten directions. Why should we lament for that? (Similarly, we should not grieve when we must inevitably part company from our dear ones)

16. He who possesses intelligence is strong; how can the man that is unintelligent be powerful? The elephant of the forest having lost his senses by intoxication was tricked into a lake by a small rabbit. (This verse refers to a famous story from the niti-sastra called pancatantra compiled by the pandit Vishnusharma 2500 years ago).

17. Why should I be concerned for my maintenance while absorbed in praising the glories of Lord Vishwambhara (Vishnu), the supporter of all? Without the grace of Lord Hari, how could milk flow from a mother's breast for a child's nourishment? Repeatedly thinking only in this way, O Lord of the Yadus, O husband of Lakshmi, all my time is spent in serving Your lotus feet.

  Chapter Eleven

1. Generosity, pleasing address, courage and propriety of conduct are not acquired, but are inbred qualities.

2. He who forsakes his own community and joins another perishes as the king who embraces an unrighteous path.

3. The elephant has a huge body but is controlled by the ankusha (goad): yet, is the goad as large as the elephant? A lighted candle banishes darkness: is the candle as vast as the darkness.

4. A mountain is broken even by a thunderbolt: is the thunderbolt therefore as big as the mountain? No, he whose power prevails is really mighty; what is there in bulk?

5. He who is engrossed in family life will never acquire knowledge; there can be no mercy in the eater of flesh; the greedy man will not be truthful; and purity will not be found in a woman or a hunter.

6. The wicked man will not attain sanctity even if he is instructed in different ways, and the Nim tree will not become sweet even if it is sprinkled from the top to the roots with milk and ghee.

7. Mental dirt cannot be washed away even by one-hundred baths in the sacred waters, just as a wine pot cannot be purified even by evaporating all the wine by fire.

8. It is not strange if a man reviles a thing of which he has no knowledge, just as a wild hunter's wife throws away the pearl that is found in the head of an elephant, and picks up a gunj (a type of seed which poor tribals wear as ornaments).

9. He who for one year eats his meals silently (inwardly meditating upon the Lord's prasadam); attains to the heavenly planets for a thousand crore of years. ( Note: one crore equals ten million)

10. The student (brahmacari) should completely renounce the following eight things -- his lust, anger, greed, desire for sweets, sense of decorating the body, excessive curiosity, excessive sleep, and excessive endeavour for bodily maintenance.

12. He alone is a true brahmana (dvija or "twice-born") who is satisfied with one meal a day, who has the six samskaras (or acts of purification such as garbhadhana, etc.) performed for him, and who cohabits with his wife only once in a month on an auspicious day after her menses.

13. The brahmana who is engrossed in worldly affairs, brings up cows and is engaged in trade is really called a vaishya.

14. The brahmana who deals in lac-die, articles, oil, indigo, silken cloth, honey, clarified butter, liquor, and flesh is called a shudra.

15. The brahmana who thwarts the doings of others, who is hypocritical, selfish, and a deceitful hater, and while speaking mildly cherishes cruelty in his heart, is called a cat.

16. The brahmana who destroys a pond, a well, a tank, a garden and a temple is called a mleccha.

17. The brahmana who steals the property of the Deities and the spiritual preceptor, who cohabits with another's wife, and who maintains himself by eating anything and everything s called a chandala.

18. The meritorious should give away in charity all that they have in excess of their needs. By charity only Karna, Bali and King Vikramaditya survive even today. Just see the plight of the honeybees beating their legs in despair upon the earth. They are saying to themselves, "Alas! We neither enjoyed our stored-up honey nor gave it in charity, and now someone has taken it from us in an instant."

Chapter Twelve

1. He is a blessed grhasta (householder) in whose house there is a blissful atmosphere, whose sons are talented, whose wife speaks sweetly, whose wealth is enough to satisfy his desires, who finds pleasure in the company of his wife, whose servants are obedient, in whose house hospitality is shown, the auspicious Supreme Lord is worshiped daily, delicious food and drink is partaken, and who finds joy in the company of devotees.

2. One who devotedly gives a little to a brahmana who is in distress is recompensed abundantly. Hence, O Prince, what is given to a good brahmana is got back not in an equal quantity, but in an infinitely higher degree.

3. Those men who are happy in this world, who are generous towards their relatives, kind to strangers, indifferent to the wicked, loving to the good, shrewd in their dealings with the base, frank with the learned, courageous with enemies, humble with elders and stern with the wife.

4. O jackal, leave aside the body of that man at once, whose hands have never given in charity, whose ears have not heard the voice of learning, whose eyes have not beheld a pure devotee of the Lord, whose feet have never traversed to holy places, whose belly is filled with things obtained by crooked practices, and whose head is held high in vanity. Do not eat it, O jackal, otherwise you will become polluted.

5. "Shame upon those who have no devotion to the lotus feet of Sri Krsna, the son of mother Yasoda; who have no attachment for the descriptions of the glories of Srimati Radharani; whose ears are not eager to listen to the stories of the Lord's lila." Such is the exclamation of the mrdanga sound of dhik-tam dhik-tam dhigatam at kirtana.

6. What fault of spring that the bamboo shoot has no leaves? What fault of the sun if the owl cannot see during the daytime? Is it the fault of the clouds if no raindrops fall into the mouth of the chatak bird? Who can erase what Lord Brahma has inscribed upon our foreheads at the time of birth?

7. A wicked man may develop saintly qualities in the company of a devotee, but a devotee does not become impious in the company of a wicked person. The earth is scented by a flower that falls upon it, but the flower does not contact the odour of the earth.

8. One indeed becomes blessed by having darshan of a devotee; for the devotee has the ability to purify immediately, whereas the sacred tirtha gives purity only after prolonged contact.

9. A stranger asked a brahmana, "Tell me, who is great in this city?" The brahmana replied, "The cluster of palmyra trees is great." Then the traveller asked, "Who is the most charitable person?" The brahmana answered, "The washer man who takes the clothes in the morning and gives them back in the evening is the most charitable." He then asked, "Who is the ablest man?" The brahmana answered, "Everyone is expert in robbing others of their wives and wealth." The man then asked the brahmana, "How do you manage to live in such a city?" The brahmana replied, "As a worm survives while even in a filthy place so do I survive here!"

10. The house in which the lotus feet of brahmanas are not washed, in which Vedic mantras are not loudly recited, and in which the holy rites of svaha (sacrificial offerings to the Supreme Lord) and swadha (offerings to the ancestors) are not performed, is like a crematorium.

11. (It is said that a sadhu, when asked about his family, replied thusly): truth is my mother, and my father is spiritual knowledge; righteous conduct is my brother, and mercy is my friend, inner peace is my wife, and forgiveness is my son: these six are my kinsmen.

12. Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit.

13. Arjuna says to Krsna. "Brahmanas find joy in going to feasts, cows find joy in eating their tender grass, wives find joy in the company of their husbands, and know, O Krsna, that in the same way I rejoice in battle.

14. He who regards another's wife as his mother, the wealth that does not belong to him as a lump of mud, and the pleasure and pain of all other living beings as his own -- truly sees things in the right perspective, and he is a true pandit.

15. O Raghava, the love of virtue, pleasing speech, and an ardent desire for performing acts of charity, guileless dealings with friends, humility in the guru's presence, deep tranquillity of mind, pure conduct, discernment of virtues, realised knowledge of the sastras, beauty of form and devotion to God are all found in you." (The great sage Vasistha Muni, the spiritual preceptor of the dynasty of the sun, said this to Lord Ramachandra at the time of His proposed coronation)

16. Kalpataru (the wish fulfilling tree) is but wood; the golden Mount Meru is motionless; the wish-fulfilling gem chintamani is just a stone; the sun is scorching; the moon is prone to wane; the boundless ocean is saline; the demigod of lust lost his body (due to Shiva's wrath); Bali Maharaja, the son of Diti, was born into a clan of demons; and Kamadhenu (the cow of heaven) is a mere beast. O Lord of the Raghu dynasty! I cannot compare you to any one of these (taking their merits into account).

17. Realised learning (vidya) is our friend while travelling, the wife is a friend at home, medicine is the friend of a sick man, and meritorious deeds are the friends at death.

18. Courtesy should be learned from princes, the art of conversation from pandits, lying should be learned from gamblers and deceitful ways should be learned from women.

19. The unthinking spender, the homeless urchin, the quarrel monger, the man who neglects his wife and is heedless in his actions -- all these will soon come to ruination.

20. The wise man should not be anxious about his food; he should be anxious to be engaged only in dharma (Krsna consciousness). The food of each man is created for him at his birth.

21. He who is not shy in the acquisition of wealth, grain and knowledge, and in taking his meals, will be happy

22. As centesimal droppings will fill a pot so also are knowledge, virtue and wealth gradually obtained.

23. The man who remains a fool even in advanced age is really a fool, just as the Indra-Varuna fruit does not become sweet no matter how ripe it might become.

Chapter Thirteen

1. A man may live but for a moment, but that moment should be spent in doing auspicious deeds. It is useless living even for a kalpa (4,320,000 *1000 years) and bringing only distress upon the two worlds (this world and the next).

2. We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

3. It certainly is nature of the demigods, men of good character, and parents to be easily pleased. Near and distant relatives are pleased when they are hospitably received with bathing, food, and drink; and pandits are pleased with an opportunity for giving spiritual discourse.

4 Even as the unborn babe is in the womb of his mother, these five are fixed as his life destiny: his life span, his activities, his acquisition of wealth and knowledge, and his time of death.

5. Oh, see what a wonder it is! The doings of the great are strange: they treat wealth as light as a straw, yet, when they obtain it, they bend under its weight

6. He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

7. He who is prepared for the future and he who deals cleverly with any situation that may arise are both happy; but the fatalistic man who wholly depends on luck is ruined.

8. If the king is virtuous, then the subjects are also virtuous. If the king is sinful, then the subjects also become sinful. If he is mediocre, then the subjects are mediocre. The subjects follow the example of the king. In short, as is the king so are the subjects.

9. I consider him who does not act religiously as dead though living, but he who dies acting religiously unquestionably lives long though he is dead.

10. He who has acquired neither virtue, wealth, satisfaction of desires nor salvation (dharma, artha, kama, moksa), lives an utterly useless life, like the "nipples" hanging from the neck of a goat.

11. The hearts of base men burn before the fire of other's fame, and they slander them being themselves unable to rise to such a high position.

12. Excessive attachment to sense pleasures leads to bondage, and detachment from sense pleasures leads to liberation; therefore it is the mind alone that is responsible for bondage or liberation

13. He who sheds bodily identification by means of knowledge of the indwelling Supreme Self (Paramatma), will always be absorbed in meditative trance (samadhi) wherever his mind leads him.

14. Who realises all the happiness he desires? Everything is in the hands of God. Therefore one should learn contentment.

15. As a calf follows its mother among a thousand cows, so the (good or bad) deeds of a man follow him.

16. He whose actions are disorganised has no happiness either in the midst of men or in a jungle -- in the midst of men his heart burns by social contacts, and his helplessness burns him in the forest.

17. As the man who digs obtains underground water by use of a shovel, so the student attains the knowledge possessed by his preceptor through his service

18. Men reap the fruits of their deeds, and intellects bear the mark of deeds performed in previous lives; even so the wise act after due circumspection.

19. Even the man who has taught the spiritual significance of just one letter ought to be worshiped. He who does not give reverence to such a guru is born as a dog a hundred times, and at last takes birth as a chandala (dog-eater).

20. At the end of the yuga, Mount Meru may be shaken; at the end of the kalpa, the waters of the seven oceans may be disturbed; but a sadhu will never swerve from the spiritual path.

21. There are three gems upon this earth; food, water, and pleasing words -- fools (mudhas) consider pieces of rocks as gems.

Chapter Fourteen

1. Poverty, disease, sorrow, imprisonment and other evils are the fruits borne by the tree of one's own sins.

2. Wealth, a friend, a wife, and a kingdom may be regained; but this body when lost may never be acquired again.

3. The enemy can be overcome by the union of large numbers, just as grass through its collectiveness wards off erosion caused by heavy rainfall.

4. Oil on water, a secret communicated to a base man, a gift given to a worthy receiver, and scriptural instruction given to an intelligent man spread out by virtue of their nature.

5. If men should always retain the state of mind they experience when hearing religious instruction, when present at a crematorium ground, and when in sickness -- then who could not attain liberation.

6. If a man should feel before, as he feels after, repentance -- then who would not attain perfection?

7. We should not feel pride in our charity, austerity, valour, scriptural knowledge, modesty and morality for the world is full of the rarest gems.

8. He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

9. We should always speak what would please the man of whom we expect a favour, like the hunter who sings sweetly when he desires to shoot a deer.

10. It is ruinous to be familiar with the king, fire, the religious preceptor, and a woman. To be altogether indifferent to them is to be deprived of the opportunity to benefit ourselves, hence our association with them must be from a safe distance.

11. We should always deal cautiously with fire, water, women, foolish people, serpents, and members of a royal family; for they may, when the occasion presents itself, at once bring about our death.

12. He should be considered to be living who is virtuous and pious, but the life of a man who is destitute of religion and virtues is void of any blessing.

13. If you wish to gain control of the world by the performance of a single deed, then keep the following fifteen, which are prone to wander here and there, from getting the upper hand of you: the five sense objects (objects of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch); the five sense organs (ears, eyes, nose, tongue and skin) and organs of activity (hands, legs, mouth, genitals and anus).

14. He is a pandit (man of knowledge) who speaks what is suitable to the occasion, who renders loving service according to his ability, and who knows the limits of his anger.

15 One single object (a woman) appears in three different ways: to the man who practices austerity it appears as a corpse, to the sensual it appears as a woman, and to the dogs as a lump of flesh.

16. A wise man should not divulge the formula of a medicine which he has well prepared; an act of charity which he has performed; domestic conflicts; private affairs with his wife; poorly prepared food he may have been offered; or slang he may have heard.

17. The cuckoos remain silent for a long time (for several seasons) until they are able to sing sweetly (in the Spring) so as to give joy to all.

18. We should secure and keep the following: the blessings of meritorious deeds, wealth, grain, the words of the spiritual master, and rare medicines. Otherwise life becomes impossible.

19. Eschew wicked company and associate with saintly persons. Acquire virtue day and night, and always meditate on that which is eternal forgetting that which is temporary.

  Chapter Fifteen

1. For one whose heart melts with compassion for all creatures; what is the necessity of knowledge, liberation, matted hair on the head, and smearing the body with ashes?

2. There is no treasure on earth the gift of which will cancel the debt a disciple owes his guru for having taught him even a single letter (that leads to Krsna consciousness).

3. There are two ways to get rid of thorns and wicked persons; using footwear in the first place and in the second shaming them so that they cannot raise their faces again thus keeping them at a distance.

4. He who wears unclean garments, has dirty teeth, is a glutton, speaks unkindly and sleeps after sunrise -- although he may be the greatest personality -- will lose the favour of Lakshmi.

5. He who loses his money is forsaken by his friends, his wife, his servants and his relations; yet when he regains his riches those who have forsaken him come back to him. Hence wealth is certainly the best of relations.

6. Sinfully acquired wealth may remain for ten years; in the eleventh year it disappears with even the original stock.

7. A bad action committed by a great man is not censured (as there is none that can reproach him), and a good action performed by a low-class man comes to be condemned (because none respects him). Just see: the drinking of nectar is excellent, but it became the cause of Rahu's demise; and the drinking of poison is harmful, but when Lord Shiva (who is exalted) drank it, it became an ornament to his neck (nila-kantha).

8. A true meal is that which consists of the remnants left after a brahmana's meal. Love, which is shown to others, is true love, not that which is cherished for one's own self. To abstain from sin is true wisdom. That is an act of charity, which is performed without ostentation.

9. For want of discernment the most precious jewels lie in the dust at the feet of men while bits of glass are worn on their heads. But we should not imagine that the gems have sunk in value, and the bits of glass have risen in importance. When a person of critical judgement shall appear, each will be given its right position.

10. Sastric (scriptural) knowledge is unlimited, and the arts to be learned are many; the time we have is short, and our opportunities to learn are beset with obstacles. Therefore select for learning that which is most important, just as the swan drinks only the milk in water.

11. He is a chandala who eats his dinner without entertaining the stranger who has come to his house quite accidentally, having travelled from a long distance and is wearied.

12. One may know the four Vedas and the Dharma-sastras, yet if he has no realisation of his own spiritual self, he can be said to be like the ladle (spoon) which stirs all kinds of foods but knows not the taste of any.

13. Those blessed souls are certainly elevated who, while crossing the ocean of life, take shelter of a genuine brahmana, who is likened unto a boat. They are unlike passengers aboard an ordinary ship that runs the risk of sinking.

14. The moon, who is the abode of nectar and the presiding deity of all medicines, although immortal like amrta and resplendent in form, loses the brilliance of his rays when he repairs to the abode of the sun (day time). Therefore, will not an ordinary man be made to feel inferior by going to live at the house of another?

15. This humble bee, which always resides among the soft petals of the lotus and drinks abundantly its sweet nectar, is now feasting on the flower of the ordinary kutaja. Being in a strange country where the lotuses do not exist, he is considering the pollen of the kutaja to be nice.

16. (Lord Visnu asked His spouse Lakshmi why She did not care to live in the house of a brahmana.She replied:)" O Lord a rishi named Agastya drank up My father (the ocean) in anger; Brighu Muni kicked You; brahmanas pride themselves on their learning having sought the favour of My competitor Sarasvati; and lastly they pluck each day the lotus which is My abode, and therewith worship Lord Shiva. Therefore, O Lord, I fear to dwell with a brahmana".

17. There are many ways of binding by which one can be dominated and controlled in this world, but the bond of affection is the strongest. For example, take the case of the humble bee, which, although expert at piercing hardened wood, becomes caught in the embrace of its beloved flowers (as the petals close at dusk).

18. Although sandalwood is cut, it does not forsake its natural quality of fragrance; so also the elephant does not give up sportiveness though he should grow old. The sugarcane does not cease to be sweet though squeezed in a mill; so the man of noble extraction does not lose his lofty qualities, no matter how pinched he is by poverty.

Chapter Sixteen

1. The heart of a woman is not united; it is divided. While she is talking with one man, she looks lustfully at another and thinks fondly of a third in her heart.

2. The fool (mudha) who fancies that a charming young lady loves him, becomes her slave and he dances like a shakuntal bird tied to a string.

3. Who is there who, having become rich, has not become proud? What licentious man has put an end to his calamities? What man in this world has not been overcome by a woman? Who is always loved by the king? Who is there who has not been overcome by the ravages of time? What beggar has attained glory? Who has become happy by contracting the vices of the wicked?

4. A man attains greatness by his merits, not simply by occupying an exalted seat. Can we call a crow an eagle (garuda) simply because he sits on the top of a tall building.

5. The man who is praised by others as great is regarded as worthy though he may be really void of all merit. But the man who sings his own praises lowers himself in the estimation of others though he should be Indra (the possessor of all excellences).

6. If good qualities should characterize a man of discrimination, the brilliance of his qualities will be recognized just as a gem, which is essentially bright, really shines when fixed in an ornament of gold.

7. Even one who by his qualities appears to be all knowing suffers without patronage; the gem, though precious, requires a gold setting.

8. I do not deserve that wealth which is to be attained by enduring much suffering, or by transgressing the rules of virtue, or by flattering an enemy.

9. Those who were not satiated with the enjoyment of wealth, food and women have all passed away; there are others now passing away who have likewise remained unsatiated; and in the future still others will pass away feeling themselves unsatiated.

10. All charities and sacrifices (performed for fruitive gain) bring only temporary results, but gifts made to deserving persons and protection offered to all creatures shall never perish

11. A blade of grass is light, cotton is lighter, and the beggar is infinitely lighter still. Why then does not the wind carry him away? Because it fears that he may ask alms of him.

12. It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment's grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one's life.

13. All the creatures are pleased by loving words; and therefore we should address words that are pleasing to all, for there is no lack of sweet words.

14. There are two nectarine fruits hanging from the tree of this world: one is the hearing of sweet words (such as Krsna-katha) and the other, the society of saintly men.

15. The good habits of charity, learning and austerity practised during many past lives continue to be cultivated in this birth by virtue of the link (yoga) of this present life to the previous ones.

19. One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

Chapter Seventeen

1. The scholar who has acquired knowledge by studying innumerable books without the blessings of a bonafide spiritual master does not shine in an assembly of truly learned men just as an illegitimate child is not honoured in society.

2. We should repay the favours of others by acts of kindness; so also should we return evil for evil in which there is no sin, for it is necessary to pay a wicked man in his own coin.

3. That thing which is distant, that thing which appears impossible, and that which is far beyond our reach, can be easily attained through tapasya (religious austerity), for nothing can surpass austerity.

4. What vice could be worse than covetousness? What is more sinful than slander? For one who is truthful, what need is there for austerity? For one who has a clean heart, what is the need for pilgrimage? If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation? What need is there for wealth for the man of practical knowledge? And if a man is dishonoured, what could there be worse than death?

5. Though the sea, which is the reservoir of all jewels, is the father of the conch shell, and the Goddess of fortune Lakshmi is conch's sister, still the conch must go from door to door for alms (in the hands of a beggar). It is true, therefore, that one gains nothing without having given in the past.

6. When a man has no strength left in him he becomes a sadhu, one without wealth acts like a brahmacari, a sick man behaves like a devotee of the Lord, and when a woman grows old she becomes devoted to her husband.

7. There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it.

8. The woman who fasts and observes religious vows without the permission of her husband shortens his life, and goes to hell.

8. A woman does not become holy by offering charity, by observing hundreds of fasts, or by sipping sacred water, as by sipping the water used to wash her husbands feet.

9. The hand is not so well adorned by ornaments as by charitable offerings; one does not become clean by smearing sandalwood paste upon the body as by taking a bath; one does not become so much satisfied by dinner as by having respect shown to him; and salvation is not attained by self-adornment as by cultivation of spiritual knowledge.

10. The eating of tundi fruit deprives a man of his sense, while the vacha root administered revives his reasoning immediately. A woman at once robs a man of his vigour while milk at once restores it.

11. He who nurtures benevolence for all creatures within his heart overcomes all difficulties and will be the recipient of all types of riches at every step.

12. What is there to be enjoyed in the world of Lord Indra for one whose wife is loving and virtuous, who possesses wealth, who has a well-behaved son endowed with good qualities, and who has grandchildren born of his children?

13. Men have eating, sleeping, fearing and mating in common with the lower animals. That in which men excel the beasts is discretionary knowledge; hence, indiscreet men who are without knowledge should be regarded as beasts.

14. If the bees that seek the liquid oozing from the head of a lust-intoxicated elephant are driven away by the flapping of his ears, then the elephant has lost only the ornament of his head. The bees are quite happy in the lotus filled lake.

15. A king, a prostitute, Lord Yamaraja, fire, a thief, a young boy, and a beggar cannot understand the suffering of others. The eighth of this category is the tax collector.

16. O lady, why are you gazing downward? Has something of yours fallen on the ground? (She replies) O fool, can you not understand the pearl of my youth has slipped away?

17. O ketki flower! Serpents live in your midst, you bear no edible fruits, your leaves are covered with thorns, you are crooked in growth, you thrive in mud, and you are not easily accessible. Still for your exceptional fragrance you are as dear as kinsmen to others. Hence, a single excellence overcomes a multitude of blemishes.