#its a prophecy fulfilled as far as im concerned

[clowningaroundmars]

ppl abt hobie brown: oh nooo he's so hard to draw he's sooooo skinny!!!! idk how to draw long lanky thin-limbed teenage boys... it's so hard! :(

me doodling hobie poses, remembering that i'm comin in from the Long Lanky Thin-Limbed Teenage Boys fandom:

[officialclangen]

Hi!! I just wanted to ask for some clarification on some things you mentioned about your coding- Im learning python (sorta) and id like to know the reasonings?

For history, cant you just make a text file while working on the main history feature? After some fiddling around i got the game to create a text file and put event text that wasn't interactions in said file. I think it'd help since if things get bloated the player can just copy the text to a google doc and delete all previous text- the code i whipped up works fine this way. Pasting it below, idk if tumblr will fuck it up tho.

def print_all_events_test(self, event_list):

with open("my_file.txt", "a") as f:

f.write("\nMoon "+ str(game.clan.age)+"\n\n")

for event in event_list:

if not "interaction" in event.types:

try:

f.write(event.text + "\n")

except:

print("Error, no Event Text found.\n")

Put the declaration on line 233 (before loaded events were cleared), with game.cur_events_list as the event_list. I know theres apparently security concerns with using files or calling them but I know WAY too little to know if a txt file will send my computer into chaos. "my_file" should also be named after the clan name, and in its own folder for neatness. Using this also means history (ingame) can be deleted after x moons to prevent bloating overall? If the player still wants the deleted history, they just need to go to the text file. Should help with people who want to copy text too, since no longer will screenshots be needed!

As for prophecies, cant you make a hidden illness for a prophecy that gets added to 1-3 cats, that gets cured after x days (aka when the prophecy is fulfilled, from what I've seen in the code illnesses get cured after x days so if multiple cats get the prophecy illness they should all be 'cured' on the same day)? It'll be work to add stuff like multiple cats in a single prophecy and adding personality into the mix but it shouldn't be outright impossible, right? Grieving seems to work similarly so the template seems to be there.

Me coming into ur asks (yes theres better places for this im just anxious @ the discord channels lmao) is 100% a sign of love for the game. I also would like to know if the ideas would work or not, i am genuinely curious about if they've been considered and (if so) the reasons why they weren't implemented! Love yall :)

Yes, we could implement a history txt file but it would become very large very quickly. And while we could try and count on the player to get rid of the file if it's causing lag, there would end up being a lot of players who don't understand how to navigate files and wouldn't know how to delete the txt file. Once the file gets big enough it'll make timeskips begin to lag out as the file is opened and changed by the game, and then held open until the game is saved once again (since the file can't be saved and closed before the player saves the game, in case the player closes without saving). It'll also take up memory during this process.

Basically, it would use resources that we feel would be better allocated to handling other areas of the game.

The problem with prophecies is that there's a million different things that a prophecy could be predicting. Is it predicting a new special cat (like firestar), is it predicting something far in that cat's future (bluestar), perhaps it's predicting an illness or a disaster, maybe it predicts a lost cat returning. There's so many options and the moment that the game starts dictating the meaning of the prophecy is the moment that those options become significantly fewer.

If we do decide to dictate the 'meaning' of a prophecy, then there's the added trouble of ensuring that any cats integral to the prophecy don't get killed or permanently changed in a way that makes the prophecy stop making sense. We have begun working on an "ongoing event" system that would control events spanning over multiple moons. This will eventually be used for things like natural disasters and wars, and if we wanted to we could potentially use it for prophecies. But, as said, that poses a lot of difficulties with having to "soft lock" any cats included in that prophecy so that they only change in specific ways that make sense. This would require a ton of work to code in.

It's never impossible but sometimes it can be unreasonable, and this is a case where we feel that "real" prophecies would be unreasonable.

I hope that reasoning makes sense! Thanks for asking <3

[blueskittlesart]

i am in a sad. how about some hc characteristics for link and zelda

this is so long because i have so many feelings and half of this is more analysis of their canon characters than headcanons but its IMPORTANT so i cant omit any of it but i dont want to make a super long post analyzing video game characters so it’s under the readmore hgfdfghj

SO link was always a very quiet kid even before the sword and everything. He wouldn’t speak unless spoken to and was shy enough that he had trouble socializing with the other kids in his village. However i dont think it really would have bothered him that much?? he found his own ways to have fun, climbing trees or shield surfing down the hills around hateno. Even as a kid, he was very independent and had a tendency to want to resolve problems on his own without going to anyone else for help, so he’d come home with two skinned knees insisting that he was fine and he didn’t need his mother’s help bandaging them up. (yes this drove his mother crazy, yes mipha also had to deal with this shit and that’s what made that cutscene between them so intimate, it was her telling him that he’s allowed to trust her enough to let her help and that she will always be there to heal him as many times as it takes. dont talk to me) Through his memories we see that zelda thinks, or thought, that he unquestioningly accepted his duty as the hylian champion and never had any struggles with his place in the world, but zelda tends to take things at face value and i find it hard to believe that link never had any regrets about his position. He was put into training as young as twelve years old, essentially taken away from his family and his life in order to serve a higher destiny. I think it probably lead to link placing all his value on how he can serve others. As far as he’s concerned, his only worth is contingent on his ability to protect and serve zelda and the other champions, which is why we see so much of him getting hurt or being reckless in order to protect others; he believes on some level that if he fails to be a good soldier he will not matter to anyone anymore. his only worth in his mind is based on how he can be “useful.” On a less depressing note tho i think hes very good with animals, espc horses! he finds them easier to interact with than people. dogs are the same, theres a reason it only takes like a minute of him standing in front of a dog for it to follow him wherever he goes. He also likes to cook and that’s not even a hc have you seen the little graphics for all the different food he can make? the PRESENTATION. he’s very deliberate in little things like that because it MATTERS to him that what he makes looks good! not for any particular reason, not to impress anyone but because he’s made it for himself and he wants to take pride in what he’s made. thanks for coming to my ted talk 

Ok now on to zelda. She has a lot more canon personality than link which like. she’s an npc and link is the player character so that’s to be expected BUT i still have a lot to say about her character. She’s headstrong and stubborn and emotional and it gets her into trouble. She has a tendency to take things at face value and she lets her emotions take over very quickly, which puts a strain on her relationships with others. Due to her status and the prophecy she was supposed to fulfill she was incredibly isolated as a child. she hardly ever interacted with anyone her own age, which is why she treats link the way she does at first; she doesn’t have any experience with anyone who isn’t required to be around her. She’s used to being condescended to while simultaneously being expected to be perfect in everything she does, and it’s made her... mean. she deliberately pushes people (read: link) away because she believes that no one really cares about her outside of her status and her supposed power, and what we see of her father’s actions only reinforce that perspective. she and link are very VERY similar in that regard, in that they place all their self-worth on their importance as hyrule’s prophecized saviors. the difference between them is that zelda fails, she is unable to be the perfect princess she is expected to be, and she has a support system in urbosa (and link, and as far as im concerned mipha too even tho they aren’t shown to be friends in canon) that allows her to recover from the trauma that forced her into that mindset. she learns to be more empathetic, she stops pushing people away and begins to consider how her actions affect others. she doesn’t necessarily lose the idea that she has to be useful completely, but she becomes aware of it and makes an effort to not take out her frustrations with herself on other people. Ok thats most of my Thoughts out of the way so onto the less depressing stuff, Zelda is INCREDIBLY smart. like child prodigy level intelligence. Her mind is very mathematically oriented, which is partially why she’s so drawn to sheikah tech. it’s something she understands very easily and can break down to its most bare functions in a matter of minutes. she was instrumental in getting literal ANCIENT TECH to work again and was respected by sheikah scholars. She is also very very curious, which helps her out in certain situations, but can be... problematic in others. she doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. shes essentially always turned up to 11. She’s interested in animals, like link, but her interest is from a much more scientific standpoint than his. She has trouble with animals that require a more empathetic approach, like horses, because she prefers to think of animals and plants in terms of their benefit to her: a horse is transportation, a frog could be used in an elixir or a dish, etc etc. her curiosity and willingness to learn help her out a lot post-calamity when she finds herself traveling hyrule with link. though not very adept with weapons, at least at first, her quick thinking makes her a good strategist. she’s adept at finding weaknesses in enemies that may be less obvious to a common soldier (cough cough she literally highlights ganon’s weaknesses in the final battle of botw and i want them to keep that motif in botw2 because it makes so much sense for her nintendo PLEASE)

HELP THIS IS SO LONG AND IT CAN BARELY EVEN BE CONSIDERED HEADCANONS IM SO SORRY I JUST. HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABT BOTW LINK AND ZELDA DONT TALK TO ME

[therewas-a-girl]

Hey i love the insight you give to Oliver and im not so lucky to be an analytical (😬😊) and was wondering what does Oliver trusting himself have to do with him not telling Felicity? And what does Felicity mean when she says she understands now because of Billy? Those scenes have me very confused.

okay, anon here i am, finally. im so sorry for the  late reply, but i’ve had a couple of bad days preceded by some worse weeks T_T, and i’m in the middle of exams * T_T harder* , so free time is essentially not here for me.

BUT i’m on my break now - 

SO!

first of all, thank you! i find it  a little bit surprising tbh, cause i never saw myself as very analytical - i just sort of obsess over details and some things seem to make sense only to me?  or i just don’t know how to express them clearly enough. but im going to try my best, i promise. but don’t take me at my word, cause honestly, even as i write this, im still trying to understand this myself, so i’ll just… take with with a grain of salt

im going to take up the easy one first: felicity. mostly because, where felicity’s ‘i understand now because of Billy’, of all things, is concerned, my reaction is basically this :

im just not here for it, and i dont care to bullshit my way into circular meta/rationalization over it, because the subtext of it as an idea alienates and, frankly, enrages me.

Oliver… 

So, the first thing i thought when i heard Oliver say, ‘i dont trust myself’ is the fact that, this whole conviction he has right now (that he enjoyed killing, and that everything that is and went wrong in his life, stems form this truth he hid from himself)is based on his supposed clarity about himself and his nature that he gained when he was holed up and tortured by Adrian for 7 days. Aka, not to be trusted.

my messy reasoning goes kind of like this: 

in the flashbacks, we saw Felicity tell him that she still felt like he didn’t trust her, or anyone.  That she didn’t understand why, and ‘maybe you don’t understand why either’. Leaving us with the hint  that, until he does, and deals with it, he will keep making the same choices. 

Oliver did not contradict her - which makes me think he, in part, agreed with her. 

(the writers use characters for this kind of ‘truth exposition’ thing, so i’m guessing they wanted to tell is that yes, Oliver does think this, and doesn’t understand this about himself*) 

so he has this insecurity, this… missing understanding about himself. A secret, so to speak. A truth about himself that he is so afraid of, that he has buried it so deep inside that is not even buried; It’s suppressed at this point. Which is why he didn’t understand himself. 

Adrian kidnaps him. 

Now, i thought it important to remember that he is the villain. (and here is where the text and my interpretation of it mix a little) Adrian is super smart and intuitive about people, and also - important! - a lawyer. He knows how to ask questions, how to lead people on. All the while Oliver was there, Adrian was in his suit, walking back and forth like in front of  a jury, totally calm, asking one leading question after another; plus a lovely side dish of torture, because why not trigger all the lovely trauma. 

And he got what he wanted. He got Oliver to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear!

Basically Adrian made Oliver look at his deepest fear, and admit it as truth. (and it’s not that i think the whole ‘i liked it’ about killing is a lie. but i think its more complicated than ‘you’re a dangerous crazy person who enjoys killing. who knows what you might do’) . A truth that Oliver has, apparently, always known on a subconscious level. Something he has  never faced but always feared. 

(which is, ironically, what makes it so easy to believe. It’s always a lot easier to believe the bad things about ourselves - but even more so when you take into account how self-deprecating Oliver is. hello depression how are you?)

This truth he admitted has been behind his every hesitation, his every insecurity. The fear that goes kind of like this: ‘You are a bad person because you did horrible things, monstrous things, and it’s not that you’re not sorry. You  liked it’.  

To someone like Oliver, whose sense of morality, right and wrong, is mostly internal, personal, (but also informed by conventional understanding of good and evil ) and who relies on ideals, motivations, reasons, to help him navigate his daily life, this is basically shattering the ground he walks on.

Oliver has always seemed to me like he needed to believe that his actions were right. Extreme, but justifiable, doing the right thing. (i remember his whole speech in s1 when he made an offer to John about joining him. about how the rich people of Starling were stepping on the city’s throat and not caring who they hurt and if nobody was going to stop them, then ‘its going to be me’. it was to fulfill a promise, a duty - something he sometimes even seemed to resent. but to do that, he had to believe he was doing the right thing, though in flawed ways) 

…that he didn’t even think were that flawed since, in season 1, he was having some SERIOUS adjustments issues when it came to adapting to civilian life. Every time he went out there, he was ‘kill or be killed’ mentality of a war-zone, which had been his reality for 5 years. Took some time to shake that off and even be able to see that he didn’t have to kill to survive. (and holy shit am i digressing)

Now, it seems to me that Oliver took this admission when he was in that cell, and did not stop to examine the ‘why-s’ and ‘how-s’, or even doubt the conclusion Adrian led him to, based on who was ‘holding his hand’ trying to get him there. Because Oliver says it himself - ‘Adrian did not make me a killer’. He frees this truth from circumstance completely. (either the circumstances of his admission, or even, before that, his behavior/violence) 

I don’t even think circumstances matter to him; they’d probably sound like justifications and he’d feel even worse for trying to justify himself, when he thinks so lowly of himself. 

Obviously Felicity puts it in far better context than he is capable - or rather, willing -  to do, reminding him, in 5.20, of things that he maybe knows to be true, but that he thinks have no bearing on his actions, or his judgement of himself. (’Five years in hell did that. Five years dealing with this city’s worst criminals did that’). She immediately gives him context, that Oliver probably feels either guilty for considering, or like it has no bearing, because he still chose murder, and who does that? Bad people who are not to be trusted. The kind of people he used to kill, in fact. (a belief reinforced by the accidental murder of Billy Malone, actually, while we’re at it. Like, in Oliver’s head it probably sounds like this: ‘if you weren’t so fucking monstrous and a murderer, Malone would still be alive’.)

The crux of the question seems to be the clash (a push and pull) between the love and compassion he is capable of, all the good parts of him, moral parts (and judgments); and the violence he knows he is capable of. (and righteousness, the satisfaction he felt while enacting that violence.**). 

He probably thinks that this ‘truth’ Adrian ‘showed’ him/led him to, is something he’s “known” all along, but just been too much of a coward to admit to himself. 

Like, suddenly that ‘unknown reason why he doesn't trust anyone’ has a logic, and a clear definition. He was afraid to face it, but now he does, and it makes perfect sense! He is the problem! He doesn’t trust himself because – the goodness (to simplify it) inside him, the part of him that feels guilt now, never let him get close to people he loved, even though he wanted to, even though he needed them. It always made him hesitate, because essentially, he was protecting everyone around him, instinctively, from what he knows to be violent and dark inside him. 

He also lied to himself and others he got involved with (John and Felicity, for starters)  about why he was doing what he was doing. That he is no better than the people he used to murder, and he even got his best friends involved 

and he forgets that his ability to feel all this guilt over this kind of thought is, essentially, what makes him so different, and sets him apart from this person he is so afraid he is. 

EDIT: i almost forgot that you asked me about how this relates to Oliver not telling Felicity about William - and I’m guessing, it’s not specifically about William. That omission was generalized as a lack of trust, and this ^^ whole thing, seems to be aimed to explain why. I think Oliver thought she would for sure explode in his hands, a conviction fueled by Barry’s ‘you broke up’ idea. And that he thought she would for sure leave him, not love him enough to forgive him? Not love him enough, essentially, because why would she? 

The feeling of being a failure for missing out on his son’s life (were it anyone else, i wouldn’t say he takes this blame too on his shoulders, because its so clearly Moira’s and Samantha’s doing for keeping him away, but this is Oliver! Of course he would) probably added to the guilt and the certainty that he wasn’t good enough for her to hang around. 

A self fulfilling prophecy, in truth, and a also a deep misunderstanding of Felicity’s character. More than the lie/omission, i find this, the reason behind it, to be Oliver’s real mistake. 

A mistake of course that is, sadly, in character, because Oliver has historically had trouble believing that the people he loves actually love him back. Which leads us back to ‘why would they’, and the reason why he thinks that, which is basically that he thinks he’s a shit person not worthy of anyone’s love. Not always, but most of the time.

It’s such a BRILLIANT manipulation really, because on someone who is like Adrian, this kind of lie wouldn't work! (Adrian killed his wife. In cold blood. he has exactly zero problems being the way he is.) 

It takes someone like Oliver for this  to work. Someone who is essentially ALL HEART. Who is kind and good and who, on a deep human level, abhors the violence that was done to him and that he has done to others, despite knowing that ‘it is a violent world and - as the world has taught him - it only responds to violence.’ It takes someone moral enough that, even while enacting murder, even while feeling that killing evil men was good, would still know it is wrong. And hate himself for it. For being capable of it, for looking at the world in the  face and thinking it is necessary. 

You can be led to think something is necessary, and still hate it. I think Oliver is an idealist, so it fits that he would hate having to lower himself to the level of nastiness the world around him responds to. (it’s so good for him that he is a mayor, actually. he can affect change, without employing ‘talents’ that came to him though pain and loss and tragedy. skills - violence - that he probably hate using by now, at this point in his journey) 

I really hope I’m making at least some kind of sense. Im sure this is like, only a portion of what is really going on with Oliver; or an angle into it? idk… 

Personally, when I imagine Oliver’s mind, I usually think of him floating on the surface of a really deep lake. And this lake is his personality/psyche, the exploration of which has been affected by his history. Said history has been such that he has explored corners of this lake that to most people, remain obscure all their lives. This is not a good or bad thing. it chance. Some people are pushed to the extremes and learn new things about themselves. Some never have to. Oliver was pushed, and he knows the depths of this lake, the hidden caves, the scary wildlife in the dark. It’s not like he went to those depths because he wanted to - but that doesn’t matter. What he saw there, he cannot unsee, unlearn***. 

Now he is on the surface again - but he knows the geography of himself. Most people whose feet dont touch the soil think the depth goes a couple of feet more. Oliver knows it doesn’t. And he knows that, if necessary, he could go to those depths again, if he has to. 

I mean, people rarely know what they’re capable of in extreme situations. Most people think choices made in these kinds of cases reveal you. And Oliver thinks those choices revealed a killer. And despite how balmy the surface waters are, he knows that down there it’s ugly so, he puts up these limits. You get to swim up to here where its safe, but not further out. Even if you want to. Felicity totally wanted to know all about him, but Oliver thought, wow no. Down there its ugly and gross and if she sees that, she will not just leave. She will also hate me. And to Oliver, being someone who feeds so much on the opinions of the people he loves - that  is basically his worst nightmare. I swear some of his most radical actions have been because he was so resistant to someone he cares about thinking badly of him. 

Anyways, this got ridiculously long. 

* the next time anyone tells me Arrow is good representation for someone with PTSD and mental illness, I’m gonna fucking FIGHT that person, because this is prime example of these asshole writers mystifying this illness. Why, you might ask. Because Oliver’s trust issues can directly and unequivocally be traced to his trauma. Its not that hard. it is not a mystery and treating it as such, and making everyone around him ignorant of this simple fact, demonizes (so to speak) his condition, instead of ‘representing’ it in any positive way. 

At this point Oliver’s isolation is beyond logic - or suspense of logic. As of right now there are two soldiers, two geniuses and a cop on his team! it makes them all into either idiots, or nasty, cause they have either trained to expect this (Dinah, as a cop, i imagine knows what PTSD is) or been through it (John, Rene) or are fucking geniuses who can fucking google (Felicity, Curtis). By now even nonexistent baby Sara would be able to understand the reasons behind Oliver’s patterns of behavior. It is not rocket science AND EVEN IF IT WAS - FUCKING GENIUSES IN THE HOUSE???!!!

I’m just so tired of Oliver’s trauma and violent re-traumatization being used (exploited) and some ‘so hard to understand’ baffling plot point, instead of being dealt with.

** I dont think Oliver ever stopped to consider that his life during those five years was hell, and that that means a lot of things. It means that it was out of control for a long time. that he was prey for a long time. and that it is absolutely normal to feel a sort of satisfaction when you are not the prey anymore. and that its normal to feel good when you ‘replace evil with death’ like he did in season 1. and that plenty of veterans would be able to tell him that soldiers hate war and t lohe ve war too, and that this is what happens when you live in this… almost liminal violent reality for so long. we are human and we adapt to whatever we have to, to survive. 

***I actually think this is what’s happening with Felicity too, only instead of a lake, with Felicity I imagine a road. Like those that stretch through the desert. She only sees this one road and she is so sure that she has to walk it, because it feels righteous to her. Necessary. 

Oliver and John though, they know where that road leads. They know that the choices she will make along the  way that will feel necessary - that they may even BE necessary - but she may eventually regret making them. Because this extreme, ruthless clarity she’s living, and which they have lived, pushes away all reasons why some things are wrong, but those reasons, John and Oliver know, eventually (if you’re lucky) will come back. And the  choices made during that time might give Felicity insight into things she is capable of that she is probably going to hate. And hate herself for making them. 

And they’re just trying to warn her that this road she is walking on is literally the middle of nowhere. That there are no stop signs to tell her when she’s gone too far and that she will know only when she is too deep in it, and she will hate herself for it, just like they hate themselves for some of the things they  have done, that they wish they  never had to do. 

I’m going with this interpretation, instead of the weirdly sexist-vibe of ‘you’re too pure to be fucking human’ angle.

[wakingthefury]

The Palestinian Media is telling Palestinian children that Israel will soon disappear

Listen to Today's Program JD: The Palestinian Authority Television using this opportunity to teach children the end of the Jewish State of Israel will be over and then we will have the entire state to ourselves, we’ll call it Palestine. A means of propaganda for the little children is it not? IM: Well it’s a lot worse than propaganda because when children believe that that’s what is inevitable and they’re also told that other times that that’s something they have to accomplish. Children have been motivated to go out and commit terror. They’re very much motivated to hate. They’re motivated to deny recognition of Israel. It’s really the root of the continuation in the conflict which is way beyond just simple propaganda. JD: Well propaganda is used of course by the Palestinians. They’re ratcheting up propaganda especially for the children. It looks like to me Itamar that the official plan for the children and all the Palestinian people would be to use Palestinian television and the educational system especially for these little children to prepare them for a time in the future and its not a good future as far as the state of Israel is concerned is it? IM: That’s absolutely correct. For example they promote terror and there’s a section on heroes in a 5th grade Palestinian school book that teaches them everyone wants to be like them. So the children are literally being taught that they are supposed to use murders of children. And this is clear message in the books produced by the Minister of Education of the Palestinian Authority that can be no doubt what they want of their children. JD: Itamar Marcus with the details of the Palestinian Media who is teaching Palestinian children that Israel will soon disappear and they will then have a state called Palestine.

We report this information because it is setting the stage for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled.

It is a terrible thing to teach children a false hope for something that will never happen. The Jewish State of Israel will never disappear. God promised a Jewish nation forever, that’s the Abrahamic Covenant, Genesis chapter 15. The Palestinian Media reports propaganda for the radical element of the Palestinian people. These Palestinian radicals want to destroy Israel and set up a state called Palestine. God has a plan for the Jews and the Palestinians. For the Jews it’s a nation in a land that God will give the Jews forever, for the Palestinians it is total destruction forever, that’s Obadiah verses 15-18. God’s plan will be fulfilled.

via Jimmy DeYoung's News Update https://ift.tt/2JrhN3c

[intothenoise]

Apocalyptic Drama

The shocking contrast between Jerusalem and Gaza, represented in our television split screens on the day of the embassy opening, may have been designed largely for Evangelical consumption.

(This post was originally published as part of IMES’ Regional Brief for June 2018, written by Jesse Wheeler.)

News

On the 14th of May 2018, the United States controversially broke with decades of US policy by officially moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, followed soon after by Guatemala, Paraguay, and Honduras. Meanwhile, thousands of Gazans continued to engage in ongoing demonstrations at the separation barrier while Israeli military snipers responded with lethal force, leading on that day to the death of 64 persons. Since the beginning of the demonstrations, 121 Palestinians of all ages have been killed and over 12,000 injured. The split screen coverage contrasting the elegance of the embassy opening in Jerusalem with that of the carnage in Gaza set forth a dramatic scene, one commentator comparing it to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Political cartoonists have been particularly caustic in their representations.

For some, the events in Jerusalem and Gaza have become a watershed moment, a time for collective introspection and soul searching. Many diaspora Jewish communities have been undergoing a rather serious moment of self-reflection regarding the country claiming to represent them and their interests. Somewhat surprisingly, numerous Evangelical Christian leaders, who would have otherwise remained relatively silent on the issue, have likewise felt it necessary to take a public stand. For example, President Emeritus of Fuller Theological Seminary Richard Mouw, a master at walking a fine line on controversial topics, spoke out on the issue in an article titled, “To my fellow evangelicals: What you’re cheering in Jerusalem is shameful.”

Of noteworthy importance to religious readers, however, is the bit of trivia concerning who was – and who was not – on the guest and speaker list of the embassy opening. In addition to the expected list of diplomats, dignitaries and political donors, one finds an assortment of prominent American pastors and religious leaders. Of particularly symbolic note were those invited to give the benediction and closing prayer: Robert Jeffress and John Hagee, each the author of multiple books on Israel and apocalyptic anticipation. Furthermore, mainstream Jewish leaders were not invited, while Catholic, Orthodox and other Protestant traditions were also not in attendance.

Analysis

The presence of Jeffress and Hagee in the ceremony – and not others – speaks volumes as to the purpose behind and intended audience for the embassy opening. This event taking place in Jerusalem was meant not for Israelis, nor even American Jews. Instead, it was clearly meant for the American evangelical voter, Trump’s most consistent base of political support. Given the fact that 81% of white American evangelicals voted for Trump and have remained his most reliable political supporters, while other demographics have waned, I don’t see this as surprising. Allegiance to Israel has long been a point of doctrine among these communities, with 80% of American Evangelicals viewing Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Furthermore, Christian Zionists in America outnumber Jewish Zionists ten-to-one. Considering this, the presence of Jeffress and Hagee onstage (both apocalyptic preachers), is not surprising, even as both have been accused of making proclamations deeply offensive to Jewish communities.

What effectively unfolded on our screen was an apocalyptic drama, broadcast in real-time and orchestrated largely for a Conservative Christian audience. The viewer was able to consume vicariously events of “eternal, apocalyptic significance” from the safety of their television and computer screens. While the split screen contrast between Jerusalem and Gaza led many to recoil in disgust at the apparent callousness of the historical moment, for others it was all part of the show. Every drama needs a villain, and if there is anything Hollywood cinema has taught us, it is that “Arabs” make for great villains. It is simply more proof that the “enemies of God” will continue to rage against His purposes and His people.

Furthermore, this situation represents another instance of American foreign policy being set by domestic political agendas and homegrown pop-theologies projected out upon the global stage by means of US political, commercial and military influence. It represents a false matrix of meaning, blanketed over the region without thought or concern as to how such views may or may not reflect historical reality or how the policy ramifications of such beliefs affect people on the ground – be they Israeli, Palestinian, Christian, Muslim, Jewish or otherwise. To what extent such theologizing may or may not be consistent with scripture is never asked.

Theological Reflections

What we evangelical Christians are then left with is a conflicting set of (a) theological convictions and (b) historical narratives, each tied to the core identity and moral values of those of us adhering to such seemingly contradictory worldviews. As evangelicals deeply committed to the authority of scripture, questions related to biblical interpretation are of profound importance. For instance, what is the relationship between the first and second covenants? Do prophetic texts refer to events long past, or yet to come? Does our reading of these texts lead us to look for signs of Christ’s imminent return, that we might be ready for him? Or, does it lead us to the pursuit of justice and peace, speaking truth to power at great personal risk? Likewise, questions related to history and historical interpretation are of critical importance as we discuss the “facts” as they exist “on the ground.” As it stands now, one finds wildly divergent interpretations regarding the past and present realities confronting Palestinians and Israelis. As people committed to Truth, to whom do we listen? Is it possible, or should we even try, to bridge the narrative divide?

Until such ideological divides surrounding theology, history and identity are taken seriously, it seems we will forever talk past each other and around in circles despite our mutual presence together under the same evangelical tent. Meanwhile, the people on the ground in the land of Christ, from all backgrounds, continue to suffer. It is at these times that I look in hope to the words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians:

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2: 14-22 ESV).

[apsbicepstraining]

Psycho thrillers: five movies that educate us how the attention cultivate

Power, savagery, fatality and reality the movies can educate us plenty about lifes large-scale concerns. From the Godfather to Groundhog Day, five psychologists pick the cinemas that tell us what realizes humen tick

Ten days ago in London, the Hungarian director Lszl Nemes hosted a preview screening of his film, Son of Saul. He explained that if beings didnt want to stay for the Q& A afterwards, that was fine; he wouldnt take personal offence. The gathering chuckled politely. Thats the last laugh youll have for a while, he told them.

Son of Saul Photograph: Rex/ Shutterstock

He was right: Son of Saul out in the UK on Friday is what you might call a taxing watch. Set in Auschwitz in 1944, it presents a era in living conditions of a Sonderkommando, a Jewish captive forced to work in the gas chambers, disposing of the deaths organizations. Almost every frame is filled by the beyond brutalised face of a mortal fated to die and already living in hell.

The film armies you to grapple with “the worlds largest” frightening moral selections imaginable. Should you delude your fellow prisoners into thinking theyre just going for a shower? Can you square a duty to truth-telling with a responsibility not to justification farther damage? Son of Saul requests topics few dare to pose about the human condition. Numerous movies from the sacred to the debase do the same. Here, five leading psychologists look at the classic movies that explore how human beings work.

Groundhog Day by Philippa Perry

Freud caused his patients the chance to re-edit their narrations

Andie MacDowell and Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Image: Allstar/ Columbia

In Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors lives the same day over and over again. At one point, he has a schmooze in a forbid with two drinks: What would you do if you were stuck in one region and every day was exactly the same and good-for-nothing you did mattered? That simply summing-ups it up for me, replies the wino. Summarizes it up for a lot of us.

Freud inspired patients to tell their narratives and got them to free-associate around their narrative to find out how they thought and experienced about themselves. This rendered his patients the chance to relive, re-examine and maybe re-edit their narrations in terms of the room they impart themselves in the present. Our earliest context has a profound impact upon the americans and anatomies, to a great extent, how we watch and interact with the world.

When we firstly satisfied Connors, played by Bill Murray, whatever happened to him in his past has shaped him grumpy, contemptuous, disruptive and insulting. He is trapped in the narcissistic defence of assuming he is superior to everyone else and we consider parties being circumspect around him and not enjoying his company. In psychotherapy, we often talking here self-fulfilling revelation if you expect everyone not to like you, you behave defensively and, hey presto, your prophecy starts true-life. Being caught in the same day is a metaphor for how he is stuck in this pattern.

Groundhog day also illustrates object relations belief: the hypothesi of how we find bad objects( a negative influence from our past) in objectives that are around us in the present. To find our bad object we search for and find negative characteristics even when, in other peoples sees, there used to be none. For precedent, at the Groundhog Day gala that Phil reports on from the small town of Punxsutawney, he can only determine hypocrisy and satire, whereas the TV creator, Rita( Andie MacDowell ), discovers the grace of institution and the delight it brings to the people. In object relations theory, the relevant recommendations is that the psychoanalyst was becoming good object for the patient, and with the psychoanalysts facilitation individual patients learns good objects where hitherto they could not. Rita is Phils good object and the catalyst in Phils transformation. Her influence begins to rub off. He detects the joy of educating himself in literature, art and music. He acquires out about beings, assisting them and befriending them rather than writing them off and finds out that this has its own reward.

The tradition of Punxsutawney is that if the groundhog, too called Phil, can see its shadow on Groundhog Day, the town will get six more weeks of winter. It takes Phil the weatherman quite a long time to see his darknes more, but when at last he does, the working day miraculously moves on. In Jungian assumption, the darknes refers to negative various aspects of your own personality that you reject and project on to others. There are also positive aspects to the darknes that is still conceal from consciousness. Jung said that everyone carries a shadow and that the less it is embodied in the individuals awareness life, the darker and more destructive it has the potential to be.

Although we dont have the indulgence of living in the same day for as long as it is also necessary in order to recognise how we sabotage ourselves, our missteps do have a garb of happening often enough for us to become aware of them. What remains of our lifespan is hour enough to do something about it.

Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist and the author of the graphic tale Couch Fiction .

The Godfather by Steven Pinker

It explains why the impulse for savagery derived to be a selective programme

James Caan and Marlon Brando in The Godfather Photograph: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

The Godfather is not an obvious choice for a mental movie, but its stylised, witticised savagery alleges often about human nature.

Except in war zones, beings are extraordinarily unlikely to die from savagery. Yet from the Iliad through video games, our species has always apportioned time and resources to destroying simulations of violence.The brain seems to run on the adage: If you want quietnes, prepare for conflict. We are mesmerized by the logic of promontory and menace, the psychology of alliance and sellout, the vulnerabilities of their own bodies and how they can be employed or shielded. A likely interpretation is that in our evolutionary record, brutality be a major enough threat to fitness that everyone had to understand how it works.

Among the many subgenres of violent presentation, one with perennial appeal to brows both high and low is the Hobbesian thriller a storey set in a circumscribed zone of chao that saves the familiar trappings of our times, but in which the exponents must live beyond the reach of the modern leviathan( the police and judiciary ), with its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Examples include westerns, spy thrillers, battlefield dramas, zombie holocausts, seat tale and movies about organised criminal. In a smuggled economy, you cant sue your rivals or call the police, so the credible menace( and occasional expend) of violence is your one protection.

The godfather of Mafia movies is, of course, Francis Ford Coppolas The Godfather trilogy. The screenplays are a goldmine for remarks on the human condition in a state of nature, beyond such constraints of modern institutions. Four wrinkles stand out: in the opening stage, Vito Corleone, having promised to mete out some bumpy justice on behalf of a victimised undertaker “whove been” abandoned by the American leviathan, demonstrates how reciprocity provides as the plaster of traditional societies: Some era, and that day may never return, Ill call upon “youve got to” do a service for me. But until the working day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughters wedding day.

The opening panorama of The Godfather

Following the tragic death of his eldest son, Vito addresses the heads of the rival violation households and shows the tactical rationality of evident irrationality: Im a superstitious male. And if some unlucky coincidence should befall my son, if my son is struck by a bolt of lightning, I will accuse some of the people here. Elsewhere, he elaborates: Coincidences dont happen to people who plow collisions as a personal insult.

A foot soldier of one of these adversaries explains why the inclination for savagery advanced to be a select programme , not an indiscriminate bloodlust or a hydraulic pressing: I dont like violence, Tom. Im a businessman. Blood is a big expense.

And for all our hotheaded counsels, Michael explains the knowledge of ensure your ardours: Never hate your foes. It feigns your judgment.

Steven Pinker is Johnstone family professor of psychology at Harvard .

Rushmore by Dacher Keltner

It shows us that to consolidate in dominance, we must unite others

Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore. Photo: Rex Shutterstock

All art, French social theoretician Pierre Bourdieu debates, is an expression of social class, from the music you experience to the trinkets you put on your walls. Few cinemas, though, have undertaken the class subdivide between the haves and have-nots as imaginatively as Wes Andersons 1998 cinema Rushmore.

The film reveals at Rushmore Academy, a prep school in Houston, Texas, and tells the story of the friendship between schoolboy Max Fischer( Jason Schwartzman ), the son of a barber, and rich industrialist Herman Blume( Bill Murray ). They both fall for a lately bereaved teacher at the school( Olivia Williams ), and resort to misguided tactics to triumph her affection. As this timeless strife undoes, the film illustrates various following principles class and dominance uncovered in psychological science.

The first that affluence is rising unethical and socially detached action is on display at a birthday defendant for Blumes sons, who attend Rushmore Academy with Max. The two sons greedily shred through a collection of presents( and are most enjoyed by a crossbow ). Nearby, Blumes wife flirts blatantly with a young man, while Blume sits far away from the mayhem, languidly convulsing golf balls into his dirty pool.

The puddle vistum in Rushmore

This scene captivates recent considers showing that upper-class individuals are more disposed to impulsive and socially aloof behaviour, including misconstruing others ardours, swearing, lying in recreations to win prizes and flouting the regulation of the road.

Navigating power structure, such as prep schools, is the cause of stress for lower-class individuals, and can heighten levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol. To adapt to such social emphasizes, people from lower-class backgrounds reach out and is attached to others a second principle of class and influence. Studies find that it is parties from lower-class backgrounds who share more, collaborate, attend to others carefully and do acts that unite others, a intend by which they can rise in strength when paucity the advantages of lineage. With brilliant detail, Anderson accompanies this principle to life in Maxs defining social inclination: forming sororities. Max is at the head of every imaginable guild, including the beekeepers culture, the kung fu golf-club and the astronomy squad all touching, quaint acts that discover a deeper principle at participate: to increase in dominance, we must unite others in common cause.

Dacher Keltner is a prof of psychology at University of California, Berkeley .

Altered Nation by Sue Blackmore

It plays with the question of what we mean by reality

William Hurt in Altered Regime. Image: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

Ken Russells Altered Position is based on a wild time in the 1970 s, when a whole lot of professors took hallucinogenic drugs. One of them, John Lilly, started working with isolation containers where you swim in saltwater in total stillnes, resulting in absolute sensory deprivation with resultant vivid imagery and bizarre sensations.

The films hero is a scientist called Eddie( William Hurt) who starts experimenting with psychedelic drugs to explore other countries of consciousness and our notions of actuality. At one point he emerges from his isolation tank having been transformed into an parrot but Im not so interested in this kind of hopeless fantasy. What interests me is how the cinema manages the altered commonwealths of consciousness. We know that when you take hallucinogenic drugs of this kind, a very early hallucinations are simple, colorful, geometric decorations. Passages and spirals are common, as they are in out-of-body and near-death knowledge. The movie has batch of passageways, and a wonderful maelstrom near the end, where Eddie is being sucked away into oblivion. That is all extravagant cinema material, but the maelstrom leaves a good suffer of hallucinatory know-hows, and is rather well done.

Lilly was trying to understand the nature of actuality, and thats what this movie gamblings with. What do we make by world, regardless? You might say that what we know, and what Eddie in the film presupposed, is that there is a physical actuality and our intelligence interprets it, and that hallucinations are not real. But if you make a hallucinogenic drug into most peoples mentalities, they get remarkably similar experiences.

A lovely detail in the film is where Eddie starts for a formality with an indigenous tribe in Mexico. He is given a tonic, goes into an extreme adjusted territory and considers flows of idols coming out of his body. The hotshots are not real in the sense that there are no white-hot lights flowing from us, but lots of people who take those same doses appreciate the same thing so there is a kind of reality here, a kind of shared experience.

In consciousness analyzes, we struggle with the hard question of consciousness. It is a deep riddle how do subjective know-hows arise from objective intelligence task? We dont know. Numerous people, myself included, say there isnt actually a hard problem. We become dualists in childhood we think that recollection and psyche are divide and thats why we have a problem: how can the knowledge arise from the intelligence? Somehow, we have to see how the two are the same circumstance. Many people have these hallucinatory suffers, or go through intense customs, and claim to have achieved non-duality. We dont get that explanation in this film, but it would be amazing if we did.

Sue Blackmore is a writer, professor and visiting professor at Plymouth University .

The Seventh Seal by Susan Greenfield

Its about the psychology of parties the hope you are going to be better

Ingmar Bergmans film is so striking and implacable, unlike most movies nowadays. A knight, returning from the Crusades to plague-ridden Sweden, is visited by Death, a pale-faced, black-cloaked attribute. They play out a chess coincide which, if the cavalier triumphs, will stave off his demise.

The Seventh Seal

The fact The Seventh Seal is in black and white and was reached in the 1950 s is evidence of its staying appeal, in the same way Greek misfortune weathers it is something that speaks of eternal appraises, folks hopes and anxieties, and is not dependent on current culture. It has been satirised, most famously by Monty Pythons The Meaning of Life, in a sketch in which Death transforms up at a middle-class dinner party. Its funny, but it doesnt detract from the original, where everyone is fated at the end. It is the opposite of the joyous stops of movies we have now.

The film has a very dark, nihilistic feel to it in an age when people are soft and easy. There is one panorama where one of the specific characteristics, an actor, is up a tree, and Death comes to looked through it. He expects him who he is, and Death says he has come for him. The man adds its not his time, he has his performance to do. Death enunciates: Its cancelled. Because of death. All the fantasies and hopes you have are annulled because of death.

Im not recognizing also that Bergman was inevitably expounding any particular mental assumption, but he does talks about the silence of God, which perhaps for many parties echoes true. I think it is about the psychology of beings the hope that you are going to be better and different, to think that you can get away with things.

The knight goes to confession and starts to tell the priest about the chess move he is going make and, of course, the clergyman is Death. You cant overcome fatality and all of us are playing chess with demise, in a way hoping well be the one who wont get cancer, wont have a heart attack, that this happens to other people , not us. I think there is that mentality in numerous parties, and this film brings it home to you. I am an rosy party, and it clears me appreciate life because of its highly transient and arbitrary nature.

Susan Greenfield is a scientist, scribe, broadcaster and a member of the House of Lords .

The post Psycho thrillers: five movies that educate us how the attention cultivate appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

from WordPress http://ift.tt/2uHivwX via IFTTT

[apsbicepstraining]

Psycho thrillers: five movies that educate us how the attention cultivate

Power, savagery, fatality and reality the movies can educate us plenty about lifes large-scale concerns. From the Godfather to Groundhog Day, five psychologists pick the cinemas that tell us what realizes humen tick

Ten days ago in London, the Hungarian director Lszl Nemes hosted a preview screening of his film, Son of Saul. He explained that if beings didnt want to stay for the Q& A afterwards, that was fine; he wouldnt take personal offence. The gathering chuckled politely. Thats the last laugh youll have for a while, he told them.

Son of Saul Photograph: Rex/ Shutterstock

He was right: Son of Saul out in the UK on Friday is what you might call a taxing watch. Set in Auschwitz in 1944, it presents a era in living conditions of a Sonderkommando, a Jewish captive forced to work in the gas chambers, disposing of the deaths organizations. Almost every frame is filled by the beyond brutalised face of a mortal fated to die and already living in hell.

The film armies you to grapple with “the worlds largest” frightening moral selections imaginable. Should you delude your fellow prisoners into thinking theyre just going for a shower? Can you square a duty to truth-telling with a responsibility not to justification farther damage? Son of Saul requests topics few dare to pose about the human condition. Numerous movies from the sacred to the debase do the same. Here, five leading psychologists look at the classic movies that explore how human beings work.

Groundhog Day by Philippa Perry

Freud caused his patients the chance to re-edit their narrations

Andie MacDowell and Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Image: Allstar/ Columbia

In Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors lives the same day over and over again. At one point, he has a schmooze in a forbid with two drinks: What would you do if you were stuck in one region and every day was exactly the same and good-for-nothing you did mattered? That simply summing-ups it up for me, replies the wino. Summarizes it up for a lot of us.

Freud inspired patients to tell their narratives and got them to free-associate around their narrative to find out how they thought and experienced about themselves. This rendered his patients the chance to relive, re-examine and maybe re-edit their narrations in terms of the room they impart themselves in the present. Our earliest context has a profound impact upon the americans and anatomies, to a great extent, how we watch and interact with the world.

When we firstly satisfied Connors, played by Bill Murray, whatever happened to him in his past has shaped him grumpy, contemptuous, disruptive and insulting. He is trapped in the narcissistic defence of assuming he is superior to everyone else and we consider parties being circumspect around him and not enjoying his company. In psychotherapy, we often talking here self-fulfilling revelation if you expect everyone not to like you, you behave defensively and, hey presto, your prophecy starts true-life. Being caught in the same day is a metaphor for how he is stuck in this pattern.

Groundhog day also illustrates object relations belief: the hypothesi of how we find bad objects( a negative influence from our past) in objectives that are around us in the present. To find our bad object we search for and find negative characteristics even when, in other peoples sees, there used to be none. For precedent, at the Groundhog Day gala that Phil reports on from the small town of Punxsutawney, he can only determine hypocrisy and satire, whereas the TV creator, Rita( Andie MacDowell ), discovers the grace of institution and the delight it brings to the people. In object relations theory, the relevant recommendations is that the psychoanalyst was becoming good object for the patient, and with the psychoanalysts facilitation individual patients learns good objects where hitherto they could not. Rita is Phils good object and the catalyst in Phils transformation. Her influence begins to rub off. He detects the joy of educating himself in literature, art and music. He acquires out about beings, assisting them and befriending them rather than writing them off and finds out that this has its own reward.

The tradition of Punxsutawney is that if the groundhog, too called Phil, can see its shadow on Groundhog Day, the town will get six more weeks of winter. It takes Phil the weatherman quite a long time to see his darknes more, but when at last he does, the working day miraculously moves on. In Jungian assumption, the darknes refers to negative various aspects of your own personality that you reject and project on to others. There are also positive aspects to the darknes that is still conceal from consciousness. Jung said that everyone carries a shadow and that the less it is embodied in the individuals awareness life, the darker and more destructive it has the potential to be.

Although we dont have the indulgence of living in the same day for as long as it is also necessary in order to recognise how we sabotage ourselves, our missteps do have a garb of happening often enough for us to become aware of them. What remains of our lifespan is hour enough to do something about it.

Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist and the author of the graphic tale Couch Fiction .

The Godfather by Steven Pinker

It explains why the impulse for savagery derived to be a selective programme

James Caan and Marlon Brando in The Godfather Photograph: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

The Godfather is not an obvious choice for a mental movie, but its stylised, witticised savagery alleges often about human nature.

Except in war zones, beings are extraordinarily unlikely to die from savagery. Yet from the Iliad through video games, our species has always apportioned time and resources to destroying simulations of violence.The brain seems to run on the adage: If you want quietnes, prepare for conflict. We are mesmerized by the logic of promontory and menace, the psychology of alliance and sellout, the vulnerabilities of their own bodies and how they can be employed or shielded. A likely interpretation is that in our evolutionary record, brutality be a major enough threat to fitness that everyone had to understand how it works.

Among the many subgenres of violent presentation, one with perennial appeal to brows both high and low is the Hobbesian thriller a storey set in a circumscribed zone of chao that saves the familiar trappings of our times, but in which the exponents must live beyond the reach of the modern leviathan( the police and judiciary ), with its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Examples include westerns, spy thrillers, battlefield dramas, zombie holocausts, seat tale and movies about organised criminal. In a smuggled economy, you cant sue your rivals or call the police, so the credible menace( and occasional expend) of violence is your one protection.

The godfather of Mafia movies is, of course, Francis Ford Coppolas The Godfather trilogy. The screenplays are a goldmine for remarks on the human condition in a state of nature, beyond such constraints of modern institutions. Four wrinkles stand out: in the opening stage, Vito Corleone, having promised to mete out some bumpy justice on behalf of a victimised undertaker “whove been” abandoned by the American leviathan, demonstrates how reciprocity provides as the plaster of traditional societies: Some era, and that day may never return, Ill call upon “youve got to” do a service for me. But until the working day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughters wedding day.

The opening panorama of The Godfather

Following the tragic death of his eldest son, Vito addresses the heads of the rival violation households and shows the tactical rationality of evident irrationality: Im a superstitious male. And if some unlucky coincidence should befall my son, if my son is struck by a bolt of lightning, I will accuse some of the people here. Elsewhere, he elaborates: Coincidences dont happen to people who plow collisions as a personal insult.

A foot soldier of one of these adversaries explains why the inclination for savagery advanced to be a select programme , not an indiscriminate bloodlust or a hydraulic pressing: I dont like violence, Tom. Im a businessman. Blood is a big expense.

And for all our hotheaded counsels, Michael explains the knowledge of ensure your ardours: Never hate your foes. It feigns your judgment.

Steven Pinker is Johnstone family professor of psychology at Harvard .

Rushmore by Dacher Keltner

It shows us that to consolidate in dominance, we must unite others

Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore. Photo: Rex Shutterstock

All art, French social theoretician Pierre Bourdieu debates, is an expression of social class, from the music you experience to the trinkets you put on your walls. Few cinemas, though, have undertaken the class subdivide between the haves and have-nots as imaginatively as Wes Andersons 1998 cinema Rushmore.

The film reveals at Rushmore Academy, a prep school in Houston, Texas, and tells the story of the friendship between schoolboy Max Fischer( Jason Schwartzman ), the son of a barber, and rich industrialist Herman Blume( Bill Murray ). They both fall for a lately bereaved teacher at the school( Olivia Williams ), and resort to misguided tactics to triumph her affection. As this timeless strife undoes, the film illustrates various following principles class and dominance uncovered in psychological science.

The first that affluence is rising unethical and socially detached action is on display at a birthday defendant for Blumes sons, who attend Rushmore Academy with Max. The two sons greedily shred through a collection of presents( and are most enjoyed by a crossbow ). Nearby, Blumes wife flirts blatantly with a young man, while Blume sits far away from the mayhem, languidly convulsing golf balls into his dirty pool.

The puddle vistum in Rushmore

This scene captivates recent considers showing that upper-class individuals are more disposed to impulsive and socially aloof behaviour, including misconstruing others ardours, swearing, lying in recreations to win prizes and flouting the regulation of the road.

Navigating power structure, such as prep schools, is the cause of stress for lower-class individuals, and can heighten levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol. To adapt to such social emphasizes, people from lower-class backgrounds reach out and is attached to others a second principle of class and influence. Studies find that it is parties from lower-class backgrounds who share more, collaborate, attend to others carefully and do acts that unite others, a intend by which they can rise in strength when paucity the advantages of lineage. With brilliant detail, Anderson accompanies this principle to life in Maxs defining social inclination: forming sororities. Max is at the head of every imaginable guild, including the beekeepers culture, the kung fu golf-club and the astronomy squad all touching, quaint acts that discover a deeper principle at participate: to increase in dominance, we must unite others in common cause.

Dacher Keltner is a prof of psychology at University of California, Berkeley .

Altered Nation by Sue Blackmore

It plays with the question of what we mean by reality

William Hurt in Altered Regime. Image: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

Ken Russells Altered Position is based on a wild time in the 1970 s, when a whole lot of professors took hallucinogenic drugs. One of them, John Lilly, started working with isolation containers where you swim in saltwater in total stillnes, resulting in absolute sensory deprivation with resultant vivid imagery and bizarre sensations.

The films hero is a scientist called Eddie( William Hurt) who starts experimenting with psychedelic drugs to explore other countries of consciousness and our notions of actuality. At one point he emerges from his isolation tank having been transformed into an parrot but Im not so interested in this kind of hopeless fantasy. What interests me is how the cinema manages the altered commonwealths of consciousness. We know that when you take hallucinogenic drugs of this kind, a very early hallucinations are simple, colorful, geometric decorations. Passages and spirals are common, as they are in out-of-body and near-death knowledge. The movie has batch of passageways, and a wonderful maelstrom near the end, where Eddie is being sucked away into oblivion. That is all extravagant cinema material, but the maelstrom leaves a good suffer of hallucinatory know-hows, and is rather well done.

Lilly was trying to understand the nature of actuality, and thats what this movie gamblings with. What do we make by world, regardless? You might say that what we know, and what Eddie in the film presupposed, is that there is a physical actuality and our intelligence interprets it, and that hallucinations are not real. But if you make a hallucinogenic drug into most peoples mentalities, they get remarkably similar experiences.

A lovely detail in the film is where Eddie starts for a formality with an indigenous tribe in Mexico. He is given a tonic, goes into an extreme adjusted territory and considers flows of idols coming out of his body. The hotshots are not real in the sense that there are no white-hot lights flowing from us, but lots of people who take those same doses appreciate the same thing so there is a kind of reality here, a kind of shared experience.

In consciousness analyzes, we struggle with the hard question of consciousness. It is a deep riddle how do subjective know-hows arise from objective intelligence task? We dont know. Numerous people, myself included, say there isnt actually a hard problem. We become dualists in childhood we think that recollection and psyche are divide and thats why we have a problem: how can the knowledge arise from the intelligence? Somehow, we have to see how the two are the same circumstance. Many people have these hallucinatory suffers, or go through intense customs, and claim to have achieved non-duality. We dont get that explanation in this film, but it would be amazing if we did.

Sue Blackmore is a writer, professor and visiting professor at Plymouth University .

The Seventh Seal by Susan Greenfield

Its about the psychology of parties the hope you are going to be better

Ingmar Bergmans film is so striking and implacable, unlike most movies nowadays. A knight, returning from the Crusades to plague-ridden Sweden, is visited by Death, a pale-faced, black-cloaked attribute. They play out a chess coincide which, if the cavalier triumphs, will stave off his demise.

The Seventh Seal

The fact The Seventh Seal is in black and white and was reached in the 1950 s is evidence of its staying appeal, in the same way Greek misfortune weathers it is something that speaks of eternal appraises, folks hopes and anxieties, and is not dependent on current culture. It has been satirised, most famously by Monty Pythons The Meaning of Life, in a sketch in which Death transforms up at a middle-class dinner party. Its funny, but it doesnt detract from the original, where everyone is fated at the end. It is the opposite of the joyous stops of movies we have now.

The film has a very dark, nihilistic feel to it in an age when people are soft and easy. There is one panorama where one of the specific characteristics, an actor, is up a tree, and Death comes to looked through it. He expects him who he is, and Death says he has come for him. The man adds its not his time, he has his performance to do. Death enunciates: Its cancelled. Because of death. All the fantasies and hopes you have are annulled because of death.

Im not recognizing also that Bergman was inevitably expounding any particular mental assumption, but he does talks about the silence of God, which perhaps for many parties echoes true. I think it is about the psychology of beings the hope that you are going to be better and different, to think that you can get away with things.

The knight goes to confession and starts to tell the priest about the chess move he is going make and, of course, the clergyman is Death. You cant overcome fatality and all of us are playing chess with demise, in a way hoping well be the one who wont get cancer, wont have a heart attack, that this happens to other people , not us. I think there is that mentality in numerous parties, and this film brings it home to you. I am an rosy party, and it clears me appreciate life because of its highly transient and arbitrary nature.

Susan Greenfield is a scientist, scribe, broadcaster and a member of the House of Lords .

The post Psycho thrillers: five movies that educate us how the attention cultivate appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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Psycho thrillers: five movies that educate us how the attention cultivate

Power, savagery, fatality and reality the movies can educate us plenty about lifes large-scale concerns. From the Godfather to Groundhog Day, five psychologists pick the cinemas that tell us what realizes humen tick

Ten days ago in London, the Hungarian director Lszl Nemes hosted a preview screening of his film, Son of Saul. He explained that if beings didnt want to stay for the Q& A afterwards, that was fine; he wouldnt take personal offence. The gathering chuckled politely. Thats the last laugh youll have for a while, he told them.

Son of Saul Photograph: Rex/ Shutterstock

He was right: Son of Saul out in the UK on Friday is what you might call a taxing watch. Set in Auschwitz in 1944, it presents a era in living conditions of a Sonderkommando, a Jewish captive forced to work in the gas chambers, disposing of the deaths organizations. Almost every frame is filled by the beyond brutalised face of a mortal fated to die and already living in hell.

The film armies you to grapple with “the worlds largest” frightening moral selections imaginable. Should you delude your fellow prisoners into thinking theyre just going for a shower? Can you square a duty to truth-telling with a responsibility not to justification farther damage? Son of Saul requests topics few dare to pose about the human condition. Numerous movies from the sacred to the debase do the same. Here, five leading psychologists look at the classic movies that explore how human beings work.

Groundhog Day by Philippa Perry

Freud caused his patients the chance to re-edit their narrations

Andie MacDowell and Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Image: Allstar/ Columbia

In Groundhog Day, weatherman Phil Connors lives the same day over and over again. At one point, he has a schmooze in a forbid with two drinks: What would you do if you were stuck in one region and every day was exactly the same and good-for-nothing you did mattered? That simply summing-ups it up for me, replies the wino. Summarizes it up for a lot of us.

Freud inspired patients to tell their narratives and got them to free-associate around their narrative to find out how they thought and experienced about themselves. This rendered his patients the chance to relive, re-examine and maybe re-edit their narrations in terms of the room they impart themselves in the present. Our earliest context has a profound impact upon the americans and anatomies, to a great extent, how we watch and interact with the world.

When we firstly satisfied Connors, played by Bill Murray, whatever happened to him in his past has shaped him grumpy, contemptuous, disruptive and insulting. He is trapped in the narcissistic defence of assuming he is superior to everyone else and we consider parties being circumspect around him and not enjoying his company. In psychotherapy, we often talking here self-fulfilling revelation if you expect everyone not to like you, you behave defensively and, hey presto, your prophecy starts true-life. Being caught in the same day is a metaphor for how he is stuck in this pattern.

Groundhog day also illustrates object relations belief: the hypothesi of how we find bad objects( a negative influence from our past) in objectives that are around us in the present. To find our bad object we search for and find negative characteristics even when, in other peoples sees, there used to be none. For precedent, at the Groundhog Day gala that Phil reports on from the small town of Punxsutawney, he can only determine hypocrisy and satire, whereas the TV creator, Rita( Andie MacDowell ), discovers the grace of institution and the delight it brings to the people. In object relations theory, the relevant recommendations is that the psychoanalyst was becoming good object for the patient, and with the psychoanalysts facilitation individual patients learns good objects where hitherto they could not. Rita is Phils good object and the catalyst in Phils transformation. Her influence begins to rub off. He detects the joy of educating himself in literature, art and music. He acquires out about beings, assisting them and befriending them rather than writing them off and finds out that this has its own reward.

The tradition of Punxsutawney is that if the groundhog, too called Phil, can see its shadow on Groundhog Day, the town will get six more weeks of winter. It takes Phil the weatherman quite a long time to see his darknes more, but when at last he does, the working day miraculously moves on. In Jungian assumption, the darknes refers to negative various aspects of your own personality that you reject and project on to others. There are also positive aspects to the darknes that is still conceal from consciousness. Jung said that everyone carries a shadow and that the less it is embodied in the individuals awareness life, the darker and more destructive it has the potential to be.

Although we dont have the indulgence of living in the same day for as long as it is also necessary in order to recognise how we sabotage ourselves, our missteps do have a garb of happening often enough for us to become aware of them. What remains of our lifespan is hour enough to do something about it.

Philippa Perry is a psychotherapist and the author of the graphic tale Couch Fiction .

The Godfather by Steven Pinker

It explains why the impulse for savagery derived to be a selective programme

James Caan and Marlon Brando in The Godfather Photograph: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

The Godfather is not an obvious choice for a mental movie, but its stylised, witticised savagery alleges often about human nature.

Except in war zones, beings are extraordinarily unlikely to die from savagery. Yet from the Iliad through video games, our species has always apportioned time and resources to destroying simulations of violence.The brain seems to run on the adage: If you want quietnes, prepare for conflict. We are mesmerized by the logic of promontory and menace, the psychology of alliance and sellout, the vulnerabilities of their own bodies and how they can be employed or shielded. A likely interpretation is that in our evolutionary record, brutality be a major enough threat to fitness that everyone had to understand how it works.

Among the many subgenres of violent presentation, one with perennial appeal to brows both high and low is the Hobbesian thriller a storey set in a circumscribed zone of chao that saves the familiar trappings of our times, but in which the exponents must live beyond the reach of the modern leviathan( the police and judiciary ), with its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Examples include westerns, spy thrillers, battlefield dramas, zombie holocausts, seat tale and movies about organised criminal. In a smuggled economy, you cant sue your rivals or call the police, so the credible menace( and occasional expend) of violence is your one protection.

The godfather of Mafia movies is, of course, Francis Ford Coppolas The Godfather trilogy. The screenplays are a goldmine for remarks on the human condition in a state of nature, beyond such constraints of modern institutions. Four wrinkles stand out: in the opening stage, Vito Corleone, having promised to mete out some bumpy justice on behalf of a victimised undertaker “whove been” abandoned by the American leviathan, demonstrates how reciprocity provides as the plaster of traditional societies: Some era, and that day may never return, Ill call upon “youve got to” do a service for me. But until the working day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughters wedding day.

The opening panorama of The Godfather

Following the tragic death of his eldest son, Vito addresses the heads of the rival violation households and shows the tactical rationality of evident irrationality: Im a superstitious male. And if some unlucky coincidence should befall my son, if my son is struck by a bolt of lightning, I will accuse some of the people here. Elsewhere, he elaborates: Coincidences dont happen to people who plow collisions as a personal insult.

A foot soldier of one of these adversaries explains why the inclination for savagery advanced to be a select programme , not an indiscriminate bloodlust or a hydraulic pressing: I dont like violence, Tom. Im a businessman. Blood is a big expense.

And for all our hotheaded counsels, Michael explains the knowledge of ensure your ardours: Never hate your foes. It feigns your judgment.

Steven Pinker is Johnstone family professor of psychology at Harvard .

Rushmore by Dacher Keltner

It shows us that to consolidate in dominance, we must unite others

Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore. Photo: Rex Shutterstock

All art, French social theoretician Pierre Bourdieu debates, is an expression of social class, from the music you experience to the trinkets you put on your walls. Few cinemas, though, have undertaken the class subdivide between the haves and have-nots as imaginatively as Wes Andersons 1998 cinema Rushmore.

The film reveals at Rushmore Academy, a prep school in Houston, Texas, and tells the story of the friendship between schoolboy Max Fischer( Jason Schwartzman ), the son of a barber, and rich industrialist Herman Blume( Bill Murray ). They both fall for a lately bereaved teacher at the school( Olivia Williams ), and resort to misguided tactics to triumph her affection. As this timeless strife undoes, the film illustrates various following principles class and dominance uncovered in psychological science.

The first that affluence is rising unethical and socially detached action is on display at a birthday defendant for Blumes sons, who attend Rushmore Academy with Max. The two sons greedily shred through a collection of presents( and are most enjoyed by a crossbow ). Nearby, Blumes wife flirts blatantly with a young man, while Blume sits far away from the mayhem, languidly convulsing golf balls into his dirty pool.

The puddle vistum in Rushmore

This scene captivates recent considers showing that upper-class individuals are more disposed to impulsive and socially aloof behaviour, including misconstruing others ardours, swearing, lying in recreations to win prizes and flouting the regulation of the road.

Navigating power structure, such as prep schools, is the cause of stress for lower-class individuals, and can heighten levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol. To adapt to such social emphasizes, people from lower-class backgrounds reach out and is attached to others a second principle of class and influence. Studies find that it is parties from lower-class backgrounds who share more, collaborate, attend to others carefully and do acts that unite others, a intend by which they can rise in strength when paucity the advantages of lineage. With brilliant detail, Anderson accompanies this principle to life in Maxs defining social inclination: forming sororities. Max is at the head of every imaginable guild, including the beekeepers culture, the kung fu golf-club and the astronomy squad all touching, quaint acts that discover a deeper principle at participate: to increase in dominance, we must unite others in common cause.

Dacher Keltner is a prof of psychology at University of California, Berkeley .

Altered Nation by Sue Blackmore

It plays with the question of what we mean by reality

William Hurt in Altered Regime. Image: Moviestore/ Rex/ Shutterstock

Ken Russells Altered Position is based on a wild time in the 1970 s, when a whole lot of professors took hallucinogenic drugs. One of them, John Lilly, started working with isolation containers where you swim in saltwater in total stillnes, resulting in absolute sensory deprivation with resultant vivid imagery and bizarre sensations.

The films hero is a scientist called Eddie( William Hurt) who starts experimenting with psychedelic drugs to explore other countries of consciousness and our notions of actuality. At one point he emerges from his isolation tank having been transformed into an parrot but Im not so interested in this kind of hopeless fantasy. What interests me is how the cinema manages the altered commonwealths of consciousness. We know that when you take hallucinogenic drugs of this kind, a very early hallucinations are simple, colorful, geometric decorations. Passages and spirals are common, as they are in out-of-body and near-death knowledge. The movie has batch of passageways, and a wonderful maelstrom near the end, where Eddie is being sucked away into oblivion. That is all extravagant cinema material, but the maelstrom leaves a good suffer of hallucinatory know-hows, and is rather well done.

Lilly was trying to understand the nature of actuality, and thats what this movie gamblings with. What do we make by world, regardless? You might say that what we know, and what Eddie in the film presupposed, is that there is a physical actuality and our intelligence interprets it, and that hallucinations are not real. But if you make a hallucinogenic drug into most peoples mentalities, they get remarkably similar experiences.

A lovely detail in the film is where Eddie starts for a formality with an indigenous tribe in Mexico. He is given a tonic, goes into an extreme adjusted territory and considers flows of idols coming out of his body. The hotshots are not real in the sense that there are no white-hot lights flowing from us, but lots of people who take those same doses appreciate the same thing so there is a kind of reality here, a kind of shared experience.

In consciousness analyzes, we struggle with the hard question of consciousness. It is a deep riddle how do subjective know-hows arise from objective intelligence task? We dont know. Numerous people, myself included, say there isnt actually a hard problem. We become dualists in childhood we think that recollection and psyche are divide and thats why we have a problem: how can the knowledge arise from the intelligence? Somehow, we have to see how the two are the same circumstance. Many people have these hallucinatory suffers, or go through intense customs, and claim to have achieved non-duality. We dont get that explanation in this film, but it would be amazing if we did.

Sue Blackmore is a writer, professor and visiting professor at Plymouth University .

The Seventh Seal by Susan Greenfield

Its about the psychology of parties the hope you are going to be better

Ingmar Bergmans film is so striking and implacable, unlike most movies nowadays. A knight, returning from the Crusades to plague-ridden Sweden, is visited by Death, a pale-faced, black-cloaked attribute. They play out a chess coincide which, if the cavalier triumphs, will stave off his demise.

The Seventh Seal

The fact The Seventh Seal is in black and white and was reached in the 1950 s is evidence of its staying appeal, in the same way Greek misfortune weathers it is something that speaks of eternal appraises, folks hopes and anxieties, and is not dependent on current culture. It has been satirised, most famously by Monty Pythons The Meaning of Life, in a sketch in which Death transforms up at a middle-class dinner party. Its funny, but it doesnt detract from the original, where everyone is fated at the end. It is the opposite of the joyous stops of movies we have now.

The film has a very dark, nihilistic feel to it in an age when people are soft and easy. There is one panorama where one of the specific characteristics, an actor, is up a tree, and Death comes to looked through it. He expects him who he is, and Death says he has come for him. The man adds its not his time, he has his performance to do. Death enunciates: Its cancelled. Because of death. All the fantasies and hopes you have are annulled because of death.

Im not recognizing also that Bergman was inevitably expounding any particular mental assumption, but he does talks about the silence of God, which perhaps for many parties echoes true. I think it is about the psychology of beings the hope that you are going to be better and different, to think that you can get away with things.

The knight goes to confession and starts to tell the priest about the chess move he is going make and, of course, the clergyman is Death. You cant overcome fatality and all of us are playing chess with demise, in a way hoping well be the one who wont get cancer, wont have a heart attack, that this happens to other people , not us. I think there is that mentality in numerous parties, and this film brings it home to you. I am an rosy party, and it clears me appreciate life because of its highly transient and arbitrary nature.

Susan Greenfield is a scientist, scribe, broadcaster and a member of the House of Lords .

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