#our society is in many ways less progressive than a lot of ancient cultures

[giantkillerjack]

People are so shocked that Black folks existed in ancient Rome like my dudes Italy is like 10 feet away from Africa some of it was literally part of the Roman empire don't make me google maps this for you

[learningarabic20]

No More Struggling: The Easiest Way to Master Arabic in Less Time

Are you tired of struggling to learn Arabic? Don't worry, we have the perfect solution for you! In this article, we'll show you how to learn arabic language quickly.

The Arabic language is fascinating and full of cultural richness. It opens doors to new experiences and career opportunities worldwide. Yet, many find learning Arabic tough. But, we have a simple way to make it easier.

We'll explain why Arabic skills are important today. We'll also talk about the challenges beginners face. And, we'll share the secrets of learning languages fast.

You'll get a clear plan to learn Arabic easily and confidently. We'll cover everything from the script to vocabulary and grammar. So, whether you're a student, professional, or just interested in Arabic, this article is for you.

Get ready to say goodbye to the struggle and start an exciting journey of learning Arabic!

Why Arabic Language Skills Are Essential in Today's Global World

In today's world, knowing Arabic is very important. It's a global language spoken by over 400 million people. Arabic opens up many career opportunities and helps you understand different cultures.

Arabic is not just important in the Middle East. It's also key in international business, diplomacy, and cultural exchange. This means more jobs need people who can speak Arabic well. This includes roles in finance, trade, hospitality, and tourism.

Learning Arabic can lead to exciting jobs. You could work in international relations, government, big companies, or Arabic translation. Knowing Arabic makes you stand out and more versatile globally.

Learning Arabic also helps you understand other cultures better. It lets you see the world from a new perspective. This can make you more empathetic and open-minded, helping you navigate our global society.

Common Challenges When Starting to Learn Arabic

Learning arabic for non arabic speakers is rewarding and challenging. One big hurdle is the Arabic script and its right-to-left writing. This is different from the Latin alphabet used in English and other Western languages. Also, the pronunciation of Arabic words is quite different from English, with sounds and rhythms that are new to many.

Another challenge is the many dialects and variations of Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic is the formal, written form. But, there are many regional dialects that differ a lot in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This makes it hard for beginners to communicate well in everyday situations.

Moreover, the Arabic learning difficulties include a large number of words, complex grammar rules, and the need to master the script first. This can be overwhelming, leading to frustration and slow progress for some learners.

Despite these challenges, it's possible to overcome them and make progress in learning Arabic. By understanding the unique aspects of the language and being patient and consistent, learners can achieve fluency. This opens up the world of Arabic, an ancient and important language.

The Science Behind Quick Language Acquisition

Neuroscience helps us understand how to learn languages better. It shows us how our brains handle new information. This knowledge helps us learn Arabic faster and more effectively.

Studies say using more than one sense while learning helps a lot. Pictures, sounds, and movements make learning stick better. Also, repeating what you learn and actively trying to remember it strengthens your brain's connections.

The brain can change and grow, which is great for learning languages. By constantly introducing new words and phrases, you train your brain. This makes it easier to speak Arabic fluently over time.

Learning the science of quick language learning can change how you study. It lets you use different methods to improve faster. This way, you can reach your language goals more easily.

Learn Arabic: Your Step-by-Step Blueprint for Success

Learning Arabic doesn't have to be hard. With the right Arabic learning plan and language learning strategies, you can reach your goals faster. Start by setting clear, measurable goals for your Arabic studies. For example, aim to become conversational or pass a specific exam.

Then, make a study schedule that matches your life and time. Mix goal setting and progress tracking to stay motivated. Try different learning methods, like listening, flashcards, and online tools, to see what works best for you.

Consistency is crucial. Set aside time each day or week for Arabic studies. Celebrate your achievements to keep you going. By sticking to a Arabic learning plan and adjusting it as needed, you'll master the language soon.

Essential Tools and Resources for Arabic Language Learning

Learning Arabic doesn't have to be hard. Today, you can find many tools to help you. There are apps, language exchange sites, textbooks, and arabic language course online free like 3 Arabian. These resources can make learning Arabic easier and faster.

Begin with mobile apps designed for all learners. They offer lessons, vocabulary, and practice for speaking. These apps let you learn at your own pace and in a way that suits you.

Then, use language exchange sites to talk with native speakers. These sites offer real conversations and a chance to learn about Arabic culture.

For a more organized approach, try Arabic textbooks. They cover grammar, writing, and reading. With the help of teachers, you can build a strong foundation in Arabic.

Online courses are also a great option. They fit your schedule and learning style. With these tools, you can master Arabic and explore its culture.

Mastering Arabic Script: Simplified Approaches

Learning the Arabic alphabet is key to becoming fluent in Arabic. At first, the script might look hard, but there are easy ways to learn. This section will show you how to master the Arabic alphabet with simple techniques.

Learning Arabic calligraphy is a great way to start. It helps you understand the language's beauty and structure. Practice writing regularly to improve your skills and grasp the language better.

Also, use digital tools to help you learn. Apps, videos, and tutorials can guide you step by step. These tools can make your practice more effective and fun.

Learning the Arabic alphabet is a journey, not a goal. Be patient and enjoy the process. With practice and a love for the script, you'll soon read and write Arabic with confidence.

Speaking Arabic with Confidence: Practical Tips

Learning Arabic is more than just memorizing words and rules. To speak Arabic confidently, you need to work on your conversation skills, improve your pronunciation, and dive into the language. We'll share practical tips to help you become fluent and speak like a native.

Improving your Arabic conversation skills starts with practice. Look for chances to use the language, like language exchange programs, Arabic clubs, or a language partner. The more you use Arabic in real life, the more comfortable and confident you'll get.

Don't forget about pronunciation practice. Arabic has sounds that might be new to you. Spend time on practicing sounds, words, and phrases. Use online tools, apps, or a tutor for feedback and help on your accent.

Learning a language is a journey, and it's key to stay positive and celebrate your progress. With hard work and a willingness to try new things, you can improve your Arabic conversation skills. This will help you communicate confidently and connect with the Arabic-speaking world.

Time-Saving Techniques for Arabic Vocabulary Building

Learning Arabic is more than just memorizing words. You need smart ways to grow your vocabulary quickly. Vocabulary expansion, mnemonic devices, spaced repetition, and the Arabic root system are your keys to mastering Arabic fast.

Use the Arabic root system to your advantage. Many words share common roots. Knowing these roots helps you guess the meaning of new words easily. This way, you can learn lots of words with little effort.

Mnemonic devices are also helpful. They are creative ways to remember new words. By making up your own mnemonics, learning becomes fun and easy to remember.

Don't forget spaced repetition. It's a method that reviews words at the right times to keep them in your memory. Apps like Anki make it easy to use spaced repetition in your studies.

Try these techniques and see your Arabic vocabulary grow fast. With the right methods, you'll soon have a large vocabulary. This will help you speak Arabic fluently and with confidence.

Understanding Arabic Grammar Without Overwhelm

Learning Arabic online arabic grammar course can feel overwhelming at first. But, with the right strategy, you can tackle it easily. Arabic's grammar rules, sentence structure, and verb conjugation might seem tough. Yet, breaking them down makes them easier to understand.

Focus on the key rules and patterns to master Arabic grammar. Don't try to memorize every detail. Instead, learn the main principles that will help you grow in the language. Get to know the basic sentence structure, verb conjugation rules, and how words are arranged in sentences.

Start with small steps and practice regularly. This will help you become more confident in Arabic grammar. Remember, learning a language is a journey. With patience and effort, you'll soon be able to speak Arabic fluently.

Maintaining Motivation Throughout Your Arabic Journey

Learning Arabic can be both rewarding and challenging. Keeping your motivation up is key to reaching your goals. By setting realistic goals, celebrating your wins, and diving into Arabic culture, you can stay excited about your journey.

Start by setting clear, achievable goals for your Arabic learning. Maybe you want to have simple conversations, read Arabic news, or reach a certain level of proficiency. Having specific targets helps you stay on track and motivated. When you hit these goals, be sure to celebrate, no matter how small they are. Let your successes motivate you to keep improving.

Connecting with the Arabic-speaking world can also boost your motivation. Look for local cultural events, watch Arabic movies, or listen to Arabic music. These experiences make learning more fun and help you understand and appreciate the language more.

Remember, don't get discouraged by setbacks or slow progress. Learning a language is a journey with ups and downs. Keep going by trying new study methods, joining language learning groups, or getting a tutor. Your hard work and persistence will pay off as you get better at Arabic.

By setting realistic goals, celebrating your achievements, and exploring Arabic culture, you can keep a positive and motivated mindset. Stay focused, patient, and enjoy the journey. Mastering Arabic is within your reach.

Conclusion

Learning Arabic is a rewarding journey that opens doors to a rich culture and global opportunities. By using the strategies and techniques from this article, you can improve your Arabic skills easily. This will help you succeed in learning the language.

Success in learning Arabic depends on your dedication, consistency, and positive attitude. With the right approach and a commitment to improve, you can build a strong Arabic foundation. This will help you connect with the Arabic-speaking world confidently.

Start this journey and let your Arabic skills open doors to understanding the Middle East, better career opportunities, and connecting with diverse people. Embrace the challenge, stay committed, and watch your cultural fluency grow with each step.

FAQ

What are the essential tools and resources for learning Arabic?

For learning Arabic, you'll need some key tools. Mobile apps like Duolingo and Memrise are great. Also, language exchange sites like Italki are helpful. Don't forget Arabic textbooks like "Al-Kitaab" and "Mastering Arabic". Online courses on 3 arabian and Coursera are also valuable.

How can I overcome common challenges when starting to learn Arabic?

Learning Arabic can be tough at first. The alphabet and writing system are different. But, practice the script every day. Use tricks and spaced repetition for words.

Listening and speaking are key. Watch Arabic media and talk with native speakers. This will help a lot.

What are effective techniques for building Arabic vocabulary quickly?

Building vocabulary in Arabic is easier with the right methods. Learn the root system of words. Use mnemonics to remember words better.

Flashcards and spaced repetition are great tools. Reading and listening to Arabic will help you learn new words fast.

How can I maintain motivation throughout my Arabic learning journey?

Staying motivated is important. Set achievable goals and celebrate your wins. Get into Arabic culture and media.

Find people to practice with. Reflect on your progress and why learning Arabic is worth it. This will keep you going.

What are the science-backed techniques for quick language acquisition?

Science shows us how to learn languages fast. Use spaced repetition and active recall. These help your brain learn better.

Mnemonics, immersion, and setting your own goals are also effective. These methods make learning faster and more fun.

[passionate-reply]

This week on Passionate Reply: We all know “Don’t You Want Me,” but the early Human League is a totally different beast, featuring a different line-up, and songs about killer clowns and wanting to be a skyscraper, on their debut LP, 1979′s Reproduction. Transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. In this installment, we’ll be investigating one of the most surprising debut LPs around: The Human League’s Reproduction, first released in 1979.

Pretty much anyone with a general understanding of Western pop will already know the name of the Human League, and associate them, rightfully, with their early 80s hits like “Don’t You Want Me.” For many, the Human League were the first genuine synth-pop that they had ever heard, and their work in the 1980s has been immeasurably influential in bringing the notion of electronic pop into the mainstream. But before they were hitmakers and game-changers, the Human League were a very different band.

Music: “Being Boiled”

“Being Boiled” was the first thing the Human League would ever press to wax, way back in 1978. In most respects, this track is everything that “Don’t You Want Me” is not: its pace is languid, its structure is shapeless and meandering, and rather than a simple and relatable love story, its lyrics offer us a strange and opaque condemnation of the tortures endured by silkworms during textile production. While fascinating, and endearing in its own morbid way, “Being Boiled” does not exactly scream “hit record.” The Human League were not only a different band in a stylistic sense, but also with respect to their personnel, driven by a creative core comprised of budding synthesists Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Prior to the release of the breakthrough album Dare, Marsh and Ware would abandon the group over creative differences, and go on to form Heaven 17 instead. It was vocalist Phil Oakey, and producer Martin Rushent, who would create the sound that their name is now so strongly associated with, and this early incarnation of the group is probably best thought of as an entirely different entity. This album, Reproduction, was their first full-length release, and is perhaps the best introduction to their pioneering sound.

Music: “Circus of Death”

“Circus of Death” had appeared as the B-side to “Being Boiled,” and was included once more as the second track on *Reproduction.* It has a lot in common with the other track it accompanied: a plodding pace, a dark and obtuse lyrical theme, and a sparse, fully electronic instrumentation. The Human League were among the first British groups to utilize a totally electronic sound, devoid of any traditional instruments besides the voice, though in this underground and more experimental context, it doesn’t present a threat to the status quo of pop the way that Dare would a few years later. Alongside fellow proto-industrial acts associated with "the Sound of Sheffield," like Clock DVA and Cabaret Voltaire, they dwelt on the fringes of good taste, crafting subversive music for subversive people. “Circus of Death” introduces us to a demonic figure called “the Clown,” who controls, and torments, human beings by use of a drug called “Dominion,” in a scenario that sounds a bit like Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s worth remembering that while younger generations are quick to think of clowns as icons of evil and terror, clowns were unironically beloved as bringers of joy for most of the 20th Century, and these early portrayals of clowns as killers were indeed shocking at the time. Preceding “Circus of Death,” and opening the album, is “Almost Medieval,” a track with some similar themes, but a rather different composition.

Music: “Almost Medieval”

While “Circus of Death” is slow and dirgelike, “Almost Medieval” showcases the more aggressive side of *Reproduction.* It opens the album with a starkly simplistic tick-tocking beat, reminiscent of an unaccompanied metronome, before bursting into its punk-like sonic assault--a musical representation of how seemingly predictable and deterministic machines can also create something outrageous and unexpected. The lyrics of this track seem pointed towards the past, with the narrator exclaiming that they “feel so old,” and as if they’ve died many times before. Juxtaposed against the thoroughly modern setting of an airport with tarmacs and jet engines, it might be taken as an expression of the horror a person from the past might feel if they were shown the world of the future, created by capitalism and high technology. While it isn’t very accurate, we have a tendency to think of the “Medieval” world as a barbaric, unclean, and uncivilized era, full of witch hunts, chastity belts, and the deliberate erasure of “ancient wisdom.” “Almost Medieval” turns that idea on its head, suggesting that perhaps our world is the one that’s truly barbaric. The image of its narrator, “falling through a rotting ladder,” can be taken as a rejection of the notion of a “ladder” of progress. Similar themes of open-ended symbolism, and the sorrow of modernity, can be found on “Empire State Human.”

Music: “Empire State Human”

Like “Almost Medieval,” “Empire State Human” is lively and faster-paced, with driving percussion. With its straightforward rhymes and repetitive structure, it readily encourages the listener to sing along, almost as if joining in some sort of ritual chant. It’s an idea that Marsh and Ware would return to in their Heaven 17 days, with tracks like “We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang.” “Empire State Human” was the album’s only single, and thanks to this exposure, and its (relative) palatability compared to the rest of their catalogue, it remains one of the best known tracks from the early Human League. “Empire State Human” makes its concept pretty clear, with less ambiguous lyrics and an easy to follow mix that brings Oakey’s voice to the fore: the narrator wishes to become a building, and a mighty skyscraper no less, which might rival the achievements of the Pyramids of the ancient Egyptians. While it is clear that that’s what the song’s about, what we do with this once again high-concept subject matter is up to us. I like to think that this is some kind of perverse commentary on the unnatural and alienating experience of urban living, which may come with the feeling that the concrete and rebar structures that surround us are more significant to our lives than the people who may live or work in them. City life is addressed more directly by the track “Blind Youth.”

Music: “Blind Youth”

“Blind Youth” is probably the most “grounded” track on the album, in terms of its theme, making pointed remarks about “dehumanization” and “high-rise living.” It’s tempting to think of it as a sort of parallel to “Empire State Human,” with a broadly similar musical backdrop, and a more literal expression of the theme hinted at more obliquely by “Empire State Human.” With its focus on the experiences of the titular “youth,” “Blind Youth” can also be contrasted with “Almost Medieval,” whose narrator keens about feeling old. Where “Almost Medieval” deals with the disgust an older person feels at the decrepit state of the human race, “Blind Youth” shows the demented, unthinking joy of the youth, who have grown up in an industrialized and urbanized world, and don’t know different--or better.

While there have been many classic underground albums whose covers aimed to shock and displease polite society, the cover of Reproduction is one of the few that I feel would still be seen as offensive, over 40 years later. It was allegedly the product of a miscommunication between the group and the illustrator commissioned to create it; the band requested a scene in which people are dancing above a ward of babies in glass-topped incubators, and the striking angle, which seems to show people crushing infants underfoot, is an unintentional aspect of the design. Unintentional or not, this crudely violent aspect dominates the final composition, and lends it vileness and immediacy. Like the lyrics of many of the songs, the combination of the cover and title can be interpreted a number of ways. Perhaps it’s a glib commentary on human reproduction as fun and games: we partake in the “dance” of courtship and sexuality, and babies drop beneath our feet. Or perhaps it suggests a contrast between life’s enjoyments, like dancing, and its stressors, like the responsibilities of parenthood. It’s hard not to see so many crying, seemingly distressed infants without becoming upset oneself, and I think the deep instinctual revulsion that this piece inspires is part of why it’s remained so resonant in its subversiveness.

As I mentioned in my introduction, the Human League have gone down in history chiefly for the music they made later, which has largely buried this early period as part of their legacy--at least in the public eye and outside of the dedicated diggings of motivated enthusiasts. If you’re a fan of what you’ve heard from this album, you’ll probably enjoy their 1980 follow-up Travelogue, as well as their EP, Holiday ‘80. Given the emphasis on long-form albums among music aficionados, EPs and their exclusive tracks are quite frequently missed, but Holiday ‘80 is a gem from this short-lived line-up, featuring the fragile “Marianne” as well as a cover of the stadium favourite “Rock ‘N’ Roll,” made famous by Gary Glitter. Thumbing its nose at everything the culture of “rock and roll” stands for, and transposing this hymn to its greatness into an abrasive and sterile lunar landscape of synths, this is one of my favourite covers of all time, and seems to prefigure how a very different Human League would later become the archnemesis of all that rock fans held holy. It was also one of very few tracks to be performed on Top of the Pops, and subsequently see not a rise, but a drop in the singles charts!  

Music: “Rock ‘N’ Roll”

My favourite track on Reproduction is one that appears on its second side, unlike the other tracks I’ve talked about so far: “Austerity / Girl One.” Side Two of Reproduction is mainly focused on longer and more narrative-driven tracks, and this is no exception. Like the opener of the second side, “Austerity / Girl One” is a medley, albeit one of two pieces that are original compositions and not covers, as medleys usually are. This track’s story is both timeless and modern, a bit like a contemporary King Lear: the “Austerity” half deals with an aging father, incapable of understanding his children, dying alone and ignored, while the “Girl One” half puts us in the mindset of his daughter, a New Woman whose life is hectic, but also bleak. It’s a story that many of us will relate to, about people who try their best with what they’ve got, but still feel as though they’ve failed in life. Its simple, but effective musical backdrop of wan synth pulses allows the narrative, and Oakey’s evocative portrayal of it, to take center stage. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening.

Music: “Austerity / Girl One”

[kapitaali]

The New Hippies

THE NEW HIPPIES: The work abolition movement, anarcho-primitivism and biodynamism as ways to combat climate change

Essay for the course LOGS13b The Strategic Role of Responsibility in Business by Teppo Saari

Introduction

The course LOGS13b The Strategic Role of Responsibility in Business had the students think about and discuss the various ethical dimensions in business, moral dilemmas and choices to be made that a decision maker in business world come across every day.

This essay is motivated by our case study with a headline ’Investors urge European companies to include climate risks in accounts’ (Financial Times 2020). In this essay I will explore values and ethical principles that I see as the solutions to our case study and climate change in general. This is not to say that I could stand up for them in business world. Ironically, my main thread and leitmotif here is the untransformational nature of capitalism and business world. Thus, standing up to the values I will discuss here means doing less business, not more.

This essay is divided in three parts: problem – reaction – solution. These three parts will talk about the chosen values and ethical principles. They are by no means new: pragmatism – The Golden Rule – parsimony & naturality. They just seem to be in conflict with our modern way of living.

Thinking pragmatically about the problem

As part of our course assignment, we got to read about a group of investors managing trillions of dollars worth of assets who urged European companies to include climate risks in their accounts (Financial Times 2020). Scientists have warned us for decades, that pumping extreme amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere will result in melting of the polar ice caps (Mitchell 1989; Jones & Henderson-Sellers 1990), which will raise the sea level and drown some of the coastal cities (Peters & Darling 1985). Finally, capitalists are acting responsibly!

It would seem that capitalists actually cared for the planet and not just their profits. Or would it? Maybe they are scared of losing their future profits, and this kind of media escapade would bring back public trust and confidence in the system. It would be a sign that capitalists can act transparently, openly, accountably, respecting others (O’Leary 1993). But is changing the allocation in your investment portfolio really a sign of empathy? Would there be other ways to better express empathy in business?

Shareholders are interested in the risk their assets are facing, not necessarily in the welfare of the people. Investors acting virtuously can be just virtue-signaling or pleasing other elements in the society to take off media pressure and negative PR from them in a conformist way (Collinson 2003). Maybe they are just greenwashing their own conscience. Why is George Soros’ climate buzz astroturfing industrial complex (Morningstar 2019a) financing Greta Thunberg to do public PR campaigns targeting the youth? Maybe there is money in it. It is unlikely that it would have been dubbed ”A 100 trillion dollar storytelling campaign” without some particularly good reasons (Morningstar 2019b).

But there is something else in it too than just money: power and control. The person who gets to limit choices gets to dictate what kind of choices remain. And if a person has that kind of foreknowledge, then that person can be two steps ahead of us. And being two steps ahead of us means securing future profits. Including climate risks in accounts will imply controls. Controls are imposed on accounts, but ultimately it will mean controls imposed on people and their daily activities. Workers are the ones who will naturally suffer the consequences of management decisions. In this case management decisions are ’urged’ externally, from the owners’ part. After all, it is the corporations that are producing most of the climate change effects, in terms of pollution and greenhouse gases (Griffin 2017). People doing their jobs, working everyday, producing things but also at the same time producing climate effects. I would still love to hear politicians use more terms such as ”pollution” when talking about these issues. For it is unclear how reducing carbon emissions will reduce overall pollution that is also a contributor in the destruction of our environment (see eg. Bodo & Gimah 2020; Oelofse et al. 2007). Issues like microplastics, holes in the ozone layer, biodiversity loss, acid rains and soil degradation need to be talked about just as much, if not more so.

The problem is simple: too much economic activity producing too much climate impact, mostly pollution and greenhouse gases. Solving the Grand Challenge (Konstantinou & Muller 2020) of our time is harder if we wish to keep the fabric of our society intact. There’s a clear need for dialogue among stakeholders (Gardiner 1996), but how is it a dialogue if people are not actually listened to and don’t get to say how things will progress in society? What I am proposing is a meme-like solution that has the greater impact the more people adopt it. My solution is: stop working. Produce less. Stop supporting systems and mechanisms that produce climate effects. Stop supporting the mechanisms that don’t listen to your voice. Disconnect from the Matrix. Working a dayjob is one of these mechanisms. Although many people have realized the benefits of working from home (Kost 2020), a lot more needs to be done. Remote work is not available to everyone. Not all jobs are remote work.

Bob Black (2021) in his texts has advocated for the total and complete abolition of work. Stopping working naturally does not mean stopping doing things, it will merely mean stopping working a job, a concept which itself is a social construct. Black’s theses are simple but powerful. Working is the source of all ills, it is not compatible with ludic life (allthemore so in 2021), it is forced labour and compulsory production, it is replete with indignities called ”discipline”: ”surveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching -in and -out, etc”. Black does not only describe the negative ontological aspects of working, he goes deeper and invokes many familiar names of Greek philosophers:

Both Plato and Xenophon attribute to Socrates and obviously share with him an awareness of the destructive effects of work on the worker as a citizen and a human being. Herodotus identified contempt for work as an attribute of the classical Greeks at the zenith of their culture. To take only one Roman example, Cicero said that “whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.” His candor is now rare, but contemporary primitive societies which we are wont to look down upon have provided spokesmen who have enlightened Western anthropologists. The Kapauku of West Irian, according to Posposil, have a conception of balance in life and accordingly work only every other day, the day of rest designed “to regain the lost power and health.” Our ancestors, even as late as the eighteenth century when they were far along the path to our present predicament, at least were aware of what we have forgotten, the underside of industrialization. Their religious devotion to “St. Monday” — thus establishing a de facto five-day week 150–200 years before its legal consecration — was the despair of the earliest factory owners. They took a long time in submitting to the tyranny of the bell, predecessor of the time clock. In fact it was necessary for a generation or two to replace adult males with women accustomed to obedience and children who could be molded to fit industrial needs. Even the exploited peasants of the ancient regime wrested substantial time back from their landlord’s work. According to Lafargue, a fourth of the French peasants’ calendar was devoted to Sundays and holidays, and Chayanov’s figures from villages in Czarist Russia — hardly a progressive society — likewise show a fourth or fifth of peasants’ days devoted to repose. Controlling for productivity, we are obviously far behind these backward societies. The exploited muzhiks would wonder why any of us are working at all. So should we.

Black notes that only ”a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages”. In similar vein, the late but great David Graeber saw the futility of most work. Calling this phenomenon ’bullshit jobs’ (Graeber 2018), Graeber sets out to describe what many of us are familiar with: we do useless things to make ourselves feel useful. Because modern society legitimizes itself with having people ’do’ stuff and not ’be’ a certain person. How can you (objectively) measure being? You can’t. But doing, that you can measure. This measurement then qualifies you as a member of society: productive, doing your part (an idiom that is a perfect example how you can’t escape the doing paradigm on a societal level). Graeber’s definition of a bullshit job is: if the position were eliminated, it would make no discernible difference in the world. In many cases these types of jobs are found to be supporting some kind of buraucracy, reporting, assisting decision makers, etc. Our current Matrix has its ways of creating more of these with the clever marketing concept called ’value’ (Petrescu 2019). They don’t make a difference, they create value.

Why would you want to overload the world by doing things that you nor most everyone else see no point in? Why would you waste your time doing pointless things? The easy answer to these questions is ’subsistence’. But there are many other ways to live on this planet. If you keep doing what the society tells you is acceptable or convenient, you will shut your eyes from the problem at hand: climate change.

Legitimizing anarcho-naturism as a solution with The Golden Rule

Our responsibility is to ourselves. We can not properly be held responsible for anything else. Yet the system of representational democracy does just this, holds us collectively responsible for many things, borrows money from creditors with our names on the loan collectively and then makes us pay for the loans. The way this Matrix works is yet another reason to disconnect from it. Or at least stop supporting it as much as possible.

The Golden Rule states: ”Treat others as you want to be treated” (Gensler 2013). From the perspective of climate change, it can first seem curious why you would quit your job and head for the hills. After all, we are facing a global issue here. There are people in need for help and I am running away? But I would see it as a way to get around our predicament. The Golden Rule can be also interpreted in Kantian way as the categorical imperative, particularly its first formulation: ”Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. This formulation is somewhat more proactive in nature. It talks about acting, doing things, and doing things is what is appreciated in our society, even when your goal is to exit the society.

Why exit the society? Is it enough to just quit your job and find something else to do, something that is more fulfilling and not bullshit? What an excellent question. Long before the advent of smart phones and 5G and DNA-vaccines, this question had been brought up to the table. In the 1800s, people were realizing the negative impact industrialization was having on society at large. People were rooted out from their family homes in the countryside, forced to move to a large city to look for a job, crammed into small apartments with dozens of other workers, coerced into working long and hard days at factories to make a living. The lowly misery of these people attracted the attention of a certain Friedrich Engels, who felt their situation was not adequate to make up for the suffering they had gone through. He meticulously described the working conditions of the English working class in his ”The Condition of the Working Class in England” (2003 [1845]), originally published in German. Sociology as a science was established by Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim to study these changes. Slowly but surely, the influx of people into cities started to cause issues, something that mayors and other municipal representatives had to start taking care of. Planning and zoning were given a lot more attention, since the earlier modus operandi of old European cities had been rather laissez faire (Sutcliffe 1980).

Against this backdrop of massive societal change, people started to question the changes and their direction. Are we really nothing more than slaves, just working in a different environment? Slavery might not be the right word or context here. Many people believe to be free, govern themselves and their property, and yet their daily actions and options to choose from seem to be eerily limited. They have only so many choices, most of which seem somehow related to running their errands. A more appropriate term, with all its connotations, here would be the Greek word ananke, ”force, constraint, necessity”. Like a force of nature, progress towards modernity necessitates that people leave their family homes and go work in large factories, compulsively manufacturing endless amounts of products, some of which are necessary, others merely decorations, and some just pointless.

Many names in 19th century New England worked upon a vision for the future society at a time when unprecedented changes were taking place and the standard of living was rising faster than ever before. The Transcendental Club was a group of New England authors, philosophers, socialists, politicians and intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism, the first notable American intellectual movement. Transcendentalist believe in the inherent goodness of people and nature, but that society and its institutions — particularly organized religion and political parties — corrupt the purity of the individual. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2003; Sacks 2003.) Transcendentalism is a unique mix of European Romanticism, German (particularly Kantian) philosophy, and American Christianity. The impact of this movement can still be seen in the many flavours of American anarchist and radical Christian movements.

Out of the ranks of Transcendentalists rose a couple of names that can be viewed as the progenitors of modern anarcho-primitivism and natur(al)ist anarchy. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the central figure of the Transcendental Club, who together with Henry David Thoreau critiqued the contemporary society for its ”unthinking conformity” and advocated for “an original relation to the universe” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2003). Emerson’s Nature (2009 [1836]) poetically embellishes our view of the natural world, while Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1995 [1854]) is a call for civil disobedience and revolt against the modern world. Another influential natur(al)ist writer has been Leo Tolstoi whose name is frequently mentioned by anarchists. Tolstoi himself was a Christian and pacifist, and his writings have inspired Christian anarcho-pacifism that views the state as ”immoral and unsupportable because of its connection with military power” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2017).

Before the Transcendentalist movement, Europe experienced similar trend in philosophy with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s natural philosophy. Rousseau touched upon many subjects: freedom, free will, authority, nature, morality, societal inequality, representation and government. Like Transcendentalists, Rousseau held a belief that human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society. ”Rousseau clearly states that morality is not a natural feature of human life, so in whatever sense it is that human beings are good by nature, it is not the moral sense that the casual reader would ordinarily assume” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2010). Rousseau’s work is relevant to many of the social movements that currently fight against COVID restrictions, vaccination agenda, building of 5G antenna towers next to where people live, polluting the environment, systemic poverty and general disconnection from the natural world. Rousseau, although regarded as a philosopher, saw philosophy itself negatively, and to him philosophers were ”the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, as apologists for various forms of tyranny, and as playing a role in the alienation of the modern individual from humanity’s natural impulse to compassion” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2010).

Rousseau’s days did not see capitalism as we see it now. It was later Marx (influenced by Hegel, who in turn was influenced by Rousseau) that put together a treatise that considers the societal change we have seen ever since from industrialism and circulation of capital. But Rousseau’s thoughts about the social contract (1968 [1762]), “child-centered” education (Rousseau 2010), and inequality (Graeber & Wengrow 2018; Rousseau 2008) are still relevant today. Especially when we are faced with many societal forces that are contradictory in nature, each of them pushing us into certain direction, demanding our attention, wanting us to change our beliefs about that one particular aspect that connects with other aspects and forms the Matrix of our reality.

We are once again facing a similar situation as the people did back in the days of the first industrial revolution. Now the industrial revolution has reached its fourth cycle, unimaginatively called ”Industry 4.0” (Marr 2018; WEF 2021), where machines are starting to become autonomous and talk to each other. I used to think technology was cool, and went to work for Google. But at Google I learned that technology is not cool, after all. Not until technology becomes completely open source, it will be used by massive conglomerates to build autonomous weapons systems (Cassella 2018; Johnson 2018) and the industry will keep paying ethics researchers to keep writing arguments for them (Charters 2020). Even though I could work for an industry that, given the current trajectory, will be among the biggest producers of CO 2 in the future Vidal 2017), the idea that I would work for an industry that sees weaponizing their products as the grandest idea of mankind’s future is still gnawing.

Because, it is all just business (Huesemann & Huesemann 2011):

One of the functions of critical science is to create awareness of the underlying values, and the political and financial interests which are currently determining the course of science and technology in industrialized society. This exposure of the value-laden character of science and technology is done with the goal of emancipating both people and the environment from domination and exploitation by powerful interests. The ultimate objective is to redirect science and technology to support both ordinary people and the environment, instead of causing suffering through oppression and exploitation by dominant elites. Furthermore, by exposing the myth of the value-neutrality of science and technology, critical science attempts to awaken working scientists and engineers to the social, political, and ethical implications of their work, making it impossible or, at the very least, uncomfortable for them to ignore the wider context and corresponding responsibilities of their professional activities.

It all seems to be connected with state imperialism and the military-industrial(-intelligence) complex. Lenin’s statement (2008 [1916]) equating capitalism with imperialism still prevails this day: ”imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists”. The conditions change, but the war machine keeps on churning (soon with autonomous weapons!), with wealthy but crooky investors financing projects that are even more dystopian (Byrne 2013). We may remember what president Dwight D. Eisenhower said about the military- industrial complex (NPR 2011):

”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

It is exactly these kinds of doomsday scenarios that inspire people like Theodore John ”The Unabomber” Kaczynski. Kaczynski, famous for sending mail bombs to various university professors around the US, holds a doctoral degree in mathematics. (Wikipedia 2021.) Kaczynski was bullied as a child, and it has been suggested that he was part of an MKULTRA experiment in college (The Week 2017). Kaczynski did not send his bombs haphazardly. He wrote long theoretical pieces to justify his actions, most of them being thematically anarcho-primitivist. In 1995, after sending several bombs to university personnel and business executives in 1978-1995, he said to ”desist from terrorism” if he got his text published in media outlets.

In his Industrial Society and Its Future (Kaczynski 1995), a 35 thousand word essay published in The Washington Post, which the FBI gave the name ”Unabomber manifesto”, Kaczynski attributes many our societal ills to ”leftism”. In the manifesto Kaczynski details how two psychological tendencies, “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”, form the basis of ”the psychology of modern leftism”. Feelings of inferiority are taken to mean the whole spectrum of negative feelings about self: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, guilt, self-hatred etc. Oversocialization is the process of socialization taken to extreme levels:

24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a nonmoral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people.

Kaczynski goes on to describe how this oversocialization causes a person to feel guilt and shame for their actions, especially in the context of performing as society expects them to perform. He writes how this concept of oversocialization is used to determine ”the direction of modern leftism”. Further on, Kaczynski describes how modern man needs goals to strive for, to not run the risk of developing serious psychological problems. This goalsetting activity he denotes ”power process”. But these goals can be real or artificial. Setting a goal is “surrogate activity” if the person devotes much time and energy to attaining it, does not attain it, and still feels seriously deprived. It is just a goal for goalsetting’s sake, the unfulfilled other side of the coin of power process. Kaczynski then connects these concepts to the many societal ills (excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe) by describing how modern society, with all its marketing and advertising creating artificial needs, disrupts the power process, mankind’s search for itself and meaning-making in life. He sees social hierarchies and the need to climb up them, the ”keeping up with the Joneses”, as surrogate activity.

”Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society’s requirements: welfare leeches, youth gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds”. This gradual increase, then, the system tries to ’solve’ by using propaganda, ”to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them”. In regards to technology, the ”bad” parts cannot be separated from the ”good”, and thus we are constantly facing the dilemma between technology and freedom, new technology being introduced all the time, and new regulations being introduced to curb the negative effects of the technology and at the same time stripping us of our freedoms. Kaczynski concludes, that revolution is easier than reforming the system.

Later, Kaczynski released another of his anti-technological theses. In Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015) Kaczynski presents a ”comprehensive historical analysis explaining the futility of social control and the catastrophic influence of technological growth on human social and planetary ecological systems.” This time Kaczynski talks more about how to start an anti-tech movement and how to keep it going. The text reads like a mathemathical proof of sorts, it presents ”rules”, ”propositions” and ”postulates” why the technological system will destroy itself (eg. Russell’s Paradox resulting in chaos in a highly complex, tightly coupled system) and why a successful anti-tech movement needs clear goals to avoid some of the errors revolutionary movements have made, which are elaborated in the book. Violence is not offered as a solution in the book, it is seen more like a mishap of sorts, a suboptimal outcome of a revolutionary movement. But it talks about power. Kaczynski got to learn the hard way how the feeling of powerlessness breeds desperate actions that would have been otherwise unnecessary. The book also talks about climate change and related issues, from a mathematic systems theoretical point of view.

Institutions that are in the business of social engineering and behavioral modification, such as the Tavistock Institute in the UK or the CIA in the US, would have us believe that Kaczynski’s actions were ”defences against anxiety” that can be seen as ”withdrawal, informal organization, reactive individualism and scapegoating” (Hills et al. 2020), and to some extent this is true. But Kaczynski interprets the actions of these institutions stemming from technological progress in our society Kaczynski 1995):

117. In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people.

This uniformity of a large hierarchical modern society then forces its will on people (Kaczynski 1995):

119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is not the fault of capitalism and it is not the fault of socialism. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity.

We have once again encountered ananke, necessity. Now, if we consider ourselves as the lonely decision makers in this society, what could we do? We can try and fight fire with fire, but such fights end up producing only pain and casualties (Taylor 2013). Anarcho-naturists and anarcho-pacifists understand that (unnecessary) fighting in most cases does not work. Sometimes fighting is warranted, but it is beyond the scope of this essay to examine those cases. Sending bombs to people’s offices may get you some attention and even make somebody quote your manifesto in an essay, but it is not solving the issue, something which the Unabomber addressed in his later texts. If working a job indirectly supports the military-industrial complex NewScientist 2011), what good does it do? The military-industrial complex is the biggest source of pollution in the world (The Conversation 2019; Acedo 2015), detaching yourself from this complex is imperative. Even if they would manage to convince us with their psyops that they are willing to change and that climate change is an important issue (Ahmed 2014), it would still be the biggest polluter that is controlling the conversation. It has even been suggested that they are behind this climate buzz (Light 2014). Is your job doing that much good in society that it outweighs the cons? If I need to act responsibly, but cannot fight the system nor conform, while at the same time keeping in mind our looming climate disaster, the only reasonable and peaceful response is to exit the system altogether.

Biodynamism’s naturality and parsimony

Owning responsibility and transforming the world implies taking some kind of action. We have already seen how feelings of powerlessness and lack of self-worth can lead to destructive actions. But there are an unlimited amount of actions that can be taken, that are not based in feelings of powerlessness but empowerment.

Exiting society might sound like a lonely project, and some people might rightfully feel lonely when all their peers still want to live in the illusion. But it does not have to be so. A lot of soul-searching needs to be done, and that is usually done in privacy, focusing upon oneself, but beyond that there are ways how to go off-grid and drastically reduce your carbon emissions.

One of the key concepts that will be our guiding principle here is degrowth (Paulson 2017), which ties into values such as organicity, naturality and parsimony. We will want to have less production of artificial things, and more organic and natural things. By artificial we mean long supply chains and many phases of production with modern high technology that produce a large amount of climate effects. By natural we mean using primitive technology, mostly all-natural or recycled materials and something that can be produced even alone, given enough time. Primitive technology does not exclude electricity, it just means producing it differently.

Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and theosophist, the founder of Anthroposophy and a great reformer of science in matters of spirit, started the first intentional form of organic farming, known as biodynamic agriculture, after he had given a series of lectures on the topic in the last year of his life. (Paull 2011.) Steiner had many spiritual experiences during his life, which lead him to start the Anthroposophy movement. He wanted to apply the scientific process into spiritual realm, inquiring it as it would be as real as our material world. Inquiring this spiritual world helped him access knowledge he claims to not have been access otherwise (Steiner 2011 [1918]). Anthroposophist self-inquiry can be seen as Foucauldian ”technology of the self” that ”provide an intervention mechanism on the part of active subjects, injecting an element of contingency to everyday encounters and alleviating the determinist effect that technologies of power would have otherwise” (Skinner 2012).

Steiner’s thoughts about agriculture are still relevant (Paull 2011):

In 1924 Steiner commented that, “Nowadays people simply think that a certain amount of nitrogen is needed for plant growth, and they imagine it makes no difference how it’s prepared or where it comes from” Steiner, 1924b, pp.9-10). He made the point that, “In the course of this materialistic age of ours, we’ve lost the knowledge of what it takes to continue to care for the natural world” (Steiner, 1924b, p.10).

Our current system seems to think exactly in this way, that if we just compensate our wreaked havoc by investing in ’green’ technology (Elegant 2019), it will all be ok and rainbows in the sky. But it will not. No one is even double checking if the companies that say that they are now carbon neutral actually proactively try to make our world greener. They can just buy a renewable energy company and say now we are green and do nothing else. Some would argue that going ’carbon neutral’ like these massive corporations are doing it is not the way to do it: “’green’ infrastructures are creating conflict and ecological degradation and are the material expression of climate catastrophe” (Dunlap 2020).

Steinerian biodynamism ”encompasses practices of composting, mixed farming systems with use of animal manures, crop rotations, care for animal welfare, looking at the farm as an organism/entity and local distribution systems, all of which contribute toward the protection of the environment, safeguard biodiversity and improve livelihoods of farmers” (Turinek et al. 2009). While modern biodynamic studies focus on agroecological factors such as nutrient cycles, soil characteristics, and nutritional quality (Reganold 1995; Droogers & Bouma 1996), Steiner himself was quite metaphysical in his lectures and paid attention to details such as kingdoms of nature, planetary influences, biorhythms, incarnated and environmental ethers, and the Zodiac (Steiner 2004 [1958]; Nastati 2009).

By shifting to more natural ways of living, we may help Gaia (Lovelock 1991; Singh 2007) heal in many other ways than just reduce our climate emissions. By realizing that we are actually living on the skin of a fairly large and complex organism, we will stop treating it as a plain source of material resources, and start bonding with it, tune into its consciousness and establish two-way communication, just like the natives have done in America.

The way of the natives ought to be our current way, since there is no reason why the natives could not guard the lands they have before. One of the greatest fears of people speaking for private property rights is that managing resources collectively would mean exhausting them. There is no Tragedy of Commons. Just because you are materially poor does not mean that you are any less competent steward of land and wealth, as proposed by Elinor Oström (2009). Acting for climate is not an investment allocation problem. The natives need their land back so that they could do their best to fight the destruction of our ecosystem. The Outokumpu supply chain in Brazilian rainforests, Elon Musk and Bolivian lithium mines, Papua New Guinea indigenous conflict, mining in Lapland in traditional Sami herding areas, Australian uranium mining in indigenous lands… these are all pointless conflicts.

There are also many other ways of staying grounded and in touch with nature, while at the same time cultivating sovereignty. Many of these things revolve around feeding the most immediate community next to you. They reflect ideas such as mutuality, solidarity, organicity, and naturality. Permaculture is a term coined by David Holmgren to describe ”an approach to land management and philosophy that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole systems thinking. It uses these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience” (Wikipedia: Permaculture 2021). Permaculture has many branches including ecological design, ecological engineering, regenerative design, environmental design, and construction. It also includes integrated water resources management that develops sustainable architecture, and regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems (Holmgren Desing Services 2007).

Earthships are 100% sustainable homes that are both energy efficient and modern. Earthsips are built with natural and repurposed (recycled) materials, they heat and cool themselves without electric heat, they use solar energy to power electric appliances, they collect all of their water from rain and snowmelt, they re-use their sewage water to fertilize plants, and there’s an indoor garden that grows food in vertical growing spaces (Reynolds 2021). Ecovillages are a ”human-scale, full-featured settlement, in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future” (Gilman & Gilman 1991).

Clifford Harper had a set of drawings imagining an alternative in his book Radical Technology (Harper & Boyle 1976). In them, he shows many of the ideas that were themes in the German garden city movement in the beginning of 20th century (Bollerey & Hartmann 1980), such as collectivised gardens, autonomous housing estates, and community workshops. The book introduces us ’radical technology’, which spans basically all of the concepts we have discussed up to this point: organic agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, vegetarianism, hydroponics, soft energy, insulation, low-cost housing, tree houses, shanty houses, ’folk-built’ houses using traditional methods, houses built from subsoil, self-built houses, housing associations, solar dwellings, domestic paper-making, carpentry, scrap reclamation, printing, community & pirate radio, collectivised gardens, collective workshops for clothesmaking, shoe repair, pottery, household decoration and repairs, autonomous housing estates, autonomous rural villages, etc.

These concepts, while they seem simple, are still empowering, they are meant to let people enjoy they fruits of their labour. Last but certainly not least is the concept that all of these things fall under, alternative (or, appropriate) technology. Alternative technologies are those ”which offer genuine alternatives to the large-scale, complex, centralized, high-energy life forms which dominate the modern age” (Winner 1979). Alternative technologies seek to solve the problems technocentric thinking has caused in society: technical scale and economic concentration, level of complexity or simplicity best suited to technical operations of various kinds, division of labor and its alleged necessity, social and technical hierarchy as it relates to the design of technological systems, and self-sufficiency and interdependence regarding the lives of individuals and communities. Many of these solutions have been developed in Africa, where problems have had to be solved, but resources have been scarce in actuality.

Appropriate technology holds great promise in ways that are currently underappreciated in our society (Huesemann & Huesemann 2011):

As has been mentioned repeatedly throughout this book, the primary goal of technology in our current economic system is to increase material affluence and to generate profits for the wealthy by controlling and exploiting both people and the environment. In view of the reality of interconnectedness, this is neither environmentally sustainable nor socially desirable. In this chapter we discuss how to design technologies which reflect the values of environmental sustainability and social appropriateness. We also emphasize the importance of heeding the precautionary principle in order to prevent unintended consequences, as well as the need for participatory design in order to ensure greater democratic control of technology. Finally, as a specific example of an environmentally sustainable and socially appropriate technology, we discuss the positive contribution of local, organic, small-scale agriculture.

Conclusion

This essay has presented the reader with ramblings of a person who is familiar with Critical Theory, who would like to build a stronger connection to nature, and who is having a major identity crisis in life. I have expressed, albeit feebly, my will to emancipate myself, to exit the Matrix. In Finnish they would say ”Sota ei yhtä miestä kaipaa”, and in George S. Patton’s words this expression would be ”Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.”

In this essay I seem to have extensively quoted the Unabomber manifesto. This is not to say that Kaczynski had exceptionally good motives or justifications for his actions. He killed many people and is in prison now. Kaczynski’s ideas are not unique. Quoting his manifesto serves merely to prove one point: he is the product of his environment. Mental illness is no longer a taboo and things have progressed somewhat since Kaczynski’s days. It could be argued that Kaczynski’s writings were just projection of his own feelings of shame and guilt he had gone through. But his mental condition, should he be diagnosed with one (Amador & Reshmi 2000), does not invalidate the things he’s written. In many ways his writings are now more relevant than ever. When we have tech billionaires talking about inserting neuralinks into your brain and downloading thoughts straight from the headquarters, we can really see the manifesto dots connecting.

I wish it would have been just the mental load caused by a ’surrogate activity’ of keeping up with the Joneses that was the cause of all this, but no, it’s the real deal now. When we have corporate executives and federal commissions defending autonomous weapons systems and saying building such systems is a ’moral imperative’ (Gershgorn 2021), you know we have reached peak civilization. It’s all downhill from now on. All participation in society will support this moral imperative, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. While many would get back to nature for reasons of convenience, such as better health, Rousseau himself would have gotten back to nature ”to feel God in nature” (LaFreniere 1990). It is this kind of humanist transcendentalism (not transhumanism) that we will need again, to realize what we have done to our planet, to realize what needs to be done to abolish the war machine consuming it, and to make ourselves whole again.

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https://kapitaali.com/the-new-hippies/

[chironomy]

what do u imagine the afterlife looks like? im a hellenic polytheist too but what i have the most trouble dealing with is the traditionally ancient greek view of the afterlife, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Hi anon,

You’re not alone. When I was thinking of following this path, I had a lot of questions about what I was getting myself into, and a lot of them had to do with the afterlife. I think it’s a question that troubles a lot of us, particularly people who were raised in religious traditions that promise eternal bliss after death. Even my sister, who is all about science and rationality (and who is totally not Hellenic nuh uh no way even though she has devotional relationships with 4 gods) asked me “Did I make the wrong decision and now I’ll be slowly disappearing in a field?”

So, one thing I want to gently push back on is the idea that the vision of the Hellenic afterlife where we become shadows of our former selves, lose our memories, and largely vanish save for how we’re remembered by others, is the one and only traditional view, or the only valid reconstructionist one. Pythagoras believed that upon death, the soul was transferred to a new being. Orphism holds that the soul goes through many incarnations, and there are choices one can make both in this life and the afterlife to ensure a better time, or to be released from the cycles of reincarnation and suffering altogether. Also, I know of at least one scholar who argues that the Homeric epics themselves present multiple visions of the afterlife. That starts on page 5 of this article: A Lively Afterlife and Beyond

[Side note: I went to one of this professor’s lectures during the year I was considering following a Hellenic path, and was nervous about the possibility of a grim afterlife. He suggested that we take Achilles’ famous lament in the Iliad (that he would rather be a slave on earth than a king in the afterlife) as less a statement of the objective reality of the afterlife and more of an indicator that many people in ancient Greece believed the soul had a basic personality that survived death (“See? Achilles is still complaining.”) I laughed really hard, and decided to double down on the self-improvement work I’d been doing. I don’t want to take my own bullshit to the Underworld with me. :D ]

And based on dismissive comments in Socrates’ dialogues, we can infer that there were people who believed in a happy afterlife, characterized by fulfillment and represented as an everlasting banquet, as well as people who didn’t believe in an afterlife at all. The latter seems to be part of the reason why Phaedo exists, which is a philosophical argument for the immortality of the soul, including a vision of a lively afterlife with a system of rewards and punishments leading to either reincarnation or eventual eternal reward. By the way, I really love Phaedo and I wish I saw more Hellenic polytheists engage with it. Here’s a full text link. 

Sure, it’s hard to know how widespread these beliefs were. But based on how diverse ancient ritual was, particularly over time and across different local cultures, I came to the conclusion that ancient belief must have been diverse as well, and this extends to beliefs about the afterlife.

I guess it’s not a surprise that I believe in the lively afterlife, with the continuation of each soul’s basic personality, a system of rewards and punishments related to our behavior in this life, the ability to continue growing and progressing as a person after death, and possible reincarnation after a period of time. Does it look anything like the mythic descriptions where we’re led by Hermes to the shores of the Acheron, where Charon takes us across the river in exchange for a coin (a symbol of the things we’re attached to in this life)? Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?

So why does the lively afterlife feel truer to me? I like the idea that we can always choose to move toward something better, and this continues after we die. And then there’s the experiences I’m having worshipping Hades, and meeting people who report eerily similar experiences with Him. It doesn’t make sense to me that this very busy god would be investing so much energy into encouraging our personal growth and spiritual development, if we largely poofed by the time we got to His realm.

But still, I’m not totally comfortable basing life decisions on UPG, and at the end of the day, none of us know what will happen to us after we die. So what I’ve chosen to do is focus on my relationship with the gods in the here and now, and on becoming the best human I can be for them. Doing this makes me happy, it makes me a better person, and that affects the people around me, which makes human society better. And all of that matters regardless of whether there’s life after death, or what that looks like.

[justgottafinishthischapter]

Worldbuilding Tips: The Five Visitors

You’ve done it. You’ve come up with an idea for your fantasy world, but right now it’s mostly curb appeal and decorations without much else. So, you have the skin and flavor of your fictional world, but what if you’re having a bit of trouble coming up with the meat needed to make your world juicy and delicious? Well, I have a little game that can help flesh out your world.

Imagine a ship or whatever other kind of vehicle arriving on the shores or outskirts of your fantasy land and from that vehicle emerges 5 people from our own mundane world: a historian, an economist, an anthropologist, a diplomat, and a cartographer. There are some other visitors, but these are going to be the most universally beneficial.

The Historian:

This person is going to be interested in the backstory of your world. They don’t need to know every minuscule detail (though they wouldn’t turn that much information down) and just a general overview would be much obliged. Many fantasy worlds such as Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Martin’s Westeros are far more rich and interesting due to the amount of effort put into crafting their world’s histories. If you’re stumped, look to real world history for inspiration. It doesn’t even need to come from the middle ages so long as it works for your story. You should be able to answer questions like: How long has the dominant civilization been around? What are the biggest defining moments in your world’s history? What things are common knowledge that every child is expected to learn (such as George Washington being the first president of the USA) and which stuff is known more by historians and social studies teachers? And as you’re discussing the rest of the visitors, think back on how the answers you give would impact the historical aspect.

The Economist:

You don’t have to know the exact cost of every single thing in your world, but have a good guess. Be able to at least have a scale of price. If someone can buy a loaf of bread for 13 of your world’s currency, but a house costs 17, that would mean that either that bread is very expensive, that house is very cheap, or each unit of your currency is equal to a lot of real world money. Whatever you use to refer to your currency, keep not only price scaling in mind, but economics. If you have a port city, there’s going to be a lot of merchants in that area. The first primary export you’re likely to see in such a port town would be seafood, but also keep in mind the things that are closet to that port, as well as the climate. Greece for instance is a very rocky and mountainous country, so while they can grow crops, they would not have been any match for medieval French Aquitaine, the crown jewel of medieval farming territory. It’s also worth remembering that food in the middle ages was far more valuable than it is today. There was an old saying that wheat is worth its weight in gold. It was southern France’s bountiful soil that caused it to become one of the richest and most coveted territories in medieval Europe.  So, keep in mind where resources would come from and where they would need to go, as well as trade that would be useful. A seaside farming town might not have any good access to raw minerals, while a city in the frozen mountainous north might not be able to grow crops, but are bountiful in minerals. The correlation of supply and demand now opens a vital trade route between them. This becomes more complex when the topic of war comes into play. The kingdom that supplies your crops and food is at war with your oldest ally. Now there’s a dilemma between having enough food to feed your people, or betraying the trust of a long time friend. Now your world building can be used as a part of your drama and narrative tension. The economy also impacts culture. What is considered a display of wealth, or is a common status symbol? What are the living conditions of the poor, the working class, the rich, and the aristocrats? Is there upward mobility? In the middle ages, you were what you were for the most part, especially serfs: peasants tied to their land. It was illegal to leave your territory, but there was a saying in the middle ages that “city air makes you free” that once a serf made it to a city, they’d be free of the life they’ve escaped.

The Anthropologist:

Every society has a culture. The way they act, think, dress, believe, talk. It’s all impacted by culture. Beliefs tend to be tied either to what has come before, or based on the world as observed. While many modern fantasy pantheons are based on ancient Greece, it’s not the only model to live by. In a loose interpretation, religion in it’s earliest stages was a rudimentary science used to explain why things happened. A culture that developed along rivers, sea coasts, and other popular trade routes are far more likely to be diverse melting pots due to the frequent traffic of people coming and going, and the common sight of foreigners choosing to set down roots. Meanwhile, a more out of the way and isolated culture is far less likely to have widespread cultural diversity. Tying back into history, a country that has experienced a number of successful wars may tend to think of themselves as invincible, or may try to police the issues of other countries, assuming they’re always on the right side, or that they can’t be defeated. The same culture may ask a high price of any other culture that asks them for militaristic support. Ask what things your people value, be they material or abstract ideals. However, try to refrain from creating a Planet of Hats, a trope often seen in Star Trek and similar Sci-Fi shows and even some Fantasy stories where everyone of a single race all have mostly the same skills, interests, personalities, and roles in the global culture. This is also the time to start thinking about myths, legends, folk heroes, and historical people and events worth celebrating, as this may be when you start to craft holidays or celebrations. This could also lead into discussing religion, and the gods or lack there of that might be celebrated by your culture. How does your society reflect itself in art, music, literature, dance. Does the way someone dresses tell you something about their place in society? Some taboos come from simple logic. The reason it’s frowned upon to eat a cow in India is the same reason it’s immoral to eat horse in western culture. Both are beast of burden livestock worth a lot more alive than dead. Cows produce milk, a source of nutrients and health. Horses are strong and were used in just about everything from plowing fields to pulling entire families or communities a great distance. Horses even became status symbols, as even in modern culture, owning a horse or pony is still considered to be (largely) a snobby rich person thing. Understanding not only what your people believe, but even just a vague idea why they would believe it is a vital aspect.

The Diplomat:

As this landing party is your fantasy world’s first contact with our own reality. How would they react to the newcomers? If there’s more than one society in your world, how would each society, country, kingdom, race, etc. react to something completely foreign? Would they try to forge an alliance? Open trade negotiations? Declare war? Prepare a feast? How would they feel about the way we dress? act? talk? How would they react to different levels of progression in technology? Could an unbiased third party from our world help two feuding sides come to peace with one another? How would they feel about knowing of a world beyond their own? Are there actions or behaviors acceptable in our own society that are considered offensive to them?

The Cartographer:

Although it’s not necessary that all fantasy worlds have a fully designed map, it is a good idea to have at least a rough idea of where things are in relation to one another. This can tell you about climate, resources, wildlife, natural borders, natural disasters, food chains, and more. It’s worth at least taking a crash course in understanding how geographical biomes tend to be laid out in order to make your world feel more real. Some authors claim that a world map is the single most important feature, others say it’s not that important. Frankly, trust your gut based on the kind of world you have. You may need a map, you may not. It really depends on the size and scope of your world. For instance, with Disney’s

Zootopia

, the entire world doesn’t matter. The audience doesn’t need to know where in the world Zootopia is, or what climate or biome it’s in. Zootopia itself is the world being built, and the separate districts and biomes of the city explain the world that’s being focused on.

Secondary Visitors:

They may still be important to your world, but are less likely to be universally helpful to all people.

Biologist: if your world has creatures beyond those found in our real world, it may be worth exploring how their bodies work on a more scientific level in order to give more realistic weight to their supernatural abilities.

Linguist/Translator: If you feel compelled to come up with a language no matter how basic or complex, it may be worth while to consider the problems with communication. this may also extend to unique idioms, colloquialisms, and slang native to your fantasy world.

Teacher/Scholar: Regardless of whether or not there is a formal education system in place in your world, a teacher may be interested in how knowledge is passed down, and what information the culture might have that would be unknown to people of our world. Whether that’s how to keep a wild animal from charging you, to knowing how to forge a mineral that exists only in your world, being able to readily answer questions is generally considered to be a good thing.

Healer: There may be healing spells in your world, there may not, but most fantasy stories tend to involve either action or adventure, both of which tend to cause fights. And since fights tend to lead to injuries, it’s important to know what can and cannot be treated, and how readily available these healing abilities are to the public.

[pinelife3]

What’s this Pizzagate in the heart of nature?

The big tech story in Australia last month was Facebook’s decision to restrict people and organisations in Australia from sharing or viewing news content on Facebook. This was in response to the Morrison government’s proposed Media Bargaining legislation which is basically a Murdoch-serving law to try to get tech companies to pay media organisations for news content hosted/linked/displayed on their sites and, most galling of all, share details of their algorithms with Australian media orgs. The idea that Facebook would have to notify NewsCorp every time they want to tweak their algorithm is patently insane. So I admire Facebook’s petty, dramatic manoeuvre: “if the way we share news on the site is such a problem then fine, no more news for you”. After all the fuss, the Australian government agreed to amend the Media Bargaining legislation - evidently with terms more agreeable to Facebook, meaning news has been restored to Facebook down under. 

One of the key responses I saw expressed in relation to Facebook’s initial news eradication was concern that disinformation would be able to spread more easily on the site - and that people wouldn’t be able to rebut disinformation with factual news articles.

So far as I can tell, the proliferation of disinformation online wouldn’t matter if people didn’t believe it. And most especially, if people didn’t want to believe it. After all, the web is full of persuasive writing and people who want to convince you of things - for whatever reason, conspiracy theories just seem to be very alluring. So rather than trying to protect people from their own stupidity by hiding disinformation... maybe we could look at why people are so credulous in the first place. Deep state? Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams? CIA Contra cocaine trafficking? The great replacement? Pizzagate? 

I’m going to class conspiracy theorists into three categories of my own making:

I believe: well meaning, uninformed people who have been fooled or duped. The fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield which started the vaccines cause autism conspiracy was actually written to support a class action lawsuit. Wakefield knew the results in his paper were not true: in addition to his conflicts of interest, he had falsified data. The paper was eventually debunked and retracted but the conspiracy had its roots and has continued to grow. I think a lot of the people who believe that vaccines are dangerous are parents who are just worried about their kids - and also want to protect other kids from a threat they believe to be real. Why is one debunked article more persuasive to people than a million proving the efficacy of vaccines? It is literally beyond reason.

It suits me to believe: people motivated by self-interest who adopt a conspiracy theory to support their larger world view. Their self-interest could be anything from their own ego to gun rights. The conspiracies around the Sandy Hook Primary School shooting are interesting because you can see a clear motivation for people to subscribe to that theory rather than the truth. If you’re a keen gun-owner, arguining that the shooting was a hoax to generate anti-gun sentiment and thereby allow the Democrats to pass harsher gun restrictions is neat and comforting. No one could argue that the events of Sandy Hook weren’t inhumanly terrible  - so the only option is to argue that they didn’t happen at all. Plus, in this worldview, no kids are getting hurt so you can sleep easy knowing you have seven semi-automatic weapons in the house.

I need to believe: the world is disorganised, scary, unknowable. Ocean deep, sky vast, dark impenetrable - and meanwhile our skin is so thin and delicate. So. Wouldn’t it be comforting to think that there’s a race of reptilian overlords that control the planet by whipping their tails against a complicated system of levers and pullies? That would explain a lot of the chaos in our world. Or maybe the problem is an elite coterie of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles? If only we could defeat those accursed pedophiles then life would be peaceful. Luckily, Q and a septuagenarian reality TV host are here to save us. 

Across these categories, there are two unifying features: 

Rejection of widely accepted truth 

Investment in the conspiracy

As a comparison with the conspiracists above, here’s my take on a conspiracy: I think it’s quite probable that Epstein didn’t kill himself. I think that some powerful, shadowy entity took him out to protect itself. But I’m not obsessed by this idea. It would not surprise or upset me if this was officially confirmed - similarly crazy shit happens all the time. I haven’t devoted my life to revealing this truth. I guess I fit into the “I Believe” category: all official information says that Epstein took his own life but my scepticism of the unusual circumstances around his death and Epstein’s powerful connections leads me to doubt the official information. The difference is I don’t do anything about it. I don’t really care if I’m right or not - I’m not that invested in the conspiracy.

And that’s why it seems ludicrous to me that Facebook should be tasked with combatting the conspiracy theories spiralling across our culture. Simply being exposed to bad information does not radicalise you, does not conjure an investment in the conspiracy. If a normal person reads something creatively wrong or misleading they discard it from their mind. If it hits a chord with them, they may adopt that opinion themselves - see: astrology, Armie Hammer as cannibal, tarot cards, essential oils as serious medical treatment, etc. But the evolution from agreeing with a thought to militaristically insisting that the rest of society also agree with it is an abnormal progression. That strange impulse runs deeper in people than their Facebook timeline.

Most people have fears for the planet or believe there are major issues plaguing humanity - and we never do anything about it because it would be mildly inconvenient or because it’s too hard to care about every issue under late capitalism: 

"But sorting my recycling is boring”

“Yeah yeah fast fashion is problematic but H&M is just so affordable" 

"Of course I hate R.Kelly! But ‘Ignition (Remix)’ is my jam” 

“At least they have suicide nets in the Foxconn factories now”

“I only buy free range chicken thighs because I care about animal welfare”

“I retweeted that thing about anti-Black racism. Yay racism solved!”

There are probably lots of people who believe in conspiracy theories but are ultimately apathetic about doing anything: they can’t be bothered talking about vaccines and politics all the time, can’t be bothered going to a protest, can’t summon the interest to care much. So what’s interesting then is that across the three categories of conspiracy theory belief (I believe > It suits me to believe > I need to believe), what a person believes in, and perhaps even the reason for the belief, doesn’t create any impetus to enact real world change. On both the left and the right, the impulse to do something about an issue is rare. Do you think conspiracy theorists, like the left, have a problem with performative activism? 

Imagine that you agree that Sandy Hook was a false flag, that ‘they’ hired crisis actors to publicly grieve as if their pretend children had been murdered... do you then get in your car and drive overnight to Sandy Hook and start harassing those crisis actors at the pretend funerals? What do you call someone like that? The hero of their own story.

Just wait!

In their worldview, QAnon are unironically trying to save us from pedophile cannibals. Given what conspiracists believe to be true, they are acting in good faith and doing the right thing. If you believed this shit, you’d be upset too. The fact that they’re doing something about it is kind of admirable: they don’t want our babies to get autism from the measles vaccine, they don’t want a deep state to manipulate our democratic governments. It’s existential for all of us - we just don’t agree on the threat. 

Can you imagine how electric the riot at the Capitol Building must have felt for the people who led it. Brave, romantic, a grand gesture: it was like their Storming of Tuileries. Remember this day forever! 

Modern conspiracists are actually similar to the sans-culottes in terms of being avid consumers of propaganda and inflammatory reporting. Disinformation and stirring rhetoric are not new - but shouldn’t people today be less clueless than 18th century peasants?

Why are there are so many people who believe things which are untrue? They exist on this planet with us but interpret it so differently. These questions really are existential: an ancient, echoing maw pointing to the heart of human nature. The struggle for a more perfect world, whispers about where the danger comes from at night, arguments about how to protect ourselves. 

Has there ever been a society where people didn’t have differing views on how best to shape the world? It’s the central conflict of human existence: epic, older than language - and now we want Facebook to fix it?

[ossseous]

hello!! hope you're well! just saw ur response to the "properly formed society" comment on the carrier bag theory ursula post, i felt like the way u answered was so gentle but firm and informed. was wondering if u could maybe share some recommendations for texts to read more about this? cos i agree w/ the idea but its hard to find books like that. for example i think yuval's book ultimately has this kind of idea behind it (havent read it but from what ive read OF it, thats the vibe). thank u!!

sorry the word limit probably didn't help me express that right, i meant more books about anthro that focus on exploring human nature and our beginnings with a less "man is violent. man is the best supreme species. progress greatest invention. colonialism good because progress" yadda yadda yadda kind of deal, does this make sense? thank you again. also i think im obligated now to ask u your garbage ship of the week 

I’m much more of an article person than a book person because I can only take so much dry jargon filled writing for so long, but I do have some suggestions.

The biggest one is probably Questioning Collapse. For context, Jared Diamond is a man (not an anthropologist) that shares all his theories on how past civilizations, such as the Greenland Norse, or the Rapa Nui, or the Maya, collapsed, in the terribly titled book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (yikes). Let's get some things straight though. Jared Diamond proved in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, that he is a white supremacist who exploited the people of Papua New Guinea and believes that euro imperialism was just , bound to happen because europeans were more "civilized." So it was no surprise when all his favorite themes, that people, especially "uncivilized" ones, are violent and selfish, showed up in Collapse. 

Unfortunately, many of these theories have become very popular and many people assume them to be correct when they aren't. Some examples: Diamond posited that the Rapa Nui (Easter Islanders) essentially destroyed their own natural resources which lead to warfare, cannibalism, and eventually their own demise. This ignores the fact that the island was ravaged by european expeditions, which included Fuck Boy Supreme James Cook (of the botched kidnapping and eventual killing by Hawaiians fame). Of course these encounters with Europeans led to the enslaving of the Rapa Nui, as well as the introduction of diseases that had a devastating impact on the population numbers.

Anyways, Questioning Collapse, edited by McAnany and Yoffee, is a collection of essays written by different people in the scientific community to dispute the theories Jared Diamond lays out in his book Collapse.

Ancient Civilizations by Fagan and Scarre, specifically chapter 2 “theories of states”

Another one would probably be Almost Human: A Journey into the World of Baboons written by Shirley C. Strum. I cant quite remember if Strum ever addresses this because it has been a few years since I read it, but: some of the earliest "man is just naturally violent and animalistic" ideas actually come from the surveying of baboon (and other primate) behavior and comparative anthropology. However, this came early in the field of primatology when observation methods weren't pinned down. Long story short, the male baboons that were being observed weren't actually being "naturally" violent--they were agitated and scared because the people observing them were literally observing them from a big ol scary unfamiliar jeep/atv thing that they drove up right next to the baboons' band. That was decades ago, and a lot of changes have been made since to how fieldwork is done. Anyways, Strum was one of the earliest groups of people to go out and observe baboons and she continued to do it for decades. Almost Human is essentially a look at her field notes/diary during the time. I have a couple other primatology book suggestions if you are interested. Here a couple: Gorillas in the Mist or anything else by Dian Fossey. Manipulative Monkeys by Susan Perry.

The next book I recommend is Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 by Nwando Achebe. From what I remember, Achebe isn't terribly fond of the anthropology field, (which is interesting because much of the book is ethnographic), but what can I say, I personally do not like historians myself so 🤷‍♀️ (also I might be thinking of someone else)

My personal loathing of historians aside, this is a great book that explores the ways in which women... well... navigate power and authority. You get to learn all about Female Kings and how the Igbo do not fit in with eurocentric gender norms--as well as the impact that European colonization eventually has on the Igbo culture and the role women and men play within their families and society.

Some articles that discuss the effects of colonialism, structure of prehistoric societies etc etc from an anthropological perspective:

State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives by Krohn-Hansen and Nustad

Different Types of Egalitarian Societies and the Development of Inequality in Early Mesopotamia by M Frangipane

Change in the Lives of Brazilian Indigenous People: To Pluck Eyelashes (or Not?) among the Canela by William and Jean Crocker

Gender Dynamics in Hunter-Gatherer Society: Archaeological Methods and Perspectives by Brumbach and Jarvenpa

Economy, Ritual, and Power in Ubaid Mesopotamia by Gil Stein

I have a lot of these articles (and more lol) as PDFs. If you would like to read them and cannot access them, let me know, I can put them in google drive or something.

also my garbage ship right now is still beth/borgov from the queens gambit lmao

[script-a-world]

I really want to create new foods and recipes for one of my worlds, but I have no idea how I would go about doing research for something like that. Do you guys have any resources or advice that might help? To be more specific for this world, most ingredients are incredibly low quality (but they are in abundance) and any imported ingredients are only used for the rich. I was thinking their food would use a lot of seasoning to mask the quality, but I'm not too sure. Thank you!

Feral: We could actually do with a few more specifics to answer this question as fully as you would probably like, but I’ll do the best I can.

First, I’m not sure whether you want to create recipes using real world ingredients that would in fact be cookable to release on your blog as some kind of companion for your audience or you want to conceptualize some recipes to be able to describe taste, texture, etc. If it’s the first option, creating recipes from scratch is pretty difficult. You might want to consider taking some cooking classes to learn techniques, reading cook books for a lesson in combining ingredients, and doing a lot test cooking to nail down the flavor profiles. If you don’t want to go completely chef-y, you could also take recipes and then tweak them by substituting an ingredient or using a slightly different technique (baking instead of broiling, etc). This would also be helpful in the second case. If by "low quality" you mean "low cost," try looking at food preparation that developed in poorer, underprivileged, or minority communities, like American immigrant cuisine and soul food (the original styles, not the bougie, hipster, “elevated” styles).

For example, understanding how immigrant cuisine differs from motherland cuisine can be particularly helpful in determining how your world’s “rich” food can be adapted into “poor” food. In America we often think of corned beef and cabbage as being a traditional Irish food, but in reality, no one in Ireland really eats corned beef and cabbage - it’s a traditional Irish-American food because poor Irish immigrants could not afford the lamb they would have eaten at home (which was more readily available in say rural Ireland than in New York City and therefore at an affordable cost), and they often could not source any bacon or cured pork products because the butchers who would sell to them were often the Jewish immigrant butchers. So, the cheapest cut of cured meat they could get was corned beef and replaced the traditional proteins they would have used at home.

Second, I’m working off the assumption that your world has the same ingredients as we do, but it’s unclear. When you mention creating new foods, that could mean food preparation or it could mean edible plants and animals. If it’s the latter, then the easiest way to do it would be crossing real world things.

So, for example, everyone’s favorite vegetable on your world may be a cross between a cucumber and a lemon (the flesh is cucumber like but grows in segments in a thick skin that wouldn’t be eaten straight but could be zested, and the flavor is like a very watered down citrus). This also gives you the ability to create recipes by using the two ingredients you crossed.

Also, I’m assuming that you’re using actual food rather than powders and extracts (very common in scifi settings where "real" food is incredibly scarce), which I don’t have too many ideas on how to create recipes that way. Firefly has a pretty good method of just obliquely referring to “protein powders in every color” and showing cans of things but only really showing food prepared and being consumed when it is in fact real food provided to the crew as payment.

Finally, seasoning is a good way to hide low quality ingredients, whether it’s a cheap cut of meat or slightly wilted vegetables. Especially sauces. Especially, especially cream sauces (providing that milk of some kind is one of the ingredients generally available). Sauces make spices go further. Also, keep in mind preservation techniques (salting, smoking, drying, pickling); in the real world what has often made something the “cheap” version is that it is preserved and not fresh (with the common exception of salted foods when salt is an expensive import). But those preservation techniques also infuse additional flavors into the food.

And speaking of the real world - have you ever heard that England conquered most of it in search of spices and then decided it wasn’t going to use any of them? Spices were the purview of the very very wealthy for a very long time. The common folk did not have much access to anything they couldn’t grow in their own backyard. So, the working class dishes we commonly associate with England are not particularly spicy. As you’re deciding how the poor disguise the low quality of their food, whether it's less costly trying to appear more costly or slightly less fresh than one would prefer to eat or whatever, keep in mind what they are able to grow in the soil and climate they have (spices are typically tropical while herbs are more often temperate).

A helpful guide in food experimenting:

Cook Smart: How to Maximize Flavor Series

Part 6: Guide to Adding Flavor with Aromatics

Brainstormed: Low quality how? Like, the bakers put sawdust put in bread to save flour low quality? Our teeth are worn down by forty years old because we live in a desert and the sand gets into our food no matter what we do and grinds our molars to nubs? We only get the worst cuts of meat because it’s all we can afford or the best stuff has to be sacrificed or tithed? Salt is expensive because we don’t live near the sea or any salt deposits so trading for it is pricey? There’s been plenty of cheats, circumstances, and shortcuts throughout history that may decrease what we would call the quality of food, and all of those examples really did happen.

Your idea of quality may be a hoity-toity five star restaurant, or an enormous home-cooked fresh meal, or the tastiest dish with all the seasonings on it. Instead of describing the food as low quality, think about what your people would consider high quality. What do they love? What flavors are common, and what’s rarer and therefore richer? How available is plant-based food, meaning are there herbs and fruit trees in everyone’s garden or is agriculture and import the only way of obtaining them? How available is animal-based food, meaning do these people live as herdsfolk and eat a whole sheep every week including the organs or do fishing boats bring in dozens of kinds of seafood or is the entire population practically vegetarian until traders arrive with preserved meats?

Think about where your people are situated geographically to figure out the resources available to them, and their neighboring countries for trade. Also think about how developed your people are. This website is a timeline of food throughout history, and may help you pin down some barebones basics.

Tex: Both Feral and Brainstormed offer excellent advice, and I’ll be reiterating most of that in my own opinion.

Cooking techniques are cumulative skills that reflect a culture’s technological progression. We started with a plain old fire, so cooking food with that meant techniques like spitroasting - with the invention of pottery, we could put things in containers over, on, and even under said fire, which would bring us “new” techniques like broiling, boiling (comestibles in a liquid), roasting, sautéing, searing, and blanching (comestibles scalded in boiling water and then removed into an ice/cold water bath).

These cumulative skills are also exponential, in that most of these adapted techniques can be combined with other skills. Take, for example, a stew. The base ingredients - meats, vegetables, grains - can be cooked with direct heat (e.g. grilling over a fire), then added to a cooking container (e.g. pots of different compositions) with a fat (e.g. oil, butter) to further cook the ingredients until it’s a desired texture (e.g. “spoon tender”).

This would be a “complete” meal by itself, of course - but it’s a cook’s decision to continue on to a stew because… well, because they think it tastes good, and there could be social/cultural reasons to continue expending effort into their food. Adding a liquid - it could be water/milk, but also a composite liquid (more cooking!) such as a broth - and simmering (low indirect heat over an extended period of time) would turn this dish into a stew.

Stews (and soups, the less dense predecessor) are popular in a great deal of cultures for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s relatively easy to make - Medieval European pottage could be tended over a fire throughout the day, portions taken and the dish stretched with minimal fuss. For two, such dishes are filling, with minimal concentration on the type or number of ingredients - the basic recipe is usually water + grain(s) + vegetable(s), and can be dressed up with whatever extra ingredients are on hand. Vegetables are resource-cheap foods, as they can be grown in family/shared gardens, and grains provide the lion’s share of carbohydrates (glucose, necessary for cell function; see: cellular respiration) as well as other things like protein and fats that vegetables are usually unable to provide in significant quantities.

Soup is, in itself, preceded by gruel. Originally, soup was nothing more than something to dip your bread (or other grain-based, dry food) into, and expanded into more than just a glorified sauce. Gruels are liquid + grain, and even simpler than soups or stews. They’re very easy to make, and often invented when a culture experiences their transition to a sedentary society (marked by the shift from hunting/gathering to agriculture). Breads of some sort usually accompany this because someone will figure out indirect heating (our first baking!).

Bread-beers (Ancient History), as a side note, frequently accompany breads and gruels in terms of cooking technique epochs. The Ancient Egyptians had one, Eastern Europe another (Kvass). This is a cousin, sort of, to gruels and breads in terms of technique, and utilizes the introduction of fermentation (another skill! Possibly discovered by accident via “oh this spoiled food didn’t kill me, neat”) from ingredients such as yeast. Alcohol that doesn’t start from a solid base such as bread is the refined version of this technique.

So far, everything I’ve mentioned is made from staple foods. It is the application of technique that creates such a wide variety. There is some degree of social hierarchy when it comes to what techniques are picked by a cook, if only because some of the more refined (a term I use as a concentration of technique, not an indication of quality) ones are costly in terms of time and sometimes also available tools (e.g. it’s simpler to make a bread-beer than vodka, especially if you don’t have a distillation set-up).

Seasoning is… a thorny topic. Most ingredients that get called “seasoning” - especially in the modern, North American sense - are just plants used in lower ratios than others in a dish. Take basil, for example. When it’s used in low proportions, it’s a seasoning (e.g. tomato sauce with basil). When used in high proportions, it’s an ingredient (e.g. pesto).

Now, there’s significant overlap in which plants are called “seasonings” and which are called “herbs”. This would be because plants designated as herbs are frequently prized in cookery as adding aromatic or savoury elements to a dish - too much can be overpowering (e.g. rosemary in small amounts can be delicious, but in large amounts can be too bitter to enjoy), so they’re often relegated as a component towards flavour profiles. Their physical quantity available to a culture does not necessarily designate “high” or “low” quality, merely the ratio that is culturally-accepted in recipes. (E.g. Italy uses basil in many dishes, but does that make either the dishes or the basil low quality? No.)

Herbs, as another side note, are frequently also used in medicine - hence herbal medicine. The medicinal plants wiki is less biased than the herbal medicine one, and offers some greater anthropological context.

Quality in terms of food is… usually more the ratio of preferred to not preferred qualities. In meat, this would mean things like fat, tendons, and gristle. Food, or rather ingredient, quality is a benchmark of how much time needs to be invested in preparing a dish. It takes significantly less time to cook bread when the grains are already hulled (and oftentimes polished), than if you had to go out to the field and do it yourself. Higher quality = higher convenience.

(Despite what Apicius might claim, spoiled food is not actually edible, and is different than purposefully fermented or cultured foods.)

Higher-quality ingredients means time saved, and that time could be allocated toward more complex cooking techniques. This isn’t always true in practice, since something like a cut of meat is better for one type of dish as opposed to another for practicality’s sake (i.e. if you’ve trimmed your meat so much it’s cubed, you’re not going to get a steak out of it). There’s some debate as to the idea of ingredient quantity vs technique complexity, where touted “high quality” foods (e.g. Sachertorte) use few ingredients, and “low quality” foods have many ingredients - usually seasonings, to mask the subpar flavour of something like a cut of meat.

Like Feral said, sauces are a great carrier for flavour, as well as helping to stretch the usable lifespan of an ingredient. A cut of meat ordinarily good for a steak that’s close to expiration might not be a good steak, but it could make for a decent stew or sausage, both of which could have sauces added to them to increase the complexity of the flavour profile. The food timeline which Brainstormed mentioned also has a timeline on sauces, which I think might interest you.

You mention “all the imported food is for the rich”, and I’m curious about that. Feral gave the example of the British upper-class restricting usage of some spices to the wealthier - and thus upper - classes of their society; is that what you’re referencing? What spices are you using as a base for your world, can they be domesticated? (For that matter, do greenhouses and the accompanying opportunistic entrepreneurs also exist? Or just a general opportunistic individual.)

The economic context of spices can’t be readily dismissed - there’s a weighing of amount of resources against amount of diplomatic tensions, so even if there’s an abundant amount of a given product, the providing nation could well make a money-based rude gesture in the direction of their client and increase the prices to artificially restrict supply. (Take tea, for example. Many, many economic wars have been fought over that [Abstract].)

The fluctuations of class-availability can include a factor of a nation’s influence on the global stage, and they could demand a good at a lower price and in large enough quantities to satisfy - at least temporarily - multiple social classes. This often comes at the cost of quality (here, in terms of purity of ingredients) - you can see this with tea, black pepper, olive oil, and many other class-oriented comestible goods (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I will stress that quality grades aren’t precisely the same for single-source foods and multi-source foods (e.g. sirloin steak vs curry powder), because a drop in single-source quality is more noticeable than multi-source quality due to fewer things to hide an ingredient’s quality behind.

Foods can still be heavily seasoned on both ends of the class spectrum, but there would be differences in local vs foreign (domesticated vs imported), and whether it’s a specialty dish (e.g. foods made for holidays, see: stollen) because infrequently-made dishes on a cultural basis are more likely to have fewer differences in ingredient quality and technique complexity.

There are also some dishes that have artificial class restrictions, because the upper classes have a habit of refusing to eat dishes from the lower classes as a means of social division. This is especially apparent in something like bread (1, 2), but fluctuations of technique complexity and ingredient quality availability can mean that the classifications of bread types can shift (1).

Further Reading

(PDF) Evolution – Culinary Culture – Cooking Technology by Thomas A. Vilgis

History of Cooking by All That Cooking

Feral (again): Modern History has a four part series on food in Medieval England broken down by social class with commentary on how it compares to food today, which may elucidate some of what we’ve been talking about in regards to the culturally variable meaning of “quality” in food.

[luminousbeansarewe]

11 and 14 for the Star Wars ask game?

oooh ok let me think!

11. who is the most underrated character?

honestly it's easy to say Finn but he's less underrated than he is simply underserved by the writers. he didn't get a canon reason to be awesome, we just all knew in our hearts that he was supposed to be (and we are right. and now fandom writers are giving him all sorts of awesome and beautiful stories which just... fills my heart with joy)

so if i'm going with characters who are not necessarily appreciated for what they actually do in canon/legends, ima go with Mace Windu. let's break this down

he recreated Juyo, an ancient lightsaber form that drew on the dark side and eventually aided in the fall of many Jedi and saw a lot of use by the Sith, into Vaapad. he said, "i created Vaapad to answer my weakness: it channels my own darkness into a weapon of the light." i never see other Jedi being woke to their own shortcomings, engaging them and transforming them instead of trying to outplay or ignore or suppress them

he did that after mastering all six other forms btw

he wrecked a whole battalion of super battle droids and a seismic tank BY HIMSELF and mostly with his bare hands (Vaapad is a combat form, not just a lightsaber form)

he passed his trials at age 28 (which is pretty damn early) and became a Master, and then the Grand Master, shortly after. he gave the seat to Yoda after Geonosis

he had a rare Force ability called Shatterpoint that let him detect weaknesses, flaws, connections, and cause-and-effect chains in anything from the structure of a building to a plan to entire circumstances as they progressed through time. he detected a shatterpoint in both Anakin and Palpatine

aside from his badass accomplishments, Mace is interesting because of the things he experienced as failures and criticisms as a padawan (he was seen as arrogant and distant, didn't trust many people, was often frustrated and hostile, and was seen as a "challenge" by his master Cyslin Myr in the new canon. in legends he struggled to build his saber despite being the top of his class, and had difficulties with his visions of the future)

he believed in peace at all costs due to his awareness of his own inner turmoil, and had a strong sense of justice and need to preserve institutions as the source of peace and order. this is why he was such a skillful diplomat and why he fought to preserve the republic. he really believed in it, and in the Jedi Order. he was suspicious of anyone who seemed to be exploiting power or knowledge to manipulate others

he truly saw himself as a peace keeper and strove to make fighting and displays of power the last resort

he cared about the clones and struggled deeply with the Republic and the Jedi's use of them, and found their creation to be fundamentally unethical which shook his strongest beliefs. but he fought anyway, because he felt it was important to be responsible for the clones and the Jedi's part in the war

despite his incredible discipline and impressive Force powers, and the fact that he truly worked for peace, i believe it was partly his faith in and preserving of the republic that led to his failure. in this essay i will,,,

nah jk that's enough you get it lol

14. what is your favorite alien species?

this is a tough call. but i find the whole weird matriarchal society/gender thing with the Zabrak re: the Nightsisters, and the diaspora to Dathomir from Iridonia, and the fact that they used "magic" connected to the Force all really interesting. i lowkey wanna write a non-binary Zabrak just to see how it plays out in such a society and come up with cultural ways they might react, or decide what they might think such a gender means. plus they're hot, and those tattoos are awesome and all the various headcanons about their purpose and meaning are super interesting to me

i was gonna say i also love the Chiss but really i just love Thrawn lol

[sydney-briar-is-alive]

Our Super Fun Cultural Dark Age. Some questions about what I’ve been soaking up.

-By a Sponge.

Fairy tales are interesting because they are originally cultural artifacts. Have you ever read Homer’s Odyssey or Iliad and noticed the language of the text? If not, give one a go!

 A diversion further into why you might ‘give one a go’.

 Secondhand bookshops are brimming with Homer. I mean that. Brimming. They’re practically paved in it. You’d be doing them a service. Most translations use very simple language (more accurate to the original text), honestly Harry Potter uses more complex language and if you don’t like it you can just close the book. So, you can’t have much of an excuse, eh?

 *Thank you*

 Welcoming one back to the actual direction of the writing.

 Now then, regardless. Back to the actual point. They are full of ceaseless references to gods, divinity and praise to ‘Pallas Athena’ and such. I mean, these people probably had Athena bless their milk and Weet Bix every morning. These days, it might seem a bit much to many readers, myself included (pressed wheat scraps are blessing enough). However, these works are cultural artifacts, and as readers we can learn something from the interpretation of the time depicted. They offer a breath of fresh air from dusty old artifacts and lists of statistics from ancient bureaucracies. They give us clues into how actual, regular people, actually thought day to day. How their brains worked.

 Broad, sweeping generalisations aside-

 Generally, in pre-revolutionary France, it’s safe to say a great many people were hungry and angry with the unfair Ancient Regime. Therefore, the French versions of Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, told at the time were fatalist lessons. Pitting peasant guile against cruel and greedy hoarders of food, rather than treasure or power. Whereas in at the same time in Germany, the same stories were often told as cautionary tales, depicting the horribly violent fates of greedy peasants stealing and the scamming powerful forces around them. The French of the time clearly had a hero of sorts, however the Germans did not. There are possibly hundreds or maybe even thousands of versions of Little Red Riding Hood alone all around the world and all through history all with their own twists and conclusions relevant to the time and place.

The Brother’s Grim famously travelled around assembling these stories from Europe into definitive, marketable versions. More or less standardising fairy tales into the ones we know today. What this means however is that- and be warned, I’m about to make some broad sweeping generalisations! It means that more or less every human culture has had the same stories. From Ancient China to Rome, there was a culturally relevant ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ or ‘Hansel and Gretel’.

This is important to understand because these days, typically when fairy and folk tales are reimagined for an adult audience, they are taken in one of three directions.

 1. Just how lovely and shiny must it be, to not be a dark age?

 The first direction is retelling a familiar story or set of tropes and putting it into a more contemporary setting, such as, high fantasy or outer space. Media that does this is very well known, popular and recognisable. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Snow White and the Huntsmen, or Maleficent. Typically, these stories are written to appeal to a wide audience and follow particular tropes and ideas, making a big splash at the box office. They need very little introduction, so, that’s it really. Moving on.

 2. Some might say analytics is just punching yourself in the gut, over and over again.

 The second direction is in my opinion more interesting, the self-referential, deconstructive direction. As it typically targets a more niche audience, allowing for a more unique perspective and viewing experience. Media like Pan’s Labyrinth, American McGee’s Alice and Jin Roh: Wolf Brigade. All these reinterpret themes into a more contemporary context, keeping their value as cultural artifacts and ‘true’ fairy and folk tales. While I am not arguing that Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings are not an important part of our culture. They serve a moral and idealistic fantasy that offers an escape to the reality of the world. Rather than interpreting that reality into a fantasy setting. This isn’t to say one is better than the other, this is merely to highlight why one is a more valuable item to our history and culture.

This direction confronts the elements of society and culture that create fairy tales, they are simply a more direct line to the value of the stories. Perhaps then they are not the same, perhaps by doing away with a lot of the symbolism they are no more than blunt instruments? Perhaps it is not fair to lump any media like this together, as each is deserving of its own fresh analysis (I did however warn you about broad, sweeping generalisations). The same can perhaps be said for all of this. Finding the line that separates any of these things is probably more personal and this is all very subjective. So, bearing this all in mind, I will introduce the final direction.

 3. Doctor Frankenstein, and how I learned to stop worrying and fear humanity.

 The ‘Horror’ genre. Now, I will not allude to my warning of broad sweeping generalisations a third time. So by ‘Horror’, I will let you use your own opinion, informed or otherwise. Typically many cultural fears and taboos are explored through horror entertainment. In many ways this is the natural progression of the fairy tale. What makes a horror film scary is relative to what you as a person are afraid of. Films like Dawn of the Dead and It Follows are not particularly scary on their own. But the cultural baggage that follows them is. They pray on our insecurities, which is why different parts will be hilarious and terrifying to different people. The same is true for fairy tales, to a starving person, a Witch living in a house of gingerbread, who lures children in to cannibalise them is probably terrifying. To a starving hungry peasant your entire existence is a battle against a cruel system that starves you and exploits you. So, maybe it is in this way, fairy and folk tales are perhaps better viewed as horror stories?

 That was a question. But you should probably just go on.

 Each of these three directions are a part of our culture and so then a part of us. We need them all to keep our identities. However, the investment in escapist storytelling is an unfortunate trend. This habit of converting important artifacts into objects of escapist fantasy is perhaps damaging to us. It’s in a way a form of censorship and it impacts everyone’s own identity in some way. By not spending time and money on a more balanced approach to storytelling, but rather focusing on a more focused one. It can damage the storytellers themselves. For example, Disney’s company image often directly clashes with this and while they produce many technical and visual masterpieces. Personally, I don’t see them as particularly focused on preserving or analysing culture. Rather creating fantasies based off false, hyper real cultures. The more media a company like this produces along this line, the more normalised its direction becomes. Thusly, the more obscure silenced the other directions become. And while it is important to remember, there will always be demand. But there may not always be works of quality to satisfy that demand.

 In conclusion: squeezing the sponge.

 In many ways this is a very subjective line of thought and please treat it as an attempt to question rather than to answer. I am just trying to have a conversation and I hope this perspective helps you understand what you are soaking up a little bit better. As it has for me! If not, I hope it none the less makes for an interesting read (I have tried to make it fun, honestly). 

To summarise. Paranormal Activity is more of a modern fairy tale than Maleficent. And Pan’s Labyrinth, while certainly using an archaic formula. It is perhaps better viewed as a brilliant satire in a classic formula than a modern fairy tale. The Avengers, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings are culturally significant and incredible works of fiction, but offer little to society as a hole aside from first class, prime cut, rib eye escapism (that is not to say they cannot have great personal meaning and value). Lastly, history is more than dusty old ruins and bones. It’s more than lists and battle statistics. History is people. It’s us. And if our stories and artifacts reflect us. I think it’d be shameful to be remembered for an age of escapism.

  A final thought-

To all of this, a quantity of pot might beg a question:

Does this then mean we create reality, based off a fear of ourselves?

I don’t know and I haven’t bothered to ask the question, sorry. Perhaps ask your neurologist?

[mechanicalinertia]

Some thoughts on re-reading Snow Crash

Sorry if you expected me to have a new update on the RPG. I’ve been all over the place mentally lately. Anyway, since I last read Snow Crash like ten years ago, and probably didn’t understand most of what was going on, I’ve been re-reading it, which is something I almost never do. Here’s some thoughts on what the book does, what it gets right, what it doesn’t, etc.

1. You can draw a pretty straight line from the Neal Stephenson who wrote The Diamond Age and the one who wrote the other books of his I’ve read, the Mongoliad, SevenEves, and Fall: Dodge In Hell. It’s something in the way his prose is written, the way it unfolds. His books have gotten progressively longer, progressively more serious, progressively more weird and less weird at the same time. I will say this much: I never finished SevenEves or Fall. They’re just so fucking long, and so dull, so exposition-y. Moreover, they kinda lack the exciting stuff that Snow Crash is saturated with - dudes with katanas, Japanese rap-stars with glowing afros, gatling railguns, Mafia pizza delivery, nuclear motorcycle sidecars. Christ, if it weren’t for the book’s obsession with really interesting Sumerian linguistic shit, I’d almost say that Snow Crash and all Stephenson’s other books were written by different people.

2. While we’re on the topic of linguistic stuff, religion as a virus, etc, it amazes me that when Stephenson was doing his research about Sumerian and Babel and how Snow Crash would spread, he didn’t come across Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I say this because Jaynes’ work has a similar hypothesis - namely, ancient man was not conscious in the sense we are conscious, and that the Late Bronze Age Collapse triggered a revolution in the invention of the self and the conscious mind - and, of course, that religion is a desire to revert to that more primitive state where something higher, something separate, the literal words of the gods, tells you what to do. It’s not exactly about viruses, or hackers, and it seems to pin the sea change in mind and language much later than Stephenson, but god damn. Both authors’ sets of evidence are based on not neurophysiological evidence (for how could you? You’d need millennia-old brains to compare!) so much as they are based on linguistics, archaeology, all sorts of evidence that may not seem as hard to modern readers but which is still interesting stuff.

Which reminds me. I first learned about the bicameral mind theory in context with an essay about the Aztecs in this book. Freshman year of high school and our history teacher gave us that, wherein Kunstler proposes that the Aztecs turned to human sacrifice as a way to traumatize their own society to reverting back to bicameralism. It’s an interesting theory, I’m just not sure it matches up with archaeological evidence - I remember vaguely that it was suggested that the whole delusion that Cortes was God was likely a Spanish invention, likewise the human sacrifice was a fabrication. I gotta look this up. (If you want to really dig a rabbit hole, lemme just say that the historical account of how Cortes and company brought down the Aztec empire would make a truly excellent HBO miniseries.)

(I just realized there’s a plot hole - Civilization arose independently, at several different river valleys - the Sumerians might have been the first, and their descendants might have hacked out all of Abrahamic religion, but the Yangtze, the Indus, the Amazon, the Nile - there’s no reason to assume they were under the same Babelian thrall that the Sumerians were. So the whole idea of Babel being real, of having an impact on every living person, is a little shaky. Whatever.)

3. Stephenson’s cyberpunk isn’t as urbane as Gibson’s or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. If anything, it describes an un-urban future, balkanized into ‘burbclaves’, sovereign microstates linked by megacorporate franchises. Which is - interesting? If one exaggerated everything about the 90′s, the Post Cold War Capitalism, then yeah, the idea of dissolving state sovereignty itself is pretty sensible. Gibson did the same thing in his Bridge Trilogy, now that I think about it. And Malka Older, much more recently, did a similar thing in Infomocracy (which is a truly excellent book, though it feels weirdly outdated in the wake of Trump’s election). I’m not sure what, exactly, the urban density of the future will look like, especially knowing that a) climate change will fuck up large parts of the world, and b) more sprawl = more human-wild interfaces = more bugs jumping from wild animals to humans and causing economy-wrecking pandemics (see: COVID-19). One would hope we’d try building denser cities, ones with less climate-impacting sprawl, be more sensible about our design choices, but capitalism is probably going to do what capitalism always does, which is make retarded decisions about the direction of humanity. (See: Fossil Fuel Lobbies).

4. Some say that Snow Crash, then, is a reaction to cyberpunk tropes, the ones so engrained in the popular consciousness at that point, that they just had to be taken apart, deconstructed with a satirist’s eye. I mean, c’mon. Hiro Protagonist, master hacker and ninja swordsman? He’s like if Gibson’s Case mixed with Bruce Lee. Corporations so powerful they’re states unto themselves? Rich dudes buying entire aircraft carriers? Guns, sex, drugs, rock n’ roll? You get the idea. 

I’m not so sure, though. The Metaverse feels like a pretty novel take on Gibson’s Matrix, but it’s one that updates the idea of a global information network, not pokes fun at it. I mean, this was the era that cyberpunk entered the mainstream, when it sold out and was eaten alive by Hollywood, culminating in the Wachowski’s The Matrix, which is at once the height and the death of cyberpunk as a legitimate genre (or maybe CP2077 will be, it’s hard to say). This is a book that could have been much nastier towards the Gibson-Sterling conception of cyberpunk, could have marked it all up as nasty people with too many guns in trenchcoats and shades. I say that because that’s a criticism a lot of cyberpunk fiction has had to deal with (and indeed, those critics may be right for the pop-culture image of cyberpunk, the one propagated by Shadowrun and CP2020). But I don’t think it is.

5. This is a fun book to read. It’s right up there in my mind with Hardwired, another cyberpunk ‘classic’ (because the genre is old enough to have classics, now, I guess). You should read it.

[thewonderousworldwelivein-blog]

Happy 420

Legalizing Marijuana for Recreational Use

In life there are many choices and what I chose to do may not be something that you want to do and that is just great, but we still should be able to choose for ourselves. Marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use and I believe it should be legal nationwide. People are allowed to drink themselves to literal death and they are allowed to purchase and smoke cigarettes and people die daily from cancer caused by smoking cigarettes. So why shouldn’t I be able to go buy some marijuana and partake of it in any way I chose from my home?

In fact, one of our forefathers and our first president of the United States George Washington, grew hemp in an abundance on a plot of land he called Muddy Hole, rumor has it that he grew a different strain for smoking but there is no actual evidence to prove this. Hemp was one of the biggest farm product plant being grown, they used hemp to make a variety of commercial and industrial products, including rope, textiles, clothing, shoes, food, paper, bioplastics, insulation, and biofuel. Hemp that was used for industrial purposes barely contained any THC, usually less than 0.3%. The strains of cannabis that produce the euphoric effects are much higher in THC content. Marijuana contains some other psychoactive substances such as CBD, we need more research to see if and what kind of medicinal benefits would come from those.  

In all honesty I think they should legalize all drugs but for right now I am just talking about marijuana. Marijuana has been around for as long as man has, I am sure and regardless of laws people are always going to smoke on some “wacky tobacy” In fact it was legal until the early 20th century. Then everyone started to look down on marijuana and laws against it were made. Marijuana has been around since ancient China back to around 2700 B.C. there are many uses for it including: chronic pain, peripheral neuropathy, spinal cord injury, HIV and cancer patients, muscle and joint problems, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, insomnia, depression, anxiety and PTSD among many others.

In 2012 Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana and since then have made millions of dollars from the profit of it, many states have legalized it for medical and many states have de-criminalized it. Colorado used the revenue from Marijuana for roads and the school systems. Right now, it is legal for medical use in 33 states and legal for recreational use in adults older than 21 in 11 states, so we are progressing and hopefully in the future it will be legal in every city, county, state, country, everywhere.

Could you imagine a place where everyone could just smoke a little pot? I can’t help but to think of what a happier place this world would be if we could all just smoke a little pot.  That sounds wonderful to me, people are too uptight and need to relax a little bit. If instead of going to the bar and having a few drinks or maybe additionally you could smoke a couple of joints and enhance your enjoyment. One should be able to do that if you would like. I think this would help our society because I think for many years people have associated marijuana with drugs such as cocaine and heroin (that’s what marijuana is scheduled with) when it’s just not true. Marijuana is not a harmful drug and you do not go crazy or lose your mind because of smoking weed or grass and some call it. People smoke marijuana and don’t want to do anything but sit on the couch and eat because they have the “munchies” but it really all depends on the strain and type of marijuana and the person because some it affects differently.

There is this whole stigma with smoking marijuana and it has for years because the Mexicans brought it with them when they would come here and work and they would smoke it and that was associated with being dirty, and they kind of changed it into this whole cultural class and society frowned upon it; so I think if we could just get rid of the whole stigma around marijuana and how it actually is, people would have a different perception of it all and we might be able to see that a lot of good comes with this plant. I have seen that there is research being done about marijuana and cancer and imagine what might happen if we could go above and beyond and explore possible treatments.

With it being legal you have guidelines that people would have to follow to make sure their product is up to par and anyone who lacks that would be dealt with accordingly. I think the benefits outweigh the cons when it comes to this subject and I really believe if we could just do our research and stand up for what we believe in we might have a fighting chance of getting this somewhere.  Should we be able to grow our own marijuana? I for one think this would be great of course they will have to put some restrictions on it since everyone cannot be growing all the plants they want. I can almost see it now and oh it sounds like an opportunity to learn, grow, teach and experience so much from it and to be part of an evolution in something so great would be wonderful.

This would also help our country to eliminate all the side businesses of drugs like the drug cartel in Mexico, if it was legal here and we did not have to rely on other countries we could limit our involvement with big gangs and corrupt drug lords of marijuana, we would be less likely to be involved with questionable acts this way, the cartel is very dangerous and numerous amounts of lives have been lost because of these people. I think the legalizing of marijuana will help to keep our borders safe.

There will be many people that do not agree with legalizing marijuana, thinking that people will be just walking around stoned out of their minds and I believe that many doctors will be opposed to this because if marijuana was legal they might not be able to prescribe as many narcotic pills and will therefore lack the kickbacks that the pharmaceutical companies give to the doctors. Which also means there would be less people addicted to opiates and other narcotics and therefore probably less deaths because of it and so essentially we would be saving lives by legalizing marijuana. There has only been one person that died from too much THC and they think that maybe she was vaping it too hot and she died and there not any other factors that could have possibly caused death. Doctors are arguing about this though because there has never been any cases of that with all the billions of people that use marijuana.

Think of all the room in our jails and prisons it would free up for people not being in there due to a marijuana offense, growing, selling, or just possessing marijuana or paraphernalia. Between 2001 and 2010 there were 8.2 million arrests for marijuana and of those 88% were for simple possession. More that half of drug convictions in the United States are marijuana convictions. 67% of all Americans believe that marijuana should be legalized, people born between 1928-1945 continue to be the least supportive of legalization. We could better use the taxpayer’s money than feeding and housing inmates from marijuana convictions.

I am no business major or anything like that, but it seems to me that if we were to grow marijuana and legalize it, this would produce a number of jobs across the nation and therefore getting more Americans to work and helping our economy boost, as I look at this there seems to be a lot more pros to this topic than cons and I truly believe that this would help many out in many ways.  

I find it a little ironic that I sit here on 4/20/2020 and write a paper on legalizing marijuana, I wish I could say it was 4:20 pm but it is now 5:15 pm so of all days today is the day that everyone should just take a break and smoke a little pot, many different ways so choose whatever fits you best, rather it be a pipe, an apple, a classical joint, a bong, these days it can go so much further than that but I will just stick to what I know, and enjoy, relax, let loose a little if you will and have some fun but not too much, because this is not legal yet and I do not want to be a criminal because I choose my medicine in my home that suits me best, this is all just make belief of course. My husband wrote a song called Green Buds and it a couple of lines in it says why I am is such a mother lovin’ criminal all I do is sit around and smoke some weed, a beautiful song about a beautiful plant.  

[hub-pub-bub]

Wage theft is when your boss doesn’t pay you what you’ve already earned. When I learned that Massachusetts had “blue laws,” that my bosses weren’t obeying them, and had shorted me around three thousand dollars, it was wage theft. 

This was the law: retail employees were to be paid at a “premium” rate on Sundays and holidays, time-and-a-half, the same as overtime. But none of the booksellers where I worked had ever been paid it. And while not being paid overtime is a textbook example of wage theft, when I tell people, they are happy to qualify it for me with a “Well…” or an “Okay, but…” I don’t know where this instinct comes from. Maybe it’s because “wage theft” makes it sound premeditated, more like a crime. (But it was a crime!) Or maybe it’s because I worked at an independent bookstore, and indie bookstores are beloved pillars of the community. (What would that mean about the community?) Maybe it’s because it doesn’t makes sense that an independent bookstore would do something like this. Everyone knows indiebookstores are thriving! (Which is true—it’s the people who work in them who are struggling.)

I found out when I was trying to see if I could afford to take a sick day. I felt like I was coming down with something, but taking a day off meant losing a not-insubstantial chunk of my monthly take-home pay ($11.50 an hour). Since there were sick hours adding up in a box labeled “time-off accrual” on my pay stubs—and surely they had to amount to something—I went to mass.gov to check the law. But they amounted to literally nothing, as it turned out: Massachusetts businesses only have to provide paid sick leave if they have more than eleven employees, and we had ten. My “sick days” meant I couldn’t be fired for staying home sick (as long as I wasn’t sick more than five days per year).

But I learned something else. There were links to related pages and I clicked the one about “blue laws,” which I didn’t know we had in Massachusetts.

Later that day I emailed the bookstore’s owners. Is there a reason our bookstore is exempt from blue laws, I asked, or was this an oversight?

They responded the same night. They’d heard that other area bookstores had to pay the premium rate, they said, because their booksellers were unionized, but that otherwise there was some exemption. They said they would investigate, that they’d talk to their lawyer and get back to me.

After that the story gets so routine you could probably write it yourself. When I followed up a few days later, they said their lawyer was on vacation but that they’d update payroll and we’d receive the premium pay on Sundays and holidays from then on. When some of the other booksellers and I contacted the Attorney General’s Fair Labor Division, they only sent a form letter saying the matter was too small for them to investigate personally, but we were welcome to pursue legal action (on our own time and at our own expense). I found some free legal clinics on wage theft, but only once-a-month and while I was scheduled to work. Ten days after the first email, I followed up again; “still the same conflicting intel,” they said, “but when we told our lawyer that we started paying 1.5 for sundays and holidays, the matter dropped. (lawyers are expensive!) let me know if it’s not reflected in your check.” A coworker who already planned to quit asked the owners specifically about back pay–which I hadn’t had the courage to do—and they told her no, they weren’t going to pay it, and they said it in writing.

I ended up speaking to a lawyer, who offered to represent me on a contingency fee basis: I wouldn’t have to pay if we lost, and the bookstore would be responsible for my legal fees if I won. But he recommended I not move forward until I got a new job. It isn’t legal to retaliate against an employee for bringing a case, he told me, but, you know, it also isn’t legal to ignore blue laws.

I said thank you, I’ll consider my options.

One day in November one of the owners called me into the office at the bookstore. She gave me $500 in cash and $500 in store credit, about a third of what I was owed. I spent the store credit on gifts for the holidays and I looked for a new job. I ignored a follow-up call from the lawyer and tried not to wallow in the humiliation. I was not successful. Even now it feels like admitting something shameful: I was fooled, maybe, or I’m some kind of miser. A few people asked me, what if they can’t afford to pay back pay and they go out of business? You hear it more than once and it’s easy to forget it’s not a ransom, that you didn’t pluck the number out of nowhere. 

It’s hard to compare independent bookstores to other kinds of retail stores. Bookstores sell a cultural product and booksellers insist that bookstores can’t be compared to other retail stores because they sell a cultural product. And bookstores don’t exploit their employees more than other retail. But what grates is when bookstores market themselves as more than stores, as community hubs.

“Independent bookstores act as community anchors,” the American Booksellers Association declares, at the bottom of every page on their site; “they serve a unique role in promoting the open exchange of ideas, enriching the cultural life of communities, and creating economically vibrant neighborhoods.”

This same lofty idealism justifies why booksellers don’t need to be paid a living wage, like employees of nonprofits or teachers: because bookstores are so vital for the community, the assumption goes, the job should be reward enough itself. The work is so important that maybe booksellers should make personal sacrifices, working well below the value of their labor.

I spoke to around twenty booksellers while I was writing this, and I was struck by how many are willing to make trade-offs. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been. “Independent booksellers consistently describe their work as more than just a way to make a living, and more than just a means of escaping the constraints that come from working for somebody else,” writes Laura Miller, in her 2006 book, Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption; “These booksellers see themselves as bettering society by making books available.” Plenty of the booksellers I spoke to saw bookselling as a calling. Because of course they do! If they weren’t willing to make sacrifices, they couldn’t still be booksellers. And how else could bookstores get away with paying them—they, who generally have to have a college degree; who have to spend a lot of unpaid time reading across all genres and topics; who have to have at least a little knowledge about everything, from the ancient Greeks to Dog Man 7: Brawl of the Wild; who, at at least one store, famously have to correctly answer quiz questions before being hired—so little, while so successfully preserving an image as a (generally progressive) force for social good?

And it is so little. A bookseller in Southern California with eight years of experience still earns less than $20 per hour; “I can’t think of another industry where you could work for eight years and still be making that little,” he said. A different Southern California bookseller/assistant events manager earns $17.50. A bookseller/assistant events manager in the Boston area is earning $14. A former bookseller in Northern California was making $14.25, a quarter above the minimum wage. A part time bookseller in Chicago makes $13, the city’s minimum wage. A former bookseller in Minnesota was salaried after two years at $30,000 while a bookseller and events manager in Tennessee started at $25,000, six years ago, and now makes $31,500.

I started at $11 per hour and ended around eighteen months later at $11.50, and as far as I know, none of the booksellers at that store even earned $15. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Boston is $2400 per month, which I could cover if I worked 50 hours a week, didn’t pay taxes, and didn’t need money for food, utilities, medical care, or literally anything else.

The booksellers I spoke to reported quite a range of benefits—in one year, for example, a Bay Area bookseller accrued three weeks of vacation time, and in the same time period a Pennsylvania bookseller got three days. But some booksellers told me that their benefits were mostly on paper. Not being fired for calling in sick or going on vacation doesn’t make it financially viable, after all. A Minnesota bookseller told me she has ten paid vacation days per year, but the store has so few employees that taking time off means she’d have to make up the missed hours working overtime. A bookstore in California offered a health insurance program, but gave employees a fifty-cent raise if they didn’t enroll.

It’s not so bleak for everyone. Unionized stores generally fight for better benefits and act as safeguards against labor law violations; I talked to a handful of booksellers whose stores had some kind of profit sharing, which can make a big difference.

But… I don’t know. There’s a bookstore owned by people who, all evidence suggests, really give a fuck and want to do right by their booksellers. They pay at least $15 per hour, and I heard one of the owners say on a podcast how much is required of booksellers; “If you’re a college graduate, and you’ve spent all this time reading, in addition to going to college—yeah, you deserve $15 an hour. Period.” But when his interlocutor mentioned a bookstore that had profit sharing, the owner was quick to say it wouldn’t work at his store. (And it wouldn’t, yet—the store is young and not yet profitable.*) But “It’s also a matter of loyalty,” he said, and explained that he couldn’t envision employees staying longer than a year. “I would love to find a bookseller who I know would be around long enough. Right now it just hardly seems even worth doing all the work. No one would qualify, because they won’t stick around long enough.”

Tell me, what are they going to stick around for? The bookstore owner said all of his employees are part-time—they’re either in grad school or working other part-time jobs. Are they supposed to stick around for a part-time job that pays $15 per hour?

What is there to be loyal to?

IndieBound—an ABA project—has a section on its website dedicated to answering Why Support Independents? One answer is that “Local businesses create higher-paying jobs for our neighbors.” But you can also find a page at the ABA website on “The Growing Debate Over Minimum Wage,” warning that “a minimum wage increase that is too drastic could result in reduced staff hours, lost jobs, or, worse, a store going out of business.” There’s also an “Indie Fact Sheet” to print out and give to local politicians; “Many indies pay more than the current minimum wage already for senior and full-time staff,” it says; “They do this because offering superior customer service is one of their competitive advantages—it is what separates them from their chain and remote, online retailing competitors. This also helps indies retain and attract good employees.”

See? Many bookstores pay their booksellers more than the minimum wage! It’s not their problem that that same minimum wage isn’t enough to cover a one-bedroom in any state in the country. It’s not their problem that inflation has eroded the value of the minimum wage. It’s not their problem that low wages are an affront to basic dignity or that higher minimum wages save lives. They’re just fiercely committed to their neighbors and their communities.

The ABA is happy to help its member stores fight even modest wage increases. “If the minimum wage is raised,” the Indie Fact Sheet continues, “it inevitably means indies will have to increase the wages of senior and full-time staff, in addition to increasing the wages of any minimum-wage workers. This increases the ripple effect. A seemingly ‘insignificant’ wage increase can have a dramatic effect on the bottom line, sending a profitable store into the red.”

There’s no mention of the dramatic effect an increase in the minimum wage could have on employees.

At Winter Institute–an annual ABA conference for independent booksellers–there’s a town hall where members can share their concerns. According to the ABA’s coverage of the event, an independent bookstore owner went to the mic to speak about the minimum wage. “I’m very happy the staff is getting a pay bump,” she said, “but that’s a huge adjustment to make every 12 months and once you get a handle on it, then it’s going up again. I feel like this seems to be going countrywide and that is something that is extra important to our nonexistent margins.”

Why this framing? Why not ask how other stores are handling the adjustment? Why not pay employees a living wage now so as not to have to change business model every year? Why does a bookstore owner feel comfortable getting up and saying this in front of an audience of booksellers?

If your local indie bookstore skirts labor laws or advocates against them, at the expense of its employees, can you still be sanctimonious for shopping there? Is your local indie bookstore thriving if its employees skip doctor’s appointments they can’t afford? If your local indie bookstore’s trade group doesn’t have resources for booksellers on paid sick leave, health insurance, or wage theft–in an industry famous for its tiny margins–is it an industry you’d recommend joining?

“We find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being believers in social and economic justice while struggling to pay our employees a salary they can survive on,” writes Elayna Trucker on shopping local and running a bookstore; “We urge our customers to Shop Local but make hardly enough to do so ourselves. It is an unintentional hypocrisy, one that has gone largely ignored and unaddressed. So where does all that leave us? Rather awkwardly clutching our money, it seems… All of this brings up the most awkward question of all: does a business that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage deserve to be in business?”

I am so glad I don’t have to come up with an answer. I have no idea. I haven’t the faintest idea at all.

In the end it was a tweet. I left the bookstore after the holidays and started a new job in January. In February, after a night of shitty sleep, I tweeted, “I have been spending hours lying awake at night doing nothing but feeling this intense shame like a stone in my chest about experiencing wage theft at my last job and I am sincerely just hoping that tweeting about it is enough to make it stop so let’s see if it works.”

A day or two later I got an email. “It’s filtered back to me that the $1000 we gave you to settle the Sunday pay issue,” they said, “didn’t resolve it.” They said some things about how they hadn’t known until I told them. They cut me a check for the back pay that same day.

I didn’t delete the tweet. I don’t know if any of my coworkers got back pay.

A little later, I read an article about the student-run Harvard Shop in Cambridge. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office found that the store owed almost $50,000 in back pay to their employees and $5,600 in fines for violating blue laws. “In this case, we unknowingly did make a mistake in how we were paying our students for Sunday and holiday pay,” the store’s manager said.

I only saw the article because the union I joined at my new job shared it on Twitter.

In Seasonal Associate, Heike Geissler’s barely-fictionalized account of her time working at an Amazon fulfillment center, she writes: “What you and I can’t do, because you and I don’t want to, is to think your employer into a better employer, and to compare these conditions to even worse, less favorable conditions, so as to say: It’s not all that bad. It could be worse. It used to be worse. We don’t do that. You and I want the best and we’re not asking too much.”  

I loved bookselling. I loved it for the same reasons everyone does: the community of readers and booksellers, the joy when someone came back into the store and says I recommended the perfect read, the pride when authors reach out directly to say how much my work meant to them. The free books, the discounts, the advance copies, all of it. And I do believe that bookstores can be forces for social good, insofar as bookscan be forces for social good, which I think they can. It is self-evidently better to get your books from a local store than from Amazon, and for precisely the reasons the IndieBound website gives.

But it’s not enough to Not Be Amazon, and framing bookstores as moral exemplars regardless of how they treat their employees isn’t to the benefit of booksellers. Bookstores “thrive” by hiding how much their booksellers struggle. “Any thriving I do personally is in spite of my store,” one of the booksellers I spoke to said. Working at a bookstore is not as bad as working at an Amazon warehouse; I didn’t walk dozens of miles per day and my bathroom breaks weren’t monitored. But are we willing to let that be the baseline?

*clarification added after publication

[icyxmischief]

Ok, this has been bothering me for a while and I really like your meta so I was wondering what your thoughts on this might be. Sorry if this ends up being super long.

First off, I want to point out that I’m not a Loki apologist insofar as I think that his actions can be justified or excused, but I do think that they can be understood in their context.

Ok, so the people who excoriate Loki for his behavior specifically relating to the Frost Giants and his invasion of New York really irk me, and it took me a long time to be able to pinpoint why. And I think it’s this- they’re judging Loki by human standards. And that makes no sense because he is many things, but human is not one of them.

I’ll start with the Frost Giants, and I’ll preface this with the fact that genocide is horrific (and that’s an understatement). And while it does not come close to justifying his actions, it is important to remember that the Aesir stopped the attempted Jotun genocide of multiple realms and peoples including Asgard/the Aesir and Midgard/humanity. (Obviously the Jotuns had more success on Midgard than Asgard itself.) And I do mean genocide here rather than just conquering because terraforming various realms into frozen wastelands (as they were trying to do with the Casket of Ancient Winters) would kill both humanity (who are incapable of travelling to a different realm) and the Aesir (unless they, in turn, conquer another realm and even then that would suppose that the Jotuns stopped their terraforming with Midgard and Asgard). The resulting lack of agriculture and the collapse of every ecosystem would wipe basically everything out. This establishes the Jotuns as genocidally minded themselves.

Again, this doesn’t justify Loki’s behavior, but it does explain why the Aesir are raised to hate or at least look very suspiciously upon the Frost Giants.

Now consider that the Jotuns have indicated that, given the opportunity, they are ready and willing to reignite conflict. They not only try to steal the casket, but Laufey attempts to murder Odin when he’s in such a position that he cannot possibly defend himself. (The fight between the Jotuns and Thor, Loki, and the Warriors Three is a different situation altogether. That’s more of a bar brawl than anything else.)

Yes, Loki provided those opportunities to the Jotuns. You cannot overlook his involvement in this; however, the Jotuns clearly indicated that they are not past their desire to use the casket to regain political and military power and neither are they above taking revenge on the Aesir for stopping their own genocidal campaign.

Consider the ramifications of both stealing the casket and murdering Odin; had they been successful the Jotuns would have thrown both Asgard itself and the political/military situation of Asgard and the realms it ruled or protected into chaos. The Jotuns are not innocent victims in this situation either historically or *even at the time Thor takes place*. In fact, they are enemy combatants at the time of Thor’s coronation and thereafter.

Once more for the people in the back- this does not justify Loki’s attempt to literally destroy Jotunheim and the entirety of the Jotun population.

It does raise a serious question, though. Loki is not stupid or one to really be controlled by his emotions (influenced by, yes; controlled, no). So why with his extensive training in both politics and military affairs would he think that attempted genocide would be acceptable and even celebrated?

Odin did not, as far as we know, commit genocide himself at any point. I suspect that Odin did not destroy Jotunheim and the Frost Giants because they were clearly defeated and with the casket confiscated they presented no substantial threat. Wiping them out would be a serious breach of ethics and violate the warrior code of Asgard. Where is the honor in destroying a weak, already defeated enemy?

This is why it was important for Loki to goad the Jotuns into reigniting the war. It restores honor to the fighting because to the rest of Asgard it appears as though they have been attacked and it was unprovoked. This reopens the acceptability of open conflict between the two realms and peoples.

Now, this is where things get sticky.

Genocide is acceptable under certain circumstances within the MCU’s Aesir culture.

This is established in The Dark World. Bor did not completely wipe out the Dark Elves, but he thought he had. This destruction is lauded in Asgard. Bor, hailed as a great king, stopped the Dark Elves from destroying creation and in so doing ostensibly wiped them out completely. Not “left the non-combatants alive on Alfheim”- the attack on Asgard after the Aether reappears is the first indication the Aesir have that there are any Dark Elves left. This indicates that there are times when genocide carried out against military enemies is acceptable to these people.

Which means there is cultural and military precedent for Loki’s behavior.

Now, again, consider that the Jotuns have in the past behaved genocidally and have indicated that they are willing to head down that path again by trying to steal the casket and murder Odin. They have aggressed against the Aesir reopening the war. Admittedly it had not progressed far, but conflict was reestablished.

Again, this doesn’t justify Loki’s attempt at genocide. Genocide should not be acceptable under any circumstances as far as humanity is concerned (I won’t get into the politics of whether or not it actually is because I don’t have time to write a dissertation, but I will say that people’s “outrage” about the Khmer Rouge, Mao’s revolution, Stalin’s starvation of the Ukrainians, the continued situation in South Sudan, the Hutus and Tutsis, the Ottomans/Turkey and the Armenians, and recent resurgence of white supremacy in the US indicate that people, broadly, don’t actually care a whole hell of a lot about genocide in practice and reality).

But it does show that Loki’s behavior *was not out of the norm* within Asgardian society and there was *established precedent* for him doing it.

Now, as far as the invasion of New York goes, let me first say that as a human myself, I don’t like it. He killed hundreds, if not thousands of people that day and doomed thousands more to die of illnesses related to the attack in the following years.

But, again, putting his actions into context indicates that his invasion with the Chitauri is not problematic in as much as it targeted humanity. Midgardians are less than in Aesir society. This is clear in Loki’s commentary at the beginning of The Dark World. Hell, he blatantly says he thinks he’s better than us in Avengers. And it’s clear in Odin’s commentary about Jane being equivalent to a goat that he holds no love of humanity. It’s even clear in Thor’s protection of the realm; that in itself is patronizing. Midgard isn’t capable of sufficiently protecting itself, so he swears that he will step up and do it. It’s not that Thor is ill intentioned in doing so, but that he feels the need to do it fairly clearly indicates that the Aesir as a whole consider Midgardians to be lesser beings.

So it’s not that Loki’s attack on New York was a problem because it killed people. After all, as Loki says to Thor, ‘the humans slaughter themselves in droves, while you idly fret.’ Humans are murdering each other all the time and Thor makes no move to stop it. It’s not the human deaths that are a problem.

The issue here is that Loki’s behavior violates two things: the honor code of not attacking a weak/defeated enemy incapable of sufficiently defending itself (see above commentary on the defeated Frost Giants and Odin and Thor’s drive to protect humanity where it cannot protect itself) and the precedent established by both Odin and Thor to protect Midgard.

Allow me to digress for a moment here and expand on an issue with Odin before I get to my ultimate point.

Loki’s attempt at genocide and his invasion of New York are why he gets punished. But it’s not because he tried to kill the Jotuns and it’s not because he killed people. Loki (in Norse mythology) is a master as putting the other gods in their place and reminding them they are not infallible. And, beautifully, he is in the MCU, too. And *that’s* why Odin punishes him.

Loki showed Odin that he was wrong to believe that Thor was ready for the throne. Loki showed Odin that he was wrong to believe that the Frost Giants were no longer a tangible threat. Loki showed Odin *and* Thor they were wrong to believe humanity needed their protection (after all, it was the Council that ultimately actually stopped the invasion by sending the nuke that Tony steered to destroy the Chitauri mother ship).

And so despite the precedent in their culture that says genocide is ok sometimes and despite the fact that Odin also thinks that humans are weak and inferior to the Aesir, Loki had to be punished. But Odin couldn’t say that he was punishing Loki for embarrassing him, which is the only thing he really did wrong as far as the society in which he was raised is concerned.

Now, as far as people judging Loki by human standards go, it’s pretty clear that the reason that they look down on Loki’s behavior is that it violates our own social codes. If you look at sci-fi and fantasy it’s clear that as a species we really believe in human exceptionalism. We’re conceited and think of ourselves as the center of the universe. Again, it was the Council and Tony Stark using a human invention that stopped a massive invasion of technologically superior aliens from conquering Earth. Even in Dr. Strange, it’s a human that outwits an ancient, hugely powerful alien in order in order to control the fate of the planet. Even Peter Quill is half human as he gallivants and ultimately works to save the galaxy. It all centers on Earth and on humans.

As such, we take offense to people thinking of us as inferior.

But I wonder why people don’t often consider the fact that we behave the same way towards other life even here on the planet as the Aesir do with us. With the exception of some vegetarians, vegans, and a few religious and philosophical sects (like Jainism and some Buddhists) we have no qualms about killing animals- that we view as *less than* humans- when it suits our needs. We do it for food, we do it for supplies (like we did/do for whale oil and leather) and we do it for convenience (like when we kill mice or chipmunks or raccoons who get in the trash). We even do it and say it’s for their benefit like when we “thin the herd for its health”.  For the most part, we as a species have no problems disregarding the will and lives of those beings we perceive as being less than us. Why would beings more powerful, intelligent, and technologically advanced than us feel differently?

I suspect that the problem these people have with Loki’s behavior re: the Invasion of New York and the resulting carnage is that it ultimately violates their perception (that is reinforced by society) that humans and humanity are the best. He transgressed by challenging that human maxim.

And I feel that the problem that people have with his attempted genocide, while well founded, is hypocritical. They will hold up his *fictional* attempt at genocide that stems from a place where that genocide would be culturally and militarily acceptable (if distasteful) as horrific while turning a blind eye to *real* and *actual* genocides that have happened and some that are ongoing in and around cultures and societies where it is *not* supposed to be acceptable. They hold his behavior to their theoretical standard of behavior (and not the standard that’s actually allowed in practice).

And none of this takes into consideration the emotional, mental, and physical trauma that Loki experiences across these films which colors his behavior and adds deeper nuance to what he’s doing. Even without that, though, the way he behaves is totally within the realm of acceptable behavior for the society in which he was raised with the exception of challenging and embarrassing Odin, which is what he’s ultimately punished for (and is why his punishment is so very personal).

And that’s the story of how I wrote 2000+ words about the Loki’s behavior in the MCU and fan reaction rather than working on my thesis.

I want to SINCERELY APOLOGIZE for never answering this, because for the past year my life has been very much in transition, but tonight I’m trying to empty my inbox and I found this profoundly elaborate, thoughtful meta in my submissions. 

I haven’t read it fully yet, but when I do I will try to offer comments and feedback. It sounds like you and I have a great number of theories about this character in common already, but I want to read closely for nuance.

For now I am posting it so that people can see the integrity of your work publicized! <3333 

[voltronseatbelts]

this essay doesn’t have a proper intro bc it’s actually just a bunch of brainstorming while writing on 750words dot com but it’s basically about how voltron treats romance and relationships in the show and how certain fans are treated outside of the show, specifically the teenage demographic. just voltron fan culture in general. 

can't believe that voltron ended after six seasons! this is so sad. alexa play the form voltron sequence.

i don't know what to type since i should write like an actual 750 words but i only have like thirty minutes to do so and uuuh i'm not sure what to write. i'm not sure if i want to write prose after watching voltron season seven lmao. wow can't believe i finally watched voltron season seven and keith is straight.

actually that's definitely not the only thing i took from season seven, but it's the one i'm thinking about right now because uh i fucking predicted keith an axca?? uh paralelles???? that's not how u spell that. it's comedic. what i'm saying is i predicted keith and axca and even so they have barely any chemistry and season 7 episode whatever the fuck is like the first time they even had a conversation. what i'm saying is that i'm kind of floored that the romance truly is kind of half-assed in this show.

and i get it! i get it! this is definitely a show about war and it's impact. it's less about individual characters and their romantic relationships (especially that) and more about whatever the fuck atlas and their thick thighs are. u know? i understand that constructing meaningful relationships is kind of thrown to the wayside and not as important as like everything else. and to some extent i agree like romantic relationships aren't everything, and they're definitely not the first thing i think of when i'm constructing my own stories. from an original creator point of view, i understand it. in clearer waters, it's not about the romance as much as it is about power structures, pollution, and whatever else is important. but from a fan point of view (and like also kind of an original creator point of view?) the romantic relationships leave me unfulfilled. i'm wanting. and that's not necessarily a good thing, bc i'm NOT wanting lance and allura and axca and keith, because neither of them are... how do u say.... that well written.

what was i talking about today? in a show about war, about mecha, about something that feels so disconnected from my life (because space u know), romantic relationships in a western culture are a point of connection for the audience, especially an audience composed of teenagers. maybe the creators of VLD didn't expect teenagers (specifically teenage girls, a lot of them part of the LGBT+ community, but i can't be sure without official statistics. my perspective as one of them probably skews the demographic in my eyes). a story about romance isn't one they wanted to tell -- i can see it clearly by how they handle the romances. u know, throwing them in in the last few seasons as just a little bit of an afterthought. with an audience like teenage girls, who are definitely a touch stone for the values of western culture (being the dominant target for a western show like VLD), romantic relationships and general relationships are going to be an important point of interest. space and war is cool and interesting, but the different types of relationships -- familial, romantic, platonic -- are the real stars of the show in my eyes, and in the eyes of a demographic like teenage girls, for whom romance and relationships dominate. it's in high school culture, pop culture, and media and entertainment. whether that's nature or nurture is not the argument right now (altho if i may, i think it's nurture); the point is that that's the CULTURE. and that's why fans of VLD are in such an uproar over relationships and friendships that in many ways aren't satisfying or in character. because while the show is about war, ultimately what's important to a very vocal part of the fan base is the relationships between characters.

another point i can make about that is that in the beginning of the show, seasons 1-3, that WAS important to the show, too. the enormous cast wasn't built up yet, so there was plenty of time to fill, and that time was filled by constructing those meaningful relationships. when the cast grew, the bigger purpose of the show was emphasized -- whether because war was what the show was about all along or whether the cast became too big to focus on individual characters for longer than 1.5 seconds, i don't know. what i mean is that as the show progresses, relationships become less meaningful and the war message more meaningful, and the shift is jarring enough to be noticed. so, uh, i noticed. a lot.

another thing to touch on... is the response of the crew, cast, and others to the uproar over characters and relationships. lol. obviously, again, teenagers (again mostly girls and a lot of the time LGBT+) are an extremely vocal part of the fan base because of our easy use of the internet and its online communities and our social natures. and we've already established that for this demographic characters and relationships are important --  because they're a reflection of the tumultuous time in a teenager's romantic and social life, because they're touchstones of connection in a show that discusses pretty alien subjects. when the crew and cast and others respond in kind with dismay and defense, i think they kind of lose that connection to the fan base. it's a little ridiculous, and i've seen it all before. time and time again, teenage girls are dismissed as a demographic; wanted for their revenue, but ignored in the true nature of their complexity and ability to i dunno function in society.

the writer's room of voltron is all men, all a little older. lauren montgomery is the only woman. it's safe to say that the crew of voltron are a little out of touch with the demographic of teenage girls. actually, fucking everyone is. i've written a goddamn expos about this in my speech and debate club! here, let me find a part of it. i'm gonna quote myself from senior year of high school, bc this is a subject i've thought about a LOT. this expos as a whole is about the psychology and impacts of fans -- this section comparing football fans and one direction fans.

"Well, despite the stark similarities, fan groups are given intense stereotypes and tend to be treated disparately, mostly based on two factors, gender and age. Let’s not beat around the bush here: the factor is sexism.  Jackie Stacey, the author of Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship, analyzes the beginnings of movie fan culture in the 1910’s, depicting fans as an archetype of a “hysterical, starstruck teenage girl”, an image that has actually been around since Ancient Egypt all the way to Freud. Since then, the stereotype has perpetrated through all of pop culture. Think about it, when I began this speech, my mention of One Direction and Harry Styles’ hair style created an immediate emotion of disdain. Football fans have stereotypes too: supportive, confident, and loyal, according to the many NFL fan websites and their commentators. As teen girls, a marginalized group and stereotype, the things we often love - boy bands, pop stars, reality TV - are perceived as less important, and we are looked at as more crazy and obsessive than our equally obsessive football loving men counterparts. It’s the teen girl epidemic: though we are a cornerstone of modern media and economics, our fanaticism is more consistently deprecated than others. But who are we kidding? We both love watching cute men run around in tight pants."

sorry that's a long quote, but i think it's important! and i think it applies here! our interests are perceived as less important, and when our interests coincide with the interests of OTHER more important demographics -- 5-8 y.o. children, 30 y.o. men who watched DOTU – our perspectives are viewed as less important. Hysterical. And our means of communication, e.g. social media like tumblr, and methods of communication, e.g. scream-typing and general teenage culture, don’t do anything to legitimize the teenage girl perspective in the eyes of the creators.

it's probably maybe kind of not this deep. JDS and LM and crew wanted to write a story about war and mecha; they didn't know that their story would resonate so much with the teenage girl demographic, and they didn't know how to deal with that when it came time for their show to turn to it's true purpose and the teenage girls were like "hey wait a minute what about the magic of friendship?" and because we all know how teenage girls are treated, we all know the outcome of this... we can see it in the negative responses to season seven and fucking kacxa, which sounds like my cat barfing in the next room. i kid, but i don't.

anyway, i don't know how to conclude this and i'm so tired because i watched season seven 1.5 times today as well as the pilot, the conjuring, and 28 minutes of boss baby. what i'm saying is that relationships aren't the point of the show and that's cool, but keith and axca literally had like one conversation and now she's in love with his flippy hair, and my first reaction was "not this straight shit again". ah, max, u never learn. it's always the straight shit.

i'm negating my own points by not drawing them into a proper conclusion but i think u can extrapolate what i'm saying. also, when atlas's legs split into two i cried for five minutes. why doesn't atlas have feet. why are mecha so ugly. why doesn't anyone hug lance. He’s been sad since season 4 and it hasn’t been resolved yet. Someone should hug lance.

Oh my fucking god I HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED ABOUT ADAM AND SHIRO. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT? I can’t even think about that right now i’m so mad and everyone else has already talked about that so just trust me adam and shiro are a part of this conversation too. Bc guess what LGBT+ fans are another marginalized demographic wanted for revenue and not perspective! Lol.