#physiological dissonance

[eatmangoesnekkid]

One thing I struggled with when I was in my 20s during my coming-of age-story of blooming into Goddess spirituality as taught by one of my mentors/muses was how semen was healthy for the female body. This is a common way of thinking with those who practice tantra, kama sutra, divine union, ancient temple arts, etc., and what is pushed in "Goddess- centered" and of course heteronormative patriarchal women spaces. However, the most disciplined, healthy, regenerative, mentally-clear men will always practice semen retention, which means that they would NOT release their semen into a woman's body during sex, and would circulate it internally throughout their own body to increase their organs' vitality instead, unless both parties were desiring to procreate a child. The thinking that semen was generally healthy for the female body as also taught in one of my favorite books "The Sexual Secrets of the White Tigress (a book I obviously don't completely agree with but helped to expand my consciousness) never fully added up with me and no one could ever answer my inquiry that "if semen is so healthy for the female body, why do the healthiest, strongest men have to practice semen retention....why would the divine be so cognitive-dissonant..lol?" I would not be surprised if our Western world had a centuries-old, clandestine operation to weaken both the female and the male body so that neither one of us would know our full power and magical potential. And I know many women whose pH balance and vaginal biomes gets out of wack after having penetrative sex with their male lover. There is so much division and anti-male propaganda out there, and that's not what I'm up to nor is it a conversation or line of thinking I would ever participate in. I'm more interested in women and other female-bodied people coming into our full alive power and magic—softening and strengthening our bodies and life force energy, expanding our minds, integrating our shadows, and birthing real authentically beautiful lives of rest, nourishment, regeneration, adventure, and ease that shift the collective energy forward into more love and life-giving resolutions. I wrote this to encourage those with female bodies to question everything, including me, because the "truth," whatever that means, will also influence your entire physiology overtime. What I know is that most of what we have been taught are lies and made up by men and patriarchal-centered women, for the benefit of men. Many of you have asked me private questions around working out and getting back active and strong in your body, but also express how tired and inflame your body is, could this be why? Because what I also know is that there are plenty of men who dump their stress, disappointments in life, rage, anger, and the like into women's bodies when they ejaculate therefore women have to be more intuitive and mindful in choosing lovers. But there is so much unlearning that every human must be willing to do in order to live healthier more emotionally-intelligent lifestyles thereby be awake enough to not continue to make a series of bad decisions in life. Because there are plenty of healthy, dutiful, deeply loving men out there to choose from if/when you are interested. May the veil of conditioning be lifted from the inner eye so that you begin to know who you truly are. Elevate your frequency so that you CAN be more grounded, centered and clear in your choosing. And what's also true is there is valid nuance as well that I won't be able to go into here on this blog at this time. -India Ame'ye, Author

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

Who was The Eleven?

Who was the Eleven?

The Eleven is the eleventh incarnation of a Time Lord known as the Multitude or the Collective, infamous for suffering from a rare and incurable condition called regenerative dissonance.

💥 The Multitude/Collective

Instead of each personality fading away upon regeneration as per usual with Time Lords, the consciousness of each of their past selves remained inside their head. Every regeneration added a new personality to this growing crowd, making them one of the most mentally chaotic Time Lords. Though referred to as the Multitude or Collective at times, most incarnations are individually known by their number.

🧠 The Personalities

Each incarnation of the Multitude had a distinct personality:

The One: Their first incarnation was a member of Gallifrey's High Council, serving as a respected but rigid official until he became fed up and changed to a life of crime.

The Two: After regenerating for the first time, the Two realised they had regenerative dissonance, and spent much of this incarnation trying to get some peace and quiet, sometimes at the expense of others.

The Three: One of the more violent personalities, the Three was bratty and very quick to suggest murder as a solution.

The Four: A very arrogant incarnation, always believing they were the smartest in any room.

The Five: The joker in the pack - a trickster and wisecracker who believed he could kill anyone and everyone.

The Six: By far the most violent, the Six was likely psychotic, with a love for murder and zero care for who or what was lost along the way.

The Seven: Rude and abrasive, this incarnation served as a scientific advisor for the Eleven's schemes, though lacked social tact.

The Eight: The exception to the chaos, able to suppress the other personalities through meditation. The Eight tried to act as a force of reason, but was eventually overwhelmed.

The Nine: A kleptomaniac, obsessed with stealing.

The Ten: Skilled in hypnotism, The Ten used manipulation and mind control.

The Eleven: The dominant personality that led the Multitude after escaping imprisonment on Gallifrey, known for their cunning and calculated chaos.

🛡️ The Twelve and The Union

After the Eleven was defeated, they regenerated into the Twelve, an older female incarnation who looked like your grandmother. Unlike the chaotic Eleven, the Twelve was more controlled, stabilising her regenerative dissonance using a neural implant to suppress the voices of her previous selves. This stability, however, didn't last forever.

In her final form, she became the Union. The Union claimed to have rid herself of the previous voices once and for all, using a deadly weapon to extract degeneration energy from other Time Lords to stabilise her own mind. This caused her previous personalities to suppress and merge, making her greedy, arrogant, insane, and intelligent, yet looked like a sweet little old lady.

We don't know what happened to the Union in the end, but for now we assume they were killed in the Time War.

🏫 So…

The Multitude is one of the most unique and dangerous Time Lords. Despite briefly finding some vague form of stability in later incarnations, the Multitude is a pretty terrifying reminder of the unpredictability of regeneration.

Related:

💬|✨🧠Regenerative Dissonance vs Disassociative Identity Disorder - what's the difference?: How RD and DID compare.

💬|✨🧠Can a Gallifreyan with Regenerative Dissonance lead a healthy, long life?: The potential long-term impact of RD.

💬|✨🧠Could a Time Lord have Regenerative Dissonance with a consistent voice?: Exploring a possible variant of RD and how it might work.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any purple text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired😴

[prototypelq]

The Most Unreliable Narrator I Have Ever Seen

soooooo I had a Cyberpunk-obsessed phase pass recently, and this time Johhny Silverhand's character caught my eye. His story, more specifically, and how... inconsistent he seems, depending on each source.

In the game, Johhny acts like a bastard for most of the game. He panic-rages on his first meeting with V, throws many threats around, but is later beaten into the background with the blocker pills Misty gave to V. Even Johnny's friends' are well, they react Loudly to his return. Y'know, make it known his presence alone provokes a lot of anger from them.

Even during his first appearance, when V gets thrown into Silverhand's memories of his SAMURAI concert, the only real thing V recalls is the all-consuming rage that he felt, which he tried to shout out through the microphone, but it never felt like enough.

And doesn't this sound weird then, that the only thing Johnny does throughout the game after that first meeting is help V out? He learns about the Smasher guy hideout at the docks (he does that through dubious means but that's Johnny for you), he helps V out when the seizures become worse, he calmly agrees to Any decision V makes, despite V clearly Not being in any real state to oppose him in the finale of the game, he plans the whole thing with "Alt" so V can get his body back at Johnny's own expense, from the beginning, and he doubles down on that claim at the end of the game.

Do you see the dissonance? The egoist rockerboy that admitted to using his friends to getting what he wants, and the downright self-sacrificing hero and a friend that is Johnny at the end of the game? People change, sure, but this divide is very massive and too sudden, so I wanted to dig into that. And what I've stumbled upon, with the help of canon Cyberpunk materials like the Red sourcebook (or, more specifically, LayedBackGamers' reading of the canon books and his lore videos on different topics), is that

Johhny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077 is the Most Unreliable Narrator I've Ever Seen.

Count with me here:

Johhny's personality in general. No matter what your interpretation of him his, it's impossible to ignore that Johhny is very much a people person and he exploits that knowledge and charisma to suit his own goals. If you choose to trust him, then you might have already been played.

2) Johhny has been alone, only his lovely self for 50+ years inside the Arasaka chip. Don't ask me how he is still even remotely sane, I haven't got a clue (hopefully the time as a construct without outside stimulation flies differently and he hasn't felt those 50 years in real time). The thing to mention here, however, is that, being alone with your thoughts and emotions for a long time, having nothing else for entertainment, is a great opportunity to rewrite your own memory of events or emotions you've felt.

3) Lack of a body. The aforementioned constant rage, that was the dominant emotion is Johnny's life (before Alt, at least, if Never Fade Away is anything to go by, and I mean, that's literally a love ballad), is a symptom of his PTSD from his too-young years serving in the corpo war, same as his signature silver hand. I'm not a specialist here, but I do know PTSD, especially for war veterans, is a physiological illness just as much as it is a mental one. Johnny's body literally had trouble living normally after that experience, and knowing this bastard - he never managed to treat that. Existing as a personality construct frees him from the many bonuses of being corporeal, but it also free him from the physiological side of PTSD. His day-to-day existence is fundamentally different from that of the Johnny Silverhand that the world knew 50 years ago, so yes, as a 'time traveler' or a source of information and comparison about the 70's and 20's of cyberpunk world Johhny is not a good source.

4) The chip with Johnny is literary inside the head of another person. The characters in game question, multiple times, just which decisions is V making on his own, and which of them might be Johnny's doing. Not consciously, no, but V and Johnny are clearly not your simple neighbours. They are not your 'close friends that start subconsciously copying each other' too. It is quite possible that the chip with Johhny is adapting to the 'hardware' it is running on, so it is specifically implementing parts of V's personality into Johnny, to minimize the 'friction' between the personality and the body it is supposed to inhabit. Everyone say hi to existential horror)

5) How does Soulkiller ever work? Is there data on how much the resulting engram actually resembles the person it tried to copy? How did the process of copying Johnny go? I can answer the last one - very badly.

Death of Johnny is told in excruciating detail in the Cyberpunk sourcebooks. Johnny died on the floor of Arasaka tower, torn in two by a shotgun blast from Smasher. There is no information on how much time it takes Soulkiller to create the engram from the brain, but it better have finished doing that before Johnny's brain started dying from a lack of blood and oxygen, and he clearly didn't have much time either, considering bisection is not the best for bodily fluid preservation, so it's a wonder the engram even works properly. Plus, during the initial heist to steal the chip with Johnny, the chip was damaged further before the idiots decided to stick an unknown harddrive into their heads to preserve it. Basically, it's nothing short of a miracle, that engram-Johnny is actually a whole damn person, that he can function, think and feel properly (well, as much as Johnny can do those things)

It is very sad that V can't talk to Johnny about this, as the man does blame himself over things he hasn't even done, and he had done enough emotional damage to himself and people around him without that kind of burden on top of it.

6) Johnny's memories are literally false. The attentive reader had to pick this up in my previous point - didn't Johnny die in the hands of Arasaka after they interrogated him? Nope. Nope, and I can say that confidently because,

(drumroll please)

Cyberpunk tabletop sourcebooks! Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk universe and the TTRP series of games, has worked closely with CDPR writers during the production of the 2077. He oversaw everything, and he says that 2077 is in the same cyberpunk universe too, it's not an 'alternate reality' or anything.

Johnny Silverhand died while trying to buy time for his friends to escape, from a shotgun shot from Adam Smasher. That's it, he died on that floor, there was noone to interrogate, no rooftop helicopter he ran for.

The sequence of 'memories' we see from Johnny's POV in the game is a mishmash of two different assaults on the Arasaka towers, yes towers there were two of them. There is a great video explaining all the small and Major details Johnny's version of events got wrong, because we have the sourcebooks and the text inside. You may accuse me of holding a 'holy canon' argument ... and well, yeah, this is kind of holy knowledge, as it was written for gamemasters.

Still, some of the things in Johnny's version are Major, and while the media certainly covered the whole story extensively with corpo propaganda (oh, btw, Johnny didn't bomb anything, he probably didn't even know there was a nuke involved, he is literally just a scapegoat), there are some holes that a citizen of this world might know and wish to poke. The aforementioned Two Arasaka towers, or the absence of the legendary solo Morgan Blackhand from Johnny's story. Interestingly enough, there is a radiostation of Maximum Mike in-game, who is actually just pretty much Mike Pondsmith, and he does propose a couple of questions the 'official' version of the attack doesn't cover (like, where would a rockerboy even get a nuke, he might have been popular, but that's not just something you find without military contracts, and that means corporations). Another thing is that since Arasaka owns Soulkiller and has had the engram for a couple of decades, it is quite possible they are the ones responsible for messing with Johnny's memories.

So uh, yeah, Johnny is the Most Unrealible Narrator I have ever seen. Johnny of 2077 is most certainly not the Johnny of 2020's, but this might be a good thing. Maybe the 'real' 2020's Silverhand could never have made the progress the engram did, or become such a good friend and companion for V, or maybe he could have done those things too. We'll never know. I really love this story anyway.

[randomthefox]

So physics is just fucked in Sonic’s world. Supernatural phenomena aren’t just contained to the animal people and their islands. Fall damage is turned off for animal people just as much as it is for humans. Having the insane amount of strength, durability and coordination necessary to bounce off a giant spring meters into the air and landing completely unharmed is just the norm. While most roads are normal, a lot of cities have highways that float in the sky and wind around buildings and go in loopdeeloops because of the dystopian state of urban planning in the Sonic universe lmao.

This does make me wonder. Do you think that the average animal person is just a strong as the average human in the Sonic universe if they’re both capable of some insane physical feats.

Yeah that's exactly it. There is no fall damage in Sonic. Sonic jumped off the Egg Carrier with NO PLAN and just face planted into the fucking jungle ground of the Mystic Ruins and it was fine. Eggman fell from the Lost Hex and cratered into the dirt on the planet below, and he was fine. Gravity and terminal velocity doesn't work the same way in Sonic's world as it works in our world, and everyone is hyper durable. Because they're video game cartoon characters. That's all there is to it.

What's funny is this cognitive dissonance of people refusing to acknowledge this fact means they're leaving money on the table. You know our whole "Sonic doesn't give a fuck if Eggman lives or dies" debate, where I use the ending of Lost World as an example of Sonic trying to murder Eggman? Someone could EASILY refute that by saying "well Sonic knew he would survive that" AND THEY'D BE 100% CORRECT! But they NEVER say that, because they also do not want to acknowledge that this is a stupid video game world with no fall damage where a normal human being could plummet thousands of stories and survive without any issue. That or they also want to pretend that Eggman "doesn't count" as a human and that he functions or is physically constructed differently or somesuch. But it's really funny to me that that is on the table for them but they aren't taking it because of their insistence on applying realistic human world rules to a setting that clearly doesn't follow them.

I think The Rookie from Forces is a good baseline to assess what is typical of the Average Person in the world of Sonic. Because while the Rookie has an arc of rising to become exceptional, at the start of the game the Rookie is just a face in the crowd. So the Rookie in their First Level is probably typical of what the Average Person is physiologically capable of in the world of Sonic. And I don't really see any reason to assume that the average Human person wouldn't be capable of doing what the Rookie does in their first level of Sonic Forces.

We have seen nothing to suggest that Humans cannot do these things. And the construction and features of Station Square a human constructed and occupied City implies that they easily can. Any argument that anyone could ever present to the contrary would rely entirely upon Sonic X or Archie to support their assertions, which as far as I'm concerned simply proves my point.

[incesthemes]

so okay. demon-human relations and logistics.

demonic possession transforms the host physiologically: the body is supernaturally fortified beyond pain and damage limits that humans couldn't typically endure (see: meg was still alive when the demon left her body in 1.22), the blood becomes corrupted and demonic in nature for so long as the demon is inside of the host (see: the nurse demon that sam drained in 4.22 went dormant inside her host body, but the blood was still demonic and sam was able to use it to power up)

demonic blood can be introduced into a human body via consumption, which induces psychic powers. the nature of the psychic powers seems to stem from innate demonic abilities, implying that there are some demons who, while unrepresented in canon, can see the future or control minds (at least i can't think of any demons who can do this, and the fandom wiki doesn't list these powers). other powers exhibited by the special children are represented by various other demons to some extent. (it's unknown and unexplored what the relation between demon-induced psychics and naturally born psychics are, though this is really something i'd love to think about more deeply.)

consuming more demon blood causes these powers to, allegedly, become stronger, though "accepting" the powers alone allows them to blossom on their own (the powers exhibited by sam in seasons 4/5 are incongruent with his powers in 1/2, hence allegedly. it's possible that the discrepancy between the seasons 1/2 powers and the seasons 4/5 powers have to do with the quality of blood sam is drinking: azazel is a prince of hell and therefore has a wider range of abilities, and sam consuming just a few drops of his blood would generate large enough amounts of power to tide him over 23 years; meanwhile, lower ranking demons have limited abilities, and so sam would need to consume more of their blood to achieve only a fraction of the power he got from azazel. just one theory to perhaps bridge the dissonance).

anyway, consuming a massive amount of blood causes the body to become demonic in nature, evidenced by the black sclera over sam's eyes in 4.22 when he kills lilith. the more demon blood that enters the body, the more demonic a person becomes.

which would imply then that it's possible to turn a human into a demon through consumption of demonic blood alone rather than the traditional centuries-of-torture-in-hell thing. season 8 also introduces the possibility for this demonization to be reversed: human blood replaces demon blood and thus humanizes the demon, in a perversion of the original concept.

this works conceptually in the way that demons are originally conceived as just corrupted human souls. this is of course contradicted by later retcons of the lore (8.02 specifically, and perhaps other episodes but i can't think of them at the moment), but the original lore allows this ebb and flow to work rather seamlessly: a corrupted soul can become uncorrupted, and an uncorrupted soul can become corrupted, all via the consumption or injection of blood containing the target physiology.

all this to say, it's reasonable within the show's own worldbuilding that dean could have saved sam and cured his whole demon blood thing by feeding him his own human blood.

[skaldish]

Is it dangerous to trance too much?

Ultimately, trance is a form of thinking, and our brains are designed to think. Thinking a lot doesn't physiologically damage us (I'd be fucked lol), but we can use thinking and trancework in maladaptive ways (avoidance, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, etc).

As long as you keep tabs on what makes it a healthy and positive experience, and make adjustments to keep it that way, you shouldn't have a problem.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

I had a class earlier and it made me laugh inside. basically the teacher was saying that some politicians in south America were saying that they were indigenous (when they weren't) and they faced a backlash since they couldn't auto-determinate themselves as being part of an indigenous group.

but when it's a man saying that he is a woman, he receives no backlash and we have to accept it even though we can see he is a man.

anyway I'm a babyradfem and I'm starting to become gender critical so it just made me laugh because the cognitive dissonance is real

i think the argument is that you cant be part of an ethnicity/people/culture if you were not born into it but since there is no coherent culture to being female/male its possible to change sex. or something. but its funny because race, ethnicity, culture etc are a lot more flexible concepts than sex. actually trying to determine race can lead to shit like phrenology while determining sex is done with one look in 99 % of cases. even intersex conditions fall neatly into two categories. and then theyre like „well its transgender now not transsexual“ okay but gender are norms, expectations, etc based on sex; you could say that race is your physiology (like sex) and race is also a concept (roles and bias assigned based on physiology). so culturally it should be possible to change race if its possible to culturally change gender. you know what i mean? its super silly.

[the-koiking-pond]

"stamps" update!

Physiologically, they're in rough shape, as could be expected. There's ankylosing spondylitis, aortic inflammation, proprioceptive dissonance, some organ bizarreness that we don't even have a name for... So, all in all, entirely typical for a dracozolt, which is what "stamps" has been temporarily registered as for everyone's sanity. Atypically for a dracozolt, which to be fair they aren't one, "stamps" has venom glands! Everywhere! All claws and plates contain venom glands, but not the muscle sheaths that would control the venom output. In short, poor "stamps" is constantly oozing venom all the time. Fortunately, as a poison-type (definitely), they ought to be immune to their own venom. Even if I'm not.

We've decided not to do any psychological assessments until after at least a week of anti-inflammatories and other quality of life improvements.

@prof-lemon Do you have any blueprints for that elevated bed?

[ryttu3k]

Thoughts on His Dark Materials s3.03 and 3.04, The Intention Craft and Lyra And Her Death! Spoilers for the rest of The Amber Spyglass.

BITCH I CRIED. A LOT. I mean I 100% knew I was going to, but holy shit pain. Every time Pan sort of reached towards the boat, at one point nearly wobbling off the dock... Lyra screaming... the conversation they had beforehand, both clearly scared out of their minds... ow ;_;

Related: World of the Dead looked oppressive as hell. The yellow-tinted light was super eerie, the mechanical way everyone acted, the fact that there's bureaucracy even after you die. Lyra's Death wasn't as I expected (wasn't he male, originally?) but still very cool. Dissonant serenity, I think the phrase is.

Mrs Coulter was goddamn incredible in these two episodes. She's still ridiculously charismatic even when literally on trial, she's playing the Magisterium, they're playing her right back, and honestly her genuine terror at the end of episode 4 was just... kind of horrifying to see. God it's going to be interesting as hell to watch the rest of her arc!

Enjoyed the reforging scene, Will focusing on what's important and just... going to Lyra. Oh sweetheart ;_; It does take away from Iorek's actual... skill, though, and how intricate the scene is in the book. He's not just A Big Bear In Armour, he's an expert metalworker! There's a fun note in the subreddit, at least, about how the CGI team heard 'polar bear performing advanced metallurgy' and just noped out, which. Honestly valid. I'm not sure how you would make that scene look good, haha.

And Lyra and Iorek's reunion was adorable, and I love how Pan just instantly switched back to Arctic fox form. Gotta match the big friend! Do kind of wish we had heard more on why the bears were moving, alas. The ramifications of Asriel's actions and all.

Speaking of which: Asriel you scary mofo. tfw Mrs Coulter appears to have more morals (and parental instincts).

A cute moment - after Lyra and Will's argument, Lyra apologises (at Pan's prompting). Will sort of... brushes it off. Lyra instantly says, "Fine, then I'm not sorry." Will's lips twitch in a smile just for a moment.

We finally saw a Mulefa!! No diamond-shaped physiology, but I can understand why they didn't want to go with that. Very interested to see how they handle the budding communication with Mary, the wheelpods, all of that.

There's some interesting commentary going around about Lyra's selfishness in her decision to go to the Land of the Dead - that she's risking everyone, her own soul included, in wanting to go just to... say sorry? To not accept Roger's death and move on? (Some people are saying it seems a lot more callous coming from a sixteen-year-old instead of a twelve-year-old too, which, okay, valid.) And I don't... really see that as an issue. Lyra is flawed! She can be downright unlikeable sometimes! She's combative, rude, and stubborn, and yeah, she is selfish!

This is a good thing, in terms of writing. Characters are allowed to have flaws. Lyra is a flawed character, who wants to absolve her own guilt in her involvement in Roger's death. She's not acting because of a prophecy that she'll end Death, she does that more or less by accident, and she does that by acting in accordance to her whims. I feel it's very much in line with how the prophecy is phrased, first by Serafina then later by Dr Lanselius:

"There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it."

Later:

"The witches have talked about this child for centuries past. Because they live so close to the place where the veil between the worlds is thin, they hear immortal whispers from time to time, in the voices of those beings who pass between the worlds. And they have spoken of a child such as this, who has a great destiny that can only be fulfilled elsewhere - not in this world, but far beyond. Without this child, we shall all die. So the witches say. But she must fulfil this destiny in ignorance of what she is doing, because only in her ignorance can we be saved."

Emphasis mine. She can't know she's meant to do all these higher-level prophesised destiny shit or it'll fail. Lyra can't be tempted by Mary knowing that she's being tempted. She can't go to the Land of the Dead with the intention of ending destiny, she has to go on her own, because of her own intentions, or the prophecy doesn't work.

So, yeah. Lyra is selfish. But she has to be - if she knew what she was meant to be doing on a worldswide scale, it wouldn't work in the first place. She has to be a little girl who wants to say goodbye and to apologise to the boy she thinks she killed, acting on her own desires, or the whole story falls apart. She can’t fulfill a destiny to end destiny on purpose.

Anyway. Flawed protagonists, man <3

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

🤔🧬 Could post-War Time Lords have biological hangups from the conflict?

We're diving into the theoretical side of Gallifreyan biology for this week's exploration. The extensive biological manipulation and alterations experienced during the Time War raises a question: Could modern Time Lords face unique biological "hangups" or adaptations in their physiology or psychology as direct result of the Time War?

🧠 Psychological Echoes: It's conceivable that post-traumatic stress isn't just a psychological shadow for Time Lords but embedded into their very biodata. Triggers - like temporal anomalies - might not just stir memories but could trigger involuntary physical responses, potentially haunting Time Lords throughout their remaining lives.

🔁 Regenerative Anomalies: The War's impact might have led to regenerations where Time Lords' bodies subconsciously adapt to defend against temporal anomalies - anticipating a threat that's no longer there.

🕰️ Time Perception Alterations: Some Time Lords might be affected by dissonance in time perception, finding linear time very challenging. This altered perception could lead to difficulties in interacting with other species and navigating fixed points in time.

🛡️ Enhanced Temporal Immunity: On the upside, continuous exposure to the time vortex during the War might have helped Time Lords resist temporal anomalies' physical/psychological effects. This resistance could shield them from illnesses that once would have once put them in bed eating chicken soup for a week.

🔗 Symbiotic Nuclei Sensitivities: The bond between a Time Lord and their TARDIS might have intensified during the war, making the symbiotic nuclei overly sensitive. Stress or damage to their TARDIS could manifest as particularly intense physical discomfort - or conversely, utter euphoria - creating a more symbiotic (but also more dependent) relationship between a Time Lord and their TARDIS.

These are, of course, just a few theories. Have you noticed any odd behaviours in your post-War Time Lord that could be related?

Gallifreyan Biology for Tuesday by GIL

More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[leebird-simmer]

Contemporary Contextual Perspectives

Contextual Theories

- Learning occurs in a system meaning there’s an interaction between individual and the environment.

- Contextual factors interact and influence learning:

Individual factors

Immediate environment (classroom, peers)

Broader cultural factors

Emotions:

Physiological components (e.g. arousal)

Sensations

Cognitions

Behaviors

Emotional Regulation

- Strategies to change how an individual is feeling

- You can’t just decide to change your emotions, at least not directly/immediately. However, you can influence or redirect your emotions by changing thoughts and behaviors.

- Changing thoughts:

Considering another way of looking at something

Reducing rumination or other unhelpful thoughts

- Changing behaviors:

Participating in more pleasant activities

- How can you model emotional regulation for students?

Emotion’s Impact on Learning & Behavior

Arousal level (increased)

Depth & quality of thinking & reasoning (cognitive dissonance, disequilibrium)

Behavior & performance (bidirectional)

Anxiety & Working Memory

Anxiety: feeling of uneasiness and apprehension about a situation; may be vague and generalized.

- Has both cognitive aspect and physiological aspect

- Anxiety can be facilitating or debilitating.

- Influenced by:

Skill level

Personality

Trait anxiety

Task complexity

Mathematics Anxiety:

Low self-efficacy for math

Negative emotional reactions to math

Results in lower grades & less persistence

Testing Anxiety:

Related to evaluative nature of exams

Focused on other’s judgment of you

Results in poor learning & retrieval

Stereotype Threat:

- Individuals from stereotypically low-achieving groups perform badly on tests simply because they’re aware of the stereotype.

- Results in worrisome thoughts, physiological responses, poor performance & less pursuit into these career paths.

Bioecological Systems Theory:

- The child is an individual.

- There are microsystems in the child’s immediate surroundings, and these microsystems influence one another.

- Exosystems in day-to-day contexts that include people and institutions indirectly influencing the child.

- Macrosystems includes the beliefs, values, and behaviors of society.

Situated Learning: learning that happens in particular contexts or environments that usually help the learner more easily apply concepts/skills.

Distributed Cognition: being able to offload some of the cognitive load to facilitate learning more effectively.

Physical objects (e.g. calculator, glance card)

Concepts, strategies, equations, other cognitive tools (e.g. calendar)

People (e.g. brainstorming)

Authentic Learning: tasks similar or identical to those that people will eventually encounter.

Learning communities: communities of practice, cognitive apprenticeships, etc.

Culture as Context

- Behaviors and beliefs that are passed along from older members to newer members in a social group

- May be concrete or abstract

- May be larger geographic areas (North America) or as small as one’s home

Different Types of Group Work

Discussions: usually topic driven, whole class involved, teacher led, hard to direct or take notes on.

Reciprocal teaching: usually a skill like understanding, teacher and students take turns demonstrating a skill step.

Cooperative learning: usually in groups of students working on a common goal, teacher-organized, but student-run.

Peer tutoring: a more advanced students helps another.

Community of learners: Everyone in the class, including the teacher, is learning.

[shiyorin]

This is inspired by loony

Ioony (Alpharius/Omegon x Reader)

TW: Yandere.

Alpharius watch in the shadows as usual, observing all yet revealed to none. His enhanced senses tracked each movement as plans took shape. Yet occasionally, amidst the shadows and intrigue, something... Intrigued him on a more individual level. 

You entered. Alpharius allowed his gaze to linger as you conferred softly with others, noting angles of your form, subtle nuances in tone and gesture.

Within his mind, analysis churned as always, strengths, weaknesses, potential vulnerabilities if turned against the Imperium. But in deeper recesses, another current stirred, one strange after millennia walled away from humanity's emotional tides.

He isolated each impression, the subtle play of muscle beneath skin as you moved, each minuscule alteration in breathing or posture conveying or concealing intent. Alpharius' psyche absorbed such intricacies effortlessly, yet analyzed them now with a frame altered.

Attempting simulation, he induced within himself the biochemical surges, corresponding physiological shifts. But like shaping smoke, the emotions themselves would not hold form no matter how perfectly rendered were their vehicles of expression. Unstable feelings gradually turned into something colder, paranoia?

That which watching you could only be described through antiquated, inexact concepts. Concepts like...love.

Was this what humans meant by "love"? An emotion so destabilizing it blurred clarity into chaos? Alpharius scoffed, even as uncertainty gnawed within. Only love, that illogical emotion create by the dissonant harmony your presence wrought. 

Your role here was unclear, its import unfathomed. But Alpharius suspected you will perceived that. How delicious it would be, to draw you in, see understanding kindle behind you at last.

Alpharius watched you leave. Your movements contained a lithe grace at odds with lethality honed within. A flickering spark awaiting tinder, or perfectly balanced steel? This thoughts pulsated, probably an impulse. Strange fruits of idleness, best pruned. 

He trailed your footsteps, mind alight with questions unasked. For now, it must remain a fleeting thought alone. But perhaps one day, when intrigues allowed... A word, a glance exchanged in passing, a meetings in somewhere. Entwining like a small diversion.

The thought pleased Alpharius, for the moment. He would let it linger awhile, hold it close, to be pondered in idle watches or drawn forth when solace was required.

A rare blossom amid plots marching to destruction, worthy of nurturing in ways even he did not comprehend.

***

You sat across from him as always, but you can't see him, or you can't know of his presence. And he still likes that, still and focused yet revealing nothing. A shadow, answering to one alone. 

Omegon watched you, worlds of speculation churning behind his obscured eyes. What did he truly see, this person shrouded in impenetrable calm? Could any mind withstand your assessing gaze, devoid of judgement yet probing deeper than fleeting surface?

Blankness sways, festering in the back of his throat. Your presence covered, enveloping, concealing all thoughts from intrusion. On your own, revealing nothing to avoid complication, choice or consequence. A clean existence, swimming placid as still waters while worlds collided around your edges.

You moved as through life were a dance, each gesture perfectly calibrated. Detached, you observed all yet revealed nothing, flickering nigh and gone like a little flame amidst machinery of war. 

Omegon was not one for fanciful words, but he understood their allure. With each glimpse of you passing by, he felt uncertainty stir within, a weak flame twitching fitfully to life at your nearness before extinguishing once more.

He did not need such complications. His works demanded perfect singularity of thought and action, without room for sentiments left unsaid. But in your gaze he sensed an invitation, to abandon identity, bleed away all traces of self until only nothing remained between him and you.

But reality persists, as do its obligations. For Alpharius or Omegon, duty must always come first. And in that, perhaps, lay fullest contiguity with the mysterious called you. 

Omegon kept his silence, locking away this vagrant fancy deep within where even Alpharius could not discern its shape. For one who lives divided can ill afford distraction, no matter how fleeting or sincere the source.

If a seed of something more lingered in the fragility of heart, such trivialities held no place in their meticulous design.

[quietbluejay]

Wolfsbane 4

pfff you know i was almost expected it to be ahriman's wine again so time for leman to tell the story of how he got that spear

with this level of casualties how did fenris not become the mess that olympia did especially because their population is a lot lower like obviously they wouldn't have been able to organize resistance in the same way but well i guess they're used to a higher mortality rate for one [i was informed re: SW geneseed working on adult men] that's actually worse in this scenario since they're taking the adults as well as the kids

and this is right at the beginning so losing a tithe of your people to feed the maw of the imperium's wars would be very new i don't see rebellion because that's not how fenris works but more just…people not showing up, fading into the backwoods which is 99% of fenris anyways hm we know they're at 40k now and that's reduced, I don't remember if it said the specific casualty figure earlier so we don't know what's normal for the Space Wolves i'm going to use 40k as a general number, so that's losses of 13k does the SW process have a better success rate than the average? anyways okay figuring out these numbers is a fool's errand i guess and also making population estimates for Fenris other than "very low, comparatively" i guess i'll put a pin in this :<

anyways emps did a ceremony for the spear

we still don't get to why it creeps out russ im continuing to chew on russ and his relationship with the emperor and the imperium and i think it's actually not as farfetched as everyone thinks to have him rebelling it's easier to pull off than dorn we get a little exposition on primarchs and sleep basically they have other physiological processes that handle what sleep does in normal humans but russ slept and dreamed that night

I feel like maybe I've been doing Russ and what I've been calling his cognitive dissonance a disservice, I think what Haley was trying to go for was - anyone seen that Narnia post floating around recently, about "even in your world, a burning ball of gas is just what a star is made of, not what it is"? Anyways, I think he was going for that behold his dream oh wow this is a long sequence

anyways he's surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of skeletons of his warriors

they fought kva wants to know how he won russ didn't win he woke up while they were still fighting he woke up because Horus showed up in his room Russ thinks Horus might have saved his life there lol

they got along okay, but russ picked up on Horus' eldest kid with nose out of joint problem

first off, I'm rolling my eyes re: primarch 2 and also Russ' pretensions here

i was also thinking about how the Space Wolves get so het up about being called Space Wolves like, it's not that bad a name, Russ did in fact come up with it and then it stuck and he later regretted it you guys get all this special treatment but you need to have a special name as well? i realize "it's not that bad a name" is a matter of opinion

anyways i am continuing to hold to the opinion i formed of russ (and magnus) in A Thousand Sons I hope they die I hope they both die man car door hook hand

Russ:

kva: you're gonna die holding the spear so he never talked to any of the wise old dudes about this before i guess??

[discussion re: disappointment in not getting into the pathos of confronting your brother happened here]

maybe we'll get some pathos out of the actual confrontation the book is young wait

it's 40% through and most of it we've spent: loken: this is a bad idea russ: i'm doing it anyways space wolves: this is a bad idea russ: i'm doing it anyways rune priests: this is a bad idea russ: i'm doing it anyways dorn: this is a bad idea russ: i'm doing it anyways wait also malcador: maybe this is a bad idea. maybe not. russ: it's a bad idea, and i'm doing it anyways valdor: this is a bad idea russ: i'm doing it anyways we haven't even gotten to fenris! the entire. first half of russ' part of the book can be summarized as "every single one of these meetings could have been a singular email"

this is not Haley's finest like i've definitely read so much worse from BL, even just in the Horus Heresy (…mostly in the Horus Heresy) but this doesn't hold a candle to the Perturabo book then again I honestly think that one is the best 30k era book I've read period

i think some of it is also, you can kind of tell when he's genuinely passionate about what he's writing because there is a noticeable uptick in quality and another part is I think this was written a lot earlier

1s let me check timeline like this is technically proficient, more so than Valedor which was written earlier, he's definitely better at craft oh geez he was writing this concurrently with Dark Imperium the Perturabo book was written before this, huh okay yeah this tracks, Valedor was 2014, Pharos was 2015, they were both rougher craft wise

i think he was putting most of his effort into Dark Imperium and kind of phoning this one in like there is some crunchy stuff with russ to be sure, that's the kind of character-driven stuff haley shines at and i think he liked writing the Cawl bits more, they've got a shine to them still not sure what that is going to do with anything lol anyways onwards

i forgot because i got sidetracked but i was going to make a joke about this do you remember the scene in the MTMTE comic in the slaughterhouse arc where they find a coffin floating in space and it's Rodimus and he asks someone to cut his arm off so they can avoid that future because the him in the coffin has both arms anyways that's what this reminds me of

lmao the spear is The Thing That Would Not Leave old mr russ had problems of his own he had a creepy spear that wouldn't leave his home he tried and he tried to give the spear away he gave it to a man, and left for far away

but the spear came back the very next day the spear came back, they thought it was a goner but the spear came back, it just wouldn't stay awayyyy

if you're not familiar with the canadian film board animation for The Cat Came Back, I highly recommend it

back to cawl hehehe the aspergillum love that thing and so did the old priest at my parents' parish context if you're not familiar but at easter mass (and at every high mass), the priest takes a bowl of holy water and the aspergillum and goes around the church flicking holy water at everyone with it sometimes the priests have such glee in flinging water so Cawl is inspecting more than 700 thallax how mind numbing the thallax are all brains in jars and cawl calls them all "he" regardless of whether they were women or not, he's got no freaking clue cawl: it doesn't matter when you only have a brain but the domina summons him so there's an ominous meeting that cawl is late for they're viewing a hologram of another mechanicum (or -us, it's unclear which) dude who is very ominous feeling and heavily altered oh that's fun, the hologram is described as being very like star wars ones down to being blue haha but someone is doing something spooky and the resolution is now wayyy too good and in full colour

as i expected from that description

the viceroy orders them to turn off the projection in a classic move, they can't stop it it's already disconnected oooooooooo spooky~ cawl smells something bad literally Sota's trying to talk them to joining her side of the schism "rotten meat and blood" is anyone surprised i'm not and now a message from our sponsors sota-nul starts a recording of Kelbor-Hal Kelbor-Hal: hey y'all i have a sexy new treaty with horus that gives us all the stuff we wanted that the emperor wouldn't Kelbor-Hal: also the emperor sucks kelbor-hal brings up the stuff about the fabricator-general being chosen by the imperium and that this is the sign they'll lose their independence forever join with me! he says

sota-nul is back, it's surrender or die

you know what, good for them time for a theological argument! viceroy: that's forbidden love science! sota: forbidden by the emperor!

honestly this book is doing a better job of making the mechanicus appealing than like literally anything else i've seen about them i skipped a whole bunch of theology squabbling because it really was getting repetitive to screenshot but it was glorious anyways sota leaves on an ominous note, time to cleanse the area cawl interrupts the domina again lmao cawl: so why would the warmaster even want to come here

cawl: why is she leaving so fast cawl: suspicious

the space wolves are out of the warp! the warp didn't want to let them go lol they got back just in time for hot wolf summer

great guys but we knew this already bjorn gets repeatedly mentioned as hanging out with people who really outrank him lol he really is russ' emotional support rando bjorn finds an old friend

TWO THIRDS that's Iron Warriors numbers empty chairs at empty tables where my friends are dead and gone bjorn doesn't hear any of the stories from his buddy or the new kids but he compliments them and is like "…yeah i gotta go somewhere" friend: don't be a stranger bjorn is an introvert he's not a big fan of being packed in cheek by jowl with all the other wolves bjorn is now drunk the two sentences are related

time for kva to bug him

bjorn feels sorry for himself some more so he's going to be with russ for the fancy ritual

yeah honestly this book had a strong start but it's really been dragging i just don't really feel like starting the next chapter

getting some tolkien echoes it's the solstice they're up in the mountains this entrance will only become visible on this day it's a trip to the "glowing heart of the world" so where's the thrush lol so russ is going to go into the land of the fair folk i guess

kva tells russ his True Name the one he would have gotten if he'd been raised by the emperor russ goes to the door

dun dun dunnn you know what we could have had an out of place FMA reference here. I'm glad we didn't

okay this book has started to drag which is why i keep putting it off but the sooner i get through this the sooner i get to see what Cawl is up to enough has been dropped that i'm pretty sure it's something at beta-garmon but if it is it'll be completely divorced from russ' plot? hmnmm is russ gonna see cawl in his vision quest perhaps cawl is what he needs to go after horus so russ is suddenly in a winter landscape

we get a bit of classic Haley prose

so russ notes he's wearing an outfit made entirely from wolf skins which is, notably what the trickster wears in the saga gee russ why do you get to be odin AND thor russ sees a lone wolf and starts chasing it russ is being physically pressed in a way that's very hard to do to a primarch many things are possible in this kind of space the wolf is now a man wolf it goes into a log house Russ goes into the hall and the next chapter is "The court of the Erlking"

they're all eating human meat and drinking mjod

this whole vision quest feels a little weird for the setting, like it doesn't quite fit the setting and the book Everything Else Is Daemons But Not The Fenris Warp Spirits which these guys are c'mon they're eating human flesh and they're supposed to be neutrals?? I know it's not going to go this way, but it kind of feels like it should have been a daemon reveal, you know? it's set up kind of like the tutelaries (…did i remember the term right) the king wolf man has black fur he completely ignores Russ

lmaoo

Russ calls out "My lord!" but they all ignore him like he's not there then he howls they all turn to look at him Russ asked for guest right, the wolf erlking mocks him also belatedly, i am once again reminded that Haley primarily feels like a fantasy author Russ gets his guest right and immediately gets offered some human flesh luckily, bluejay is saved from having to read another book with cannibalism as Russ gets out of it he gets offered a drink and has to take it, it's completely frozen

anyways he asks a favour from the wolf king, he wants an answer to a question wolf king decides to set before him 4 challenges, he has to pass 1

if he loses all 4 his soul belongs to them juuust local special warp spirits~ he already lost the first challenge because he didn't drink all the mjod

it's really pulling from a lot of folklore and fairy tales rather than regular 40k metaphysics like this is absolutely classic, i'll…i dunno, take a picture of my tomato plants and post them on the server if i'm surprised by any of the challenges the next one is wrestling the wolf king's agèd mother 3 bouts russ is going to lose this one

the wolf king calls her "the worst killer of man" russ is like "i'll be gentle" he loses, quelle surprise

challenge 3 is move the shadow wolf before the throne he's going to fail this one as well

so russ has dominion over all wolves and he tries to exercise it over this one you'll never guess what happens russ does get to pet the giant doggie

he fails erlking: you failed 3, i'm calling it all the wolves jump up to attack him again this must be a completely new experience to a primarch lol he challenges the king for the fourth contest erlking: you're gonna lose but ok. name all the four challenges first one was the sea, i took have read norse myths yep second one is old age yep okay the wolf i didn't get it was Death

it was perfectly fair it's not their fault you overestimated your strength in the halls of powers beyond human ken and didn't try to set limits on the challenges

or well, perfectly unfair lol death, the sea, old age, a primarch or a regular man has to grapple equally with them though i mean, the old age happens a lot slower

finally the erlking asks him to name him it's time for a persona 4 moment! because yep, it's Russ

everything is literally falling apart a human rips his way out of the wolf skin iiiits Russ' identical twin

time for another test he's facing the him he could have been if he had been raised on Terra

I mean it's not actually russ it's what russ thinks he would have been, that's my read

[ericosantos]

Title: The Detrimental Effects of Making Assumptions Without Seeking Truth on Mental Health

Introduction:

Assuming things without finding the truth can have severe consequences on a person's mental health. This blog will explore the scientific evidence and real-life cases that demonstrate how this behavior can lead to long-term damage.

Scientific Example:

A study conducted by researchers at Stanford University found that individuals who frequently make assumptions without verifying facts have higher levels of cortisol, known as the stress hormone, in their bodies. This physiological response to constant uncertainty and misinterpretation can contribute to chronic stress, anxiety, and even depression over time. Further research conducted at Harvard University revealed that individuals who consistently make assumptions without seeking the truth are more likely to experience cognitive dissonance. This internal conflict between their assumed beliefs and actual reality can lead to persistent feelings of confusion, frustration, and emotional distress. Over time, this cognitive dissonance can contribute to a decline in mental well-being and overall psychological health.

Case Study 1:

Sarah, a young professional, always assumed that her colleagues disliked her because they never invited her to lunch. Without seeking the truth, she isolated herself at work, leading to feelings of loneliness and worthlessness. Eventually, Sarah's assumptions took a toll on her mental health, resulting in severe anxiety and depression.

Case Study 2:

John, a college student, often assumed that his professors were intentionally trying to make his life difficult with challenging assignments. Without seeking clarification or feedback, John spiraled into a cycle of self-doubt and negative thinking. Over time, his assumptions led to increased stress, poor academic performance, and a decline in overall well-being.

Case Study 3: Emma, a high school student, often assumed that her friends were intentionally excluding her from social gatherings. Without verifying the facts or communicating her concerns, Emma began to withdraw from her peer group, leading to feelings of isolation and alienation. As her assumptions went unchallenged, Emma’s mental health deteriorated, resulting in heightened anxiety and a sense of disconnection from those around her.

Case Study 4: Michael, a middle-aged professional, frequently assumed that his partner was unhappy in their relationship based on subtle cues and assumptions. Without open communication and seeking the truth, Michael’s unfounded beliefs led to increased tension and distance in their relationship. Over time, this strain took a toll on Michael’s mental health, contributing to feelings of inadequacy and a pervasive sense of unease.

The Long-Term Ramifications: The long-term ramifications of assuming things without finding the truth extend beyond individual mental health. Unchecked assumptions can create barriers to effective communication, hinder personal growth, and perpetuate a cycle of misunderstanding and conflict in various aspects of life. Furthermore, the cumulative effects of unfounded assumptions can erode trust, foster a negative worldview, and impede the development of healthy coping mechanisms, ultimately impacting one’s resilience and ability to navigate life’s challenges.

The Long-Term Impact:

Making assumptions without finding the truth can damage a person's mental health in various ways. It can lead to a distorted perception of reality, fuel negative thought patterns, strain relationships, foster self-doubt and insecurity, erode self-esteem, and contribute to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. The cumulative effects of unchecked assumptions can create a vicious cycle of emotional distress and cognitive dissonance that is challenging to break free from.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the evidence from scientific research and real-life cases clearly demonstrates the detrimental effects of assuming things without seeking the truth on mental health. It is essential to practice critical thinking, seek evidence, and communicate effectively to avoid the damaging consequences of unfounded assumptions. By cultivating a mindset of curiosity, openness, and willingness to verify information, individuals can protect their mental well-being and foster healthier relationships with themselves and others.

[antimirobialresistance]

The Solution (Antibiotic Stewardship)

Antibiotic Stewardship refers to the efforts in doctor's offices, hospitals, care facilities, and other health care settings to ensure antibiotics are used only when necessary and appropriate. Below are the core elements of antibiotic stewardship.

Enhancing Infection and Control

Antibiotic stewardship programs have shown to improve patient outcomes, reduce antimicrobial agent related adverse events, and decrease AMR. It's important that all clinicians depend on evidence-based IPC interventions to reduce demand for antimicrobial agents by preventing certain infections in the first place.

Controlling Source Control

Source control encompasses all measures undertaken to eliminate the source of infection, reducing bacterial inoculum and correct or control anatomic derangements to restore normal physiologic function. Source control generally involves drainage of abscesses or infected fluids, debridement of necrotic or infected tissues and control of the source of contamination.

Prescribing Antibiotics When They Are Truly Needed

Nowadays, people use antibiotics for almost anything, and it's unfortunate that some doctors go along with it. While antibiotics can be life-saving (quite literally) when treating BACTERIAL infections (not viral), if used inappropriately or misusing it, it can become dangerous for the patient as their causing more harm than good to themselves.

Prescribing Appropriate Antibiotics with Adequate Dosages

An ineffective or inadequate antimicrobial regimen is one of the variables more strongly associated with unfortunate outcomes in critically ill patients.

Educating Staff

Education is important to every ASP. Diagnostic uncertainty, fear of clinical failure, and time pressure. Due to cognitive dissonance (recognizing that an action is necessary but not implementing it), changing prescribing behavior is extremely challenging. Efforts to improve educational programs are thus required and this should preferably be complemented by active interventions such as prospective audits and feedback to clinicians to stimulate further change.

In conclusion, practicing antibiotic stewardship helps bettering patient care, reduced antibiotic use, and can help with cost-effective health care.

[errantabbot]

Riffing on Resurrection

And so we’ve arrived at Easter, the ultimate event in the life of the Christian church, commemorating the resurrection of Jesus after his death and burial.

This day is marked by acclamations that “Christ is risen,” which has been Christianity’s foundational lynchpin for over 2,000 years. And while visions and hopes of a return of Christ (following his resurrection and ascension) have waxed and waned from literal and imminent to metaphorical and even remote in present day, the resurrection is an event that most Christians cling to as both historical and physical, even at the expense of cognitive dissonance.

While the bodily resurrection of Christ is certainly accessible to the realm of the imaginal, an important domain of human experience wherein those truths that may only be conveyed symbolically can be explored and experienced, the fact remains that resurrection does not happen in the natural world otherwise.

Resurrection as a religious motif (death literally becoming life) is one that existed in ancient cultures before Jesus and one that has persisted in religious thinking beyond the confines of Christianity. It’s a high hope, and not infrequently, an unrequited dream with no physiological correlate. What then are we to make of it?

Functionally, the resurrection’s mythos has served to substantiate the life, message, and significance of Jesus in the wake of the violent death that brought about an end to his relatively brief ministry. For his early followers, who were expecting so much outward change in their world by means of his existence (true circumstantial salvation), the resurrection served as a symbol of enduring relevance, metaphysical conquest, and hope.

To the band of disciples who heeded Jesus’ call to worldly renunciation, giving up vocations, possessions, and relationships to literally follow him, who quickly turned to mourning, confusion, and even hiding in the wake of his arrest and execution, resurrection was a culturally primed, convenient resolution to their new quandary of identity in the immediate wake of Jesus’ natural life. And in this, it became reality as an operative commitment.

In many ways the death of Jesus was a literal “dark night of the soul” for his followers. Pushing through the doubt, disbelief, and dissonance that they no doubt must have faced, and choosing to live in the light of the Gospel anyway, which is to say to take up Jesus’ mantle and continue his work, well, as far as I can tell, that’s resurrection. That’s finding new life from listlessness’ depths and it’s intrinsically meaningful.

The human power to reinterpret our experience, to adopt narratives that reframe our motivations, and further, to regard those narratives with unique realism in defiance of those structures that would otherwise limit us and keep us in fear and isolation, while allowing us to carry on in love, constancy, and peace, according with a set of declarative values, is a superpower. As such, this power (and tendency) is one that deserves conscious and intentional wielding, and in this, mindful critique lest it take on a life of its own, independent of the agency (and responsibility) of its wielders.

Jesus’ dying on the cross and rising in our hearts, in our motivations, and in our resolves isn’t a small thing. But its implications are also not implicitly clear. One might ask, what is Jesus’ message if not an utter inversion of the temporal world’s power structures? What is the place of a Messiah whose life was prematurely stamped out? Or of a resurrection whose unqualified literality has been dismantled?

The story of Christianity is essentially one of paradox, or to put it another way, of the non-dual harmonization of seemingly unreconcilable dichotomies. This alone places the tradition in a wider stream of the world’s wisdom traditions, which are born of a collective effort of long term grappling with the finitude of our individual lives and the infinitude intuited at reality’s heart.

In the realm of paradox, it’s no problem for unjust and oppressive structures to exist atop a substrate of utter transcendence in one’s direct experience (alas, the “Kingdom of God” is like this). In the stream of infinity, there’s no difference between one moment or one lifetime, and eternity. In the purview of metaphor, historicity doesn’t limit truth.

More could be said, much more even. But at their core, the non-dual traditions always speak toward the inability of language (and beliefs) to encapsulate truth. These traditions always enjoin us to practice, which is to say to experience and realization born of doing and being. But what is one to do? How does one practice and be in the light of resurrection?

Mark’s Gospel, the earliest account of Christ’s life, which I invoked in my Good Friday reflection, ends (16:8) with three of Jesus’ female disciples encountering his tomb empty, and in response, “trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”

That’s it. Sometimes our praxis of faith is bewilderment and quietude. Sometimes it’s trembling and fleeing. In many cases it’s haunting, in so much as it takes us up and carries us to unexpected places as we seek to digest our experience. A life of faith isn’t all made up of reassurance and comfort, of certainty and creed, indeed such curated sterility isn’t really life-giving so much as it is infantilizing. Mature faith takes on, of necessity, a much wider and fuller breadth.

Recently I’ve been struck by the use of the peacock as one of the early symbols of Christianity. It seems that in the ancient world it was regarded as an animal whose flesh did not decay, and was thus understood as an analog for the bodily resurrection of Christ. Of course today we know that this is an utterly fictional notion, and while it has thus been rendered an inept analog, the imaginal motif has proved enduring (one can even spend tens of thousands of dollars on vestments so embroidered). This is not unlike the resurrection of Christ itself, which while proving inaccessible to the realm of historicity, has gained enduring life as a dream, a hope, a metaphor, a commitment, and yes, at times a quandary.

Today the tomb is empty. Things are not as simple as we have thought them to be, and the implications are unsettling.

It’s okay. There’s life and purpose ahead, there’s integration and even resolution. It’s from this very ground that the whole world-spanning tradition of Christianity has arisen, both in the vein of perennial wisdom, contemplation, and beauty, and in the perversion of those things. Where we end up has all to do, I think, with how we approach the unsettling appendant to the perception of the empty tomb. Either with reverence and hesitancy, or with nuance-less confidence and words born of the pathological need to know.

~Sunyananda