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unrestedjade · 4 years ago

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Baseless Ferengi headcanons no one asked for and that get increasingly queer-navel-gazing and self indulgent because the horrible space goblins have consumed my brain:

- Mobile ears, because if hearing is so well developed and important to them they should be able to aim those big stupid radar dishes. Also because then they can emote with them and that's cute. THE AESTHETIC IS PARAMOUNT.

- Since they canonically sharpen their teeth with chew sticks and sharpeners, their teeth must grow continuously. So I submit: subcultures that let certain teeth grow out as a fashion/political statement. Ferengi punks and anarchists with 5" tusks. Ferengi with all their teeth filed flat (mom and dad HATE it).

- Corollary to the above, most of their teeth are crooked. At the least, they don't share our fetish for straight teeth. What if their teeth are deciduous, and there's no point in trying to force them into perfect alignment, since they'll just fall out and get replaced? So like, sharks but their teeth can also grow longer with no limit. WHAT HAST EVOLUTION WROUGHT ON FERENGINAR :V

- Parents nagging their kids to sharpen their teeth "or they'll grow up into your brain and you'll die :)"

- Personal space? Don't know her.

Okay I need a cut because there's too many now. WHOLE SOCIETY OF GAY HOMOPHOBIC UNCLES AND AUNTS GO I HAVE A PROBLEM

- I can't remember who on here put forth the idea of them having retractable claws but Yes. :3

- Pushing back against the worst canon episode a bit but: relative ear size being the only obvious sexually dimorphic trait, and even that having enough of a gray area that the only way to be 100% sure you're talking to a male or female Ferengi is if you do a blood test. Unless they're intersex! *shrug emoji*

- This is why they're so fanatical about gender conformity and their Victorian "separate spheres" attitude to men and women's roles. Capitalist patriarchy is fragile! And as artificial to Ferengi as it ever was to Humans! (self-indulgenceeeee about gender shiiiiit)

- You know how with domesticated rabbits, the rabbit getting groomed and paid attention to is the boss? Yeah. Go ahead and paint your bestie's nails, just don't be surprised if she cops a little bit of an attitude with you from then on.

- Their fight/flight/freeze/fawn instincts skew heavily toward the last three, and what a lot of other species read as annoying sucking up is the Ferengi in question feeling anxious and unsafe. Especially if they don't feel integrated into the group. Even being at the bottom of the pecking order is better than not being in the flock at all.

- If they DO opt for fight, it's ugly and typically their last resort. Bites or scratches will get infected without intervention-- microbes that their immune system can handle could cause big trouble for aliens. You might wanna check for full or partial teeth that break off and get lodged in the wound, too.

- Too many of these are tooth related but I don't care. :B More teeth stuff: you know what else has teeth that grow constantly? Puffer fish. Likewise, Ferengi can chew up mollusk shells as easy as potato chips, and they need the minerals for their teeth. (Imagine grandpa Sisko offering Nog a crayfish for the first time and watching as he just...pops the whole damn thing in his mouth and crunches away...)

- Their staple foods seem to be grubs and other arthropods, high in protein and fat. I've unilaterally decided their cuisine also involves a lot of edible fungi, ferns, plant shoots and seeds. Gotta get those vitamins. Overall flavor profile leaning toward umami, vegetal, and fresh herbs, and pretty mild (or "delicate" if you wanna be snooty about it, which a Ferengi probably would let's be real).

- Not much sugary food. I'm basing this solely on Quark's aversion to root beer as "cloying". Which could definitely just be his personal preference, but most of the people I hear hating on root beer cite the actual sassafras/sarsaparilla flavor (saying it tastes like medicine) not the sweetness. Nog might be the weirdo outlier for being able to enjoy it.

- Their home planet isn't bright and sunny, so their eyes are better at discerning shades of gray in low light conditions, with relatively weak color vision. Which could explain why they dress Like That.

- Conversely, human music has a reputation for stinking on ice because a lot of it is juuuuust lightly dissonant or out of tune because we can't pick up flaws that small. Ferengi can, and it drives them up the *wall*.

- Music? So many different kinds. Traditionally, maybe lots of percussion and winds, and water as a common component of many instruments to alter pitch or tone. Polyphony out the ass. Some of the modern stuff is an impenetrable wall of sound if you're not a species with a lot of brain real estate devoted to processing sounds. Pick out one melody to follow at a time.

- Yes, back to teeth again I'm sorry. It's a sickness. At some point in their history, pre-chewing food was just something you did for your baby or great grandma as a matter of necessity. Possibly your baby gets an important boost to their immune system and gut biome from your spit. At some point takes on a more formal intimacy aspect and gradually drifted from something all adults and older kids do to something only women do. Your husband and older kids have perfectly functional teeth, but you love them, right? =_= (Think old memes about husbands being useless in the kitchen if little wifey isn't there to cook, but even more ridiculous. Ishka was right about everything but especially this. Thank you for making your family chew their own food, Ishka. Not all heroes wear capes. Or anything!)

- How did they get started on the whole men: clothed vs women: unclothed nonsense? My equally stupid idea: men just get cold easier. Those huge ears dissipate a ton of body heat. Cue Ferengi cliches like "jeez, we could be standing on the surface of the sun and my husband would put on another layer." At some point, again, this got codified and pushed to ridiculous extremes in the name of controlling women and keeping everyone in their assigned box, to the point that women just have to shiver if they really are too cold and men have to pass out from heat stroke if the alternative is going shirtless, because That Would Be Inappropriate.

- Marriages default to five years, but they're also the only avenue for women to have their own household or any stability. Plus their religion places no emphasis on purity save for pure adherence to the free market and the RoA. So, curveball to the rest of their patriarchal bullshit: female virginity isn't a concern in the least. Bring it up and they'll rightly side-eye you.

- Family law is absolutely bonkers and lawyers that specialize in it make BANK. I feel like custody would default to the father usually but oh wait, the maternal grandfather has a legal stake in this, too, and your next father-in-law is asking HOW many kids are you dragging into my daughter's house, etc etc. Growing up with a full sibling is way rarer than growing up with half or stepsiblings, since it usually takes both men and women two or three tries to find someone they vibe with. (Not love, unless you're super cringe.)

- A misogynistic society is a homophobic society. Imo those flavors of shittiness just come in pairs. Homosexual behaviors are fine within certain parameters (aka "always have sex with the boss") but not on your own terms. To add spice, bisexuality is their most common mode (because I'm bi and these are my hcs for my fics I'm not writing, so there), but capitalism demands fresh grist for the mill so you better get het-married and pop out some kids you lowly peons. You have a choice so make the proper one. :)

- Corollary to the above, that doesn't keep all kinds of illicit "we're just friends with quid-pro-quo benefits for realsies" affairs of every stripe and every gender from going on everywhere. Many Ferengi have a lightbulb moment somewhere in early adulthood when they figure out their dad's business partner or the "auntie" who visited their mom every month had a little more going on.

- Plus there's way more gender non-conformity and varying degrees of trans-ing than the powers that be have a handle on. Pel isn't unique, even if most would have to somehow make it out into space to be able to thrive.

Damn a lot of these are just my personal bugbears plus THE GILDED AGE BUT WITH HAIRLESS SPACE RODENTS ain't they

- Women can't earn profit, okay. But lending or "lending" things to each other isn't commerce, riiiiiiight? To be assigned female is to master navigating a vast, dizzying barter/gift economy. Smart boys and men leverage this, too, and there are splinter sects that view this as the purest expression of the Great Material Continuum.

- Of course plenty of women make profit anyway, and just do their bast to dodge the FCA. The tough thing about insisting on using latinum as currency is that cash can be so hard to track, you know?

- Because of the RoA, guys are discouraged from doing favors or giving gifts without setting clear expectation of getting some return on investment. This can twist into an expression of friendship (and of course women do it too), and the ledger will keep cycling between debit and credit among friends for decades. A common mistake aliens make is to tell them recompense isn't needed without explaining why, or return their favor or present with something that zeroes out the debt. The Ferengi will assume you want to break off the friendship. (I cribbed this from dim memories of an African studies course I took in 2007 and whose textbook I know I still have but I can't frigging find it...)

- Flirting, they do a lot of it for a lot of reasons. Roddenberry made it clear that they're just straight up pretty horny, but there's no reason it can't pull double duty for building alliances with other people, smoothing over feuds or disagreements, or cementing friendships. Ferengi who are ace and/or sex-repulsed are possibly viewed similar to the way we'd view someone who's "not a hugger/not big on touching" and if they flirt just don't get offended if it doesn't go any further; aro Ferengi don't garner much comment aside from an occasional "wow how badass, never falling in love with anyone."

- where to even start on making sense of the Blessed Exchequer??? Like seriously, what is this literal prosperity gospel insanity, I need to force myself to re-read Rand and like, some Milton Friedman for this shit. Help.

- fuck I'm probably going to actually do that, RIP me...

#ds9 #star trek #meta #ferengi #i love them Too Much help #reliving my brief libertarian phase from high school from the opposite direction #my heart wants to make them simultaneously as queer and as repressed as possible #i didn't even make it to the goddamned blessed exchequer my head is too full #i will find beauty in this vulgarity if it kills me #this is too long #why did i spend my time this way

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skinfeeler · 3 years ago

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you may notice so-called progressive members of religions (including those which are minority religions in ‘the west’) spend much more time on critics of religion than conservatives in their own circles. sentiments such as “X discussion belongs within the community” might clue us in as on why, but allow me to proffer a red thread that i believe i have identified throughout all of this.

it is, obviously, true that critique of religion often constitutes or is a vehicle for assorted bigotries. a certain vigilance can be understandable and i advocate among my peers to not let us become callous of the very real dangers that members of certain ethnic and cultural groups (however one might understand these) face, even people marginalised in and by such religious communities. this is then, in fact, the crux of my project: the acknowledgment that say, ex-muslims aren’t really helped by islamophobia given the fact that it’s not like they’re going to get support from those people peddling it, which is exactly why it’s so tragic that many of them feel there’s no place for them on the left, because so many people on the left refuse to acknowledge that even though islamophobia is well, extant, it’s not like people stuck in certain spheres (among which gay and trans people, women, and all children) are impervious from being harmed just because larger society might not be accepting of those who level that harm unto them. this much then is important: to do right by everyone who must be done right by in whatever way and to leave people’s dignity intact, and to do so in such a way that cannot be co-opted by white supremacists and the like— the most important way to do this is to attack the concept of parental authority, which (culturally) christian conservatives will never accept but will resolve basically all problems that result from the shape of religion as a non-elective membership propagated through the family (as structured by clergy etc etc, whatever).

inoffensive as this clause should be to anyone who claims to be part of the left — which must fundamentally oppose the family for either marxist reasons per engels or for other reasons — even anti-theism which very clearly takes this form is mistaken, usually on purpose, by many religious apologists, to be something it’s not. one of those things that get invoked is the very real white supremacism and imperialist thought that is too endemic in our circles. i’ll admit to tendencies herein appearing from time to time — including in myself, at times, regrettably — but i also insist that a large part of this is simply the fact that while religious people enjoy the benefits of community and avenues for discussion and review, many of us do not: all we have at this stage, sadly, is the diatribes of new atheists who consider christendom an important ‘bulwark’ to protect the ‘occident’ who are useless to anything but an insipid culture war. mistakes are going to be made, and i think some small leeway should be allowed those most ambitious of us who still have a clear and provable dedication to justice and equity (and this is in fact the point of any useful notion of freedom of speech), especially since what we currently have works for nobody except those who want first and foremost to remain comfortable— which is exactly what i believe describes so many anti-anti-theists, but we do in fact need an alternative.

it’s not easy to be leftist and religious and my heart goes out to those who try, even if i don’t ultimately think that where they are heading will allow them to keep their principles coherent and intact: members of one’s congregation and one’s spiritual leaders may tacitly condone or endorse ethnic cleansing in the levant, assorted infant genital maiming rituals, reifications of gender that only those least abject to it can find peace with (consider the humble theyfab), the imperative and exaltation of procreation, to name a few possibilities, which one then is implicitly required to respect in order to remain part of such communities, and i understand the struggle of wanting to be or remain part of those and to have to tangle with that. what i don’t understand then, though, is the abhorrence of people outside such circles who perform critique of the like: i simply do not agree with the fact that certain discussions should stay within the community and they should be well left alone in literally every way with no demands made given the fact that certain members in those communities who this harm is visited upon and whose membership isn’t elective (including all children) do not have voice or agency in those discussions — they deserve support and solidarity across cultural lines, especially as it’s apostates from so many religions who helped me survive and i will owe this to them forever — let alone those in the outgroup who fall victim to the real geopolitical consequences of the substance of certain positions that proliferate in some of these communities, as is now more relevant than ever. this latter aspect is obvious to even the progressive religious apologist, however… at least those conservatives, both inside the congregation and in much more conservative movements don’t threaten what they perceive to be the faith.

an instantiation of this which i will see even most progressive religious people abhor is the notion that any religion is tied, inherently, to not just a nation, but a state. and so they can quibble with their zionist peers and spiritual leaders on this, because both of them have one thing in common: the idea that even if one’s religion/culture is not most meaningfully embodied through state, it is through family, and the criticism of the conservative that the progressive has is not that they are wrong, but merely inauthentic and clinging to something unnecessary, but they are not. i vehemently disagree: the nature of most organised religions has changed through both necessity and acknowledged moral imperative. why can a religion which doesn’t transmit through the family (one of only adult converts perhaps) be envisioned— which in turn wouldn’t depend so heavily on the reification of bodies and family immanent in the aforementioned (a conclusion worth stressing on its own)? if you ask me, it’s a matter of a lack of courage borne from a lack of understanding of history— one may want to read doubt: a history by jennifer michael hecht who is considered jewish according to halakha (for however much that fucking means) who speaks on what the german jews in the 19th century, understanding that they could either stay stuck in the present (and thus have their worldview eventually become as farcical as those who believed that recreating the temple era of judaism was either viable or desirable in any histiographical or theological sense as a result of you know, history historying) or establish those principles which they believed were actually important that could be passed on regardless of how judaism was envisioned before. their work, however hegelian in nature, produced some of the greatest minds even among their apostates, including theodor adorno. turns out that even when people become philosophers rather than rabbis (or ministers, or imams, or gurus), they have plenty to offer, there is wisdom and value in exalting sagehood above the pulpit and how the pulpit must always lay down the law for the mechanisms of familial transmission.

consider second, the ancient greeks: the ancient greeks no longer possess the structures required to exercise their worldviews and theodicies as a bloc (in diaspora or otherwise). regardless, many of their concepts and wisdoms persist in various cultures literally all across the worlds, including mine: their strands of cultural dna have germinated in a larger cosmopolitan phenotype, and i believe this is beautiful and worthwhile in its own right, and in no way whatsoever a loss. sure, their influence might not be recognisable as an enduring culture, but does that make it any less valuable? no, not in the slightest. the fact is, once you are on the other side this is the most normal thing in the world, nobody will mourn it, and everyone who wishes to return will be easily dismissed as entertaining a fantasy. the only way to forestall this is in fact a tautological clinging to the present which will necessarily through the course of history become an immanence of reaction, after all, the prime fallacy of reactionary thought is that it is in fact possible to recreate the past, which is plainly not true except perhaps for aesthetic but which will regardless necessarily be rooted in the current conditions of the world. all that forestalling this progression constitutes is the insistence on the completely artificial. much like the workings of the state are one that imposes a false reality, a phantasm, a reification onto the world, so with family, and literally the moment you stop propping it up it will be superceded. let me repeat that: supercession is inevitable, and the most sophisticated elements of any culture acknowledge this and have for literal centuries (although some cultures are ahead of others in this regard by-and-large). for every generation of a culture persisting as itself, apostates and deviants emerge and at this rate they have done more for the progress within any cultural body than will ever happen within such cultural bodies, which must begrudgingly acknowledge that they are dependent on modernity in order to make any progress at all (and as such, will wither away together with modernity), although of course they will deny this at any front— the adaptation of any covenant is desperately contingent on integration and naturalisation of the apostate and the ‘modern’, or at least her wisdom , which the embodied religious individual will then, of course, pretend to practisee more ‘maturely’ than the apostate because they insist on integrating it in a neutered fashion where it is stripped of future potential of development until the next steal comes along, which is better than fully embodied anti-atheism as the ever-sublating struggle against entropy, for some fucking reason.

this is the promise of ‘externality’ that foucault dreamt of: that there is a way of thinking ‘outside the box’ that allows us to once and for all dispel and move on from the ways of thinking that we cannot think outside of. derrida then disputed him by arguing that there is no outside context. derrida is right— regardless, i remain optimistic: perhaps this cosmopolitan neotenous emergence is a culture in itself, but it is as divergent from what came before as christianity is to judaism, and islam to both christianity and judaism. all it takes is courage, and once the leap of faith has been made, this state of affairs will be the most normal thing in the world. in light of this, the claim that anticlericalism is simply an outwash of christendom becomes obviously farcical and a clear double standard when one considers in juxtaposition their insistence that christianity is divergent from what came before, even though in both cases (christendom versus judaism, anticlericalism versus christendom) perhaps some commonality in language exists and perhaps some people exist who have not managed to estrange themselves from the trappings of christian thought— not to mention the worldwide history of anticlericalism that is yet to be integrated which exists exactly because clericalism necessarily has the same structure and function across all religions. join me in this supercessionist bliss, reject the idea that chronology of thought implies that successors are one and the same as what they draw upon or co-opt, and help usher in the only future world worth conceiving of, resting easy and comfortable in the truthful rejection of the notion that any culture needs to cling to the notion of familial transmission to have any worth at all or that its existence as such is inevitable. the complete and utter nullification of familial logic will happen regardless of whether you want it or not anyway, because it is as artificial as the logic of nation and state and likewise unsustainable and on its death march— this is the one and final eschatology of this world which is not a threat, but a promise, since it will (and can) not be the result so much of repression but of religion collapsing under its own weight, and this much is only uncomfortable to those who are disciples to the family regardless of whether they admit it to themselves or not.

#atheism #avery speaks

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ofcloudsandstars · 4 years ago

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Hey guys so here is my experience from last night lmaoo get ready cause it was unsurprisingly a hot mess full of white people microaggressions and me being alone as the only black person present having to deal with their spiritual charade shenanigans.

It's a bit long but it's a colorful description of the event and the experience taking ayahuasca, a wrap up of my own spiritual and magical journey and also a rant on the caucasity rampant in spirituality lol. A tl;dr is that it's sad that White People have to go across the world to take medicine from other people that have ceremonies revolving around it when.. we literally have our own stuff here that's like.. nearly the same vibe.. But more on that below.

So last night for the lions gate sun lining up with sirius star I was invited last minute to an ayahuasca ceremony in the edge of London kind of by Richmond park. The whole universe really opened up for me to do this Ceremony.

At first I was like I dunno I mean its hosted by wealthy white people right? Admission was £200 and I was like absolutely Not, not for a medicine taken far away from it's land and I dunno how the experience was going to be like, plus it was on a Saturday night until Sunday morning and I work in hospitality and if I couldn't get Tuesdays off to at least work in the garden center growing food and plants how would I get the full weekend off? Plus the ceremony was already full. Well without even ASKING, or really thinking much about it, for once in like.. 2 years working for this company I got the full weekend off?!?! The fuck!!!!! Like I literally had to go to my director to fight my manager to try to get off Tuesdays which are the QUIETEST day of the week for hospitality but I got the full weekend off on like one of the hottest summer weekends in England. My friend co-hosting the ceremony called me to tell me that I wouldn't have to pay full admission and it was all donation to the tribe anyway (like suggested donation) anything I could give would be appreciated but I certainly did not have to pay the full fee. Then I was supposed to go to the beach with my friends in the morning but that all fell through due to unforeseen circumstances. I was thinking the beach trip would make me unable to go to the ceremony but it was just like.. cancelled the morning of lol. Lastly this guy dropped out last second so there was space for me.I was like damn it was like the Universe reshuffled itself for me many times to do this so like sure I will take this opportunity. Plus my friend in this group did work with the tribe in Brazil earlier this year and they are friends with them and do this to raise money so that they can sustain themselves better, like they are building solar panels for electricity, building chicken coups and trying to integrate little bits of modern society (like the electricity and water filtration parts, not like social media and capitalism lmao) into their lives. The last ceremony they did they raised like 2,000 pounds and this got the tribe a lot of food and funds to buy solar panels. So I was like ok this is also a good cause I always would love to help out indigenous people that protect the Earth.

Anyway there was a vibe about the way the Universe just opened itself up for this medicine that reminded me of Mushrooms. Like it's a strange thing but people that take mushrooms medicinally say it as well like it finds you when you need it. Last night I also got a great link to healing mushrooms as well and it was just the time to open myself up to that type of frequency I guess. For a while before it was a challenge to find for years I’ve been living here, but all of a sudden the universe was like: here you go! Anyway I was thrilled to work with this medicine and ground the lessons I've learned getting pinball tossed around the cosmos on DMT at the beginning of 2020 in January.

So yes I got to the edge of London and it was in some beautiful secret entrance building painted with murals of green jungle designs, A LOT of Indian spiritual symbolism everywhere, statues of Ganesha and other bejeweled paintings of Indian gods. It was beautiful but to be frank as much as I find Hinduism beautiful I never related much to it cause it's not my culture. What I mean by 'relate' is that there is this SEVERE obsession in white western cultures looking for spirituality in Hinduism and I never really got it. Like yes it's beautiful like many other nature-based spiritual religions but we are so far removed from the climate and nature of India like why are they so fascinated by it? Then.. there were some red flags...

Ok for starters I was the ONLY NOT-WHITE PERSON there. I think it bothered me more in this moment cause I just got off discussing with an incredible Earthy witch in NYC who changed my life who's trying to do work by providing a nature sanctuary garden for POC how nature is so inaccessible to us and it's gate-kept by wealthy white people. I could elaborate on that more later but this post will be long enough lol. But anyway, why is this medicine not accessible to POC? When it's something not even native to here either? So it's like deliberately not shared with us?

Then there were just some people's vibes like ooooh boy I dunno why but some people just felt cold towards me? Like I guess they were annoyed at me showing up last minute to their ceremony? But my friend was co-hosting it? Like if you trust my friends judgement you should have trusted her in inviting me like I am not some asshole. But they were like.. impatient with me I guess? Like 'oh you didn't bring a waterbottle?? Guess you gotta borrow one of ours.' like BITCH I don't know what to expect man the closest experience I had to this substance was DMT where it knocks you the fuck out of your body and your spirit gets catapulted into the cosmos like I didn't know I gotta bring shit, damn! And then there were some people I felt like I just didn't want to talk to. Like they already had this cold vibe towards me like they didn't think I was relatable cause I wasn't some white cosmic yoga hippie like them (sorry I am a black bog witch like leave me alone) but anyway the way they were talking about the medicine was kind of irking me too like, 'ooh can't wait to clear some stuff I just gotta clear it out you know?' I am like, Becky we gonna be vomiting into buckets like calm down.

AND THEN LASTLY oooh boy so when you do any psychedelic the space really matters right? My friend like.. assigns me this fucking (ooh boy just typing this story and reliving it I am already getting heated lmaooo) |CORNER| spot and what I mean by corner is that it is in the corner of the room but wedged between the fireplace so you are stuck between 3 tight walls and you can't fully lie down or stretch your legs. Everyone across the room could lie down but me. Then there are like vomit buckets and this white girls crystal grid blocking my path if I need to leave to use the toilet or even stretch my legs so already I am having a slight panic moment cause I hate being confined. In general, I tend to like to pick aisle seats on planes and stand on either corners by the door of the elevator cause I fucking hate being confined. So I say something immediately like: ok well can I change spots? I am worried about being blocked. Can I sit there? 'no someone is there.' There? 'no' etc. So I am just like omg I am going to have to deal with it and some people are getting a bit fussy that I am trying to demand better treatment, so I am leaving it. They at least move the pile of vomit buckets out my way lol. But these white women next to me have also taken ALL OF THE NICE fucking pillows to make themselves super comfortable pillow chairs like one for their ass and back against the wall and they were like: oh no you'll need a pillow too! (Cause the ceremony is 12 hours long throughout the night like 9 to 9) and I was like yeah... and they were like: oh no there is no more!! But like CLEARLY all of the nice cushiony things were not evenly distributed across the room and the few people who did not get some nice cushions at least had space to stretch their legs. I didn't really say anything cause obviously these two white women had like pillow thrones happening next to me and this woman literally said with a pouty face: Aww, now I feel bad cause I have two nice pillows! BITCH, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY?!?!?! Fucking christ. See?? SEE IT's shit like THIS that make POC hate that kind of white guilt shenanigans like, oh my god bitch either swallow your guilt in peace or give me a fucking pillow like you are trying to shift the position on to me to pressure you into giving me a pillow which you would either read as demanding or hope that I stay silent and be like: it's ok! so you can enjoy your comfort in peace and be free of your guilt. Like fuck off!!

Then there was this full time astrologer there who has some indigenous feather clip in her hair for some reason. She wanted to say a few things about what was going on with the planets. She was like: I love charting asteroids cause I feel like it's a representation of the divine feminine coming back! (I was going to be like: Me too! But the way she spoke about it was like.. not all of it is feminine? What do you mean?) she was talking about Medusa and eros conjunct in gemini right now and the myth of medusa being smited by aphrodite for being beautiful or whatever and I am thinking like I do not recall this myth cause it was Athena that turned her into the 'monster' to protect her wtf. And wanted to talk about mars retrograde that's not coming up for a while. So anyway I am like: Yeah! I love astrology too! All that you talked about was pretty cool but I also wanted to mention some big changes are coming up with Uranus going into retrograde a week from now!! :) and everyone just like.. disregarded what I said.. Like she was like: oh yeah.. that's just an outer planet.. OK BITCH like I am pretty sure Uranus, a big ass planet that has to do with revolution, freedom and change going retrograde until Autumn is much more noteworthy than some little asteroid who's myth and energy you've completely misinterpreted being conjunct with Eros. (Eros is moving into Cancer really soon too so the conjunction isn't even going to last that long). Plus I wanted to mention that it was nice that we were doing this ceremony on an Aries moon cause it's like the symbolic start of a cycle yet it's a disseminating moon so it's also like starting off a cycle by celebrating the fruits of our success. But no one really wanted to listen to me anymore though that energy did influence my trip.

Anyway there was a part of me that was pretty bummed that my best witch friend that I did DMT with could not have come as well cause there just was no more space. At least we are always on the same vibe with everything and we would have been laughing about the shadiness of it all or excited about what's to come but I felt pretty alone during this ceremony.

So it begins, I got my borrowed waterbottle, the smallest, thinnest and hardest pillow that no one wanted for my ass that hurt more to sit on then the thin yoga mat that was just as thick as a human mousepad and I am like: who knows I may be so out of it I won't notice my space as much. The woman leading this is someone who worked with my friend in the tribe in Brazil. She is Russian and got the feathers in her blonde whispy hair and shit I am like oh boy. She explains what work they were doing and the reason for the fundraiser like the details of what the tribe is building and how they are supporting themselves. Also the tribe that night were also doing an ayahuasca ceremony earlier to sync with us so that they can meet up in the Astral plane which is really beautiful. She also explained how they were surprised at westerners fascination with the medicine. Cause they are like: this is apart of everyday life and there are other healing plants in the amazon too. Like why do westerners have a fascination with this? It is a way to connect with the jungle and cleanse yourself and reset (once again I am making that connection to mushrooms I am like.. the vibe sounds oddly familiar), but they find westerners interest in it weird.

Ok so we start with some ceremonies to open up the space and create this 'fire spiral' altar in the middle of the room. They light the pillar candle and have a tea light for everyone in the room. We each go around to light our tea light in the spiral with our intention allowed. People go there and declare stuff like: I am free, I am aligned with my path, etc. I think about my intention for this trip and how it feels like another pillar of understanding in my journey to connect with my heart energy, love myself and be proud of my accomplishments cause I really came a long way. I was a bit afraid it was going to be another chaotic DMT experience but I just reminded myself that no matter how bad I felt everything was going to be ok cause I have people in this world that care about me. Even if I disappear somewhere or end up dead someone will come looking for me. And I know that sounds dramatic and morbid but at one point like 5 years ago I really did not have that. I was alone, lost and suicidal. I know what loneliness can do to people and it's nice all of the friends I pulled together in London who are creative diverse witches that all made great friends with each other as well through me and it's like we created this new found family that cares and supports each other. So I light my candle and say alloud: I am protected by love and reflect that in the things I create. Anyway the ceremony leader is like.. can I say something?? BITCH!!! HOOOOO MY GOD I should I have said NO but I was like, ok, she is the ceremony leader so I am like.. go ahead.. She was like: By saying you are protected by love that's implying you could be attacked.. (Like Why the fuck would you say this?? While I am lighting my candle?? You are putting negative energy towards my intention wtf) I was like no I meant it like.. I am supported by love. She is like: ah yeah that's better say that. She did not want to correct NONE OF THESE OTHER PEOPLE when they were saying 'I am free'? BITCH you could have had the same energy like: that's implying you could be enslaved. Anyway that irritated me into my trip. I took the ayahuasca from her and as I was feeling the effects I was feeling more and more adamant about my intentions.

I was thinking about the times when I was alone, when I was targeted and attacked by this stupid racist social group in college that made me feel unworthy of friendship and it was hard to make new friends until I was 21 cause it was a city college so most people hung out with their highschool friends until they were old enough to go out and drink so the first two years I was fucking lonely and the subject of like a lot of harassment when I did try to socialize in clubs and would run into those people there. It nuked my self esteem. Plus though I did so much finding friends magic it was really difficult finding friends that into the same things I was. Sometimes I felt like I was the only witch, the only person really into nature and magic. After college I did another spell and met this incredible witch that we synched so much (I have def wrote wild adventures with us together but she was also abusive cause at that point I still did not know how to establish my boundaries well) but I met other amazing witches in NYC but eventually we all moved. The incredible Earth witch who changed my life was the one who accidentally gave me shrooms that were like grown with love and intention that helped break down my mental barriers and help me take charge of my life and finally move out of my house I grew up in.. like completely out of the country and into England to start my life anew. In England I was successful in making a whole community of loving witch friends who really care about me and add to the ceremonies I host. I joined greenspaces to learn how to grow food and plants. I fucking STRUGGLED in my job getting my food in the door with bartending and slaving my way up until I have a cushy desk office job with healthcare. All in 2 years. I fucking hauled ass and created and manifested the life I always wanted when I was suicidal in NYC thinking that this reality was impossible. And every time I feel anxious I know that since I love and trust in myself that I will always protect myself and even if I was worried I have like a whole SET of magical badass witch friends who would help me at anything and I would do the same for them.

When my roommate was threatening to call the police on me back when lockdown happened (long story) one friend did some healing on her and she like completely came to her senses and apologized the next day which was wild considering that she's such a proud self-absorbed person and would never do that. She realized that she was acting super ugly and was like wow I don't want to be this person. (Also I was so close to cursing the shit out of her lol but we are cool now). Also I am going away to Italy for the first time to be with this gorgeous man who wants to take me around his hometown but I am only going cause another close witch friend just moved to the neighboring town and will check up on me. She made sure to call him without me even asking to look at his itinerary and include herself and her boyfriend in a night of drinks to check up on us lmaoo. She is such an Aries I love her. If anything would happen to me she would make sure I was safe and could stay with her if something went wrong. God I could go on about each friend, how they've helped me with confidence, healing, safety and just feeling loved, valued, accepted and less alone which is powerful in this society that thrives on people not valuing themselves and where pure unconditional love has seemed to have lost it's meaning. One thing I admire about trees so much is how when they grow together their roots intertwine underneath the ground so that they can support each other upright during winds and storms. They also send nutrients to each other and help each other grow. I feel like I made a network of trees with witch friends in London and I am proud of that when I didn't have that years ago when I was alone and actively hated by a group in college. (I mean about the group it was more like a dynamic where a guy who had control over the club wanted to shun me cause he just likes the power dynamic of picking someone to talk shit about like literally if it was not me it was going to be someone else. So one party cause I did have a crush on him, I told him as I was wasted I was into him but then later apologized when sober if he didn't feel the same way. Like it really wasn't a big deal, I was a flirty 19 year old, but it was fuel for him to once again redirect negative attention on someone cause he's someone who's insecure so he likes the power of getting others focus on people and crush them. The "mutual friends" kind of didn't care about what was going on. The reason why this dynamic worked is cause in a way everyone was a bit lonely and didn't value themselves so they were willing to do anything to fit into a toxic social circle to have access to a club room and drink underage on campus to feel included and didn't want to question who the witch hunt of the week was so they could feel like they were in the ‘in crowd’. It was pathetic when one of them would be the new target and they would come to me like: boohoo I know what it feels like. Bitch I do not care and I made new friends and moved on. Fucking cunts. -Another thing about being protected by love is like as a black woman even though I got some privileges being mixed and half European I still was subject to racism and I am still scared of hate crimes fueled by sexism and queerphobia but I have friends who will support me and understand and if anything happened to me people would care. Like yes some people in this world DO have things to fear about getting attacked cause we are not all privileged in society to not fear getting hurt Karen.

Anyway as the ayahuasca was kicking in I started getting a bit emotional cause I was thinking about people in the world that really deserve to be loved in this society that condemns us for loving ourselves which is the most important thing. I was crying thinking about black kids especially black girls trying to survive in this society or LGBT+ kids and how some people can't even have their existences respected. How people mock others for their gender identity but those people are in a constant battle with loving themselves cause I am sure at the end of the day they feel hopeless at times or giving up and have to fucking battle dysphoria and have to survive in a society that actively wants them dead and its really fucking upsetting like hooo them psychadelics were opening my heart and grief while this white woman across the room was doing some downward dog yoga shit into her bucket so she can wretch into it lmaoo..

When it started kicking in, boy omgg I felt SO GOOD but I was like.. This.. THIS (I got so mad when I realized this) THIS IS JUST FUCKING MUSHROOMS LIKE!!!!! !!! ! THIS VIBE IS SERIOUSLY JUST SHROOMS, THE JUNGLE EDITION™ like no wonder the tribes are like: what are white people on about? Cause if they all came with their pashmina scarves, harem pants and grinch-finger dreadlocks to my woodland for mushrooms, especially when there are so many magical plants as well but they are just focusing on this psychedelic when there's also like native medicines in every land I would be a bit confused too. Like we were drinking something that was the equivalent of mushroom tea but it made you vomit it back up eventually. Ohh my god lmaooo.

I felt so beautiful though. Some comparisons if you guys have done mushrooms: where as mushrooms make you feel these gentle pulsations like everything is breathing around you had has this gentle life breathing among everything like it's all connected (like the mycellium under a forest), ayahuasca makes you feel so sensual like everything is kind of just rolling like how the underside of waves look except the waves are large snakes. Like things start getting wavy the way snakes move but slow and sensually, think like the way a bellydancers hips can roll. It was a whole MOOD. Also with mushrooms when you close your eyes you can see these beautiful patterns bloom before your eyes like pastel art nouveau fractal patterns of tree roots, or clusters of bubbles you'd see looking at plant stems vascular bundles under a microscope or the web-like pattern you see in butterfly and dragonfly wings. With ayahuasca when you close your eyes you see like bright neon colored geometric shapes expanding like bismuth crystals, the patterns you see in indigenous textiles like triangles and cubes, sometimes they will lattice together and make beautiful neon snake-skins that gently slither together. If you've ever seen Miyazaki's/Studio Ghibli's castle in the sky it reminds me of that 'lost technology' metal blocks with runes and scriptures on it moving around. Sometimes you will be following this thread of cubes and they'd be moving around like in that scene and in this cavern of blocks you'd see this celestial-looking geometric crystaline being be revealed. It's very beautiful. Though mushrooms can make you purge, it really does not happen often. However with ayahuasca it's almost a guarantee you will vomit it back up.

So people are all wretching everywhere as the ceremony leader is singing some folk songs from the tribe to guide us through our journey. What's cool is that you kind of feel that purge coming towards the peak end of the trip like a kind of brown murky snake rising from the bottom of your body up like kundalini energy starting from the base of your spine bowels past your stomach up until it pokes from your throat opening up that passage way until you feel it in your head and you just release it all out into the bucket. Not really glam but it doesn't taste bad but then again being a bog witch I drink all sorts of murky plant teas so I am used to the flavor palate. (It's like a sweet in an aromatic way and reminds me of one of those chinese medicinal murky teas).

Also as I was realizing the similarities between this and shrooms I was like wow it's a shame that we aren't outside or somewhere with jungle plants at least to connect with that plant energy. Instead we are in this hindu spiritual retreat place but if we just did some shrooms we could have been out in the sunlight at richmond park hugging the massive ancient trees there and feeding the wild deer summer strawberries like instead I am fucking cramped in this corner vomiting into a bucket with this exotic medicine.

As my trip went on I was thinking more about my friends who care about me and support me and how much I loved them and I couldn't stop thinking about my best witch friend that I did DMT with whom I wish was there. Like we would at least have been laughing about this or vomiting together or she would be like: omg this would be such great play-write material. She is white passing but super self aware and would at least make sure that I felt ok and included in all of this. I took a moment to step out of the circle to text her about the details and the woman in the corner doing yoga and vomiting in her downward dog pose and she was cackling and of course since the medicine connects you to that heartspace I was like confessing how much I care about her and how much of a special friend she was to me and was tearing up but one of the ceremony leaders followed me outside and was like: no phones!! It's not good energy!! Omg?? Like sorry I forgot cellphones were the devil's energy, it's not like I am bored and scrolling through social media, I just wanted to connect with my best friend who makes me feel less alone thanks.. Anyway I went back after being scolded and tried to get comfortable in my cramped spot.

Some positive affirmations I did get through all this was that (bringing back the disseminating moon vibe) I was loved and should be really proud of how far I've come. I kept thinking about all the people I love and cared about and how I should express my love in little ways that will make them happy like celebrating love everyday to make sure that people can feel supported cause it was the themes of my DMT trip too but now it was clearer and more grounded. I also got messages that sometimes I tend to be too selfless and there will be a time that I will help others but I should prioritize myself first mostly cause when my cup is full or when I get to positions of power or comfort I can always share that with people I care about. It was a good conclusion to a half years effort cause this also reflected my Glastonbury trip back in November where this witch who read my tarot cards gave me the clearest reading of my life and told me that I would not do well if I did not confront my heart energy and the pain there that was still festering from the social experience at university. So the efforts I went through my friend giving me sound healing and the DMT trip and other stuff has really opened up my heart and helped me to connect with that energy and care about myself more. But there was the theme again of I really need to protect myself first. Sometimes when the white girl next to me was mercilessly wretching and wailing into her bucket I felt so emotional for her that I would fan her but I would get this loud voice in my head like: DID SHE EVEN ASK THAT OF YOU?? FAN YOURSELF IT'S HOT BITCH- SHE OK SHE GOT HER FUCKING PILLOW THRONE WHEN YOUR ASS IS ON THE HARD GROUND. After purging and trying to get comfortable in my corner I would get increasingly aware of the lack of space and how I was starting to feel claustrophobic and it was starting to fuck with me. Cause yeah I got mental health issues, but it's usually under wraps when I take care of myself like, good sleep, food and water but, I was getting sleep deprived since this was an all night ceremony, I wasn't able to eat food to fast before this, and now I can't even fucking lie down cause I was in a coffin of a corner on the hard ground. My muscles and knee joints were starting to hurt. People were so in the zone just like.. doing arm-trance dance shit or throwing up while the ceremony host was hollering some songs which no one understood the meaning to and I felt at that point it was too late to ask anyone to share their pillows. I was noticing as I was coming down from the sensual jungle slithering plane that I was in muscle and joint pain.

I was like: Ok it's fine, the night would go by quickly.. It was not going by quickly.. I remember once I was sneakily looking at my phone’s clock and it was 4:30AM. I was like ok just gotta get through this time will pass.. The ceremony leader was like intoning some frequency so loudly she was trying to channel some celestial dolphins and whales or some shit but it was so high pitched the crown of my head would be vibrating and at first it feels energizing and cool but since my head hasn't had anyplace comfortable to rest I got a tension migraine from placing it on the floor so I could feel the high pitch note like vibrating the pain in my head. Then she was doing individual healings (I also got skipped somehow in this), she would be like channeling the frequencies for each person and making sure they purged what they need to purge and they would wretch into the bucket some more as she was growling into their backs, the feathers stuck in her blonde hair, quivering as she growled, there was the yoga girl now crying releasing her purge again. Someone was sticking their legs into the air and waving them around cause of energy I guess. I am like ok ok time will pass quickly.. what time is it? *sneakily checks my phone again so I won't get yelled at* 4:32am

OH HELL NO. I am trying to calm myself down but like if you struggle with the mental health imbalance I was in the red zone. Like I have not eaten, my stomach is cleared with vomiting, I cannot sleep, I am CONFINED in this corner, unable to stretch my legs, I am in PAIN, I feel alone.. They go around offering everyone a cup again and I am like: fuck it let me take a second cup..

So I start feeling good again, I feel like a sensual snake like trying to slither across silk. (You know when snakes try to slither across silk but they cannot move across it? It's like that you are just slithering in place) but literally I also feel like a clearer message in my mind almost like the spirit of ayahuasca is communicating with me like: Hun.. babe.. You got your positive affirmations that it's your time to rest and celebrate all you're hard work but you need to remember that you gotta honor and take care of yourself as a part of self love and you being confined in this space is not an act of self love. Especially if you do decide to stay here longer your mood and health will drop so low that it will affect others healings so it's best for everyone if you try to go home early. Like I felt the spirit of that medicine actually encouraging me to leave. Like the fucking ayahuasca itself was like this environment isn’t healthy for you lmaoooo. And I think that's wild.. It's so wild that these white women are all like: We are going to connect with the cosmic dolphin frequencies, and the tribe in the amazon and the human race, but they CAN'T EVEN FUCKING CONNECT TO THE BLACK GIRL IN PAIN IN THE CORNER OF THE ROOM, like they can't even distribute their nice pillows, they can't even read that I need help. They SKIPPED me with the individual healing. They were so cold towards me. Fuck it! Even my friend's companion dog who was there noticed I was off. She would look at me with concern in her big eyes and apprehension cause she could feel my pain turning into mentally unstable anger. I was like aw man I am killing the dogs vibe right now but damn the dog noticed and even these white women didn't?! Like I dunno if they are that empathetically shut off or if they were deliberately ignoring me. lmao, Also I think maybe cause I vibe so much with plants and genuinely want to reforest some land some day maybe that's why I feel so at home in the ayahuasca high like the medicine was really comforting the second cup but it also was like: you cannot hide within my frequency to escape pain- cause obviously it's NOT a substance for escapism. Anything but. It was like: it's time to go home and take care of yourself. (Like you'd imagine being on the brink of a mental breakdown taking this stuff may push you over the edge but it was actually very loving, sensual and re-affirming again.)

So the ceremony leaders notice since it's 5AM that most people are comfortably asleep in their piles of pillows and stretched out legs and they are about to go to bed but I go up to my friend and am like: thank you for everything, I think I should go home now.. And the women leading it were all Surprised and Shocked! 'Oh my goodness?? She's leaving?! Going home? The event isn't over!' Mind you this is by Richmond park and I live in north London by Hampstead heath so yeah it is a mission. I also could not afford the £40 uber so I was willing to take the shady public sunday morning night bus home lmao (oh no she'll expose herself to all that heavy shady energies of public transit! 🙄). But I was like the amount of time the bus would take from me to go home is probably not as long as the way time was inching slowly within that space and me being in pain. So my friend walked me out and I was trying to be as loving and cheerful and grateful cause I honestly did not want to bring down anyone's vibe. She checked up on me as I was getting my things to make sure I had a healing experience. I tried to be a little honest in being like: It was beautiful, it reminded me of mushrooms but like from the jungle.. Honestly the reason why I am leaving is cause I am in physical pain and I don’t think I can stay in the corner any longer; and she was like: yeah well ceremony is never comfortable. HOOOOOO LAWDDD. Oooof.. Omg.. Like.. OOF firstly.. The ceremony leaders each had 3 stacks of like thick pillowy matts to sleep on which ONE Of them could have been given to me and like yeah I am sure ceremony is at least bearable when you have a fucking pillow throne and mattresses and not confined in a coffin of a corner spot unable to move your legs without knocking someone’s vomit bucket over. Jesus. I didn’t say anything. I just grabbed my shit and left. As soon as I was free on the other side of the gate I felt SO RELIEVED!!

It was so refreshing being outside on sunrise, free to stretch my legs. I could still feel the affect of the medicine as things would pass me by and I'd see like this stream of energy behind them it was really pretty and cool. Since it was London in Liminal Space Hours™, there were foxes everywhere leaving behind streams of soft light as they'd move around the empty streets. The bus was pretty chill other than this fucking creep of a man walking in this dark cloud and when he moved past me his stream of light was literally some ugly fluorescent hostile neon color I was like wow I can literally see your grimy frequency right now lmaoo. But whatever, anything was better than staying silent in that cramped corner to cater to white women's comfort.

Anyway I got home, got plenty of water, took care of myself and crashed on my super comfortable bed. It was a really good decision I made I could not imagine staying until 9 AM like it was not possible and I am grateful I honored myself in leaving early and listening to ayahuasca's reminder to do that as well.

So the conclusions I made:

White people as a modern cultural collective are fucking wild and can sometimes be a lost cause, cause we literally have medicine here that does similar stuff and more like flying ointments which can help you confront your shadow and fly to other planes but they just want to lose themselves in the mysteries of other peoples exotified cultures that still have traditions in tact to celebrate the nature around them cause white people are disconnected completely from the nature that they come from. (Also obviously to clarify I mean white people as the modern white supremacist culture, obviously not everyone individually cause I am friends with a lot of white witches here doing invaluable work connecting people back with the native land, plant medicines and traditions and many of them trying to save the Gaelic language and traditions that are still under threat and being killed off today).

Though ayahuasca can be more of a powerful cleanser than mushrooms, it's essentially the same frequency of plant medicine like the same vibe just connecting you to another land and there is a reason why indigenous people think white people are weird for over glorifying it when we have our own shit. If you are really curious about ayahuasca I mean mushrooms are good enough a job really and will better connect you to the woodlands that you may live in.

Most importantly I kind of understand the type of role I need to play and the path there isn't clear cut but it's important for me to keep spreading that message of love. Right now we live in a dark dank ass time line when the Earth is transiting some dark corner of the cosmos and everything is going through it's own nasty purge while we try to ascend to a new and better reality. However this new and better reality is really indifferent towards the existence of the human race or white supremacy so as the earth ascends and has it’s own purges, if people don't fucking get it together, especially white people, we are going to get taken out as the rest of the world thrives and glows up without us. It's so easy to fall into a spiral of self hate cause this shitty evil society we live in thrives on us not knowing how to honor ourselves and love ourselves. Even capitalism has twisted the idea of loving ourselves into something selfish or synonymous with splurging money to further empower stupid companies to give us quick highs from new purchases that will lose it's meaning and later pollute the earth.

On these trips a message I keep on getting is that love and life are synonymous. It's true and sad that there are many people brought into this world without love but what lets life thrive and what makes life worth living is love. And love is really that energy where we are grateful in our existence and the existence of our friends and those that support us and nature that supports us. But often what helps us understand that love is being able to support ourselves and do stuff that honors ourselves. And yes being loved IS a need, so it's important to seek out friends that validate you and that will love and support you and that you can do the same with them. If you find that network you will feel less alone and when you love yourself you will never feel alone and that in itself is true empowerment. When you have love in your life like that you can do anything and you will always feel safe. And I think that's why I was crying at the beginning of my trip cause I know what it's like to not have that. I know what it was like to feel hopeless and suicidal. We also live in a society that like beats down on kids of color especially black girls and like LGBT kids especially trans kids and it makes me so sad to think that there are people here that don't even realize how valuable they are by just existing. Like their lives don't just matter, they are INVALUABLE and that they need to fight for themselves every day and make the effort to love themselves cause honestly once they push through and really figure out how to love themselves they don't realize that they are literally a beacon of light and hope for others to learn how to love themselves too. Once they get to that place someone else who could be alone and struggling can look to them and be like: wow I do have the right to exist and be valued cause this person found a way to do it themselves even though society shat on them the whole time. And it's important to support your peers in these marginalized groups as well and be allies to those who are not well supported in this society. Like this is such a shitty timeline but people need to realize that they are made of love and that they are valuable and that the future of humanity and our peace and well being depends on their missions to find love for themselves and overcome white supremacy's demon ass structure that is enslaving us all.

Ok that is all. If you have read all of this thank you <3

#personal #lions gate #boy what a night of revelations lol #thank you if you read all of that lol

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asitrita · 4 years ago

Text

Personal rant

This is a personal rant about Spain’s history and some people’s interpertation of it, mostly regarding some of the “nations”, or “ethnic groups” that are sometimes considered Spain’s parents. If you think it can affect you personally, don’t continue reading.

I really do not understand people who consider Spain’s father figure anyone other than Rome. Like... literally, no one makes any sense other than Rome. I could buy Visigoth acting as Spain’s father figure, or as his “tutor”, and I could even understand (though in no way share) the idea of Castile and Aragon being Spain’s “parents”. Though, again, I would not share that hc either, because even if the current nation-estate of Spain is “younger” than the many different medieval kingdoms, the notion, the “idea”, the “identity” to some extent, of Spain is way older than any of those medieval kingdoms which, technically, were not nations nor modern estates either, so acting as if Spain came to be out of the blue in the 15th century, as if there had not been already a clear Spanish identity and notion of unity and nation prior the 15th/16th centuries is just... ignoring all the evidence. What I trully do not understand is when people have Al-Ándalus, Umayyad, or even Carthage, as Spain’s father figures. It is true that history can be interpreted in many different ways, more so when it comes to Hetalia, but there are some interpretations that... they just make no sense. Not from a historical point of view, at least. Guess you can have whatever headcanons you want, but historically speaking, they may make no sense whatsoever. And that is exactly the case with these interpretations. For Al-Ándalus and Umayyad the reason why it is utter nonsense for any of them to be Spain’s father figure is that they are literally everything Spain is not (and did not want to be). In the first years of our lives, until we become adults, we all build our identity against the others. Something similar happens with the different nations. They build their identity partially based on not being like the neighbour next door. We could say that Spain built itself against precisely these two guys up there, Al-Ándalus and Umayyad. One could think, “okay, but as we all know, in many cases, the first ones we try to build our identity against is our parents, so that could further emphasise the role of those two as Spain’s paternal figures”. Well, no, and here’s why. Maybe it all comes to what I understand as a father figure, but to me, in the case of nations, the father figure, or the “father” or “mother” of a nation should be the one the nation receives more influences from. It should be to some extent the “origin” of most, or a big significant part of the nation’s culture, identity, and overall, idiosyncrasy. Either that, or it should have left a very deep impact and long lasting effect in the character and identity of that nation. And what I mean is that the nation must have adopted transcedental aspects from that “father nation” that are now rooted deep in its character. Otherwise, a deep impact could be a traumatic event like a war that people from the nation have built their national pride upon, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that the nation has actively acquired, integrated, and assimilated, deep and transcendental elements and aspects of its “father nation” culture and identity, so the “father nation” identity has, to some extent, become the identity of the “new nation”. Examples of some of these transcedental elements could be religion (and overall, spirituality), sense of justice, moral values, or even lexicon related to abstract concepts and emotions such as love, passion, fear, desire, hate, regret, etc. So here’s the thing. Neither Al-Ándalus nor Umayyad did, in any way, affect Spain in this respect. Mind, I am not saying they didn’t leave any influence in Spain at all, what I am saying is that they did not have a transcedental influence in Spain’s identity. Or they did, but just in the opposite way. Spain takes its culture, society, values, and spirituality from Rome, and builds itself against Al-Ándalus and Umayyad (quite honestly, Spain’s relationship with these two is more similar to the “traumatic” event some nations have built their national pride upon I mentioned earlier than to any father-son type of relationship). If anything, they only helped to exacerbate Spain’s loyalty to its “indigenous hispanoroman” identity. Again, not saying they left no influence, for example, some architecture in southern Spain (though, tbh, it’s more like a couple buildings people visit while ignoring the hundreds of christians and roman buildings lol), some cities, some influences in the food and some traditional dishes, some new agricultural and destillation techniques, etc. And it is well known that up to 8% of the Spanish vocabulary is of Arab origin, even though, to be honest, much of that percentage are toponyms and half of the lexicon is no longer used in Spanish today (most people don’t even know half of these words, and some have their Latin counterpart). However, none of these influences affects Spain’s psique and identity to a transcendental level. Not only that, but the people who identified as Spaniards and all its old variants (derivatives of Latin’s hispanus/hispanicus) were the Northern Christian people, never the Muslims who lived in Al-Ándalus under Umayyad rule. It was northern Christians who talked about Spain, who considered Spain their “lost” nation, and who identified with a Spanish identity, not the people nor the rulers of Al-Ándalus (for a short time, Northern Christians would actually refer to Christians living under Muslim rule in Al-Andalus as Spaniards, to distinguish them from the Muslims). And in no way am I justifying the following, I’m just stating a fact, which is that Muslims were expelled. All of them. Which means that Spain, as a nation, as the people it represents, literally has almost no link whatsoever with the people of Al-Ándalus, Arabs, nor Muslims, other than its people, the “Spanish people” fought them for centuries. Obviously, they lived in the same piece of land, though borders were never an easy place to live in, they were not 24/7 killing each other (impossible to do that nonstop for almost 8 century), they often traded, and there were Christians living in Muslim territories who adopted some Arab or generally Middle Eastern/Oriental traditions and practices that they preserved even under Christian rule (they were called Moriscos), hence the influences. But these influences are so superficial and “materialistic”, they affected so little the Spanish way of understanding the world, that I trully think it is unrealistic to make any of these two Spain’s father figure. It is almost a bad joke when you get the Northern Kingdoms singing to Spain and identifying as Spanish, getting ripped of their representation and identity, and instead, associating this identity and representation (their identity and representation) to those who never identified as Spanish and fought those who did with the intention of conquering and subduing them. And I guess you could argue that most of “Spain” (the land) was under Muslim (Umayyad) control, but as I understand Hetalia, and modern states today, it is not about land, but about nations and ethnic groups, and the people they represent, and it just makes no sense to make Spain’s father figure neither Al-Ándalus nor Umayyad, because given history, they would have probably tried to kill Spain had they got the chance, and the same goes for Spain, as it certainly would try to kill them as well. Plus, friendly reminder that the muslim territory of Spain was, for the most part, independent from the Umayyad Empire, so even if members of the Umayyad dinasty ruled over Al-Ándalus, it was not part of its empire (again, for the most part, there was a short time it did belonged to the empire). Plus Al-Ándalus was cut into pieces during the 11th century and the Arab “Umayyad” elite expelled from the Peninsula. I mean, neither the Umayyad dinasty nor Al-Ándalus lasted for 7 centuries. The Arab rulling elite (Umayyad) were expelled, and Al-Ándalus destroyed, by the end of the 11th century. So it is not true Spain received direct influence from these particular people for almost 800 years, that’s an extreme oversimplification of Medieval Spain, as Arab rule in part of Spain, as well as the existance of Al-Ándals, in reality, lasted for around 350 years, as opposed to Roman presence in Spain, which lasted for over 600 years, plus, they were never expelled and their identity completely permeated the indegenous inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula.

About Carthage... what can I say? This just makes no sense. It may not be as ironic (and almost offensive) as the other two choices, but in some way, it makes even less sense, if that’s even possible. Not much to say about this one, I just can’t even think of one thing Spain has inherited from this guy, can’t think of any influence from Carthaginean culture or whatever in Spain. The little I can think of slightly related to Carthage is actually Phoenitian so... I mean, Cartagena, in Murcia, is a great city, but... can anyone think of any significant influence, any significant link Spain as a nation, or Spaniards as an ethnic group, have with Carthage? I’m sure people from Murcia may come up with something but... in general, I really don’t think we have anything to do with Carthagineans, as much as I like Carthage. I’m sorry, but I trully can’t think of anything Spaniards, Hispanics, even Portuguese if you want (though I’m no expert on Portuguese history so I may be wrong on this one) have “inherited” from Carthage (guess you could link the Portuguese Empire based on trade with Carthage, but realistically speaking, there’s no historical corelation there either). I guess they may have introduced some new techniques and whatnot, but, really, that happens all the time, that does not affect the identity of a group nor their way of looking at the world greatly, unless it supposes a radical change in their way of life, which did not happen, since Carthage barelly controled some strategic cities. Yes, it got to the northern part of Spain, but did not have actual control over all that territory, and there was no cohesive rule nor anything I can think of... In any case, I’m no expert on Carthage either, but I trully cannot think of any Carthaginean influence in Spain at all. In conclusion, a nation’s “father figure” is the one that has, to some extent, “built the nation”, or “mould it”. Just like if we were talking about a human being, we should ask “how does it behave? how does it think? how does it see the world? how does it communicate? what are its values? what are its traditions?” Then ask about the origin of all those answers. And there you get the “father figure”. Spaniards speak a Latin-based language/s (but the Basques and some people from Navarra who speak a pre-Roman language), they are Christians, Roman Cahotlics to be more precise, and Spanish justice is based on Visigothic and Roman laws. Spanish culture is overwhelmingly based on Roman culture, as is its society, values, etc. The way Spanish interact with the world and others is based on a Roman perception of the world. They may be others who have influenced Spain, I’m not denying that, but none of them has, not by a long shot, defined Spanish identity as much as Rome has. The only event in history that had a significant importance in defining Spain’s identity other than Rome and getting to America, is the war against the Muslims, which includes the two listed above. But they never “added” to the Spanish identity on significant levels, for the most part they just reinforced it by acting as its antagonists, which is not exactly what I would represent as “parenthood”. Carthage... I don’t even know how that happened. And that’s it. This is not a personal attack to anyone who has any of these headcanons, it may seem like it is, but it is not. If anything, it is an “attack” to these ideas, simply because I don’t think they accurately portray Spain’s history at all, on the contrary, they distort Spanish history based on 18th and 19th century foreigner’s ignorant and orientalist crazy theories and assumption (and anti-Catholic propaganda, tbh), and Hetalia, at the end of the day, is about history. If any one has these headcanons,you do you, go with it, but please be aware that they are not historically accurate, that’s it.

#aph spain #aph #hetalia #historical hetalia #hws spain #jesus #needed to get it out of my chest #like seriously #it dosen't make any sense #and i've been seing fanart about this for years and years #and carthage #like how???#and god knows i love carthage #but... no #just don't #If you want a pre-roman character to be Spain's and Portugal's father or mother figure #please do Iberia or Celt or whatever #I would even accept Lusitania for Portugal even though as someone from Extremadura lusitania = portugal is a glowing big ass red cross #but at least it makes some sense #even though we don't have much of pre-roman culture left we still have a tiny bit #and biologically speaking both portuguese and spaniards #and particularly spaniards #are overwhelmingly pre-roman 'people'#genetics don't lie and spanish genetic genepool is overwhelmingly native hispanic #and numancia cantabrian and sertorian wars are important in the imaginary of the spanish nation #as well as the wars led by viriatus #i went out of topic already #this is all for now

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scarletravenswood · 5 years ago

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Pagan vs Christian Worldview || 4 HUGE Differences

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One of the most common questions I receive is if someone can be both Christian and Pagan. This is a difficult question as it depends on what perspective you're coming from. From a Christian perspective the answer is definitely NO as in Christianity you must only believe in the one ‘true’ God. If you’re looking from the Pagan perspective the idea of combining Christianity & Paganism is a bit more possible because as Pagans we can always add on an additional deity, which in this case would be the Christian God, into our religious practice. However, there are some huge differences between the Pagan & Christian lifestyle and worldview that would make combining these two faiths difficult. So for this video & blogpost I want to share what I view makes the Pagan worldview so fundamentally different from Christianity.

Now before we begin, some disclaimers. I am not an official expert on religion. This is just my personal understanding of the differences between Paganism and Christianity so take everything I mention with a grain of salt. I understand that there is complexity and nuance to everything and this is just meant to be an introduction & my personal beliefs. This is also a very difficult topic to tackle because Paganism is an umbrella term and there are many different religions with varying beliefs and practices that could be considered Pagan. For the purposes of this post I’m using commonalities I find among the majority of Pagan religions, though this will of course not reflect all Pagans or Pagan religions.

Now that we got that out of the way here are 4 fundamental differences between Paganism and Christianity:

One God vs. Many Gods

In Christianity there is belief in one true god. Those that believe in this God will ascend to heaven and those that believe in either multiple deities or a different singular God are incorrect and they must be “saved” or else they will not ascend to heaven. In Paganism we believe in multiple Gods. While there may be a hierarchy of Gods, with some more powerful than others, the belief in multiple deities is an essential part to Paganism.

This makes Paganism distinctively different from Christianity and also makes it extremely versatile as each individual can choose the deities they would like to incorporate in their religious practice. This Pagan worldview also allows for religious syncretism which is the blending of two or more religious belief systems into a new system. The deity Hermes Trismegistus is an example of this as he is a deity formed by combining the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.

Why is Religious syncretism important? Well, Pagans have the ability to adopt other deities and religious customs instead of completely rejecting them as wrong or sinful. Because of this unique feature it is my personal belief that Paganism is very conducive to peacefully living in a society that is filled with a diversity of people with various faiths. Also, as a side note, since there is not ONE true God in Paganism that means that others don’t need to be “saved” so there is no need to proselytize in Paganism. “Spreading the word” or converting others is not necessary or desired in Paganism.

Faith vs. Actions

Faith is the most important aspect of Christianity. Sin can be forgiven as long as you confess & have faith in the one true God. For example, in Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

In most Pagan societies, faith was secondary to actions. It was more important to perform the rituals & festivals to honor the Gods than it was to fully believe in the Gods. It was your actions in life, not your faith, that determined your place in the afterlife. You can look at Valhalla as an example - it was your strength in battle, not your faith, that determined a place in Valhalla.

You can also look towards ancient Roman society where religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of "I give that you might give." Roman religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma. Excessive devotion or fearful groveling to deities was considered undignified in Roman society. This does not mean that faith was unimportant among Pagan societies, it just means that it was not valued in the same way as it was within a Christian worldview.

For example, we can look at a quote from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, “Since it is possible that you might depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly. But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve you in evil; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no concern about human affairs, why would I wish to live in a universe devoid of gods or devoid of Providence? But in truth they do exist, and they do care for human things, and they have put all the means in man’s power to enable him not to fall into real evils.”

Here Marcus Aurelius is stating how the Gods have created us not to watch over us to see if we are sinning, but instead they have empowered us to create and mold our own lives. Faith here is not what’s truly important. What’s important is the quest to empower ourselves to actions that better our lives and the lives of others.

Mercy vs. The Warrior

In Christianity there is a focus on humility, peace, and meekness and an de-emphasis on physical strength & the warrior archetype. For example, Matthew 5:5 - “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

This is much different from Paganism. There is not a ‘turn the other cheek’ worldview and Pagan societies were not always peaceful or gentle. In fact, pretty much every Pagan society had at least one God of war.

This does not mean that we as modern pagans condone violence. However, it does mean the warrior archetype has value and that building both physical & mental strength can be an active part of Pagan practice. If you are interested in learning more about the Warrior archetype I would recommend watching the video The Archetype of the Warrior – How Films Help Empower Us All.

Strength in the Pagan worldview, both personally & collectively as a society, was greatly important. For example, you can consider the value of athletic glory in Ancient Greece or you can look towards Socrates who wrote, “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

In Paganism the body is not sinful nor is it something to be ignored. In fact, the body is an integral part of spiritual practices. Through bodily strength & pleasures we gain access to glimpses of the divine, but that does not mean we should descend into purely hedonism. There is of course a time & a place for hedonism in Paganism, but it must be balanced by a strong body and mind.

Focus on Afterlife vs. Focus on Life

In a Christian worldview the goal is to live in faith without sin so that you may ascend to heaven. In many Christian texts and in certain aspects of modern Christian culture there is a yearning for this life to end and for the rapture to occur. During this time faithful Christians will be chosen by God and the rest of us will descend to hell for eternity.

Even the main symbol of Christianity, the cross, focuses on death and the afterlife. Additionally, you have the concept of the martyr - to sacrifice your life for God leads to sainthood.

By contrast, the afterlife is not as important within Pagan societies. While there are some occasional mentions of places like Elysium or Valhalla, it’s clear that the afterlife was not a main focus of Pagan religions. Instead, a main focus of Pagan religious rites and festivals was to celebrate life & fertility. This celebration of fertility is a clear departure from the Christian worldview.

In Christianity, female sexuality and fertility is often viewed through a lens of sin. Pagan societies however, greatly celebrated fertility - both our human fertility and the fertility of the land. Some of the earliest art we humans created, like the Venus of Willendorf, emphasized the sexuality & fertility of the female form and celebrating this fertility is an integral part of pretty much all pagan religions.

When it comes to death in Pagan societies, it was your legacy that mattered much more than where you end up after you die. For Pagans achieving eternity did not mean dying and going somewhere where you’ll live forever. Instead eternity was achieved when the great acts you performed in life are remembered & retold by your descendants and your community.

There’s a lot more I could discuss about the differences between the Christian & Pagan worldview, such as Purity of God vs Flawed Gods or the Intersection of Science and faith in Christianity & Paganism so let me know if you enjoyed this post and I maybe I will make a part 2.

Next I’d love to hear what you think are some of the fundamental differences between Christianity and Paganism, so please share your thoughts as well. ✨

#paganism #witch #witchcraft #witchblr #pagan #Pagans of Tumblr #witches of the world #Christianity #Heathen #baby witch

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maiismsworld · 3 years ago

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SUMMARIZATION OF IMPORTANT ETERNAL TRUTHS IN SUPPORT OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGION OF UNIVERSAL GOD OF MAI-ISM FOR THE NEW AGE

1) No race, nation, community, society, family or individual can be ever truly happy, unless there is at least a superior morality, an unflinching faith in God, a clear crystal conscience and a penetrative righteous understanding about spirituality, and a conviction about the never-failingness of the Divine Law and a perfect censorship in the matter of passions and moderation of one's varied desires.

2) Any deep study of the religious integrity or disintegrity of any nation and it having been happy or unhappy during a certain period will bear out the said truth although of course the good or bad seeds-sowing and its rich or poor harvest-reaping may differ in their times by 30, 50, 100 or even more years. Sometimes another equally observable truth is seen, viz., that the finalmost Western point at one end turns out to be the extreme Eastern point and staunchest religiosity on gradual advancement always follows the most rabid irreligiosity. Nations that have gone to the extremity of godlessness do realize their own follies through unbearable sufferings, and turn a new page of morality, religiosity, spirituality, love and wisdom. Since past 300 to 500 years the said transformation age has brought upon the world every course of conflict, quarrelling warfare, in almost all the regions of human activity and living. The only exception is that of the special region of the higher realized godly persons of any religion and any nation.

3) The first happy change in realizing the need of living with virtue, character, sympathy, love and service having been achieved (which work has to be actually undertaken), there can be the dawn for the sun of true religiosity to rise. In another word, the next forward step from virtue, morality and character is the truest religiosity of the inner-most inherent nature of any religion.

4) The highest supreme Almighty having fully considered different conditions of the various portions of humanity viz., their climates, geographical environments, inherent natures, surrounding flora-fauna, external and internal forces, etc., has through the highest religious souls of each humanity portion, prescribed certain ways of guidance consolidated together, have formed different religions for various groups of mankind. The end and aim kept in view during the gradual development of any religion by God and God-directed highest religious personages, has all along been one alone, viz., that on strictly living life according to the requirements of any religion, each and every human being that has embraced that religion, may live in peace and happiness, generally and on the whole.

5) The simplest precaution so that there be no complication, confusion or conflict regarding religion is (according to Mai-ism) that there should be a clear, almost impermeable specific understanding regarding each of the three principal elements, viz., (a) God, (b) Religiosity, (c) Religion.

6) According to Mai-ism, religiosity is never confused with religion. Religiosity means the condition of having attained a certain status regarding moral, mental, religious and spiritual development, on having lived out the requirements of a particular religion. It is with this difference of religiosity and religion, that Maiism specially emphasizes the truth stated on page 11 of Mother's Message, viz., "Preachers are to be witnesses and not lawyers".

7) Religions differ from each other to quite a large extent. If, however, under the all=embracing crude word of religion a distinction is made as between religion and religiosity, a world of difference and bitterness will disappear. Compared to what a great gulf lies between one religion and another, if the religious world is trained to see the so-called religious differences through the test of "religiosity", it would be quite surprisingly seen that all religions are much nearer to each other than when religions are viewed through their above stated superficial meaning as “religion". In fact "religiosity" prescribed by all religions is practically almost identical. If religion were viewed in its said meaning interpretation, viz., that of "religiosity', the whole religious world will come much nearer than can be imagined. This can be seen on page 16 of the Mai Chart Explanation booklet. Just compare only the religiosity items of different religions and any truly religious man will be struck with the closest resemblance of different religiosities of different religions. It should be enough that "religion" should mean "religiosity" and the main requirement of any religion whatever, should be various things as are common in all religions. As the common highest factor we have the following commandments of true "religiosity" prescribed by all religions. They are:

1) Don't hurt and don't be violent. 2) Don't steal. 3) Don't kill. 4) Don't bear false witness. 5) Don't indulge in falsehoods. 6) Don't commit adultery. 7) Don't covet another's anything. 8) Keep yourself holy, 9) Always remember God. 10) Obey your parents and God.

11) Remember that the Divine Law will never fail and that God's will ever finally reigns supreme, etc. etc.

Thus, Mai-ism introduces the word "religiosity' instead of various religions and any ordinary common sensed thinking man must surely come to the conclusion that most of the differences between various religions, religious followers, nations and communities, etc. are bound to vanish. Thus, if we consider religions as "religions" we will find thousands of differences, whereas if by religion we mean "religiosity", there will be hardly 10 points of differences. This is then the specific work of Universal Religion of Universal God of Mai-ism. All religions reduced to the various requirements of "religiosity would be reduced in their bulk to almost an unimaginable smallness and that is the work Mai-ism is most ambitious to carry out as prevalent throughout the whole religious world. In one-word, what Mai-ism is strongly insisting upon, is to fully visualize the difference of religion and religiosity. As stated on page 8 of "Mother's Message", Religiosity is practice of religion and attainment of the fruits and benefits through the practice.

Mai-ism introduces an entirely new aspect viz., that human beings should be judged and dealt with on the basis of religiosity and not religion. On studying the natural trends of the new age, Mai-ism most clearly visualizes that the future humanity will be classifiable as consisting of (1) ignorant self-centered selfish human beings; (2) knowing about God and religion but fully indifferent; (3) knowing all matters fully naturally out of the demoniac nature; and (4) being of the divine godly nature.

Before I conclude this little thesis about the Universal Religion of Universal God for the new Age (U.R. M.), I feel the inner urge of taking necessary literature precaution, lest there be misunderstanding or misrepresentations about the universal nature of this religion, about which I submit as under.

The finalmost God of this religion is Mother Mai. Mai is also not some fanciful name of any individual religion, but is a simple word meaning nothing else except Mother. If any narrow-minded fanatic of an individual religion wants to give any other name, U. R. M. has absolutely no objection. Let that word be of any language. Only requirement is that that word should mean "Mother". To make it clear, any such name as say, Mary, or Ameena, or Devaki, Mother of Christ, Mohammed, Pegamber or Lord Krishna can't be acceptable. Most often repeated question to the Founder has been "What is the actual name of Mother?'' The Founder's answer is, "Mother's name is Maa, Mother, Amma, Mater." It can be any word which means mother in any language.

The underlying idea is that the God of U. R. M. is the conception of the merciful protective parent and with no limitations of any traditions, mythologies or religious histories or stories.

- None was born without Mother, even though we have certain scriptural references of some greatest prodigies being born without a father. The certainty about, and indebtedness to Mother, is much greater than to the father. Further, if the continued world custom of matrimony disappears due to rebelliousness of man and woman against each other's bondage, where will the world be, regarding the decision about true fatherhood? What about the progeny of unmarried women or of wives of divided heart pairs or professional women? Thus, the claim of the mother is much higher than that of the father. In fact, any impartial thinker would agree with Mai-ism that if God has to have a parental conception, Mother has a greater claim.

Even just ordinary judges deciding the question of guardianship have this consideration most prominent before their mind, which the fanatic religionists who give no peace to God as Mother, don't admit.

Says Mai-ism, if God can be Father, God can as well be Mother; or, as most clearly stated in Mai-ism, Mother is very same whom the world has mostly worshipped as Father. God under Mai-ism can be universal father as well: Universal Mother, Universal Father, Universal Mother-Father or Universal Father-Mother. as one's faith conceives. F is wisdom; M is love, protection; F is justice; M is mercy and forgivingness.

I think from what little has been stated here, no wise man, unless he be a fanatic, bigoted, or prejudiced religionist, can have any objection to U. R. M.

Taking the yet deeper strata of "Why the parental conception at all?", there is the deepmost psychology below. Let us take the driest crumbs of conceptions, "God is everything that exists. All indeed is Brahman (God) or God is one from whom we emanate, to whom we return and in whom we have our living and being. Or let us have the definition of the creator nourisher and destroyer of universes. Let us add the omnipresent, omniscient, the omnipotent. All these definitions judged by themselves, without any further additions or comments or interpretations, can be only the mental creations of any heartless philosopher or scientist.

Mai-ism most boldly asks, "What do we care for any highest God, just as we don't care for the highest world emperor or multi-millionaire, if he is of no utility whatever to us?"

Has anyone's richness any value to us, unless that sometimes helps us to hold our own against poverty? What does any man care if the number of stars, or

planets, or suns or different worlds are reduced or increased? After all eliminations, man wants God only for his own better being, reduction of miseries and increase of happiness. However grand and glorious God be, what does any man care for Him, unless He hears, relieves us, sympathizes with us, saves us from injustice, persecution, cruelty, accidents or earth quakes or epidemics, etc., unless God remunerates sufferings for the sake of virtue, merit, sinlessness, etc.?

If this utilitarian view which is the most predominant consideration as it is practically the only one, there is nothing of greater practicability than the conception of the parent and preferable to the most merciful parent, nourishing even before being born, ever forgiving, protecting, maximum sacrifice-ful and with maximum love and service.

Thus, no wise and thinking man can have any opposition (although one is free to choose one's God's ideal) against Mother's conception. The only idiotic argument that can be held forth is that none or few religions have accepted the ideal of God as Mother. Do we not advance in our outside world? We had no radios, trains and planes. Does anyone argue, we had none for centuries before us? We therefore can't accept them. Or is it meant that religious thinkers must be of a much greater brainless stuff than any ordinary worldly man? Well, judge everything mostly by the utility it serves for mankind. We have till now God as father, but that God did not rise to the ascent of a universal Father.

Mai-ism says "Why not start an entirely new God government, when the world needs a much broader, almost universal outlook?" If everything is to be made anew, new conceptions, new age, new rules, why not new rulership, as well, especially when God as father has hopelessly failed to keep all his various sons, of religions, without mutual rivalries and hatred? And why be so cruel or at least unmindful of the mother's claim, especially when it is the universal experience that no family can live happily without the central pillar of the mother?

And such ones of the readers as are gifted by God with the sense of rising above one's ancient prejudices or insensible godlessness, may just condescend to admit the possibility of justly holding religious views other than one's own. They may have a look at the Mai-ism literature, to see how very unimaginably broad-minded Mai-ism has been.

Just open only the 5th page of "Mother's Message". "One who does not believe in God, but does believe in the common tie of humanity and practices service and extends love to all, is a Mai-ist. Because he is the follower of Mai, in one of Her aspects as one universal soul, one universal consciousness or one universal cosmos."

Just open the very 2nd page of "Mai Sahasranama". It says, "Mai has no name and no form which means that Her names and forms are infinite."

Amongst so many forms and names, enumerated as "some' out of infinite, the following deserve repetition here.

Mother is the inner voice of saintly souls, consciousness, instinct, conscience or inspiration.

One most highly educated young man in Madras in 1949 challenged Maiji, stating that he does not believe in God at all. Maiji told him, "It depends on the definition you make. During life you must be following certain views." He said, "No, no, no God, I will do only what my conscience commands me to do. Said Maiji, True, but suppose some one preaches conscience is God, are you not 'godless'?" "Yes, but I know none has ever defined so". "Rather say none of the religions you have known has defined so". "If I show you Mai is conscience, would you agree you are following Mai?" "Surely'. This reference was shown to him. He saw the broad-mindedness and universality of Mai-ism. (Everyone has a conscience).

Mai that works through three powers of desire, knowledge and action and handles all beings through three principal moods of equilibrium, action and inertia.

Mai has the visible forms of fire, sun, moon and dawn; Mai that is the soul of whatever enraptures us as beauty, sublimity, mercy and compassion; Mai who is in the form of the guru or an assemblage of gurus. Mai that is known in common parlance as nature, divine law providence, time, primary desire, force, power, energy. evolution or chance; Mai that resides in individuals as the serpent power (Kundalini); Mai that is one, few, many and all as conceived by any soul. Mai that is beyond the conditioned state of being He, She or It. Mai that is all and not all, beyond being personal or impersonal and beyond being with or without forms and qualities.

Thus Mai is what any rationalistic religious Man's conception can possibly be.

The next naughty question is the most common notion, as to how any religionist can follow the U. R. M. Here Mai-ism cuts the Gordian knot. Refer "Mothers Message"' page 1.

"With full respect to and following of one's own religion, one can be a Hindu-Mai-ist, a Jain-Mai-ist, a Christian-Mai-ist, a Zoroastrian-Mai-ist, a Mohammedan-Maiist and so on. Mai-ism is one's own personal religion."

As explained in "World's Need and Mai-ism", Mai-ism cuts off this Gordian knot by bringing into existence a new idea. "There is no conflict or contradiction in any one having his individual religion for individual purposes of religious progress and yet having a Universal Religion of Universal God for universal purposes and considerations." This is as so often stated like any doctor being a president or member of an epidemic prevention institute, for the whole city and yet conducting one's own private hospital or dispensary without any conflict between the universal duties and individual duties, much more has been stated on the point. In fact, there can be no conflict of duties so long as those both are thoroughly understood in their true spirit.

Whenever there is obviously a conflict between the part and the whole, it implies a disruption of integrity or a crooked behavior or any offence-giving on the part of either of the part or the whole, or both. In natural unvitiated condition, any whole is never against the better being of any one of its different parts, nor is any part against the better being of the whole, All parts are most anxious and deeply interested in maintaining the highest efficiency of the whole and vice versa, unless there is split, corruption, corrosion and tearing of the heart. To put it in plain words, the principal tenets and authoritative injunctions of the part and the whole can never run cross-wise, if rightly interpreted in their esoteric meanings about the finalmost forms of duties, orders or commands.

Next, the vexing opposition arises from a suspicious mentality, which can be removed only on personal contacts and experiences. How far the U.R.M. is in every atom of its teachings universal can however be seen from various scattered expressions of beliefs given out in the Mai-ism literature all throughout

With a view to leaving no room for any misconceptions the following references are quoted here to permanently imprint the conviction that the Universal Religion of Universal God of Mai-ism is really universal up to its last and lowest end and atom. U. R. M. is for compacting and consolidating and condensing and not for compulsion nor conversion. In fact U. R. M. has no belief in any permanent efficacies of any efforts which have not originated from the heart and willful resolution of any person.

Says Mai-ism, "Everyone has one's own right fo selecting one's own line of evolution. (Mother's Message" Page 7.) Efforts of all others, unless they are by way of guidance to the determined, go futile, without one's own faith, conviction, desire and determination. (Page 11 of "Mai Sahasranama", "Mother's Thousand Names"'). "If all religions are the creations of some one or another of all Mai's sons, where is the sense and need of transferring your own coins from one of your own pockets to another of your own pockets of your own coat?" (Mai-ism page xi of the preface).

In the regions of religions there are, along with strong prejudices, soft, slippery juggleries, as well. One type is of this nature. Every religion has its exoteric and esoteric forms, external and internal points and best as well as worst sides. Our Christianity our Islam, our Hinduism has so many most attractive features. Therefore, be a Christian, a Mohammedan, or an Arya Samajist Hindu. It is like selling fruits in units of baskets on tempting the customers with best fruits placed on top and front for infatuation. Another type of jugglery is to study all religions. Work out one idealistic religion, exhibit the same, and then shout at the top of one's voice, “this is our Hindu Sanatana Dharma" Maiji uses the coined expression lurking thief" for both kinds of juggleries. A lurking thief conceals himself while all are inattentive and busy during daytime and by night when everyone is asleep, he opens the chest and quietly passes off unnoticed. This tendency arises from passionate overenthusiasm regarding one's own religion being believed to be the only best religion. The same scene was repeated when the world took the fad of universality. Pick out points of universality from one's own religion. Place them before the public in the most infatuating language and speak within one's own heart

it is my Christianity or Islam or Hinduism that should be accepted by the whole world as the Universal Religion of Univ. God." The substantial analysis of all such mentalities is that unless the very fundamental basic mentality has become universal, all efforts for a Universal religion become fruitless. It is that lurking thief mentality that has been responsible for no tangible results, although most expensive and vast conferences have continued since 1893 when the Parliament of All World Religions was convened in Chicago.

U. R. M. has started from God to the world just from the other end, while we solve an algebraical exercise of complicated, both sided identities. We presume it is correct and proceed to simplify both sides till we come to some most evident truth as 2n is-equal-to n plus n; or n2 is equal to n x n. We than revert all the steps till we come to the most complicated identity, required to be proved this is the true and internal state of things in the case of U. R. M.

The Universal Mother Mai floods certain best conceptions and they are placed before the world as if a Universal Religion of Universal God is worked out, through human brains on studying the world's requirements. This too is the sportivity of Mai just as any mother makes her ignorant stupid obstinate child to believe the child has done what was believed and desired to be done, although really done by Mai Herself.

There are two principal ways for increasing the world's peace and happiness through religion. Leaders and custodians of individual religions should go on developing the element of universality amongst its followers. This remedy had its proper age and time, but materialism baffled the religious custodians and pseudo saints and religionists, through their pitiable lack of true religious powers and abuse turned the follower's mass to be rebellious against church, scriptures and priestcraft.

The second or the other way being that of U.R.M. is that of consolidating all persons that are already of the proved universal mentality and leave the question of the details of formulating the Universal Religion of Univ. God to be worked out by universalists under the grace and inspiration of God as the Universal God (Mai, in the case of U. R. M.), through love, and service to the whole humanity and devotion with self-surrender to one's own universal God.

Best play or drama in the hands of hopeless players and actors is a trash. Best players will give best moral effects and results even if the theme is quite mediocre.

Mai-ism is for selection and consolidation of the highest players, and leave the question of the play selection and its details to them that would know best what scenes to be enacted or rejected. This mentality of U. R. M. will be quite evident on reading the preface portion of the 2nd Volume of "Mother's Thousand Names'', which is as under:

If the world wants to be happy, it must start a searching campaign in every nook and corner of all continents for saintly souls, who are fully universal minded, to whom all religions are theirs, to whom all people of any nation are theirs, to whom the greatest joy is to serve God's children to whom being in communion with, and in the service of God is the on living."

Such self-controlled, universal-minded God favored humanity-welfare-worried selfless high souls of the said new universal saints order, can alone create finally the best legislators, advisers, society-formers and society-reformers, peacemakers and peace establishers.

|U. R. M. or the Universal Religion of Univ. God of Mai-ism wants such saints to be in the higher regions beyond India and Hinduism, beyond America, Europe and Christianity, beyond China and Japan and Buddhism beyond Arabia and Africa and Islam, so on and so forth.

And as stated on page 445 of "Mai-ism" in italics there must be intercommunications and sympathetic exchanges and some eleventh thing must come forth out of the ten ablest things.

The regional height was from U. R. M. expects such saints to work for the world's welfare can be inferred from the following practical measures advocated under U. R. M. (Page 12 of "Mother's Thousand Names"').

(2) Abolition of racial, national, provincial, social and religious prejudices.

(3) Opening, or encouraging to open, independent Mother's lodges and colonies under any denominations, religious, national or communal, of any people, in any place,

(4) Exchange of opinions on religious questions and of charities by leaders of different religions to one another.

U. R. M. aspires some day to wipe out the mutual bitterness of individual religions to such and extent that Christian, Hindu or Muslim saints under their superior idea of the U. R M. may exert for procuring charities to help the needy humanity portions from the prosperous portions without any considerations of religions or countries and nations. In the final matter of charities, the only consideration should be that of the suffering humanity portion.

The extent of the universality element in the head and heart of the Founder of U. R. M. can be well seen from the following extracts of his thesis In support of I. R. F. (International Religious Federation)" as its subconcillor-in-Chief (in Japan). The thesis has been printed in the Ananai issue of January 1958, page 40, by the Ananai Kyo Institute.

(1) "My object has been to collect all views about the need of unification of all different nations and religions, world peace and re-organisation measures for increasing general religiosity, love and service."

(2) "As I am the follower and devotee of the Universal Mother Mai, of all religions and religionists, I am the pilferer of nectar fruits of any gardens that fall into my hands.

"All gardens are finally owned by God Almighty. whose servant and slave, but most beloved and ever pardoned pet creature I am."

(3) I have thrown off all the outer skins of different sugar-canes of different countries. I am pressing out their juice and collecting the same in a common receptacle. I have unified all juices to form one juice, which I invite and welcome all my brothers to share with me, in the sacred memory of one common parentage of ours, of one and all of us, Universal One God of one and all.

(4) Personally, I think it will be more useful work, to take up all books of eternities of every religion and to revise and abridge them and to make them appreciative and attractive and handy enough for the modern leisure-less world, without thrusting one's own personal views and comments.

I would like someone to prepare new text-books of each religion, made acceptable to the modern man on the basis of psychology, rationalism, universality and science, without losing a single golden dust grain.

(5) Finally, I would like the enactment of a worldbible for them that have remained discontented with any one of so many religions.

As stated on page 118 of Mai Adherents Oath, by Mai's grace, it is very possible that in immediate future. groups of universal religionists, Hindu, Christian, Muslims, Jain, Zoroastrian, Mai-ists may be formed.

Such groups have their full independence and autonomy in all matters and details, except being out of rhyme with the above-mentioned Mai-istic principles. All such institutes can be federations to the parental conception and institute of Universal Mai-ism.

Any such universalised group may have its own temple, God, gospel, worshipping modes, rules and regulations, places (temples and monasteries) and properties, in respect of which none others can have any right of dabbling.

Let there be further elucidation as to what views U. R. M. entertains regarding the churches, rites and ceremonies, spiritual yogic practices, devotional methods, etc. There too, U. R. M. has quite an out and out universalistic mentality. None should commit the Himalayan blunder, viz., that U. R. M. is in any way pro-Hinduistic. The casting of prayers and practices of U. R. M. have been to some little extent Hinduistic, not because U. R. M. has any preferential estimation for Hinduism but because the only available human material, to propagate the U. R. principles, has been automatically of the Hinduism casting. If U. R. M. had been born in any other country, it would have taken the shape and colour of that country and the religion of that country.

This is the possible great fear in future and with a view to saving U. R. M. from that danger there have been scattered words of warning against falling into the said cess-pit.

To start with, in the matter of explanation of the Mai-istic view point, regarding various devotional and worshipping or ceremonial practices, etc., we have on page 6 of "The Synthesis of Mai-ism" the following:

(1) "Believe me, the man who loves and serves others, is devout and self-surrendered, is many times much more powerful, even in altering his own circumstances than the man who has learned all scriptures, who has mortified himself in midst of five fires, who has mastered pranayam, who has shut himself in caves, who has awakened his Kundalini, who has repeated mantras and who has performed elaborate ceremonies."

(2) As stated in "Mai Pathanam", Mai worship text, Mai worship can be external or internal, physical or mental, unintrospective or introspective, unmeditative or meditative. The installation of Mai for worship can be supposed to be in one's body, heart or soul or in altars, skies, fires, waters, dawn, full Moon, rising or setting Sun, etc.

One has to decide oneself, as Mother is everywhere, according to which method and associated with which conceptions and environments, one's devotional intensity can be raised to the highest pitch. That is the worshipping method for that particular person.

On page 61 of "Mai-ism" (Note 76-77) the same idea will be found corroborated. A devotee of the old school came to Maiji for understanding Mai-ism. Maiji inquired, "Shall we pray and worship?" With the old orthodoxical mentality the visitor said, "I don't mind. What is to be done?'' Maiji answered, "Do whatever you like: sing., dance, meditate, kneel, pray, prostrate. Do whatever you love best. There is no particular method with Mai you know best what will make you most absorbed in Mai.

Mai Sahasranama Pathanam, which is the authorized text book of worship, repeats the warning against falling into the said blunder at so many places. It says thus, on the very 2nd page,

(1) Subsidiaries may vary. The main most thing is for everyone to find out in what circumstances one's latent devotional mood can be raised to its highest pitch.

Each thing is best for one, who has found it best for oneself. There should be absolutely no dabbling with some one's own selection for himself or herself.

The worshipped may be an image, an idol or a picture or only a mental imagination of a personal deity or the conception of the all-embracing infinity.

(2) Mai worship does not necessarily mean the worship by a certain congregation, or the installation of a certain image, in a particular place with a particular process.

On arising of that sort of degenerated belief of monopolization, Mai-ism can no longer retain its claim to universality.

(3) On page 33 under "Dhoons", comprising of couplets for repetition sung musically in a chorus, the following has been stated:

There should be no misunderstanding, that dhoons under Mai-ism are only in respect of any particular deity, God or religion. Mai being universal, represents all deities, and religions.

If the followers of any religion join together in sufficient number and with the universal spirit, and if they undertake the chanting of any dhoon in chorus on unanimous agreement and acceptance, they are equally welcome and such dhoons should be repeated in chorus by all Mai-ists, in as much as Mai is the Mother of all deities, nations and religions.

Many similar other references can be found in "Mai-ism" literature because that is the most natural form of the Mai-istic belief.

Regarding the universal outlook, conception and belief in respect of worshipping Mai and practicing devotion to Mai, the following quotation will fully convince that Mai-ism is universal in all its aspects regarding worshipping method, meditation and any rights or ceremonies in connection with any religious undertaking. It is quoted from the Phala-Shruti of Mai Sahasranama, page 146. It runs as under:

Once a very staunch devotee wrote to the Founder, to enquire what were the distinctive technicalities of Mai worship. The founder was just then out from divine ecstasy. In a seemingly blunt but outspoken manner, he wrote to the stranger:

The distinctive technicality of Mai worship is that it has none. This arises from the Founders: conviction that you and I are mere mimics. Mother alone can worship Mother and that alone is the true worship in which the worshipper has been first made Mother by Mother, be it for however a small time period and to however a small degree. The rest is mere mimicry and can therefore be of any type. I am too poor to know how Mother worships or should worship Mother, and too different to be approving or disapproving any particular mode of worshipping Mother. In the finality of things, on elimination, the only truth that stands is that Mother alone can and does worship Mother. The rest is only a self-deception or at the most a mind purifying or mind-concentrating practice. On visualization of the final-most stage on elimination, you and I are mere moon reflections, say, you in the nectarlike crystal-lake and I in the dirty cesspool. The span of life, however, for both of us finishes as soon as the moon retracts the moonlight or at the most as soon as the dawn breaks.

The subject of religion is actually more endless than the practically endless largest ocean. The final end therefore can only be that the limitations bound human creature has to control its thirst, hunger and gluttony.

We, therefore, rest here, quoting the last para of the Preface to "Mai-ism", which points out the same sublime truth as is contained in the above illustration.

"How little is claimable by man, in the coming forth of any new religious movement or a sub-religion or a religion? It is all the making of Mother alone. The miraculous-ness of "nothing during a saint's life" and "an amazing huge blaze" thereafter, is not simply a freak or fancy of Almighty. That too has a deep meaning. It is a proclamation of Mai's nothingness, even the highest saint's nothingness, and a working out of an inviolable divine law. The seed shall have to perfectly perish". There is nothing more complicated and incomprehensible, as the healing of the world and worldliness, with a saint and his saintliness.

The life and longevity of any religion's movement depends on its sacred fire being kept alive, by the further sacrifices of more and more high souls as disciples and faithful followers, and as the fire, light and spirit of the predecessors gets dazzling or dimmed with the advent of times.

UNIVERSAL MOTHER MAI BLESS US ALL

JAYA MAAI JAYA MARKAND MAAI

Mai Niwas, Saraswati Road,

Santa Cruz (West), Bombay 54.

27-7-1965 Mai Day Friday.

Mai Swarupa Mai Markand

Founder of Universal Mai-ism and

President – Mai Adherents Institutes.

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 4 years ago

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What do you think Napoleon would feel about the Le Pens? Like I know he’d hate their guts but the extent 👀

God fuck the Le Pens. I feel dirty thinking about them. (Though weirdly funny that Marine kicked her dad out of FN. Like you know you’re too deep down the rabbit hole of fuckery when Marine kicks you out. [and yeah, of course it’s all part of her image cleaning up gimmick. Wherein I’m sure she thinks the same as him, but is trying to “soften” the image of the party. And, based on the last election, it’s working. So that’s horrifying.]) All this to say: fuck the Le Pens; white supremacy etc.

Anyway - assuming we’re still going for “Napoleon from 1815 woke up August 22, 2020″ base for our thought experiments here.

Overall, yeah he’d think them short sighted, idiotic, and would probably have some elegant-yet-crude insults for them in Corsican. Let us take a brief, and not at all comprehensive, stroll down the Le Pens (and FN by default)’s terrible policies. Then I can scrub my brain out because they are absolutely foul people.

behind a cut because it’s long.

Economics: First off, Napoleon and I are the same in that we neither know anything about economics. He did not have a firm grasp on how the economy worked. Which I sympathise with, because it seems very fake and made up.

Anyway, he did a lot of modernization, raised taxes, created a lot of public works programs to stimulate the economy and improve connectivity (gotta build all the roads and canals. Actually though, as a public infrastructure keener, I support this). He did lay the foundation for the centralized bank of France. (Something Biddle would get all hot and bothered over. Nothing sexier than centralized banks.)

Napoleon also introduced a whole loan system for businesses to try and keep them afloat and improve local industry. He was keen on protecting property rights, um, tried to regulate the currency to protect it against inflation. Idk, he did other things that I’m not going to get into.

Comparing Napoleon’s hot economic takes from 1815 to 2020? A bit hard. So I’m going to guestimate on this.

I think, once he understood how the world functions now, he would be pro-globalization and the various free trade agreements that are in place (CETA, PCAs etc). He might disagree with details therein, but the broad philosophy is one I think he’d support.

I don’t know if he would be pro-single currency. I suspect he might be anti-the Euro, while still supporting the broad intents of the EU.

He would support a strong public sector - so government controlled postal service, utilities, schools etc. In that, and the anti-Euro view, he would align with Marine, at least. Not sure about her POS father.

No idea what his views on the Havana Charter would be. Probably mixed.

EU: I’ve touched on this before, I think Napoleon would be pro-EU, over all. He’d just think France should be the hegemonic power. Why isn’t France making all the decisions? This is dumb. Who does Germany think they are? Etc. Therefore, he would disagree with the Le Pens who think the EU is the anti-christ and the cause of everything bad that ever happened in France (I exaggerate, but they do blame the EU for a lot of things so you know, it’s not that much of a stretch).

Immigration: This is where they would diverge significantly. Like apples and moldy toast kind of different. I’ve touched on Napoleon’s immigration policy before, so I’m not going to wade into it again. But yeah, needless to say Napoleon would be like “let everyone come. They want to come to France? They are French. More is better. The end.”

The only thing is, he was very pro-assimilation. Not really into the “patchwork quilt” approach to the philosophy (and implementation) of multiculturalism. Which, to be fair, is a very modern view and not something I would expect anyone from 1815 to agree with, or consider a general good approach to dynamic, multicultural societies.

But yeah, the Le Pens whole moratorium on immigration, hatred of anyone foreign, that would be an anathema to Napoleon. He would vehemently disagree with that stance. Napoleon believed alloys were stronger. You took different people, boiled them down, and melded them into a unified French identity. That was his Hot Take on the matter. Again, pro-assimilation, which is an inherently conservative stance by 21st century standards, but a very average stance by early 19th century standards. His immigration and citizenship views were overall liberal for the time.

Indeed, the whole creation of a unified French identity was in its infancy during his life. He contributed heavily to it, but for his lifetime, identity was strongly linguistic and regional. You’re Gascon before you’re French, you’re Basque before you’re either French or Spanish, that sort of thing.

And of course, his views on this were heavily informed by his own experience and identity as a Frenchman and how it was received, or not, by his own people, as well as other monarchs and countries. (Tsar Alexander liked to brag that he spoke better French than the Emperor of France. And I believe the Times once called Napoleon a “Mediterranean mongrel.” Charming. So, he had a fun and exciting adventure in European class, ethnic and racial politics of the early 19th century.)

Napoleon would also disagree with the Le Pens that citizenship and nationality are indivisible. He was into the whole “if you decide you are French then you are French, no matter which side of the Rhine you were born on”.

Secularism: They’d actually probably mostly agree on this. In that religion has no part or place in government and there should be a clear and strong separation of church and state.

The banning of religious clothing, though, I don’t think Napoleon would support that. I would argue that he’d think it infringed on personal rights too much, and he was keen on protecting those. Like, his policy towards integrating France’s Jewish population was to try and assimilate them, yes, because he viewed everything as being consumed by the monolith that was the French Empire. But he wasn’t like “no wearing a tallit or kippah.”

Abortion: Guys, Napoleon is a culturally Catholic man from 1815 who thought women’s crowing jewel were her children and that France really needed to increase its overall population. I think we can all figure out what his views on abortion would be. Marine is pro-legality of abortion, but she personally is like “it’s eViL and a serious MoRaL IsSuE” etc.

Gay Rights: Napoleon’s whole political approach was to bring in the people on the margins and normalize them (assimilate; one of us, one of us) as a means to increase the base of the population who would support him. As he viewed marriage as a strictly secular, civil ceremony, and not a religious one, there could be a possibility of slowly talking him around to it. That said, he also viewed marriage as a declaration of intent to make many babies (for his army). I don’t think he’d be pro-queer couples adopting, no matter what. So, who knows.

That said, he wasn’t like “lock up the gays”. And as gay marriage is established in France currently, I don’t know if he’d be pro-abolition since it’s mostly a popular/accepted law and he was all about that sweet, sweet public approval rating.

So if he came around to it, it wouldn’t be for altruistic reasons. At the same time, he wouldn’t be like “make it illegal”. He was very “w/e just show up to work on time Cambaceres, jesus.” (Cambaceres: It’s midnight, sire. This isn’t normal work hours. Napoleon: SAYS WHO???)

Women in Politics: Well he’s obviously 100% against that. Ladies belong at home with the bebes. Le Pens, obviously, aren’t. Though Jean, I think, is like Trump where he’s pro his daughter being in politics (until she chucked him out of FN), but he would expect his wife to be a Proper Housewife. That weird conservative man thing about the role of wives and daughters.

There’s my fly-over guestimation of Napoleon v Le Pens

It’s very, very hard to figure out what Napoleon, a man born in 1769 and died in 1821, would think about politics, economics and society in 2020. I tried to gauged based on his broad, philosophical views and how he acted as ruler. But he was also someone who was very analytical and would be capable of understanding the world as it is today and the realities that are in place. He might find them off putting or bizarre (ladies as heads of states?? what about your children??) but he was an imminently pragmatic man who would look at a situation and go “alright, this is the reality of the system and society I am now in” and would adjust himself accordingly.

In the end, trying to figure out how a man from 1815 would react to today’s politics is very difficult, if not outright impossible. His understanding of what liberal meant, what conservative meant, etc. were so different to our understanding that I would never place him in one camp. He had changing, dynamic views, and that would be reflected in his understanding of politics in 2020.

Overall, I think he would disagree with a lot of the stances of the Le Pens. Would he hate them? No. Because Napoleon didn’t really hate people based on their political views. He saw too much of the Revolution to go for extreme personal reactions to political stances; also he was too much a pragmatist and understood that you never know who might be an ally in the future.

Napoleon might look down on the Le Pens, he might find them personally disgusting, he might view them as stupid (honestly, he’d probably just think they’re dumb and quickly move on), but he wouldn’t hate them.

Because this is tumblr, I must now declare my political stance because I was too calm in most of that assessment.

1. Fuck the Le Pens & Front Nationale

2. Nationalism is spooky and I am always suspect when it comes up in political discourse in the year of our lord 2020

3. I am bi and non-binary, which isn’t actually a political stance (or a personality), but tumblr is Like That so I thought I’d include it.

4. I support: lgbtq rights; trans rights; universal health care; easy and open access to education; improved access to education at primary school levels (because that’s a huge impact on people); ACAB; separation of church and state; prison reform/some form of abolishment - I’m still thinking through my views on this and how it should be approached; land back; Aboriginal and Treaty Rights; immigration; no more kids in cages jesus christ; don’t drink bleach; democracy is good, punch fascists etc. etc.

#and by spooky I mean that I think nationalism is a plague on all our houses #napoleon bonaparte #napoleon #spicy fucking ask #I really don't want dumb comments or asks as a result of this #fingers crossed #ask #reply #anon #napoleon in the modern day

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things2mustdo · 4 years ago

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In order for a nation to survive, two critical emotions must be controlled. Contrary to popular belief, these emotions are not fear and greed—although these are very important to control, as well. Rather, it’s masculine aggression and feminine vanity that must be controlled…and we are doing a terrible job at this.

Unfortunately, over the past 70 years, we’ve seen sex roles and gender dynamics completely turned on their heads. Rather than men and women working together to create better relationships, more functional families, and more powerful countries, we’ve been pit against one another by toxic ideologies and ruthless demagogues.

It is not enough to simply know what is happening, however—we must know precisely how it’s happening, step by step, and more importantly, WHY it’s happening. In this article, I will explore why our society has gone so downhill so fast, and potential solutions we can integrate to remedy it (if we can save it, at all).

The Two Forces

As I said previously, there are two very delicate forces which must constantly be counter-balancing one another, and anytime they grow unbalanced, there will be chaos. These two forces are, of course, masculine aggression and feminine vanity. Too much masculine aggression, and a country becomes war-torn, unable to run itself or stay stable long enough to produce any sort of civilization (think the Middle East).

Too much feminine vanity, however, and the opposite occurs. Men become reclusive, because women become far too difficult to deal with. This is why we’ve seen the rise of the sigma male over the past 20 years—men who refuse to attach themselves to any sort of social hierarchy. They’re not alpha, beta, or omega. They just do as they do, without adhering to any sort of social group or workplace hierarchy.

As feminine vanity grows excessive, female hypergamy is given reign to run loose. Rather than men and women developing healthy relationships with one another, women become so conceited that they refuse to “settle” for anyone less than an alpha male Chad Thundercock, and thus we have a surplus of angry, bitter women who hit the wall at 30 and end up childless and alone.

It’s so obvious that it should go without saying, that we are currently in a serious imbalance. For far too long, masculine aggression has been hampered and stomped down by our effeminate school system, our brainwashing devices (aka TV’s), and our mass media control system. All the while, these things have encouraged women to do as they please, without any consequences or thought of their actions on a larger, societal scale.

Restoring the Balance

Balance will be restored, one way or another. There are only two ways for this imbalance to possibly be restored, and most men here will acknowledge, at least implicitly, that this is the case:

Men in OTHER COUNTRIES restore the balance (by coming here en masse)

Men in THIS COUNTRY restore the balance (by not being pussies)

Those are the only two options. There is no third option, where women somehow magically stop giving men 500,000 shit tests a day and step down to become good, faithful girlfriends, wives, and mothers. This will not happen. When a society reaches this critical imbalance, only one of two things can happen.

Of course, we all know what the elites (oy vey!) are pushing for. They want to bring millions of aggressive, young, fighting-age men to this country, to supposedly help combat “population decline.” We all know that this is complete horse shit, and that their true motive is to destroy America.

Even so, with the full force of the elites raining down upon us, there is hope. Over the past two years, we’ve seen more masculine energy emerge and come to the front of our socio-political battlegrounds than arguably any other time in history. For the first time in the past 70 years, men are reclaiming their manhood.

Let me reiterate that this is the only option. There is no magical world where everything just works out great, where we have millions of violent, aggressive 20-something-year-old men come into this country, and we retain our values as an Anglo-Saxon country. No. This will not happen. We either get our acts together, collectively, as men, or we watch our nation burn.

The Path Forward (2018-2020)

The next two years are of critical importance. We have collectively, successfully memed the most brutally alpha and pro-American president into office arguably since Ronald Reagan. This is not an opportunity that we can afford to squander—we must all begin proactively restoring the balance of masculinity in this country, from the top down, otherwise our nation will perish to globalists and their dumb, but useful allies.

There will be resistance, as there is whenever masculinity tries to assert itself. Pay no attention to this resistance. Simply follow the advice which the manosphere advocates for:

Create an income independent of a massive, bureaucratic, globalist corporation

Increase your testosterone levels (start by avoiding foods that kill testosterone)

Lift weights, and become physically able to stand up for yourself

Proactively participate in the upcoming midterms, and the Presidential Election of 2020

Do everything you can to red pill those who are ready (emphasis on them being ready)

If we, collectively, as a group of thousands of like-minded men all across the nation can successfully pull this off, we will see a resurgence of economic, political, and social growth which will have been unprecedented.

If we do not pull it off however, and our nation succumbs to the manipulations of the elite, a far more grim and sinister future will play out.

The Alternative

If we do not successfully reclaim the balance of masculine aggression and feminine vanity in this country, all will be lost, and we will be forced to either live through hell, or leave our homelands. Here’s what to expect over the next decade or so, if a social justice warrior is elected President in 2020, and we lose the culture wars:

Increasing surveillance over the internet

More thought crime policies instituted into law

The figurative castration of men all across the country

Eventual race wars, or religious wars, spurred on primarily by Islamic migrants

This is non-negotiable. If we lose the culture wars to SJW’s over the next several years, we will begin to see lobbying to shut down any and all manosphere websites dedicated to spreading the truth. We have already seen PayPal, YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and Google begin to censor people like Roosh, Alex Jones, Donald Trump, and other conservative/red pilled speakers. We cannot afford to stand this any longer.

If we lose these mediums to the globalists, they will easily gain the support of the public to institute thought crime policies into our legal system. You have a book by Bronze Age Pervert, that Amazon can track from your order history? NAZI SCUM! You’re going to prison. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t actually hurt anyone in any way shape or form, because you had an opinion that the globalists dislike.

As this begins to happen, men will self-imprison all over the nation. Some will fight, of course, and maybe win (if we’re lucky). Others will leave and attempt to gain citizenship in more male-friendly countries such as Denmark, Austria, and Poland. The rest will be forced to hang their heads in perpetual shame.

Eventually, as the population of third world migrants explodes, and tribalism is exacerbated by the polarizing media, we will begin to see rampant terrorist attacks, which are already happening in Germany, The UK, and other nations around the cucked European Union. Inevitably, this will end in a civil war.

It’s Our Choice

I have presented to you the only two choices that we have, and to me, the decision is quite simple. We can either sit around passively, and squabble amongst ourselves over stupid theories and philosophies, or we can take action to better ourselves and improve the stance of our nation.

The choice is clear to me. We either succumb to globalist propaganda, see the death of masculinity in the West, and see freedom of speech die as it is destined to do, or we fight back and create a better future. Some may say this is melodramatic. I would say that a mere cursory glance at history will prove otherwise.

Read Next: Cultural Collapse Theory: The 7 Steps That Lead To A Complete Culture Decline

It was Joe’s first date with Mary. He asked her what she wanted in life and she replied, “I want to establish my career. That’s the most important thing to me right now.” Undeterred that she had no need for a man in her life, Joe entertained her with enough funny stories and cocky statements that she soon allowed him to lightly pet her forearm.

At the end of the date, he locked arms with her on the walk to the subway station, when two Middle Eastern men on scooter patrol accosted them and said they were forbidden to touch. “This is Sharia zone,” they said in heavily accented English, in front of a Halal butcher shop. Joe and Mary felt bad that they offended the two men, because they were trained in school to respect all religions but that of their ancestors. One of the first things they learned was that their white skin gave them extra privilege in life which must be consciously restrained at all times. Even if they happened to disagree with the two men, they could not verbally object because of anti-hate laws that would put them in jail for religious discrimination. They unlocked arms and maintained a distance of three feet from each other.

Unfortunately for Joe, Mary did not want to go out with him again, but seven years later he did receive a message from her on Facebook saying hello. She became vice president of a company, but could not find a man equal to her station since women now made 25% more than men on average. Joe had long left the country and moved to Thailand, where he married a young Thai girl and had three children. He had no plans on returning to his country, America.

If cultural collapse occurs in the way I will now describe, the above scenario will be the rule within a few decades. The Western world is being colonized in reverse, not by weapons or hard power, but through a combination of progressivism and low reproductive rates. These two factors will lead to a complete cultural collapse of many Western nations within the next 200 years. This theory will show the most likely mechanism that it will proceed in America, Canada, UK, Scandinavia, and Western Europe.

What Is A Cultural Collapse?

Cultural collapse is the decline, decay, or disappearance of a native population’s rituals, habits, interpersonal communication, relationships, art, and language. It coincides with a relative decline of population compared to outside groups. National identity and group identification will be lost while revisionist history will be applied to demonize or find fault with the native population. Cultural collapse is not to be confused with economic or state collapse. A nation that suffers from a cultural collapse can still be economically productive and have a working government.

First I will share a brief summary of the cultural collapse progression before explaining them in more detail. Then I will discuss where I see many countries along its path.

The Cultural Collapse Progression

1. Removal of religious narrative from people’s lives, replaced by a treadmill of scientific and technological “progress.”

2. Elimination of traditional sex roles through feminism, gender equality, political correctness, cultural Marxism, and socialism.

3. Delay or abstainment of family formation by women to pursue careerist lifestyles while men wait in confused limbo.

4. Decreasing birth rate among native population.

5. Government enactment of open immigration policies to prevent economic collapse.

6. Immigrant refusal to fully acclimate, forcing host culture to adopt external rituals and beliefs while being out-reproduced.

7. Natives becoming marginalized in their own country.

1. Removal of religious narrative

Religion has been a powerful restraint for millennia in preventing humans from pursuing their base desires and narcissistic tendencies so that they satisfy a god. Family formation is the central unit of most religions, possibly because children increase membership at zero marginal cost to the church (i.e. they don’t need to be recruited).

Religion may promote scientific ignorance, but it facilitates reproduction by giving people a narrative that places family near the center of their existence.[1] [2] [3] After the Enlightenment, the rapid advance of science and its logical but nihilistic explanations into the universe have removed the religious narrative and replaced it with an empty narrative of scientific progress, knowledge, and technology, which act as a restraint and hindrance to family formation, allowing people to pursue individual goals of wealth accumulation or hedonistic pleasure seeking.[4] As of now, there has not been a single non-religious population that has been able to reproduce above the death rate.[5]

Even though many people today claim to believe in god, they may not step inside a church but once or twice a year for special holidays. Religion went from being a lifestyle, a manual for living, to something that is thought about in passing.

2. Elimination of traditional sex roles

Once religion no longer plays a role in people’s lives, the stage is set to fracture male-female bonding. It is collectively attacked by several ideologies stemming from the beliefs of Cultural Marxist theory, which serve to accomplish one common end: destruction of the family unit so that citizens are dependent on the state. They achieve this goal through the marginalization of men and their role in society under the banner of “equality.”[6] With feminism pushed to the forefront of this umbrella movement, the drive for equality ends up being a power grab by women.[7] This attack is performed on a range of fronts:

medicating boys from a young age with ADHD drugs to eradicate displays of masculinity[8]

shaming of men for having direct sexual interest in attractive and fertile women

criminalization of normal male behavior by redefining some instances of consensual sex as rape[9]

imprisonment of unemployed fathers for non-payment of child support, rendering them destitute and unable to be a part of their children’s lives[10]

taxation of men at higher rates for redistribution to women[11] [12]

promotion of single mother and homosexual lifestyles over that of the nuclear family[13] [14]

The end result is that men, confused about their identify and averse to state punishment from sexual harassment, “date rape,” and divorce proceedings, make a rational decision to wait on the sidelines.[15] Women, still not happy with the increased power given to them, continue their assault on men by instructing them to “man up” into what has become an unfair deal—marriage. The elevation of women above men is allowed by corporations, which adopt “girl power” marketing to expand their consumer base and increase profits.[16] [17] Governments also allow it because it increases their tax revenue. Because there is money to be made with women working and becoming consumers, there is no effort by the elite to halt this development.

3. Women begin to place career above family

At the same time men are emasculated as mere “sperm donors,” women are encouraged to adopt the career goals, mannerisms, and competitive lifestyles of men, inevitably causing them to delay marriage, often into an age where they can no longer find suitable husbands who have more resources than themselves. [18] [19] [20] [21] The average woman will find it exceedingly difficult to balance career and family, and since she has no concern of getting “fired” from her family, who she may see as a hindrance to her career goals, she will devote an increasing proportion of time into her job.

Female income, in aggregate, will soon match or exceed that of men.[22] [23] [24] A key reason that women historically got married was to be economically provided for, but this reason will no longer persist and women will feel less pressure or motivation to marry. The burgeoning spinster population will simply be a money-making opportunity for corporations to market to an increasing population of lonely women. Cat and small dog sales will rise.

Women succumb to their primal sexual and materialistic urges to live the “Sex and the City” lifestyle full of fine dining, casual sex, technological bliss, and general gluttony without learning traditional household skills or feminine qualities that would make them attractive wives.[25] [26] Men adapt to careerist women in a rational way by doing the following:

to sate their natural sexual desires, men allow their income to lower since economic stability no longer provides a draw to women in their prime[27]

they mimic “alpha male” social behavior to get laid with women who, without having an urgent need for a man’s monetary resources to survive, can choose men based on confidence, aesthetics, and general entertainment value[28]

they withdraw into a world of video games and the internet, satisfying their own base desires for play and simulated hunting[29] [30]

Careerist women who decide to marry will do so in a hurried rush around 30 because they fear growing old alone, but since they are well past their fertility peak[31], they may find it difficult to reproduce. In the event of successful reproduction at such a later age, fewer children can be born before biological infertility, limiting family size compared to the historical past.

4. Birth rates decrease among native population

The stage is now set for the death rate to outstrip the birth rate. This creates a demographic cliff where there is a growing population of non-working elderly relative to able-bodied younger workers. Two problems result:

Not enough tax revenue is supplied by the working population in order to provide for the elderly’s medical and social retirement needs.[32] Borrowing can only temporarily maintain these entitlements.

Decrease of economic activity since more people are dying than buying.[33]

No modern nation has figured out how to substantially raise birth rates among native populations. The most successful effort has been done in France, but that has still kept the birth rate among French-born women just under the replacement rate (2.08 vs 2.1).[34] The easiest and fastest way to solve this double-edged problem is to promote mass immigration of non-elderly individuals who will work, spend, and procreate at rates greater than natives.[35]

A replenishing supply of births are necessary to create taxpayers, workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers in order to maintain the nation’s economic development.[36] While many claim that the planet is suffering from “overpopulation,” an economic collapse is inevitable for those countries who do not increase their population at steady rates.

5. Large influx of immigration

An aging population without youthful refilling will cause a scarcity of labor, increasing that labor’s price. Corporate elites will now lobby governments for immigration reform to relieve this upward pressure on wages.[37] [38] At the same time, the modern mantra of sustained GDP growth puts pressure on politicians for dissemination of favorable economic growth data to aid in their re-elections. The simplest way to increase GDP without innovation or development of industry is to expand the population. Both corporate and political elites now have their goals in alignment where the easiest solution becomes immigration.[39] [40]

While politicians hem and haw about designing permanent immigration policies, immigrants continue to settle within the nation.[41] The national birth rate problem is essentially solved overnight, as it’s much easier to drain third-world nations of its starry-eyed population with enticements of living in the first-world than it is to encourage the native women to reproduce. (Lateral immigration from one first-world nation to another is so relatively insignificant that the niche term ‘expatriation’ has been developed to describe it). Native women will show a stubborn resistance at any suggestion they should create families, much preferring a relatively responsibility-free lifestyle of sexual variety, casual internet dating via mobile apps, consumer excess, and comfortable high-paying jobs in air conditioned offices.[42] [43]

Immigrants will almost always come from societies that are more religious and, in the case of Islam with regard to European immigration, far more scientifically primitive and rigid in its customs.[44]

6. Sanitization of host culture coincides with increase in immigrant power

While many adult immigrants will feel gracious at the opportunity to live in a more prosperous nation, others will soon feel resentment that they are forced to work menial jobs in a country that is far more expensive than their own.[45] [46] [47] [48] [49] The majority of them remain in lower economic classes, living in poor “immigrant communities” where they can speak their own language, find their own homeland foods, and follow their own customs or religion.

Instead of breaking out of their foreigner communities, immigrants seek to expand it by organizing. They form local groups and civic organizations to teach natives better ways to understand and serve immigrant populations. They will be eager to publicize cases where immigrants have been insulted by insensitive natives or treated unfairly by police authorities in the case of petty crime.[50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] School curriculums may be changed to promote diversity or multiculturalism, at great expense to the native culture.[56] Concessions will be made not to offend immigrants.[57] A continual stream of outrages will be found and this will feed the power of the organizations and create a state within a state where native elites become fearful of applying laws to immigrants.[58]

7. Destruction of native culture

This step has not yet happened in any first-world nation, so I will predict it based on logically extending known events I have already described.

Local elites will give lip service to immigrant groups for votes but will be slow to give them real state or economic power. Citizenship rules may even be tightened to prevent immigrants from being elected. The elites will be mostly insulated from the cultural crises in their isolated communities, private schools, and social clubs, where they can continue to incubate their own sub-culture without outside influence. At the same time, they will make speeches and enact polices to force native citizens to accept multiculturalism and blind immigration. Anti-hate and anti-discrimination laws will be more vigorously enforced than other more serious crimes. Police will monitor social networking to identify those who make statements against protected classes.

Cultural decline begins in earnest when the natives feel shame or guilt for who they are, their history, their way of life, and where their ancestors came from. They will let immigrant groups criticize their customs without protest, or they simply embrace immigrant customs instead with religious conversion and interethnic marriages. Nationalistic pride will be condemned as a “far-right” phenomenon and popular nationalistic politicians will be compared to Hitler. Natives learn the art of self-censorship, limiting the range of their speech and expressions, and soon only the elderly can speak the truths of the cultural decline while a younger multiculturalist within earshot attributes such frankness to senility or racist nostalgia.

With the already entrenched environment of political correctness (see stage 2), the local culture becomes a sort of “world” culture that can be declared tolerant and progressive as long as there is a lack of criticism against immigrants, multiculturalism, and their combined influence. All cultural identity will eventually be lost, and to be “American” or “British,” for example, will no longer have modern meaning from a sociological perspective. Native traditions will be eradicated and a cultural mixing will take place where citizens from one world nation will be nearly identical in behavior, thought, and consumer tastes to citizens of another. Once a collapse occurs, it cannot be reversed. The nation’s cultural heritage will be forever lost.

I want to now take a brief look at six different countries and see where they are along the cultural collapse progression…

Russia

This is an interesting case because, up to recently, we saw very low birth rates not due to progressive ideals but from a rough transition to capitalism in the 1990’s and a high male mortality from alcoholism.[59] [60] To help sustain its population, Russia is readily accepting immigrants from Central Asian regions, treating them like second-class citizens and refusing to make any accommodations away from the ethnic Russian way of life. Even police authorities turn a blind eye when local skinhead groups attack immigrants.[61] In addition, Russia has also shown no tolerance to homosexual or progressive groups,[62] stunting their negative effects upon the culture. The birth rate has risen in recent years to levels seen in Western Europe but it’s still not above the death rate. Russia will see a population collapse before a cultural one.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very low

Brazil

We’re seeing rapid movement through stages 2 and 3, where progressive ideology based on the American model is becoming adopted and a large poor population ensure progressive politicians will continue to remain in power with promises of economic redistribution.[63] [64] [65] Within 15 years we should see a sharp drop in birth rates and a relaxation of immigration laws.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Moderate

America

Some could argue that America is currently experiencing a cultural collapse. It always had a fragile culture because of its immigrant foundings, but immigrants of the past (including my own parents) rapidly acclimated into the host culture to create a sense of national pride around an ethic of hard work and shared democratic values. This is being eroded as a fem-centric culture rises in its place, with its focus on trends, celebrities, homosexuality, multiculturalism, and male-bashing. Natives have become pleasure seekers with little inclination to reproduction during their years of peak fertility.[66]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

England

While America always had high amounts of immigration, and therefore a system of integration, England is newer to the game. In the past 20 years, they have massively ramped up their immigration efforts.[67] A visit to London will confirm that the native British are slowly becoming minorities, with their iconic red telephone booths left undisturbed purely for tourist photo opportunities. Approximately 5% of the English population is now Muslim.[68] Instead of acclimatizing, they are achieving early success in creating zones with Sharia law.[69] The English elite, in response, is jailing natives under stringent anti-race laws.[70] England had a highly successful immigration story with Polish immigrants who eagerly acclimated to English culture, but have opened the doors to other peoples who don’t want to integrate.[71]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

Sweden

Sweden is experiencing a similar immigration situation to England, but they possess a higher amount of self-shame and white guilt. Instead of allowing immigrants who could work in the Swedish economy, they are encouraging migration of asylum seekers who have been made destitute by war. These immigrants enter Sweden and immediately receive social benefits. In effect, Sweden is welcoming the least economically productive people in the world.[72] The immigrants will produce little or no economic benefit, and may even worsen Sweden’s economy. Immigrants are turning some parts of Sweden, such as the Rosengard area of Malmo, into a ghetto.[73]

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Very high

Poland

From my one and half years of living in Poland, I have seen a moderate level of progressive ideological creep, careerism among women, hedonism, and idolation of Western values, particularly out of England, where a large percentage of the Polish population have emigrated for work. Younger Poles may not act much different from their Western counterparts in their party lifestyle behavior, but there nonetheless remains a tenuous maintenance of traditional sex roles. Women of fertile age are pursuing relationships over one-night stands, but careerism is causing them to stall family formation. This puts a downward pressure on birth rates, which stems from significant numbers of fertile young women emigrating to countries like the UK and USA, along with continued economic uncertainties faced from transitioning to capitalism[74]. As Europe’s “least multicultural” nation, Poland has long been hesitant to accept immigrants, but this has recently changed and they are encouraging migrants.[75] To its credit, it is seeking first-world entrepreneurs instead of low skilled laborers or asylum seekers. Its cultural fate will be an interesting development in the years to come, but the prognosis will be more negative as long as its young people are eager to leave the homeland.

Likelihood of 50-year cultural collapse: Possible

Poland and Russia show the limitations of Cultural Collapse Theory in that it best applies to first-world nations with highly developed economies. They have low birth rates but not through the mechanism I described, though if they adopt a more Western ideological track like Brazil, I expect to see the same outcome that is befalling England or Sweden.

There can be many paths to cultural destruction, and those nations with the most similarities will gravitate towards the same path, just like how Eastern European nations are suffering low birth rates because of mass emigration due to being introduced into the European Union.

How To Stop Cultural Collapse

Maintaining native birth rates while preventing the elite from allowing immigrant labor is the most effective means at preventing cultural collapse. Since multiculturalism is an experiment with no proven efficacy, a culture can only be maintained by a relatively homogenous group who identify with each other. When that homogeneity breaks down and one citizen looks to the next and does not see a person with the same values as himself, the culture falls in dis-repair as native citizens begin to lose a shared means of communication and identity. Once the percentage of the immigrant population crosses a certain threshold (perhaps 15%), the decline will pick up in pace and cultural breakdown will be readily apparent to all observers.

Current policies to solve low birth rates through immigration is a short-term fix with dire long-term consequences. In effect, it’s a Trojan-horse prescription of irreversible cultural destruction. A state must prevent itself from entering the position where mass immigration is considered a solution by blocking progressive ideologies from taking hold. One way this can be done is through the promotion of a state-sponsored religion which encourages the nuclear family instead of single motherhood and homosexuality. However, introducing religion as a mainstay of citizen life in the post-enlightenment era may be impossible.

We must consider that the scientific era is an evolutionary maladaptive feature of humanity that natural selection will accordingly punish (i.e. those who are anti-religious and pro-science will simply breed less). It must also be considered that with religion in permanent decline, cultural collapse may be a certainty that eventually occurs in all developed nations. Religion, it may turn out, was evolutionary beneficial to the human race.

Another possible solution is to foster a patriarchal society where men serve as strong providers. If you encourage the development of successful men who possess indispensable skills and therefore resources that are lacked by females, there will be women below their station who want to marry and procreate with them, but if strong women are produced instead, marriage and procreation is unlikely to take place at levels above the death rate.

A gap between the sexes should always exist in the favor of men if procreation is to occur at high rates, or else you’ll have something similar to the situation in America where urban professional women cannot find “good men” to begin a family with (i.e., men who are significantly more financially successful than them). They instead remain single and barren, only used occasionally by cads for exciting casual sex.

One issue that I purposefully ignored is the effect of technology and consumerism on lowering birth rates. How much influence does video games, internet, and smartphones contribute to a birth decline? How much of an effect does Western-style consumerism have in delaying marriage? I suspect they have more of an amplification effect than being an outright cause. If a country is proceeding through the cultural collapse model, technology will simply hurry the collapse, but giving internet access to a traditionally religious group of people may not cause them to flip overnight. Research will have to be done in these areas to say for sure.

Conclusion

The first iteration of any theory is sure to create as many questions as answers, but I hope that by proposing this model, it becomes more clear why some cultures seem so quick to degrade while others display a sort of immunity. Some countries may be too far down the wrong path to be saved, but I hope the information presented gives concerned readers ideas on protecting their own culture by allowing them to connect how progressive ideologies that may seem innocent or benign on the surface can eventually lead to an outright collapse of their nation’s culture.

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thesethingsofours · 4 years ago

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Parents are the Worst.

I recently began listening to Nice White Parents, a new podcast hosted by self-confessed nice white parent, Channa Joffe-Walt. It’s produced by the people in and around Serial, This American Life, S-Town and The New York Times. If you are familiar with those titles, you’ll know what to expect – in-depth, considered analysis of a heretofore, under-exposed social issue, executed with an East Coast progressive liberal stride; a pleasingly audible, irreverent gait and the swagger of emotional intelligence and self-aware humility. Through research, interviews and attaching herself to the Brooklyn School of International Studies for several years, Joffe-Walt tells the story of the New York Public school system and its apparent failure to meaningfully integrate itself since Brown v Board of Education made racial segregation illegal over 65 years ago.

In episode 2, Joffe-Walt tracks down and interviews some nice white parents from around the time the school opened in 1963. These people had written letters encouraging the school board to erect the school building closer to their own neighbourhood (and consequently further away from the darker-skinned families it was more likely to serve). They expressively emphasised their wishes to send their kids there and virtuously aid the process of integration, which they believed to be morally imperative.

But apparently, none of these letter writers subsequently sent their kids to that school. It remained, as anticipated, a predominantly non-white school. Laid alongside the tense machinations of the contemporary school’s invasion by a large new cohort of white parents and their issue, Joffe-Walt’s hypothesis is that white parents have always held liberal aims, and the clout to impose them, but do so with little consideration for their non-white counterparts or any real commitment to seeing through the incumbent practicalities. From the outset, this natural conclusion is persistently hinted at, not least from the podcast’s deliberately provocative title. Perhaps, on an individual level, this hypothesis contains some truth.

However, as the story extends, the blame gains weight and the theory mutates into a generalised accusation. Responsibility for the mediocre state of New York’s (and by implication, America’s) public schools is explicitly laid at the pale feet of white parents. It's an exposition of what is often described as “White Guilt” and its corresponding effort at contrition (i.e. the guilt felt from the inherited sin of one’s ancestors’ oppression of non-white people, primarily through slavery). While White Guilt might have its conceptual uses for a few people to come to terms with idea of race (although even there I am sceptical), its value as a wider social narrative is deeply unconvincing, and potentially damaging. Nice White Parents does a good job showing why.

In the podcast, anecdotal evidence is drastically extrapolated to justify White Guilt. Unless backed up by unequivocal data, it is inherently flawed to base so much on interviews with a handful of people in their 80s about a letter they wrote in the 60s, and (in episode 3) a now middle-aged woman about her perception of school when she was 13. Equally so is to use the example of a single New York school to imply that nice white parents are universally responsible for all the failings of American public schooling. A quick empirical comparison with countries unburdened by America’s racial psychosis would almost certainly reveal this argument to be fundamentally false. I hazard to suggest that Joffe-Walt set out, either consciously or subconsciously, to prove the theory of Nice White Parents, and has therefore fallen into the trap of verification bias.

Of course, the truth is likely to be far simpler – green, cheddar, dead presidents and moolah (which middle-aged white people in American disproportionately possess). Better schools arrive from broad, deep and perpetual community investment – from good, affordable housing and well-paying jobs to well-paid teachers and decent facilities. That means higher taxes on the wealthy and better provincial management. If a completely non-white school district received $50 billion to invest in their community with educational improvement as its ultimate goal (that or the abolition of private schools), I suspect the idea of nice white parents would quickly evaporate.

It is plainly a damaging distraction to focus on the role of supposed-predisposed-racism of well-meaning, middle-class people, who simply want the best possible education for their children. Instead, the message for the “hereby accused” should be to use their numerical majority and voting power to advocate for systems that would reduce inequality, regardless of race. In this respect, it strikes me that wealth is a sacrosanct subject in America, something that one can never apologise for having too much of. Quite the opposite – the culture is built on celebrating those who hoard capital. Is it possible that Americans are taught never to apologise for having money, so those who see something wrong develop other issues, such as race, for which they can atone?

More deeply, the podcast reveals how the White Guilt narrative is in ideological conflict with the very wrong it is supposedly trying to right. Taken to its conclusion, it inevitably reinforces the idea that white people are innately superior, and race is the primary determining factor for success in American life. In the context of the podcast, it is applied to suggest that New York public schools are destined to fail their students unless white kids and their parents get involved. It is gloriously ironic that condemning the influence of white parents on public schools serves to reinforce the supposed inferiority of non-white participants in the education system… because of their lack of whiteness. At the end of episode 3, Jaffe-Walt lays this out:

Nice white parents shape public schools even in our absence, because public schools are maniacally loyal to white families even when that loyalty is rarely returned back to the public schools. Just the very idea of us, the threat of our displeasure, warps the whole system. So “separate” is still not equal because the power sits with white parents no matter where we are in the system. I think the only way you equalise schools is by recognising this fact and trying wherever possible to suppress the power of white parents. Since no one is forcing us to give up power we white parents are going to have to do it voluntarily, which, yeah how's that going to happen? That's next time on Nice White Parents…

(Consider replacing every mention of “white” in this excerpt with “affluent”. Would that not feel infinitely more true?)

In fairness, the honourable, “anti-racist” intention is clear – in order to defeat “white supremacy” white people need to accept their inherited and systemic superiority and eliminate it. Sadly, any idea centred around race – whether malicious or well-intentioned – is bound to collapse under even the slightest pressure. To be truly anti-racist is to recognise that race itself doesn’t exist (other than as an abstract concept that, having infected people’s perceptions after four centuries of concerted, localised propaganda, must be eradicated). Race has no basis in science or nature; it cannot be quantified in any reasonable, measurable way. Simply, it is a lie; invented to excuse the exploitation of others for the purposes of wealth-generation. To base one’s actions on it in any way is to take a leap of faith into a void with no landing. Race is a malignant, empty God; belief in which is destined to lead to malignant, empty behaviour. “Racism” and “Anti-Racism” (as it is currently understood) are therefore both empty, malignant religions, practiced in service of a non-existent deity.

Notably, there are still two episodes to go (released August 13th and 20th). Either might serve to recover some balance. But by episode 3, the stage is not only set for this conclusion to be drawn, but the 1st Grade nativity is in its final scene and the wise men are long since gone.

All that said, if you let the incessant racialization of all things drift past you rather than choking on it, as plain entertainment – storytelling rather than journalism – it’s still an engaging listen; well-constructed and convincingly told. Furthermore, on a non-racial level (if you can somehow listen beyond it), the podcast does have some value, since it reminds me of something I have long half-joked about – that parents (of all stripes) are the worst.

Aside from the obvious, complex Freudian reasons, on a socio-political level, when a choice arises between a laudable, achievable change and putting one’s own children at a perceived disadvantage in order to effect it, a parent will choose its child’s advantage almost every time. No matter their colour, few parents will sacrifice their own child’s prospects – even minutely – to advance the hypothetical children of someone else, or society more widely. Parents are company directors whose primary obligation is to their miniature, genetically-derivative shareholders – they’ll only vote for large-scale change if it is net-profitable or government-imposed.

And of course, parents should pay their kids the maximum dividend. Who else will? A parent is legally and morally obliged to do the best for the young life they are charged with defending. And therein lies the joke. Parents are the worst only because they are ubiquitous. They created you, me and everyone else. We all had them, and most people end up being one. It is therefore less of a criticism than an inevitable, evolutionary truth – just one we should probably be more honest and upfront about. Unknowingly, underneath (and in some ways, because of) its misguided, exhausting racial handwringing, Nice White Parents just about makes this point.

Listen to Nice White Parents here or wherever you get your podcasts.

#nice white parents #podcast #parenting #education #race relations #critical thinking #review #podcast review #npr #this american life #new york times #capitalism

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee formally acknowledged what has been evident for quite some time: Nonreligious voters are a critical part of the party’s base. In a one-page resolution passed at its annual summer meeting, the DNC called on Democratic politicians to recognize and celebrate the contributions of nonreligious Americans, who make up one-third of Democrats. In response, Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor with close ties to Trump, appeared on Fox News, saying the Democrats were finally admitting they are a “godless party.”

This was hardly a new argument. Conservative Christian leaders have been repeating some version of this claim for years, and have often called on religious conservatives and Republican politicians to defend the country against a growing wave of liberal secularism. And it’s true that liberals have been leaving organized religion in high numbers over the past few decades. But blaming the Democrats, as Jeffress and others are wont to do, doesn’t capture the profound role that conservative Christian activists have played in transforming the country’s religious landscape, and the role they appear to have played in liberals’ rejection of organized religion.

Researchers haven’t found a comprehensive explanation for why the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has increased over the past few years — the shift is too large and too complex. But a recent swell of social science research suggests that even if politics wasn’t the sole culprit, it was an important contributor. “Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are,” said Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.” “And some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.”

Liberal Americans are less religious than they used to be

Over the course of a single generation, the country has gotten a lot less religious. As recently as the early 1990s, less than 10 percent of Americans lacked a formal religious affiliation, and liberals weren’t all that much likelier to be nonreligious than the public overall. Today, however, nearly one in four Americans are religiously unaffiliated. That includes almost 40 percent of liberals — up from 12 percent in 1990, according to the 2018 General Social Survey.1 The share of conservatives and moderates who have no religion, meanwhile, has risen less dramatically.

The result is that today, most people’s political ideology is more tightly tethered to their religious identity. The overlap is far from complete — there are still some secular conservatives and even more religious liberals. In fact, the majority of Democratic voters are religiously affiliated. But the more liberal you are, the less likely you are to belong to a faith; whereas if you’re conservative, you’re more likely to say you’re religious.

To be sure, religious belief and practice can still exist without a label. Many people who are religiously unaffiliated still believe in God, or slip back into the pews a few times a year. But liberals are also cutting ties with religious institutions — since 1990, the share of liberals who never attend religious services has tripled. And they’re less likely to believe in God: The percentage of liberals who say they know God exists fell from 53 percent in 1991 to 36 percent in 2018.

Politics is shaping how some liberals think about religion

At first, it wasn’t clear why so many Americans were losing their faith — and of the available explanations, politics wasn’t high on the list. After all, there are lots of reasons why any individual person would stop attending church that have nothing to do with politics. A church scandal might spark a crisis of faith. You might begin to view a religion’s hierarchies or rules as antiquated, restrictive or irrelevant to your life. You might not have been that religious to begin with.

Social scientists were initially reluctant to entertain the idea that a political backlash was somehow responsible, because it challenged long-standing assumptions about how flexible our religious identities really are. Even now, the idea that partisanship could shape something as personal and profound as our relationship with God might seem radical, or maybe even a little offensive.

But when two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, began to look at possible explanations for why so many Americans were suddenly becoming secular, those conventional reasons couldn’t explain why religious affiliation started to fall in the mid-1990s. Demographic and generational shifts also couldn’t fully account for why liberals and moderates were leaving in larger numbers than conservatives. In a paper published in 2002, they offered a new theory: Distaste for the Christian right’s involvement with politics was prompting some left-leaning Americans to walk away from religion.

It was a simple but compelling explanation. For one thing, the timing made sense. In the 1990s, white evangelical Protestants were becoming more politically powerful and visible within conservative politics. As white evangelical Protestants became an increasingly important constituency for the GOP, the Christian conservative political agenda — focused primarily on issues of sexual morality, including opposition to gay marriage and abortion — became an integral part of the the party’s pitch to voters, but it was still framed as part of an existential struggle to protect the country’s religious foundation from incursions by the secular left. Hout and Fischer argued that the Christian right hadn’t just roused religious voters from their political slumber — left-leaning people with weaker religious ties also started opting out of religion because they disliked Christian conservatives’ social agenda.

At the time, Hout and Fischer’s argument was mostly just a theory. But within the past few years, Margolis and several other prominent political scientists have concluded that politics is a driving factor behind the rise of the religiously unaffiliated. For one thing, several studies that followed respondents over time showed that it wasn’t that people were generally becoming more secular, and then gravitating toward liberal politics because it fit with their new religious identity. People’s political identities remained constant as their religious affiliation shifted.

Other research showed that the blend of religious activism and Republican politics likely played a significant role in increasing the number of religiously unaffiliated people. One study, for instance, found that something as simple as reading a news story about a Republican who spoke in a church could actually prompt some Democrats to say they were nonreligious. “It’s like an allergic reaction to the mixture of Republican politics and religion,” said David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame and one of the study’s co-authors.

Granted, the people who were leaving weren’t necessarily at the center of their religious community — they didn’t attend religious services often, perhaps dropping in once or twice a year. But the numbers began to add up, opening a rift between conservatives and liberals. According to Margolis’s research, while young people across the political spectrum tend to drift away from religion, liberals are increasingly unlikely to return.

Liberals seem likely to become increasingly secular

As a result, views about religion and its role in American society have become increasingly polarized. According to surveys by the Pew Research Center, the percentage of liberals who believe that churches and religious organizations positively contribute to society dropped from nearly half (49 percent) in 2010 to only one-third (33 percent) today. And according to 2016 data from the Voter Study Group, only 11 percent of people who are very liberal say that being Christian is at least fairly important to what it means to be American — compared to 69 percent of people who identify as very conservative.

And although the people who have left religion could return, it seems more and more unlikely. For one thing, conservative Christians are still a key part of the Republican coalition, where their agenda on issues like abortion and religious exemptions remains a high political priority within the party. This means liberals’ views of the association between conservative politics and religion could be hard to shake.

These patterns are self-reinforcing in other ways, too. Recent surveys show that secular liberals are more likely than moderates or conservatives to have spouses who aren’t religious. That’s critical because these couples are then often less likely to pray or send their children to Sunday school, and research shows that formative religious experiences as a child play a crucial role in structuring an adult’s religious beliefs and identity. It’s no coincidence then that the youngest liberals — who never lived in a political world before the Christian right — are also the most secular. “It’s very, very unlikely that a kid raised in a nonreligious liberal household would suddenly consider going to church,” Margolis said.

The political implications of this shift are already evident. As more liberals become nonreligious, the Democratic Party’s base is growing more secular, complicating the party’s efforts at reaching more religious voters. But what it means for religion is less clear. Paul Djupe, a political scientist at Denison College, said that the impact might be blunted by the fact that the people who are becoming nonreligious mostly weren’t that involved in religion to begin with.

But Campbell warned that this shift is already reducing churches’ ability to bring a diverse array of people together and break down partisan barriers. That, in his view, threatens to further undermine trust in religious groups and make our politics more and more divisive. “We have very few institutions left in the country where people who have different political views come together,” he said. “Worship was one of those — and without it, the list is smaller and smaller.”

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Daniel Cox

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alexsmitposts · 5 years ago

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From Orwell to Huxley: Grim Prospects of Truth-Telling Scroll through NEO’s website and you will realize that we have been honest in reporting the problems the world faces on a daily basis. The articles are straightforward: real issues, real people, and real insight. While we are steadfast in our reporting, more and more journalists are being subject to the most severe form of censorship, some have taken to – self-censorship in order to avoid the wrath of the powers that be. Such arm twisting by the authorities is nothing but a frontal attack on any semblance of a free media. It is even worse than that—people, in general, are so skeptical of anything written or reported by the mainstream news nowadays. Things have gotten to the point where they don’t believe anything that the MSM says, however, the unfortunate part is that now the lines between mainstream and independent media has also started blurring, with more and more independent media also falling in step with the official government line. I have a distant relative who now says that she refuses to watch or read any news from any source since it is all propaganda, and this feeling of discontent is becoming widespread. Mark Twain once said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” But the wise Mark Twain could also not imagine the dystopian world we live in today, where the only alternative is not to read anything and not to trust anything, as much of news has been turned into mindless entertainment. We know what is happening to Julian Assange, and that is no longer real news, at least for most viewers and the MSM. His ordeal, first at his Embassy holdup after jumping bail, and then being turned over to UK authorities is just the start of another horror story. Given his deteriorating health his stay at the prison is putting his life at risk, and even UN Human Rights experts have warned of his health complications. All that is happening now was predicated by earlier writers. Hence it is time to revisit a bit of ominous literature, as it is not as if we were not warned about what to look forward to in the future. “Brave New World” vs. “1984” – which won? The BBC did an excellent adaptation of “Brave New World” many years ago. I don’t think it survived on tape (it was a few years before the VCRs became ubiquitous). I was able to find one that is close, with Aldous Huxley, an interview with Mike Wallace back in the late ’50s which describes the enemies of freedom in the United States. My first reaction was that of surprise as all that was described seemed so true even in today’s context. He had been able to accurately describe how various bureaucracies, technology, and propaganda methods work in tandem to create a false narrative and distract the people from more real and pressing issues. From his description it becomes clear that the methods being used today to distract us are the same that Hitler used, only now they have become more effective. To compare and contrast, George Orwell’s “1984”, and Alex Huxley’s “Brave New World”—they both predicted different visions of a dystopian future. What has emerged now is a combination of the two takes on what the future holds, or at least that is what the situation looks like as of now. People say we are more Huxley than Orwell, but there are some Orwellian methods too, at least for journalists and whistleblowers. Orwell saw a world where fear was used whereas Huxley perceived a world where we will be manipulated in other ways—more effectively and willingly! It is so very true that Truth has become Treason with the torture of Julian Assange. The powers to be would like us not to consider him a journalist. Truth has never been well received by governments who want to hide it, at any cost, even at the expense of fundamental principles of the founding fathers. But the situation is getting grim day-by-day now. So, where does that leave us? The lesson to others is clear: challenge the global US military empire and you will be destroyed. Politicians are acting as bullies like George Orwell predicted… perhaps. Huxley’s “Soma” drug is allegorical to how people are drugged by devices and perhaps some actual drugs. In Enemies of Freedom Huxley is exposing how free choice, the rational side of man are bypassed – and how the democratic process is circumvented and efforts made to eliminate what would be informed and free choice. Huxley dives deep into the forces that are taking away freedom, including electronic devices, overpopulation, and materialism. However, the greatest threat is over the organization of society and the lack of “thinking beings.” The system, including how education is allocated makes sure that those who question the most are afforded the least conducive environment for learning. Madness in Method But there are better ways, for instance, aversion conditioning is how “Brave New World” has prevailed over “1984.” Low levels of education, distractions caused by cellphones and mindless computer games, and various forms of modern-day “Soma” are all tools in the hands of governments to keep the minds of the and people distracted and to keep them calm and mindless. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be only a few left who would want to read one, or at least have the inclination and time. Younger folk have been manipulated into relinquishing virtually any right or privilege as long as they can still keep their video games and smartphones. “Brave New World” depicts a society that bears more than coincidental resemblance to our society today (watch CNN and Anderson Cooper to get a better idea). But the “Powers That Be” would also prefer that we live in the “1984” society, and they are trying their best to plunge us into that darkness by attacking journalists who describe inconvenient truths. Huxley summed it up best: “By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. … Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. … Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.” The comparison is made to radio and television fodder “new devices” and now all that he predicted – subliminal projections contained within films. Once you establish the utility of something that is known to work, you can be certain that the technology of it will steadily improve. How can we preserve the integrity of humans in an age when we are being persuaded below the level of “choice and reason” – not only in how we think but even in our choices for political office. It is no longer a matter of making an intelligent choice for one’s self interests, but falling prey to the manipulations of [MSM] and the manipulations of consumers by Madison Avenue. A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest in any given circumstance. But attempts are being made to bypass that “rational choice” by appealing to unconscious forces below the surface – below the level of choice and reason. But that is not happening anytime soon but at least we have a modern version of soma with PR, mind control and a new generation of prescription drugs. Soma can even compete with religion; it takes away bad experiences and makes us all happy and content. All that was written as fiction is now a reality, even genetically engineered babies and a society driving by never-ending consumption. In the quest for the most modern devices, people have become hooked to a reality that does not exist. It is this generation of low castes who are proven to be clueless and preoccupied with promiscuity that paints anyone who speaks in disapproval as intolerant. Society has been transformed into “a pre-ordained caste system ranging from a highly intelligent managerial class to a subgroup of dim-witted serfs programmed to love their menial work; and of soma, a drug that confers instant bliss with no side effects.” That drug comes in many different forms – mostly ignorance and is distributed by the manipulated media and corrupt advertisers. And let us also not forget why it is no longer even necessary to burn or restrict books. As we learned from the newest release, at the movies, of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 –very few among us are actually interested in reading book or truthful news anymore and fewer, in any case, have the critical thinking abilities to understand their true meaning. “We are not born equal but must be made equal by the fire!”

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stjglobal · 6 years ago

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For all of the places I visited, I both intentionally and unintentionally learned more and more about the issues that citizens of the countries were facing.

There is something amazing about being able to see the sights of Europe: The Eiffel Tower, The Colosseum, Sagrada Familia, and so on. And while I enjoyed getting to see the rich history here and learn all about these historical and sacred places, the thing that I’ve taken away most from my trip abroad is the volume of current things going on in Europe that I simply had no idea, or only a vague idea, about. My theology professor here has been living in Italy for eight years or so, and she says that she remembers how different it is in The United States. It’s like being in your own world entirely, so far removed from other countries. Because of the proximity and relationships within the European Union (EU), I think that it simply isn’t as easy to be disconnected from the rest of the world here. When you add in the size of The United States and relationships with the rest of North America and South America, Europe barely stands a chance to truly enter our news network.

For all of the places I visited, I both intentionally and unintentionally learned more and more about the issues that citizens of the countries were facing. I have been fortunate enough to travel to Paris, Barcelona, Zurich, Edinburgh, Bucharest, and, of course, Rome and around Italy. In this post, I hope to help you to travel with me and see what I’ve learned about these places and their trials. While most of the information has been compiled throughout the semester, I linked some fact-checkers and ways to read/watch more about these issues below. One of the main themes highlighted by St. John’s University’s Study abroad programs is migration. It is integrated to every class possible, and this has helped me understand the issues. With the current climate all across Europe, there couldn’t be anything more appropriate.

The first place I would like to focus on is France. My first stop in Europe was in Paris, France, and I was immediately amazed by its wonder and beauty. However, there is no question about the political and social turmoil that has been occurring there for years. While many of us have heard about the attacks on Paris and Nice, there is a much deeper disdain toward foreigners that is not far removed from these attacks. In the United States, we refer to ourselves as a melting pot, a blending of cultures to create a diverse society. In France, it couldn’t be more the opposite. A dirty word in American history, assimilation, is their reality. When you are immigrating to France, you are expected to become French. While I’ve noticed that this is a theme around Europe and the hyphenated identities (African-American, Irish-American, Italian-American, etc.) of the US don’t exist here, it runs deeper in France. The culture that is not their own is washed away here, especially when it comes to religion.

In 2004, French began the consideration of outlawing wearing burqas, hijabs, kippahs, and large displays of crosses. The one that came into effect is of any sort of face-veil, which directly targets Muslims, but it is widely encouraged to not wear any religious symbols and make yourself a target. Outside of religion but not far from it, immigrants tend to be living in suburbs or lower socioeconomic areas of Paris. They isolate themselves because they don’t feel welcome, and they create their own communities that are segregated from the whole of Paris and therefore France. While this brings in the question of open- vs. closed-borders and integration, it also creates a breeding ground for terrorists. In fact, the Paris attacks of 2015 had French natives involved.

One of my classes studied how people can feel drawn to join a terrorist group and act when they feel that they are not being represented. In a society where culture erasure is meant to create a unified whole, it instead has created tense relations that have lead to attacks. In the US, we can obviously relate with recent immigrant issues at the forefront of politics. Rome, and Italy as a whole, had similar issues with immigration. Italy quickly has become the liaison between the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries to the rest of Europe. Many people from MENA countries will enter into Italy through the Mediterranean with the intention of staying until they can make it further north. This has caused a great strain on the economy and relationships between natives and the new demographic. In this country, strict self-segregation can also be seen.

In my economics class, we took a trip to a town called Torpignattara, which has been dubbed “Banglatown”.This town is full of heavily concentrated immigrants, many from Bangladesh as implied by the name, and they have made more of a town of their own than become a part of Rome. Their town is filled with stores with their native clothing, food, and other goods. They support their own small economy, not the whole of Rome. Rather, they send a majority of their money home. All of these issues have brought immigration to the forefront of Italy’s political atmosphere. There have even been talks of leaving the EU to allow them to have more ability to control their immigration laws. Another effect that has happened to Italy is called ‘The Brain Drain’. Basically, well-educated individuals are leaving the country in search of better job opportunities. This makes it hard for the country to continue to develop and westernize since the best of the best are leaving.

By far the most interesting thing to learn about was the potential secession of Catalonia from Spain. Catalonia is to Spain what, for example, Pennsylvania is to The United States. While it is just a region, it functions more as a state with its own government. This region includes Barcelona, a city that was my first international trip leaving Rome. Upon arriving, it was clear that there was some strong political movement going on. Every single apartment building had plenty of windows donning the Catalonian flag (which I initially thought were weathered Puerto Rican ones) and signs along the lines of “we won’t be silenced” and “free Catalonia”. Out of intrigue, I did some research while there to try to figure out what was going on. Catalonia is the richest region in Spain, and because of this they pay high taxes. However, much of that tax money they don’t see coming back to their own region. Rather, it is used for other regions in Spain. Aside from this main issue, Catalonia has an entirely different culture and even their own language, Catalan. Catalan is more similar to Italian and French than Spanish, which definitely threw me off while I was in Barcelona. I am by no means a Spanish speaker, but I think that everyone in the US picks up a few things.

Having traveled to Puerto Rico not long ago, I thought I could at least order french fries (papas fritas), but even that wasn’t immediately recognizable (patates fregides). The most interesting part of this whole thing to me was the numbers about who really wants this. 90% of the population that chose to vote in the referendum said that they wanted to secede. There is much more that goes into this whole issue, including violence, some people in jail or in hiding in other countries, and some lost votes. Overall based on what I saw and what the numbers show this is a very real and pressing issue in this area. Because Spain is a country that is in the Western world and there was violence involved, I assume that this is something that I would have heard of. It just enlightened me even further to how little I am in touch with the rest of the world.

Rebeka Humbrecht, Spring 2019 Social Media Ambassador

#sjuglobal #studyabroad #internationaleducation #sjurome #sjuparis #exploretheworld #traveling #studentsabroad #Discovertheworld #discovereurope #spain #studyimmigration #immigrationstudies

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badmousestuff-blog · 6 years ago

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M’s Report

Why should Leftists Reject CPGB-ML’s transphobia:

“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”

This quote from the Manifesto demonstrates a trend that shows up time and again in Bourgeois society - the simplification and homogenization of social identities as a whole. While communists primarily focus on the Class identities as described above, it would be foolish to avoid other identities. Even Marx and Engels engaged in this, as Engels discussed the family and how it has changed over time. Likewise in the Manifesto Marx says this:

“The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.”

Here Marx discusses how the bourgeoisie has centralized the state, considerably compared to old feudal Europe. The state itself has become simplified, as local provincial laws and systems of government are homogenized into one nation-state.

Just as bourgeoisie society homogenizes and simplifies class and the state, it can likewise be seen that bourgeoisie society homogenizes other areas of identity. National Identity, Race, Gender, Sex, Ethnicity, and other identities are frequently scrubbed away into singular new identities, in order to categorize, control, influence, and antagonize the masses. Just as the multitude of classes has been simplified into “Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”, other identities have been simplified.

When national identities are simplified, it is called Cultural Homogenization, and ever since the French Revolution, Bourgeoisie nationalism has sought to eliminate the regional differences and diversity within the “nations” that nationalists claim to love so much. Any deviation from the perceived norm or perceived national “culture” is punished, and cultural uniqueness from local religions, to language, and in some cases even cuisine, is homogenized. Either destroyed or barely integrated, if tokenly, into the larger national culture. By homogenizing the national culture, the bourgeois gain a number of advantages. First they build national solidarity, making it seem like there is a common national interest shared by the bourgeois and proletarians. Second, it pits different nations against each other, this is partially a result of the previously described advantage. Proletarians are lead to believe that not only do they share a national interest with the bourgeoisie of their nation, but also that other nations are out to destroy their own nation. By focusing the proletarians’ fear and hatred towards other nations, the bourgeois prevent the proletarians fear and hatred from being directed towards them. Finally, by homogenizing and antagonizing groups that don’t fit into the perceived national identity or culture, the bourgeois create yet another group for the proletarians to direct their anger towards that is not the bourgeois. While gender identity, sexuality, sex, and race can also be applied to the last category of “not fitting into perceived national identity”, the bourgeois frequently use these identities to create additional divides among the national proletariate.

One example of this is that under bourgoise society, sex has been equated to gender identity. This subsequently leads to the erasing intersex and transgender people. In an attempt to categorize and simplify sex into a binary, and then subsequently equaiting one’s gender identity to their sex assigned at birth, bourgoise society has lead to the oppression of these nonconforming individuals. When these individuals become impossible to classify or fit into their predetermined boxes, Bourgeois society demonizes them in an attempt to get them to conform. The bourgeois elites will convince the rest of the proletarians that these individuals are dangerous, weird, or abnormal, once again creating a new target and scapegoat for the proletarians’ outrage. When these non conforming individuals fight back, and eventually win popular support and some rights however, the bourgeois only give token support. The bourgeois attempt to once again assimilate, homogenize, and neuter the movement’s radical potential, while continuing to demonize the most radical or “different” members of the community. The bourgeois will drape themselves in the colors of LGBT and show off wealthy, safe, and conforming members of the community, all the while ignoring or even continuing to demonize those that don’t fit into their “acceptable” minority. These patterns are seen in more than just the LGBT community however, and other minorities also face similar conditions.

There have been a number of Assigned Gender Non Conforming individuals throughout history. However, the transgender and intersex identities were never formed until the height of Industrialization and Bourgoise society in the west. In earlier times, it was often a lot easier to live as a gender non conforming individual, and many societies even included unique identities or a “third gender” for such individuals. It is bourgeois society that seeks to destroy these unique identities in an attempt to maintain control over society. These identities are less a modern creation by the bourgeoisie, and more a way to push back against the oppression caused by the Bourgeoisie.

The Bourgeois social project is not interested in diversity, it is interested in simplicity, control, and maintaining their power and wealth. In short, all opression under bourgoise society is material. By falling for their propaganda and bigotry by opposing not only Transgender individuals, but identity Politics wholesale; the CPGB-ML fails to recognize how the Bourgeois have maintained their control over society. It is not enough to say that “we are all proletarians” to build solidarity through that. There are multiple identities that the bourgeoisie use to oppress others, and their concerns must be addressed by any party that believes themselves to be communist. When a communist party cannot see how bourgeois homogenization, and oppression of minorities are all tied together into a greater picture that all materially benefits the bourgeois, reveal their true colors. As of now, the CPGB-ML cannot recognize that it’s transphobia and rejection of idpol comes not from a marxist understanding and interpretation of history, society, and oppression, but instead comes from a bourgeois and liberal mindset. If it continues down this material and ideological failing it will not only fail to become relevant, but it is likely that their ideology will continue to fester into something much worse. Our job as communists must be to embrace and protect the diversity that bourgeois society so desperately wants to destroy.

(quotes from Communist Manifesto)

(some thoughts influenced by this article https://oxfordre.com/internationalstudies/abstract/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.001.0001/acrefore-9780190846626-e-139)

General Response/Thoughts/critiques on each of CPGB-ML’s articles:

While most of the articles aren't written super well (and I don’t have much room to complain about that, especially since a lot of their “articles” are just speech transcripts), and some do feel just super biter for no reason, the bigger issue comes down to what seems to be a sub par understanding of marxism. They also frequently fall into the trap of class reductionism.

CPGB-ML’s Declaration of opposition to “Identity Politics”

● Very little meat here, just a general declaration, however it should be noted that they fail to mention that they oppose discrimination on grounds of Gender Identity, ethnicity, nationality, disability, or other areas of potential discrimination.

● Uses the right wing dog whistle of “LGBT Ideology”

● Fails to distinguish Marxist Identity Politics from Liberal Identity Politics

Why gay rights is not a class issue

● Fails to recognize the material benefit (and thus why LGBT issues are also class issues) the Ruling class gets from the oppression of LGBT individuals (as I tried to explain above)

● Fails to show solidarity with LGBT individuals in their struggles and oppression, weekly says that “there is no need to persecute them”, as if that made the persecution under liberalism acceptable or at least not something to fight against

● Again uses the right wing dog whistle of “LGBT Ideology”

● Effectively claim that there is no persecution of LGBT individuals in the west today

● Makes the absurd claim that “tomboys” or other Cis gender non conforming individuals are being pushed into being trans - another right wing dog whistle

● Fails to recognize false consiousness and how Cis/Straight Working class individuals can be indocrinated into Bourgoise ideas and hatred of minorities by saying that this mindset “I’m sorry but a man’s a man and a woman’s a woman and you’re not going to be able to mess me around.” is one of the working class instead of being imposed on them by the bourgoise

● This quote also equates gender to sex and is basically the CPGB-ML saying that they also equate gender to sex

● Clear example “class reductionist” mindset, says that LGBT will benefit from the revolution but is unwilling to combat existing prejudice against LGBT individuals

● “We can honestly say that under socialism there will be no ‘LGBT rights’ because everybody will have full rights; end of story.” - more class reductionism

● Article literally states that “Silencing debate doesn’t vanquish existing prejudice, it simply creates fresh hostility” yet the entire article is trying to silence voices from marginalized folks (primarily LGBT) outside of just class analysis

● Uses rightwing talking point/dog whistle of “everyone you disagree with is a fascist”

● Paints the image of a “man that looks 100% like a man, but “identifies” as a woman” - a common right wing stereotype and bigotted view of transgender women, and follows this image up with further “transwomen are a danger to young cis women” transphobic nonsense. - This is also a modern continuation of the “Gay people are dangerous to children” right wing homophobic argument

The reactionary nightmare of ‘gender fluidity’

● Marx didn’t discuss gender and LGBT issues, not because they did not exist as an issue, but because LGBT issues were not mainstream at all, it really wasn't until the 1900s where these issues came to light as much in culture, and even then more on the fringes. You can’t really blame Marx for not discussing an issue that basically was unknown at the time

● Again equates sex with gender identity literally says that they are synonyms

● Attacking academics in the united states, a common right wing tactic

● Author effectively does the right wing “why won’t you debate me” move, despite basically denying the existence of trans people

● The idea that trans people don’t exist, and that sex and the gender binary are the complete truth is more “idealistic” and denying material reality. There are Intersex people after all, and countless cultures throughout history have had more genders than the traditional two.

● Still fails to show solidarity with oppressed individuals along lines other than “race, sex, or sexual proclivity”

● No one is saying that trans issues are more important than other issues

● Saying you’re against unjust discrimination for all workers is not actually being inclusive, its ignoring other ways that bourgoise society oppress individuals

● Speech jumps around everywhere, has no cohesion, and just ends by saying that “we are not transphobic” but completely fails to prove that point. Meanwhile the article frequently erase or claims that trans people don’t exist or that its not an issue.

● Ignoring identity politics, and not engaging in intersectional politics with other oppressed groups is more divisive than engaging in idpol. This mindset actively turns away potential allies and comrades.

The only thing that unites us is class

● Oh this is the article where the writer is complaining about not being denied a PhD

● Look, I don't know how it works in Britain. But here in the conservative state of Utah, in the already very conservative and right wing USA, I NEVER got any shit or poor grades for focusing on or using marxist and materialist theories. I suspect that the author was just flat out wrong, poorly supported their thoughts, or just didn’t defend their thesis well. Seriously, I HIGHLY doubt that any academic institution would deny someone a PhD for the sole reason of looking at disability through a marxist/class lense. Marxism has been and always will be an important academic lense for many parts of academia. I suspect that the author is just bitter and unable to self critique their own work and understanding of class, and is looking for someone to blame.

● Also goes on to full on claim that trans rights and the trans movement is bourgeois and idealistic which is just so very wrong as explored in earlier sections.

● Claims that they don’t patronize, yet patronizes transgender individuals by saying that what we feel and know about ourselves are “bourgeois illusions”

● Over all super trash article that I really didn’t bother to re-read because it just comes across as super bitter and petty

Challenges facing communists in Britain today

● More strawmanning of Identity Politics (even liberal Idpol tbh) through ridiculous equations. No one is saying that “feeling disabled” actually makes someone disabled, stop strawmanning.

● Once again, says but fails to support the idea that Identity Politics divides the working class

● It is also telling that the CPGB-ML supported the right wing Brexit Party in the most recent elections, purely because they are pro brexit. This reeks of Red-Brown “beefsteak” coalitions.

Letter: Identity politics v class politics

● “Real oppression is homelessness, hunger, destitution, war, poverty, police brutality, anti-trade-union laws, etc. While we talk about identities, are we seriously challenging this oppression?” - If you weren't so busy strawmanning identity politics, you would realize that most marginalized identities face a lot of these same problems, and that their identities frequently make it worse. Working class people of color frequently fight america’s imperialist wars (in addition to very poor whites) as a way to escape their current conditions. LGBT people are frequently more likely to experience homelessness because of an unsupportive family situation. Etc. While capitalism certainly makes these issues WORSE, providing a trans woman who was kicked out of their house by an unsupportive family a place to live, DOESN’T fix the underlying issue of an unsupportive family and a society that is inherently hostile to them. This is why Identity politics is important

● Identity politics, and especially intersectional politics, doesn’t divide the working class. As I've said before. Ignoring the very real issues faced by people who are marginalized along lines beyond just class alienates them from your movement, and divides the working class. A working class movement that wants the support of the ENTIRE working class, and not just the most privileged, MUST engage in intersectionality and devote some time and energy into fighting the injustices beyond that of the most privileged working class. As was stated in this article, the bourgeois attempts to divide the working class. This is why there are people who are oppressed beyond just their class, all oppression serves a material benefit to the bourgeoisie. Failing to recognize this and saying we must only focus on class is playing right into their hands.

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tanadrin · 6 years ago

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Olly Thorn, the guy who does Philosophy Tube, argues in his video on liberalism that, as an ideology, it’s characterized primarily by its tendency to carve out exceptions: politicians of classical liberal bent like moderate Republicans in the US and Tories in the UK promulgate a general political perspective of to-each-their-own, but place those principles in abeyance for pragmatic or situational reasons--and, of course, classically liberal documents like the U.S. Constitution talk a big game of being about freedom and self-determination generally, while having implicit and explicit glaring exceptions, like women and black slaves.

I disagree. Not because I’m a diehard classical liberal; I think liberalism is a useful starting point through which many much more incisive and useful political and social analyses have passed. It is at best the Newtonian physics of human rights, though sometimes it reeks of epicycles. But: I think liberalism is best understood as the practical application of philosophical principles discovered during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, but only fully explored and coherently grappled with much later. Nonetheless, as a tendency, it does have its own internal logic, and the apparent suspension of liberal principles by self-professed liberals is less an inherent property of a liberal worldview than an inherent property of humans being shitty and clinging to, or adopting, prejudice when it’s expedient or provides some measure of personal comfort.

This is important because I think that ultimately the contradiction between the liberal perspective and the mental jiu-jitsu required to maintain those prejudices from a liberal perspective can open the floodgates to progress. Let us take the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s in the US as an example. Many different factors contributed to the successes of the CRM in the 20th century. Previous attempts to win something like civil equality for black people in the US had failed: Reconstruction was abandoned, struggles against segregation in the early 20th century came to little, and the appetite for racial discrimination on the part of the white majority, especially in the South, was not at all diminished after the end of World War 2.

What changed? Mostly, I think, the right leaders and the right strategies at the right time. But a strong contributing factor was the fact that the U.S. saw itself as an essentially liberal construct, based on rights and freedoms and equality, and no matter what racist justifications were trotted out to narrow the scope of those rights, it was increasingly apparent both in internal and external terms that something was hilariously out of kilter. Women’s suffrage, the labor movement, and the relentless drive of black Americans to increase their own economic prosperity made it clear that there were brutal archaisms within the systems of American life that could no longer be sustained. On the world stage, two massive wars were fought in which the U.S. positioned itself as a defender of freedom and democracy, alongside allies that emphatically did *not* have explicit regimes of racial segregation enshrined in their laws, or the same thoroughgoing ideology of white supremacy, and one of which indeed argued (at least on paper) for a kind of radical social equality that would have had the so-called freedom-loving founders of the U.S. begging and screaming for a king to come back and rule over them again.

Like all great attempts at reform, the CRM achieved less than it set out to do. But, in a way that the labor movement and women’s suffrage had not, it did leave a powerful lasting model within American culture and within the American civil religion for What Rights-Seeking Is Supposed To Look Like. I don’t know why the CRM was unique in this respect. (I suspect that it’s because the CRM occurred when the contradictions it sought to undo were at their height, relatively-speaking: even in the 50s and 60s, the philosophical justification for racism and segregation was basically incoherent screeching, which meant that extremely uncontroversial tactics could prove highly persuasive.) It also established that *this was a process that was supposed to occur.* By giving such a process a formal presence within civil society, it directly laid the groundwork for other movements rebelling against much older, and much more deeply ingrained prejudices, against which liberalism had, heretofore, been mostly powerless. This was extremely important.

Gay and lesbian culture, and the idea that gay and lesbian people might not be demon-possessed desecrators of all that was good and decent in life, did not appear suddenly in the second half of the 20th century. But the CRM provided a new framework in which to cast the concept of gay rights, and, indirectly, language for a gay identity that wasn’t one entirely of rebellion. Let us cast ourselves back to a much earlier era, the long 18th century. In this era, before even the milquetoast concession to the humanity of homosexuals that was the reclassifying homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder instead of an immolation-worthy offense, the dominant language to talk about good and bad, ethical and unethical, right and wrong, was monopolized by religion and the religion-adjacent concept of natural law. Lacking the natural empiricism that was the legacy of scientists like Darwin, natural law was conceived of in narrow terms that were not, in fact, based on any close or careful observations of nature, but human biases projected on to the natural sphere. Therefore, for many people who found themselves inherently opposed to the dominant ethical framework, like those who fell in love with and were attracted to people of the same sex, the choice they had must have felt from the inside a lot like Huck Finn’s: to be “good,” even though it was personally and spiritually intolerable to you, or to say, “All right then, I’ll go to hell.”

If society refuses to make a distinction between real evils and real suffering we visit upon each other and the moralizing “evils” we conceive of only to police the behavior and opinions of our neighbors, it must not pretend to be astonished when those who, out of no actual malicious inclination, must be themselves or perish reject that general framework entirely. And you know what? I sympathize. If somebody told me that who I was, inherently, was evil, even though I desire no harm and no suffering to anyone around me, and that expressing that identity even in private was equivalent to--or worse than!--inflicting grievous harm on another human being out of pure hatred, I would be extremely suspicious of their overarching moral framework.

Out of, I suspect, an inclination to rebelliousness and an imperfect analysis of the insufficiencies those antiquated frameworks, people like Marquis de Sade embraced or appeared to embrace monstrous ethics, because these were the only other ethics available to them. Christian, and especially Catholic teachings on sexual ethics require not only a denial of truths of human nature available to casual, empirical inspection (if one is willing to conduct such an inspection dispassionately, attendant to discovery of novel goods as well as novel ills), but a monstrous indifference to the suffering such teaching inflict on those who are simply unable to conform. Then, Pikachu-like, the Catholic church looks at gays and lesbians and gender-nonconforming people and says to itself, “Why on earth did these people reject the simple truth of the teachings of Christ??”

Thankfully, the gay rights movement has a superpower that the African-American civil rights movement, and the feminist movement, and many other such movements throughout history, did not. That superpower was the closet, or, more specifically, in the act of coming out. Women, the working class, and racial minorities are not randomly distributed throughout the population. Working class children are not born at random to middle-class and wealthy families; you do not need to come out as black to your shocked segregationist parents at sixteen. There is not a pre-scripted social role for gays and lesbians to slot into, a set of norms that are foisted on one as totally and completely as gender roles with a provenance that stretches back into the misty depths of Mesopotamian time. (There could have been. In some societies there is something quite like that--just not in ours.)

Because literally anyone could be gay, and because creating social bubbles of like racial or political or socioeconomic attributes does not insulate one from knowing someone who has the experience of being gay, even though gay people are not a large proportion of the population (2-5%, maybe), it becomes much harder to maintain “gay” as a firmly isolated category of other. When just enough gay people have come out in a society that is just liberal enough to tolerate their existence, it rapidly incentivizes more gay people to come out, both to be able to live as themselves, and to say to their acquaintances and family, even if in the most nominal way, “yes, you too know a gay person. You must integrate your knowledge of me as a person into your understanding of the category ‘homosexual.’” And, of course, also incentivizes closer analysis of sexual identities; of the coming out of bisexual people, who otherwise might live tolerably-but-unhappily in the closet, or who simply might not understand that bisexuality is a thing and they share it; and, as we have now, the beginning of a glorious blossoming of a diverse and nuanced understanding of sexuality and sexual identity. To the reactionary mind, this looks like the gays are recruiting, and lobbying, and overturning the order of society. In fact, what is happening is that even those conservative by inclination (among them, famously, Dick Cheney) cannot maintain both their avowed liberalism and their opposition to gay rights when confronted with members of their own family who are gay. It may not lead them to a comprehensive application of the ruthless logic of liberal democracy, but it does destroy one specific contradiction. This is why, even though the U.S. as a whole is not much more socially liberal, the popular opposition to gay marriage absolutely fucking *cratered* between the end of the 90s, when the idea was first conceived of in an extremely-distant extremely-theoretical way, and Obergefell. For institutional reasons peculiar to American conservatism, there’s still a nominal opposition, but let’s be clear: the war is over. Gay marriage (which I’m using here as a proxy for ‘basic acceptability of homosexuality as a personal attribute’) won.

This not to say that all discourse over gay rights is finished, any more than racism in the US ended with the VRA in 1964, or the need for feminism ended when women got the vote. Political rights aren’t the equivalent of social equality. But how we organize ourselves politically is integral to the mythology of our society--there’s a reason that, say, in the US electing your high school student council uses first past the post voting, while in Ireland it uses IRV. Political rights are a baseline and a pivot point. If your right to marry someone of the same sex is protected by law, it is a powerful social signal that being gay is OK--just as the VRA is a powerful social signal that racism is not, and women’s suffrage that women’s role as political beings is not to be ignored.

So there’s an ongoing social struggle to dismantle illiberal-undemocratic incoherencies within smaller bubbles of society, using the overarching consensus, and to dismantle biases and prejudices which are predicated on the illegitimacy of homosexuality, because the actual implications of the legitimacy of a gay identity haven’t been fully worked out generally. Same as with race. Same as with gender equality. And because the L, the G, the B, and the T (and all the other letters in the increasingly-expanding initialism) are related, because gender and sex and sexuality are part of a huge and messy complex of human identity, transness and trans identities specifically, while constituting a distinct concept on their own, are bound up in other ongoing struggles, while also having issues all their own. If, as Dan Savage says, misogyny is homophobia’s snot-nosed sibling (and it absolutely is), so is transphobia. You cannot be a transphobe and not, at some level, be supporting the same set of memes that has for thousands of years legitimized sexism, sexual exploitation, the brutalization of gay people, etc., etc.

What are some of those unique issues? Well, for one, transness is more bound up with medicalization and looks more to medicine to legitimize itself as an identity than any other GSM. There are historical and practical reasons for that. Historical, in that sex researchers and psychiatrists newly interested in the empirical exploration of human identities were among the first people to take the experiences of trans people seriously. While we had preexisting and strong social stigmas around the idea of homosexuality, we had a society so transphobic by default that it didn’t even really understand trans people could exist, much less come up with invective against them. This didn’t mean early trans pioneers like Lili Elbe were accepted by society, really; but the cruel incomprehension of society was more like the attitude to circus freaks than to serial killers. With gay people, on the other hand, “sympathetic” psychiatrists reclassified homosexuality as a disease, then started work on various kinds of fucked-up conversion therapy. Psychiatry may be a science, but let it never be said that science is immune to human prejudice.

But the practical reason for that association is that modern medical technology offers a powerful tool for relieving the suffering of trans people. To be sure, there are specific concerns of medical care among gay, lesbian, and bi people, too, especially since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic. But such is a) the complex and interlocking aspects of gender and presentation and embodiment of both in our society and b) the nature in which dysphoria is felt by trans people, that medical intervention is, purely on a pragmatic level, a powerful tool to both relieve suffering specific to the experience of being trans. That’s not really the case with gay or bi identities.

Where we run into trouble is where we rely on the interface between trans identities and medical institutions to legitimate trans identities. What this huge long screed has all been a preface to is this assertion: that it is, above all, entirely unnecessary. You do not need a comprehensive medical theory of blackness to recognize black people deserve rights. You do not need a medical theory of gayness to recognize gay people deserve rights. Ditto womanhood. Indeed, in *every one* of those cases, medical theorizing on paradigms of homosexuality, womanhood, and race have been used to prop up, rather than to dismantle prejudices, and it is only the relentless logic of liberal values, either on their own terms, or in the more sophisticated form under which they’re incorporated into other critiques of society (as leftists sometimes manage), that have ultimately pushed through the “eww, I don’t like these people” reaction to a consistently tolerant treatment of these categories as fully realized human beings--or, at least, the beginnings of that treatment.

(Irrelevant aside: I actually entirely expect that the close relationship between medical and experiential aspects of transess will be the vehicle to greater acceptability of a transhuman ethos around how we interact with our bodies. Because the morphological self-determination aspect of transhumanism is fundamentally liberal, i.e., it’s about personal autonomy and personal flourishing, and because the technologies available to facilitate that are medical, they’re bound up with the cultural aspects of medicine. Right now, that’s a disease model, based both on the inheritance of medicine as “thing which exists to make people healthy again,” and the practical limits of scarcity and wanting people to pay out of pocket for anything that is classified as purely cosmetic. But in my heart of Utopian hearts, even purely cosmetic procedures belong to the same category, mutatis mutandis 1) whether they can be shorn from the (IMO mostly unfair) presumption they’re about conforming to oppressive social norms, and 2) the fact they’re usually used to enact a preference much less acute and involving much less personal difficulty than GID. But big, big emphasis on “usually.” To put it another way, unbinding medicalization from transness wouldn’t be an argument against providing specialized medical care for trans people. It would be an argument for providing a similar set of services to everyone.)

I’m actually deeply uninterested in theorizing about what transness is or how it’s constituted. For one, I think a lot of the questions around it are simplistic and ill-defined, such as the utterly moronic search for “a gay gene.” Human identity and sexuality and sex, and cultural complexes built around those things which have their roots in, but really aren’t tied to biology in any kind of philosophically consistent way, are too multifactorial, and too fuzzy to be clearly or cleanly captured by psychiatry and neuroscience and biology as they currently stand. Maybe one day, when we have Culture-level AI able to image us down to the subatomic level and run sophisticated simulations of every metabolic pathway and every cognitive tic simultaneously we can create a sufficiently detailed model of the human being to speak on these things with some certainty. But that’s actually irrelevant to the messy business of lived experience, and to the practical business of “how do we get people to stop deliberately inflicting massive amounts of suffering on each other.”

The answer to the latter question is essentially the same as has been for homosexuality. Like gay people, trans people have the superpower of being able to come out. Unlike gay people, trans people make up an even smaller proportion of the population. And the conversation around the diversity of gender identity is even more in its infancy than the conversation around sexual identities. But as we have seen time and time again, the exact constitution of the identity is irrelevant to the identity’s legitimacy. Those hostile to that identity will always find a basis on which to rest their hostility: using medical legitimacy, or failure to conform to the gender binary, or failure to meet some arbitrary definition of dysphoria, will make it no easier to gain acceptance. Minorities under siege have been willing to throw less-mainstream members of the group under the bus to defend themselves since time immemorial: it never works. You will be accepted for precisely as long as you are useful to attack other members of the group, and then they will turn on you. Racists will use black people who look down on AAVE to say, “see! I’m not racist!” and then still refuse to hire the well-dressed black person who speaks perfectly standard GenAm, over a less qualified white person. There is no “balancing act” between a “reasonable” set of trans identities and an “unreasonable” set, because what the philosophical battle is over is not where, exactly, the line will be drawn for a minority identity, but the validity of that fundamental identity in the first place.

So I tire of people who want to endlessly split and compare forms of transness that they feel are well beyond the set of central examples of trans identity. I tire of people who want to treat some forms of gender self-identity as invalid, or of too little value to the person making them to be worth caring about. This is not just dumb, and it’s not just bad strategy (solidarity! it works, bitches). It’s actually completely missing the point. If you can convince society that “trans” is a legitimate identity, the supposed edge cases don’t matter. If you can’t, abandoning people “without” “real” “dysphoria” or w/e won’t make a difference. It’s not as if they’re the one thing standing in the way of every transphobe going “welp, guess we were wrong!” The thing standing in the way is that they refuse to accept trans identities at all. They will point to whatever they can to buttress that lack of acceptance, and if it isn’t that it will be something else. The thing that works against that, the thing that dismantles that, is the same thing that always dismantles prejudice: you be who you are. You don’t let anyone take that away from you. And if someone asks you to philosophically justify your experiences, your life, your existence, you tell them to get fucked, and you keep right on living.

#ramblings and doggerel #please excuse the long ass maddowesque meandering #i swear there's a point at the bottom of all this

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