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agerefandom · 4 years ago

Text

Restrained

Fandom: Death Note

Words: 4,150

Characters: Regressor!Light Yagami, Caregiver!L/Ryuzaki. Brief appearances from Soichiro Yagami, Shuichi Aizawa, and Watari.

Summary: Set during Light and Misa’s imprisonment (episode 16-17). Classification/Regressors Are Known AU: Light was classified as a regressor when he was fifteen, but has fought the identity ever since. L is classified as a caregiver, but has never used those skills further than calming people in interrogation situations. Things come to a head in the second month of Light’s imprisonment.

Warnings: Imprisonment, irresponsible use of restraints, mentions of death and murder, nightmares, panic attacks, involuntary regression, hidden regression being revealed non-consensually. Ominous ending.

Author’s Notes: I usually take issue with Classification AUs, because regression is a coping mechanism and not a fixed part of someone’s identity. Regression can change, and regressors can also be caregivers, and the idea that it could be ‘classified’ as part of someone’s political identity is kind of distressing. All of that said, it’s also a very comforting trope: it’s nice to imagine that you were ‘meant to be’ a regressor, naturally given that role, and that there are natural caregivers who want/need to take care of you. So, there are pros and cons to this kind of universe, as long as you remember that it’s an AU for a reason! Anyways, that’s my soapboxing done. Please note the warnings before reading!

Light was not a regressor.

It didn’t matter what the letter he received at age fifteen said. Didn’t matter that his age range was listed as ‘2-3’ and a permanent caregiver was recommended. Light Yagami was a neutral, collected, and precocious teenager. He was mature for his age, and always had been.

Admittedly, Light occasionally sucked his thumb to help him sleep. And he convinced his mother to buy him more expensive sheets because he liked to run his hands across the texture. And maybe he cast side-glances at the adult playgrounds all around the city, at the regressors who were happily running and playing on the swings.

But Light Yagami was not a regressor. He got top marks. He wore stiff, professional clothes. He didn’t cry, not even when he stubbed his toe. He turned his nose up at sweet drinks and packaged candy. In short, at seventeen, Light was a model young man.

Which was when the notebook fell outside his classroom window, and everything got a lot more complicated.

Could a regressor do this? Collectively bring the world to its knees, the news outlets humming with one story? Could a regressor kill hundreds, save the general population from the evil in its midst?

Light Yagami was Kira, and Kira was not an age regressor.

Light Yagami was not Kira.

Light was trapped in a cell, his arms shackled behind his back, and he was absolutely certain that he wasn’t Kira. What kind of idea was that, marching in and saying he thought he was subconsciously Kira? Absurd. He wouldn’t do that kind of thing.

He yelled at the ceiling, pleaded with Ryuzaki, and received cold answers in return.

How had Light sat here for a week, believing that Ryuzaki had been right to lock him away? It was absurd: he couldn’t have committed the murders without knowing at all, it just didn’t make sense.

“You told me to keep you in there, no matter what you said,” Ryuzaki repeated calmly, his voice crackling through the cheap speakers outside of Light’s cell. “I’m only doing what you told me.”

“Well, stop!” Light shouted, tugging uselessly against the leather cuffs that held his arms behind him. His shoulders ached from the position. “Listen to me now, I’m not Kira!”

“We don’t know that,” Ryuzaki said. “Until we can be sure, you will stay in that cell. I’m sorry, Light.”

Light felt tears well up in his eyes, and he jerked his head down to hide it. With his bangs hiding his expression, he tried to wrestle himself under control.

He felt scared and helpless and he just didn’t understand what he was doing here. Let me out! a voice was screaming inside him, younger and just as frightened as he was. Please, I can’t take it anymore!

What was he thinking? He was Light Yagami, part of the taskforce dedicated to catching Kira. He could withstand this. He would have to.

He didn’t bother to hide the tears as he raised his eyes again to the camera.

“Fine. I’ll stay. But you’ll see that I’m not Kira! I don’t know what’s happening, but I believe that my innocence will be proven one way or another.”

“That’s exactly what Kira would say,” Ryuzaki drawled into the microphone, and then there was a short sound of feedback as the conversation cut off.

Light rocked back to lean against the side of the bed, feeling exhausted but satisfied. He’d made his statement, and he had fought off the despair. He was Light Yagami, and he would deal with this imprisonment with all the dignity he could.

This was awful.

Light had never been so bored and anxious in his life. The days stretched on, with only Ryuzaki’s occasional check-ins to keep his mind busy. Out of lack for other things to do, Light started sleeping more than usual. His days were hazy, short bathroom trips out of the cell and the clatter of the food tray his only reference points for time. The lights shut off for seven hours every night, the cameras equipped with night vision to watch him toss and turn in his restraints.

There was nothing to do but ruminate, worry, wonder. Light tried to run through lectures in his head, even tried his hand at mentally writing a story. He wondered if he could convince Ryuzaki to play chess with him over the speaker system, but found himself worrying about whether that would make it seem like he wasn’t taking his imprisonment seriously.

It had been a month, and Light was suffering.

The nights were hardest. In the dark, Light cried, trying to stay quiet. He couldn’t bite his thumb, he couldn’t feel his soft blankets, and sometimes he couldn’t sleep for the tug of the restrains at his wrists and shoulders. He wanted to kick his legs, flail around, scream at the top of his lungs until they let him out. But he was Light Yagami, and he had dignity. Even with cameras fixed on him twenty-four hours a day, even with his wrists and ankles contained, even under the constant scrutiny of Ryuzaki and the other members of the task force.

He almost made it to the end.

Things that Light didn’t know:

-it had been a month since Kira had begun killing again -his father was in a matching jail cell, several blocks away -the task force had been pressuring L for weeks to let Light and Misa go, convinced by the new wave of murders that the two were innocent -L had a plan, and was simply waiting to contact Light’s father to play his part

(Light would never know most of these things, because before they became relevant, everything fell apart.)

L sat in the same place he’d been sitting for weeks, watching the same scenes play out on the same flickering screens. Misa sagged against her restraints, Light laid curled up on the bed, and Soichiro sat in his chair, staring down at his hands.

Nothing had changed, but everything was different.

Light and Misa were Kira, or at least they had been. L had never been more certain. Now they both seemed utterly convinced of their innocence, and L wasn’t comfortable with the implications of that. Were they truly ignorant of their role? Had their ability to kill been passed onto someone else, or had the two of them been unwitting puppets to some new and yet-unseen player?

Misa took a struggling breath, and went limp again. Light shifted. Soichiro got up and began to pace. His cell would fit eight of his steps before he had to turn around and begin again in the other direction.

L missed nothing. But the pieces weren’t coming together.

He tapped his fingers against his knees, a syncopated rhythm as his eyes flashed from one prisoner to the next. Watari had brought him a plate of fruit, not yet touched, with icing sugar sprinkled over them. They would make L’s fingers sticky, and he didn’t want to get juice on the controls. He would have to eat with one hand, and operate the microphones with his other. He was just about due his check-in with Misa-Misa.

Just as L began to reach for the berries, a movement on-screen caught his eye. He didn’t currently have the audio on for the cells, but from the visual, he would guess that Light just woke up screaming. L has had a few of those nightmares. They weren’t pleasant.

L switched the audio on, and listened to Light trying to calm himself down. He was talking out loud, a mutter only loud enough for the microphones inside his cell to pick up on. (Light always yelled to the camera when he was talking to L, as if he weren’t aware that the cell was bugged well enough to hear every last breath he took. They could take no risks with Kira, when they still didn’t know how he was committing the crimes.)

“I’m okay,” Light was muttering. “Don’t… don’t do this. I don’t need anything. I’m okay.” His breathing caught, paused, and then resumed. “I’m okay. Please, please- don’t.” His voice was trembling, and L leaned closer. He’d seen Light crying, of course, trying to hide it by turning away from the cameras. But this seemed… different. Light was on the edge of something, and if L was lucky, it might be some kind of confession, fuelled by a terrible dream that brought all of his crimes rushing back with the sudden weight of guilt that Kira never felt.

Yes, L had enough self-reflection to know that he was kidding himself. But it had been a long month and a half.

He remained crouching, one hand poised above the plate of strawberries and the other hand hovering above the microphone that would let him speak to Light. And he listened.

“I don’t wan’ do this,” Light whispered to himself, his words slurring together in a way that L had never heard from the other man. The distressed voice hooked its claws into his chest in a way that was both foreign and familiar. Was this… “I don’ wan’ do this,” Light repeated, and then burst into tears.

It wasn’t anything like the quiet, hidden tears of the night-time. Light was sobbing, pulling at his restraints, tossing on the bed. Unable to wipe them away, tears and snot made a mess of his face. L watched as the teenager struggled to his knees and pressed himself against the wall, as if he were trying to get some kind of comfort from the pressure. The tears wouldn’t stop, even as words started making their way through the sobs.

“Lemme out, I wan’ out, I can’t, I can’t. It’s too dark, I can’t. Please, I’m too… I can’t feel my hands!” Light wailed, collapsing in on himself, his shoulders straining against the cuffs.

L was dimly aware that his hands had dropped to his sides. He knew he was staring. He knew that Aizawa had come running to stand behind him, alerted by the cries coming through the speakers. His ears were ringing, and he could feel Light’s sobs in his own chest.

The truth was unavoidable: Light Yagami was a regressor, and L had not known.

How was that possible?

Light was registered as age-natural on his official documents. L had watched him for weeks, and he had shown no signs of regression, not at home when he was unaware of being observed, and not here in the prison cell. Until now.

This was a harsh involuntary regression, from the looks of it, and the part of L that had made them stamp ‘caregiver’ on his own documents was aching.

“Oh my god. Is Light a regressor?” Aizawa said behind him. “That looks like regression, right?”

“It isn’t on his file,” L said, pleased that his voice sounded even. He hadn’t been around a regressor in distress for a few years, and he’d forgotten how much it made his chest hurt. Knowing that he’d been the one to put Light in that situation made it worse. Rationally, he knew that Light being a regressor meant nothing to the investigation. In fact, it made L even more certain that he was Kira. To conceal his headspace that thoroughly, even under investigation, made it clear that Light was no ordinary teenager. That must have taken an immense amount of willpower and planning.

“You have to let him out,” Aizawa said. “You can’t hold a regressor in a place like that, and his innocence has already been proven.” Light was still sobbing, his harsh breaths providing an undercurrent to their conversation. “Ryuzaki, you can’t possibly let that continue.”

“I… think he knew this might happen,” L realized. “This is what he meant when he asked me not to let him out, whatever happened. He knew that he would regress under the pressure.”

“All the more reason to release him! He still doesn’t know that Kira is killing again, it’s not fair. You’ve put him under way too much stress. Let me talk to him.” Aizawa reached for the microphone, and L struck his hand away.

“No. The last thing he needs is more sensory input from the speaker system.” Aizawa recoiled from the physical interception, eyes wide. “And you could jeopardize the investigation,” L added, slightly belated.

“You can’t do this. I’ll call the rest of the team,” Aizawa threatened, reaching into his pocket.

“There’s no need for that,” L sighed. He knew that the rest of the team would agree with Aizawa. The legal system was more lenient for regressors, and keeping them in solitary confinement was widely considered cruel. “I’ll go myself.”

Just because Light couldn’t be held in the cell anymore didn’t mean that L was prepared to let him go without twenty-four-hour supervision. Luckily, he had a set of unusually long handcuffs that he’d already been prepared to use after Light’s release. He could just speed that process along… and tell Watari to order some more regressor-friendly accessories for their room, of course. Maybe pad the cuff that Light would wear, so he didn’t accidentally hurt himself.

L shook his head, pushing his chair back from the table with a sigh. His caregiver mind was getting in the way again. Light was Kira, regressor or no. He wasn’t keeping Light close so that he could take care of him, but so that he was unable to hurt anyone else.

“We’ll discuss Misa’s release when I return,” L added over his shoulder as he headed for the door, reaching into his pocket to call Watari with the car. Light’s prison was a short drive from the base, and the sooner L got there, the better.

Sure enough, the drive was agony.

L stared out the window, the seatbelt Watari had forced him to wear digging into his chest and disrupting his thoughts. He was trying to make plans, trying to think back to all of his interactions with Light and wonder if he should have known. Was that why Light had always sharply refused any kind of sweet drink, even something as simple as fruit juice? Was he afraid that he might slip into regression? Was that why he had been crying at night, quietly regressing just enough for his childish fears to come to the surface? How confused was he, how disoriented in the cell? He seemed to know he was trapped, but did he remember what he was accused of?

L barely noticed when the car came to a stop, but when Watari opened his door for him, it took genuine effort not to go running into the building. Instead, L moved even slower than he usually would. Each gesture would be planned. Each word intentional. Just because Light was a regressor, it didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. L had to be on his guard, even more because of his natural caregiver instincts.

He made his way down the cold concrete stairwell, Watari a few paces behind him. Hands tucked in his pockets, breathing slow and natural. No worries about what he might have missed in the two minutes he’d been away from the screens. Had Light hurt himself? Was he safe? Was he still crying? L should have brought water, he’s sure to be dehydrated-

They stepped onto the cell block, and L had a brief conversation with one of the guards to obtain the keys. He’d already texted ahead, and they knew to expect him.

Watari stayed behind, just within earshot as L padded down the line of empty cells to the one that held Light.

It was strange to see the cell in person. For the first time, L could see the camera that Light had shouted at so often. He could see the details of the walls more clearly here, the chipped tile of the bathroom corner and the scratches in the concrete that didn’t come through on the long-distance video feed.

And there was Light, curled into a ball on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms still tied behind him, much in the same position that he had been napping in before his nightmare.

L had approached soundlessly, and Light’s eyes were closed. He didn’t open them until L put the key into the lock and turned it.

“N—no, I don’t-” Light stuttered, and then looked up. “Ryuzaki? Ryuzaki!” He tried to get up, but the cuffs on his ankles made him stumble and fall. L heard his knees hit the concrete with a harsh crack, and Light teared up again. “No, no, don’t come in. M’sorry, don’t come in.”

“I’ll let you out of the cuffs,” L told him, his hand on the door but waiting to open it.

“No, I don’t want it,” Light managed. “Just… go.”

“Light, how old are you?” L pressed.

Light made a sound that resembled a squeak, and very slowly raised his eyes to L’s.

“How old are you right now?” L asked again. He watched Light’s expression twist from surprise to embarrassment to conflict, then Light started crying again.

“I don’t wanna be,” Light sobbed. “I don’ wan’ it.”

And there went L’s chest again, twisting and aching with the sound of a regressor in distress. He regulated his voice, unwilling to let it sound too caring. It came out flat instead.

“There’s no shame in regressing, Light. Two percent of the population isn’t an insignificant number. You’ll be more comfortable with your arms free.” Light shook his head, tears flying with the gesture.

“No! Don’t come in!”

“How old are you, Light? You’re young, I can tell that much. Probably in the toddler range, if I had to guess.” From Light’s glare through the tears, L had hit the nail on the head. “I thought so. Stop fighting me. I was going to let you out soon anyways.” Well, L hadn’t been meant to say that. But he could probably use that to his advantage.

“But… but you think I’m Kira,” Light mumbled. Interesting: he did have his full memories, then. Very little disorientation for such a young age range.

“I do,” L admitted. “But the taskforce doesn’t. They want you back on the team.”

“Me?” Light blinked up at him, and his eyes were even wider than usual, framed with perfect dark lashes, and L was in agony being separated by bars. This regressor was going to be the death of him. “But… I thought the bad things stopped ‘cause I was here.”

L was fascinated by the limits of Light’s mental reasoning while he was regressed. He would have to do some experimentation at a later time, but for now…

“I lied. Kira has been active for almost a month. I wasn’t convinced it meant you were innocent, but it makes a good case.” L watched that news hit home, but in a very different way than it would have hit an adult Light.

“You lied? Why? I thought… I thought I was bad, maybe, but you were lying!” Light tried to wipe his tears on his shoulder, only partially succeeding. “I don’ wanna know why. Probably a good reason, ‘cause you’re L and you do all the good things.”

Hmm. It seemed that Light’s certainty that he wasn’t Kira didn’t extend to his regressed self. Perhaps he was speaking more candidly in this headspace.

“I’m not fond of unnecessary cruelty,” L sighed, hooking one hand through the bars. “If I had known, Light-”

“You never woulda had me on the task force,” Light said, quite viciously. “Never ever.”

“That’s not true.” L traced one thumb against his lips. “I’ve known regressors who are exceedingly intelligent. Everything would have proceeded the same.”

“Even though I’m three?” Light asked, and L fought the urge to smile. Information, at last. Three. He stored that away.

“Even though you’re three,” L confirmed. “Your input is valuable to me. In fact, I would like to invite you back to the taskforce after you’ve recovered from this imprisonment.”

“Yes!” Light shuffled forwards on his knees, wincing at the movement. He probably bruised them earlier when he fell. “Yes, please! I wanna help catch Kira! And all the bad guys!” His eyes were shining with excitement and the tears from earlier. Looking down at him, L’s mind caught in a loop.

Light Yagami was Kira, but this… this was not Kira. What that meant about Light, or Kira, or the nature of Light’s regression, L couldn’t say, but he was certain of one thing.

“Can I come in now?” L asked.

Light visibly hesitated, then sank back onto his heels and nodded.

“Thank you.” L left the keys in the lock as he swung open the door and entered, making his way to Light briskly. It was easy enough to get the cuffs off his wrists, and Light whined when his hands were free, struggling to move his shoulders back into a natural position. “Give it time,” L advised, pressing at his spine with experienced fingers. Massages were one of his lesser-used skills, but easy to pick up with his wide knowledge of the human body. “They’ll hurt less in a few minutes.”

He wasn’t expecting Light to shift forward and wrap his arms around him, but that was exactly what happened.

L froze, his hands raised in the air as if in surrender. He’d comforted regressors before, at crime scenes and over interrogation tables. A few of the children at the orphanage were regressors, and he interacted with them when he visited. But none of them had dove into a hug like this. L was a detective, a mentor, a little too strange and intense to be approachable. Now there were arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly, and L didn’t know what to do.

Falteringly, L returned the embrace, the tips of his fingers resting lightly on his own forearms. Light had lost weight over the last month, and his body felt almost frail against L.

“Had a nightmare,” Light whispered.

L wondered if Aizawa was listening, back at the base. He wondered if Watari had wandered closer, after hearing the cell door open. He wondered what kind of things Kira dreamed about.

“Do you want to talk about it?” L asked, and didn’t lean back from the embrace.

“It was bad,” Light said. “I was running, and there were hands, and a fence, an’ there were… bodies. On the fence. And they were… they were…” L could feel Light shaking, and he held the regressor just a little bit closer.

“Just a dream,” L said. He wondered how much blood was on Light’s hands, how much of it he remembered. “You’re safe now. It was just a dream.” L held Light in his arms, the ache in his chest finally fading as he looked down at him. There, the regressor was safe, and L could finally relax. Light’s breathing slowly evening out, his grasp on L’s shirt finally loosening. “You’re safe.”

Light blinked up at L sleepily, and then his eyes slid closed. A natural reaction to stress, and having a caregiver close by. Even if L hadn’t disclosed his classification, his actions combined with Light’s instincts had likely made it clear. L cradled Light in his arms, like a puzzle piece fitting into place, and watched him fall asleep. He would have no more nightmares with a caregiver so close by, and even if he did, L would be there to calm him down.

L knew that this was trouble. Light was Kira, and Kira was death. L’s instincts as a caregiver could only blind him further as he continued in the investigation. If he were being rational, he would attach Light to someone else for the rest of his surveillance period. Prevent the caregiver/regressor bond that had been formed between them from strengthening into something difficult to break.

But L didn’t like being rational. He followed his instincts, and they were always right.

Right now, his instincts told him two things.

I will not let go of Light Yagami.

This will be the death of me.

#death note agere #fandom agere #agere writing #agere fanfiction #agere stories #my writing #death note

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arcticdementor · 3 years ago

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Kayfabe is a treasured part of pro wrestling culture. Kayfabe refers to the commitment of everyone involved (the wrestlers, the refs, the announcers, and to a certain degree the fans) to maintaining the shared fiction that pro wrestling matches are unscripted. (Wrestling is real, in the sense that the athletes are taking real punishment and risk really getting hurt, and there is a degree of improvisation, but the outcomes are predetermined.) Kayfabe has had a kind of mythical importance to many in the pro wrestling community: you keep kayfabe no matter what, even in the event of serious injury, out of a sense of sacred commitment. Crucial to understanding kayfabe is that it is not an attempt to deceive the audience. Modern wrestling is in some ways perfectly open about the scripted nature of the matches. Fooling people is not the point. If every fan signed an affidavit saying they knew the outcomes were predetermined the wrestlers would still keep kayfabe, out of commitment to the culture. Kayfabe is a mutually-approved illusion. It is artifice, but it is mutually agreed upon artifice, a consensual fantasy.

Our current political culture is kayfabe.

The illusion that we pretend to believe is that we are in some sort of uniquely politically fertile moment for progressivism and social justice, that we are experiencing a social revolution or “Great Awokening.” Further, we keep kayfabe by acting as if we believe that certain policies like police abolition or abolishing border enforcement (or if you prefer utterly meaningless sloganeering, “abolishing ICE”) are tangibly viable in anything like the near future. I say that these are kayfabe to emphasize my belief that most people who endorse these beliefs are well aware that they are not true, and to underline the sense in which the commitment to unreality is mutual, an expression of a strange kind of social contract. Most thinking adults comprehend the current moment and understand that the hand of establishment power and the influence of social inertia are as strong as ever. (Why would you feel otherwise?) But because people have understandably been moved by recent righteous calls for justice, they feel they must accept the fiction of a new awakening to show solidarity with the victims of injustice. This is emotionally understandable, but strategically counterproductive. And indeed one thing that has defined these new social movements is their relentless commitment to the emotional over the strategic.

…

Living in a culture of political kayfabe is a strange experience. It feels the way that, I imagine, it feels to live under a truly authoritarian government, where you’re constantly having exchanges where everyone involved knows that what they’re saying is bogus but you push right through the cognitive dissonance with a smile on your face. Only you’re not compelled by the fear of torture or imprisonment but of vague-but-intense social dictates, of the crucial priority of appearing to be the right kind of person. So often political conversations today have this dual quality where you feel forced to constantly evaluate what your interlocutor actually believes even as propriety compels you to take seriously what’s coming out of their mouth.

A major negative consequence of our commitment to kayfabe lies in our acceptance of behaviors we would ordinarily never accept, under the theory that this is such a special time, we need to shut up and go along with it. Take our broken discourse, as frequently discussed in “cancel culture” debates. My experience and my intuition tell me that almost everyone in the progressive/left/socialist world knows that our discourse norms and culture are totally fucked up. Trust me: most people in liberal spaces, Black and white, male and female, trans and cis, most certainly including people in academia and media, are well aware that we’ve entered into a bizarre never-ending production of The Crucible we can’t get out of. They’re probably just as sick of Woko Haram as I am.

But they’re either empowered and enriched by this state of affairs, and don’t want the party to end, or they’re holding on for dear life trying not to get their lives ruined for speaking out of turn. Look past self-interest and self-preservation and you’ll find that everybody knows that the way left spaces work now is horribly broken and dysfunctional. The problem is that thinking people who would ordinarily object don’t because they’ve been convinced that this is some sort of special moment pregnant with progressive potential, and that is more important than rights, compassion, or fairness. So we maintain a shared pretense that things are cool the way you go through the motions on an awful date where you’re both aware you’ll never see each other again.

If I say “cancel culture,” normies indeed don’t know what I’m talking about, because they are healthy, adjusted people with a decent set of priorities who value their own time and lives too much to get caught up in all of this horseshit. But if I say “cancel culture” in front of a bunch of politics-obsessed professional-class shitlibs they will pretend to not know what I’m talking about. They’ll put on a rich fucking show. They do an impression of Cletus from The Simpsons and go “cancel culture?!? Hyuck hyuck what’re that? I’m not knowing cancel culture, I’m just a simple country lad!” These are people who have read more about cancel culture in thinkpieces than I read about any topic in a year. But pretending you don’t know what cancel culture is happens to be a key part of the performance, a naked in-group signifier, so they pretend. The “I don’t know what cancel culture is�� bullshit performance is kayfabe at its most infuriating. I know you know what cancel culture is because you’re currently using it to demonstrate your culture positioning by pretending you don’t know what it is. You fucking simpleton.

People say and do weird shit and it’s all wrong but you just pretend like it isn’t. Who wants to be the one caught making waves? When you’re in a group of people and someone engages in something patently ridiculous - when, for example, someone says “AAVE” in an ordinary social situation with no academic or political reason to use jargon, even though everyone there knows the phrase “the way Black people talk” is more elegant, useful, and true - and the moment passes and there’s this inability to look each other in the eye, when everybody starts studying their drink and clearing their throat, that’s life under kayfabe.

Getting to this is not normal. It’s not a healthy state of affairs. It can only happen when people come to believe that self-preservation requires pretending things are OK.

…

It is at this point that people say that “defund” does not mean “abolish,” which is true, and Defund the Police indeed does not mean “abolish the police.” Defund the police means nothing, now, though I’m sure that the people who started using it had noble intentions. At this point it’s a floating signifier, an empty slogan that people rallied around with zero understanding of what semantic content it could possibly contain. If it’s meant to be a radical demand, why use the vocabulary of an actuary? If it’s meant to mean a meaningful but strategic drawdown of resources, why use it interchangeably with “abolish”? I cannot imagine a more comprehensive failure of basic political messaging than Defund the Police. Amateur hour from beginning to end.

I take the political concept of alternatives to policing seriously, in the same way I take many political ideas seriously that are not likely achievable in my lifetime. I know there are deeply serious people who are profoundly committed to these principles and who have thought them through responsibly. I appreciate their work and become better informed from what they say. But their ideas did not reign last year. A faddish embrace of a thoughtless caricature of police abolition reigned, pushed with maximum aggression and minimal introspection by the shock troops of contemporary progressive ideas, overeducated white people with more sarcasm than sense.

Policing will not end tomorrow or next month or next year. And whoever you are, reading this, you are well aware of that fact. The odds of police abolition in any substantial portion of this country are nil. Indeed, I would say that the likelihood of meaningful reduction in policing in any large region of this country, whether measured by patrolling or funding or manpower, is small. Individual cities may reduce their police forces by a substantial fraction, and I suspect that they will not suddenly devolve into Mega-City One as a result. (Though I can’t say initial data in this regard is encouraging.) I hope we learn important lessons about intelligent and effective police reform and more sensible resource allocation from those places. But the vast majority of cities will not meaningfully change their policing budgets, due to both the legitimate lack of political will for such a thing - including in communities of color - and broken municipal politics with bad incentives.

…

Living under kayfabe makes you yearn for plainspoken communication, for letting the mask fall. The professed inability of progressives to understand why woke-skeptical publications like this one keep succeeding financially is itself a slice of kayfabe. They know people are paying for Substacks and podcasts and subscribing to YouTubes and Patreons because it’s exhausting to constantly spend all of your time pretending things that don’t make sense make sense, pretending that you believe things you don’t to avoid the social consequences of telling the truth.

When you’re someone who spent the past several decades arguing that the American university system is not hostile to conservative students, that it doesn’t try to force extremely contentious leftist views onto students, and then you watch this video, how do you react? I think many people, most people, even most people committed to the BLM cause, see that video and wince. That is not how we get there. Browbeating 20 year olds for not parroting your politics back at you is not how racial justice gets advanced. But if you’re caught in this moment, how do you object? Acknowledge that, yes, in fact, it is now plainly the case that many professors see it as their job to forcefully insist on the truth of deeply controversial claims to their students, berating them until they acquiesce? Well that would be an unpleasant conversation with the other parents when you pick up your kid from Montessori school. So you just choose not to see, or keep you mouth shut, or speak in a way that maintains the illusion.

I mean there is the absurdity of what she’s saying to contend with - the now fairly common view that policing was literally invented in the antebellum South purely to enforce slavery, because in ancient Rome if someone came in your house and stole your stuff you’d just be like “oh damn, that sucks.” Is there a relationship between modern policing and slavery? Of course. Does the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow infect modern policing at every point? Sure. Should we make political and policy decisions that recognize that historical influence on policing, especially given the racist reality of policing right now? Yes. But what good does it do anyone to pretend that the concept of “the police” is 250 years old? Why on earth would we get the correct shit we do believe tangled up with this bizarre shit we don’t believe? (The professor in that video does not herself honestly believe the police were invented to support African slavery in 18th and 19th century America.) Because this utterly ahistorical idea is being promulgated by people who claim to speak from a position of justice, we are forced to assign seriousness to it that it hasn’t earned, seriousness that it could never deserve. Because we live in a world of mutual delusion. Because of kayfabe.

…

And the fact that some will wrinkle their noses about this piece and its arguments, go about their days of progressive performance art, and pretend they don’t believe every word they just read? That’s kayfabe, my friend. That’s kayfabe. And we’re trapped in it, all of us, you and I. You know it’s all bullshit. Will you keep the code anyway? I’m willing to bet that the answer is yes.

#freddie deboer #substack #woko haram

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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

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Im asking this genuinely so pls dont yell at me; when you say that those using trigger warnings dont care about their readers’ mental health and wellbeing, what else are trigger warnings supposed to be for? To make sure people don’t enter fics that have material that would harm them. Just like tv shows that warn about nudity or violence or what have you. Its a rating system, theyre warnings. Tagging for rape or underage ARE the looking-out-for-readers thing. Past that, it is on readers to decide

I try not to yell at anyone engaging in good faith, I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but I would rather be engaged with than ignored...the latter is when my volume goes up, lol.

But in answer to your question, it comes down to the fact that trigger warnings are well established enough in fandom by now, that they exist as a kind of social contract.

In short, its EXPECTED that you provide trigger warnings, and that if you don’t have them, someone will bring that up at some point.

Problem is, this counter-productively works against what trigger warnings are actually FOR.....once we reach a point (which we’ve long since reached)....where a lot of people are only including the trigger warnings because of the social contract that expects them to have them, and not ACTUALLY because they’re prioritizing their readers’ well-being.

Something I see a LOT after trigger warnings is the phrase or sentiment “enter at your own risk”....and the phrasings are so, so key to what I’m talking about.

Take a small sampling and just look for what I’m describing and I’m fairly certain you won’t have to go far to find an example of a fic where the tone of the author is not one of concern for readers, but preemptive concern for potential backlash from readers.

And these are two very different things.

Like, we all know how to read and interpret tone and nuance. Its genuinely not that hard to tell the difference between a sincere expression of wanting readers to be aware of potentially triggering content, and a faux-expression of that when really, the only thing you’re worried about triggering is a negative reception from people, and you want to get ahead of that by making it clear from the get go that hey, you did your job, you warned readers, and thus nobody has any grounds to say anything about your content itself.

Because also too there’s the fact that trigger warnings are inherently fallible. They rely on the author’s own AWARENESS of their content and everything it might include......but a racist author isn’t going to place a trigger warning for using their characters as mouthpieces for even blatant white supremacist ideology.

A genuinely predatory author (and yes, they absolutely do exist, and its willful stubbornness that people rely on to pretend that like, for some bizarre reason, only genuinely predatory people don’t partake in this otherwise global hobby of reading and writing fiction, like what even is that, how do you arrive at that conclusion, that like, actual pedophiles are so busy preying on ‘real life’ teenagers in their zip code 24/7 that they just don’t have TIME to go online and cultivate predatory relationships with real life teenagers via social media? That doesn’t make any sense!)

But anyway, a genuinely predatory author, is absolutely NOT going to tag or place trigger warnings for pedophilia, etc....because they don’t WANT the things they write perceived that way.

People trying to normalize incest are not always going to tag for incest because they want to DISTANCE the cute, sweet dynamic between two ‘only sorta brothers’ as other than the kind of incest that destroys families...regardless of the reality that most cases of incest are the LATTER and its the FORMER that’s so rare it barely exists.

And that sort of thing is how we get terms like dub-con and pseudo-incest and ‘consensual underage sex’ when its describing a relationship between a minor and adult....because this is mitigating, distancing language. Its entire reason for existing is to make unpalatable content seem more palatable.

And especially in Batfandom, we KNOW this.

Because we all, practically universally, give Devin Grayson crap for describing the rape in Nightwing #93 as ‘nonconsensual sex’ and go.....THATS NOT A THING!

And then half of fandom turns around and....acts like that and similar stuff...IS A THING.

That doesn’t work! LOL. It just...doesn’t.

Or another example, because abuse can be just as triggering as rape.....like, for me, personally, I’m a survivor of both, and yes, both CAN be triggering. But not as much as people might think....like, just reading a depiction of these things doesn’t trigger me.

Its, like you were saying at the get go, yes, a matter of surprise.....the kind of thing that CAN be warned for, and prepared for, and its the sheer unexpectedness that’s usually the trigger.

Like.....I went off a few weeks ago about reading a story that was supposed to be about Dick’s brothers learning the truth about what led him to take the Spyral mission and what happened in Forever Evil. That’s what the summary said, that was it, that was the only thing it led me to expect about the story. So understandably, I go into the story expecting it to be sympathetic to Dick. I’m looking for catharsis from it honestly, a salve for the many fics and canon events that blamed and punished him for something I don’t consider his fault, right?

And then towards the end....I get Jason punching Dick again, before hugging him, because that’s just how he reluctantly shows love or whatever.

This genuinely triggered me, yeah. Its why I got so upset about it. Because I was blindsided, I had no way to prepare for it, because I went in expecting catharsis for a story that bothered me due to its victim blaming, and instead I got the author heaping on more of the same abuse we already saw in canon.....with zero awareness that’s what she was doing.

So....that’s absolutely something I wrestled with should I message the author and ask them to add a trigger warning or not? Because I genuinely could have used one. It would have helped. I would have avoided that story if I had any notion that might crop up in it, because frankly, that’s not something I had any interest in reading.

But problem is, there’s only really two realistic outcomes there. If she was open to hearing a genuine request for her to be aware that her content contained triggering material for a reader....chances are, she probably would have just edited it and taken that out entirely. It was just one line. Easy enough to do. It certainly didn’t add anything.

Problem is....there’s an equal and opposite likely outcome....that she’d get defensive, call this unsolicited criticism, and double down on the idea that what she had written wasn’t abuse, because obviously she doesn’t condone abuse, so she wouldn’t have written that plain and simple. It has to be acknowledged that a lot of authors ARE innately defensive about social content in their work, and not open to hearing they’ve done something offensive or triggering....because that’s like...literally the basis of the ‘no unsolicited criticism’ movement in fandom, even though being critical of toxic ideology expressed in content is NOT the same as offering criticism of someone’s writing in general.

So you see what I mean? A trigger warning COULD genuinely help in that situation....but our fandom environment simply flat out is not conducive for readers to be at all confident that they even CAN come forward and alert an author that they delved into an offensive, even harmful take with their content and be well received no matter HOW they phrase it....

For much the same reasons I mentioned in that other post. People are more likely to instinctively jump to the defense of the person WRITING the content that offended or did actual emotional harm....than the person simply trying to say, backed by their own lived experience of....being offended or experiencing emotional harm....hey, this is a problem for me and I would appreciate it being regarded as such....

Otherwise, what is even the POINT of this entire system of trigger warnings in the first place? If a problem for a reader isn’t regarded as worthy of attention in and of itself.....at least, not in comparison to whatever problem that READER’S problem creates for the WRITER.

You see what I’m saying? For this, and a lot of other reasons, trigger warnings are innately fallible. They rely on an honor code system, and the uncomfortable truth is none of us are actually naive enough to believe everyone in fandom is innately honorable enough to honor that....if they were, would we have as much cases of anon hate, spite fics, etc?

But fandom as a whole looked at the trigger warning system and decided well....its good enough. Because its not like I’m proposing a viable alternative, its not like I have a BETTER system in mind, offhand. All I do have is the point that well...no...its NOT good enough as is....because for a ton of reasons, there’s a ton of cases in which there’s a ton of people for which it flat out doesn’t work for or benefit at all.

But when this comes up to any degree, in any capacity whatsoever....and the only thing people fall back on is well, I tagged it, or I used trigger warnings what more do you want, or its good enough for me so that’s what matters, or just....

“I did what I was supposed to per the social contract about trigger warnings, so if anything goes wrong in your reading experience at this point, that’s entirely on you.”

Like, does that make sense?

Basically, there’s a world of difference between:

This is a problem that still needs solving because the solution provided now is not all-encompassing or inclusive....

And....

This is a problem that’s already been solved as far as I’m concerned, and I’m utilizing that solution so any further problems are just in the mind of the reader and have nothing to do with reality, let alone me and my work.

Again, as I said above....its the difference between genuinely engaging with other members of your fandom community with actual concern for THEIR fandom experience.....or faking engagement with other members of your fandom community when your only real concern is YOUR fandom experience, and at most, the experiences of anyone who already is of like minds to you on a subject.

Hopefully that answers your question or clarifies my stance there, anon. And thank you for actually engaging on this. It feels a bit like shouting into the void a lot of the time, lol.

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ao3feed--kylux · 5 years ago

Text

Relaxation Aid

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2zZ34rY

by doublemetalaxis

Hux just wants a good night's sleep. Kylo Ren has other plans.

Words: 6046, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: F/M, M/M, Multi

Characters: Armitage Hux, Phasma (Star Wars), Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren

Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Phasma, Phasma/Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Phasma/Kylo Ren

Additional Tags: Finalizer Era, Wrestling as Foreplay, Sub Hux, Dom Phasma, Dom Kylo Ren, Space Gatorade, Phasma has gorilla grip coochie, Hux does not object as much as he says he does, please do not break windows he has water and is listening to his favorite music, Not Beta Read, Dubious Consent, Consensual Non-Consent, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Inappropriate Use of the Force, That's Not How The Force Works, Choking, Force Choking (Star Wars), Orgasm Delay/Denial, Threesome - F/M/M, Anal Sex, Vaginal Sex, Cunnilingus, Face-Fucking, Face Slapping, Barebacking, OK BDSM Etiquette, Submissive Armitage Hux, Smart-Assed Masochist Armitage Hux, Top Kylo Ren, Impact Play, Spanking, Aftercare, Pre-Canon, happens before Star Wars Episode VII

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2zZ34rY

#star wars: the force awakens #star wars: the last jedi #kylux #kylo ren #general hux #fanfic

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teshknowledgenotes · 4 years ago

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PRINCIPLES - RAY DALIO

FLESHING OUT PRINCIPLES

Ever since Bob, Giselle and Dan had presented me with the “Ray Feedback Memo” in the 1990s, I had been much more explicit in writing down and sharing my work principles in the same way I had written down my investment principles. At first, this took the form of shared philiosophy statements and emails to the entire company. Then, whenever something new came along that required me to make a decision, I would reflect on my criteria for making that decision and write it down as a principle so people could make the connections between the situation, my principle for handling these situations and my actions. More and more, we saw everything as “another one of those” -- another of a certain type of situation like hiring, firing, determining compensation, dealing with dishonesty – that had principles for handling them. By having them explicitly written out, I could foster the idea meritocracy by having us together reflect on and refine those principles – and then adhere to them.

I started to have people from outside Bridgewater ask me how they could create idea meritocracies of their own. So in 2006, I prepared a rough list of about sixty Work Principles and distributed them to Bridgewater's managers so they could begin to evaluate them, debate them, and make sense of them for themselves. “It's a rough draft”, I wrote in the covering memo, “but it is being put out now for comments.”

This began an ongoing evolutionary process of encountering many situations, forming principles about how to deal with them, and getting in sync with other Bridgewater learders and managers about them. Over time, I encountered most everything there is to encounter in running a company, so I had a few hundred principles that covered most everything. That collection of principles, like our collection of investment principes, became a kind of decision-making library. Those principles are the basis of what you'll find in Work Principles.

But it wasn't enough to codify and teach out philosophy; we had to live it. As the company grew bigger, how that happened evolved. In Bridgewater's early days, everyone knew each other, so being radically transparent was easy – people could attend the meetings they wanted to and communicate with each other informally. But as we grew, that became logistically impossible, which was a real problem. How could people engage productively with the idea meritocracy if they didn't know everything that was going? Without transparency, people would spin whatever happened to suit their own interests, sometimes behind closed doors. Problem would be hidden instead of brought to the surface where they could be resolved. To have a real idea meritocracy, there must be transparency so that people can see things for themselves.

THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISIS OF 2008

In the early 2000's we had included a “depression gauge” in our systems that specified the actions we should take if a certain configuration of events began to play out in a way indicating a heightened risk of a debt crisis and depression. In 2007, this guage indicated that a bubble of debt was nearing its bursting point because the costs of debt service were outpacing projected cash flows. Because interest rates were so close to 0 percent, I knew that central banks could not ease monetary policy enough to reverse the downtrun the way they had in prior recessions. This was the exact configuration that has led to past depressions.

My mind and gut flashed back to my 1979-1982 experience. I was now both thirty years more knowledgeable and whole lot less confident. While the dynamic in the economy seemed clear to me, I was much less sure I was right. I remembered how clearly it had seemed to me that the debt bust I'd been expecting in 1982 would sink the economy – and how painfully wrong I had turned out to be.

That experience also drove me to learn a lot more about debt crises and their effects on the markets, and I researched and trade through a number of them, including the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, the Japanese debt crisis of the 1990s, the blowup of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, and the fallout from the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. With the help of my teammates at Bridgewater, I took history books and old newspapers and went day by day through the Great Depression and the Weimar Republic, comparing what happened then with what was happening in the present. The exercise only confrimed my worst fears: It seemed inevitable to me that large numbers of individuals, companies, and banks were about to have serious debt problems and that the Federal Reserve couldn't lower interest rates to cushion the blow, as was the case in 1930-1932

My fear of being wrong pushed me to seek out other smart folks to poke holes in my view. I also wanted to walk key policymakers through my thinking, both to stress-test it and to make them aware of the situation as I saw it, so I went to Washington to speak with people in both the U.S. Trasury and the White House. Though they were polite, what I was presenting seemed too far-fetched to them, especially when by all outward indications the economy seemed to be booming. Most of them didn't go very deep into our reasoning or calculations before they dismissed them, with one exception: Ramsen Betfarhad, Vice President Dick Cheney's deputy assistant of demostic policy, He worked through all our numbers and was concerned by them.

Because everything we saw lined up and we couldn't find anyone who could refute our views, we prepared our clients' portfolios by balancing our positions in a way that there would be a considerable upside and limited downside in the portfolios if we were right and putting in a backup plan in case we were wrong. Though we thought we were well prepared, we were as worried about right as were about being wrong. The prospect of the world economy going over a waterfall was scary to all os us because of what it might mean to those who weren't protected.

The dominoes fell fast the whole market was crashing, to make this long story short, we navigated this period well for our clients, anticipating market moves and avoiding losses. Our flagship fund made over 14% in 2008, a year when many other investors recorded losses of more than 30 percent.

Policy makers wanted my help because my global macroeconomic perspective as an investory was very different from theirs as policymakers. We were both products of our environments. Investors think independently, anticipate things that haven't happened yet, and put real money at stake with their bets. Policymakers come from environments that nurture consensus , not dissent, that train them to react to things that have already occurred, and that prepare them for negoatiations not placing bets. Because they don't benefit from the constant feedback about the quality of their decisions that investors get, it's not clear who the good and bad decision makers among them are. They also have to be politicians. Event the most clear-sighted and capable policymakers must constantly diver their attention from the immediate problems they are dealing witht eo fight the objections of other policymakers, and the political systems they must navigate are often dysfunctional.

While the economic machine is more powerful than any political system in the long run (ineffective politicians will be replaced and incapable political systems will change), the interaction between the two is what drives economic cycles in the here and now – and it's often not pretty to watch.

Since I was a kid, I've learned by doing. I'd just dive in after things I wanted and try to survive long enough to learn from my mistakes and improve. If I changed fast enough to become sustainable at whatever I was doing, then I would build on that to flourish. I've always had great faith in my ability to figure things out, and over time my need to figure things out made me better at doing so. As a result, I tended to hire people who were the same way – who would dive right into challenges, figure out what to do about them, and then do it. I figured that if they had great character, common sense, and creativity, and were driven to achieve our shared mission, they would discover what it took to be successful if I gave them the freedom to figure out how to make the right decisions. I knew that micromanaging and handcuffing them wouldn't work because neither of us would like it. If I was the one telling thme what to do, I wouldn't be getting any leverage from them. Besides, I didn't want to work with people who needed that.

RETURNING THE BOON: 2011 - 2015

It seems to me that life consists of three phases. In the first, we are dependent on others and we learn. In the second, others depend on us and we work. And in the third and last, when others no longer depend on us and we longer have to work, we are free to savor life.

I was beginning my transition from my second to my third phase. Both inellectually and emotionally, I was no longer as excited about being successful as I was excited about having the people I cared about be successful without me.

The biggest question I wrestled with was whether I should leave management completely or stay involved as a mentor. On the one hand, I liked the idea of stepping out completely because it would give the new leadership the freedom to find their own ways of succeeding without me looking over their shoulder.

LEARNING WHAT SHAPERS ARE LIKE

To vizualize what I mean by “shaping” and “shapers��, think of Steve Jobs who was probably the greatest and most iconic shaper of our time, as measured by the size and success of his shaping. A shaper is someone who comes up with unique and valuable visions and builds them out beautifully, typically over the doubts and opposition of others. Jobs built the world's largest and most successful company by revolutionizing computing, music, communications, animation, and photography with beautifully designed products. Elon Musk of Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Reed Hastings of Netflix are other great shapers from the business world. They all had original visions and successfully built them out.

I spoke with proven shapers that I knew – Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Reed Hastings, Muhammad Yunus, Geoffrey Canada, Jack Dorsey, David Kelley and more. They had all visualized remarkable concepts and built organizations to actualize them, and done that repeatedly and over long periods of time. I asked them to take an hour's worth of personality assessments to discover their values, abilities and approaches.

It turns out they have a lot in common. They are all independent thinkers who do not let anything to anyone stand in the way of achieving their audacious goals. They have very strong mental maps of how things should be done, and at the same time a willingess to test those mental maps in the world of reality and change the ways they do things to make them work better. They are extremely reilient, because their need to achieve what they envision is stronger than the pain they experience as they struggle to achieve it. Perhaps most interesting they have a wider range of vision than most people, either because they have that vision themselves or because they know how to get it from others who can see what they can't. All are able to see both big pictures and granular details (and levels in between) and synthsize the perspectives they gain at those different levels, whereeas most people see just one or the other. They are simultaneously creative, systematic, and practical. They are assertive and open-minded at the same time. Above all, they are passionate about what they are doing, intolerant of people who for them who aren't excellent at what they do, and want to have a big, beneficial impact on the world.

ANTICIPATING THE EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS

Beginning in 2010, my Bridgewater colleagues and I began to see the emergence of a debt crisis in Europe. We had looked at how much debt had to be sold and how much could be bought for a number of countries and determined that many Souther European nations were likely to come up short. The resulting crisis could be as bad as worse than the one in 2008-2009.

Just as the U.S. Policymakers had before 2008, the Europeans did not fear what they hadn't experienced before. Because things were good at the time and the picture I was painting was worse than anything they'd experienced in their lifetimes, they found what I was saying implausible. They also didn't possess a granular understanding of who the borrowers and lenders were and how their abilities to borrown and lend would change with changing market conditions. Their understandings of how markets and economies work were oversimplified, like those of academics. For example, they looked at investors as a sing thing they called “the market”, rather than an amalgam of different players who bought and sold for different reasons. When the markets did badly, they wanted to do things that increased confidence, figuring that if they built confidence the money would come and the problems would disappear. They didn't see that whether they were confident or not, specific buyers didn't have enough money and credit to buy all the debt that had to be sold.

One person I consider a hero I am fortunate to learn from is China's Wang Qishan. Every time I go to China, we meet for sixty to ninety minutes. We talk about what's happening in the world, and how that relates to thousands of years of history and the never-changing nature of mankind. We discuss a wide range of other topics as well, ranging from physics to artificial intelligence. We are both keenly interested in how most everything happens over and over again, the forces behind those patterns, and the principles that work and don't work in dealing with them.

HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES

I gave Wang a copy of Joseph Campbell's great book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, because he is a classic hero and I thought it might help him. I also gave him The Lessons Of History, a 104 page distillation of the major forces through history by Will and Ariel Durant, and River Out of Eden by the insightful Richard Dawkins, which explains how evolution works. He game me Georgi Plekhanov's classic On The Role of The Individual in History. All these books showed how the same things happened over and over again throughout history.

Most of my conversations with Wang are at the principle level; he sees the rhyme of history and puts the particulars we speak of in that context. “Unattainable goals appeal to heroes,” he once told me. “Capable people are those who sit there worrying about the future. The unwise are those who worry about nothing. If conflicts got resolved before they became acute, there wouldn't be any heroes.” His advice has helped me in my planning for Bridgewater's future. Everytime I speak with Wang, I feel like I get closer to cracking the unifying code that unlocks the laws of the universe. He uses his timeless perspective to see the present and the likely future more clearly.

Being around such people, especially if I can help them, is thrilling to me.

Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, one of the books I gave to Wang as well as a number of other heroes I know, was introduced to me by my son Paul in 2014. In it, Campbell looks at large numbers of “heroes” from different cultures some real and some mythical and describes their archetypal journeys through life. Campbell's description of how heroes become heroes aligned with my thinking about shapers. And it gave me powerful insidghts about the heroes I know and the patterns of my own life.

For Campbell, a “hero” isn't a perfect person who always gets things right. Far from it. A hero is someone who “found or achieved or [did] something beyond the normal range of achievement,” and who “has given his life to something bigger than hiself or other than himself.” I had met a number of such people throughout my life. What was most interesting about Campbell's work was his description of how they got that way. Heroes don't begin as heroes; they just become them because of the way one thing leads to another. The diagram on the following page shows the archetypal hero's journey.

They typically start out leading ordinary lives in an ordinary world and are drawn by a “call to adventure”. This leads them down a “road of trials” filled with battles, temptations, successes and failures. Along the way, they are helped by others, often by those who are further along the journey and serve as mentors, though those who are less far along also help in various ways. They also gain allies and enemies and learn how to fight, often against convention. Along the way, they encounter temptations and have clashes and reonciliations with their fathers and their sons. They overcome their fear of fighting because of their great etermination to achieve what they want, and they gain their “special powers” (i.e. Skills) from both “battles” that test and teach them, and from gifts (such as advice) that they receive from others. Over time, they both succeed and fail, but they increasingly succeed more than they fail as they grow stronger and keep striving for more, which leads to ever bigger and more challenging battles.

Heroes inevitable experience at least one very big failure (which Campbell calls an “abyss” or the “belly of the whale” experience) that tests whether they have the resilience to come back and fight smarter and with more determination. If they do they undergo a change (have a “metamorphosis”) in which they experience the fear that protects them, without losing the aggressiveness that propels them forward. With triumphs come rewards. Though they don't realize it when they are in their battles, the hero's biggest reward is what Campbell calls the “boon,” which is the special knowledge about how to succeed that the hero has earned through his journey.

Late in life, winning more battles and acquiring more rewards typically becomes less exciting to heroes than passing along that knowledge to others “returning the boon” as Campbell called it. Once the boon is returned the hero is free to live and then free to die, or as I see it, to transition from the second phase in life to the third phase (in which one is free to savor life until one passes away)

Reading Campbell, I saw that heroes like shapers, come in varying sites there are big ones and small ones that are real people, and that we all know some. I also saw that being a hero is typically not all it's cracked up to be – they get beat up a lot, and may are attacked, humiliated, or killed even after they triumph. In fact, it's hard to see the logic for choosing this hero role, if one were to choose. But I could see and relate to how a certain type of person would start and stay on that path.

LOOKING BACK FROM A HIGHER LEVEL

With time and experience, I came to see each encounter as “another one of those” that I could approach more calmly and analytically, like a biologist might approach an encounter with a threatening creature in the jungle: first identifying its species and then, drawing on his prior knowledge about its expected behaviours, reacting appropriately. When I was faced with types of situations I had encountered before, I drew on the principles I had learned for dealing with them. But then I ran into ones I hadn't seen before, I would be painfully surprised. Studying all those painful first-time encounters, I learned that even if they hadn't happened to me, most of them had happened to other people in other times and places, which gave me a healthy respect for history, a hunger to have a universal understanding of how reality works, and the desire to build timeless and universal principles for dealing with it.

Watching the same things happen again and again, I began to see reality as a gorgeous perpetual motion machine, in which causes become effects that become causes of new effects and so on. I realized that reality was, if not perfect, at least what we are given to deal with, so that any problems or frustrations I had with it were more productively directed to dealing with them effectively than complaining about them. I came to understand that my encounters were tests of my character and creativity. Over time, I came to appreciate what tiny and short-lived part of that remarkable system I am, and how it's both good for me and good for the system for me to know how to interact with it well.

In gaining this perspective, I began to experience painful moments in a radically different way. Instead of feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, I saw pain as nature's reminder that there is something important for me to learn. Encountering pains and figuring out the lessons they were trying to give me became sort of a game to me. The more I played it, the better I got at it, the less painful those situations became and the more rewarding the process of reflecting, developing principles, and then getting rewards for using those principles became. I learned to love my struggles, which I supposed is a healthy perspective to have, like learning to love exercising (which I haven't managed to do yet).

In my early years, I looked up to extraordinarily successful people, thinking that they were successful because they were extraordinary. After I got to know such people personally, I realized that all of them – like me, like everyone – make mistakes, struggle with their weaknesses and don't feel that they are particularly special or great. They are no happier than the rest of us, and they struggle just as much or more than average folks. Even after they surpass their wildest dreams, they still experience more struggle than glory. This has certainly been true for me. While I surpassed my wildest dreams decades ago, I am still struggling today. In time, I realized that the satisfaction of success doesn't come from achieving your goals, but from struggling well. To understand what I mean, imagine your greatest goal, whatever it is – making a ton of money, winning an Academy Award, running a great organization, being great at a sport. Now imagine instantaneously achieving it. You'd be happy at first, but not for long. You would soon find yourself needing something else to struggle for. Just look at people who attain their dreams early – the child star, the lottery winner, the professional athlete who peaks early. They typically don't end up happy unless they get excited about something else bigger and better to struggle for. Since life brings both ups and downs, struggling well doesn't just make your ups better; it makes your downs less bad. I'm still struggling and I will until I die, because even if I try to avoid struggles, they will find me.

Thanks to all that struggling and learning, I have done everything I wanted to do, gone everywhere I wanted to go, met whomever I wanted to meet, gotten everything I wanted to own, had a career that has been enthralling and most rewardingly had many wonderful relationships. I have experienced the full range, from having nothing to having an enormous amount, and from being a nobody to being a somebody, so I know the differences. While I experienced them going from the bottom up rather than from the top down (which was preferable and probably influenced my perspective), my assessment is that the incremental benefits of having a lot and being on top are not nearly as great as most people think. Having the basics – a good bed to sleep in, good relationships, good food and good sex – is most important, and those things don't get much better when you have a lot of money or much worse when you have less. And the people one meets at the top aren't necessarily more special than those one meets at the bottom or in between.

The marginal benefits of having more fall off pretty quickly. In fact, having a lot more is worse than having a moderate amount more because it comes with heavy burdens. Being on top gives you a wider range of options, but it also requires more of you. Being well-known is probably worse than being anonymous, all things considered. And while the beneficial impact one can have on others is great, when you put it in perspective, it is still infinitesimally small. For all those reasons, I cannot say that having an intense life filled with acomplishments is better than having a relaxed life filled with savoring, though I can say that being strong is better than being weak and that struggling gives one strength. My nature being what it is, I would not have changed my life, but I can't tell you what is best for you. That is for you to choose. What I have seen is that the happiest people discover their own nature and match their life to it.

Now that my desire to succeed has given way to a desire to help others succeed, that's become my current struggle. It's now clear to me that my purposed, your purpose, and the purpose of everything else is to evolve and to contribute to evolution in some small way. I didn't think about that at the start. I just went after things I wanted. But along the way I evolved, and now I am sharing these principes with you to help you evolve too. I realized that passing on knowledge is like passing on DNA – it is more important than the individual, because it lives way beyond the individual's life. This is my attempt to help you succeed by passing along to you what I learned about how to struggle well – or at the very least to help you get the most out of each unit of effort you put in.

I believe that everything that happens comes about because of cause-effect relationships that repeat and evolve over time. At the big bang, all the laws and forces of the universe were created and propelled forward, interacting with each other over tie like a complex series of machines that work together: the structure of galaxies, the makeup of Earth's georgraphy and ecosystems, our economies and markets, and each one of us. Individually, we are machines made up of different machines – our circulatory systems, our nervous systems, and so on – that produce our thoughts, our dreams, our emotions, and every other aspect of our distinct personalities. All these machines are evolving together to produce the reality we encounter every day.

Look to the patterns of those things that affect you in order to understand the cause-effect relationships that drive them and to learn principles for dealing with them effectively.

By doing this, you will begin to understand how the machinery underlying any “another one of those” works and develop a mental map for dealing with it. As your understanding of these relationships grows, the essentials stand out from the blizzard of things coming at you, you will notice which “one of those” you are facing and instinctually apply the right principles to help you through it. Reality, in turn, will send you loud signals about how well your principles are working by rewarding or punishing you, so you will learn to fine-tune them accordingly.

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usnewsaggregator-blog · 7 years ago

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Risky stalemate as science battles human fears at Fukushima

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/risky-stalemate-as-science-battles-human-fears-at-fukushima/

Risky stalemate as science battles human fears at Fukushima

More than six years after a tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japan has yet to reach consensus on what to do with a million tons of radioactive water, stored on site in around 900 large and densely packed tanks that could spill should another major earthquake or tsunami strike.

The stalemate is rooted in a fundamental conflict between science and human nature.

Experts advising the government have urged a gradual release to the nearby Pacific Ocean. Treatment has removed all the radioactive elements except tritium, which they say is safe in small amounts. Conversely, if the tanks break, their contents could slosh out in an uncontrolled way.

Local fishermen are balking. The water, no matter how clean, has a dirty image for consumers, they say. Despite repeated tests showing most types of fish caught off Fukushima are safe to eat, diners remain hesitant. The fishermen fear any release would sound the death knell for their nascent and still fragile recovery.

“People would shun Fukushima fish again as soon as the water is released,” said Fumio Haga, a drag-net fisherman from Iwaki, a city about 50 kilometers (30 miles) down the coast from the nuclear plant.

And so the tanks remain.

———

Fall is high season for saury and flounder, among Fukushima’s signature fish. It was once a busy time of year when coastal fishermen were out every morning.

Then came March 11, 2011. A 9 magnitude offshore earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people along Japan’s northeast coast. The quake and massive flooding knocked out power for the cooling systems at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Three of the six reactors had partial meltdowns. Radiation spewed into the air, and highly contaminated water ran into the Pacific.

Today, only about half of the region’s 1,000 fishermen go out, and just twice a week because of reduced demand. They participate in a fish testing program.

Lab technicians mince fish samples at Onahama port in Iwaki, pack them in a cup for inspection and record details such as who caught the fish and where. Packaged fish sold at supermarkets carry official “safe” stickers.

Only three kinds of fish passed the test when the experiment began in mid-2012, 15 months after the tsunami. Over time, that number has increased to about 100.

The fish meet what is believed to be the world’s most stringent requirement: less than half the radioactive cesium level allowed under Japan’s national standard and one-twelfth of the U.S. or EU limit, said Yoshiharu Nemoto, a senior researcher at the Onahama testing station.

That message isn’t reaching consumers. A survey by Japan’s Consumer Agency in October found that nearly half of Japanese weren’t aware of the tests, and that consumers are more likely to focus on alarming information about possible health impacts in extreme cases, rather than facts about radiation and safety standards.

Fewer Japanese consumers shun fish and other foods from Fukushima than before, but one in five still do, according to the survey. The coastal catch of 2,000 tons last year was 8 percent of pre-disaster levels. The deep-sea catch was half of what it used to be, though scientists say there is no contamination risk that far out.

Naoya Sekiya, a University of Tokyo expert on disaster information and social psychology, said that the water from the nuclear plant shouldn’t be released until people are well-informed about the basic facts and psychologically ready.

“A release only based on scientific safety, without addressing the public’s concerns, cannot be tolerated in a democratic society,” he said. “A release when people are unprepared would only make things worse.”

He and consumer advocacy group representative Kikuko Tatsumi sit on a government expert panel that has been wrestling with the social impact of a release and what to do with the water for more than a year, with no sign of resolution.

Tatsumi said the stalemate may be further fueling public misconception: Many people believe the water is stored because it’s not safe to release, and they think Fukushima fish is not available because it’s not safe to eat.

———

The amount of radioactive water at Fukushima is still growing, by 150 tons a day.

The reactors are damaged beyond repair, but cooling water must be constantly pumped in to keep them from overheating. That water picks up radioactivity before leaking out of the damaged containment chambers and collecting in the basements.

There, the volume of contaminated water grows, because it mixes with groundwater that has seeped in through cracks in the reactor buildings. After treatment, 210 tons is reused as cooling water, and the remaining 150 tons is sent to tank storage. During heavy rains, the groundwater inflow increases significantly, adding to the volume.

The water is a costly headache for Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that owns the plant. To reduce the flow, it has dug dozens of wells to pump out groundwater before it reaches the reactor buildings and built an underground “ice wall” of questionable effectiveness by partially freezing the ground around the reactors.

Another government panel recommended last year that the utility, known as TEPCO, dilute the water up to about 50 times and release about 400 tons daily to the sea — a process that would take almost a decade to complete. Experts note that the release of radioactive tritium water is allowed at other nuclear plants.

Tritium water from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States was evaporated, but the amount was much smaller, and still required 10 years of preparation and three more years to complete.

A new chairman at TEPCO, Takashi Kawamura, caused an uproar in the fishing community in April when he expressed support for moving ahead with the release of the water.

The company quickly backpedaled, and now says it has no plans for an immediate release and can keep storing water through 2020. TEPCO says the decision should be made by the government, because the public doesn’t trust the utility.

“Our recovery effort up until now would immediately collapse to zero if the water is released,” Iwaki abalone farmer Yuichi Manome said.

Some experts have proposed moving the tanks to an intermediate storage area, or delaying the release until at least 2023, when half the tritium that was present at the time of the disaster will have disappeared naturally.

———

Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi

Find her work at https://www.apnews.com/search/mari%20yamaguchi

Original Article:

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freakqueer · 9 months ago

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#swerve strickland #nick wayne #risk aware consensual wrestling

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usnewsaggregator-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Risky stalemate as science battles human fears at Fukushima

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/risky-stalemate-as-science-battles-human-fears-at-fukushima/

Risky stalemate as science battles human fears at Fukushima

The stalemate is rooted in a fundamental conflict between science and human nature.

And so the tanks remain.

———

Fall is high season for saury and flounder, among Fukushima’s signature fish. It was once a busy time of year when coastal fishermen were out every morning.

Today, only about half of the region’s 1,000 fishermen go out, and just twice a week because of reduced demand. They participate in a fish testing program.

Only three kinds of fish passed the test when the experiment began in mid-2012, 15 months after the tsunami. Over time, that number has increased to about 100.

———

The amount of radioactive water at Fukushima is still growing, by 150 tons a day.

A new chairman at TEPCO, Takashi Kawamura, caused an uproar in the fishing community in April when he expressed support for moving ahead with the release of the water.

“Our recovery effort up until now would immediately collapse to zero if the water is released,” Iwaki abalone farmer Yuichi Manome said.

———

Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi

Find her work at https://www.apnews.com/search/mari%20yamaguchi

Original Article:

Click here

0 notes