#seeing the same discourse over and over again might be at the crux of it

[thelustybraavosimaid]

Idk is it just me or is the asoiaf fandom boring rn?

I don't wanna interact as much as I wanted to or had before...

[buddha-in-disguise]

Discourse, Supergirl and fans.

The Supergirl situation with William Dey, is far more than about William Dey per se.

I touched on this when I first posted about David Harewood.

What I have seen, and I am still seeing is while some SuperCorp fans were annoyed about the preview for episode 12, this was also coming from a diverse section of the fandom. That David (and others) have singled out the SuperCorp fandom is both unfair, and unhelpful. But that is a different discussion altogether.

So - I am going to repeat and expand on some of what I wrote at the time to try and explain why I, (and others) have found Supergirl to be really problematic at the moment.

First of all: There is no doubt Supergirl currently has a diverse cast, inc. LGBTQ representation. 

However, all the diversity in the world means absolutely nothing if a program is seemingly only playing lip service to the characters. 

Compare and contrast with Legends of tomorrow. They have 6 women. 2 Muslim superheroes (a TV first). 5 characters are LGBTQ, including Charlie; who is recognised as gender fluid. 4 people of colour. The lead is a woman, who is bisexual, in a canon relationship with a lesbian, and is a superhero. 

They do this without it being made a big deal of, enjoyed by LGBTQ and heterosexual audience alike. But it is a huge deal for many because of that diversity, and just as importantly they haven't overloaded the cast numbers, so they all get good solid storylines through a season. A season that is also shorter than Supergirl. 

Legends are an example of how you can put in a diverse minority cast, without it becoming forced or cumbersome. It isn't without fault sure, but no program is. 

So where is Supergirl going wrong at the moment? 

Let's use William, as the crux of the problems are best shown with his character, but it isn't limited to him. I will put first - this is absolutely *not* a criticism towards Staz Nair, who I respect (& like, as far as one can from limited SM interaction). All too often the accusations are made that if you don't like a character, you hate the actor. That is categorically not true for me, nor others I've seen posting about this. Of course if anyone does hate on the actor, that is not okay.

So, back to William. I get the reason he came along in regards to Russell and so the Andrea connection. That story made sense.  What hasn't made sense - William being used as a journalist, when Nia is right there! Nia has barely had any screen time, and virtually none as a journalist; you know - her actual job. I'm not sure what the minutes on screen ratio has been this season between the two, but it has felt completely slanted towards William as a viewer, at least until now. 

First instead of Kara and Nia investigating Leviathan after William was 'exposed' in the earlier episodes, now Nia is sidelined again, because they want Kara to team up with William to investigate Lex.

Why? Why do they need that journalistic pairing, when Nia - who as a Superhero, is better placed if danger from Lex occurs. But no, they're making it about Kara having to work with William because Lex threatened to kill him. Plus Nia was being mentored by Kara. Is she no longer being mentored by Kara? Are they a team? Even if the mentoring has ended, Nia is still not being utilised as a journalist.

I am utterly baffled as to why they feel this arc makes any sense. Moreso when an already established character gets sidelined. 

I'm also getting tired of seeing anyone who sees these valid opinions about current storyline as being trolls (or the comments all SuperCorp fans are just outright haters. No - SuperCorp fans are a large diverse group, that have incredible artists, fanfic writers, and social media users. Many also multi-ship. To place a blanket statement about a whole fandom as large as SC, is hateful. All fandoms have some who are problematic, but to single out an entire group is not right). 

So back to my thoughts. An episode can have some great aspects to it, but it can also be highly problematic to some fans, & receive valid criticism or valid opinions for it. For example, the latest episode of Batwoman. The Alice/Beth story was great. The acting superb. What I found worrying was the way they made Sophie feel guilty for legitimate reasons why she had led a closeted lifestyle. That lifestyle is valid, for Sophie and many LGBTQ people, and for good reason, including keeping some people safe from harm. I felt it was a clumsy attempt for Alice to get into Sophie's mind; it could've been tackled other ways, so it felt wrong they used her sexuality as a way to achieve that. Being closeted for many literally keeps them alive. So that was one hell of a poor choice in my opinion. Yet others have made perfectly credible counter arguments that it showed the difficulties faced by many LGBTQ people. So, great episode, valid criticism/opinion from both points of view. It also highlights you can have excellent episodes, but they can have legitimate issues.

Nor does differences of opinion, as long as it is respectful, makes those voicing them a bully, no matter how much you disagree. 

At the end of this, if you don’t agree, and your opinion makes you say something that is intentionally hurtful (directly or indirectly to a person or group of people), it's a bad thing. The key word being intentionally. We all make mistakes, and responses that could've been better, & we all need to be aware of that, but if it is an intended attack, don't be surprised if others call you out for your behaviour. 

So now what in regards Supergirl?  

I know ultimately that this show is about Supergirl, but it is also about those around her as family & friends. I understand there are only so many minutes in one episode. What I don't understand is why those precious minutes are going to a character, when they have one perfectly placed to do the same role. Why they have to potentially explore another relationship, when we have one canon relationship, one canon on/off again relationship & one relationship that while isn't canon in terms of romantic, it is a big story in terms of best friends, all seemingly sidelined. Which brings me to the Kara fighting for Lena's soul aspect. Again, I am not seeing a lot of fighting for anything, except more and more fans fighting themselves and cast. 

Then you just need to look at the dislikes that teaser was given on YouTube, and compare them to previous ones. I've attached screenshots to show this.

A serious misjudgment was made by someone on how that teaser would be received, and again I will stress, this dislike hasn't just been from one area of fandom, but multiple areas. For many it wasn't just about William, but the culmination of unease that has built for a few episodes. A prime example of the straw that broke the camel's back. If you are solely focused on one area of fandom for this discourse (as many blame SuperCorp fans), you need to step back and recognise you are not allowing yourself to see the whole picture. To focus solely on one thing, rather than acknowledging the wider audience are saying this, does not make you the better fan. To dismiss it as trolls, is being dismissive of good, regular fans with legitimate questions or concerns. It is insulting to many of us.

I will be honest, I had high hopes for this season. I also knew it was likely going to be pretty confusing at times since it was given as 'our Black mirror season' and 'nothing is as it seems.' I accepted that.

However, all it seems at the moment is a jumbled mess from pre and post Crisis. They just doesn't appear to be any cohesion at all, which is making it really difficult as a viewer. Add in the changes post Crisis and it feels even more of a mess.

Of course, they could bring in more cohesive elements soon, but considering that we know episode 13 is 'It's a wonderful life,' and Alex Danvers in a later episode is wearing a Super suit - I just sense this whole 'nothing is as it seems' side we appear to be getting isn't changing any time soon, & with episodes running out, with so many strings running through at the moment, it feels really discombomulated. If by seasons end, they pull it off and you can look back and see how it's played out as a whole, I will be the first to say well done for that part. 

I do though think right now Supergirl feels chaotic beyond expectation, and no end in sight. I feel there have been too many character additions this season (particularly Andrea & William) that is taking screen time away from Kara, Alex, Nia, Lena, Kelly et al.

It feels like a mess of unnecessary pairings and the crux of the story seems to have been lost in the midst.

That is causing confusion for fans, that is also beginning to become frustration. That frustration is spilling over. Add in the genuine and extremely legitimate concerns over the LGBTQ issues that have arisen (again from far more than just SuperCorp fans), and the frustration has built even more. 

I can only hope the next couple of episodes address some of this and not complicate the mess further. 

Whatever happens, Supergirl is not doing well in terms of a storyline that is gripping for fans, that is now top heavy with regulars, taking screen time from established characters, and a social media blunder that has so far only exacerbated the simmering uncertainty being felt by many.

It might improve, and I sincerely hope it does, but they are edging into the potential for the anger felt by fans to become an all out riot if they don't stop and see where valid criticism is being given. If this season continues on in this vein, then there is going to be huge swathes of fans drifting away. The concerns are legitimate. I wish it could be seen as that.

[chiclet-go-boom]

waxing philosophical about star wars on main because i don’t do side blogs

There’s a meta post from @symptomofconvalescence going around this morning about Kylo Ren/Ben Solo that crossed my dash a couple of times, stating that the base of his character is wanting to be loved and valued and seen. I don’t normally involve myself with meta discourse but I quietly disagree with most of the opening statements although I’m in general agreement with the tone of the conclusions, so I’m going to take a minute to talk about why. I’ll quote the relevant passage below: 

Fundamentally, he wants to be loved, he wants to be valued, he wants to be seen. But he isn’t getting that love or understanding. Very early on in his life, he becomes convinced that his family betrayed him- justly and unjustly at the same time. His family loved him but they did make mistakes, grave mistakes, and Snoke was there to take advantage of that immediately. Understandably, he turns to Snoke who promised to make the pain go away, to make him a new person. But at some point he realizes that Snoke never cared for him either, and his heart and loyalties complete their shift to Rey. When Rey leaves him, he feels that he truly has no one left he can care for and no one who can care for him, so he spirals out of control into despair and anger.

Some quick notes on this:

Kylo’s had love and rejected it.

Kylo knows he has value - he’s had both sides of the sith/jedi line fighting over him his entire life after all and they’re still fighting. His entire life is a smoking battleground because of it.

Kylo doesn’t turn to Snoke because he thinks his mentor cares about him or is offering him less pain or an easier path. The Dark path is notoriously hard to walk. He doesn’t turn from Snoke to Rey because Rey cares more or that he wants someone to care about. Caring isn’t the problem here. 

What Snoke promised and what he killed Snoke for, was acceptance.

A statement to start with. Ben Solo is an extremely powerful Force user and part of his skill set includes both defensive and offensive telepathy, empathy and mental manipulation (along with incredibly fine-grained telekinesis and battle precognition but while I could absolutely get into that, it’s irrelevant to this post). He has the ability to break minds and extract information with ease and in movie-canon he appears to be Snoke’s chief torturer in that respect, sent to interrogate both Poe Dameron and Rey with the implication that this is just part of what he does for the First Order. 

Kylo knows he’s loved because he’s empathetic. He is also not unaware of what Snoke feels about him which isn’t going to be any kind of tender emotion like caring, except in the possible sense of how one might care for a pet - some amalgamation of possessiveness and pride and control for owning something rare and unique. When Han tells Kylo that he’s being used and will be discarded, that isn’t any sort of revelation; he knows that Snoke is trying to break him, trying to sift out the pieces that Snoke doesn’t want.

What Snoke offered to Ben was acceptance of who he was. Snoke wasn’t afraid of Ben’s anger - in fact, he praised him for it, elevated him for it, told him to embrace it, told him he could use it. Growing up with every adult in his life afraid of him on some level, that had to have been a very tempting feeling, to be wanted for exactly the flaw that everybody else wants you to carve out of yourself. Did Snoke stoke that feeling? Absolutely. Did he poison all of Ben’s interactions to make that crevasse, that disconnect wider and wider? You know he did. But it was still there to start with, Snoke just made it deeper and darker. 

That’s how the Dark works and what the Dark promises. That it’s possible to be self-contained, beyond all reproach, beyond all judgement if you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get there. Self above everything, above all things — everything else, every one else irrelevant. Ben felt (and for practical purposes was) betrayed by everyone in his life and Kylo is on a quest to amass enough power now — secular, mystical, emotional — that he can’t be judged and found wanting by anyone anymore. 

He wants to stop feeling bad about who he is. Wants desperately to stop caring what other people think of him because for all this power, all this potential, he’s been told over and over again that his essential nature is wrong and always has been.

Circling back, there is no way Kylo’s unaware of what his mother and his father feel for him - he’s right in front of Han after all, who I will remind everybody has nothing in the way of Force defenses, while they talk on the bridge in that pivotal scene in The Force Awakens. Han is pouring out likely megatons of emotion at his son in those few minutes - love, regret, guilt, compassion, determination, desperation - along with his verbal words begging his son to please come home, that he is loved and that he is wanted. Han’s not lying. And notably neither is Kylo which is why the whole thing is so terrible. 

For while Kylo verbalizes his conflict, acknowledges that he still feels, still cares, he still sacrifices his father because what Kylo wants in that moment is more important than his father’s actual life. That’s a quintessential Dark side move even if the aftermath didn’t necessarily accomplish all that it was supposed to. In that moment, Kylo chose himself while looking love right in the face.

So love isn’t what Kylo wants because he’s got that and it so very clearly isn’t enough. 

(As an aside, he’s in communication on some level with Leia in The Last Jedi when he’s targeting the command deck of the Raddus, although whether its empathic or telepathic isn’t stated nor what specifically passes between them. Simple awareness? Actual conversation? It does, however, turn Kylo back from matricide so the question there is - why? Love didn’t stop him before so why does it stop him now? You could argue that since killing Han didn’t bring him what he wanted, he’s reluctant to sacrifice his mother for the same net zero gain. There’s a ton of nuance here, it’s not going to be a single, clean answer for this. Did he blame his father more? Does he blame his mother less? Anyways.)

As for the question of value, Ben Solo has been in the middle of a vicious tug of war since he was in the womb and he knows it. Yet neither side wants him as he is. He’s got too much Dark for the Light to trust him - hence Luke’s betrayal, Han and Leia’s abandonment. He’s got too much Light for the Dark to be able to use him easily - hence Snoke’s escalating (and calculated) disgust and ridicule, keeping Kylo unstable. Snoke is Dark but not Sith; it’s fairly obvious from the outside perspective that he’s not teaching his apprentice to surpass him, as a Sith master should, but to make him strong in the Force while keeping him emotionally weak and manipulatable. 

The Jedi espouse that there is no emotion, except in the abstract. The Sith espouse that the only feelings that count are the ones that aggrandize the self. Ben didn’t fit into the first and Kylo can’t fit into the second no matter how hard he tries.

So what Kylo is truly looking for is acceptance for who he is and how he is, which is why Snoke ended up dead on his throne because in that moment after touching hands through the Force bond with Rey, Kylo thought he’d finally, finally found it. 

Which bring us to Rey.

Rey is uniquely positioned to understand both Ben Solo and Kylo Ren. First, the Force Bond has made her confront her own prejudices as Kylo makes her question the lies she was told and the truths she wasn’t and she can feel what he feels, all that swirling rage and hurt. She’s also grown up alone and rejected and carries her own scars because of it, even as she managed to hang onto both hope and compassion when Ben couldn’t. Rey is angry over what was done to her. But better, Rey is furious over what was done to him. 

That isn’t abstract emotion. That isn’t generic Jedi compassion for all living things. That’s Rey, willing to confront the legendary Luke Skywalker over what he did to Ben specifically and then completely abandon her mission to recruit the Jedi back to the Resistance because of it. 

Rey is the only one who could look at Kylo Ren and see all that he is and accept it because fundamentally that’s who she is too. Look at Rey when she fights. She’s not in the least passive about it, she’s channeling nearly as much rage as Kylo does. She’s not trained in the Dark, she doesn’t accept the mandates of the Dark but she’s not Jedi either. She feels too much, just like Kylo does. 

But… she doesn’t accept him. In the home stretch in the throne room, Kylo planted his feet on all the choices that got him this far and chose himself, chose to consolidate personal power regardless of everything and everyone else — and Rey chose the good of the many over the needs of the one. They were both right. And they were both wrong.

But the crux of it is that it’s not about love or value at all, that’s not the essential problem. Rey and Kylo can love each other to the ends of the universe and back if they want to, see themselves mirrored in each other, understand each other, and it’s still not going to change anything.

They have to accept each other, as they are, without trying to change each other’s essential nature. Rey wanted Ben and refused Kylo and that’s where it all blew up and we ended up with a kyber crystal that split itself in half rather than decide.   

[no-longer-an-alley-cat]

‘“Asexual” Isn’t Who I Am’: The Politics of Asexuality

by Matt Dawson, Susie Scott, and Liz McDonnell

Comedic commentary that might verge on insightful by me.

Join me as I try and fucking deal with this particular hangup I have

Arright, so basically these folks are reacting to other folks who say that asexuality is the fucking cats pajamas and is going to do everything from redefining relationships to destroying neoliberalism.

Basically, they’re saying that this is telling asexual people how they ought to be, and not actually looking at what it is and how asexual people actually are. In fact, they think asexual people are a very diverse bunch and you can’t make general claims about their politicalness. Which is fair.

Anyway, they’re going to look at the politics of asexual people, and they’re doing this in an interesting way where they are committed to studying the world from the participant’s perspective. This is interesting because, generally speaking, it is impossible for a researcher to entirely remove themselves from an interpretation, because they’re human, and that’s not how humans work. It’s particularly interesting if this means they’re just going to take their participant’s word as gospel, because folks have this nasty habit of lying to researchers.

So, working through past literature now.

They got a good handle on the different parts of the spectrum though, nice, nice.

And critique essentialism, all to the good. 

Then they’re saying that the establishment of asexuality as legitimate relied vision of an asexual person is the ‘gold star’ asexual (yikes yikes yikes) cause that sectioned off some people who you could still intervene with, so the social dominance of sex in society is unchallenged. This negates the ‘radical potential’ of sexuality which is to suggest the FUCKING WILD NOTION that maybe it’s okay for anyone to not want sex. Like, maybe sex could just be a thing, and not a prerequisite of being normal or intimate???

Anyway, the idea that it could suggest this buck wild idea basically spawned a bunch of articles expecting asexuality to pretty much fix everything wrong with society. We’re questioning mainstream culture, we’re rethinking intimacy, we’re desexualising identity, we’re radical (in the political sense of the word) just by existing. Also just “fundamentally anarchist” because we reclaim agency over our body by not wanting to have sex? Dunno about that one, but I might be down for an A tattoo in ace colours.

But our three musketeers say these are a bunch of claims just pulled out of a collective ass, there’s not data whatsoever. Also, all that stuff talks about ‘asexuality’ like it’s some distinct entity (like how folks talk about capitalism but good) and not a thing that people have. So there’s no discussion of how other aspects of people have (race, gender, class, disability etc) interact with asexuality. And of course they do, people are people.

And they want to see some real resistance, alright? Some proper political action and mobalisation, not just thinking radically. Or, I guess, living in a way that resists norms? Or maybe that counts as taking a political position. I guess we’ll have to wait because now it’s time for METHODOLOGY.

So right off the bat we’re talking qualitative. Interviews and a diary. Data from a study originally looking at asexual identity formation and the construction of intimate relationships, but they figure they had enough to do a little article on the politics of it too. And like they said before, they’re looking at what it is that their participants think they’re doing. They call themselves out a bit, saying that maybe their participants might not know if they’re being political, but I’m gonna add in here that this interview was probably advertised as being about the asexual identity. Folks were asked if they had ‘been an activist in the asexual community or in relation to asexual issues’ sure, but it wasn’t advertised as political so they might not be getting the political peeps!

AND ANOTHER THING (cause we’re into recruitment now), you’re not going to get the people like me. The people who care Very Much about their identity, but are also Very Scared to talk about it with pretty much everyone who hasn’t unlocked like sixth tier trust. And they don’t mention this, even while they’re patting themselves on the back for how many diverse identities they got (never mind that the sample is nearly 74% white, 76% younger than 29, and 54% had a university qualification). People who have the most issues are unlikely to be fitting into those categories, either.

But fuck it, let’s get to the analysis.

How central did the participants consider asexuality to be in their lives? You’ll be fucking astounded to know that it varied!!! Amazing, right? But mainly what they’re looking at is whether folks saw asexuality as a key factor marginalising them. (This is about where I started crying last time, but I’m channeling that into anger to try and keep it together so buckle the fuck up).

Our brave trio admits that they did “””””of course””””” find evidence of discrimination against asexual people, and say that they really don’t want to downplay it, but hey, most of the people they talked to didn’t experience it! They just talked about hearing about it! Like, NO SHIT MOTHERFUCKERS! YOU TALKED TO 50 FUCKING PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO TALK TO YOU! YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING TO FIND A TREND WITH THAT?? And also let’s not downplay what it can do to a person to hear about how others like them are threatened with rape, huh? Let’s maybe think about the effect of that, huh?

Like, yes, the participants who said that it’s not as bad as the history of oppression that homosexuality has are entirely valid. But the researchers who say multiple times that they don’t want to downplay the effect of discrimination and oppression and then ignore the instances they found in favour of talking about ways it could be worse are NOT.

And then they’re saying that it’s not significant to come out, because it’s ‘a lack’ and they cite a couple of participants who say they don’t come out on a regular basis and here is where we get to crux of my problem with their methodology. Because what they’re doing is they’re taking what these participants said and they’re going, ‘oh, yup, that must be why.’ And that’s all well and good, but if some rando I barely knew asked me why I didn’t come out to all an sundry I might also say something along the lines of ‘oh, well, you know, it’s not a huge deal, it’s not something the public needs to know.’ But Reader, it is a huge deal, at least for me. I’m fucking terrified of coming out to people. People LIE. We lie all the time, we tell people what we think they want to hear, and that means that there could very well be a reason I’m reading what these people said and hearing echoes of the tired old aphobic discourse. 

Not saying that is what’s going on, just raising the possibility which they have yet to do.

Yeah, yeah, see here, heteroromantic asexual talking about how they realise their privilege and can pass as straight. Sound familiar? Maybe that is their experience. Maybe it’s what they think the interview wants to be their experience. WHO’S TO SAY?

Yeah, so they conclude that maybe asexuality isn’t very central in their participant’s lives, and we get the title quote of “asexual isn’t who I am. This is just what I am, not who I am as a person.” Which is interesting, because I was just reading another article where gay men said the same thing.

But they say this quotation shows that asexual can be a description of actions one doesn’t take rather than an aspect of a person which creates marginalisation and UM WHAT? You could just as easily say that ‘this is just what I am’ shows a deeper claiming of identity, making it a physical aspect of you which could actually lead to marginalisation. Hey, maybe the context of the quote makes it clear. Don’t know, though, BECAUSE THEY DON’T GIVE ANY.

And now we’re moving on to activism, which I don’t expect to make me as angry, but we’ll see. (Editor’s note: It did.)

Yeah, so there’s more of the drawing the line between how people would like recognition of asexuality and the activism necessary for the wider LGBT community, which, again, valid. But they say that this means that the people who say this feel less need to confront forms of discrimination, when the selfsame participant they are discussing explicitly outlined a need for better education. 

APPARENTLY there was no suggestion that the educatory action people engaged in linked to a wider question of social change which, I mean, sure, had you not already called yourself out on participants maybe not being politically  conscious I might allow. But you did, and what’s more, I bet you didn’t even fucking ask them if they saw it as social change. And since when was education not social change? How are folks supposed to know that it’s okay not to want sex if you don’t TELL THEM THROUGH THE EDUCATION SYSTEM???

And then they have the nerve the fucking audacity to say that while it is “of course” admirable, it doesn’t show a desire to challenge a social system. EDUCATION IS A SOCIAL SYSTEM, YOU ABSOLUTE WALNUTS.

Now, online activity

This is mainly about people’s attitudes to AVEN which I don’t really know anything about, but it’s people talking about how it feels to find a label and answers, which is some much needed wholesomeness. And I feel like people’s opinions on a particular organisation or website to use for community are much more valid to take at face value. Much less interpretation going on.

LGBT groups/politics. Oh dear.

“The relations between our participants and LGBT groups were complex and multifaceted” oh, I bet they were.

Again, they found more people talking about hearing others excluded rather than seeing them excluded themselves. Kinda idea that the political standpoints might be different, but they don’t really dwell on that, they just head on through to really ram home the idea that asexual people are all different and might not hold inherently queer political perspectives.

And finally, finally, the conclusion. People are different, political literature is wrong, asexuality is not a fucking cure all. Now, they outline a couple of responses to their argument that folks might take. 

One: the idea that by being asexual, people have the potential to question society. They say this takes people out of their context, and that their way of looking at human action is better.

Two: a radical politics that hopes to transcend sexual society is the best/only way for asexuality to get social acceptance, never mind what the experiences of the participants say. They don’t want to say whether this is true or not, but say that sociologists should distinguish between arguing for the things they like and arguing that those things are what a certain group should do.

And now for my own conclusion. I know I have issues. I am very ‘sensitive’ around this topic. And, just to be clear, I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically radical in being asexual, either. I think it might inspire a person to take a radical bent on life, but that’s up to an individual. 

But these folks, these silly sausages, in their eagerness to disagree with everyone fell over themselves to gleefully stab each other in the foot. They took an extremely shallow look at their data, not interrogating why people might be telling them these things at all. Additionally, they clearly didn’t want to find much evidence of social activism, and one can’t help but wonder if that is why their definition was so crushingly tight that it didn’t. 

They got to an answer I agree with, but boy howdy did they make a mess doing it.

[generational-intersectional-blog]

-- Emotional Algebra

-- Emotional Algebra of a Feral Spirit

How would Compassionate Nihilism work?

Because I needed to reject the stereotypes of 'white male' starting early with anti-racist and pro-feminist influences, it became easy to deconstruct ideological narratives in the culture. There's no difference in the process of transcending 'whiteness', 'maleness' and ideas of national bonds and nationalism, that is easily seen as the psychological impetus of war.

It's a matter of a single thought-process for understanding the agendas of socially-constructed ideologies. I lost religion by age thirteen using the same process for understanding the function of religious ideologies. None of those explanations came from a book. That was just my life.

Whatever label you'd like to put to that, it's a matter of the heart being stronger than the influence of society.

-- Early Essentialist Compassion  

Cognitive development is such, that we should expect everything to be in essentialist terms for children under twelve.

The entrenchment of a pure heart really happens before age six. The conclusion is there is no complex reasoning needed to entrench a pure heart.

--- Self/Worldview Constant

There is ones idea of the self in relation to the world, which is a *constant* over life, in the sense that while the character of ethics may change and develop, the *position in ones perceptions* does not change as we grow older.

All of our ethical/moral decision-making made throughout life is rooted in that 'crux': the way we see ourselves in the world. Our 'self/worldview' becomes the initial premises of any words (argumentation) and deeds (behavior) people express in the world.

-- The Crux of Social Change

There is an ethical/moral character to the way anyone sees the world. It always begins essentialist because perception always begins essentialist in childhood. The conclusion is one can nurture ethical development in the next generation if that is their will.

The world we want to see in that 'crux' of perception and ethical development.

-- Stages

In early life, and throughout life, we reach a different stages in ethics through learning, experience and revelation. Ethics become the 'initial premises' of all behavior. When we reach a new stage of ethics, our behavior changes.

-- Slippage, Shift and Redemption  

An example here is how sexual urges led me to be a bit of an opportunist when it came to sexual relations. Shitty ethics and sexual urges lead me into more than one purely sexual relationship when it was obviously hurting feeling of others.

I came to the ethics of an opportunist in the my early to mid twenties, but I needed to transcend that, because there was too much emotional conflict with the earlier entrenched 'universal ethics' of an anti-racism and pro-feminist upbringing.

The pure heart entrenched as a kid won the battle. That's 'demisexuality' as redemption. Redemption in any context comes from self-reflection when the heart wins the battle.  

-- Compassionate ID

I can speak in the context of universal ethics for days and days and days, because it's the emotional root of every expression all through life, while education and experience just gives me fancier words and logic to express the same root emotional repertoire.

-- Neptunian Ethics

"Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune." - Noam Chomsky

Of course, I live on Neptune, and don't live in the "Real World" of NYC Earth where my brethren call my compassionate ethics: "Kumbaya". (/sarcasm)

When people believe opportunism is "the natural way of society that will always be", they see universal ethics as unreasonable and foolish.

That puts me on Neptune, or might as well, for my Brooklyn brethren. They dismiss compassion and say: "Kumbaya doesn't work in the real world".

-- Kumbayarchy

My apartment is my real world to the best of my control. I call mental space under my control: Kumbayarchy. People who know me, know that I insist on keeping the ethics of NYC Babylon Kyriarchy out of my mental Kumbayarchy, at least in the physical space I control.

There are only universal ethics in that space, to my best ability.  

--- Hypocrisy and Cognitive Dissonance  

It seems most people see universal ethics as unreasonable and foolish, yet that's what they expect to speak in their defense. Along with the ethics of opportunism comes hypocrisy.

We get the psychology of capitalist USA in NYC, because that's the ethics the people here believe is 'normal'.

NYC is the Babylon Kyriarchy.

When I ask people who call my ethics 'Kumbaya' how to create solidarity without compassion, they generally don't know, and answers get convoluted.  We have not learned the lesson about 'using the masters tools' in regard to ethics.  Cognitive dissonance in this context is often exposed in the thought: "I can't really provide a reasonable rationalization, but I just don't like what you are saying."

--- Compassionate Nihilism

Who is to blame for systemic violence in a collective culture, but everyone?

Nihilistic attitude creeps-in to that battle between a pure heart and a culture in which there are no innocents and no organized spiritual maturity.

Emotions have a memory of their own. Notice we don't generally remember every detail of experience, but rather the emotions of certain particular experience.

A center of emotions: The Amygdala in that scenario doesn't care about ideas and rationalizations, it just feels the negative emotions of everything in one spot. The details of the world get very fuzzy in the struggle and the world just seems like a big stinky chaotic cloud of shitty ethics. ("It's the smell!" ~Postmodern Agent Smith)

Compassion leads to a nihilistic attitude in the 'causal/see-saw/hydraulic/algebraic' mechanics of emotions, which is to say the intrinsic connected relationships between emotions.

You know a pure heart only gives one path, and that the ethics of the culture at large are the ethics of a school-yard. At some points in the path, you'll feel like you hit it a wall, and the force of 'cultural hegemony' of shitty ethics kills your spirit.

--- The Amygdala remembers probability differently

It's also a matter of understanding probability. The Amygdala looks at probability differently than the reasoned mind, and often creates bias. The reasoned mind looks at details, but when the reasoned mind gets tired analyzing, the Amygdala sees the chaotic psychology of the culture as one big scary thing that can not be transcended.  

The institution-machine that maintains childish ethics in the culture is bigger than a scattered and random array of pure hearts and informed minds.

We get dispirited…but..

-- Re-Energizing

I've found the next stage in the compassion/nihilism progression is finding something for myself to re-engage happiness, and I expect at some point after that, the pure heart will send an urge to be heard again.

Natures beauty engages happiness for me, and spring is coming. The birds and squirrels of NYC have much more to say to me, than do the people of NYC.

Social Justice Argumentation uses perception, i.e. Mirror Neurons that allow us to feel the emotions of other animals, and perceive as through we are in place of another.  

- If I try to imagine seeing through the eyes of the people around me with anything but light discourse, I usually eventually see and feel the nastiness of NYC Kyriarchy, or at least get around to the subject.

- If I try to imagine seeing through the eyes of squirrels and birds I see and feel the beauty of nature. Being a fan of science helps with that, since it gives me lots to contemplate. With stuff like clouds, thermodynamics, and all the rest of wondrous existence outside of the human ego.  

I know how to make the getaway back to 'the core', which is significantly knowing that being angry about living in a structurally violent society is not a problem, and that I really don't want to be anyone but an ethical person, regardless of the fact I need to live in an alternate Neptune to maintain my core ethics.  

--- Art gets trashed by the system

I have personal experience in having my work assimilated by corporate capitalism, but that's only context for what I see in the larger scope of cultural change.

For more context, I realize now that there's no way to separate my anti-racist and pro-feminist upbringing from the fact that it happened from within a creative family that also imparted the vocations of music and art.

I see now there's no way to separate my concepts of art from both my ethical development and my present emotional repertoire and view of culture.

There is no way to separate the Art of a culture from the emotional repertoire of a culture. All art that is systematized serves the ethics of the system.

Mechanized, systemic Art has for me become part of the stinky capitalist chaos. Individuals can enjoy it, but no art is capable of changing the ethics of the system itself.

Oops. That's a hard realization when you've seen yourself as an artist all your life. Now the heart demands that I save the culture so that art means something other than service to the machine.

Add that to the nihilism connection that 'comes with' universal ethics in my experience.

Art in a general sense is dead to the degree the culture is spiritually dead. The ethics of a spiritually dead culture must be reconciled before art has meaning to those who love, more than they love art.    

-- Art as Identity

There's no way to really divorce my understanding from the world as I understand it through the sense of ethical and social justice argumentation. I go for broke on that. I try to be scientifically and culturally informed. The pure heart chased me to those pursuits.  

I need to mix-in my concept of art as an individual with art as a historic and cultural force. Anything I spit out into IT is judged by the measure of IT.

That leads to wanting a sledge hammer to smash the system. Except it wouldn't matter if I smashed the system, because people would demand putting the same thing right back in place.

What can I do? I can try to be iconoclastic, expect that been done to death itself.  All mediums have been assimilated by the B/K system and so there is nothing to do for artists but change the ethics of the culture.

-- Art as the Psychology of Cultural Change

Ideals - If you want to bring art, don't bring it to an electronic medium, bring creativity to the psyche of every new child in the culture, and then don't hand them electronics at all, so they may model genuine creativity for the electronically addicted.

The pure heart says that Art can not be an expression in the material world until the psychology of the culture is reconciled.

--- Art as Portal to Political Philosophy

This puts a lot of context to changing the view of art for new generations, and changing the view of what art means to ongoing social justice activism.

Art functions as a portal for all 'cognitively aware' education and child development.

Art functions as a portal for math, logic, particularly in relation to emotional development concerning ethical development during the most formative years.

A socially conscious child development strategy can function as a force for social change if adopted as working-class consciousness.

Art doesn't necessarily need to be "The Portal", but functions well as an intersectional point of understanding.    

In this interpretation, Art is connected to the ethical development scheme of Kohlberg, which understands the development and character of ethics from a universal measure.

This approach teaches Ethics, and Art, encapsulated in the same emotional repertoire.  

The aim in the strategy is to allow cognition to the level of critical thinking to develop in sync with universal ethics during pre-school and early school development.

Art functions as a portal for critical-thinking, only if we are aware of the connections between art, science and logic, and provide a 'scaffolding' of knowledge, which is to say appropriately prepare the ongoing lessons, education and social environment for a new socially-conscious child development strategy.

Every kid gets to use creative thinking as part of their emotional understanding of themselves in the world.

Social justice activists should understand that if ones ethics are not universal by age twelve, it's a very hard path to get to universal ethics once the character of more complex thinking emerges.  

Since simple visual Art which is easy to relate to the early emotional stage of childhood connects to more complex concepts like geometry and optics, and Music in early child development should be seen as connection to logic in the most general sense.  

A child's extended personal connection to music and art should be seen as an imperative for 'socially-aware' child development in the digital age.

At the level of mental development, composition engages creativity in any context of expression.

If we have a different way of seeing the relation between emotions and art, we should see it is the same emotional mechanism we use for social justice advocacy.    

The point is not that we necessarily intend to create a generation of artists, but do intend to teach critical thinking and an understanding of self in a more enlightened way.

It's taking art from control of capitalist mechanisms, and putting in the peoples intellectual and spiritual enrichment.  

-- Collectivist or Bust

I've jammed my political philosophy in a systematized and relational way. So OK, that must be something like a political art, right?

I'm not looking to be appreciated as a good guitar player or electronic musician unless it is from with a trajectory of social change. My art must be contained within my political philosophy for social justice and cultural change.

That art is not material but psychological. Right now it's just me, but it must be collective to manifest as cultural change.

Maybe we can think of it as the kernel of a new political theory of art.

If you buy-in to education as relevant to social justice, and science as relevant to education, and art as relevant to science, you should be able to see there is a purely psychological component to art in the context of social justice advocacy and cultural change.

-- Scaffolding

I'll contemplate in that realm where art is the portal for other aspects of education. Kohlberg's work gives me the structure for stages of education.

Art begins as a simple portal, but grows to be a comprehensive 'socially-aware' education strategy. The connection between disciplines will take work to get clear.  We can consider such an idea: "Art with a purpose"

--

This is to me where a discussion of emotions, child development, ethics and art belong in the context of intersectional activism.

I wouldn't know any other way to relate them in a way that gives more insight into cultural change.

--

#transnational #intersectionality

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

On the Scott, Deucalion & Theo discourse; SM stans always bring up Theo's oh so brilliant manipulations to excuse Scott's failures and mistakes but that doesn't really excuse Scott blindly trusting Theo since the beginnig instead of at least questioning his true motives first. Theo creeped into Kira's bedroom to record her sleeping and what did Scott do? Nothing! then again, Scott himself has always been a BIG fan of ignoring other people's boundaries so that might be the reason he didn't react.

Well, given that Theo’s manipulation plan hinges on the very shaky idea that both Scott and Stiles won’t just blurt out the truth about what they’ve been told/what they actually did at any point, it’s not really that brilliant, is it? It’s certainly not foolproof. In fact, in the confrontation scene you can almost see the writers working hard to keep both Scott and Stiles avoiding the crux of the thing: what actually happened with Donovan. 

But yes, the fact that Theo is openly creepy with Kira should have raised some warning flags, you would think. 

This isn’t Scott’s first rodeo. Things try to kill him all the time. 

Stiles doesn’t trust Theo. Theo creeps on Kira. Theo’s dad’s signature doesn’t match. Theo turns up at the exact same time as the Dread Doctors. Really, there are so many dodgy things about Theo. None of them is a smoking gun, of course, but hey, let’s invite him into the pack. 

What about: “Yeah, sorry. Theo. We’re kind of in the middle of something right now, but we’d be totally open to hanging out over summer and seeing if you’re a good fit for the pack. How does that sound?” 

That sounds sensible, Scott. That sounds sensible.