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eretzyisrael · 4 years

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The Biden Administration and the “War of Return”

Judging from the few public statements made so far and what is known about his appointees, the Biden Administration will take the same stance toward Israel and the Palestinians as the last Democratic administration, led by Barack Obama.

That means that it will return to the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria more or less on the pre-1967 lines. It will go back to financing the Palestinian Authority, which will find a way to pay terrorists and support their families while pretending not to, in order to circumvent the Taylor Force Act which requires the US to deduct such payments from aid to the PA. The administration will likely close its eyes to the subterfuge. It will go back to funding UNRWA, the agency that supports the exponential growth of a stateless population made up of the descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war, despite the fact that it exists to perpetuate the problem posed by this population, not to solve it.

I believe that it will return to the principle that the main reason the conflict has not ended is that Israel has not made enough concessions to the Palestinians, and that the way to end it is to pressure Israel to give in to Palestinian demands: for Jew-free land, for sovereignty without restrictions, for eastern Jerusalem, and perhaps even for the “return” of the refugee descendants. Although not directly part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will probably reduce pressure on Iran and possibly even return to the JCPOA, the nuclear deal.

It’s too early to tell if it will also adopt the open hostility to the Jewish state that characterized Obama’s reign. That will depend on who influences Biden, both among his official advisors as well as the numerous think tanks, lobbies, and pressure groups that have an interest in the conflict – including the one operated by Barack Obama himself.

I suspect that the administration will have its hands full with other matters and so will not immediately launch a new “peace” effort. But one never knows. Sometimes rationality goes out the window when the subject turns to the Jews and their state.

Although nothing can be done with those who take a position because they see it as a step in the direction of the ultimate elimination of our state, there are still “people of good faith” who believe that the Land for Peace paradigm that inspired the Oslo Accords does provide a path to ending the conflict. If the new administration is dominated by the latter type of people, there is hope that correcting their fundamental misapprehensions might lead to a more productive policy.

These misapprehensions are spelled out persuasively in a recent book, The War of Return, How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf (All Points Books, 2020). Schwartz and Wilf fall on the left of the Israeli political spectrum (Wilf was a Member of the Knesset for the Labor Party), and they still favor a two-state solution. But unlike most of their comrades, they have listened to the Palestinians, and understand their actual concerns and objectives. In their book, they explain why the traditional approach has failed and propose the initial steps that are necessary for any settlement of the conflict.

All previous Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have miscarried because Israelis and Western interlocutors have failed to realize the paramount importance of one issue – the “right of return” demanded by the Palestinians. This is possible because they have systematically misunderstood the language – whether English or Arabic – used by the Palestinians. The “constructive ambiguity” that often characterizes diplomatic language and allows parties that don’t quite agree with each other to nevertheless sign agreements has made it possible for the same words to have diametrically opposed meanings when uttered by Westerners or Palestinians.

The prime example of this is the phrase “a just solution to the refugee problem.” To an Israeli or Westerner, this can include the normalization of the refugees* in their countries of residence, their emigration to other countries, or their resettlement in a Palestinian state, should one be created. This has been the approach taken by the international community to the numerous refugee populations, including Germans living in Eastern Europe after WWII, Holocaust survivors, Jews who were forced out of Arab countries after 1948, and so on. But the Palestinian position is that there is only one “just solution”: anyone with refugee status has the inalienable right to “return” to his “home” in Israel if he wishes to do so, or to receive compensation if he prefers. And that is what this phrase means when they use it.

Naturally, given the numbers of Arabs who claim this “right,” such a mass return would change Israel into an Arab-majority state, even assuming Jews were prepared to leave their homes and peacefully give them to their “rightful owners.” The absurdity of the demand is evident. Yet Yasser Arafat walked away from Camp David precisely because Israel would not agree to it.

Another phrase whose ambiguity has prevented agreement is “two-state solution.” Virtually every Israeli that favors this understands it as “two states for two peoples.” But the Palestinians want one totally Jew-free Palestinian state, and one state in which the right of return for Arab refugees has been implemented (and which theoretically might contain Jews, at least for a while). They have never accepted the idea of any Jewish sovereignty between the river and the sea, and hence reject the formulation “two states for two peoples.”

Schwartz and Wilf explain that Western and Israeli negotiators have always assumed – perhaps because the demand is so extreme – that the right of return was a bargaining chip that the Palestinians would cash in for the currency of borders, the removal of settlements, or rights in Jerusalem. But they were wrong. The demand for “return” is the essence of the Palestinian movement.

Palestinian children learn about it, down to the particular locations to which each has the “right” to return, in UNRWA schools where they are taught by Palestinian teachers (99% of UNRWA’s employees are Palestinians). Someday, they are told over and over, they will return. Guaranteed.

Everything UNRWA does is geared toward increasing this population of angry people, convinced that a massive injustice has been done to them, and that the only solution will be for them to return, and through this return, wipe the Jews from the face of the land they are convinced we stole from them.

UNRWA was created after the 1948 war with the intention of providing temporary assistance to the refugees until they could be resettled and normalized the way all other groups of refugees had been. But the only country that cooperated was Jordan, which gave the Palestinians citizenship and allowed them to integrate into their own populations. In Lebanon there were especially harsh restrictions and poor conditions. Little by little, the Arab nations changed the temporary UNRWA into a permanent tool to mold a refugee army that they hoped would ultimately do what their conventional armies could not: eliminate the Jewish state.

Today UNRWA is the main obstacle to solving the refugee problem. But it need not be. Schwartz and Wilf provide a relatively detailed, step by step program for phasing out UNRWA in the various places that it operates, and providing solutions for the refugees from the host countries and other agencies. For example, in the Palestinian Authority areas, they propose shifting both the responsibility for the refugees, and the money that supports UNRWA, to the PA. Former refugees would study in PA schools, go to PA health clinics, and so on. There are similar programs for Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon where the remaining refugee “camps” (today mostly neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities) are located.

Real peace can only be achieved when the consciousness of the Palestinians changes and they understand that the dream of return will not be realized. This would be a long and difficult process that could only begin with the elimination of UNRWA. But it has to start before it can finish. It will require cooperation of all of the Western donor countries that have been supporting UNRWA. Perhaps the fact that from a financial standpoint UNRWA will soon be unsustainable (after all, the number of “refugees” is growing exponentially) will encourage them to cooperate.

In the short term, it’s essential that everyone involved in relations between Israel and the Palestinians understand the real issues that underlie the conflict. And it would be a good thing if all parties could agree to use words the same way. Schwartz and Wilf say that “constructive ambiguity” should be replaced by “constructive specificity.” If the European Union, for example, believes that the State of Israel should be replaced by a Palestinian state, it should say so. Otherwise, it should unambiguously oppose a right of return, and work to dismantle UNRWA as quickly as is practical.

Back to the incoming Biden Administration. I hope it will resist the attempts of the anti-Israel Left to revive the hostility of the Obama days, and instead choose to be a force for real peace.

To that end, I will be sending Joe Biden a copy of this book, with a suggestion that he read it and pass it around among his foreign policy team.

Abu Yehuda

#Peace process #American politics #Israel and Palestinian Arabs #US-Israel Relations

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jawnkeets · 4 years

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just saw that you love rilke's letters to a young poet as well! it's one of my favorite reads when i need a pick-me-up or motivation. but i wonder whether you agree with him when he says "works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice"? xx

it is beautiful!! 💕

funnily enough this has been driving me nuts this entire year to the point where it has become almost academically central, especially during term time when i’m writing weekly essays and reading loads of crit. this is just my two cents, and i’m only just beginning to attempt to put my thoughts in order, which will be obvious, so pls no one hold me to this lol. this is also specifically about literature, though i’d love to hear people’s thoughts concerning other arts!

anyway, this started when i was working on george herbert, whose poetry is just stunning, but it’s so easy to push his ideas until they fall apart or contradict each other, and many critics have done so. however erudite and academically interesting this work was, though, i couldn’t shake the idea that it was entirely missing the point, and i couldn’t get a quotation by monet out of my head: ‘everyone discusses my art as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love’.* critics try to unravel the thread of herbert’s poetry, herbert pulls at their critical thread in turn. i’d read secondary criticism when trying to work out what to say about him, then come back to herbert and realise i had nothing to say at all which truly added to his poetry, or to use rilke’s words, did it justice.

and so from then on i often felt like i was writing to say something that seemed clever, or being original for originality’s sake (because i didn’t want to fall into certain critical grooves), or saying what everyone else had already said (and if it was bang on why not just read the poetry itself?!), and returning to the poetry would always make me feel so silly, though in a gentle, humbling way. rilke says as much: ‘it [criticism] will either be partisan views, fossilised and made meaningless in its lifeless rigidity, or it will be neat wordplay, where one opinion will triumph one day and the opposite the next.’ this was partly, practically, because i didn’t have time to discover what i ‘truly thought’ - when you’re reading the primary stuff, secondary stuff, and writing the essay in two or three days you often have to pick an idea somewhat arbitrarily and run with it. but it’s also embarrassing to say what you actually feel about a work of literature, even if it is possible within a critical framework (which i’ll come back to); if a tutor didn’t like something i’d written when i didn’t care for the opinion myself, no big deal, back to the drawing board. if it had been what i really thought about an author i revered, it would be hideous. sharing love with someone else makes you vulnerable, as in any other area of life.

but, to use the rilke quote, how can you ‘do them justice’ if not by criticism, and by criticism truly meant, if there is such a thing? by writing creatively yourself? by reading, absorbing and sharing with other people? passion/ effusion rather than ‘rigid’ academic analysis (i.e. old-school romantic 'criticism’, like lamb’s thoughts on hogarth)? this is kind of the problem with english literature as a discipline. i’m no expert on its development, but when i’m in a cynical mood i think it’s because to study english literature (i.e. for it to be institutionalised and taken seriously as an academic discipline, for us to ‘do’ it at all as anything other than recreation) it needs to have grounds for legitimacy, by which i mean that it needs to have scholarly method, quantifiable elements, be teachable, etc. unlike classics which arguably the institutional study of english (or substitute any vernacular) literature rose out of in european education, there’s no immediately obvious linguistic rigour (as in, fluency in another language or languages isn’t a primary focus of the discipline**), so we also need, if not english language as a module or core part of the course, which some courses do have, a focus on language and its constituent parts, or close-reading (the verb does this, the parallel structure does that, etc). but, less cynically, i think it also emerged because we felt there’s something to say about vernacular literature, and we wanted to try and do that. but the paradox is that whatever that is can’t really be said. hence the increasingly complicated 20th century stuff culminating in deconstruction, and now in the 21st century what is often a focus on manageable specifics - pathways through texts (like ‘wind in shakespeare’), spotlighting something in the historical moment and reading it in conjunction with the text (the laryngoscope really helps us read george eliot because...), etc.*** i should say that i do find this stuff really interesting, i just struggle to reconcile it with the feeling i get when i read and am spellbound by what i read, and what is so fundamental to reading for me - the ambiguity, the innumerable elements comprising the text that cannot be separated or delineated without the magic fading,**** the wholeness or completeness, the feeling of comprehending many if not all elements of the text at once.

i do think, as well, that reading and practicing critical writing has helped me to appreciate literature more. partly because it’s helped me realise what i don’t think literature is ‘about’, if there is such a thing, but also in terms of positive definition as well as negative, because rigour, deep thinking, attention to detail, extended and focused meditation on a single text/ idea/ theme/ topic/ word, etc are skills which are enriching. it’s a strange thing where i feel like i’m moving closer at the same time as i’m moving further away.

so basically, as the year’s progressed, i’ve been impetuously trying to fight criticism through the medium of criticism, which has its obvious ironies and shortcomings. i wrote an essay, for example, arguing that keats’ poetry is anti-taxonomical, and that criticism, conversely, is taxonomical - it’s from κρίνειν, to judge or decide, so to be a critic is to choose/ select/ interpret/ delineate - criticism of keats, then, is best when it’s as unlike criticism as possible (and so bad criticism), because otherwise it’s deliberately misunderstanding keats. i’m being as honest as i can be, and at times as embarrassing and embarrassed as i can be, and it’s working much better. but i think after all this that the best criticism, to be as generous to other critics as they really deserve (as i have not been all year, to my discredit), is passionate, and that critics show this in different ways.***** one way around my crisis is to take the view that literature reconciles work and play, and criticism does or at least should do the same, thus running parallel with the text instead of converging (because in ‘playing’ it will naturally be somewhat divergent). i buy this to a degree. and also some people do study literature on the grounds for which i’ve criticised criticism above (they love specifics, or creative pathways through texts, etc), and i don’t want to set myself against them at all; i’ve realised that i am also partly one of these people - some hugely inspiring tutors have shown me that it is amazing to study in this way, and i’ve seen from the work of tutors and fellow students that love can be suffused through criticism like this, that it can be genuinely moving and inspiring. i also get that this perhaps doesn’t feel like a binary split in other places or for other people as it does for me; i think creative writing for example is way bigger in america as a subject, so it might not feel like ‘enjoy literature and write literature recreationally’ and ‘do literature academically/ in an academic setting’ are diametrically opposed, or that you can do both but that they have to be separate, or that there’s a disconnect between the way you do one and the way you do the other. so now i’m trying to be as honest as i can be when it comes to criticism, and pushing forward whilst trying not to cover or lose sight of the little spark reading generates - i think that if your criticism bears this in mind, it might not be able to grasp the poetry like simply loving it does, but it can perhaps reach out and gingerly touch it. whether that makes it worth it is up to you.

i hope this answers your question - i realise this got long. what an interesting ask, thanks very much for sending it!! 🌹

* speaking of - i recommend this poem!!

** though some courses, like the oxford one, teach old english, which is arguably another language.

*** i appreciate that what rilke means by criticism is not necessarily identical to what i mean by criticism, which obviously developed a lot after rilke, but even so.

**** granted, in engineering a car is and should be taken apart so we can see how it works, but the end goal is still the working car!!

***** some would disagree, saying that we should be ‘objective’ and/ or shouldn’t be ‘on a poet’s side’ (i.e. trying to do them justice) and i struggle with them a lot more, but after a bit of grumbling they still have my firm respect.

#asks

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irinapaleolog · 5 years

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With the Star Wars sequel trilogy now concluded with The Rise of Skywalker, fans everywhere now know how Rey and Kylo Ren’s story comes to a close. Those who have long shipped "Reylo" and yearned to see "Bendemption" finally saw it happen, but the film doesn't quite do the work to earn those moments, and forcing these issues highlights how profound the thematic disconnect between TROS and its predecessors. What started out as a compelling dynamic between protagonist and antagonist in the The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi was unfortunately derailed in the last act, delivering an unsatisfying conclusion to Rey and Kylo Ren's relationship.

A Knight and a Scavenger

Even before we learn exactly how they will be connected, The Force Awakens portrays Rey and Kylo as diametrically opposed. Both are introduced wearing masks, yet Rey’s lasts for barely a minute while Kylo doesn’t take his off until two thirds through. Rey is a scavenger on a backwater planet, scraping by on her own skills to survive, while Kylo is a major leader in an autocratic military organization about to achieve dominance in the galaxy, a position he secured via his connection to his grandfather, Darth Vader. Setting aside how we now know the story ends, as initially presented in TFA, Rey is from nowhere and Kylo is our heir apparent to the Skywalker name.

We understand by the midpoint of the movie that Kylo has a familial connection to all three of the Original Trilogy heroes, and yet he has inherited none of their heroism. Rey, meanwhile, has everything to gain from selling BB-8 and doesn’t, and within seconds of learning his importance to the Resistance is ready to put herself on the line for it. Rey looks to Han Solo as a potential father figure; Kylo cuts him down because he’s his actual father. Their opposing views are even literalized by the massive canyon that tears them apart after their duel in the snow. But there is something that does connect their characters in this film beyond their strength in the Force: their fascination with mythic iconography. Rey, a starry-eyed collector of Star Wars memorabilia (she lives in an AT-AT!), and Kylo, a vindictive child who prays to the burnt husk of Vader’s helmet. Both of them are children of the OT’s legacy, but one pulled to the Light, the other drawn to the Dark.

They spend all of The Force Awakens and most of The Last Jedi being enemies, and as presented on paper in all three films, there’s simply not enough build-up to sell the romance that the final film wants to go for. Not even The Rise of Skywalker fully commits to this concept, because the first half of the film is so focused on Rey’s struggle with her burgeoning Dark Side power, and her big team-up with Ben at the end is cut short because the movie also wants to get to the “all the Jedi live in you” finale, which Ben has nothing to do with. Perhaps moving towards a romance in Episode IX was always the plan, but the way it’s realized here, what’s supposed to be their heartfelt final moments together are lacking the emotional weight they needed.

A Shattered Alliance

Before we ever hear the term “Force Dyad” from Palpatine, The Last Jedi effectively communicates that Rey and Kylo are intrinsically linked just as much as they are fundamentally opposed. The connection Snoke forges between their minds through the Force gives us some of the film’s best scenes, and it’s understandable why they are drawn to each other after Rey’s journey into the Dark Side cave. After learning what might have been the worst possible answer to the driving question of her own existence, Rey lays her cards on the table. “I’ve never felt so alone.” Her emotional vulnerability is conducive to her reaching out to Kylo, a man who feels just as dejected by his origin story as she does by hers, and to mistakenly believing that she can turn him to the Light just as much as he hopes to seduce her to the Dark.

This tension (of multiple varieties) explodes in the throne room, with a lightsaber battle against the Praetorian Guards that glistens with passion and rage. The Light and the Dark, for a dazzling moment, unified in purpose. Yet when the battle ends, both of them believed they’ve won the other to their side. Rey begs for Kylo to tell the First Order to stop firing at the Resistance shuttles, and Kylo asks her to take his hand and help him rule the galaxy. Neither of them have changed. They are still opposing forces, and they once again pull apart, literally tearing the Skywalker saber in two during their struggle. Rey accepts her place as the last Jedi, while Kylo doubles down on his darkness by assuming the mantle of Supreme Leader. At the end of the film, even though they briefly united, they end with Rey closing the door on him. If anything, The Last Jedi reinforces their disparate nature rather than subverting it.

The Force connection they share is exploited further in The Rise of Skywalker, but rather than being used to explore their dynamic, it’s used more for the sake of spectacle. Consider how small moments of physical exchange in TLJ (some drops of water materializing on Kylo’s hand) are replaced with lightsaber duels happening in multiple locations. Cool? Sure. But the deeper meaning of why this bond was even established feels subdued here, particularly when Rey and Kylo destroy Vader’s helmet, not in a conscious cooperative act, but accidentally mid-battle. The thematic coherence of this aspect of their relationship feels lost in the chaos of the film’s frantic plotting and roller coaster pacing. A Broken Promise But with two major plot turns, The Rise of Skywalker tries to get Rey and Kylo back on the path towards not just reconciliation, but romance.

The first is the reveal that Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter, which once again sends Rey into an existential crisis about her parentage, but this time saddling her with the same issue Kylo had: a grandparent on the Dark Side. Now her bloodline does matter, and it's no coincidence that Kylo is the one who reveals this information to her. After all, he is a tragic example of how the weight of an important lineage can turn someone to the Dark Side -- and now Rey is being crushed by it. While the attempt to create another mirror between the two makes sense in theory, it comes at the cost of being completely divorced from Rey’s character journey in the last two films. The shape of her own destiny she forged across the trilogy, the idea that her origins don’t need to define her capabilities, is destroyed. Becoming the Light Side’s new hero despite “having no place in this story” was powerful. Revealing that she did have a place in it all along feels like a shortcut to ensure Rey has another connection to Kylo rather than a natural evolution.

The second is Kylo’s rushed redemption arc, which makes no sense in the context it appears in. After Rey and Kylo's duel on the Death Star wreckage, a defeated Kylo gets another chance to turn to the Light with some help from the memory of his father, and this time he takes it. However, nothing that has happened to Ben in the previous movies or this one indicates that this would turn him. His opinion of his father hasn’t changed in any way since he murdered him, and his mother reaching out to him through the Force sadly falls flat given that they haven’t shared any scenes across the whole trilogy. Rey says she wanted to “take Ben’s hand” after healing him, and while that is an effective call-back to TLJ that could possibly get him to reconsider his morality, it also feels like a small piece of what should’ve been a larger arc across the movie. Instead, everything related to Ben’s turn has been shoved into this one scene. It’s not enough to communicate why, after all the horrific things he’s done, now is the moment he is redeemed.

Rather than getting us invested in an ending that felt thematically connected to the previous films or even coherent on its own terms, The Rise of Skywalker shuffles its pieces to get where it wants to go without justifying how it gets there. Ben joins Rey in her duel with Palpatine, running in with his father’s blaster, and all of his darkness is simply washed away. The idea of their connection being based on how they were representations of the Light and Dark Sides, how one came from nothing to become the last hope for the Light while the other was born from the Skywalker legacy and still turned to the Dark, is tossed aside. After such a strong first two acts, Rey and Kylo deserved a better conclusion, one that truly solidified the emotional bond these two characters were supposed to share.

Midway through TROS, Rey says “People keep telling me they know me. I’m afraid no one does.”

Maybe she was right.

#the rise of skywalker #kylo ren #rey #reylo

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entamewitchlulu · 5 years

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Arc V Month Day 12: Favorite Ships

ohohohoho, did you mean my favorite day?? I love talking about ships, I love exploring possible character dynamics whether those are romantic, platonic, sexual, antagonistic, or whatever, and Arc V is FULL of great character dynamics as well as great potential ones that while they never interacted much or at all in canon, I still think would be really fun to play with

I could talk for hours about ships, and I have a LOT of faves within Arc V (arc v was actually the beginning of my multishipping tendencies, before this I was a strict single-ship-per-character type), but for the purposes of time and space I will talk only about my “starter pack” as I like to call it lol. Tho, if you would like to hear my thoughts on any other Arc V ship, please don’t hesitate to drop into my askbox! I love to talk about this >w<

Escapeshipping (Asuka/Osiris Red Girl)

One half of the ship may not even have an actual name, but that doesn’t stop me from being in love with this little rarepair. I’ve always liked the idea of bi Asuka, but before Arc V, there really wasn’t a female character I really enjoyed shipping her with. Arc V came to the rescue by giving her a gf (it also gave Crow a bf...Arc V said gay rights). Even though all we get of them is one flashback, it’s pretty clear that the two of them were close, close enough for the Osiris girl to confide in Asuka her treasonous thoughts and to want to save Asuka by bringing her along in her escape rather than simply escaping on her own. And it’s the Osiris girl’s sacrifice that drives Asuka to be as much of a rebel against Academia that she is. That’s the set up for a powerful tragic love story right there, and we only had half an episode -- that’s pretty epic imo.

Chaperoneshipping (Gongenzaka/Sawatari)

I named this rarepair, so it has a special place in my heart lol. I just think it’s probably one of the funniest, and yet sweetest ships I’ve got for Arc V. The two of them are pretty much diametric opposites -- Sawatari never stops moving or talking and is super full of himself, while Gongenzaka is based on standing completely still and has a pretty healthy understanding of himself and his limits. Every single interaction they had was gold, as the two of them have such different ideals and beliefs, but they play off of each other so well. They’re literally the tol gay + smol gay and I love them and their banter a lot -- plus, I legitimately think that the two of them are pretty good for each other. Gongenzaka can help ground Sawatari but also take care of him when his inevitable loss of confidence spirals back again, and Sawatari can put an exasperated smile on Gongenzaka’s face and help him loosen up here and there.

rest are under the cut so this doesn’t get TOO long lol

Darkrebelshipping (Shun/Yuto)

This is one I haven’t actually paid as much attention to lately, but I still do really enjoy it! It’s a little cliche, but I just find their relationship pretty interesting. It’s clear that they’re close friends who trust each other, but there’s also a lot of friction between them because they have such fundamentally different value systems. They both want the same things, but what they’re willing to do to achieve those things is very different, and seeing how that effects the two of them in different situations is very interesting to me. Plus, I just kind of love how they both look like they would go to Hot Topic together lol.

Moonblossomshipping (Ruri/Selena)

Am I using my own screenshot edit for these two? Yes, yes I am, because despite my deep and abiding love for this ship, they never officially got to interact while not possessed lol.

As the above mentioned lack of interaction notes, this ship is mostly in my head, but I think it has a lot of interesting potential as a dynamic. Ruri and Selena may be parts of the same person, but they have some unique differences that make their potential relationship intriguing. Selena is a very headstrong person who rarely thinks before she acts, acting on an innate sense of justice that may be skewed because she rarely takes the time to closely examine where that image of justice is coming from. She’s an angry and impulsive person determined to prove herself, and yet she’s also very disciplined in other places. Ruri, on the other hand, comes from a much softer world, and from what we’ve seen of her, she also has a strong sense of justice -- though her views on it come from a place of sympathy/empathy and a desire for compassion towards others, rather than Selena’s warrior-like take on making justice happen. That softness + Selena’s sharpness makes for a great contrast, and the fact that their two worlds are pretty much perfectly opposed in the struggle in canon also sets up for some great star-crossed lovers shit which I’m ALWAYS into.

And outside of that? They just are....so pretty. They have the best aesthetic together. I was shipping them somehow before Ruri was even revealed, I am here for the long haul.

Duskshipping (Dennis/Yuuri)

Here’s another ship that gave me less than half an episode of content and made me go absolutely wild over it. Yuuri and Dennis may have only interacted for a few moments and only twice overall, but there’s something about those moments that still captivates me. The whole concept of Yuuri being this terrifying force that people run to the side of the hall to avoid, even as a child, but then being met by a laid-back, cheerful greeting from Dennis, fascinates me. Dennis isn’t scared of Yuuri at all, in fact, he seems to find Yuuri amusing to some degree. He’s the only character in the entire show who hasn’t immediately viewed Yuuri as some terrifying monster. Part of that may be simply due to Dennis’s cheerful + semi suicidal personality, but I think there might be a little more to it than that, especially since Yuuri doesn’t seem at all annoyed at Dennis’s lack of respect. There’s this sense of relaxation to their interactions, as though they’re used to hanging out, as though they’re comfortable with each other. For people like the two of them -- Dennis, with his self-loathing covered up by a mask of cheer, and Yuuri, with his monstrous, malicious glee towards destruction, that unspoken comfort with anyone, much less people so different from each other, feels very important.

Stealthshipping (Sora/Tsukikage)

This one hit me like a frieght train all at once. For most of my favorite Arc V ships, I got the sense that I would like them early on into their character introductions. Basically from the moment I saw most of them, their first interaction or even their first introduction alone, I had the feeling I was going to love them as a ship. These two? I had no idea I was going to make THIS my favorite ship for the two of them...and honestly, my only romantic ship for either of them. And like, why would I have? Their first interaction is where Sora kills Tsukikage’s brother. Angsty, to be sure, but I barely thought they’d even meet again.

When they did, however, and how it all played out after that, I was smitten. Two soldiers who met on opposite sides of the conflict, who had every reason to hate each other, and every reason to destroy each other, who found themselves slowly, slowly putting that unease aside for the common goal ahead of them, until they became a team to be reckoned with. Sora apologizing for what he did to Tsukikage’s brother and even offering to atone any way Tsukikage wanted as long as he could save Yuzu and Yuya first, Tsukikage putting down his grudge “just for now,” slowly becoming the two of them coming to each other’s aid and fighting like a team? It was so powerful. I definitely need to create more content for the two of them.

Genesishipping (Ray/Zarc)

Let’s be honest, we all ship this one a little bit. They’re the penultimate tragic, antagonistic couple, even if they probably never actually met in the past. They’re perfectly opposed forces, creation and destruction, and Ray is more than willing to come back over and over again to fight Zarc, while Zarc builds pretty much his entire self around being able to defeat Ray again. Plus, considering all of the bonds between their counterparts? It’s obvious that in another life, these two would have been friends, or even lovers, which just makes their actual first meeting all the more tragic. They have a wealth of possibilities to explore, and it’s one of the most popular ships in the fandom for a reason.

Appleshipping (Rin/Yugo)

otherwise known as THE CUTEST OTP....I don’t know what to say about Apple that I or others haven’t said before. They are such a power couple. They’re so sweet and wholesome, but they’re also inherently kind of tragic. They grew up in a world that didn’t want them to survive, but they did. Yugo’s pure love for Rin, and Rin’s motherly nagging, probably out of fear that Yugo’s happy nature might end up with him getting hurt in this awful world they live in, hiding her own deep love for him back, is just such a sweet, beautiful combination. The way they constantly work together and constantly think of each other is just so sweet and lovely, and I love them a lot.

Lustershipping (Yuzu/Masumi)

The ORIGINAL Arc V gays, the one I shipped before I even started watching the damn show. Shallow bit out of the way first, but they’re a pink/blue ship, and their color schemes together are GORGEOUS, which is my weakness.

Past that, though, this is the first pair of significant f/f rivals we’ve gotten in YGO to my knowledge, and I’ve found lately that I’ve become something of a sucker for some brands of rival pairs. They’re antagonistic, but it drives them both to be better, and they shit-talk each other, which is great to see with an f/f rival pair, but they end up being super respectful and even grateful to each other for pushing them to get better and better. And if you don’t think Masumi’s got a crush on Yuzu at the very least, I don’t know what to tell you lol. She gave the girl a ROSE.

I’d love to play with their continuing relationship more with the pair of them as rivals who eventually become friends before they know it, and then perhaps something more :)

Pendulumshipping (Yuya/Reiji)

And here we are. You all knew it was coming if you’ve been here for longer than 10 minutes, lol. Yuya/Reiji was my fave from the beginning, and it only grew and grew and grew until it became my most important and favorite OTP of everything I’ve ever shipped.

I’ve told the story a million times, but I first began shipping them when Reiji imagined he was dueling Yuya while testing his pendulum cards. What kind of a person do you have to be to move someone as immovable as Reiji, who’s spent his entire life making himself strong and unaffected for the task ahead? What kind of person do you have to be to stick in Reiji’s mind like that? And for a while, it felt very one-sided to me, though I played around with the idea of Yuya eventually returning those feelings -- still, back then, I felt almost guilty about the ship because more than one person called it potentially abusive, and I could see where they were coming from -- canon at that point had shown them as antagonists towards each other after all. And then canon kept trucking along and showed me that it wasn’t just that at all -- a seed of trust was starting to blossom between the two of them. The moment that Yuya called out Reiji’s name by his first name out of concern to see him trapped with the Council, that’s when I realized they absolutely did both have some level of trust in and care for each other. And when Yuya shouted out his trust in Reiji despite Roget’s revelation about Reiji’s father, proving that he did trust Reiji and his judgement after all, and when their tag duel arrived, and Reiji decided he would throw in with Yuya all the way, that he would stand behind him and believe in him til the end and the two of them fought together, that was it. It’s place as my favorite OTP was sealed.

There’s just something so soft and gentle about them, despite their beginnings. They don’t have the same antagonistic air to them that most main ygo protag/rival pairs have to time. Despite their beginnings, they were always on the same side, and it was never about trying to one up the other, even at their last battle -- it was always about working together for a common goal, and making the other better. And I just really, really love that.

#arcvanniversary #long post #lulu talks #this was so much fun to talk about all my ships lol

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nicklloydnow · 4 years

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“Friedrich Hayek is generally regarded as the apostle of a brand of economics which holds that the market will assure the optimal allocation of resources — as long as the government doesn’t interfere. It is a formalized and mathematical theory, whose two main pillars are the efficient market hypothesis and the theory of rational expectations.

(...)

I have an alternative interpretation — diametrically opposed to the efficient market hypothesis and rational expectations. It is built on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity.

I firmly believe these principles are in accordance with Hayek’s ideas.

But we can’t both be right. If I am right, market fundamentalism is wrong. That means I must be able to show some inconsistency in Hayek’s ideas, which is what I propose to do.

(...)

This helped me see the similarity between the Nazi and communist regimes. Having lived through both in Hungary, it made a great impression.

This led me to Popper’s theory of scientific method. Popper claimed that scientific theories can never be verified — they can only be falsified. So their validity is provisional — they must forever remain open to falsification by testing. This avoids all the problems of needing to prove scientific theories beyond any doubt and establishes the importance of testing. Only theories that can be falsified qualify as scientific.

While I was admiring the elegance of Popper’s theory, I was also studying elementary economics. I was struck by a contradiction between the theory of perfect competition, which postulated perfect knowledge, with Popper’s theory, which asserted that perfect knowledge was unattainable. The contradiction could be resolved by recognizing that economic theory cannot meet the standards of Newtonian physics.

That is why I sided with Hayek — who warned against the slavish imitation of natural science and took issue with Popper — who asserted the doctrine of unity of method.

Hayek argued that economic agents base their decisions on their interpretation of reality, not on reality — and the two are never the same.

That is what I call fallibility. Hayek also recognized that decisions based on an imperfect understanding of reality are bound to have unintended consequences. But Hayek and I drew diametrically opposed inferences from this insight.

Hayek used it to extol the virtues of the invisible hand of the marketplace, which was the unintended consequence of economic agents pursuing their self-interest. I used it to demonstrate the inherent instability of financial markets.

In my theory of reflexivity I assert that the thinking of economic agents serves two functions. On the one hand, they try to understand reality; that is the cognitive function. On the other, they try to make an impact on the situation. That is the participating, or manipulative, function.

The two functions connect reality and the participants’ perception of reality in opposite directions. As long as the two functions work independently of each other they produce determinate results. When they operate simultaneously they interfere with each other. That is the case not only in the financial markets but also in many other social situations.

I call the interference reflexivity. Reflexivity introduces an element of unquantifiable uncertainty into both the participants’ understanding and the actual course of events.

This two-way connection works as a feedback loop. The feedback is either positive or negative. Positive feedback reinforces both the prevailing trend and the prevailing bias — and leads to a mispricing of financial assets. Negative feedback corrects the bias. At one extreme lies equilibrium, at the other are the financial “bubbles.” These occur when the mispricing goes too far and becomes unsustainable — boom is then followed by bust.

In the real world, positive and negative feedback are intermingled and the two extremes are rarely, if ever, reached. Thus the equilibrium postulated by the efficient market hypothesis turns out to be an extreme — with little relevance to reality.

(...)

Human beings act on the basis of their imperfect understanding — and their decisions have unintended consequences. That makes human affairs less predictable than natural phenomenon. So Hayek was right in originally opposing scientism.

(...)

By identifying Hayek’s inconsistency and political bias, I do not mean to demean him — but to improve our understanding of financial markets and other social phenomena. We are all biased in one way or another and, with the help of reflexivity, our misconceptions play a major role in shaping the course of history.

Because perfection is unattainable, it makes all the difference how close we come to understanding reality. Recognizing that the efficient market hypothesis and the theory of rational expectations are both a dead end would be a major step forward.

(...)

As I see it, the two sides in the current dispute have each got hold of one half of the truth. which they proclaim to be the whole truth. It was the hard right that took the initiative by arguing that the government is the cause of all our difficulties; and the so-called left, in so far as it exists, has been forced to defend the need for regulating the private sector and providing government services.

Though I am often painted as the representative of the far left — and I am certainly not free of political bias — I recognize that the other side is half right in claiming that the government is wasteful and inefficient and ought to function better.

But I also continue to cling to the other half of the truth — namely that financial markets are inherently unstable and need to be regulated.

Above all, I am profoundly worried that those who proclaim half truths as the whole truth, whether they are from the left or the right, are endangering our open society.

Both Hayek and Popper, I believe, would share that concern. Those of us concerned with the protection of individual liberty ought to work together to restore the standards of political discourse that used to enable our democracy to function better.”

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real-talk-news-blog · 6 years

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Missing What Matters: Schweizer-Reneke and our Media - Itai Chitapi

Schweizer-Reneke. Just another name in South Africa, that will join a long list of names that are diary markers of flashpoints in the fitful societal fight against racism: Coligny, Bronkhorstspruit, Sodwana Bay, along with individuals’ names like Penny Sparrow, Adam Catzavelos, and Vicky Momberg. As a society, we’re not doing very well.

If you think that these people and place names represent isolated cases, then you should at the very least marvel at how well concealed these outliers have been for a long time.

There’s almost a playbook representing all of these cases:

An incident occurs or a comment is made and then reported on. In all the examples named above, except Coligny, the origin is social media or online (email or internet).

Outrage follows. Most of the outrage appears to be expressed on social media or online.

Protests occur – sometimes spontaneous, but frequently managed by political parties. The predictable statements are made on the left and on the right of the political spectrum.

Pertinent facts are blurred, ignored and/or eventually included in report.

Both attention and outrage fade away precipitously, and the window of opportunity to reach a resolution that is ethically appropriate, socially acceptable and widely publicised is lost. Guided by the media, we all move on and await the next incident.

Repeat steps 1-5.

The media establishment as a whole has been a prominent player in South African public life recent years, particularly through their collective efforts at uncovering the deep perversion that has come to be known as state capture. Media houses and journalists here and abroad are under a range of pressures, mainly commercial and technological, as they work to remain relevant to the polis. This means that while they may sometimes excel, as they have done in regard to state capture, they may not have the resources or the bandwidth to investigate, fact-check and report their stories accurately and thoroughly. Also, their overarching priority is to sell copies or advertising, and either way this means enticing people to consume their content however they can.

Having said all that, most of us have no real option for informing ourselves but to consume whatever the media dishes up, however they dish it up. We’re just obliged to remain sceptical and vigilant.

The Schweizer-Reneke story sells easily, because it’s such a “clean” black-and-white story, or so it appears. (Pun intended, of course)

Naturally, because this is SA, the battle lines are pre-set and all of the expected outrage, arguments and counter-arguments have played themselves out. The protests have kicked in, as early as the very next day after schools opened and the picture emerged. It has been a battle, predictably, to get a clean hold of pertinent facts from the media. And indications are that the news cycle may have already moved on to fresher, more sellable stories, such as the ANC’s manifesto launch or the latest instalment of the slow-motion train wreck that is the DRC election.

It’s been particularly interesting to observe some immediate (dare I say knee-jerk) reactions. The Schweizer-Reneke School Governing Body issued a statement containing the usual PR guff, but notably claiming that the photograph was “a reflection of a single moment in a classroom.” In other words, nothing to see here people, move on.

In contrast, the North-West premier was reported to be “shocked by the images circulating on social media”. In other words, someone must be guilty of something here – let’s send in a team to investigate. Two equally stark leaps to diametrically opposing conclusions.

Because our attention and our outrage are loud, shallow and transient, we are unlikely to see the true issues in a place like Schweizer-Reneke, let alone resolve them. The Citizen[1] reports that the teacher suspended in connection with the photograph is one of an all-white staff complement of 19. Nineteen! Nineteen teachers at a government primary school in South Africa, not one of whom is black. Not only is this a significant part of the real story of Schweizer-Reneke, this is something for which all nineteen of those teachers and the MEC for education in North-West are partly responsible. They should all be desperate to change that fact and doing all they can to make it happen. Preferably together. Sadly, the likelihood that such collaboration has ever been suggested, let alone attempted, is vanishingly small. Instead, this passes us all by.[2]

The same article from the Citizen quotes MEC Lehari stating that the school suggested the reason for the separation of the four black children from the larger group was that “they did not understand English and Afrikaans”. That the learners’ proficiency in only English and Afrikaans is apparently at issue (the MEC rejected this excuse) is actually one of our most fundamental problems in South Africa. We have not moved forward from the days of apartheid’s narrow tweetaligheid. We blacks have failed to take our own languages seriously enough to respect and value the languages that these four black kids, and millions of others, bring to the classroom. We have relegated their mother tongues to the back corner of the education system, and we will continue to subject them to these indignities for as long as white children’s proficiency in Setswana, Tshivenda or isiZulu is not even raised as a topic.

The racism probably expressed by this photograph[3] is an issue and needs to be dealt with.[4] The media as a whole has a responsibility to inform us better about incidents and issues as they arise. But we have a lot of cleaning house to do, as black people. And until we start making concerted and consistent efforts in this direction, we will be continually distracted, whipped into a frothy frenzy by each next “isolated incident” of racism that breaches the social media attention threshold. Let Schweizer-Reneke finally be the name that calls us to pay close attention to what really matters.

Footnotes:

Suspended Laerskool Schweizer-Reneke teacher ‘flees town’ – report. 11 January 2019. “Citizen reporter and ANA” – anonymisation of reports by credible sources is a growing problem

Of course this is speculation. I would love to be proved wrong.

I stick my neck out and make this judgement call – for me the fact that a teacher at the school took the photo and presumably saw nothing wrong with it is in itself an indication of how much work still needs to be done to battle racism.

We would recommend beginning by holding a closed session in which the parents of all the learners at the school are allowed to voice their perspectives, frustrations and concerns, without constraint and without judgement. While the process and how we would handle it might be instructive for all South Africans, we would strongly prefer that it be closed and unrecorded, to maximise the chances for real engagement.

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republicstandard · 6 years

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The Un-Making of the West, Vol. I: Whistling Past the Graveyard

“Our current immigration policies will make the United States a poorer, grimmer, more dangerous country for everyone. Hispanics expect to gain increasing power by increasing their numbers, but they will find they have gained power in a country that increasingly resembles the failed nations from which they thought they had escaped. It is in everyone’s interests to cut immigration close to zero.”-Jared Taylor

It’s far more cost-effective to keep the customers you have than to continuously recruit new ones. This fundamental and common-sense business axiom is jettisoned when it comes to citizens of a country, however. Newsweek seems to think America getting “less white” will save it from itself, but all it will do is further fragment a society running perilously low on common ties to bind. We have for some reason decided that “diversity” is an intrinsic good without ever stopping to interrogate that notion. Let me be clear: diversity for its own sake is fundamentally irrational. By all metrics it damages and fractures any community, state, or even country so “enriched” by it, and yet it has become one of the central deities of the Leftist pantheon, as uncritically interrogated as you would expect for an ideology demanding blind faith.

In fact, open borders has so cheapened the meaning of “citizenship” there is no incentive whatsoever to become Americanized

Central to the push for “diversity” is an immigration policy that seeks to bring as many people whose civilizational outlooks are diametrically opposed to ours as possible in order to imbue what was a previously moribund culture with the vibrancy of long-eradicated diseases, crime, mistrust, dysfunction, and societal breakdown. For Victor Davis Hanson:

The more non-Westerners abandon their homelands and flee to the West—especially en masse and illegally—the more these immigrants ironically seek to replicate in their new country the very cultural conditions they forsook. All immigrants from time immemorial are naturally schizophrenic about their homelands—they romanticize their country of origin in the abstract, while experiencing relief that their new home is not like the old one they abandoned.

As Hanson noted, however, the relief of being in a functioning society doesn’t extend to the ready acknowledgement that it is obviously doing something right, and a majority of immigrants therefore continue to sentimentalize their homelands and the dysfunction they left behind and prove unwilling or unable to adapt their beliefs, customs, and attitudes to their new environs. They do not replicate the conditions of achievement in a modern society in their personal lives, nor do they cherish the principles of freedom upon which the United States was built, and it has a very destructive ripple effect. This is not to be unexpected, particularly when there is no filter for those who arrive nor any pressure to assimilate and discard previous loyalties. In fact, open borders has so cheapened the meaning of “citizenship” there is no incentive whatsoever to become Americanized; in fact, the benefits generally accrue to those least integrated.

No individual has a “right” to immigrate anywhere—this privilege is extended by a government on behalf of its citizens with the understanding that the relationship will be a reflexive one; that is to say, both sides affect a positive impact on each other. The immigrant will necessarily discard all past loyalties and adhere to the norms, values, customs, and traditions of their new nation. I apologize if this seems a little “basic bitch,” but it’s important to remember that we elect government officials to serve as stewards of their constituents and to act in our interests. There’s a reason we call them “representatives.” Mass immigration does not benefit anyone except for those low-skill immigrants and aliens whose low wages by our standards are downright lavish compared to where they come from, and the detached political class and their wealthy benefactors, which includes Big Labor.

Ideally immigrants will come from compatible cultures, and they will not come in transformative numbers—if they are allowed to come at all. This is wholly discretionary. Assimilation is a difficult process for even the most related of cultures. Valuing the most alien and the most unassimilable, as the Left does, and in huge numbers, is producing the fracturing any logical person would expect. The percentage of Americans born abroad is at least 13.4% (where the Pew Research Center placed it in 2015, the most recent number I could find), and it stands at a whopping 27% in California (both figures exclude the 11-30 million illegal aliens). Over 20% of U.S. residents do not speak English at home. As Steven A. Camarota reports:

In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households…Welfare use is high for both new arrivals and well-established immigrants. Of households headed by immigrants who have been in the country for more than two decades, 48 percent access welfare…Welfare use varies among immigrant groups. Households headed by immigrants from Central America and Mexico (73 percent), the Caribbean (51 percent), and Africa (48 percent) have the highest overall welfare use. Those from East Asia (32 percent), Europe (26 percent), and South Asia (17 percent) have the lowest.

The Left wants to transform the United States first into a direct democracy, which inevitably degenerates into tyranny.

What’s more, those who benefit most from the dispensation of others’ money will logically continue to vote for the party most aggressive in transferring taxpayers’ hard-earned money to curry political favor and votes in a process Gavin McInnes calls “insider trading.” For example, in the 2016 presidential election, 89% of blacks and 66% of Hispanics voted for Hillary Clinton. This is of course not the only factor, but it is one powerful incentive. Indeed, despite their economic success, 65% of Asians voted Clinton in the election. Just 37% of whites voted for Hillary Clinton; with the non-white voting share of the Democrat Party at a whopping 44% nationally, it is clear that, as Tucker Carlson puts it:

Democrats aren’t simply the pro-immigration party. They’ve become the anti-border party. The party opposed to citizenship itself. They don’t want the border secured. They oppose the deportation of anyone, under any circumstances, even criminal offenses. Dems believe illegal aliens accused of murder deserve protection from you more than you deserve protection from them. They care more about Ivan Zamarripa-Castaneda than they care about you. They’ll ignore and undermine federal law on his behalf. Would they do that for you? Never.

In such an environment, to say nothing of the rancor and hostility that governs politics these days, how can we be expected to have anything resembling a civil discourse? The present racial spoils system is a zero-sum game. “Diversity” in this context is anything but inclusive. It’s all well and good for the “Intellectual Dark Web” to wax poetic about “democratic values” and “pluralism,” but these are concepts developed and implemented in homogeneous, high-trust European societies, and they took centuries if not millennia to develop; they cannot exist in a state of constant ethnic tension. Democracy is built on a social contract, a mutual respect among citizens. When citizenship becomes cheapened, when it becomes something anyone can attain with minimal effort—indeed, when illegals are given privileges beyond the average citizen—the social contract breaks down, and democracy becomes what Polybius termed “ochlocracy,” or mob rule. The Left wants to transform the United States first into a direct democracy, which inevitably degenerates into tyranny. The inexorable slide into totalitarianism is being witnessed in a number of Western democratic countries who do not have the same system of checks-and-balances the United States has. As Andrew Fraser states:

European man alone bears the spirit of civic republicanism, a tradition still largely alien to other races and peoples…There is no shortage of evidence that the Changs, the Gonzales, and the Singhs (not to mention the Goldmans with their well-known animus toward WASPs) still practice forms of ethnic nepotism strictly forbidden to Anglo-Protestants…WASPs are trusting souls. For that very reason they can be exploited easily by those who promise one thing and do another. . . . Mass Third World immigration imposes enormous risks upon Anglo-Saxon societies grounded in unique patterns of trusting behavior that evolved over many centuries. If newcomers do not accept the burdens entailed by the civic culture of the host society—most notably the need to forswear one’s pre-existing racial, ethnic and religious allegiances—they are bound to reduce the benefits of good citizenship for the host Anglo-Saxon nation.

The phrase “Demography is destiny,” is an uncomfortable truth for many of us to accept, believing that all people cherish liberty and freedom. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Consider the Democratic Party platform: it consists mostly of hand-outs, blaming, shaming, and the restriction, not expansion, of rights—unless of course you happen to belong to one of their privileged classes. Paul Kersey is right—if the Democrats get their way, it will soon be illegal to arrest black people…and illegal aliens, party donors, and everyone else caught in their rotten embrace. The Democrat Party has become explicitly anti-American and anti-white in its extreme rhetoric and policies. The kind of America they are striving to create is one of strife and dysfunction, one where we can’t trust each other, where we lock our doors and bar our windows, and retreat from public life and civic engagement to buying stuff on Amazon and binge-watching Netflix.

What happens next is classic divide-and-conquer for this isolated, disaffected, and easy-to-control population; suspicion and conflict become the order of the day, problems only a “strong” (that being a euphemism for totalitarian) government can solve.

The Left is a civilization-destroying force that wants nothing more than not only to erase the people that built it, but their entire legacy.

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xupeishan · 6 years

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Fear and Vulnerability (Direct)

While researching about fear, I looked into many artists, philosophers and researchers. Most of them talk about how to overcome fear, how to find courage and how to manage fear. It seemed really clear and easy for them to identify their fear and recognize where it’s from. However I find it hard to identify and understand. During the research, I stumbled upon a TED Talk call The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown. In this talk she explained her research on connection and how it leads to discovering “... I know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love.” And all of a sudden everything seems to make sense. The connection I felt is real, it is not some illusion created by my own anxiety about not being able to find a core to my works. The fear and doubts exist. So, what now? What happens next? What am I going to do with this fear? Is it OK to feel fear and be afraid? Should I try to counter it with optimism thoughts and hope that everything will turn out to be fine? Should I try to conquer this fear and make it disappear one way or another? I am a relatively selfish person, I want my own future to be good. I want to live in an environment that I at least don’t need to worry about getting kill from pollution, flooding, war breaking out between nations. I will probably still fear about something even under that kind of circumstances, but at least it will be about some variables I can control.

I begin to look at artists who used fear in their work, the first work that came out was The Scream by Edward Munch. Though the artwork may not be about fear itself, the anxiety and reaction it showed was always closely related to fear. From his notes, it is a work to express what he felt at the moment from an actual scene from nature. Then another result came up quickly afterwards and it was Francis Bacon’s Screaming Popes : Study after Velazquez and Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pop Innocent X. When mentioned fear, it always seem to connect with horror, phobia and anxiety. Although they are all considered as a range of fear, these art works (to me) lacks the vulnerable. They focuses on presenting the fear, while not presenting what is behind. So I looked into more contemporary artists trying to find one who established the connection and I found Marina Abramovic and her works Rhythm 0 and The Artist Is Present. To me, Rhythm 0 was about fear and suffering, and The Artist is Present is about love. 36 years apart, two most well known works and “... are so diametrically opposed to each other”. Looking at her works throughout the years, the change is huge and yet the method is the same. In her interviews she talked about how people are afraid of many things, and her performances used energy from audiences and liberate herself from the fear. She pushed her body to the limit and start converting what she received into something else. “You know the knife and the pistols and the bullets, I exchange into love and trust.” To me this is very important, I do not want to add my fear and doubts on the audiences and make them suffer. I want to understand fear and doubt and use it as a foundation to build love and protection. She put herself in a position where she is fully vulnerable for Rhythm 0, fear was present during it and the acceptance of vulnerability created love. Though I may not fully agree with her method of putting herself in a matter of live and death, the theory is the same. In more recent work, 512 Hours, instead of letting herself be completely vulnerable, she asked the audiences to do so. The solidarity she gave them, the silence and the guidance, coming to an end with a connected experience between all.

An Indian Public Speaker, Osho once said: “So first you have to understand that fear has not to be conquered, otherwise you will remain always afraid of the conquered fear - because the conquered fear is there...” Although I do not agree with all the things he said, this sentence is very accurate to me. Going back to the TED Talk about Vulnerability, shame - the fear of not being enough was explained by Dr. Brown, she stated the need to understand shame and decipher it, to acknowledge how particular shame kept you safe in the past but now this fear of not being enough has gotten into the way. “Vulnerability is not a weakness.”, this is still a topic we need to bring up and debate about in our daily life. While fear can be talked about openly, vulnerability can not. People fear about being vulnerable. Children were taught in school to be strong, boys are taught to man up, the society refused to be vulnerable. And it occurred to me that if we see from a different angle, when we stop seeing things from it’s surface, a lot of artists has already start to explore the theme of vulnerability through different topics. Artists like Amy Elkins who created the series Danseur to challenge gender stereotype and the way masculinity is seen within the society.

Vulnerability should not be avoided, it should be embraced and believed that it is a fundamental part of what makes us feel sentimental, empathetic and ‘alive’. It is not something that is comfortable, but rather what is necessary. Artists throughout the time have been using fear as a source to create, whether its literature that generates fear and phobia, or reflecting what they are afraid of as a child, fear and vulnerability has always been there. Fear is not something we can just ignore or excluded from our lives, as an artist and as a person. It should be something we are constantly acknowledged and understand. Marina Abramovic did not make all the people in MoMA cry because she generated fear, instead she gave them a chance to be vulnerably and look into themselves through her. We should not numb vulnerability and try to hide the fact that we live in a vulnerable world. It is not perfection that we need to achieve in order to get a sense of worthiness, it is rather embracing imperfection and let yourself be vulnerably seen, to create artwork and also to be a person. These are my opinions on fear and vulnerability.

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lorenzoarroyo6-blog · 7 years

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epistolizer · 7 years

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The Cultural Impact Of Worldview & Apologetics, Part 4

Western religions following the close of ancient history are perhaps best categorized as monotheistic in nature where the deity is a singular entity personally distinct from its creation and where the adherents of these respective faiths hope to obtain a blissful afterlife as distinct individual beings by gaining the favor of their respective deity following the conclusion of their corporeally linear existence. Though it would be intellectually dishonest to flippantly dismiss all Eastern religions as the same, but as with their counterparts in the Western division, those in this category also share a number of characteristics with one another. For the most part, Eastern religions tend to believe that individuals are continually reincarnated into this plane of physical reality as they attempt to achieve a sense of detachment so that they might achieve what amounts to an enlightened obliteration of the self through a merger with the cosmic unity (158). These concepts are such a stark contrast with the Christian worldview that the Christian will need to compare a number of the ideas fundamental to a Biblical understanding of reality with those advocated by the Eastern outlook.

One of the most profound differences between Christianity and Eastern religious is how each believes truth is arrived at. Christianity believes that God has revealed Himself through the word of His propositional revelation and the Incarnation of His Word in the from of His Son Jesus Christ. Of the Eastern religions, on the other hand, Harold Netland writes, "In attaining religious truth, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism give priority to mystical or introspective experiences based on rigorous meditative disciplines which are said to provide direct unmediated access to ultimate reality (163)."

In other words, Christians focus outward to gain understanding whereas the adherents of the great Oriental traditions look inside themselves. This is especially evidenced by the two foremost figures these respective faith groupings are roughly organized around: the Christ and the Buddha.

The purpose of Buddha was to get the individual to realize that the individual has within themselves the wherewithal to bring about their own enlightenment and to detach themselves from the states of being that bring about their own suffering. The purpose of Christ, on the other hand, was to get the individual to realize that they were so stained by sin that there was nothing that the individual could do to achieve his own salvation and that individuals had to look outward from themselves towards a savior, that being none other than Jesus Christ.

Since Christianity is focused outward in its offering of a solution to the travails in which each and every one of us finds ourselves, as a system it corresponds better to both the objective and existential aspects of reality. In his journey to Japan, theologian Paul Tillich learned that, should an historian ever persuasively make the case based on research findings that Gautama Siddhartha never actually existed, such a discovery for the most part would not adversely impact Buddhist teaching (165). However such would not be the case regarding Christianity, which is so linked to the existence, actions, and nature of its founder that if He did not do what the accounts of Him claim, we of all men would be the most miserable according to I Corinthians 15:19.

Despite standing in contrast to many of Christianity’s most basic assumptions, the objective student and observer of religion (even if standing within a Christian framework of belief) must admit that the most devoted adherents of the respective Eastern creeds practice a rigorous form of self-discipline as they attempt to master the urges that exert an undue influence over the individual throughout the earthly life. Though many are opposed to the idea of relying solely on a savior for their salvation and find an allure in the Eastern notion of looking for the answers to the mysteries of life and the cosmos within themselves, they do not necessarily find the idea of rigorous self denial all that appealing (at least for themselves anyway with pleas of sacrifice for the greater good something to rather motivate and govern the lower classes of the less-spiritually inclined by).

Thus in a process not all that dissimilar to the operation of the Hegelian dialectic where two competing or even diametric ideas are brought together and melded together to form a synthesis incorporating aspects of each, Eastern and Western outlooks have formed a coalition perspective in what since the 1960's and 1970's has come to be known as the New Age movement.

Like the Eastern worldview, the New Age outlook essentially sees the totality of reality as a singular unity with the individual in a sense being akin to a single cell in the comprehensive cosmic mind (175). As in the case of the Eastern faiths, L.Russ Bush writes, "...the New Age movement emphasizes the human problem as ignorance with salvation coming through enlightenment and self-effort (176)."

However, in the New Age movement, the approach and outcomes of this awareness are a bit more decidedly Western in their appearance. For example, in Eastern brands of yoga the purpose is more about detaching the soul from the body in preparation for spiritual states such as nirvana. To Westerners, however, yoga is packaged not only as about the quest for inward universal truths but also about improving one's body and success in life.

Thus, for at least those in the movement's elite, there is a considerable emphasis upon the self. L. Russ Bush categorizes the emphasis upon the here and now rather than a future heaven as "This worldliness”. Of this state, he writes, “...the New Age is focused on the here and now; it is not a pie-in-the-sky sort of faith; it is belief that the New Age is itself the here and now and for this world and its people; it looks forward to an earthly transformation, not a heavenly one (180).” What is not as often brought out to the gullible along this worldview’s outer fringes is the number that those in the higher echelons believe must be eliminated or perhaps “deliberately progressed” to more advanced levels of disembodied consciousness in order for this utopia to be brought about.

The New Age has become so ingrained throughout American society that it no longer seems as novel as at the time when its name was coined. Now, certain interpretations of this brand of spirituality quietly just about serve as the respectable backdrop of establishmentarian popular culture. For example, Star Wars is no doubt one of the most beloved movie epics of the last 50 years. However, to a percentage of its viewers, it is far more than an invigorating afternoon’s diversion. It has been reported that a number of “Jedi churches” have popped up among fans that have taken enthusiasm for the films to the next level of adoration and devotion.

Those grounded in the real world will think those taking entertainment this seriously have sniffed too many musty comic books. However, beneath the dramatic adventure and impressive special effects, Star Wars was not created solely for entertainment purposes. George Lucas, who considered himself something of a student of anthropologist Joseph Campbell, created Star Wars to serve as a mythology for the contemporary world.

This claim can be substantiated in regards to those scenes from the films where the nature of the Force is expounded upon. For example, of the Force, Yoda (the primary exponent of these teachings) ruminates, “For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us.”

And like New Age conceptions of the essence that runs through the universe, the Force is not a conscious person concerned about the distinctions between good and evil as evidenced by the Dark Side’s primary devotee Darth Vader who it turns out is actually the saga’s focal character as the tale centers around his embracing of the Dark Side and reentering into the Light when he saves his son Luke from Vader’s Sith Master Emperor Palpatine. This act was cast not in terms of the triumph of good over evil but rather as merely restoring balance in an almost Taoist manner.

The extent to which these various worldviews have permeated contemporary culture as to the extent Star Wars has has forced the Christian to walk a precarious tightrope. On the one hand, there isn’t a person in the United States today that hasn’t had some kind of negative encounter with those that could be classified as stereotypical legalistic Christians.

Enthusiastic believers are to be commended for the seriousness with which they take their Christian walk if it is ultimately in Christ’s redemptive and free offer of salvation that they are truly trusting rather than in a rigorous adherence to a body of systematized rules, some of which are interpretations of certain Biblical injunctions rather than explicit Scriptural commands. However, in doing so, are such believers really equipping themselves to reach out to others that have become mired in these deceptive worldviews? Furthermore, by cordoning themselves off to such an extent in relation to things such as Star Wars, Stargate, and Star Trek, these Christians are denying themselves what amounts to an innocent good time and are not doing as much as they initially think to protect their children by failing to teach them how to sift the wheat from the chaff in relation to cinematic and literary productions.

By Frederick Meekins

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