#so these packets really just come back to us teaching ourselves the material.

[transxfiles]

girl i just spent ~3 hours completing a math packet of 5 questions...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

[feminist-propaganda]

The Star Wars Saga Is A Meditation On Single Motherhood

It recently dawned on me that the entire story line of the Star Wars saga is built on the lives, loves and tribulations of 3 generations of single mothers. There are monsters to slay and aliens to find and planets to explore, yes, but if you think about the powerful message in the movies, you’ll come to realize it was mostly a reflection on the status of single mothers, the outcomes of their offspring, and the conflict that lives forever in their descendants.

Each trilogy, once reframed, becomes the story of one woman, who finds herself in a situation that is as old as time. She is with child, but the person who planted the seed in her is not by her side.

Shmi Skywalker or The Good Single Mother

In the Phantom Menace, Jedi Knight Qui Gon Jin meets Anakin Skywalker, a slave boy with a talent for repairing machines. The Jedi knight is impressed with the child’s abilities. He’s knowledgeable, intuitive, and most importantly he’s also kind and thoughtful. When a sand storm threatens the group of travelers, Anakin takes them to his own home and offers them shelter. 

We meet Shmi Skywalker, who in many ways is the archetype of the good single mother. She is not just quiet. She has completely erased herself. She has no personality, apart from being Anakin’s caretaker. She expresses no needs, no desires, no dreams. She simply loves Anakin, and when she sees an opportunity for him to leave the desert planet ruled by the Huts, she doesn’t stand in his way. 

In a now famous scene, Qui Gon asks her about the child’s origins and Shmi famously responds “There was no father”. The line continues: “I carried him. I gave birth. I raised him. I can’t explain what happened”.

The immaculate conception myth refers to the idea in Christianity that Mary, much like Shmi, was impregnated by some magical force, a holy spirit. Both are parabols: images we use to discuss painful topics. Single motherhood has probably always been a part of the human experience. Jared Diamond explains in “Why Is Sex Fun?” that in terms of evolution, it is more rewarding for human males to be “super spreaders “ rather than “good fathers “ . The “good father” gene does not pass down to future generations, because in effect, not sticking around to raise the child is a better strategy for a human man to pass on his genes to the next generation. Not convinced? Just count how many women have been impregnated by a rapper like Future (8 last time I checked). If you’re not into hip-hop, you can think of the offspring of the Mongol Genghis Khan

The purpose of the parabol is to provide an image, to extract ourselves from the technicalities of onr person’s story and to instead talk about all single mothers at once. Indeed, single mothers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are widowed, some are abandoned, others are lied to, and some run away from abusive environments.

Shmi raises her son the best she can, and her love for him is unconditional. She doesn’t bat an eye when he is freed while she is to continue her life as a slave. She doesn’t even seem to mind when Anakin leaves the planet and never returns to free her, even after he marries into some serious money. 

But the story of Star Wars tells us that Shmi’s relationship to Anakin, because it was so fusional, because it was all that he had, led to his undoing. In Episode 2, when he senses she is in danger, he jeopardizes his mission to protect Padme to go rescue her. When he eventually finds her, he is so upset about her ultimate death that he commits mass murder, targeting the Tuskan riders of the sea of Dunes.

When Yoda first lays eyes on Anakin, he senses Anakin’s pain, he is just a child whose been ripped away from the only human that’s ever cared for him deeply. The turmoil inside the boy is palpable, and Yoda advises against training him. 

Padme Amidala or The Bad Single Mother

Anakin develops feelings for Padme, and in Episode 2 the pair decide to secretly get married in the lake district of Padme’s home planet Naboo. Their relationship is very intense. Both share a strong sense of civic duty: Padme was elected queen of the Naboo when she was just 14 &  Anakin is a keeper of the peace. They care deeply about issues such as how the galaxy must be governed, how much action needs to be taken versus when diplomacy must be prioritized. 

Their strong sense of service has made them lonely young people. They’re far away from their families, surrounded by advisors, servants and droids - not friends. 

They jump into their relationship with an eagerness that suggests it is their original caretakers they crave for.

Padme becomes pregnant while the Clone Wars are raging, and immediately Anakin begins to experience trouble with his sleeping. He imagines Padme is dying in childbirth, and the visions haunt him during the day. His fear that she will die ultimately leads to his decision to join the Dark side of the force. Senator Palpatine has manipulated him into believing that Sith Lords have discovered the power to prevent death itself. 

Just like his mother before him, we need to look at Anakin’s story in terms of symbolism. It isn’t really about his specific experience with fatherhood : it’s about the universal conflict that men feel towards their own offspring. Even the way it is announced to him, in the Senate chambers, barely hidden from the rest of the Coruscant elite, implies some sort of entrapment. The columns around them seem to be like a cage that is closing in on his life. He is in the middle of the Wars - he should be celebrating his victory over General Grivious, but instead he is stuck with his wife and he has to absorb her anxiety & reassure her. 

Anakin makes a weird, forced smile and says : “This is a happy moment.” But neither Padme nor the audience believe him. Nothing about him feels happy, he isn’t relaxed: he is tense.

At the end of Episode 3, Anakin attempts to kill Padme when she condemns the mass murders he’s committed against the younglings in the Jedi temple. Hr uses for the first time his “strangling” trick, which becomes his signature move in the original trilogy. 

Palpatine makes Anakin believe that he’s killed Padme, but the truth is somewhat more nuanced. She dies of heartbreak shortly after giving birth to twins. For anyone who thought this was corny, it’s actually been proven by the scientific community that heartbreak reduces your life expectation (it diminishes the size of the telomeres in your body cells, which is the molecule that helps replicate your DNA). 

As Lisa Feldman Barret wrote in How Emotions Are Made: 

Emotional harm can shorten your life. Inside your body, you have little packets of genetic material that sit on the ends of your chromosomes like protective caps. They’re called telomeres. All living things have telomeres—humans, fruit flies, amoebas, even the plants in your garden. Every time one of your cells divides, its telomeres get a little shorter (although they can be repaired by an enzyme called telomerase). So generally their size slowly decreases, and at some point, when they are too short, you die. This is normal aging. But guess what else causes your telomeres to get smaller? Stress does. Children who experience early adversity have shorter telomeres. In other words, emotional harm can do more serious damage, last longer, and cause more future harm than breaking a bone

More severe cases involve patients actually dying of a broken heart, the myocardia just collapses under the weight of the sadness the human feels.

The original trilogy should be re-viewed with all of this new information we have. In the 80s, when Empire Strikes Back came out, the “I am your father” line became instantly iconic. But the plot twist was more like an “Oh My gosh!” moment rather than a profound reflection on fatherhood. The audience sympathized with Luke not because his father had been absent and negligent, but because his father’s job was to serve a fachist leader. It was the actions of Darth Vader as a political servant that were questioned, not his refusal to nurture a smaller being. 

Padme is the opposite of Shmi. She is the archetype of the “bad” single mother. The bad single mother is the single mother who can’t deal with the situation and checks out of it. She collapses under the weight that she feels on her shoulders. She can't get over the heartbreak, she can’t find the will to live. 

Society tends to punish the Padme’s just as much as it praises the Shmis. Television programs like “Teen Mom” are set up to shame the young deviants into adopting the correct behavior. The purpose of the show is to judge these young women into becoming self-sacrificing mothers.

Leia Organa - The Non-single Single Mother

Leia Organa is Anakin Skywalker’s daughter. She is raised by an adoptive frailly on Alderaan after she’s separated at birth from her brother Luke. Much like her mother, she becomes a dedicated public servant, a trusted leader and a beloved public figure. 

She is raised by a wealthy family in the central galactic systems. The Organas teach her the ways of the elite political class. As an adult she serves the cause of the Rebels, and when she meets Han Solo in Episode 4, the mediocre smuggler fascinates her. 

In the now famous scene from Hoth in Episode 5, Leia declares her love for Han Solo right as he’s about to be frozen in carbonite. The ultimate bad boy responds his chilling, because realistic  “I know”.

Han is nothing compared to Leia. He drives a broken down ship, doesn’t have any morals or even a simple code of conduct, much less a cause that he’s dedicated his life to. He has nothing to offer her, and is definitely not in her league. But still, in Episode 6, the pair become an official item.

The last Trilogy was an opportunity to explore Leia’s experience with motherhood. By now we know that Leia’s grandmother was a “Good single mother”, she completely sacrificed herself to protect her son & more importantly she never questioned her status of sole caretaker (remember the “there was no father“ line). We also know that Leia’s mother was a public servant, and a passionate woman who allowed herself to fall deeply in love with a sensitive young man with a non existing support system. Leia’s mother was the “bad” single mother: driven only by her career (Queen of the Naboo, later a Senator of the Old Republic) she did not step up to the task when her destiny revealed itself to her.

Leia seems to share her mother’s taste in reckless young men with a lot of attitude and no emotional security to offer. It’s the excitement she craves, not the tranquility.

Her fate will be the same as her foremothers. She has a child with Han, but when she sends him away to be trained by Luke, she loses them both.

Their dialogue in Episode 7 goes like this: 

Han Solo : Listen to me, will you? I know every time you... Every time you look at me you're reminded of him.

Leia : You think I want to forget him? I want him back.

Han Solo : There's nothing more we could have done. There's too much Vader in him.

Leia : That's why I wanted him to train with Luke. I just never should have sent him away. That's when I lost him. That's when I lost you both.

The last trilogy develops Leia’s character in a way that allows her to be something else than just a single mother. She loses her husband, she even loses her son to the dark side: but she never loses herself. Leia doesn’t allow her condition to define her. She becomes a leader of the Resistance even if it means going after her son’s New order. 

In Episode 9, Leia even destroys her son to protect Rey - the symbolism is that she’s overcome her role as a mother, she’s rejected the notion that she must sacrifice everything for her son even if it goes against her own self interest (like Shmi). She also rejects the idea that her partner abandoning her is the end of her. It isn’t. Unlike her mother, she finds the will to live, and to lead the next generation of freedom fighters and peace keepers.

The saga ends on a hopeful note for all of us single mothers out there. It comes with a message for us : we don’t need to choose between the austere Shmi and the weak Padme. We can instead decide that this “single mom” problem is kind of like beauty : it lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Single moms don’t need to think of themselves as failures, they don’t need to live in modest conditions, they don’t need to beg society's forgiveness for merely existing. They don’t need to be ashamed. 

Single moms don’t need to erase their brains and their lives, and sink into an ocean of denial either. They don't need to be obsessed with their careers or caught up in romantic entanglements that are only going to exhaust them.

Single moms can just decide that they’re women, with beautiful, inspiring personalities and kind, loving hearts. Mothers are first and foremost, the leaders of the young, the protectors of the realm and the makers of the future. It’s not that it doesn’t matter that they’re alone. It’s that they don’t have to be alone at all.

[smokeybrand]

The Fallacy of Education

I think elementary school is necessary to an extent but everything I've ever learned after probably the third grade, was during summer break at the library and then all of the time when my family got a computer. I never really learned anything “new” in a classroom setting, from probably the fourth grade and forward. Sure, it's dope to have someone bounce ideas off but you can do that with anyone. You can do that online. Hell, I DO that online now. SO what the f*ck is the merit of going through the tribulations of “school?” Capitalism. Capitalism is the “merit.” School is designed to break your spirit as a youth and train you to be a drone in the workforce. The structure of how education here in the US has been built, is designed to acclimate you to a forty hour work week early on. It's built to make you yearn for holidays and the weekends. It grooms you to raise your hands to ask questions and punishes those who deviate from the assigned tasks. Free thinkers are shunned and the arts are almost always removed in one form or another. Creativity is killed in service to conformity because capitalism needs that in order to function. The second it's removed, the second people questions the status quo, is the second they understand the terrible conditions in which they've been forced to exist. But, if you're not smart enough to ask the right questions, then there is no threat to the current class system.

When i got to fifth grade, i went to a substantially sh*ttier school than before. We move into a worse ghetto than the one I grew up in for he majority of my life and that was reflected in this school's curriculum. These kids were morons. That wasn't there fault, the system had failed them because it was assumed they weren't worth the investment. We'd all end up being thugs and criminals because that was what our zip code dictated. When I got there, I kind of f*cked all of that up. These kids were reading well under their grade, the “smart” one rad at a high school level if I remember but i could read at a college level. Indeed, I was well into checking out Shakespeare and Dante by this point. That was too much for my teacher. He graded on a curve because the kids were so stupid and, after that fist test where everyone failed but me because I got such a high mark, told me flat out that there was nothing he could teach me. I became kind of a TA in that class and never turned in another assignment for the entire year. He just gave me As on everything and apologized profusely for not being able to adequately challenge me. It was difficult to see because I would tell this dude loved teaching and he had an opportunity to rally flex his passion with me but the system in which he had to work wouldn't allow him to do any of that. Because the system, itself, isn't built to educate. Imagine being an educator trapped in that cage? Now imagine being a student trapped in there, too, oblivious to the handicap you've just been saddled with.

When i got to the seventh grade, i was put into remedial courses against my ill. We moved back to my old neighborhood ahead of my sixth grade year so I was able to return to my previous school where it was understood that myself and a handful of others were WAY too smart for our own good. They got us more advanced materials from the surrounding high schools and basically told us to teach ourselves. My then principal drove us over to a separate middle school because it was supposed to have better materials and more advanced courses than the neighborhood one. Our principal and the one in the middle school spoke, we all demonstrated our intelligence, and it was agreed we'd be placed in advanced courses in the coming year. When the new year started, I was not placed in those agreed upon courses. My zip code reflected the ghetto and not the bourgeois neighborhood this new school was in. They assumed i was an idiot, even though i was enrolled specifically for the more challenging curriculum, and dismissed my previous academic accomplishments without a word. My elementary school principal literally drove me over there and introduced me to that school's principal because she wanted to make sure the staff understood that i was wildly intelligent "for my age." Didn't matter. They saw a Meadowview zip and i was put into classes with a bunch of idiots. When i protested, they refused to change my schedule. It didn't take long for most of my teachers to realize I wouldn't be in such pedestrian classes but the administration refused to budge. I was ghetto trash and they didn't want to hear anything else, even if it was coming directly from the teachers in charge of me education. My science teacher literally had us coloring f*cking pictures as work assignments. I refused to do such ridiculous busy work, demanded that he teach me some sh*t and, instead, he suspended me from his class and threatened to fail me.

When i got to high school, i was wildly disillusioned by education and basically coasted my way through. I understood that i could learn more on my own and pushed to be home schooled. The way the that system works is you show up for in-class check-in on Monday and pick up a packet of schoolwork. You complete the school work through the week and turn it the following Monday. No classroom. No teachers. No fuss. All of my credits, and then some, and none of the the everyday baggage. I could excel at my own pace, which we have established far outstripped whatever the f*ck the curriculum is at any given time. Plus, I could return to proper coursework at any time. My plan was to knock out about three years worth of credits that first year and try to get into the off-campus internship with the State. It was called the Regional Occupation Program. I'd be paid to work for the State part time while accumulating proper work experience, and still have time to take some college courses at the local Community College. I'd still be able to come back and participate in all of the social sh*t like dances and games plus, I'd be able to walk the stage with my proper class. I'd be able to challenge myself, build toward my future, and still have that high school experience. But my mom refused. Everything i said here, I said to her, and she still refused. She's a slave to tradition and tradition dictated that i HAD to go to class everyday. The system HAD to be maintained. So i did and, as the years progressed, i went less and less. By senior year, i went just enough to keep the cops of her back and still graduated with a 3.8. I never one applied myself in high school and literally just showed up because cops, gym, and girls. Most days, i left early because f*cking why not? I wasn't learning anything. I wasn't being enriched in anyway. By my senior year, I had two Teacher's Assistant classes, two gym classes, Government and a creative writing course. I never went to that one because it was the last class of the day and Transformers came on halfway through it so I skipped it everyday. In order to pass, I just printed out a novel I wrote when I was in the eighth grade. He gave me an A, even though I was only there in person around thirty percent of the school year. I was writing high school level sh*t when I was thirteen. That's the story of my whole life and it didn't get any better when I got to college.

I thought it was going to get better when i got to college. It did not. I had toured a few campuses around my neighborhood and even sat in on a course or two. I went to a few College Fairs and even got accepted into a couple of HBCs. After a I graduated high school I opted to go to a community college that was near by. I' m poor so I couldn't afford a proper school and the scholarships available to me were all partial. I didn't want to have to split time between working and college so I figured if I got the core courses out of the way early, I could lighten the load and have an Associates to take into a part time gig or something later. I had actually gotten into Stanford and wanted to go but the cost of living was WAY too staunchy so this Community college plan was the best option. I lasted a semester. That sh*t was like going back to high school but i had to pay for it out of pocket. I had dreams of debate and lecture, of challenging a professor who could challenge me in return What I got was more of the uniform apathy that has dogged me my entire education career, only now it was driving me into f*cking debt. I love learning. I love reading. I love thinking. None of that I was even conducive to school here in the states. Often times, it was objectively frowned upon. From kindergarten to literally college, I was always under the gun in that sense. To this day, my curiosity is insatiable and I research everything. I want to know all of the things and the big sh*t like theoretical physics or the math necessary to infer the universe before the big bang, is absolutely tantalizing to me. I was frustrated with the stifling rigidity of school f*cking twenty years ago. I can't even imagine what it's like for kids nowadays.

The education system in the US is f*cking ridiculous. It's not meant to build intelligence or free thinking, it's an assembly line method designed to acclimate you to a forty hour work week. It's supposed to get you used to sacrificing the majority of your life in service to capitalism, busting ass just to get to the weekend or next holiday off, because that's how you'll live the rest of your adult life. They're not in the business of education or teaching life skills, they're in the business of manufacturing more cogs for the great machine that is the “economy.” Why the f*ck do I need to know Algebra 2 when I can't do my own taxes? Why the f*ck do we have to spend three weeks studying the Crucible when I don't know how compound interests works? Parents should play a part in this, for sure, but how difficult is that for them to do? They are victims of the same system and have to sacrifice their liberty in order to pay bills, after being bludgeoned with that same aggressive system necessary for them to abandon their hopes. A smart person is a difficult person to manipulate. When people understand, or even have the ability to comprehend, the scales fall from their eyes. We're seeing that now with the “Employment crisis” and how no one wants to go back to being underpaid and overworked after a the Pandemic showed the world for what it was. It's in capitalism's best interests to make sure the masses are smart enough to produce but dumb enough to never understand that they control the means of production. Why do you think everyone wants the kids to "get back into the classroom" when it's obviously easier to "teach" kids over zoom? When it's obvious that they learn more and understand better at home? When entire grade averages have increased considerably, over the entire country, since kids have been studying at home? Because that structure is more important than the learning. Every kid has a phone, computer, or tablet at this point. Internet is everywhere. There's no reason to have in-class learning, especially considering how many f*cking classrooms get shot up around these parts. Especially considering that there are more kids like me thanks to the ready-to-consume inf oration at our fingertips. This one got away from me but i really, really, hate the "education system" here. It's so boorish and archaic, f*cking obsolete, especially in the age of the information, so why go back to that broken system? Because capitalism needs drones not dreamers. It needs conformists, not thinkers. It needs ignorance not education.