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ladyhistorypod · 4 years

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Episode 15: Boss B!tches

Sources:

Elleanor Eldridge

Smithsonian Library Blog

Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge (Smithsonian Libraries)

Women Extra and Ordinary: Elleanor Eldridge

Documenting the American South

Rhode Island Historical Society

Stages of Freedom

Further Learning: Stages of Freedom on Zora Neale Hurston

Madam CJ Walker

National Women’s History Museum

Philanthropy Round Table

Guinness Book of World Records

History Channel

Preserving Black History

Mary Ellen Pleasant

New York Times

CNBC

Black Past

Black Economics

Biography

Attributions: Katy Kirby, Live a-humble, Cash Register, San Francisco bound

Click below for a transcript of the episode!

Archival Audio: I can make my own living just as well as he can make his. He ought to be glad I'm working. Just because he can't stand competition he wants me to quit. My work isn't important enough. I'm only a woman but he, the man, is boss. He'd like me to be a slave to the house. Look at this mess.

Haley: Starting a business now is increasingly just slowly getting harder and harder because… and I'm doing this because I want to start an Etsy, because money and graduating in a pandemic sucks. Like Etsy has ridiculous fee prices.

Lexi: Yes.

Haley: Like just uploading a picture is like twenty cents and I realize this for like all these other accounts there are just so many different fees. But then when I was talking to like my dad and the older generation family members, they’re like “start a business, have an idea, and like create something” and I’m like do you guys not understand how difficult that is? Like I don’t–

Lexi: Well you need money to make ideas.

Alana: Yeah.

Lexi: I have plenty of business-worthy ideas and I always like sit at the dinner table and joke that someone should give me like X. amount of dollars because I've researched how much my new idea is going to cost but no one ever takes me seriously and they're like “what is this your thirty fifth business idea this year” but like… compostable dog toys? Fantastic idea.

Haley: Oh, I love that idea.

Lexi: All it would take me is a grand to get that off the ground so if anyone wants to invest. But guess what? I don't have a grand.

Haley: Well I’m using my savings account for this.

Lexi: Oof.

Haley: I have invested like a grand or so and I’ve taken way longer– I've been thinking about this like for the whole pandemic like since May. And with moving that was kind of like a shit show obviously like school comes first, but I'm at the point where now I'm just like making stuff and I have to do another order for shipping like candle materials? It's a hundred dollars for shipping. Yeah. I like making stuff. I’m a crafty bitch.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Alana: Hello and welcome to the Lady History; the good, the bad, and the ugly ladies you missed in history class. In the Zoom meeting today as always is Lexi. Lexi, which of your business ideas do you think is the most sustainable?

Lexi: My most sustainable business idea is to 3d print dog toys out of corn. That if the dog buries them in the yard or destroys them and you need to get rid of them, they are compostable. Because one of the biggest struggles about being a pet owner is that, at least for my bird a lot of the toys are very made of natural materials and so I don't feel bad throwing out the broken pieces, but dog toys are made of not good stuff.

Alana: And it's the other constant in my life, Haley. Haley, what would you do with a million dollars?

Haley: I would have a dog. Dogs don't cost a million dollars, but like…

Lexi: You could spoil a dog.

Haley: Yeah.

Alana: And I'm Alana and I can't eat the rich because pig isn't kosher.

Lexi: In terms of women starting businesses, I was thinking if Lady History doesn't work out, if we never make real money our business plan can be–

Alana: How dare you, we have made six dollars.

Lexi: Okay. But like, if we need real money and all museums stop existing because of the rona we can open a bake shop called Sprinklebear McPuss-n-Boots’ Bakery.

Haley: I love it. I'm down. You know that's like always been my dream is to have a bakery but part of the bakery…

Lexi: I believe there's a place near me I think you would really like. You probably couldn't eat anything there– well maybe you could eat like the savory stuff. But it's called Sweet Memories and the first floor is a tiny little restaurant that serves soup and gourmet grilled cheese and has baked goods but the upstairs is a little craft store where they sell locally made, handmade stuff and that is kind of how I envision Sprinklebear McPuss-n-Boots’ Bakery.

Haley: So that's exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be a chef growing up and I would, that's how I like bake all my cookies and everything, all egg substitutes. I just hate it when people try to make like restaurants so freakin elaborate, like where they have– and I'm not talking diners, diners are perfection like the gross greasy diner? Give that to me.

Lexi: Mm. That’s the good stuff

Haley: I don't want to go to a cafe where like the list of crap you can get is longer than like my shoe size… I have small feet. Okay fine, I have very small feet so like let me rephrase that.

Lexi: Longer than Robert’s shoe size.

Alana, laughing: Ayyyyy.

Haley: Ayyyy.

Lexi: That was a dick joke. I’m sorry.

Haley: Longer than my wand. My bakery has to have a good menu that's like very limited. So again, soups. I love soups and sandwiches, like you have your grilled cheese–

Lexi: I mean it’s literally gourmet grilled cheese and like three kinds of soups.

Haley: Like you always have like the tomato, you always have broccoli cheddar, and you always have chili and like one seasonal.

Lexi: I had a pumpkin wild mushroom seasonal soup that was to die for.

Haley: Amazing, that sounds so great. And then for the bakery stuff, it's stuff that like you can eat right there– like a croissant would be excellent. Cookies would be excellent, but also just like you could special order like a pie or cake.

Lexi: Yes!

Haley: And then one part of it is like a library type situation. Not necessarily bookstore, but just like all my books. I have over two hundred books of course I could spare a few books. So you could sit there, read, do a chit chat.

Alana: It's like those books at Gelman that are like you can't take them out but you can read them there. On reserve or whatever it’s called.

Haley: Yes. And then lastly, have stuff like packaged because like hostess gifts. I am the queen of bringing a hostess gift. There have been moments where I forgot it and that's why I've made up with it of just being really elaborate. So if like you need a serving dish for the cookies you're going to buy from my place? Of course I have some ivory porcelain cooking dish– like serving dishes. You want like a Haley inspired Dutch oven? you damn Skippy you're gonna have it in three colors.

Lexi: So I guess the final verdict is Sprinklebear McPuss-n-Boots Bake Shop will be an egg-free, small menu, gift shop, library, eatery experience.

Haley: Absolutely.

Lexi: For my business woman I am covering yet another lady from the Women Extra and Ordinary project that I did with the Smithsonian Libraries. I feel like this is going to get real old real fast, how many of these women I'm covering, but you know what I already did the research. So today I'm gonna talk about Elleanor Eldridge, who lived in Rhode Island and was born approximately in March 1785. Her father, Robin Eldridge, was a formerly enslaved person who fought in the American Revolution in exchange for his freedom. Her mother, Hannah Prophet, was a Native American who died when Elleanor was ten years old. Elleanor was one of nine siblings. After her mother's death, an aunt suggested Elleanor never get married, and Elleanor began working as a servant. While working, Elleanor became skilled in weaving, spinning, paper and soap making, wallpapering, cheesemaking and dairy working. And to keep her living costs down, she exchanged housework for boarding so that she wouldn't have to pay rent. And through her skills and smart planning, she was able to expand her money making ventures, performing various tasks to earn money. Elleanor was naturally gifted as a businesswoman, and when she succeeded in saving up a large sum of money she began investing in property, which is a pretty good business move. She was also able to take out a mortgage to further her investments. And this was an extremely unique position for a woman of color living in Rhode Island at the time that she lived. So she took advantage of her own savvy and did something really unique and awesome. She built a home on the property she bought with a space that she could rent out. So like think modern duplex but this is the early 1800s and your landlord living next door is a badass businesswoman. So I wouldn't mind her as my landlord. But Elleanor's aunt was right to advise Elleanor to never get married because at the time women could not own property in their own name if they were married. So married women could only hold property in shared ownership with their husbands or after their husband's death, so Elleanor was smart to not get married because it would have meant that her husband would control the property that she had acquired through their own hard work, so by staying single she kept her business interests in her own name which is really good. When Elleanor fell ill in her forties, she went to stay with her family to recover from her sickness. And after becoming well, she had to travel to assist another ill relative who was suffering from cholera. And because many people in her hometown thought she was gone for a really long time, they believed that she died, and a disagreement surrounding the loan that she taken out– the mortgage– led to Elleanor having her property holdings wrongfully taken from her. And she decided to take legal action in 1837. She became the first Black woman in America to plead her case in court and despite overwhelming evidence–

Alana: I look pretty good for a dead bitch.

Lexi: Despite overwhelming evidence, including three male witnesses, a corrupt sheriff testified against her and his testimony was enough for the judge to rule against her. And after spending years working and growing her business, Elleanor lost everything. But Elleanor did not give up. A strong-willed woman, she pursued a settlement out of court which allowed her to repurchase her property, but she was still short on funds to pay the fee that she needed to pay to recover the property. So she had a big brain plan, like the big brain businesswoman she was, to help her cause. Elleanor, who was illiterate, enlisted the help of a ghostwriter; abolitionist Frances Harriet Whipple Green, and Green transcribed Elleanor's life story into a memoir, and the sales of the memoir helped Elleanor repurchase her lost property. And you can read the book by accessing a digital scan on the Smithsonian library website if you are so inclined to read it. The terminology is a little dated and it's a little hard to read if you speak modern English, but if you're curious for a firsthand account… Because even though it was physically written by Francis, it was told by Elleanor, so it's a really unique story. And the book is in the public domain but if you're so inclined that you're just like this is really cool you can actually purchase a physical copy and have it if you would like to. Elleanor’s memoirs include this quote which I really think sums up her whole situation quite well so I'm just going to read it in her words– “No MAN would have been treated so; and if A WHITE WOMAN had been the subject of such wrongs, the whole town—nay, the whole country, would have been indignant; and the actors would have been held up to the contempt they deserve! Newspaper editors would have copied, and commented on it, till every spirit of honor, of justice and of chivalry, would have been roused.” So I think that says a lot about the situation that she was in and how she felt about it and how precarious the whole thing was the fact that if it had happened to a guy, or even to a white woman, it would have not gone down the same way it did. So at the time of her death, Elleanor had recovered most of what she lost and regained most of her property and money, and her story is regarded by scholars today as an important unique account of the story of a Black woman in early America pursuing her own career. In a time when many Black stories were lost, Elleanor's was saved and today she can continue to tell her story through her book. When not close for COVID-19, the Rhode Island Historical Society has a walking tour. It’s about Elleanor and other Black Rhode Islanders from early America, so it stops at a couple locations in the city to share their stories. And the Historical Society also presents a one woman reenactment of Elleanor's trial called “No Man Ever Would Have Been Treated So: The Trials of Elleanor Eldridge” which can be booked as an educational event for groups and clubs. It's pretty cool. And the actress who does it seems really cool so Google it. One of the links actually in the tumblr sources that I am sharing is a video where the actress talks about her experience and a couple other things related to womanhood, so if you're curious about that kind of stuff go watch it.

Alana: I hate that you’ve now done two Rhode Island ladies, and I've been to Rhode Island and telling me about all these cool things to do in Rhode Island and I didn't do any of them because I was like eleven and–

Lexi: You'll go to Rhode Island again.

Alana: Lady History field trip to go see that play.

Lexi: Hey, maybe she could do the play and then we could do a live episode about other famous Rhode Island ladies.

Haley: That would be fantastic.

Alana: Manifest it. Say it on the pod, make it happen.

Lexi: Live show at the Rhode Island Historical Society about Rhode Island ladies.

[Archival Audio of a hymnal]

Haley: My fabulous gal today is Madam CJ Walker, or, by Guinness Book of World Records, the first female self made millionaire in America. And before we get to that point, this history book starts at her childhood. Born on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, Sarah Breedlove was one of six children to Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove. I love the name Minerva. Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove, “former slaves-turned sharecroppers.” And that was a quote, and I don’t like that that’s how it’s phrased. Like “former slaves-turned sharecroppers” is exactly what happened, my problem is like in the sentence I kept reading it it's like “oh but they’re sharecroppers now” not like–

Lexi: It's like still bad.

Haley: Yeah it's still bad and this is because–

Alana: It's not even bad to less bad, it's bad the different bad.

Haley: Yeah. It hits differently. And this is all post Civil War. I even put in my notes like this quote is weird. Unfortunately, her parents died when she was seven and Madam CJ moved in with her sister who worked in the cotton fields. And at age fourteen she married Moses McWilliams, and this is partly to get away from her abusive brother in law.Because already we're off to a rocky start if like your footnote is to get away from an abusive person. Maybe there was love. I couldn't find much about Moses. Again, life was just not on Madam CJ’s side, and her husband died in 1887. And she had to raise their two year old daughter Leila, known as A’Leila. She moved to St Louis with the hope of a better life and not just like living in poverty getting out of that poverty situation because… like yeah absolutely. She wanted– and she was very adamant on making a better life for herself and her daughter and knowing that she could do it as a woman, not just like having that widow title slapped on her. Because we know– even now still, if you’re a widow that's kind of like your identity, your personality. It's like “oh… your partner died.” And kind of the same with men like raising children and that's not what we want. So in St Louis, her four brothers were barbers and she worked both as a laundress and a cook. She also joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church where she met Black men and women who were both educated and successful. And this is kind of like an inspirational moment for her. This was a pivotal moment that she, in my research, just kept going back to. She went through a bit more of a life struggle with a failed marriage and just more financial ups and downs which would make anyone physically and mentally strained. However, in 1904, she began using African American businesswoman Annie Turbo Malone’s “The Great Wonderful Hair Grower” because she was starting to see like scalp problems where… concluded into like hair loss, and I’ll explain more of that because I had to do some more research myself. She also joined Malone's team of Black women sales agents, and this is where she starts to become one of those successful independent people she'd previously admired. And I believe this is around the time Leila actually went to like university, so that was a big yay. I also would like to pause, like I said, to do some research about hair care products because all hair is different. And these products especially that Madam CJ later invents were for Black women who lost their hair to scalp disorders or most likely a form of alopecia, like relatively common and Madam CJ had it too. That is not to say that hair loss just comes in scalp disorders, like I get hair loss when I use certain rubber bands because I have really thick coily hair that will break off at the end. Apparently my hair type is prone to like stress falling out. After some time in the business field, and I believe this was just like about a year, she moved to Denver where she married quote “ad man” Charles Joseph Walker. Hence the new name of Madam CJ Walker. and this is important in the business sense of her life because she started out with a dollar twenty five, and yes this was way way back ago, but in the sense of building like a business that was launching her career to be a self made millionaire that's a little bit of dough. And she was able to launch “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower” which her husband, the ad man, helped advertise and getting like mail order business started because remember, we did not have the lovely internet. So that was a huge chunk of the business to get like revenue, get the word out there and such. And she knew that there was a market here, because one she was in that market and she just previously worked in that market so she could easily tap into it. And as a Black woman, she knew how to essentially not only market, but just be like “here's how you use it.” So unfortunately this marriage ended in a divorce, and she later moved to Indianapolis. And in 1910, she built a factory for her company, now named Walker Manufacturing Company. And this transformation made it possible for her to become an advocate for Black women especially in the economic independence realm, with Walker Manufacturing Company she could branch out and do a lot more. And she opened up a training program called the Walker System, and basically this huge network of licensed sales agents blossomed. And this led back into her core ideals of giving back and being very generous because she believed that she had generous opportunities given to her, so now she needed to give back. And she remembered what it was like to be that person on the poverty line being inspired by these wealthy, educated, successful people. She ended up employing forty thousand Black women and men in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean. I couldn't find out if this was specifically one part of her business or like the whole network or other endeavors because she also had a cosmetics branch called the National Negro Cosmetics Manufactuers Association that she also started. Regardless, forty thousand people worked many different spans of land is a lot. And her worth in all senses of the word just kept growing and growing. Financially, in the last year of her life she reached that one million dollar mark with her sales exceeding five hundred thousand dollars and some reports saying that at her death, the value of her remaining estate was more like six hundred thousand, which is about eight million today. Just like, what Alana asked, what would I do with a million and maybe a house… like now thinking of it. Because one of her things she spent her money on was a mansion named Villa Lewaro which was a five point five acre plot in Irvington, New York. And I think I might have to do like a drive by field trip. I know where Irvington, New York is and by looking up the street name when I was like googling all this, I think I know exactly where it is. This was also for Madam CJ to be closer to her daughter at this point. And at the end of this like all, happy and sad, Madam CJ continued her avid philanthropy until her death from kidney failure by bequeathing two thirds of her net profits to charities and thousands of dollars to different schools and individuals. There is a Netflix special that’s out. I have not watched it yet. I thought it was still in production. Lexi was the kind beautiful soul to send me an email. Lexi, have you watched it and can you give us a review?

Lexi: I watched it. Since I didn't dive as deep into research on her as you did, I'm not sure how accurate it is because there were you know little stories you didn't cover… Because this is like it's not just one movie it's like a multi part series, so I guess my curiosity maybe after you watch it you can tell us how accurate it was. But from an entertainment standpoint it was really good.

Haley: This is going to be like once I'm done with like writing my thesis and everything–

Lexi: Treat yo self.

Haley: –and be like this is amazing.

Lexi: Yeah, it was like… In terms of entertainment value it was a really amazing woman focused story which I appreciate.

Haley: I've seen the previews, I knew it was coming out and I really thought I was still in production or was like postponed because La Rona. Those looked fabulous.

[Archival Audio of a song about San Francisco]

Alana: So I initially found out about my lady from Drunk History, which is classic me. It’s one of my favorite shows. I have said on this podcast before that I was devastated when it was canceled. I'm still devastated. I don't think I'll ever be over that loss in my life. But then in researching this lady I found out that very little of the Drunk History story is accurate and so that broke my heart. And I'm glad I followed up with some research and wasn't just like using Drunk History as a source because I don't think that's a good idea. Okay, so, Mary Ellen Pleasant was born no one really knows when so I can't tell you her star sign, but in 1814ish. One of my sources said August 19, 1814, which would make her a Leo and I definitely can see her as a fire sign. She wrote three autobiographies, and every single one gives a different birth date and even year. And also no one even really knows where she was born it's possible she was born free in Philadelphia or into slavery in Georgia, who knows? Only Mary Ellen, and she's dead. She spent her early life in Nantucket, Massachusetts where she was indentured to a family of abolitionists. Insert lady doing equations meme. The… I… What? I don't understand how abolitionists owned slaves. Like Alexander Hamilton owned slaves. What's his name? His lover? I haven’t watched Hamilton in so long.

Lexi: Oh, John Laurens.

Alana: Also owned slaves.

Lexi: Yes. But they were like “slavery bad, but we own slaves.”

Alana: I forgot where I was. Oh, I was at my insert lady doing equations meme because abolitionists who own people make me confused. Eventually she was married to a man named James Henry Smith who was either white or biracial or mixed race. And he was an abolitionist as well but also a plantation owner. That's one of those things that I am a big ole question mark. So the two of them as a couple gave a lot of money to the abolitionist movement because they had a lot of money from owning a plantation that I think meant they also owned people, which I am so confused. But James Smith died in the early 1840s and left her a lot of money, some of which she invested and some of which she kept giving away to the cause. The cause of abolition. She got remarried to John Pleasant and they moved to San Francisco to avoid slavers, so formerly a local lady for Haley, even though she doesn’t live in San Francisco anymore. I'm not sure what happened to him. He is never mentioned again besides she moved with him to San Francisco. Mary Ellen became business partners with a man named Thomas Bell. It's possible they were romantically involved but Mary Ellen like found a wife for him, so I don't think so. But anyway they amassed thirty million dollars.

Haley: Throuple?

Alana: Throuple, maybe, I don’t know. Together they amassed thirty million dollars in back then money which is almost a billion dollars today. In the 1890 census, she listed her profession as capitalist which is like so on the nose and I love it. She owned laundries and restaurants and dairies and all these other things. She even owned a Wells Fargo. And she hired Black people, especially Black people who had escaped slavery, to work in them, which gave them opportunities that they probably wouldn't have had otherwise. And this is where she gets the nickname– she starts to get the nickname the Mother of Civil Rights in California. She was a light skinned Black woman, so she could have been white passing, and she did until a census taken after she had gotten kind of successful and amassed all this wealth, she wrote in that she was Black instead of white. She also, furthering her title of Mother of Civil Rights in California, she sued a cable car company for not allowing Black people on at all, setting the stage for Rosa Parks to be even allowed on the bus in the first place to refuse to give up her seat. She won several other lawsuits regarding racial discrimination in the 1860s and 70s and she starts getting notorious among white people. Obviously, because powerful Black women make white people uncomfortable. That’s just a fact. And so many people started calling her Mammy Pleasant which she hated so much because they were like using it derogatorily. Apparently a pastor in Sacramento wrote her a letter addressed to Mammy Pleasant asking for something and she wrote back to him on the same piece of paper because she didn't want to waste her own on him. Big Dick Energy.

Haley: That’s a power move. That’s a power move right there. That’s like saying “best regards” on an email.

Alana: Yeah. Jumping back in time a little bit, in 1859 the abolitionist John Brown led a raid on Harpers Ferry. This is a pretty famous event, he got caught and he was hanged and they found a note in his pocket that basically said here's what I gave you thirty thousand dollars to do– regards to the raid– and it signed, but there's a case of mistaken identity, so no one actually knows who did it. Except, on her deathbed, Mary Ellen confessed to it being her. She pulled the whole “tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me.” And her gravestone reads “friend of John Brown” because she was. After Thomas Bell died, his widow sued Mary Ellen and she lost almost everything. So there was some falling out there that's something happened. It's also possible she studied voodoo like the actual voodoo like the Haitian voodoo, not like the garbage touristy shit, from Marie Laveau herself, who I’m hoping maybe we’ll cover at some point. I think Marie Laveau was really cool. But that's one of those things that like she said and can't really be corroborated even against Mary Ellen’s own stories. I think it's possible that that's just like something she said to scare the white people even further. There's a park in San Francisco named after her. Haley did you ever go?

Haley: I feel like I do, in the sense I know the plot of land, or like general area. Is it in Golden Gate? Because Golden Gate Park has like a bunch of little pockets.

Alana: No, it's on the corner– it's on the corners of some streets. Anyway there's a park in San Francisco and she haunts it and she has been known to–

Haley: I wish I’d known that. I really… I would have gone.

Alana: I know. Yeah, she throws eucalyptus nuts at people, supposedly. I think that’s cool. That’s what I would do. And she used her position to make a better life for herself and better the lives of others and used her capabilities… And she had… She was such a smart woman, and so capable, and so manipulative but in a good way. She knew what people were thinking and could use that to her advantage, and not just to her own advantage, to the advantage of the people in her community who she really helped. And the best quote from her is “I'd rather be a corpse than a coward” and that's what makes me think she is a fire sign.

Lexi: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at LadyHistoryPod. Our show notes and a transcript of this episode will be on ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com. If you like the show, leave us a review, or tell your friends, and if you don't like the show, keep it to yourself.

Alana: Our logo is by Alexia Ibarra you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at LexiBDraws. Our theme music is by me, GarageBand, and Amelia Earhart. Lexi is doing the editing. You will not see us, and we will not see you, but you will hear us, next time, on Lady History.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Haley: Next week on Lady History, we’re diving into some misconceptions. Retelling the stories that should have been told the first time.

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dewitty1 · 5 years

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harryromper @harryromper

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Characters: Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, Bill Weasley, Original Female Character(s), Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, Andromeda Black Tonks, Teddy Lupin, Rose Weasley, Minerva McGonagall, Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, Portrait Fleamont Potter Additional Tags: Post-Hogwarts, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Post-Second War with Voldemort, POV Alternating, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Pining, Romance, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, wizarding houses, House magic, Magic, Families of Choice, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Wizarding Traditions (Harry Potter), Magical Theory, Brooklyn, Roller Coasters, Socks, Quidditch Player Ginny Weasley, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley, Minor Hannah Abbott/Neville Longbottom, Professor Neville Longbottom, Curse Breaker Bill Weasley, Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, Godric’s Hollow, Hogwarts, Grimmauld Place, H/D Erised 2018, Community: hd_erised, Lovers to Friends, Don’t copy to another site Summary:

At first Harry wonders if they’ve managed to destroy his vaults and are trying to tell him in the most oblique way possible. But when he turns the page he realises they’ve found a vault. A vault in the name of Lily and James Potter.

The parchment trembles a little in Harry’s hand. He takes another gulp of wine.

Harry Potter left Britain after the war and didn’t look back. Ten years later, when Gringotts discovers a vault containing his parents’ belongings—including their badly spell-damaged wedding rings—he’s forced to face up to friends and family who’ve grown in ways he could never imagine, a wizarding London rebuilt beyond his expectations, and the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s the entirely unforeseen problem of Draco Malfoy.

Featuring pureblood wizarding traditions, ancestral magic, open mic nights, marriage equality, a diner in Brooklyn, and the return of Fleamont Potter.

Excerpt:

“I ran into Malfoy again, yesterday. Like, physically. Ran into him full-tilt coming back from a jog outside the Leaky. Bowled him right over.”

Hermione giggles, as Harry kneels beside her on the quilt. “On purpose?”

Harry laughs. “No, of course not.”

She pushes a plate of muffins towards him, and he breaks off a chunk of one.

“Who did he marry?” Harry asks, thinking about Parkinson. The way Draco’s hands, brushing himself off yesterday, were unadorned by rings.

“He’s not married,” Hermione answers, letting Hugo clutch at her finger, dragging it towards his mouth.

“Really? He always seemed the type to be married to some prim little witch who knows how to entertain properly. You know, the sort who’s really good at parties and small talk and never forgets anyone’s name.” Harry can just picture them both at society functions, glasses of champagne in hand. Malfoy looking down his aristocratic nose at everyone.

“That’s funny,” Hermione snorts, clearly delighted by something he’s said.

“What is?”

She gives him a strange look. “Harry, Draco is as gay as a maypole.”

Harry manages to inhale a crumb the wrong way and immediately sets to choking. It causes Hermione to laugh even harder. “You really didn’t know?” she asks, patting his back ineffectually. ”He dated Dean Thomas for over a year!”

And that is really not an image Harry needs in his head, all of Malfoy’s long limbs wrapped around… He shakes his head vigorously.

“No. How would I have known? I heard him talking about picking a kid up from school and I just assumed—”

Hermione’s laughter dies suddenly and the happiness slides from her face. “Teddy, Harry. He would have been talking about Teddy.”

“Why would Malfoy be picking Teddy up from school?” He tries not to make it sound scathing, but it doesn’t really make any sense. The two of them are related, sure, but in the “burnt off the family tree” kind of way. He can’t imagine even a post-war Malfoy being that interested in a Metamorphmagus from the wrong side of the Blacks.

Hermione sighs and gently tugs her finger back from Hugo, picking the baby up as he starts to fuss. She frowns at Harry, a sign he’s coming to recognise means he’s freshly disappointed her in some way.

“Draco looks after Teddy two days a week. He has done for years. Draco’s basically the father figure in Teddy’s life.”

If she doesn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation, Harry thinks, she’s fallen pretty short of the mark. Hugo starts to cry, and Harry decides to take the excuse.

“Time for Hugo’s nap—I’ll leave you to it.”

“You should go catch up with him, Harry. You’ve changed a lot and so has he. It’s Wednesday, he’ll be at the Bent Wand tonight.”

Harry waves absently at her as he leaves. He doesn’t have any intention of catching up with Malfoy.

Except that her suggestion keeps gnawing at him as he heads back to the Leaky, and it won’t leave him alone as he eats a bowl of bland soup at the bar. He asks Kim, the waitress, about the Bent Wand and she gives him directions to a new street opened up after the war. He has no interest at all in seeing what Malfoy’s up to, but the idea that British wizards have caught up with the modern world enough to have gay bars out in the open is sort of intriguing. He could just go have a drink there. It doesn’t mean he has to talk to Malfoy. In fact the thought of not talking to Malfoy and finding an attractive wizard to work out the week’s frustrations with is sort of appealing. And so before he can reconsider he’s wandering past a new Wheezes branch and round the corner into a charming little street he’s never seen before called Equal Alley.

The Bent Wand looks like more of a pub than a bar, and there’s a foreboding-looking bouncer standing at the door. “Tap your wand,” he says, indicating a brick in the wall. Harry does so, and a blue plastic wristband appears on his arm.

“All Ages night tonight,” the bouncer says, by way of explanation, and steps to one side to let Harry in.

The pub is warm and busy, with groups of people clustered around tables and around the bar. The crowd is younger than Harry was expecting. Two boys who look like they’re still Hogwarts-age walk past him holding hands. The taller one is wearing a t-shirt that reads I Like Wizards / It’s None of Your Business. Harry waits behind them at the bar.

“Where’s the sign up sheet?” one of them asks.

The bartender points over their shoulders. “Draco has it over by the stage.”

Harry turns to catch a glimpse of Malfoy’s blond hair, surrounded by young people over by a large amp sitting on a low stage.

Harry orders a pint, and while the bartender is pulling it, he asks, “Sign up sheet?”

“Shout Out. It’s an open mic night for youth. Happens here every Wednesday.”

Harry is reluctantly impressed. It’s more or less the last thing he expected when Hermione mentioned it. He assumed the Wand would be some snooty wine bar with an overpriced cocktail menu and Malfoy holding court in a booth being rude to people who weren’t as attractive or wealthy as him.

“Some of these kids look like they’re still in school,” Harry says, anxious to derail that train of thought as quickly as possible.

The bartender nods. “Hogwarts lets them Floo down for the evening. It’s an approved extracurricular. Draco over there takes responsibility for getting them back afterwards.”

Harry tries to imagine anything like this being possible during his school days and can’t. It took him leaving the country to even understand that the confused knot of feelings he had about his own attraction to wizards was fine and normal and nothing he needed to hide. It certainly wasn’t something they ever discussed in school. Though to be fair to Hogwarts, he supposes, they had quite a lot else on their minds at the time.

He takes his drink and perches on a stool at the corner of the bar with a view of the stage. When Malfoy stands up, clipboard in hand, Harry’s forced to admit to himself that he looks really good. Which is a preposterous sort of thought, because Malfoy’s only wearing jeans and a white t-shirt. But there’s something about the way the dark skinnies hug his legs, the form-fitting tee, even the faded grey lines of his Dark Mark. Harry finds that he can’t look away.

Malfoy greets everyone there like old friends and invites a blue-haired witch in her twenties up on stage as the evening’s emcee, before taking a seat at one of the front tables. The talent on display is mixed at best, but the enthusiasm is contagious. Passable cover songs delivered on guitar, overwrought poetry, a slightly ill-considered rap. Harry finds himself clapping wildly, beaming at the thought of these young people having the space to express themselves. He’s ordering another pint when Malfoy pulls up the stool next to him as if they’re old friends. He hadn’t even seen him come over.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.” Draco sounds curious, rather than mean. Harry realises his hair is cut much shorter than it had been in school. It suits him.

“What, you thought you were the only queer wizard in our year?”

Malfoy laughs, reaching for a drink the bartender has made for him without asking. It looks like a gin and tonic. “Please. That cat’s long out of the bag. Ever since the Weasley wedding guests flapped their traps and the Prophet dedicated a full week of issues to The Boy Who Lived a Lie.”

Harry folds in on himself a little at that. It’s not that he hadn’t known it made the press here at the time, of course; he just hadn’t seen any of it. He’s pretty sure it was ugly. Andromeda always made a face when the subject came up.

As if he can read the dark turn Harry’s thoughts have taken, Malfoy leans in conspiratorially and says, “I may or may not have kept a few newspaper clippings for my personal collection. Some of the photos were very inspirational.”

It startles a laugh out of Harry, and Malfoy gives him a pleased smile. His ears pink up a little and Harry finds himself fixated on the smooth skin over his clavicle. Harry straightens up. Clearly, the pints are going to his head and he should leave. Flirting with Draco Malfoy is an objectively terrible idea. Draco’s tall and lithe and gives the impression of being all coiled power. Like a snake, but probably twice as dangerous. Harry can easily find far less menacing opportunities to pull, with a lot less emotional baggage.

“What brings you to London? Other than knocking people over in the street and lurking around queer youth nights in bars?”

Harry snaps his gaze back up to meet Malfoy’s. He doesn’t seem to have noticed Harry’s inner turmoil, or if he has, he isn’t letting on. “Gringotts found some things belonging to my parents so I needed to sort that out. I’m only here for another day or two.” He doesn’t say any more. Harry knows Malfoy’s father was sentenced to be Kissed. Talking about their parents or the past in general seems like a no-go. In fact, just the two of them sitting side by side in a bar having a conversation seems like something that should bend the universe in on itself and cause it to implode.

“This is impressive,” he manages, taking a deep breath and reaching for a change of subject, gesturing around at the pub night. “Creating an environment like this.”

“Thank you,” Malfoy nods. “Times have changed a lot since we were their age, but not so much that it’s not important to give them all the support we can.” He knocks his drink back in several swallows that leave Harry staring at the long, pale column of his throat. Harry desperately wants to mark it up.

“Go easy,” he manages, aiming for teasing. “You’ll be on the floor at that rate.”

“It’s soda, Potter,” Malfoy smirks. “Someone has to get the children back to Hogwarts in one piece.”

Harry is just wrestling with why that idea seems disappointing when Malfoy gives him a long, considering look. It’s as if he’s weighing every aspect of Harry, and it’s ridiculous, but Harry suddenly doesn’t want to be found wanting.

Draco seems to reach some sort of decision as he stands and leans right into Harry’s personal space, his lips warm against Harry’s ear. “Though if you want me on the floor, I don’t have to get the students back to school for an hour or so.” Just the words alone have Harry letting out a small groan and adjusting himself in his jeans. Malfoy pulls back, grinning wickedly at him. This whole moment is absurd.

Unthinkable.

Harry can’t possibly go through with it. But Draco is the brightest spot in the room and he can’t look away.

“Where?” he breathes, thinking about just tugging Malfoy to him and Apparating them right back to his room at the Leaky, although that seems a bit obvious.

And really who can wait that long, there’s got to be a perfectly good toilet somewhere in this pub.

But Malfoy just smirks and walks away, toward a door at the back of the bar marked Emergency Exit. Harry hastens after him.

He finds himself in a service lane behind the building, immediately pressed against a brick wall. If Malfoy’s jeans looked tight from across the bar, now he’s close enough for Harry to feel it.

“Someone will see,” Harry bites out, as Malfoy makes quick work of his belt buckle.

Malfoy laughs. “You think gay wizards built Equal Alley and didn’t disillusion the hell out of every dark corner?” And then Malfoy sinks to his knees and Harry can’t find himself able to care anymore.

#I could Be Wrong I could Be Ready #Author: Harryromper #Drarry fanfiction #Drarry fic rec #fic rec #Careys Bookmark fic recs #Careys personal bookmarks #Draco malfoy #harry potter #long post #Drarry squad #First rec of 2020!!!💜 💙 💚 💛 ❤️ 💕 💖

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cherryfloyd-blog · 6 years

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Jimmy Page - Behind Closed Doors

There are so many cookie crumbs to this story and I truly put as much research into this as my brain could handle. What started as a fun idea, soon turned into a late night adventure of notes sprawled across my bed, snacks to keep the energy going, glasses on; with a pen sticking of my mouth as I thumbed through as many pages of literature that I could get my hands on. There are several parts of this but for the sake of remaining unbiased I will keep it as straightforward and simple as I can. There has been a rumour floating around for fifty odd years, that Led Zeppelin; more specifically Jimmy Page, had made a deal with the devil. In this article, I will break down the events that have lead people to believe such things. In the end, it will remain impartial and will be open to interpretation which we can discuss further.

To begin, let’s talk about Jimmy’s growing idolisation and obsession with Aleister Crowley, famous for being an occult leader and magician. For more back story, Crowley was a British occultist who became known for pioneering the practice of black magic (or magick as he would call it). Aleister called himself Beast 666 and wrote literature on black magic and the occult, making him a major cult figure. He joined a few popular organizations to begin with, but ventured off into his own self created philosophy. Crowley believed himself to be the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Eon of Horus, thus founding the Religion of Thelema.

(Below is the logo of Thelema)

Pictures of Crowley have since been discreetly used in pop culture, as if a small tribute. For example; The Beatles featured Crowley on their album cover art for Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club, he can be seen in the back row, if I’m correct. Building off of Page’s affinity for Crowley, which began to noticeably build by the mid to late 60’s, Page financed to own a bookstore in Britain which specialized in selling publishings of the occult and black magik. Needless to say, Jimmy was in deep at this point but still only scratching the surface of infatuation. The bookstore was named “The Equinox” which was also the name of a book that Crowley himself had written on the occult and magic. To this day, Jimmy Page has the second largest collection of Crowley memorabilia and literature, which is no small expense. His bookstore is now closed, but back in the day had been in stock of some very pricey and hard to come by black magik publications.

Another thing I found interesting, was Page being heavily influenced by very iconic blues artists, such as Robert Leroy Johnson (okay, maybe not that interesting, everyone in rock cites him as being the backbone of rock n roll today) nonetheless, Johnson died at the age of 27 from unsolved and suspicious causes. He never became famous while he was alive, but rumour has it that Johnson had also sold his soul to the devil in return for fame, at a crossroads, which Robert mentions in a few songs. A very small, unrelated tidbit of information, but it makes you wonder if our rock star idols gave up more than a normal life, to become internationally loved and recognized.

Around the year 1970, Jimmy had supposedly asked the band to perform a ritual with him, one that would bring them power and something along the lines of everlasting life? I know right, no biggie, just dabbling with some dark forces. Anyone that knows black magik, can tell you that spells like this are not something to be taken lightly or messed with. John Paul Jones was allegedly the only one to not take part in this pact, which you’ll later realize why that makes all of this so much more strange than it already is. If you think about it, had they made such a pact it would make sense. Robert Plant has made it to the list of top 100 best singers of all time in Rock history, not only that but made it to number one (1). Jimmy Page? Well he’s seen as a god and legend by almost every guitar player in the modern world, and has been ranked number two, only one spot behind Jimi Hendrix. John Bonham has been recognized as one of the best double kick drummers in history, quite literally, every drummer looks up to him as also an almost god like figure. As for John Paul Jones? There is no doubt the man is wicked talented, but not nearly as talked about or famed. We can all acknowledge the man has serious talent, and yet seems to be left in the shadows of his peers.

The first evidence of this pact can be seen with the album Led Zeppelin III, between the end of the last song and the paper label is the outro groove written into the vinyl was “So mote it be” on one side and “Do what thou wilt” on the other. The are basic phrases that are the core of Crowley’s belief system. By this point people were determined that Jimmy had become a member of O.T.O , and organization and cult who’s most influential and iconic member was none other than Crowley. More about the organization can be read about in a link below, but it should be noted that they have four pillar rules; one of which is to not speak of the organization to others or discuss the practices of which they studied. A rule, that Jimmy Page is believed to have broken at one point.

The second piece of evidence was apparent with the release of Led Zeppelin IV, when symbolism became a driving force. Inside the album is a painting of the hermit (a powerful tarot symbol), later in life Jimmy would refer to himself as being something of a hermit despite being a major public figure. The album provides no title, and shows no band name on the cover, but on the inside are four brightly printed logos across the sleeve. From left to right, these symbols represent Page, Jones, Bonham and Plant. Page has said in interviews that the symbols (for the most part) were taken from Rudolf Koch’s 1955 Book of Signs. Plant’s symbol is probably the easiest to decipher - as it is the feather of truth and courage, from the origins of Egyptian goddess Ma’at. John Bonham’s is believed to be either a drum kit, or the symbol of trinity of a family unit (meaning father, mother, child). John Paul Jones, which was likely picked by Jimmy, was the a celtic sigil for confidence and competence. However, Jimmy’s logo has always been the hardest to breakdown and figure out. While most people believe his logo represents saturn (which controls the Capricorn sign, Jimmy is a Capricorn so it would make sense), there is a certain level of mystery behind it. Page has famously said he will never tell anyone what it means. Thought Plant has once said that Page revealed the full meaning of all four signs, including a detailed discussion of what Zoso meant. Admittedly, Plant expressed he was too drunk to remember by the next morning, and when he had asked Page about it again, page replied with saying he couldn’t/wouldn’t discuss it. Now this could very well be Jimmy’s antics, or just general mysterious persona, or perhaps he simply cannot discuss or reveal information. Perhaps, this is the one of the four pillar rules of O.T.O that Page had broken. Jimmy is an all around very private person, who very rarely, if at all, talks about his religious or spiritual beliefs or practices.

It is worth noting that Sandy Denny (pictured below) of Fairport Convention, the voice on The Battle of Evermore track, was given her own sigil. The logo is translated to Godhead or the power of female.

According to Pamela Des Barres, Pages girlfriend of this era, has said that at this point Jimmy got very deep into the studying of Crowley, and had even asked her to search San Francisco and Los Angles for Crowley memorabilia. She had not fallen short on this task, and managed to dig up some very impressive artifacts, manuscripts, and even “magical” robes that Crowley has worn. In 1970, around the time of the ritual, Page had dropped a large chunk of cash to acquire Crowley’s mansion, Boleskine, located on Loch Ness. The home, once owned by Crowley, had a large history of suicides and an even bigger turnover rate of employees as they found the home to be no doubt inhabited by dark entities. Regardless of what one may believe, the house holds a sinister vibe. Page later sold the home in 1992, and had actually been very wary of ever living there and had left the estate in a caregivers possession. Of the 22 years that he had owned the house, he only spent 6 weeks in total living there. In 2016, the house unexplainably burned down. (pictured below is Jimmy at the mansion)

Now this next part is where shit gets bonkers, so to speak, the rest so far has been rumours and back stories and alleged encounters. Just a man with an obsession, and depending on your personal beliefs, you may find that he took his practices too far. Perhaps his intentions were pure, but looking at his life in general, what did Jimmy have to sacrifice to become quite literally a noteable person in history. Well let’s see.

Introducing Kenneth Anger; a fellow Crowley disciple and filmmaker, drug taker and subversive. He spent most of his time drawing magic circles, burning incense and chanting spells in Enochian - trying to do a real ritual exorcism. Plans for his film Lucifer Rising began to fall apart when Bobby Beausoleil (lead actor) - had to quit. Bobby, who later stole rough cuts and cameras from Anger would soon regret this. To take revenge, Anger supposedly made a talisman to curse Bobby. Within a year, Beausoleil had ended up convicted of murder with a life sentence for the murder of Sharon Tate as part of the Manson family murders. Wild, I know. Possibly just a coincidence, or even just a tall tale.

Cue Jimmy Page, who had agreed to do the soundtrack for Angers film, and the music Jimmy had produced is exactly what you’d expect. Dark, eerie, and perfect for a film of satanic proportions. Some of which can actually be heard in the intro for “In The Out Door”, his melancholy and devilish sound coming through in the song “In The Evening”. Kenneth and Jimmy had a love/hate relationship, and what started as a mutual appreciation and dedication to Crowley’s practice and image, soon turned to ugly turmoil just as quickly. Anger moved into Boleskine, where him and Page shared a love for Crowley memorabilia. However, as their friendship deteriorated, Anger was asked to leave the Crowley mansion. At the height of Led Zeppelin’s career, Jimmy had pulled out of the film project in 1975. Allegedly, Anger soon stated that he had cursed Page and Zepp with a major spell, a spell so big that it took all of Crowley’s teachings he could muster up, to cast upon them.

Almost immediately, the band started to experience turbulence and the eventual downfall of their career as one tragedy after another struck them to the core. Robert Plant was in a car crash, plunging off a cliff in Greece in 1975, nearly killing himself, his wife and his son Karac. Which meant cancelling the Physical Graffiti tour and having to record in a wheelchair. The make up tour was littered with negative events starting with Plant getting Laryngitis. Followed by ticketless fans in Cincinnati rioting and storming the gates. In San Francisco, manager Peter Grant and John Boham had gotten into a fight with Bill Graham, and nearly beating a Bill Graham employee to death. Both Grant and Bonham narrowly escaping serious charges and incarceration. Karac eventually fell ill, and no amount of money would make him better, as doctors had no idea what was wrong, by 1977 Karac had passed away and the tour was cancelled. At this point, Plant had quit the band and music in general in response to Page and Jones not showing up to his sons funeral.

Around this time, Page was nearly comatose on a daily basis due to a crippling Heroine addiction, and Bonhams alcoholism was raging out of control, becoming increasingly violent and unpredictable. In 1978, Sandy Denny, the goddess of the Battle of Evermore, drunkenly plunged down a flight of stairs; breaking her neck and died. The tip of the iceberg was the incident that occurred in September of 1980. Handlers had tucked Bonzo into bed after a band rehearsal, following a night of heavy drinking; assuming he would be okay, he’s done it a million times before, right? But as well know, John tragically died in his sleep from asphyxiation. It’s worth mentioning, that in the middle of all of this mayhem, John Paul Jones had remained completely untouched. While the loss of Karac and Bonham had affected John, being as they were family, he was never really directly affected. Could this be because he stayed as far away from the pact as possible? Could these events be natures way of taking something, in return for giving something such as power? Is this all the work of Angers alleged curse?

Robert Plant once addressed these very claims, as some people point fingers at Jimmy being the cosmic reasoning behind the passing of Karac and Bonham. Though, he says it’s a cheap shot. This is what Plant had to say about the matter - “The comments about how it was all connected with Jimmy’s dalliance with the dark side or whatever, that was cheap. I’ve never shared the preoccupations with him and I don’t really know anything about it. Fate is already written”. I suppose it has less to do with whether Page “sold his soul” and more to do with the possible repercussions of playing against nature, and whether such practices have a domino affect. The piling strange circumstances does make one wonder how involved Page really was, and how much the involvement took a toll on the band. Just how much of it can account for Led Zeppelin’s massive success, to the point of making history in music forever (everlasting life?). At the end it could all very well just be a bunch of mumbo jumbo non-sense. I am curious as to what you all think, feel free to leave comments or shoot me a message!

*Note; Do not take this too seriously, it’s all speculation and open for interpretation. Below are some interesting sites that I used in my search!

Resources:

https://forums.ledzeppelin.com/topic/15027-jimmy-and-crowley/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

https://carwreckdebangs.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/aleister-crowley-jimmy-page-and-the-curse-of-led-zeppelin-when-myth-magick-and-weird-facts-collide/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordo_Templi_Orientis

https://zososymbol.com/

#uhm I think I covered all the basis #im SO nervous to post this omfg #jimmy page #led zeppelin #robert plant #john paul jones #John Bonham #myposts

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dpeace85 · 4 years

Text

The Gospel

On reading the word:

A lot of people seem really stressed out these days. I’d say politics is the main source of it. But the pandemic is running a tight second. I can’t help but notice the helplessness I see in the people around me. It just seems like everyone is lost. Not just mentally or emotionally, but spiritually. And that’s what concerns me most. I read my Bible and listen to what self-professing Christians around me say, and what I hear is very different from what I read. I’m no scholar, but the scriptures just don’t seem, to me, to be hard to understand. I believe the problem is most people read the Bible the wrong way. Yes, there is a “right” and “wrong” way to read. That’s true of any text. If I’m browsing the isles of the local bookstore and come across a title I’ve never heard of or seen, and decide to buy it, I’m going to read that book much differently than I would the New York Times bestseller. The difference is the method of interpretation. The terms used for this are “exegesis” and “eisegesis”.

Approaching a text exegetically simply means reading the words and interpreting what is being said. This is quite easy to do if you’re unfamiliar with a book. In fact, exegetical is the only possible approach to an unfamiliar text. You have no preconceived notion or ideas about what you’re about to read. You simply open to page one and begin reading. By the end of the book, you’re likely to have a clear idea of what the writer wanted you to know. You’re not reading the book, while simultaneously searching for a “spoiler” your heard prior to buying it. There’s no confusion as to what you read, and what you thought the outcome of the story was supposed to be.

Eisegesis is just the opposite. The NYT bestseller is the one everyone is talking about. It’s been pre-released to the author’s biggest fans. It’s been talked about on all the morning shows, and it's the one people can’t wait to get their hands on. You already know what the story is about. You just don’t know how it ends. Or maybe it’s the classic. Most everyone has read it. You know the story, and how it ends. You’ve heard the highlights, and all the real-world implications of the text. So, when you finally get your hands on it, you start searching at page one for all the things you’ve heard. As you read, your mind constantly wanders back to those things, and certain parts of the book are a little confusing, because the interpretation “they” gave wasn’t exactly the way the text offers it. So, you just skim over those parts and get back to the stuff you know is there. This approach robs you of the full enjoyment of the book. It’s also a waste of time on behalf of the author. They wrote the book with the intent of all readers enjoying the full essence of the story.

Sadly, the Bible is almost always approached eisegetically. In all fairness though, it’s been around a while. Since the scriptures were first written, they have been passed through the generations almost exclusively by spoken word. In the early 1600s, King James I of England changed history for us all. Until then there was no English translation of the scriptures. The king believed people should be able to read them for themselves, instead of relying on someone else to do so. Since then, the Bible has been translated and printed in virtually every language on Earth. And because of this, it’s nearly impossible to pick up a Bible, open to Genesis 1:1, and begin reading without any preconceptions of the text. With that said, however, how many Christians try? And therein lies the problem with the modern Gospel – which is no Gospel at all.

I’m ashamed to admit I’ve received most of my Biblical education sitting in a church pew on Sundays, listening to a guy hiding behind a pulpit. Don’t get me wrong. I know there are no perfect people, and I’ve had some God-ordained leadership over the years. But I’ve also come to realize, in my adult faith, that several of my pastors and teachers over the years were – and some still are – sorely misguided. My entire Christian education can be summed up very simply: “Do your part, and let God do the rest.” What a waste of the Gospel. There’s infinitely more to the Gospel of Jesus Christ than just “let go and let God.” Put away the Bible studies. Put away the commentaries. Turn off the podcasts.

Read God’s word.

On God:

You must understand who God is. God doesn’t need you. God never needed you. God will never need you. You are because God wills you to be. Between the words “are” and “because” you can add anything your heart desires, but it will never be the result of anything you’ve done. When “the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen. 1:2) He knew that on this day, at this very moment, you would be reading these words. Not only did He know, He willed it. At this very moment, God knows exactly how many milliliters of blood are flowing through your heart with every beat. He also knows, at this very moment, how many milliliters of blood are flowing through every beating heart on Earth. Not only does He know, He is aware of every single one. He doesn’t have to think about it. He doesn’t focus on one thing, while something else slips by. He is deeply and intimately aware, at this very moment, of the number of times a bird in the Amazon must flap its wings to reach its next drink of water. Not only is he aware, but He willed it before the creation of the world. One might say God could just snap his finger and make everything disappear, but there’s no finger snap needed! God willed your life into existence before the creation of the world. He knew the exact moment of your birth. He knows the exact moment and means of your death. A person who is conspiring to kill you, and even takes action to do so, has no control of whether you live or die. No accidental death is truly accidental. No chronic disease was ever truly undiscovered or unexpected. God’s will is sovereign over all things and all people. Understanding this should cause us to fear God, because “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7).

God is not your buddy. There’s a verse in an old song I heard many times growing up that says, “I am a friend of God, He calls me friend.” It’s a fast-paced, clap-along, feel-good song. And the message of the song is based on John 15:15 where Jesus tells the disciples, “I no longer call you servants... I have called you friends.” But instead of an eisegetical approach to this passage, start at verse 12 and just read it. Jesus says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know is master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father I have made known to you.” Jesus starts by telling them to love like He loves. He then tells them the greatest example love is to die for your friends. He later dies for His friends. He also tells them His Father’s “business” which includes His death, and their future trials and persecution. In this passage, He’s telling them they must lay down their lives for Him, so that they can be called His friends. I’ve never had a buddy tell me he is going to die for me, and I must also return the favor. I can only conclude that my skewed definition of “friend” is a result of my modern Christian education. I know now that I must be called a friend of God if I want to spend eternity with him. I must be willing to die to gain eternity.

The part about dying doesn’t really concern me that much, though. I'll talk more about that later. The part I focus on is the “business” that He has made known to us. The Bible is our “master’s business.” It’s all written down and, thanks to King James I, we all can read it. It’s not a secret! Yet some Christians live every waking moment worrying about what’s going to happen next. Whether it be at work, at home, in politics, or in health, they worry. Why!? He’s already told you the end of the story! John wrote an entire book about it (Revelations). Prophets talked about if for centuries. Jesus talked about it often. We know God’s will. This should strike a deep fear in your heart! Not a fear of the future, but a fear that when God’s will comes to pass, you will be called an enemy of God, instead of a friend.

Pray that God will give you understanding of who He is.

On death:

If I understand I must lay down my life for God, to be called His friend, I must accept the fact that I am going to die. I must live with an awareness that this life will end. I see Christians every day that are consumed by fear of death, and it confuses me. I must admit I haven’t read my Bible cover to cover yet, but I’ve read many scriptures that tell me I’d much rather be dead than alive. It’s easy to sit at a keyboard and type such bold statements, but it’s very difficult to live them day to day. I know that if one of my children were to die, I’d be devastated – there are a million other words I could use there, but it’s safe to say none could truly describe the pain I’d feel. But at the same time, I can say with confidence in my faith, I know God knows the exact moment each of my children will leave this world. No matter how violent or unexpected that moment may be, He knew it would happen before he created the world. He willed it to happen that way. This brings me to a question I got the answer to when I started reading the Bible: Does life matter?

The murder of Abel in Genesis 4:8 is the first recorded death in history. It was sudden and violent. Having children of my own, I can assure you Adam and Eve took this pretty hard. I’m sure there were many tears and sleepless nights. Their lives were forever changed that day. Since that time in ancient history, however, not one single person has lost a minute’s sleep over Abel’s death. The story lives on thousands of years later but focuses more on Cain’s anger than the son Adam and Eve lost that day. There are six-year-olds in Children’s Church that can tell the story, from Abel’s burnt offerings to Cain’s punishment; all with a prideful smile on their face. Abel was beaten to death with a rock, and now his murder is featured in children’s story Bibles.

Then we move on the flood in Genesis 7. God himself killed everyone on Earth except for Noah and his family. And that’s pretty much all that’s said about all the people that died. Somewhere that day, some guy was sitting with his wife and kids at the dinner table, and it started raining. At some point over the next few days, he and his wife were treading water, desperately trying to keep their children’s heads above the surface. They all eventually sank slowly below the surface of the water and drowned. That happened to families all around the world, but the scriptures make no mention of it. The scriptures focus on Noah’s obedience to God, rather than the massive loss of life.

In Exodus 12 God kills the firstborn child of every Egyptian. Thousands of people – men, women, and children – all die at the same exact moment. Weeks before, a woman walks her child through the market, holding his hand so he wouldn’t get away from her and get himself hurt. The woman has never heard of Moses; has no knowledge of the struggle between Pharaoh and the Israelites. Her time is consumed by her toddler son. But soon, all the animals die. Locusts destroy the crops. The river that gives life-sustaining water to her child turns to blood. Through all of this, however, she manages to keep him alive and healthy. She’ll do whatever is necessary to keep her son safe. But one morning she awakens to find her son’s lifeless, cold body. He was just one of thousands. Exodus 12:30 says, “... there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.” Thousands dead in one night, and all the Bible offers us is a “loud wailing.”

These events are some of the earliest events in history. We can tell these stories, along with many other stories in our more recent history and feel virtually no emotion. But the thought of losing someone close to us makes us sick to our stomach. The fear of dying leads us to extraordinary means of self-preservation. The current pandemic (COVID-19) is a perfect example. Over the course of history there have been numerous plagues and outbreaks of diseases that have claimed the lives of millions. However, those are not real to us because we weren’t there. We weren’t there when the first murder was committed. We weren’t there when everyone drowned. We weren’t there when the death angel came. We weren’t in the concentration camps. We weren’t in the Twin Towers. But we are in the pandemic. We have lost loved ones to COVID-19. This one is real to us. We isolate ourselves. We isolate others. We’re willing to help, if we can do it from a distance. The virus is deadly. Meanwhile, in countries like India, Peru, and Ethiopia, children dig through piles of rotting garbage for food, and drink contaminated water. Their parents have died from diseases we as Americans are vaccinated for as newborns.

At some point after you die, no one is going to remember you. So, the answer to my question is obviously, “No, life doesn’t matter.” Yet we fight so hard to keep it. It’s an end for us. So many people in the Bible embraced death. They rejoiced in it. They ran to it with open arms. Paul lived a miserable life after God changed him. He spent the rest of his days on the run, in prison, being beaten, starved, and homeless, but genuinely rejoiced in his sufferings. Paul wasn’t always under persecution. There were days when he was just in a bad situation. He spent days on a ship during a storm. He and the others on the ship were close to death on more than one occasion, but he never lost faith or doubted it was God’s will that he was in the storm. If he had died during the storm, it would have still been for the glory of God. He was a friend of God.

John 12:25 says, “Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” There are a lot of Christians out there who seem to really, really love their life.

On politics:

Since the beginning of time the vast majority humans have lived under some variation of a Monarchy. A king rules and the people obey. There is no such thing as a “God-given right to be free.” In the Old-Testament, God led many nations into battle. He led them to fight for His will and purposes. But for most of the Israelites’ - God’s chosen people – history, they were slaves. As Americans it’s hard for us to imagine any other way of life than what we’ve always known. We’ve reached a point in our nation where Christians feel they have a right to complain when the waitress wasn’t paying attention and got the order wrong. We think it’s necessary to cancel church services because the power is out. And we wouldn’t dare live without our guns. God has blessed America because of how good we’ve been as Christians, right? He gave us our right to be free, because we have honored him, right?

In Daniel 2, Daniel is interpreting a dream for King Nebuchadnezzar. The dream is about a statue made of various metals. Each section, from the head to the feet, each made of a different metal, represents a different kingdom in history. The last section of the statue is the legs and feet. The legs are made of iron, and the feet of iron and clay. Daniel tells the king this represents a kingdom in the last days. He describes the kingdom as “strong as iron” (v.40) and says, “it will crush and break all others” (v.40). Then he says the feet of iron and clay represent a divided kingdom, “partly strong and partly brittle” (v.42). He goes on to say its people will not remain “united” (v.43). During the time of this kingdom, Jesus will return, destroy all earthly kingdoms, and rule for eternity. This last kingdom Daniel refers to is the United States. The US has become the most powerful nation in history. Its power has enabled it to render aid to, protect, and even destroy other world governments. But the US is more divided now than ever. Our nation is weaker than it has ever been. We are no longer pure iron but have been mixed with an equal amount of clay. God’s moral standards still have a stronghold in our nation but are slowly diminishing by the day. So, if I believe Daniel is prophesying about the US, I must also believe our great blessings have nothing to do with what we have done and has everything to do with God’s will for His people. There is nothing we as Christians can do to turn our nation back to God. Biblical prophecy tells us time and again that’s just not going to happen. Our nation will remain divided until Jesus returns and destroys all nations... including ours.

So why are so many Christians so passionate about politics? The outcome of an election has no bearing on the moral declination of our country. It really doesn’t matter who the president is, or who our government leaders are. We as Christians have been called to do God’s will. Should you vote? If you want to, sure. Are we called by God to vote? Absolutely not.

In Matthew 8, several disciples are pledging their allegiance to Jesus. One of the disciples tells Jesus he will follow Him, but his father had just died. He says to Jesus, “Lord, first let me go bury my father” (v. 21). Jesus replied, “Follow me and let the dead bury their own dead” (v.22). This man was grieving. His father had not even been dead long enough to be buried. Jesus is telling him the work of the Father is more important than burying dead people. He also implies the man’s family is also dead even before they have died. He was referring to their souls.

What Jesus is teaching us in this passage is that we should not concern ourselves with worldly traditions. Let the world do worldly stuff. We need to be focused on eternity. Our future is not here on Earth. Our future is with God our Father.

On freedom:

So why am I writing all this? I just feel like a lot of my brothers and sisters in Christ are hurting when they don’t have to be. If you find yourself in a state of depression, or feel like you keep running in spiritual circles, open your Bible and just read the Word. God makes it very clear that He is in control. Understand you can do nothing to change or influence God’s will. You can’t read the scriptures and conclude you have any control over the world around you. The Bible tells us exactly what is going to happen to us and our nation... and every other nation on Earth. It’s all going to end. Our money, our homes, our stuff, our body, and our lives all have a time limit. We were never called to get a job, start a family, save for retirement, and live the American dream. We are called to repentance. We are called love like Christ loves. We are called to follow Him. Knowing this frees us. We can be free of stress, free of worry, free of depression.

But how do we gain this freedom? The generic answer would be, “Give your sin to God", or “Let go of your sin.” But Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). What slave has ever been able to just “let go" of their master? How can you give something away if you belong to it? You can’t. The idea that you have to take action to gain freedom in Christ is sinful. Jesus came to set us free, because we are slaves to sin. In order to be freed from sin, we must pray for God to release us. Only He can break those chains. This is the truth of the Gospel.

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” – John 8:36

Dusty Peace

2/16/21

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kwispayne · 5 years

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The Top 10 Albums Of The Decade (2010-2019)

I got requests to pull a decade list together, so this is my attempt. This wasn't as easy as I thought, as opinions do change, but I'd like to think this is the best. Also, it is a stark realization that I really love the modern British rock scene. Go figure.

So here are some rules:

1. I may have changed my opinion from previous lists. Sometimes things stick...sometimes they don’t.

2. I didn’t hear every album this decade. But I am open to recommendations.

3. This is all personal opinion. And my tastes are odd.

10. Enter Shikari - The Mindsweep

Year Of Release: 2015

Genres: Post Hardcore, Electronica, Electronicore, Pop Rock, Experimental Rock, Alternative Rock, Mathcore

Country of origin: England

As I have said in the past, Enter Shikari are in my opinion a part of the best of the British rock scene at the moment. While their follow up The Spark did see the band experiment even further down the pop and electronic circles, this was very much the best of both worlds. This album very much holds everything great about this band. It's heavy, screamy, poppy and experimental enough. But the epicness of this album really is what grabs my attention. With the use of atmospheric strings and a production which makes the sound almost symphonic, it still makes the hairs on my neck stand to attention. Musically speaking it is the bands strongest effort, and definitely Rou Reynolds best vocal performances. While their debut is still a classic, this album is the bands masterpiece.

9. Black Peaks - Statues

Year Of Release: 2016

Genres: Post Hardcore, Post Metal, Progressive Metal, Experimental Rock, Progressive Rock, Math Rock, Sludge Metal, Hard Rock

Country of origin: England

While their latest album All That Divides is a fantastic album, nothing will beat the staying and natural power of their debut. This band came out of nowhere, and I remember within the first few minutes of listening to the opening track, I knew this band was special. I remember the first time I had heard this album, I tested myself to see if I could find one track on it which I disliked. And there isn't one. This album is bone crushingly heavy and just complex enough to not hinder it from the material at large. But the biggest draw for attention is Will Gardner's vocals. I remember going to see this band live in Belfast not shortly after the release, and being just blown away by the power and determination of this band (Will at one point had to sit down from screaming so much). Definitely the best debut album from any band this decade.

8. Devin Townsend Project - Sky Blue

Year Of Release: 2014

Genres: Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock, Hard Rock, Pop, Electronica, Post Metal, Experimental Metal, Alternative Metal, Art Rock

Country of origin: Canada

Looking back at the body of work Devin made around this time and later, this is definitly the album that stands out the most to myself. When it was released, it was more of a bonus disk which followed the newer Ziltoid project. But, surprisingly it contained his most focused and honest work. A personal concept album dealing with death and loss, Devin put down the inward telescope, and held a hand with his audience, to know that he was there with them going through their loss (I'm not sure if he lost someone at the time himself, if he didn't, then this album is mostly a brilliant act of kindness). Also this is what I feel to be his poppiest release, and I love when he pushes forward the pop element of his sound. And as usual, the music and production is first class.

7. Everything Everything - A Fever Dream

Year Of Release: 2017

Genres: Pop Rock, Pop, Art Rock, Electronic, Progressive Rock, Experimental Rock, Indie Pop

Country of origin: England

These album was prophetic at the time, but it still stings. But I am afraid the uncomfortable nature of this album is still lingering in our political and general atmospheres. The band did release an ep of songs after this which were good, but overall I think this album is the band's greatest pop achievement (they will appear again later on in this list). One of the criticisms thrown at this album at the time was the cleaner production, but I think it bodes well to the bands sound. One of the slight criticisms would be the lack of complexity, but overall I think the material outshines what the band used to be and I am looking forward to listening to whatever they have planned next.

6. Idles - Joy As An Act Of Resistance

Year of release: 2018

Genres: Punk, Hardcore Punk, Experimental Rock, Noise Rock, Art Rock, Post Punk. Comedy

Country of origin: England

This album is just packed full of tunes. How could I not leave it out? Ok, it is a little bit more than that. The album itself is one of the most positive messages out there to deal with the modern world we live in. And it's also really funny at times. This album is very much like a drug that I would recommend to get rid of sadness. But then there are sad and somber moments on it too. But then again, we all need a bit of sadness in our lives. Positive punk! What should be an oxymoron is now a cure for all ails. I really hope at some point I can see this band live, and I will be shouting along each word of this album back at the band.

5.Jamie Lenman - Devolver

Year of release: 2017

Genres: Post Hardcore, Punk, Pop Rock, Pop, Indie Rock

Country of origin: England

Like the Idles album, this album is just a collection of brilliant tunes. But, with a twist. Now after having made this album, Jamie did release a covers album this year which was a nostalgic look at his past, but this album is also a nostalgic look at his past too and in my opinion is the greatest piece of work he has released. I still put this album on and I'm still blown away by the production. The guitar tone on this album is heavy as hell, and the riffs and songwriting on the project are all killer. Jamie is another example of one of the best creative artists coming out of England. A singer songwriter who is able to really rock and kick ass.

4. Everything Everything - Get To Heaven

Year of release: 2015

Genres: Art Rock, Art Pop, Experimental Rock, Electronica, Indie Rock, Pop Rock, Pop, Progressive Rock, Math Rock

Country of origin: England

Yes. They are on the top 10 list. This band is just this good. Now, come on. Look at this cover. This is kick ass. But the cover itself is a bit of a distraction, because underneath the oddness of the opening visual, the album itself opens a dangerous and complicated world. A world that 4 years ago were living in, and now has become deformed. This album was able to get a top 40 UK hit while detailing the trail of an Islamist terrorist. I don't think any modern band have the balls or even the talent to pull this off. But luckily this album exists to dispel and exert this fears. Musically complex, raw at times and even a bit odd at times, this is the band's finest work, as it mixes the best parts of their pop and experimental sounds.

3. Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience

Year of release: 2013

Genres: Pop, Neo Soul, Soul, Symphonic Rock, R&B, Experimental Rock, Hip Hop

Country of origin: USA

Ok. Let me explain this one. I have always kind of had a soft sound for lil old Justin. But his albums always lacked I found. Or were too long. Or too overblown. And on this project, it is all the problems I just mentioned. This is the oddest pop album ever. Pretty much most songs on this album are close to or over the 8 minute mark, they go on weird experimental jams, at times the song is finished, and Justin is not ready to finish it like a child desperate for attention. But what he wants to tell the audience is so good, he just has to get it out there. And his presentation is just beautiful. Epic soaring strings, heartfelt lyrics, great beats and fantastic musicianship throughout. Justin has always been great at getting multi layered vocals (possibly from his boyband times) on tape and his range on this is superb. The joy that comes from this album is intoxicating. Also, when this album came out, I was put in the middle of a rather uncomfortable situation, and this album really got me through it all. Also, one of my all time favorite albums is Songs In The Key Of Life, and I feel this is a big tribute to that album.

2. David Bowie - Blackstar

Year of release: 2016

Genres: Art Rock, Experimental Rock, Progressive Rock, Jazz, Post Rock, Adult Contemporary, Electronic, Art Pop

Country of origin – England

This one still hurts. The last masterpiece created by one the greatest artists that ever lived. And while it deals with dark subject matters and musically it is rather odd, there is a twisted sense of joy behind it all. As if Bowie knew this was the end and he wanted to make sure his audience was kept well looked after. But this album is still miles ahead of his modern contemporaries. I can't see any artist able to make something so experimental, but yet so accessible at the same time. This album emotionally connected to me because I heard it the day I found out he died. And instead of losing someone, it felt as if I was meeting them for the first time. In an eternal loop. And this is why this album has still stuck with me all these years. In his long and lustrous career it is his greatest work and it is the greatest swan song ever created.

1. Anathema - Weather Systems

Year of release: 2012

Genres: Progressive Rock, Symphonic Rock, Pop Rock, Experimental Rock, New Prog, Art Rock

Country of origin: England

So here we have it. The best album of the decade. Now let me explain. When this album came out, I was dealing with the death of a family member and dealing with other challenges...and this album was the biggest help. This is one of those albums were it is so open ended, you can take it to mean whatever you imagine. Personally I think the album deals with death, but it could also be interpreted as a look into how people deal with personal changes. Musically this album is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. The raw emotion of Vince Cavanagh's vocals underlayed by the beauty of Lee Douglas' crooning, the orchestral back gushes forward and slams straight into your chest. They did follow this album with 2 great releases, and before this album they had 2 great releases, but personally I believe this to be the bands strongest work, and one of the greatest albums ever made.

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tipsycad147 · 5 years

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Mirror Gazing (Scrying)

Written and compiled by George Knowles

Since time began, man has been fascinated by his reflected image as seen in the still waters of woodland lakes, pools and rivers. Among primitive peoples superstition was rife, and seeing their image reflected in water may have been like catching a glimpse of their souls, for it was widely believed that the soul existed separate from the body. Others may have found themselves gazing through a portal into the spirit realm, there communicating with departed loved ones or gaining insights into future events. However, these same woodland lakes and pools were also known haunts of fairy folks and nature spirits, sometimes friendly, but sometimes hostile, and likely to snatch at human reflection to capture the souls of the unwary. Little wonder then that anything reflecting images was regarded as magical.

The Mirror of Venus by Burne-Jones

Ancient prophets, soothsayers and oracles initially used bowls filled with water in which to scry and divine answers to questions about past, present and future events. Later, highly polished stones such as beryl, crystal and quartz were used for similar purposes. The first man-made mirrors used in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome were commonly made of sheeted metal (pewter, copper, tin, bronze or silver etc.) and flattened into rounded disks to which handles were applied. Some had decorative designs inscribed on the back, but the face would have been highly polished and reflective.

In the Middle Ages when it became possible to make glass, crude hand held glass mirrors were made backed with thin layers of metal such as tin and lead. Later during the 16th century, better quality mirrors were produced in Murano, Venice (Italy), the backs of which were covered with an amalgam of tin and mercury (normally 75% tin to 25% mercury). In 1836 a German chemist called ‘Justus von Liebig’ developed the process of coating a glass surface with metallic silver, a process that is still used today. By the end of the 17th century plate glass was developed, and the use of large stationary mirrors became commonplace household features.

Legends, Myths and Folklore

Dr. John Dee (1527 – 1608)

Dr. John Dee was a famous Alchemist, Mathematician, Astronomer; he was also an adviser to Queen Elizabeth I on matters pertaining to science and astrology, as such, he was commonly referred to as “the last royal magician”. A serious academic, some thought him to be the most learned man in the whole of Europe. He was fascinated by all things occult, and was an adept in Hermetic and Cabbalistic philosophy. Dee had a particular interest in divination, and spent much of his later life experimenting with different methods in his efforts to communicate with Angels. From 1583 onward, Dee worked with Edward Kelly using both a black obsidian mirror and a crystal ball to see visions of ‘Angels’. Allegedly they communicated by pointing to squares containing letters and symbols that Dee had transcribed.

John Dee’s black obsidian mirror and crystal ball

This is the mirror together with a small smoky quartz crystal ball used by Dee and Kelly for their occult research. These are now on display at the British Museum in London. The mirror is made of highly polished obsidian (volcanic glass) and was one of many objects brought back to Europe after the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish conquistador Hernán (Ferdinand) Cortés. Obsidian was sacred to Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec “Sky God” associated with Kings, Warriors and Sorcerers, and whose name can be translated as “Smoking Mirror”. The Aztec priests used mirrors for divination and conjuring up visions.

The case along side it was especially made to fit the mirror, it has a paper label written by the English antiquary Sir Horace Walpole who acquired the mirror in 1771 stating: “The Black Stone into which Dr Dee used to call his spirits...” and added later: “Kelly was Dr Dee’s associate and is mentioned with this very stone in “Hudibras” (a satirical poem by Samuel Butler, first published in 1664) Part 2. Canto 3 v. 631. Kelly did all his feats upon The Devil’s Looking glass, a Stone".

Archimedes

In one of the many legends of Greece, the mathematician Archimedes (287-212 BC) invented giant mirrors that were used to reflect the rays of the Sun onto Roman warships during the battle of Syracuse in 212 B.C.

Wall painting from the Stanzino delle Matematiche in the Galleria degli Uffizi (Florence, Italy). Painted by Giulio Parigi - 1599-1600.

“At last in an incredible manner he (Archimedes) burned up the whole Roman fleet. For by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it; and owing to the thickness and smoothness of the mirror he ignited the air from this beam and kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, until he consumed them all.”

(The above description is from Dio's Roman History - Translated by Earnest Cary, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1914)

Narcissus

In Greek mythology Narcissus was a handsome young man whose beautiful good looks claimed the love of all the women who met him, but he continually rejected their advances. One day while hunting in the woods he came upon a clear pool of water and stopped to take a drink from it. Mirrors were almost unknown in those times, but when he bent down to drink from the water, he saw what he thought was another young man. Amazingly the young man seems to be alive and responding, for when Narcissus smiled, so did he. The young man was so incredibly beautiful that Narcissus immediately fell in love with him, but when he bent forward to kiss him, just when their lips should have touched, the young man’s image blurred and rippled and all he got was a mouthful of water.

Narcissus by John William Waterhouse (1903)

Eventually Narcissus realised it was his own reflection in the water, but he could not bear to pull himself away. As he continued to gaze longingly at himself, he gradually pined away and died. At the place where his body had lain now grows a beautiful flower, a Narcissus, nodding its head over its own reflection in a pool.

Perseus and Medusa of the Gorgons

In Greek mythology, the Gorgons (daughters of the sea god Phorcys and his wife Ceto) were three monstrous sisters called: Stheno, Euryale and Medusa. They were dragon-like creatures covered with scales, had wings, claws, enormous teeth and snakes replicating hair. They lived on the farthest side of the western ocean, shunned and feared because a single direct glance at one of them could turn a person to stone. Of the three, only Medusa was mortal and could be killed, a feat that was achieved by the hero Perseus (son of Zeus).

Perseus, with the aid of a sword given to him by Hermes and a highly polished shield given to him by Athena, by watching Medusa’s reflection in the shield, was able to cut off her head without directly looking at her. The severed head, however, still had the power to turn a person into stone if it was looked upon. Legend has it that Perseus gave the severed head to Athena who used it to turn Atlas into stone. This stone became known as the Atlas Mountains that now hold up the heaven and earth.

Medusa painted by Caravaggio 1596-1597

Other legends about mirrors and scrying include the Goddess Hathor, who carried a shield that could reflect back all things in their true light. Nostradamus is believed to have used a small bowl of water as a scrying tool into which he gazed and received images of future events. And who can forget the magic mirror featured in the Disney folktale classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, when the wicked Queen immortalized the question “Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

Making a Scrying Mirror

All types and sizes of mirrors can be used for scrying, but commonly round or oval mirrors seem to be preferred. Old mirrors seem to work better than new mirrors, and more particularly those encased in a silver frame. Silver is generally associated with the moon, and while scrying can be practised at any time, best results are often gained in the quiet of night during a full or new moon.

Many people find it easier to scry using a black or obsidian mirror, the dark depth of a black mirror being more conducive to inducing visions. Obsidian is a black or dark-coloured volcanic lava rock, chemically similar to granite, but formed by cooling rapidly on the Earth’s surface at low pressure. The glassy texture of the rock is the result of its rapid cooling, which inhibits the growth of crystals.

Obsidian was highly valued by the early civilisations of Mexico, who used it for making sharp-edged tools, ritual and ceremonial sculptures, and polished mirrors similar to the one owned by Dr. John Dee above. Sadly, the ancient method of mining, grinding and smoothing obsidian into reflective mirrors was a long and drawn-out process, and so true obsidian mirrors, particularly old ones, are now quite expensive. However, given modern techniques and the demand created in the contemporary market, new obsidian mirrors can be obtained from most modern occult shops who stock them in a range of sizes at competitive prices.

Here’s an old mirror and stand I found at a car boot sale recently. I then purchased a new black obsidian mirror slate from an occult store in Glastonbury and collected all the bits and pieces needed to transform and create my own magick mirror.

An alternative to using obsidian is to make your own ‘black’ mirror. If you have an old silver picture frame lying around the home, simply take out the glass, clean it being careful to remove any marks, finger prints or blemishes, then paint the back of it black. Matt black paint tends to work better than gloss paint, as does black enamel or car spray paint. You may need to give the glass a few coats of paint to cover it properly, but allow each coat to dry thoroughly before adding the next. Also try to leave a smooth finish without streaks or runs.

Having rubbed down the mirror frame with fine sandpaper and sprayed it with black satin paint, I decided to decorate the boarder with appropriate directional and elemental stones. North is Malachite representing Earth, East is Citrine representing Air, South is Tigers Eye representing Fire, and West is Lapis Lazuli representing Water. Replacing the silver backed mirror glass into the frame, I then centralised and bonded the black obsidian slate to it leaving a silver rim around the black mirror...

Another good idea is to use the curved glass face of an old clock and paint the convex side black; you will of course need to make a suitable frame to mount it on. Antique shops are a good source for old clocks, and who knows, you could also find an antique silver frame on which to mount it. Frames can be as plain or as ornate as you like; you may even wish to personalise or decorate it with meaningful stones, gems or sigils. Remember the mirror will also need some method of standing-up on your altar or table, ideally at a shallow or adjustable angle. Some picture frames have a leg on the back for this purpose, or alternatively you could use a display stand similar to those used for collector plates.

... and the end result is my own Magick Mirror.

Before using your mirror, as with all magickal tools, it needs to be cleansed of all previous associations and negative energies, then dedicated and charged with your own energy. It is up to you how simple or elaborate you wish to make this process, but most people do it inside a properly consecrated circle. Once your circle is formed and quarters called, a simple dedication might go something like this:

“Into this sacred space I bring this mirror, here to be cleansed and dedicated to my service”. Face each direction in turn and call on its associated element with these or similar words (start with North - Earth): “By the spirits of the North and the powers of the Earth, I purify and dedicate this mirror” (repeat the same with the other directions: East - Air, South – Fire, and West - Water). Next you may wish to call whatever deities you are working with for their blessing, saying: Goddess/God (or deity names), bless this mirror, let it be a tool I use for positive purposes. Guard and watch over the works that come from it, and ensure no harm can ever be caused by it. In thy name Goddess/God I dedicate this mirror to my service. So Mote It Be!”

Mirror Gazing (Scrying)

The art of mirror gazing (scrying) is called Catoptromancy, a term that refers to the use of reflective surfaces for the purposes of divination. Scrying mirrors can be used to make contact with spirit guides, to access knowledge for healing and self-improvement, or to define the past, predict the present, and perceive the future. As a portal into other realms, it can also be used to aid astral travel, and during ritual to communicate with deity.

Scrying can be practised at any time, but best results are often gained in the quiet of night after the hustle and bustle of the day’s activities. It is not necessary to construct a fully consecrated circle for scrying; it is enough to simply create your sacred space by visualising a circle of white light surrounding and purifying the appointed working area. In a quiet darkened room, place your mirror on a table or altar with a dark cloth beneath it. Light a candle, one on each side of the mirror, but in such a position they don’t reflect on the mirror’s surface, and if you wish, burn an appropriate blend of incense to stimulate the psychic senses. Switch off all other light sources except for the two candles, and seat yourself comfortably in front of the mirror. Take a few minutes to relax while you tune into the atmosphere created. When ready to start, first ground and center yourself then call your guides or guardians to protect the work from unwanted or misleading influences.

To begin, when looking at the mirror try not to just stare at it, but look through its surface as if gazing into a dark and endless tunnel. After awhile, images and colours will begin to take form, they may even appear and take shape outside the mirror surrounding it on all sides. When you first start scrying be patient, keeping your first sessions to about 10 - 30 minutes, and gradually work it up to hour-long sessions as you learn. The art of scrying is interpreting what you see in the images and colours as they take form. This in a way it is a little like dream interpretation, and initially you may wish to consult one of the many books on the subject to help define the images you see. At the end of the day however, the real interpretation will be what those images mean to you personally.

After you have completed your scrying session, re-ground yourself and close your sacred space. You may wish to keep a journal and note down any visions you received during your session and later compare them with a list of dream interpretations. The more you practice, the more familiar the images and their meanings will become, but you may need to meditate on them for awhile to reveal any hidden meanings.

In conclusion, there are many differing ways and methods of scrying in addition to the one above, so it pays to experiment and use what works best for you. Whatever tool or method you use, be it your own personalised mirror, a crystal ball, or simply a bowl of coloured water; it can with time and patience become a font of wisdom and knowledge. As Ostara, the Spring Equinox approaches, a time of fresh beginnings, who knows what future truths can be divined??? Believe in your abilities and may you find what you seek.

End

https://www.controverscial.com/Mirror%20Gazing.htm

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insideanairport · 5 years

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Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (part I/II)

❍❍❍

This is the best and most profound work of Nietzsche, yet the hardest to grasp. For beginners, I don’t recommend starting with this book. All of Nietzsche’s philosophical universe is condensed and packed in this work. I picked up this book first when I was still in Highschool. I didn’t understand a lot in the first reading of it. I also took some notes and moved on to reading other works by Nietzsche. Soon, I found myself reading all of his major works. Before writing this review, I looked back on my first notes from Thus Spake Zarathustra. I had to delete every single note I took at that time. My view has been changed completely towards Nietzsche’s work since the first time I read this book.

Where did Zarathustra come from?

If you have never heard of Zarathustra (Zoroaster or زرتشت‎) and have only heard it through this book, it means that you have spent too much time reading European writers. Zarathustra was an ancient Persian figure and the founder of Zoroastrianism religion. His most famous book is Avesta (اوستا) and along with it is the communal household prayer book called the Khordeh Avesta (خرده اوستا). Zoroastrianism is still practiced in many countries around the world, especially in Iran, Pakistan, and India. It is one of the world's oldest monotheistic religions that remains active.

Nietzsche found out that before Manichaean and Abrahamic religions, Zarathustra was the first person who came up with the idea of Good and Evil. A philosophy that states human action fall in these two binary categories. Therefore, Nietzsche considers Zarathustra the first “moralist”. In the book, Nietzsche personifies himself as Zarathustra in order to present a critique of the moralist philosophy of Good and Evil, an idea that he continued in his next book “Beyond Good and Evil”. Nietzsche believed that since Zarathustra created the first notion of morality, he must have also realized his mistake. In his autobiography Ecce Homo, Nietzsche explains:

“I have not been asked, as I should have been asked, what the name Zarathustra means in precisely my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous uniqueness of that Persian in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the actual wheel in the working of things: the translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But this question is itself at bottom its own answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality: consequently he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only has he had longer and greater experience here than any other thinker – the whole of history is indeed the experimental refutation of the proposition of a so-called ‘moral world-order’ –: what is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, upholds truthfulness as the supreme virtue – that is to say, the opposite of the cowardice of the ‘idealist’, who takes flight in the face of reality; Zarathustra has more courage in him than all other thinkers put together. To tell the truth and to shoot well with arrows: that is Persian virtue. Have I been understood? The self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite – into me – that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth.” (1)

Walter Kaufmann argued that Nietzsche might have more in common with Zarathustra than we think. “The two figures also share a range of similar properties or powers, such as the ability to annihilate and create in the light of a re-evaluation of past thought, the disposition to be inspired through visions manifested in poetry, dance, and song, and the courage to act in accordance with all of these. Moreover, the ‘Three Stages of History’ that Zoroaster took to be embodied in the individual (as ‘birth’, ‘death’, and ‘beyond’) are mirrored in [Nietzschean] Zarathustra’s ‘Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit’ as Camel, Lion, and Child.” (2)

In this book, Nietzsche is literally preaching but also making fun of preaching and preaching mentality. The book is about a philosopher guy who is trying to “show” humans the right way of living, through Superman (Übermensch). The philosophy is a direct-antagonism to Christianity (not all religions) yet using its lingo. Nietzsche's philosophy starts with the harsh critique of Christian morality. Yet, at times it can be seen as a critique of all morality, or a universal morality (if such a thing exists). We know that not all Abrahamic religions share the same view regarding good and evil. For example, in Bahá'í Faith the concept of evil (devil) does not exist. Evil is interpreted simply as a “lack” of good/goodness. Just as cold is the state of no heat, darkness is the state of no light, forgetfulness the lacking of memory, ignorance the lacking of knowledge.

Nietzsche’s love of the Greek tragedy, Presocratic Philosophy and art is a reaction to monotheism, rationality, and idealism (especially in Plato). He calls life an “activity”: A continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. He believes that life is something essentially immoral. In multiple occasions, he joins “God/philosophy” and “dance” to elevate the art and demote God. Quotes such as; “I would only believe in a god who could dance.” or “there is nothing to which the spirit of a philosopher more aspires than to be a good dancer.”

Nietzsche and the East

The book is speaking of love, affirmation, and also about populism. Nietzsche might have read some Eastern metaphysics, Islamic and Buddhist texts, but definitely has read the bible a dozen times more. While the entire book is preoccupied with references and allusions to the Bible, there is only one reference to the Persians in “One thousand and one goals” where he says: “’To speak truth, and be skillful with bow and arrow’—so seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me.”

Dariush Ashuri the translator of Nietzsche’s work into Farsi believes that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra can only be understood in relation to his other works. Zarathustra is not simply a replica of proto-historical Prophet yet a complex iconic figure that bears the voice of Nietzsche and his entire philosophical works, which aims to change the entire vision of humanity about the meaning of being and life through “Transvaluation of all values.” (3)

The book as a whole is written at the end of Nietzsche’s philosophical career and the concept of maturity and prudent is also fitted into the thesis. The reversal of the wisdom is folly, Nietzsche is also interested to play with the two, similar to strategies that Hafez used, although less sophisticated. He is intending to elevate Dionysian philosophy and lower Christianity’s moral dogma. For that reason, I see the influences of Hafez on Nietzsche's work better in this book than others.

The notion of Journey and travel (distance and time) is persistence throughout the whole book next to the idea of repetition and Eternal return. Man is something that needs to be surpassed. Starting from the rosy dawn, following into the noon-tide in the town of Pied Cow, and finally the supper. Similar to the three stages of life: the camel, the lion, and the child. It seems like after reading a lot of Eastern metaphysics Nietzsche is intending to construct a cyclical time perception on top of the very Eurocentric and colonial Kantian perception of time and space. In regard to Europe, Nietzsche is not shy to admit his positionality. His work is from and about European culture, rather than a universal concept. At the end of Joyous Science he mentions that the goal is to emancipate from everything European:

“If ‘thoughts on moral prejudices’ are not to be merely prejudices about prejudices, they must presuppose a position outside morality, somewhere beyond good and evil, a position to which we must ascend, climb or fly – and in any case, a position beyond our good and evil, an emancipation from everything ‘European’, understood as a sum of the authoritative value judgements which have become transmuted into flesh and blood.” (4)

Sa‘di and Hafez are the only Persian names of the Islamic era mentioned in Nietzsche’s writings. But, going back to the idea of journey and distance, I see Nietzsche’s philosophy closer to Rumi’s poetry than Hafez. Rumi (جلال‌ الدین محمد بلخى) wandered around middle Asia in his life, traveled from modern-day Tajikistan (or as some say Afghanistan) to present-day Turkey where he died. He lived everywhere in between and spoke multiple languages. Hafez on the contrary, similar to Sa‘di, Omar Khayyam and Attar of Nishapur, died in the same city he was born. Hafez’s poetry still has those transcendental elements which influenced Nietzsche yet missing those transformative parts beyond a hegemonic cultural domain. Maybe that’s why both Hafez and Goethe influenced their native speakers yet didn’t manage to connect in a deeper level with the non-natives as much as Rumi did.

From a Middle Eastern perspective, finding Nietzsche in between the lines of Ali Shariati and Muhammad Iqbal can also be equivalent to reading Rumi and Hafez in between the burning lines of Nietzsche.

بشنو از نی چون حکایت میکند وز جداییها شکایت میکند

کز نیستان تا مرا ببریدهاند از نفیرم مرد و زن نالیدهاند

سینه خواهم شرحه شرحه از فراق تا بگویم شرح درد اشتیاق

Pay heed to the grievances of the reed Of what divisive separations breed

From the reedbed cut away just like a weed My music people curse, warn and heed

Sliced to pieces my bosom and heart bleed While I tell this tale of desire and need.

(Rumi, Masnavi, Translation by Shahriari, 1998)

"We have left dry land and put out to sea! We have burned the bridge behind us –what is more, we have burned the land behind us! Well, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean. True, it does not always roar, and sometimes it is spread out like silk and gold and a gentle reverie, but there will be hours when you realize that it is infinite, and that there is nothing more terrible than infinity. Oh, poor bird that felt free, and now beats against the bars of this cage! Alas, if homesickness should befall you, as if there had been more freedom there –when there is no longer any ‘land’!” (The Joyous Science - Book III, 124 In the Horizon of the Infinite)

(Part I/II)

______________________

#read #reading

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ink-splotch · 8 years

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I was wondering, what if Harry and Hermione had met before Hogwarts?

The first time Harry Potter met Hermione Granger, she was standing with her chin up and her hands on her hips a few paces from the old olive tree in the schoolyard, glaring into the far distance. The wind was trying to twist and buffet her hair into her face, but mostly it was just tangling cheerfully with itself.

Dudley and Piers were busy kicking all the other kids off the play structure, so Harry had retreated out into the grass. He stood a safe distance from the weird girl who was pretending to be a statue and thought wistfully of lunch.

“There’s a fallen bird’s nest,” the girl said in a rapid and certain tumble of syllables. “The boys knocked it out of the tree, but I chased them off and I’m hoping the mama bird comes back. I’m Hermione Granger. We just moved here.”

“Harry,” he said.

“How’d you get that scar?” she said.

“Car accident.”

“That’s a weird scar for a car accident.”

Harry shrugged. “It killed my parents.”

She blinked quickly at him and even at that distance he wished vaguely that she wore glasses, too, because her gaze was something that really felt like it should have some built-in bluntedness. “Mine are dentists. Mum’s taking me to the library after school, want to come?”

Before they went into Diagon Alley, Harry asked Hagrid if they could find a payphone. Hermione picked up on the first ring.

“Harry! Where have you been? I’ve been trying and trying to call–”

“Sorry, yeah. Um, so, I’m not coming back to school next year, I…” Harry drifted off, staring at Hagrid’s massive moleskin shoulders. The giant man saw him looking and gave him a tentatively cheerful little wave. “It’s been weird, Herm.” He pressed his forehead into the phone stand, but not too hard. “I think you’re the only thing I’m really going to miss.”

“Harry,” Hermione said and Harry started to frown, because that wasn’t her stern and startled voice. That was the voice that meant she was off down a charging war path of other thought and might not have heard him at all. “I’ve been reading.”

“Of course you’ve been reading,” he said. “I’ve been being forcibly hidden from a swarm of post office owls–”

“You’re in books,” she said in breathless delight, squeaking over the telephone line. “First thing we did, of course, after the professor explained, was get her to escort us to a bookstore– a whole bibliography, Harry, a whole world’s bibliography I haven’t even touched– how am I ever going to–” She took in a little calming breath, and murmured, “Different infinities, it’s okay, Hermione, okay.” A sharp exhale and then she tumbled right back into her rushing rivelet of a sentence. “And I picked up a good dozen, besides the school books, of course, and Harry, you’re in books, in Dark Wizardwork of This Century and A Modern Wizards’ History and October’s End: A Biography–”

“Hermione,” said Harry with slow enunciation. “Are you a wizard, too?”

“A witch, I think,” she said. “But I’m still reading up on the sociology of it all.”

Hagrid wouldn’t say Voldemort’s name, but Hermione would. She came over with a stack of books up to her chin, gave the Dursleys her normal pointed little stare that said she’d like to set them a little on fire, and curled up in his cupboard with him.

He supposed she probably could learn how to set them on fire, now, if she really wanted to.

She gave him passages and excerpts with his name in them, with his parents’ names, a home he hadn’t known. There were pictures of a ruined house with the smoke drifting in little curls of ink. There was his mother, smiling and waving in black and white. There was his mother, laid out on the floor, with a sober little caption below it. That picture was still, except for curtains fluttering in the window.

Hermione finally dragged her face far enough up from the pages to see Harry holding his own hand very tightly, and then she closed the book and reached for one about which magical creatures you should pet and which you shouldn’t.

“Sorry,” she said.

“I wanted to know.”

“I’m still sorry.”

The Grangers drove Harry, Hermione, Hedwig, and their trunks to King’s Cross Station. Mrs. Granger kissed the top of Hermione’s head while Mr. Granger mussed Harry’s mop of dark hair affectionately, and then they swapped children and repeated the treatment. Hermione pushed her hair back out of her face and marched them all to Platform 9 ¾, the entrance mechanism of which she had read all about.

“Before you go,” Mrs. Granger said, “let’s buy you some sandwiches? I don’t know what sort of food they’ll have past that–”

“There’s a trolley,” Hermione said, but her parents dragged them off to a snack kiosk anyway, Harry happily in tow.

As they were on Hermione’s tight schedule, there were plenty of compartments open, and they took one all to themselves– well, to themselves, Hedwig, and Hermione’s books, which took up two seats. (Harry would wheedle Hagrid into taking him to Diagon Alley for Christmas shopping that year, where he would get Hermione a carry-all bag for her small personal library.)

Hermione took a long preparatory breath while Harry unwrapped his sandwich. “Harry? What if I go and sit down under the Hat and I just sit and sit there, and then it says I’m not a witch at all?” Hermione said, the words getting more squashed together and higher-pitched as she went. “I’m not magic, it just got confused, and they send me home? Harry, I don’t want to be a dentist. Other people’s mouths are disgusting–”

“You’re not going to get kicked out,” Harry said, chewing amiably on his sandwich. It was not good, but the Dursleys hadn’t bothered with any breakfast for him and he hadn’t wanted to bother the Grangers about it either. It was a bit dry on the way down, but it settled warmly in his belly.

“But what if I do?”

“I’ll stage a protest,” said Harry. “Refuse to do my homework til they reinstate you.”

“You’re not going to do your homework anyway.”

“See how dedicated I am to you.”

She made a dismissive little noise at him, wringing her hands in her lap.

“Hermione,” he said, and she lifted her bush of hair to look at him. “You’re the most magical person I know. It’s gonna be alright.”

She gave a long slow blink but whatever she might have said was interrupted by an uneven knock at the door. “Um,” said the pudgy boy standing there. “I’ve lost my toad.”

Hermione leapt to her feet. “Where did you see him last?”

Harry followed in the wake of her forward charge, but he brought the rest of his sandwich with him.

(Harry did not know this and would not know this until Mrs. Granger mentioned it casually over a Christmas dinner years and years later– but she and Mr. Granger reported the Dursleys for child abuse and neglect, over and over.

The reports got lost– minds scrubbed down, papers vanished– but they kept calling in reports. They considered kidnapping. They couldn’t imagine why the wizarding world might want to keep their chosen one somewhere so toxic, why they might want to keep this underfed child and his messy hair with those people.

“My mother left me a blood protection spell,” said Harry, whose scar had not ached in years. He poked at his mashed potatoes under the focused attention of Mrs. Granger’s stern little forehead wrinkle. “I had to live with family, blood family.”

“Then they should have made them treat you right,” Mrs. Granger said, as though it was that simple.

Mr. Granger gave Harry another helping of peas.)

On the steps of Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy thrust out his hand to the Boy Who Lived, who surveyed the open palm with amusement. “Thanks,” said Harry. “But I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself.”

The redheaded, freckly, hand-me-down clothes boy Malfoy had been bothering snorted. Harry slipped his hands into his pockets.

“You’re the kid with the rat from the train,” Hermione said. “And the spell that didn’t work.”

“It was a cool rhyme anyway, though,” Harry said. “Hi, I’m Harry, this is Hermione.”

“Yeah, she said, then. I’m Ron– uh, Ron Weasley.”

“Yeah, he said,” Harry said, rolling his eyes Malfoy’s direction. “Come on, you wanna stand with us? Hermione will tell you about the ceiling.”

“It’s enchanted!” said Hermione.

When Hermione founded SPHEW, Harry was not surprised. He had spent too many schoolyard days escorting spiders to safe spaces, keeping vigil over fallen bird’s nests, and watching Hermione stand up on her desk chair in heated pitched verbal battles with teachers. She’d driven at least two teachers to tears and taught most of them at least a few new vocabulary words.

Over summers and holidays, Harry and Hermione took Ron to the movies, to the seashore, to Hermione’s top three favorite libraries. Hermione’s Aunt Meg taught them how to whittle under a cloud of cigarette smoke that clung to Harry’s hair until he washed it out.

In this life, there were things in the Muggle world that Harry missed, that he wanted to see again. He loved Hogwarts, and he nominally went home to the Dursleys each summer, but he knew he always had a bed at the Grangers’. He knew the weird system they used to organize the books on their shelves. He’d pass Mrs. Granger the marmalade in mornings before she had to ask. He got free dental check-ups all his life, which was good because the Dursleys rarely bothered taking him into the dentist.

The whole Granger family tore apart newspapers every morning, calling article excerpts across the table and pointing each other to their favorite journalists. Before Hermione even first stepped onto Hogwarts grounds she got a subscription to the Daily Prophet. During Harry’s fourth year, Mr. and Mrs. Granger got Arthur Weasley to buy them an owl and then began an unending campaign of furious letters to the editor that never got published.

In a crumbling boat shed, Severus Snape died, but first he pressed a shining bundle of memory into Harry’s hands.

The fight was still going– Neville newly broad and certain; Luna whipping out quiet, barbed little curses; Ginny charging like an army in and of herself. Hermione had her arms full of basilisk fangs. Ron was moving people like bishops and knights. But Harry had a long damp walk before him, so he had time to wade through that life not his own.

Severus had been a lot of things– one of them was in love. Harry dragged his feet through forest mulch, seeing a little redheaded girl in sunlight, hands not his own offering her transformed flowers. It had been just them for so long. For Severus, for so long, there had been no one but him and Lily.

Even in Hogwarts, Severus had drifted through the classrooms and common room and library. He had believed in magic, in the cool slide of good knives through dried roots, and in Lily– always, always in Lily– Lily in sunlight, Lily chewing on her thumbnail over Transfiguration homework, Lily flicking soapsuds at him in her kitchen at home over summer, Lily pig-tailed and seven, wide-eyed as he showed her the first magic she’d ever seen, a leaf to a flower, a bit of sunlight to a bit of fire.

He had loved, and it had been a real thing. He had fucked up, and it had been a real thing, that heartbreak, that regret.

When Harry turned the Stone in his hand and saw his mother step into pseudo-life in that forest clearing, he thought I wish I’d known you. He thought about how she was in sepia and gray, here, just like in the pictures in the pages of Hermione’s books.

But he was also thinking about Severus. He was remembering Lily in sunlight, remembering her walking away, remembering her in that same cold photographed sprawl but in color–in grief–in bruised knees and heaving gasps.

Severus had been the first to find Lily’s body and it had felt like someone had cut the sunlight out of him. Harry was living through that grief, but he was also living through the wail of the child crying unacknowledged. His tiny pudgy hands were wrapped around the guardrail of his crib.

Harry was thinking about a girl standing in a field like a statue, hands on hips. He was thinking about Hermione’s raised hand ignored in Potions, or the way Snape had sneered that he didn’t see a difference in her cursed teeth. Love had made him brave, perhaps. It had killed him, but it had not made Severus good.

Harry wondered if his mother would have escorted spiders to safe places, if she would have stood guard over fallen bird’s nests, if she had worried herself to pieces that first time on the Hogwarts Express about the Hat telling her she didn’t really belong.

“I wish I’d known you,” he told the specter of Lily Potter. He held his own hands tight.

For Harry, for so long, there had been no one but him and Hermione. Even in Hogwarts, there were things only she would understand– parking meters, the cobweb ceiling of his cupboard, the silence of marmalade at breakfast. Harry believed in magic and he believed Hermione Granger was the most magical thing he knew.

“They’ll be alright,” he said. “I’ll be alright. I was alright, mum. I wish I’d known you– but I wasn’t alone.” He squeezed his hands tighter– Hermione showing him her favorite spots in her favorite libraries; Ron shyly showing them the Burrow like it was anything less than a magnificent masterpiece of warm rooms and patchwork architecture; Hermione standing in the field like a statue, bushy-haired and seven years old, jaw set. “She wasn’t alone, either,” he said. “And she’ll be alright. Ron will be alright. I have to do this, don’t I?”

“We are so proud of you,” Lily said.

“Thanks,” said Harry. “Sorry,” said Harry, and wondered if Hermione was going to be able to read the little passages and excerpts with his name in them, with those un-moving pictures and the sober captions underneath.

He dropped the Stone.

When Harry Potter died for the first time, crumpled in forest mulch, he didn’t go to a squeaky clean King’s Cross Station. There were no crescent moon glasses to twinkle kindly at him.

He stood under an old olive tree and a little girl looked up at him with those eyes that needed shielding, needed blunting, needed a manufacturer’s warning. “A wind’s coming,” she said. “You can just go. It will be easy.”

He stood outside Diagon Alley, a Muggle payphone tucked between his shoulder and ear. “You’re in books,” she said, with a breathlessness he’d barely heard for years. There had been too much weight on his shoulders, on hers. “You’re done,” she said. “You’ve done enough. Go on, tap three bricks up and two to the left.”

He stood in Godric’s Hollow, in the snow, holding her hand, looking at the ruined house. “You should have had this,” she said. She was seven and small, not nineteen and weary like she had been in life. The sky was overcast but there was sunlight glinting in her hair. “You can still have this. You can have everything.”

“You’re not real,” Harry said.

“But you are,” she said. “There’s a wind coming. It will be easy.”

“You’ve never done anything easy in your life,” he said.

She took both his hands– hers were so small against his grown fingers, his broad palms, and how had they done everything with hands that small? Basilisks and werewolves; shouting down teachers from atop desk chairs.

Harry was sitting in his cupboard in the light of its single bulb and he was too big for this space, his shoulders curling forward, his head bowing. She was standing there with sunlight still in her hair and her arms piled high with books. “You don’t belong here,” she said. “It will hurt. You won’t fit, if you go back. Everything can be easy. Everything can be fine. It doesn’t have to hurt, ever again.”

“Hermione,” he said and leaned forward, put his hands on her hands where they were gripping her books. “It’ll be alright.” He smiled and she was staring at him with those eyes, those goddamn eyes. “We never fit, remember?”

“We tried,” she said and Harry squeezed her small hands gently.

“Send me back,” he said. “I want to go home.”

After the battle, as Hogwarts rang with frantic healing, crushing grief, and raging celebration, the three of them retreated to the library. Hermione hauled them down narrow aisles until she found her favorite tucked-away nook and they all collapsed on sagging sofas that seemed to not have been touched at all by the war.

“Well,” said Hermione. “What now?”

Ron let his head flop back against the seat, hair tumbling all over his pale forehead. “I’m going to nap,” he said. “For a month.”

“That’s not physiologically possible,” said Hermione. “Or if it is, then it’d be a coma.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Ron said, then: “no, wait, a hyperbole.” Hermione beamed at him. He blushed a little and elbowed her gently.

“After this, you’ll be in books, you know,” Harry told her.

“Not– I mean–” Hermione rubbed at her nose furiously. Ron laughed enough to wake up and sit up, throwing an arm around her shoulders.

While Ron came up with outlandish titles for Hermione’s eventual many biographies, Harry pulled his feet up onto the sofa. He watched the candles float quietly between the shelves.

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johnchiarello · 5 years

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Acts 6

ACTS 6 https://youtu.be/Vqgm3E4k95A Acts 6 https://ccoutreach87.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/3-23-17-acts-6.zip Acts 6:2 Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Acts 6:3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. Acts 6:4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. ON VIDEO- .Cookie parable . ‘Wandering aimlessly’- who said this? . ‘Another world’- ‘Not in the Bluff’- mouth of 2 witnesses .Flour Bluff Park .Prayer altars .Church as community .Feeding the poor .Greek speaking Jews .Alexander the Great .Why Greek and not Latin? .First Deacons .Timon[s] .Hahn .Going to court .Trump [yes- more ‘wire tapping’ stuff] .NBC NEW ‘Fake news’ again PAST POSTS- [Past teaching I did that relates to today’s post- ‘Acts 6’] https://ccoutreach87.com/james-2015/ https://ccoutreach87.com/house-of-prayer-or-den-of-thieves/ https://ccoutreach87.com/overview-of-philosophy/ https://ccoutreach87.com/galatians-links/ https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/18/acts-1/ https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/01/26/acts-2/ https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/02/02/acts-3/ https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/02/09/acts-4/ https://ccoutreach87.com/2017/03/23/acts-5/ (739) ACTS 6- There arises the first controversy in the Jerusalem church. The fact that they were doing this daily massive food distribution led to an area of prejudice. The ‘Grecians’ [Greek speaking Jews] were being neglected. They were seen as a little lower on the scale of racial purity. They were speaking a language less pure than the Hebrew tongue. So the Apostles heard of the problem and said ‘pick out 7 men of good report, who have favor and wisdom and put them in charge of ‘this business’. In essence these were the first Deacons. The business was simply speaking of the duty of serving the food. Up until now the Apostles were involved with the distribution. But they said ‘we will devote ourselves to prayer and the Word’. This chapter is important, many well meaning church communions trace their practices of church government to this time. Are Deacons positions who ‘do the business of the 501 c 3’? Not really. Well, not at all! Are there ‘Pastors’ here in the modern idea of the office of a person who is over the flock and is the weekly speaker whom the people see every ‘Sunday’. No. Are these practices all wicked and from the devil? Of course not! But it does help to see what is actually going on. This early community saw the need for the leaders to devote time to the word and prayer. Fulltime ministry? Really more of a community adjustment allowing those with greater insight to propagate the gospel. Paul will later show us this doesn’t mean each separate community had ‘full time ministers’ who were forbidden to work secular jobs. He will continue to make tents thru out his life. But he will also teach that it is all right to meet the material needs of those who are ministering spiritual food. We also see the Apostles lay their hands on these first deacons. Is this some type of official ordination [recognition, licensing] from a seminary? Of course not. Is it wicked to attend seminary and have an ordination? Of course not. The principle of the ‘school of the prophets’ in Elijah’s day shows the possibility of God working thru these universities. It’s just we need to be careful we are not reading ideas into the story that are not faithful to the text. My reading of this chapter shows an organic community of people who were ‘the church’. They did have leadership and sought God for direction and weren’t imprisoned by any specific form of ‘church’. The main ingredient was a group of people sharing the life of Christ and living this life out as a community. All church communions have a tendency to read there own story into ‘Gods story’. That is we find isolated verses of scripture and say ‘see, this is why our church government does it this way’. It’s OK to a degree, but then when you see ‘our church government’ as the only true church government, that’s where problems arise. I think we should avoid looking for prescriptive patterns of ‘church government’ from the book of Acts. We should read the story as a community of people who are experiencing God and learning to walk out this experience as the Body of Christ. The great mystery is that God is ‘no longer dwelling in Temples made with hands’ but in a vibrant Body of people! [p.s. Stephen will quote this prophetic scripture in the next chapter as he does one of the most masterful jobs of an Old Testament survey to be found in the New Testament].

[parts] [parts] Alexander sought to implement the ideals of his teacher- he wanted to unify the known world under one people/culture- a belief that Aristotle held- a sort of ‘unified theory’ [Einstein] that would seek to bring all learning/knowledge together under one supreme [Divine] principle.

Alexander’s experiment was called Hellenization- which was the Greek worlds attempt to impose Greek culture/language on all their conquered enemies- and at the same time allow them to hold on to the their own culture too. Alexander did amazingly well at this experiment- at the young age of around 24 he had accomplished most of his mission. The cities were a sort of composite of Greek culture mixed in with their own culture- this is where we get the modern term Cosmopolitan.

Alexander died young and his kingdom was divided between 4 generals- one of them- Ptolemy- would himself make it into the history books because of his keen intellect.

The system of cosmology developed under him would last [and work!] until some 17-18 hundred years later when it was overthrown by the Copernican revolution during the time of Copernicus and Galileo.

Alexander’s generals would do their best to carry on the system of Hellenization- and other nation’s generals would keep the system going even after Greece fell. One of them- Octavian [Roman general] makes it into the history books by another famous name- Julius Caesar.

Alexander established a great library in the Egyptian city of Alexandria [named after him] and many of the great writings were preserved during this time.

The writings of Aristotle would be discovered again during the time of Thomas Aquinas [13th century Catholic genius/scholar] and this would lead to Scholasticism [a peculiar school of thought developed/revived under Aquinas] and give rise to the Renaissance.

Okay- before the birth of Christ- the Jewish people resisted the imposing of Greek culture upon them- you had the very famous resistance under the Jewish Maccabean revolt- where the Jews rose up and fought the wicked ruler Antiochus Epiphanies- and till this day the Jewish people celebrate this victory at Hanukah.

Eventually Rome would conquer the Greek kingdom and the Jewish people were allowed to keep their culture and temple- yet they were still a people oppressed. Hassidism [getting back to the beginning] developed during this attempt to not lose their Jewish roots- the Pharisees of Jesus day came from this movement.

Alexander was pretty successful in his attempt to unify language- even though the bible [New Testament] was written by Jewish writers- living under Roman rule- yet the original bible is written in the Greek language.

Bible scholars till this day study the Greek language to find the truest meaning of the actual words in the bible [I have a Greek Lexicon sitting right in front of me].

It would take a few centuries before a Latin version appeared on the scene [the great church father- Jerome- would produce the Latin Vulgate].

Yet it would be the re- discovery and learning of the Greek texts [under men like Erasmus- and the Protestant Reformers] that would lead to the Reformation [16th century] and other movements in church history.

The Jews had various responses to the empires that ruled over them during various times. Alexander the Great instituted Hellenization- a sort of cultural compromise over the people he conquered. They could keep their religious/cultural roots- but would be subservient to Alexander and Greek rule. Some Jewish people rejected any compromise- we call them the Essenes- they moved out of town- so to speak, and lived in what we refer to as the Qumran community. This was a few centuries before the time of Christ- and this was where the Dead Seas Scrolls were found in the 20th century. A Bedouin boy was looking for his goats- threw a rock in a cave right off the Dead Sea- and that’s how we found the scrolls. The scrolls might have been hidden there by the Essenes- Now- when my friends asked me about them- I told them that it’s been a while since I read up on any of this- but to the best of my memory the thing that made them significant was the fact that they were very old manuscripts- from the bible- and they backed up what we had had all along.

[parts]

VERSES- Acts 6:1 And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Acts 6:2 Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Acts 6:3 Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. Acts 6:4 But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word. Acts 6:5 And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: Acts 6:6 Whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. Acts 6:7 And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. Acts 6:8 And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. Acts 6:9 Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen. Acts 6:10 And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake. Acts 6:11 Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God. Acts 6:12 And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the council, Acts 6:13 And set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place, and the law: Acts 6:14 For we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us. Acts 6:15 And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.

James 2:5 Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? Matthew 26:61 And said, This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations Mark 14:58 We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations John 2:19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy thistemple, and in three days I will raise it up. In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

http://www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5?ref=bookmarks https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4GsqTEVWRm0HxQTLsifvg

https://plus.google.com/108013627259688810902/posts https://vimeo.com/user37400385 john chiarelloFollow On https://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=hb_logo http://johnchiarello.tumblr.com/ http://ccoutreach.over-blog.com/ Note- Please do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on- Thanks- John.#

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Acts 3

Acts 4

Sunday sermon [text]

#God #Jesus #Bible #Religion #ccoutreach87

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inmomni · 6 years

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No. 14b

I. Intro/Premise:

Hi, my name is Inmo, i am a senior biological studies major at Biola University. I’ve grown up in the church all my life, and I am currently a frustrated, working past it, christian who doesn’t work as advertised.

This became clear to me after my youth group’s 2015 winter retreat that i got “saved” for like, the third time that my best friend and i had an interesting conversation about our sin. I remember we were on a night hike with a few other of my church friends when i suddenly started to get a strong urge for a cigarette. I hadn’t had one since the start of the winter retreat, which was about two weeks ago then and a long time for me. It brought up this kind of frustration in me. Not because the craving was getting worse, but because i had just been “saved,” again. See in my mind, if you were with Jesus, you should be the farthest away from sin because of this new found love that you have for Jesus now; so in turn, that would make you naturally hate sin, ya know? Sharing the comment with my church friend, it sparked some talk about the fallenness of man and how we innately fall away from God, you know the gist, and we went on for about an hour when pent up with frustration about how i still want sin after all that God had shown me, after knowing what He did for me, after experiencing how much He loves me,

I said, “I wish God could just make us love him so much right now that we would never dare to sin again.”

II. Idealistic Picture vs: Reality

Idealistic: [See], I thought I knew what a christian should look like. I’ve been to church all my life, so that being said, I think I have a pretty good idea of what an idealized modern day non-Jesus Christian would be like:

Prays for at least 30 mins a day, an hour if it didn’t cry at all to “push through and seek the Lord”….Or an hour if you did cry cause, you cried and you had a moment with Jesus.

Reads the word every day without fail, even if you don’t have time for it cause you’re too busy serving, you get it in somehow by listening to an ESV ebook bible or through your 2min New Morning Mercies.

Just exudes Jesus everywhere they go, like to the point where you feel so sinful if you’re around them, but somehow they’re so humble that it doesn’t even cross your mind.

Raises their hands every single worship song at some point in the chorus and definitely the verses cause no one raises their hands for those

Every single conversation they have in passing turns into some life changing prophetic revelation for both parties involved

The list can go on.

Past Reality:

As you can see, I think a lot, my mind is always racing, and in science and especially in theology i really like to understand things and how they work, I need sequential process. So if I don’t understand something, I will just sit there until I get it to take an action on it. I need to know what to do, I need direction, and I need it NOW. So in grappling with my newfound faith during my early high school years, my sinfulness, how to pray, what to think during worship, how to know if I’m being genuine, what I need to be feeling when I encounter God, and i started picking away at my own faith with my doubt. And with doubt, I froze, because I didn’t understand it, and because I didn’t understand it I would question if I was a christian at all because I didn’t act the way I thought i was supposed to. I didn’t reach out to leadership, I didn’t ask my pastor or small group leader any questions I had, how to walk in the faith, I simply took what I saw, held up myself against that standard, and graded myself accordingly. And because I wasn’t doing well with the Lord, all other areas of my life would suffer, my overall mood, my motivation, my assurance in God and his character; nothing was stable. So I started to seek refuge from my reality in things like video games, anime, kdramas, sleeping, and slowly that evolved into trying weed for the first time, and then turning that into an everyday thing, with a daily goal of escaping reality and forgetting how terrible of a person I am. I was open to having fun, cause my life didn’t offer much as it was, and because all of this relied on how i felt, it wouldn’t be like this all the time, maybe just months at a time, sandwiched by seasons of “doing alright”, or a year on, and a year completely clean because God did graciously meet me in those moments, but nothing really changed, even if it was a year away, it doesn’t change the fact that I failed.

There emerged a very cyclic pattern starting since senior year of high school:

Summer is so good, it’s great, restful, had a bunch of fun, ready to get back to work

Fall initially is really good, meeting up with friends, keeping up with academics, motivated, I’m doing okay with God, reading here and there, not consistently, but reading at least, not doing bad things and such… then it starts to drop off around late October. I start getting less motivated, missing more classes, sleeping in more, trying to escape reality more.

Winter is super bad, just bummy lazy disgusting, right up until finals week approaches from where I jump up out of bed and turn into a study machine.

This carries on past spring and then probably into summer again. Then it repeats.

Recent past reality:

This cycle got worse every single year, until last year, my junior year, when I failed 3 classes second semester.

It was my junior year, and I’m a bio major. I’m trying to become a doctor, but now I’m not even sure of that anymore.

Present Reality:

If I’m honest today… I’m a slob, my sleeping schedule is a mess, I’m not even properly eating and what the heck is up with that. I don’t go to the gym anymore. I’m not loving on the people that are close to me well at all. I feel so selfish and twisted. I think myself into a pit, dramatically breaking apart my own self confidence and credibility to myself.

It’s easy for me to think: “God, I feel like such a failure. I’ve tried so hard, my bootstraps ripping into the palms of my hand, to be a Christian, to stay in the faith, but it’s too hard. I don’t get it, and i don’t understand it. If i did, then maybe i wouldn’t be like this. If i was a christian, I wouldn’t be doing X, Y, and Z or i would have fixed this part of myself ages ago. I should have had a consistent routine with God by now, talking with him, I should be the ideal christian by now.” IF I had truly been a christian up til now, holy, I’ve lived 21 years exposed to the gospel, and I don’t know how to do this thing. I should just give up.” I couldn’t even trust myself, the feelings and emotions I had, my all my actions can be accompanied by an army of voices questioning my intentions for everything. Everything was falling apart, my future, my faith, my academics, nothing was solid, nothing was stable, the way I am right now, I can’t even pick myself up again. I can’t do this.

III. Realization & God-centered Reality

But that’s when it became clear to me. If you’ve noticed by now, I’ve used the word “I” so many times up til this point. God just started highlighting all of the I’s I used, and he started replacing them with His name. and it all started to click. Maybe the reason I failed all these times was to bring me to a place where I could say, with my heart inside out, “God help me please, I don’t know what to do.” I tried to do things my own way for 3 almost 4 years now and i failed every single time, maybe it’s time to look towards God and not myself.

God reminded me of a passage in Numbers 21:6-9 where it talks about God sending fiery serpents to the people of Israel. In short, God sent fiery serpents to the people of israel because of their disobedience, killed a lot of people, then told Moses to construct a bronze snake so that people could look at it and live. Notice God didn’t say be healed from their afflictions. He just said that they would live, like NIRV even says that they “remained alive”. So what are the takeaways here for me? As you live your life, with or without God, you’re going to get bit, like 100%, when God said he sent serpents that killed many, I’m sure it wasn’t just a heist size group of snakes that ravaged the entire population, but a disgusting amount of serpents. You can try to fend for yourself, or you can look up at God and get through this thing with him.

The amazing thing is, that when I look to him, I see the moments where God affirmed me in my spiritual growth, all in retrospect of course.

I remember a time at Chick-fil-a with the same Caleb after serving at VBS where one of these moments happened. We had just finished up a day where the theme was the good news.

I started asking him about what he thought of the entire day that we just ran through. He responded with a “It was kinda weird”, not really a straight answer, but to see more what I’m thinking. I started explaining how they didn’t do the gospel justice, how this wasn’t something that was deserving of being rushed or just gotten over with, especially if it is for these kids. At one point, some guy paraphrased the gospel to,

“uhh we sinned, Jesus died on the cross for them, and, oh shoot were out of time, can the crew leaders explain the rest on the way to the next station” Everything was so rushed, paraphrased, cut off, I understand we were pressed for time the entire program, but dang did this topic deserve more respect.

I was getting really emotional, and tears started running down my eyes at which point caleb asked me why I was crying. I didn’t understand his question, until i remembered that all the conversations we had and all the things he’s seen me do don’t point to an impassioned college student upset because his church’s VBS didn’t do the gospel enough justice when presenting it to 5-10 year olds. That was when I realized God has taught me the weight of his gospel

There were other instances like this:

When i first got to Biola, and I hated it, but God told me through the` song i hated the most during high school (Christ is Enough) that though i may think that i failed because nothing went to plan, its all according to his. He’s bringing me to a place where I can say Christ is all I need, and he placed that desire in my heart.

Placing me in Torrey, a great books program at Biola, so that I would have a deeper knowledge of the word and how to converse with people, to have that show up at a party filled with a bunch of non-christians who were talking philosophy of a higher being and of a purpose in life

Seeing that through every cycle of highs and lows, regardless of how low that low was, I still came back to a place where God met me.

IV Conclusion:

To be honest, I still don’t fully know what I’m doing. I’m trying to read more. Pray more, I don’t know what it looks like to do what I said just now, or what that actually looks like. But regardless of what I know, or what I understand, God is doing things behind the scenes for my good. That there is no other reason, there can’t be any other explanation than the grace that God gives me and sustains me with. In this most darkest season of my life, I have never understood more clearly what it means to work out your faith with fear and trembling, to know that I am a christian despite all my crap, and that despite how hard I may want to leave, not even I can pluck myself out of God’s hand, because of the way He’s been teaching and shaping my heart. He’s locked me in. Once you know, you know, with this sort of thing if you know, if you’ve seen or tasted just a fraction of his grace, you cannot go back. Grace prepares the heart for salvation, it is grace that one receives salvation, and it is through grace that salvation is sustained and sanctification is occurring. I don’t know how I got here and how to get to where I need to be, but I just know that God’s got this.

So I’m just going to take that and run.

#2nd draft #samestuff

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jeroldlockettus · 6 years

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Two (Totally Opposite) Ways to Save the Planet (Ep. 346)

Can technology solve the challenges of food, water, energy, and climate change that come with a growing global population? (Photo: Oast House Archive/geograph)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Two (Totally Opposite) Ways to Save the Planet.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

The environmentalists say we’re doomed if we don’t drastically reduce consumption. The technologists say that human ingenuity can solve just about any problem. A debate that’s been around for decades has become a shouting match. Is anyone right?

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

Charles MANN: At one point I was going to call the book Toblerone For Ten Billion. That was vetoed by my editor, for some reason.

Charles C. Mann is a journalist who writes big books about the history of science. His current interest is:

MANN: The modern environmental movement, which I would argue is the only successful ideology to emerge from the 20th century.

By the middle of the twenty-first century, the global population is expected to reach 10 billion.

MANN: And the question is, are we going to be able to satisfy all their demands for food, water, energy.

Also: Toblerone.

MANN: Because in addition to food and water and the basics, they’re going to want occasional treats.

And there’s one more big concern.

MANN: How are we going to deal with climate change? Those are the big challenges.

The future of food, water, energy, and climate change — big challenges indeed. How will those challenges be met?

MANN: There have been two ways that have been suggested, overarching ways, that represent, if you like, poles on a continuum. And they’ve been fighting with each other for decades.

That fight, and those two worldviews, are the subject of Charles Mann’s latest book, which he wound up calling The Wizard and the Prophet. The prophet sounds the alarm and wants us all to cut back. The wizard urges us to charge forward, confident that technology will solve our problems. Surely you’ve heard these prophets and wizards, speaking to us — and usually speaking past each other.

Al GORE: The next generation would be justified in looking back at us and asking, “What were you thinking? Couldn’t you hear what the scientists were saying? Couldn’t you hear what mother nature was screaming at you?”

Nathan MYHRVOLD: The way to have a dramatic message is to say we’re all going to die.

The prophet encourages a return to nature.

Mary ROBINSON: We need to replant and save rainforests.

The wizard finds the prophet’s suggestions naïve.

MYHRVOLD: Well, that argument is so absurd on so many levels that the miracle is that there are people who can say it with a straight face.

The prophet sees grave danger in the immediate future:

ROBINSON: We’re going to be into tipping points. The Arctic is going to go. We’re going to see a sea-level rise that will wipe out islands.

The wizard is more optimistic:

MYHRVOLD: I think that if we put our heads together, we will come up with ways to cope. But that’s no fun compared to saying we’re all going to die next Thursday.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: are you more prophet or wizard? Why? And: is anyone right?

* * *

When Charles Mann was in college, there was a book that showed up on the reading list in several classes.

MANN: Ecology, you know, political science, demography.

So he had the chance to read it several times. It was called The Population Bomb. There was a warning on the cover. “While you are reading these words,” it said, “four people will have died from starvation. Most of them children.”

MANN: And it really hit home, and I thought, oh my gosh. The edition I read, which is the first edition, said there would be massive famines in the 1970’s. Basically, it said we are in deep, deep trouble.

And then, in the 1980’s:

MANN: In the 1980’s, I sort of noticed this hadn’t happened.

So were the famine predictions simply wrong? Or: was the doomsaying a calculated strategy, designed to shrink the Earth’s population before it was too late? Environmentalists were saying humankind was pushing the Earth’s limits; technologists, meanwhile, said those limits were nowhere in sight.

MANN: The world is finite, obviously, and the real question is not whether there are limits, but whether the limits are relevant. At some point, we do run out of planet. But what exactly that limit is and when we’re going to hit it — I think it’s much less well-known than either side says it is.

DUBNER: So did you come to feel then that both camps — rather than wizards and prophets, we can call them techno-optimists and environmentalists — do you feel that both camps to some degree intentionally misrepresent their strengths in order to engender support, when in fact the reality — and indeed, most solutions — is probably much more nuanced than that?

MANN: I think so. I’m not sure about intentionally, because people get convinced. I think that neither side truly appreciates how much of a leap in the dark jumping into the future is. They’re both overly confident that we know what we’re doing. Take energy for instance. The best solution for the prophets is this whole sort of neighborhood solar thing. But that depends on there being innovations in computer technology and innovations in energy storage, in energy transmission, that simply aren’t here yet. Maybe they can be done, but do we actually know how to do it? No.

Similarly, the wizards, they typically imagine very large numbers of next-generation nuclear plants. And they argue, totally rationally and totally correctly, that these have the smallest environmental footprint of any form of energy generation. They’re completely right about this. But I’m not actually seeing that happening. Nobody seems to be building these things. Next-generation nuclear plants have been around for 30 or 40 years, at least on the drawing board, and only a few of them have actually ever been tried. So you wonder, how is that going to happen? Both of these: how is this going to happen?

While wrestling with the best ways to move forward when it comes to energy, food, water, and climate change, Charles Mann found himself looking backward. Specifically, to two men — the wizard and the prophet who make up the title of his new book. Its subtitle is: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World.

DUBNER: Let’s start with your prophet, William Vogt. So tell us briefly about him, and why he was the one who qualified to become the prophet in your book.

MANN: Well, he is, more than anyone else, the progenitor of the modern environmental movement. And the basic idea of it is one of limits. He called it carrying capacity. And this is that the Earth, the environment — another idea he invented, the environment — is governed by these ecological processes and we transgress them at our peril. And therefore we have to hunker down. We have to put on our cardigan sweaters and turn down the thermostat and eat lower in the food chain and all that sort of stuff. And he put this all together in a book. It’s now forgotten, but it was hugely influential, called Road to Survival. It was published in 1948, and it’s the first modern “we’re all going to hell” book, if you know what I mean.

DUBNER: As apocalyptic as his beliefs and predictions were, the title itself connotes at least survival, if not prosperity. Was the road to survival, basically, hope that a lot more people don’t get born and/or a lot of people die, and we have enough to go around, and we get small?

MANN: Much of the book is a passionate screed for population control, sometimes written in language that makes you cringe. Another big chunk of the book is about how we should do things in a way that fits better within nature, and that’s things like stop farming within marginal land. It’s paying attention to erosion. It’s not overusing fertilizer.

DUBNER: So when you say that his discussion about population growth makes you cringe, was it from a classist perspective, the cringing comes from, or racist — how would you describe it?

MANN: I would say yes, both. He was, basically, pretty misanthropic. And it’s hard to avoid noticing that although he was very, very hard on rich, white people and overconsumption and being wasteful and destructive and so forth, that the brunt of the population-reduction stuff he’s talking about are on poor, brown people in other parts of the world. And he sometimes described them in language that is really kind of appalling — he talks about Indians breeding with the irresponsibility of codfish, and so forth. In this he was very much a man of that time, unfortunately. And this is something that environmentalists today should be aware of and think about. Their movement has some pretty deep roots in some pretty bad places.

William Vogt’s work inspired the first best-selling environmental book: Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. Here’s Carson:

Rachel CARSON : Can anyone believe that it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?

MANN: And books like The Population Bomb; Al Gore’s first book, Earth in the Balance; The Limits to Growth. All these great environmental classics all stem directly from his work. That’s why I picked him.

William Vogt was born in 1902 on Long Island, New York, back when it was largely bucolic.

MANN: And then it was just engulfed by suburbanization. So he tried to find nature, he ends up in a Brooklyn slum, and is plucked from that and goes to one of those schools they have in New York where the deserving poor are given special education.

He becomes the first college graduate in his family — with a degree in French literature.

MANN: And a degree in French literature was probably as useful in career building then as it is now. And he turned to ornithology. He was a passionate birdwatcher. I should mention that he had polio, as well, and he went all over the place despite finding great difficulty in walking and having canes and braces and having to be hauled around and so forth. He was a gutsy guy. And through a whole series of unlikely circumstances — he ends up becoming the official ornithologist of the Peruvian government on these guano islands off the coast of Peru. And these islands have had seabirds roosting on them for millennia upon millennia. And the seabirds do what they do, which is to eat fish nearby and excrete huge quantities of bird poop. I’m allowed to say that on your podcast?

DUBNER: Sure are. Absolutely.

MANN: You guys are just, you know, hang loose, right?

DUBNER: We’re very pro-poop.

MANN: Okay. And this, in the 1850’s, became the origin of today’s hugely important fertilizer industry, these vast heaps of bird poop that were on these islands off the coast of Peru. And they became very important to the Peruvian government. To maintain the supply of poop, you need to maintain the supply of birds. In the 1930’s, the supply of birds started declining, and they brought him in, as he said, “to augment the increment of excrement.” And he spent three years there, and he actually did a remarkable piece of ecological science, a foundational piece.

He realized that there is an oscillation of the currents there, it’s called today, El Niño, La Niña. And he argued that when the warm water came in, when the El Niño phase came in, the anchovetas, which were the fish that the birds ate on these islands, swam far out into the Pacific to avoid the warm water. They like cold water. And the birds couldn’t reach them. And this recurring phenomenon put a cap on the number of birds that you could have on these islands. And you could not augment the increment of excrement — that nature set these bounds. And if he did increase the bird supply, it would just mean that things would be worse when the next El Niño came in. And this was this powerful insight for him. This is the way nature worked. And he put it together.

And then he made two big steps, which I think are enormously important. One is that he said, this kind of phenomenon, which is called a carrying capacity — means that only so much can be produced because of these natural limits — could be stretched like taffy to cover the entire world. The world can be thought of as a single environment with a single carrying capacity. And the second, he said, is that we’re exceeding it. Or we’re about to exceed it, and that’s going to bring us into trouble.

DUBNER: William Vogt predicted, specifically, personally, he predicted famine, which as you write, hasn’t come true. So in the 1940’s, the global famine death rate was about 785 people per 100,000 — so, call 800 per 100,000. It’s now 3 per 100,000. So let me ask you this: as a prophet, do you need to be right? Or is it enough to sound the alarm? Because obviously on that dimension at least, a prediction of famine and population wipeout, Vogt was wildly wrong.

MANN: Now, I think there are two responses to it. The first is, “Okay, you’re right, it didn’t happen, but it will happen eventually. We just got the timing wrong.” And the second response, which, to my way of thinking at least, is more nuanced, is, “You’re right, we didn’t get that right, but a lot of the other things they predicted, we did get right.” And that is true. Nitrogen pollution is a huge issue. I mean, about 40 percent of the fertilizer that’s been used didn’t get absorbed by plants, and it got — either went up in the air, where it interferes with the ozone layer, not a good idea, or it becomes nitrous oxide, closer to the ground, in the air, which has caused all kinds of health problems. Or even worse, it goes into the streams, which goes into the rivers, which goes into the ocean, causes these enormous blooms of algae and other aquatic plants. These die, they fall down to the bottom. Microorganisms consume them, it’s sort of an orgy of breakfast, and they metabolize so quickly they suck all the oxygen out of the air and you get these huge dead zones in coastal areas around the world. And you can go on and on. All that stuff, if you point to that, they’re looking better.

At the same time as William Vogt, the prophet, was sounding the alarm on overpopulation and what he saw as the resultant famine, there was another scientist whose discoveries would lead to a dramatic growth of the global population. This is the wizard in Charles Mann’s book; his name: Norman Borlaug.

MANN: He was born in a very poor family in Iowa, poor soil, terrible, hardscrabble farm, worked like a dog. He was determined to get off of that, he really hated it, clearly. He thought his way to do it, because he didn’t think he was very smart, was athletics. To do that, he needed to go to college, which he was able to do, really, thanks to the fact that Henry Ford had invented the cheap tractor.

DUBNER: Which let his family free him up from the labor, yes?

MANN: Right, freed him up from the labor. And even more important, when you have horses, and oxen and so forth doing the labor for you, you have to grow food for them, and you have to tend to them. And they’re just huge time sinks, and they’re land sinks. And a typical small farmer in those days, about 40 percent of the family’s land was devoted to growing the food for the animals.

DUBNER: That was one of my favorite statistics in your book. I mean, it’s one of those things that, the minute you see it, it makes perfect sense. But I never would have imagined it.

MANN: Exactly. It’s almost like doubling your land. And of course your land becomes more productive. A tractor is a huge, huge deal.

DUBNER: On two dimensions at least, right? In terms of making more available land and, obviously, increasing the pace of the labor.

MANN: Right, and making people’s lives better, and also being able to accomplish more, just, — it’s vastly better.

Thanks to that tractor, Borlaug did go to college; he studied forestry and eventually got a Ph.D. in plant pathology and genetics. During World War II, he worked at DuPont, trying to make water-proof ration boxes and mold-proof condom wrappers. Then he got a job with the Rockefeller Foundation, trying to boost the production of wheat in Mexico.

MANN: And the remarkable thing is, he succeeded, despite not knowing Spanish, never having been out of the country, never having bred wheat before, hardly having worked with wheat before. And the wheat genome is terrifically complicated, it’s five times as many genes as there are human genes. And because plants can do weird things that mammals can’t, there’s three copies of each genome in every cell. There’s six different versions of each gene. It’s just a mess.

DUBNER: So his breakthrough came about from what you described as shuttle breeding. Can you describe A, why that was unusual, why more people didn’t try that; and B, why it worked?

MANN: More people didn’t try it because it was literally written in the textbooks that it wouldn’t work. And the thing is, he was so ignorant — very occasionally, ignorance is good. And what he thought to do was — plant breeding is very slow, because in most places there’s only one crop of wheat that you grow a year. It’s either called winter or spring wheat, and you have to wait an entire year to grow the next. And there had been a dogma that you have to breed the crop in the area in which it’s going to be grown. And he thought, “Wait a minute. What if I grow one crop in the south of Mexico and one crop in the north of Mexico, where it’s warmer? And that way, I can do two a year and make things go twice as fast.”

DUBNER: Well, Borlaug found a way through, as you said, grit and luck, and a handful of other things, to make wheat a much, much, much more productive and more flexible crop. And this gave way to what we came to call the Green Revolution, and Borlaug went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. So talk to me about the consequences of, really, this one man and what he helped produce, good and bad consequences.

MANN: Well, the good consequences are really striking. If you look at the data, shortly after the Green Revolution, wheat production in Mexico just soars. It basically quadruples. The same techniques come to the American middle west, and that’s when the American middle west becomes a huge agricultural powerhouse. Our yields just increase enormously. It goes to India and Pakistan. Same thing. Then, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations are excited by what they’re seeing in wheat, and they set up the International Rice Research Institute outside the Philippines, and they resolve to do the same thing with rice. And yields triple there. And the world just grows enormously more food. And sometime in the 1980’s, for the first time in recorded history, the average person on earth has enough food year-round. And famine — except for famine induced by war — basically ends. It’s a huge moment. And I sort of think this should be taught in all the schools. So that’s the good part, and it’s a huge good part.

DUBNER: Okay, so let’s talk about the downsides of the Green Revolution. One of them, you write, is that it essentially fueled income inequality. Land became more valuable. It just created a lot of leverage. On the other hand, the alternative would be that everyone gets to be poor and hungry, other than maybe, warlords and kings, right? So how much credence should we give inequality as a downside of the Green Revolution?

MANN: I think you should give quite a bit of credence to it, because when we say, “inequality,” it sort of minimizes the actual experience, just as we are talking about, when a small holder’s farm is able to grow four times as much food, the land becomes four times as much valuable, and it becomes worth stealing. And in countries with very weak institutions, which is unfortunately most of the world, it was stolen, often with the active support of the elites in the government. And huge numbers of people were pushed off the farms and forced into slums, and communities were broken up.

DUBNER: And what about the environmental costs of the Green Revolution?

MANN: The big environmental costs of this are nitrogen pollution. What we talked about before.

DUBNER: So did Borlaug, later in life, acknowledge the costs of the growth that he helped produce?

MANN: Kind of. There’s a way that, when you’ve accomplished something, and somebody is carping, that you say, “Well yes, but,” and you acknowledge what they do and then you brush past it. He said, “Wait a minute, the work that we’ve done has saved hundreds of millions of people from starvation. That’s a big deal. And there’s no upside without a downside. So yeah, there’s a downside, but holy cow.” And I think that’s pretty easy to understand.

I should tell you that I talked briefly with Borlaug before his death. An article had just come out that was trying to estimate the impact of the Green Revolution, and said that Borlaug and his people, if you looked carefully, had saved 600 million lives. So I put this to him, and he was an exceptionally modest guy, a very personally attractive guy. And he said, “Oh, I think that number is exaggerated, and it was a whole bunch of people, and it wasn’t just me,” and all the things you’d expect him to say. And I said, “Look, suppose that they’re off by an order of magnitude, and you yourself are only responsible for saving 60 million lives. How does that feel?” There’s a long pause. “You know what? It feels pretty good.”

Norman Borlaug died in 2009. But the legacy of his wizardry lives on, in force — not only in the modern-day miracle of global agriculture, but in the belief that science and technology can save lives.

MYHRVOLD: You know, there was no golden age of mankind that was better than today. That’s the first point.

William Vogt died way back in 1968. His legacy also roars on, with countless prophets warning us of the coming dangers.

ROBINSON: How could we be mad enough, cruel enough, insane enough to have a world for our children and grandchildren which will be unlivable? And that is what we’re headed toward at the moment.

* * *

DUBNER: So, you called your book The Wizard and The Prophet, not The Wizard Versus The Prophet. But in some ways, it is asking us as readers to judge the two men and the movements that they helped create against each other. It strikes me a little bit as an unfair fight, in that wizards actually do stuff — they invent things and they push new ideas and systems and products, whereas prophets, it seems at least to me, primarily shake their fist against the sky and urge people to stop doing things.

MANN: Well, I failed if I have completely convinced you that the prophets don’t do anything, because I don’t think that’s really true. I think there is certainly a lot of decrying and fist-shaking going on. That’s absolutely right. But they are arguing for, really, a different way of life. And, if you like it, a different kind of technology. So there is this clash, but it really represents a preference for different kinds of technology — which need to be invented and supported — rather than an idea of a technology versus decrying technology. Although you’re absolutely right, there is that overtone.

It’s time now to hear from a modern-day prophet. One with impressive credentials:

ROBINSON: My name is Mary Robinson. I’m president now of the Mary Robinson Foundation: Climate Justice, former president of Ireland, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

DUBNER: Let’s talk for a moment about what you’ve been doing between the U.N. position and now you’ve just written a book called Climate Justice. I’d love to know about the road in politics that led you to this topic.

ROBINSON: Well, in a way I’m quite late coming to the importance of climate change in undermining and negating human rights. When I finished my seven years as president of Ireland in 1997, I became high commissioner for human rights. I don’t remember making any significant speech because another part of the U.N. was dealing with climate change. It was when I started work in Africa on behalf of a small N.G.O. and everywhere I went in Africa people kept saying, “things are so much worse.” And it was the unpredictability of the weather. People didn’t know when to sow and then their harvest would be destroyed, and the rainy seasons wouldn’t come. And I realized, my goodness, I missed this. This is a huge issue of human rights, and it’s so unjust, so unfair, and that’s why I don’t talk about climate change. I talk about climate justice.

DUBNER: You argue that our environmental problems are at heart human-rights injustices, largely committed by big rich countries like the U.S. against small and poor countries. And that’s an argument I’m sure resonates for many, many people. On the other hand, the technology and resources from rich countries also have a lot of benefits — food production, just to take one. How do you find the middle ground to have conversations that are not so accusatory toward the big, rich, polluting countries?

ROBINSON: I think that “climate justice” finds a very good balance in this, because we do acknowledge the injustice of the fact that the emissions have been caused, historically particularly, by the richer countries and now also by the emerging, the Chinas and the Indias and Russias, etc. And that has a big negative impact on food security, on life security, on health, on so many things for poorer developing countries who are not responsible for the emissions.

But we also say that we want — when we move to this renewable-energy world, which would be so much better for health, for jobs, etc. — that there is a fairness in ensuring that the poorer countries, and particularly the poorer people in those poorer countries, get the benefit. We need to get to those one billion people who never switch the switch for electricity. We’ve now got off-grid solutions. We need to get to the women, in particular, who cook on open fires with animal dung, coal, wood and ingest and die in very large numbers from that inhalation, and we need to make this an engagement of people in solidarity with other people.

DUBNER: It’s a really interesting — not a conflict, quite, you raise, but a two-headed problem, I guess. Technologists — and I guess you could include economists in there — they often advocate for a different set of solutions to problems, whether it’s famine or pollution or so on, than environmentalists do. And I think it mirrors political partisanship, whereby there’s very little middle ground and very little collaboration. Trying to convert people who are using animal dung as fuel — obviously that would require a technological solution that may require more energy from the grid. So can you talk about the two camps — if we consider it truly to be two camps, let’s say environmentalists on one side and real technologists on the other — what are some ways to accomplish a middle ground that you’ve seen in action, that you think are scalable?

ROBINSON: I’m not so sure, as you put the issue that way, that we have the kind of middle ground you’re talking about. We have to get out of coal rapidly, period. We have to get out of oil and gas pretty quickly, and be out of all three by 2050 to have that safe world. And what is happening and, I have to say this quite unequivocally, the fossil-fuel world is using the tactics of the tobacco industry. It’s using these tactics to muddy the science, delay things, and deny that there is a real problem. And unfortunately, as we know, President Trump has put in quite a number of climate deniers. How do we understand that the new economy is the renewable energy economy? Solar and wind are becoming so much cheaper. They’re very competitive, far more competitive than coal. We need to have that shift.

DUBNER: So you’re calling for the global community, however that can be created or defined, to come together to carry out climate justice. Talk to me about what you see as big previous successes in the global community coming together to solve problems.

ROBINSON: Well, one example is when we knew there was a threat to the ozone layer, we came together with the Montreal Convention to make sure that what was causing that problem with the ozone would be completely banned. We need to have exactly the same attitude to climate change. I mean, it has been said, and said very eloquently, we’re the first generation to really understand the dangers of climate change and that’s why we have the Paris commitment to stay well below 2 degrees of warming and work for 1.5 degrees and be carbon neutral by 2050, meaning out of greenhouse gases: coal, oil, gas, etc.

And we’re the first generation to understand all of this and the last generation with time and opportunity to make sure we do get out of it. We’re going to be into tipping points. The Arctic is going to go. We’re going to see a sea-level rise that will wipe out the islands. How could we be mad enough, cruel enough, insane enough to have a world for our children and grandchildren which would be unlivable? And that is what we’re headed toward at the moment.

MYHRVOLD: The way to have a dramatic message is to say we’re all going to die.

That’s Nathan Myhrvold, the former chief technology officer of Microsoft and now C.E.O. of an invention-and-technology firm called Intellectual Ventures.

MYHRVOLD: If you said, “Oh my God, the changes in the food system mean we’re all going to die,” is a lot worse than saying, “Changes in the food system mean we’re all going to be at least five pounds heavier than we would ideally like to be.” I mean, you don’t get any oomph out of that.

DUBNER: If you had to declare yourself, let’s say, x percent wizard and y percent prophet, with “prophet” representing environmentalist and concerned about population and the environment, and “wizard” representing technology and maybe techno-optimist, what are those numbers for you, Nathan Myhrvold?

MYHRVOLD: Oh, probably 90-10. And if you push me it might be 98-2. The part where I would differ from many environmentalists is I understand that technology is not just a bad thing that got us in this terrible situation. Technology is also our salvation. And the notion that we have caused problems in our society which we have to fix, in least in part through technology, that is the story of mankind.

DUBNER: So, The Economist has said that you have “an unshakeable belief that human ingenuity will sort everything out.” What’s that belief based on? Other than history?

MYHRVOLD: Well, historical experience. What do you mean, “other than history?” Our species has faced many, many great challenges. And when we face a great challenge, one of the things that we fall back on is technology. And frankly, that is what distinguishes us from other creatures. Most animals have to undergo biological evolution. They can’t learn and undergo a cultural evolution. When we went from being hunters and gatherers to being agriculturalists, that wasn’t because we evolved new kinds of limbs meant for agriculture. What it meant was we learned how to sow crops and harvest them and build a civilization that could stay in one place because we had a regular food supply.

Every time we have a really powerful technology that really changes the world, well of course there’s problems that come up. And you can blame technology, but I think the constant in that equation is humans. So, of course we will over-exploit things, of course we will do a set of things that is very much human nature, but for most problems, we wind up realizing it eventually and we fix it.

DUBNER: But a prophet might say, “Well, just because technology or technologies were the solution to one set of problems doesn’t mean it will be the solution to the next set of problems.” And, indeed, if one makes the argument, as many prophets do, that these problems are actually the result of technologies, then, indeed, the most natural solution would be the opposite of that, which is some kind of reversion, some kind of return to a more natural state, a smaller population. So what do you say to that argument?

MYHRVOLD: Well, that argument is so absurd on so many levels that the miracle is that there are people who can say it with a straight face. There was no golden age of mankind that was better than today. That’s the first point. There’s a lot of, “Oh, let’s hearken back to those wonderful old days. You know, when the feudal lord oppressed us, when the number-one killer of women was childbirth, when infant mortality was 50 percent.” Oh yeah, I really want those days back. In order to worship the past, you have to have a very bizarre filter on to filter out those aspects of the past that you don’t like.

Look, the single biggest thing that would help world population is to get a higher standard of living in the parts of the world where it’s still crushingly bad. If the bottom two billion people in the world had a better lifestyle, ironically, that’s what would lower their population and help them have a better lifestyle going forward.

This is a point on which Myhrvold and Mary Robinson, wizard and prophet, happen to agree.

ROBINSON: We know exactly what will reduce population. It’s educating girls and women, and it’s having a health system that works — universal access to good health care. And we’ve seen in countries all over the world that the population comes down very rapidly when you educate girls and women and have a health system that functions.

On the issue of carbon emissions and climate change, meanwhile? Not much agreement between wizard and prophet there.

MYHRVOLD: I am not saying that global warming is a solved problem, I think is an incredibly hard problem to solve. So, I’m not saying all of our problems are trivial. Far from it. I think that if we put our heads together we will come up with ways to cope and maybe eliminate. And that is a really important thing.

Myhrvold has spent some time thinking about technological solutions to the climate-change problem.

MYHRVOLD: So, climate change is a 1-percent effect. Now all we have to do is make the sun 1 percent dimmer. Now I don’t literally mean changing the sun. But there are a variety of things that bounce sunlight back into space. Clouds are one of those things: white clouds bounce white light back up into space. It turns out that volcanoes throw ash and particles, if it’s a big volcano, very high in the atmosphere. That reflects some of that light. And in fact this happened in 1991 when Mount Pinatubo went off. It cooled worldwide temperatures by a degree, degree-and-a-half-Fahrenheit for 12 to 18 months. Well, my company has come up with some very practical and cost-effective ways of deliberately putting particles into the upper atmosphere. And on paper, it works out that you could nullify all of global warming that way.

These geoengineering ideas are, in many quarters, quite poorly received.

MYHRVOLD: People get extreme, some people anyway, get extremely angry, and they say, “Oh, technology got us in this problem, why are using technology to get us out?” And that’s where I come to think of saying, “Well, okay so are you sincere about worrying about global warming? Or are you using global warming as a stalking horse for your political agenda?” If you’re sincere about the harm of global warming, you say, “I don’t want my environment screwed up. I don’t want millions of people to die.” So, if you take that problem-oriented view, if we can stop that problem, that’s good right?

This is one characteristic of the wizard’s solution: a large-scale, top-down fix. Many prophets, meanwhile, think about small-scale, bottom-up.

ROBINSON: Well there’s a lovely story of this woman that I was very impressed by. She’s an anthropologist. Mrs. Tong, she was a professor who moved from Vietnam to Australia and could have had a very good living in Sydney, and came back to her country because she wanted to work with poor people in her region. She introduced me to the regional officer, she introduced me to the elders, she introduced me to the women, etc. They had broken down the level at which women could be involved comfortably. She said, “If we did it at the district level, women would feel disempowered.”

So we broke down to eight families coming together and forming a co-operative, and we now have a number of co-operatives who are in charge of a certain part of the forestry to maintain that forest. And the regional officer, at her persuasion, had given them the right to the fruits of the forest as they say. The first fruits were medicinal and actual fruits. And then they said, “Next year, we’ll be able to cull some of the trees, but we will plant new trees. We will maintain the forest.”

And this for me was a wonderful example, which I know is happening in indigenous communities all around the world. They actually save forests. And if we’d only listen to indigenous peoples, we would save far more forests. And we need to replant and save rainforests, and if we listen to those who really understand their neighborhood and their forests, we’ll do it much more quickly and more effectively.

DUBNER: A lot of the solutions that you praise and suggest that we scale up are reliant, to some degree at least, on behavior change, on people deciding to make a different kind of consumption decision or whatnot. And as most of us know, even if just from our own personal experience — whether it’s a diet or exercise or spending/saving money, and so on — behavior change and self-discipline can be very difficult. And I’m curious whether you truly believe that relying on humans to “do the right thing” on a large scale will be successful enough to have the kind of effect in the climate realm that you hope for.

ROBINSON: Well, I certainly think it is important that we change our behavior to a significant extent, and it is happening. People are recycling more. More young people are vegetarian or even vegan. There is a real acknowledgement that we need to do this, and actually women, in the home and in their community, are more likely to be leaders on changing behavior. That’s what we’re good at in the family.

You may not always be successful, and I’m not the best myself. I’m more vegetarian than I was, but I’m not pure vegetarian, yet. I aspire to be. I love some West Ireland lamb, that sort of thing. But the point really is that we need to understand the health and the economic benefits that come from a change in vision about where we want to see the world, and that’s the most important thing.

MYHRVOLD: I am skeptical that we will solve it by just doing the right thing. And I mean that somewhat facetiously. To give an example, there was a little book that was popular a few years ago called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth. Well, those are 50 simple things that you can do to feel self-righteous and none of them are going to save the world. And I think that approach, and that attitude, fundamentally mistakes what the problem is, and it creates a situation where people can feel good about themselves. “Oh, I unplugged my iPhone charger while I was away today.” And yet, no matter, even if all of us did that, it would not materially change what’s going to happen to global warming. We have to make actually very painful cuts, which our society isn’t very good at doing.

ROBINSON: We need to be careful about how we will move rapidly to having renewable energy in developing countries. Developing countries have become very ambitious to get renewable energy. We’re learning that there are human-rights abuses occurring where clean energy is being put into a country in the wrong way. And the wrong way tends to be mega projects that don’t have any concern for land rights or water rights or indigenous people’s rights to consent locally.

An example that I’m aware of was a big wind farm in Kenya, and it was on pastoral land belonging to Maasai pastoralists. Nobody thought they had land rights, but they had always brought their animals on this land. And these big, 365 wind turbines were being built, and they wouldn’t have even benefited from the energy, from the clean energy, the electricity. So they took a case in court in Kenya and blocked the whole thing until their rights were being properly recognized.

MYHRVOLD: Well, then there’s nuclear power. So, nuclear power is a carbon-free energy source that absolutely works. The United States got scared of nuclear starting in the 1970’s and through the 1990’s. Then-Vice President Gore presided over the announcement of killing the last nuclear plant in the United States because we were going to build safe coal plants. Now we realize, inconveniently, that global warming is a threat.

ROBINSON: Well, I’m not an expert on the nuclear issue, I have to admit that. The way I see it, nuclear energy has its own problems. We saw that in Japan when the nuclear power plants were flooded. What incredible problems, and they’re lifelong problems for the Japanese. There are problems at the end of the lifecycle that make it very expensive. There are problems in building nuclear power stations that make it very expensive.

And meanwhile we have the much cheaper renewable energy coming on stream, and that I understand much better. So I’m not making a whole statement. I think it’s true that nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gas emissions and that’s important. France has nuclear energy and has benefited from it but also has the problems now of aging nuclear power stations and the cost to the economy of getting rid of those.

I went back to Charles Mann, author of The Wizard and the Prophet, about the nuclear-power conundrum.

DUBNER: Nuclear power is one of these things that a lot of environmentalists have come around to embrace as —

MANN: At least, some.

DUBNER: — and what’s interesting is that I look to that as an example of how the standoff between the wizards and the prophets can turn into inertia. Because if there had seen more collaboration and less grandstanding, rather than inventing a technology that then got old and got exported to Japan and France, we probably would have kept building a better technology that by now would be — whether universally accepted or not, who knows — but it seems that the environmentalist protest against nuclear was so strong that it really stymied invention or innovation. So that strikes me as one of the potentially worst paths of having wizards and prophets, or technologists and environmentalists, not sharing a language, sharing a middle ground. And I’m curious where you see this can go, or should go.

MANN: Well, the present that we have, as you say, I think quite accurately is the worst of the many worlds, right, in which people are at loggerheads. I suspect that one of the underlying issues is that much of these discussions, the debates, the arguments, are couched in, I think what the philosophers call “prudential terms.” So the people who don’t like nuclear power say, “Well, we don’t like it because it’s unsafe. We don’t like it because of the waste. We don’t like it because of proliferation and so forth.” And those are all true. But they’re mainly pretexts. They don’t like it because they don’t like the path that takes you down, which they see as giant centralized facilities under state control, and further and further away from democracy. They don’t like it for the same reason they just don’t like big corporations.

The fundamental arguments are really about values. And we typically argue them on the basis of practical things, as if that is actually what is fueling the debate. I’ve never seen, to my knowledge, a nuclear power person saying, “What if we built compact nukes with smaller scale and shorter life spans that can be used as a bridge fuel in the way that people talk about natural gas?” and say, “Okay, we’ll have this nuclear power plant for 30 years and that will buy us time so that the renewable stuff can kick in.”

DUBNER: Why do you think that conversation isn’t happening? Is that a failure of one camp, or is it this construct that has been set up by people like William Vogt, and maybe by Borlaug as well, that we can’t escape?

MANN: Well, there is a tendency for people to get really entrenched in their own walls. Our society is now so large that even advocacy groups have become an industry of their own. They have to protect their credibility and they start acting like the corporations that they decry. And it becomes more and more difficult for, not even it’s just a middle ground, but a creativity, to happen. And I think some of that is just a consequence of scale.

DUBNER: Let me ask you one last question, I want to know what you think is the prophet’s view and the wizard’s view on colonizing Mars. Right? So I can see that appealing, maybe not equally, but quite robustly to each camp. Obviously it requires a great deal of technology, but for the prophets it’s a chance to start anew with a planet we haven’t screwed up yet.

MANN: It’s interesting. I should say that I am — and ever, since I was a child, have been a space enthusiast. I think the kind of tradeoff there is — do you know the science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy?

DUBNER: No.

MANN: It’s a fascinating look at exactly colonizing Mars, and, in a certain way it’s all about the clash between the wizards and the prophets, because it’s about how we should live on this new planet. And yes, we need all kinds of technological development. But what is the life that we’re going to have here? And also, how are we going to terraform it? How are we going to make it more habitable? And I think there’s a rich room for disagreement and argument there. You could put it inside a dome city, which would in a certain way be the most efficient way, or else you could really take the challenge of trying to transform the whole planet and make it breathable.

DUBNER: If you were going to bring one science adviser with you on that establishment of a human colony there, would it be William Vogt, or would it be Norman Borlaug?

MANN: Well, I hadn’t thought about this. What I’m thinking is, which person would I like to be locked up with a small vessel for several years? And Borlaug, I think had a better sense of humor.

DUBNER: Yeah, that seems an easy answer. But forget about being locked up. So let’s say that personal confinement was not the one metric that you had to choose your scientist on, but would you rather have the guy who figured out a new dimension of botany? Or a guy who understood that resources are finite and carrying capacity is a concept that should be applied to the environment, and so on?

MANN: You know, it’s funny. I think I would choose Vogt. And here’s the reason: that is a hostile environment. Mistakes will kill you. I’m starting out. I want somebody who’s hyper-aware of potential mistakes. I think I would probably have a chance of coming up with some of the innovations and so forth, I’d really want somebody who would point out how I might be on a path to killing myself. So if I could have Borlaug on the way over and transform him to Vogt when I’m there.

Charles Mann’s book is called The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. Thanks to him, and also to Mary Robinson and Nathan Myhrvold.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Harry Huggins. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rosalsky, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melathe, Zack Lapinski, and Andy Meisenheimer. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Charles C. Mann, journalist and author.

Mary Robinson, president of the Mary Robinson Foundation: Climate Justice, former president of Ireland, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and co-host of the podcast Mothers of Invention.

Nathan Myhrvold, co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, former chief technology officer at Microsoft.

RESOURCES

The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann (Knopf 2018).

Climate Justice by Mary Robinson (Bloomsbury Publishing 2018).

EXTRA

Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Spectra 1992, 1993, and 1996).

“Nathen Myhrvold, Myth Buster” Alex Renton, The Economist 1843 (January/February 2015 Issue).

The post Two (Totally Opposite) Ways to Save the Planet (Ep. 346) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/save-the-planet/

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talesfromtherift · 6 years

Text

Visiting Family - Part Two

"The Sunken City. Isn't that a bit on the nose? I liked the old name, myself."

Myrios walked through the back of Sebastian's store with him. The place felt just as cold and barren as the front. He tried to listen but could only feel something like ominous breathing, nothing like the life he felt in his own store. This store had plans and ambitions. This store had schemes, and these were reflected in its owner, Sebastian Blacke.

"I thought it was fitting. Considering the circumstances, it was the smallest dagger that I was allowed to wield," the man intoned as they walked through long, barely lit hallways that twisted and turned until you had no bearings, no idea of where you could possibly be going.

They stopped at the entrance to an amazing baroque antechamber. The walls were covered in frescoes and paintings. Gold accented the pillars, and met at the top of a large dome covered in paintings, much like the Sistine Chapel. In the middle was something that resembled a gazebo. Four black pillars rose to support a smaller dome, ringed in gold and obsidian.

"You should remember all of these, Myrios. You were there. You caused this. Don't tell me otherwise. I saw you. Walking away amid the chaos." The man shows the first cracks in his facade. "You let this HAPPEN! And for WHAT?! Because your favorite little sister was killed? You let an entire continent sink while we destroyed ourselves because you were SAD?!"

Myrios winces at the man's words, perhaps the first expressions of shame and regret crossing the man's face in an Age. "You know full well it was Xander that started that. That's why we have our accords. A continent sank and we lost five siblings. We got too involved. We puffed our chests and acted as Gods, and priests, and Prophets! We were stupid! We have the Accords now. That hasn't happened in an Age. Let this go."

"Accords you've now chosen to violate! I nearly lost my store, you insipid pacifist. Rome burned while you stood watching! You're only lucky that I had another storefront opened or I'd be gone as well." The man's anger was welling up inside of him but he stopped himself, the fury departing him just as suddenly as it had come. "Of course, you managed to keep your hands clean in all of this. I saw you, watching. You did nothing. Five. That's how many of our siblings you let die."

"I tried to talk all of you out of it," Myrios said grimly. "The warring was foolish. You all got caught up in your egos and the worship. Azi was the best of us. I learned from her unfortunate lesson and tried to make you all see as well."

Myrios sighed and his strange eyes swept around, taking a closer look at some of the frescoes. The intricacy of detail was amazing compared to even modern capabilities; relics of an Age long past. The ones closer to the ground depicted seemingly mundane endeavors: crowds gathered around performances. Gods on the steps of temples. Many wonders were depicted, wonders now lost to the sands of Time.

As the eye was drawn upwards, the pictures became more dire; depicting conflict, battle, fire, and ultimately the mural at the top of the dome. In brilliant, blazing colors spread out a series of toppled buildings, smoking temples, and scores of bodies littering the scene. In the foreground, a man in black knelt, weeping over the bodies, long white hair and sullen face blood-streaked and mangled. In the background, atop the broken head of a fallen statue stands a familiar man, dressed in white robes with a brilliant blue scarf blowing in an imagined wind, like some sort of judging god or avenging angel. Arms crossed on his chest, he looks down at the scene, sunglasses obscuring his eyes.

"That's quite the revisionist take on Atlantis, don't you think, Sebastian? You were in no way the savior. You drew as much blood as Xander and Cruxi, maybe more. THAT is a farce." He pointed at the mural with outrage on his face. "You did none of that for your family or the people of Atlantis. You did it for yourself and you know it! Now can we stop this pity party and get on with whatever you want? I have important things to do."

The man bristled again but managed to maintain his composure. "You're right. You may be a coward, but you are absolutely right.

"Please, have a seat in the chair.” He gestured. “I'm sure you remember these. I managed to save this holo-inducer before the whole continent broke apart and was swallowed up by the Void."

Sebastian circled around what appears to be some sort of stone examination table. He patted the flat spot in the chair and motioned for Myrios to sit. "This won't be pleasant, but that's not a concern of mine. You know that I can't harm you due to the accords, but I have other ways to get my point across. Now, before we begin, won't you give me an idea of what I'll be informing you about? I would know the specifics so that I can honor our deal fully. At least one of us will keep to the Accords,” he said in a scathing tone. “Is there anything you'd like to say before I leave you to… this... for the next week?"

Myrios took his jacket and shoes off and lay them on a nearby bench before hopping up on the table. "You know exactly who I'm talking about. If you know enough to propose a deal, then you know what I'm after. But so we can avoid a mistake that I made earlier, I will speak very clearly and very slowly so that you can't twist these words. One of us. took blood. From Sulwen. Morgan-Dorne. You have that, every syllable? Because I want to know which one of us made the deal. I wish to visit them. The details beyond that are mine to know."

"So you intend to further violate the Accords, then?" Sebastian shook his head, gesturing and causing a hard light panel to appear. Then he began typing on buttons. "We don't interfere in other shops' business. That's what happened in Atlantis, and that's why we're here now." He hits a few more buttons and light starts pulsing from pillars, one by one. "As a matter of fact, if I had been so inclined... I took issue with a few of the sales that you've made over the years. I didn't darken your doorstep, did I?"

Myrios shook his head. "You did not. Though, before you turn the lights off and I have to experience whatever this is for the next week, just tell me one thing." He tilted his head to get a better look at Sebastian. "Do you have a bedroom?"

"Of course not. I have no need for such nonsense. I don't try to be more than what I am. I don't hold any love for these mayflies we call patrons. They're gone like THAT!" He snapped his fingers, and in the building aura of the holo-inducer the sound became amplified until nearly deafening. "Why would I try to endear myself to that which will barely persist beyond a heartbeat of ours?"

Myrios simply nodded stoically and took his sunglasses off, tossing them onto his suit jacket. He looked up at the malice-saturated face of Sebastian, who was applying a band around Myrios's head, covering his eyes and blacking out the light. He smiled a bit, but he knew what was coming. "Because some of them are worth it, Sebastian. Some of them need the help."

As the field built, Sebastian exited the gazebo structure and watched inside. "Where was this sentimental streak when we were killing ourselves? When thousands of people died and an entire continent was lost? Where was that love then?"

Sebastian watched as the field reaches a critical point and with a loud WHUM sound the gazebo was filled, playing scenes of fire and death and the screams of the dying... and those who only wished for death in vain.

The man had to turn his head from the scene. This wasn't his punishment, after all. These were only his memories, and ones he wished would fade.

He made his way back to the entryway, a wicked smile on his face as the first painful noises came from the man in the chair. Sounds that would only grow in intensity...

Sounds that he'd relish for the next week.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Myrios walked stiffly from the shop. His head was upset with the activities of the last week. His eyes burned in the blinding sun, and everything had a red tinge to it. He shook his head and tried to get his bearings for a few moments.The images and flashes filled his mind. Screams and bodies. Fires filling the streets.

The sound of cars violently crashing together in a sudden accident rattled him to the core, sounding much like the cracking of the earth as Atlantis broke apart and tumbled into the Void.

Myrios slumped against the front of Sebastian’s shop, trying to shake the images from his head. Shakily, he brought his hand up to read the piece of paper in the light of day. It took several minutes before his sight cleared enough to make out the writing.

"Phaethon LeGrande, eh?" he muttered to himself. "I didn't know you were even still around... you sneaky bastard." His voice sounded hoarse and cracked in his ears, his mind returning to the images of shops burning under fire from terrible weapons and magic.

Myrios then looked around him and forced himself to focus for a few moments, a focus hard-won. He saw images of himself, standing silent witness to the destruction, every time he closed his eyes; as if that terrible cinema was magically seared into his lids.

At last, the disoriented Shopkeeper managed to disappear into a golden halo of light. When he rematerialized, he found himself on the endless beckoning paths of Agartha’s branches.

He felt more energized as he stood in the enfolding arms of the tree, and before long the smile returned to his face. He closed his eyes.

"Where are you today?" He murmured quietly to himself as he reached out his senses to find Phaethon's shop.

Phaethon LeGrande had one of the more unique shops in the 'verse. There were several rules that he didn't follow, according to the nature of his shop. Unlike the other shopkeepers, Phaethon's store appeared wherever probability dictated he could make the highest number of optimal deals for his current stock of merchandise. Only temporarily did he have multiple storefronts, so he could neatly skirt around having more than one shop in a city. This made it difficult to find him, as he could be anywhere at any point in time or space. The last time Myrios had seen him was in the 1860's; the American Civil War.

He focused his attention and reached out with his power. Agartha was the perfect place for this, aside from his shop, but he wasn't ready to return there yet. Too many chances for something to intervene. Too many opportunities for someone to stop him.

His body glowed in the mystical environment for several long minutes before he stumbled on a thread belonging to his target.

"Gotcha, Phaethon."

Myrios grinned with relief, disappearing in a flash to find himself on the streets of Philadelphia. The hustle and noise of the city disoriented him for a moment, and he found himself incredibly pleased that he didn't materialize in the middle of 6th street.

He rallied quickly, and a wary smile came to his face. This was not the time to show weakness, but also, he did love the Old City. It had a certain... revolutionary charm to it. He chuckled to himself at his own pun and crossed 6th street to stand in front of the vintage sign, painted in the tacky 1970's plain font that was ever so popular. "The Storied Altar? Really, Phaethon?" He shook his head. " And here I thought I was a too fond of cliches."

The redhead peered in through the large plate window before he entered. The counter reminded him of an old 1920's shop, but, gods... that tacky yellow and pea green tile made him want to throw up. He was glad that he had sunglasses when he opened the front door and the tacky 'bing bong' sound of the electronic bell sounded. The place was gauche and it felt... filthy. The shadows didn't move right, and it felt as if it could've been infested with roaches or... something. This place seemed to exist just behind the veneer of the world, and somehow it gave him the distinct sense that like the storefronts, the inside of this place would shift, attracting whatever sort of customer its feelers had sensed might seek its stock. Either the shop's current stock wasn't seeking the cream of the crop when it came to Philadelphians, or the entire place was uniquely shaping itself to repel an unwanted invader... him.

Myrios poked at a magazine rack. All of the magazines were from earlier eras. He picked up a Time magazine from the '20s and flipped through it.

Eventually, he felt rather than heard the presence of another Shopkeeper. His eyes lifted up over the rim of his sunglasses and he casually put the magazine back on the rack, trying to seem aloof. Playing it cool was never a strong suit of his, but he felt it was time to give it a try.

"What brings you here, Myrios?" The man sounded suspicious, but confident, like a man who knew that he had the upper hand--a man on his home turf.

Myrios picked up a ritual dagger from the counter and tossed it into the air, eyeing Phaethon.

"Is that supposed to be intimidating, Myrios?" Phaethon inquired solicitously. "You know as well as I do that you can't hurt me. Even if you could, it wouldn't do you any good. I'm assuming that you're here to discuss things, and you'll get much farther if I'm able to discuss. Correct?" The man exuded a smooth confidence with a whiff of hubris. He puffed up his personality as an animal would in the wild to dissuade predators... then again, so did many dangerous serpents.

Phaethon LeGrande was a diminutive being. Much like Sebastian, he resembled someone's grandfather, if that grandfather was a particularly slick used car salesman. His hair had thinned to balding, a calculated effect to set visitors at ease. His grin both warmed you and made you look around, in case there was someone coming up to surprise you with a knife to the kidneys.

The stab never came in the way you'd think it would. It didn't come in the form of shadowy assassins or sneering rogues. The stab came in the form of little fellow with a pencil-thin moustache and a slate grey suit with a charming yellow flower on his lapel. He reminded you of the smells of candy and chemicals; he looked sweet and tasted foul. In fact, this whole place tasted foul to Myrios every time he breathed.

"I'm assuming that Sebastian has contacted you in the last week," Myrios notes. "He's had plenty of time to do so. I would think that he would simply to gloat, if nothing else." He picked up a small vase from the counter and turned it over, pointedly looking at the bottom before shaking his head and replacing it on the tacky fake-wood veneer of the counter.

"He hasn't said a word to me, dear brother. Why would he have occasion to contact me? We stay out of each other's business. As you did, until recently." Phaethon walked down the counter, running his hand along the beaten and worn cash register, the round, raised push buttons of the early twentieth century device making clicking noises as he went. His eyes were always fixed on Myrios; appraising him with the watchful gaze of a hawk, but knowing full well that he was the one with all the power here.

Myrios followed him along the counter, tapping his fingers along the glass front panel as he walked. Passing an old typewriter, he resisted the urge to hit the keys. He did so enjoy the sound of a properly used typewriter. He'd have to dig one up from the back sometime. "Then let's talk blood, and all of the reasons that we don't broker in it. We don't broker in control. We don't broker in death. And we certainly don't broker in the summoning of ancient beings. I'm not sure how many of these you've broken over the years, but I'm most interested in one."

"Tea?" The old man broke Myrios' attempt at an intimidating tone without so much as a waver or an ounce of worry in his voice.

The man set a cup on the counter and slid it between two vintage cookbooks towards Myrios.

Myrios eyed the tea cup and looked harshly at Phaethon.

"Suit yourself, Myrios. I can't force you to effect good manners. But you know there's nothing between us to worry yourself over. I can't poison you. I can't infect you with anything. Take it or leave it--of all the things I'm going to bargain for today, tea with you isn't going to be one of them."

The man sipped his own tea, loaded with cream and sugar to where it would barely resemble tea in appearance or taste. Myrios grudgingly took the offered cup, sniffing the liquid inside before adding milk and a tiny bit of sugar, and began to drink it with a sigh.

"That is, surprisingly, just what I needed. Everything else aside, thank you. But we have business I need to conclude, and it seems that you're the person to ask about it."

"You're only partially right, my brother," Phaethon corrects, one finger briefly held in the air. "YOU don't deal in blood and control. I do, though, though, in one highly specialized little area which DOES suit the terms of the accords: magical blood. The blood of beings who are in the know about the secret world, and of beings who can defend themselves should be it used against them in some way.

"Did you know that there's a very distinct lack of truly magical families these days?" Phaethon began to pace slowly along the counter, musing to himself. "The world has changed. People are not as devout to the gods as they once were. Fewer and fewer mortals are... 'superstitious.' That means blessings and bloodlines alike are becoming fewer and farther between. Some dynasties, particularly amongst the Templars, have fallen into true disrepair. So, I get it where I can... those few bright souls from wherever or whenever who wander into my shop with a need for something... special."

The man sipped his tea, continually sizing Myrios up. "And as for control, we ALL deal in control. You may not like to admit it, and some of our more... wayward siblings may revel in the dark and the Filth and the horrors; in things like souls and the pieces thereof... but at the end of the day, we all deal in control. But please, continue to lecture me about my business practices--as long as you recall that you can only do so because I choose not to harbor such foul means to use against you.” He smiles faintly. “I do so love these talks."

Abruptly, then, Phaethon placed his teacup on the counter, and stood to his full height. Despite the unimpressive nature of his stature, the awful fluorescent lighting of the ceiling did a wonderful job of shrouding him in shadow, making him look much more dark and intimidating than he should.

"I'm not here to play games, Phaethon." Myrios frowned. "Any other time I'd love to settle in on a game of Checkers or Go, but I want blood. I want a very specific person's blood that I'm sure you still have." He sipped his tea, hesitating each time as if he was trying to figure out if there really could be something in it, despite what the other Shopkeep had said.

He set the tea down when it was dry and stood across from Phaethon, hands flat on the counter and looming over him. He wasn't trying to be intimidating this time, which was strange because it was probably the only time that he had been. "I want what's left of Sulwen's blood."

His face was serious, but Phaethon grinned, knowing he had a bargain in the making. "Oh come now, Myrios. You're the fool. The whimsical, scatterbrained magpie. This is far too serious a business for you. Where's that odd smile, and the inane banter about walruses and sealing wax and all that?" With a trace of sadism then, he queried further, "where's the patting on the arm and whispering that things will be all right?"

Phaethon’s grin intensified as he let his words sink in for a moment.

"You've been using it to watch?! That was too specific to be a guess, even for you!" Myrios had gone pale for the moment. He found the intrusion nauseating, not for his own sake, but on the part of parties that he was fully glad weren't here.

"I only wanted to check up on the girl," Phaethon corrected, a little smugly but with a grandfatherly air that was disturbingly sincere. "She seemed a very nice girl in a very bad position." His sculpted brow tilted upward, and he jerked his head slightly. "You know the type. You obviously know the very specific example, in fact.

"We made a deal. I got her blood, and she got a book full of vital information that served her purposes nicely--and informed her about her very own magical bloodline, a cause near and dear to both my heart and my shop. Business complete." He spread his arms in a grand gesture, then calmly picked up his teacup once again and took a sip.

"I really did like the girl,” Phaethon mused then. “She was sweet. Kept inquiring after my health and offering to help heal my wheeze free of charge, but she was a wreck without any answers to her questions. Why, she thought she was a freak, a monster! Not a precious relic of a bygone era, blessed by a goddess and capable of achieving her favor." Phaethon actually seems as if his sensibilities had been offended by the state of affairs; as if some travesty of justice had occurred and appalled him deeply, but he shrugs his shoulders and smiles in the end. "The poor child needed to know the truth of her lost bloodline and her nature as a witch, in order to have peace with herself and a chance at fulfilling her true potential. The perfect person to wander into this shop, and you know the shop. It goes where it is required. It went right to her."

Myrios sighed, unable to argue with that part, however much he would like to. "In any case, I would like to make a deal for her blood. I can’t let you sell it to anyone else." He bent his elbows to bring his face a few inches downward until he was at eye level with Phaethon, removing his sunglasses to stare into his eyes, a brief flash of cyan visible.

"You are absolutely correct on that front. I can NOT sell it to anyone else. The buyers I had lined up could not afford the price I set." He tut-tuts, shaking his head. "They might return one day, but I find it quite upsetting when a deal falls through--they seemed so promising." Oddly, Phaethon seems entirely insincere about what he's saying, almost as if he secretly found this preferable. His nearly imperceptible trace of a smirk only adds to this effect.

"But now we have a new deal on the table, dear brother. Let's see what terms we shall come to with one another." Phaethon's grin could nearly encompass the width of his head, and his eyes flashed a brief yellow in his delight. "Now, what do you have to offer me for this wonderful vial of vitae? It can be yours for just the right price. What do you have to give that I don't already possess?" Myrios stopped to consider for a few minutes. He shuddered just a bit thinking of the last deal that he'd made with Sebastian, regretting his choices on the matter. He'd need to be more careful this time. He should've been more careful with Sebastian, but he had been caught up in the moment. "Well... I've got a bottle of Soma, several tomes that I've confiscated from some blood cultists over the years, and several artifacts from the last Age. C'mon, who doesn't love a good artifact? And the Soma! You know how hard that stuff is to get a hold of nowadays. It's been a couple hundred years since they've been able to make the stuff. Tell me, what do you want? The whole lot's yours for that blood." Phaethon considered, making a display of looking torn on whether to accept or not. He 'hmm'ed and 'aaah'ed for several long moments. Then he chuckled, dismissively waving a hand. “Mere trinkets and baubles. You know, with time and space at my disposal, it only takes the right kind of person at the right moment in history and I have all the Soma and eldritch tomes that I could fit in the back room." He grinned wickedly as his teacup reached his lips, and he looked over the rim, speaking before taking a sip. "And you know how large that is. The artifacts? That's all rubbish. I've got just as many, and much more useful in the back." He took a long sip of his tea. Reasonably he should have finished it long before that sip, but the cup was just as full when he pulled it from his mouth. "You can do better than that." Myrios went back into his head for a few minutes and thought hard, shaking his head as he fought off the returning images. His voice wavered as he got his mind under control. "Please?" he offered the man across the counter, not caring about paying the price of a little humiliation. The look on his face had softened, perhaps even becoming a bit pleading. "You said you liked her. You said she was sweet. She might be a bit of a train wreck in ways if what she’s told me is so, but you’re right, she is sweet, and she doesn’t deserve to have a deadly vial of blood floating around in the world--one that might as easily be used to kill her as to call whatever entity she’s connected to. I'm asking you as a professional courtesy. Please, just give me the blood." The sound started as a chuckle and built into a laugh of pure amusement before trailing off almost a minute later. Finally, Phaethon says smoothly, "I'll take your sunglasses. I have a place for them already in mind--right there on that shelf, so everyone can see them when they enter. I want them to remind me of the time you came pleading for my help. You went begging for a creature who is barely more than human; a little ascended ‘mayfly’, as Blacke would say. So, you give me those, and I'll give you the blood. Do we have an accord?" Myrios looked down at the sunglasses. He’d lifted them to disguise his strange eye color when the people of the city he’d been in were staring at him. They'd served him well over the Ages to the point where they were like an old friend; a literal lens through which he’d seen the world, and made many memories colored in the hue of that faint tint. He folded them up and slid them across the counter to where Phaethon stood, grinning and then practically skipping down to the cash register. The old rogue typed furiously for a few seconds at the register, and the sound of the mechanical keys striking led to the ding of the drawer being opened. It then immediately slammed shut, signifying that the deal was complete. Phaethon climbed on the stool and placed them on the shelf behind the register. While stepping down, he spoke again. "You know, I was hoping that you'd come for this, Myrios. I would say it was meant to be, but we both know that's not how this all works. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, I'm glad that nothing more came of it. She was a lovely girl in a bad position. She was the ideal customer at that moment. Nothing personal against her, but business is business, after all. You understand that as well as any of us. “So, go back to your shop, and go be the hero. Go be the good guy, the fool, the bard, and the Sun. Go save damsels and slay dragons... for all the good it will do you at the end of the Age. All of this will pass away, and you'll be alone with your thoughts again, just like the rest of us." He grinned a bit, twisting the point home. "At the end of all things, one does expect the company of immortals. After all, family's all you've got to count on." He grinned a bit more. Myrios nodded solemnly in response. "You're not such a bad guy, Phaethon, when you don't have your head entirely up your own ass. You've never fooled me. You try to be like Sebastian or Cruxia, but you just don't measure up to that sort of evil. They give us a bad name. You... well, you just creep people out, which I think may just be your entire thing." He smiles a bit to the other shopkeeper and inspects the vial, shaking it a bit; the blood was magically kept fresh by the small glass container. "And this is all of it, correct? We had a deal, Phaethon." "That is every last drop, brother. You have my word on that, for whatever it's worth to you." Phaethon grinned up at the sunglasses on the shelf again and began chuckling to himself. "Now it's time for you to get out of my shop. I have customers that have been waiting, and I'd like it to be another Age before I deal with you or any of the others again. I'd say to take care, but I know you won't. You're the doer, out of all of us. You've never sat still. Just don't do anything dumber than you already have." Smirking, he moved from behind the counter to open the door for the young woman waiting behind it. Her face looked frightened and gaunt, like a prey animal that had reached its limit. Myrios stood aside to let her in and she looked between the two men nervously. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, my dear," Phaethon soothed her battered nerves with his distinguished, grandfatherly voice and bearing. "I've just finished up a surprise tete a tete with my little brother here, so sorry. I do hate to keep a customer waiting." He grinned and motioned to Myrios with a flick of his eyes toward the door. "Pay attention and be wary," the redhead leaned down and whispered to the woman before he left, vial in hand. Myrios walked the streets of Philadelphia for a while, letting time wash over him for the first time in a week. The reality of the city’s layout was replaced with the cobble and brick of Atlantis. He shook his head, but the images persisted. Everywhere he walked, he was flanked on all sides by the dead and dying. This was Sebastian’s revenge, the deal he’d waited an Age for. These were his memories now. He was now burdened with the total picture. He kept going until the street lights came on along Chestnut Street as he traveled towards the river, turning and looking over the vial as he moved. His mind wandered again as he approached the water. The blood on his hands, the blood covering his robes as people clutched at and clung to his departing frame. The scene was replaced again with concrete and water, and he sighed a small bit of relief. Once there, he stood by the concrete barrier along the shore, and watched the river flow for a while longer. He needed the peace before he went home. At long last, he forced himself to concentrate, and left the city for the warm coziness of Ealdwic, choosing to walk back to the shop in Darkside. He needed this time to realign himself. He needed to surround himself with the familiar, the small enjoyments. He enjoyed the sounds and the flow of the district. He waved to several of the denizens as he traversed the cobbled walks and the old stairs, finally arriving home. He stepped through the store and into the back apartments, smiling at the well lit and cozy hallway before the dining room. He ran his hand along the backs of the intricately sculpted wooden chairs, and drummed his fingers on the table top. This caused him to need to fight images of charred wood and leather from his head, gritting his teeth as he shook it off with effort. Then he left and wandered into the next room, shrugging out of his suit jacket and laying it on the back of one of the large stuffed leather chairs in the sitting room. He glanced at the couch where he'd spent an evening awash in a plethora of emotions, and enjoyed the company of an old friend. He left his tie draped over the back of the couch and stood by the fire for a few minutes, shirt half-unbuttoned. He enjoyed the feeling of warmth from the fire, and only reluctantly left it to adjourn to the room just off to the right. His bedroom felt like a welcome sanctuary. It was his personal vault of fond memories and things that he cherished. He flopped backwards onto his bed and held the vial up to the light, turning it to see it slightly coat the side of the container before rolling along with the motion. He sighed then, and set the vial on the nightstand. It had come at a high cost. He closed his eyes for a while, tears falling as he saw himself standing atop the statue of a long forgotten god. He looked down at the scene of war and blood; of suffering unlike anything seen since. He rose from the bed quietly and went to the closet. He stood before it for long minutes, hands shaking before finally summoning the bravery to open it. He pulled the long blue scarf from the recesses and stared at it. Myrios cried fully then. Memories that he’d hidden away with humor and ridiculousness flooded back. Memories of the time that he’d failed an entire continent. He slumped back onto the bed, curled up holding that simple object of clothing that he had once been so proud of, but which only brought him shame now. He was content to be home, but he’d need time to recover. The moment he tried to focus on was the moment he put the vial into Sully’s hand and saw her expression of relief and gratitude. That one moment would be worth the week of hell.

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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years

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Writing Tips From Journalism, Aristotle, & of Course, Childish Gambino

Real-life mad man, Howard Gossage is quoted saying, “people don’t read advertising, they read what interests them. Sometimes, it’s an ad.”

I think the Socrates of San Francisco was being a bit generous — it’s usually not an ad.

Then again, Gossage wasn’t fighting for the attention of consumers with ad blockers, instant notifications, and millions of terabytes of media at their fingertips.

However, in the era of branded content and inbound marketing, his point is more prophetic than ever.

When we write copy, we aren’t competing with other copy — we are competing with our persona’s favorite publications, television shows, social feeds, movies, and music.

We are competing with everything they would rather consume than what we just wrote to promote our businesses.

Now, I know you’ve heard this before. You get it. There is more content than ever and we need to write better copy if we want to stand out -- but we are failing, marketers.

Most content kinda sucks -- and it’s a shame.

Because when done right, content marketing can spur incredible business growth.

4 Non-Marketing Sources of Inspiration

I want to acknowledge that there is a ton of great marketing-specific content advice out there.

IMPACT’s very own Marcus Sheridan wrote a book called “They Ask, You Answer” that is one of my favorites and I highly recommend content guru Ann Handley’s “Everybody Writes” (See her at IMPACT live 18’).

Lessons from the golden age of copywriting also remain relevant.

The classic formula “create the problem, agitate the problem, and solve the problem” isn’t going out of style (I’m using it for this post) and you should always kill feature-heavy copy to highlight benefits.

But those two paragraphs are the last in this post that will mention advice specific to marketing or advertising.

Great copywriting can and should draw inspiration from divergent sources.

I firmly believe if we want to create business-changing content, we need to take a hard look at what our personas are consuming instead of our blogs, social posts, and landing pages.

These are 4 non-marketing forms of media that helped me learn to write better copy.

1. Journalism

In his hallmark writing how-to “On Writing Well,” William Zinsser wrote, “The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead.”

Readers Follow the Lede

Long before the goldfish attention spans of today’s web readers, journalists understood an article lives or dies with the lead (or “lede” if you want to be old-timey).

A lead is the first 20 or 25 words of any article and how journalists hook their audience.

Leads can be as simple as a straight news lead that provides the reader a summary of all the most important facts.

This is commonly done for breaking news, like this example from today’s New York Times:

“A California man suspected of accessing and defacing numerous military, government and business websites, including that of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center and the New York City Comptroller’s Office, was arrested Thursday on computer fraud charges.”

Although, in feature stories or non-hard news, journalists often employ other types of leads that may inspire you to write better introductions.

One such type is an anecdotal lead that uses narrative to draw you in.

Here’s a narrative lead from a 2006 pulitzer prize winning article written by Andrea Elliot in the New York Times:

“The young Egyptian professional could pass for any New York bachelor.

Dressed in a crisp polo shirt and swathed in cologne, he races his Nissan Maxima through the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, late for a date with a tall brunette. At red lights, he fusses with his hair.

What sets the bachelor apart from other young men on the make is the chaperone sitting next to him — a tall, bearded man in a white robe and stiff embroidered hat.”

What makes this lead so strong is that it introduces the main tension of the story, that this young Egyptian bachelor must reconcile modern dating rituals with those of his traditional beliefs, without explicitly telling you all the summary facts.

It draws you in. You can’t help but want to keep reading.

When you’re writing meta descriptions, think of leads. What are the 300 characters you can write that will leave your audience with no choice but to click for more?

For some of your content, particularly educational content, that may mean the straight facts. Other content may be better teased with tension-filled narrative arcs.

Avoid Cliches & Jargon

Now, before any journalists call me out, I know my lead for this post is the much-maligned quote — but I like to think all rules are made to be broken.

If there is anything else editors hate, it’s cliches. Avoid them like the plague (yes, I did that on purpose).

In marketing, think ____ is dead, or ____ is king. No one really believes SEO is dead anymore and we get that content is king.

Also, eliminate all jargon.

We may say things like leverage, ten thousand foot view, and thought leader to each other, but our audience doesn’t. All jargon does is alienate them and demonstrate what a hard time we have talking like humans about our profession.

Don’t Ask “Yes or No” Questions

Another truism from journalists that may help sharpen your writing is Betteridge’s law.

Betteridge’s law states that any headline that asks a question can probably be answered no. It is designed to bring attention to the fact that if a journalist is using a question, it probably means they are trying to over sell what is in fact a pretty dull payoff.

If you were breaking the story that cancer has been cured, you wouldn’t write, “Have we found the cure for cancer?” You would simply write, “Cancer cured.”

Keep Betteridge’s law in mind when you are writing headlines or page titles. Otherwise, you risk alienating your audience with clickbait that only lets them know they shouldn’t click again.

The Inverted Pyramid

And last, but not least, always remember the inverted pyramid.

Relevant for almost all media writing, the inverted pyramid states that the most important information in any article comes first, followed by gradually less important information throughout the story.

Don’t bury your lead or the most interesting thing about your content. Journalists are hard wired to use the inverted pyramid to give their stories structure and ensure that even if someone doesn’t make it to the end, they’ve gotten all that really matters.

The same should be true of your marketing content.

Think about that the next time you are writing a web page. If 50% of your users aren’t scrolling past the fold, is your hero copy communicating all that they really need to know?

2. Fiction

If we want our marketing content to resonate, it needs to tell a story.

An actual story. Something that moves from A to B to C to D, that has internal or external conflict, tension, closure, or hell, even a lack of closure.

To tell better stories, we need to recognize when one is right in front of us. For that, I will defer to master sci-fi author, Kurt Vonnegut (“Slaughterhouse five” is his most known work).

During his anthropology graduate studies at the University of Chicago, Vonnegut noticed that the Bible’s New Testament and the enduring folk tale Cinderella followed nearly the same shape.

He posited that the “shapes” of the stories a culture holds most valuable reveal things about that culture, and submitted his findings for his master’s thesis.

While his professors rejected the thesis (because “it was so simple and looked like too much fun”), Vonnegut considered the shapes his “prettiest contribution to culture.”

I’ll let him explain:

Credit: Maya Eilam

These story shapes are everywhere.

Almost every episode of every sitcom uses “man in a hole.” Our favorite lovable cast of weirdos gets into a pickle, then they get out of it.

I would argue that the classic copywriting formula “create the problem...” is just the “man in a hole” story shape.

Rom-coms are always the “boy meets girl” shape — star-crossed lovers find each other, then lose each other, but luckily love’s eternal power always conquers all in the last five minutes.

Forget Cinderella — “Rocky,” “The Karate Kid,” and most sports movies always steal her shape.

Think about how you structure your marketing and sales stories.

Is it like this?

This is the way things are, now let me tell you why they will be a million times better.

We only tell our audience why our product or service is the greatest thing that anybody has ever conceived with no tension or conflict, but this doesn’t make your message persuasive -- it makes it sound like BS.

We cannot be afraid to introduce points of tension and conflict into our content.

People love stories because they love struggles that mirror their own. Human existence is a binary struggle between the way things are and the way we want them to be.

Effective copy can and should mirror this.

Or as I’ve heard Marcus Sheridan say (and I’m paraphrasing), “your content shouldn’t be just about the good, but also the bad and the ugly.”

Say the ugly that your competition is too scared to.

Explain who shouldn’t buy your product or service.

It takes guts, but you’ll wind up with better leads, more satisfied customers, and less churn.

3. Speechwriting

Aristotle taught his students that if they wanted to persuade an audience, they had to use three rhetorical appeals.

Logos or logical appeals. These are supporting details and facts that bolster your point or argument (i.e. social proof, references, etc.). When I share all the ways Vonnegut’s story shapes work in popular media, I am making a logical appeal to convince you that you should try it with your content.

Ethos or ethical appeals. These speak to your credibility to deliver that message. Extrinsic ethical appeals speak to your experience — I’ve driven results for clients with copywriting, so I feel credible to write about it. Intrinsic appeals are how well you deliver your message — if you think my writing sucks, you aren’t going to trust any of my writing advice.

Pathos or pathetic appeals. This is very different from our interpretation of the word pathetic. These appeals speak to the emotions of the audience. I started this article strongly implying that your content may suck to appeal to your emotions of fear, “am I leaving money on the table because I’m not communicating my message well?” Instead, I may have actually appealed to your emotion of hate, “will this pompous marketer get off his high horse,” If so, thank you for hate-reading this long.

The world’s best speakers intrinsically use these appeals to hold attention, earn trust, and ultimately, inspire action.

Hours after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, Robert Kennedy stood on the bed of a pickup truck in Indianapolis to announce the news to a predominately African American crowd.

Despite concerns from campaign advisors about his safety, he delivered an improvised speech that is widely considered to be one of the most poignant addresses of modern politics.

This speech has taught me more about copywriting and rhetorical appeals than any other. I will resist the urge to go line-by-line but share select passages that highlight Aristotle’s appeals.

Logos

“For those of you who are black — considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization — black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.”

RFK is making a logical appeal. MLK stood for peace and nonviolence — to respond as a country to his violent end with violence is to betray the compassion and love he preached.

Ethos

“For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.”

To show the audience he understands their pain, Kennedy evokes the loss he felt when his brother John was killed by an assassin's bullet. His call “to go beyond these rather difficult times” doesn’t ring hollow because he too has struggled to move beyond deep despair.

Pathos

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: 'In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'"

While nearly every line of RFK’s speech has an emotional appeal, it’s hard for anyone reading this beautiful passage not to feel universal human truths and emotions. We all try to forget pain, that one day, against our will, becomes perspective.

Kennedy is not merely using rhetorical appeals, but also rhetorical devices. These tools, developed by Greek masters of persuasion, are tried and true messaging techniques.

We are all familiar with metaphors -- Abraham Lincoln once said a political adversary, "dived down deeper into the sea of knowledge and come up drier than any other man he knew.” -- But there are many other devices that you may or may not be familiar with that can level up your copywriting.

To keep it in the Kennedy family, JFK loved rhetorical devices. Think "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." This is called antimetabole, and it’s a reversal of repeated words or phrases for effect.

Another, “let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate” -- This is called chiasmus and it’s a repetition of words and phrases in reverse order for effect.

If you want to try rhetorical devices to be more persuasive in your copywriting, here’s a list of 50.

4. Songwriting

There are few forms of art or media that evoke as visceral a reaction as music.

Songs that mean something to us stick to our souls. They become defining parts of who we are.

How many times do you hear a song and almost feel like you’ve stepped in a time machine to the first time that song meant something to you?

Because the experience is so personal, it is also wildly subjective from one person to the next.

A skilled songwriter creates this thing that is very personal to them and then releases it into the world to be interpreted.

Sort of like what we do as marketers, right? While everything filters through the lens of a brand’s needs and objectives, there are bits of us in all the creative and strategy we do, but I think, as marketers, we can learn a lot from how songwriters are able to create very personal works of art that somehow become universal.

When writing marketing and advertising copy, it’s so easy to try to create something universal.

No matter how much we keep our personas in mind, I think we all fight a voice in our heads that wants the copy or content to work for everyone. We don’t want to alienate anyone.

Great songwriters, however, understand all they can share is the truth of the story in their head and the more personal and specific they are, the more it gets at fundamental human truths.

As of writing this article, less than a week after it was released, the video for Childish Gambino’s “This is America” has 75 million views.

A still from Childish Gambino's "This is America" music video. (source)

For the sake of simplicity, the song basically has an A and a B part.

The A part is upbeat, has lots of melody, and jubilant singing buoyed by a choir of voices. The instrumentation includes gentle guitar, a danceable drum loop, and percussion.

The B part is dark and uncomfortable. There is no longer singing but Gambino now rapping with ad-libbed voices stabbing in rough vocalizations.

The instrumentation becomes something in the vein of southern trap hip-hop. There is bassy synths and the drum loop adds sub-divided hi-hats (they stay in the A part after the first B part).

Lyrically, the song is sparse.

The A parts are pretty much “We just wanna party, party just for you, we just want the money, money just for you (yeah)” or Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh, tell somebody, you go tell somebody, Grandma told me, get your money, black man (get your money).”

The B parts are always “This is America, don’t catch you slippin’ up” repeated before simple phrases like “look how I'm geekin' out (hey), I'm so fitted (I'm so fitted, woo), I'm on Gucci (I'm on Gucci), I'm so pretty (yeah, yeah).

There isn’t much to it, right? Relatively simple lyrics over only 2 alternating musical themes --so why does the video have 75 million views?

Why is it seemingly the biggest pop culture moment that has happened in recent memory? Why is every news outlet and publisher trying to interpret, analyze, and discuss its significance?

The answer lies with Ernest Hemingway, who called his style of writing “the Iceberg theory.”

It’s a minimalist style that focuses on surface elements without explicitly discussing underlying themes. He believed the deeper meaning of a story (in this case, a song) should hide under the surface (like most of an iceberg), but be implicitly understood.

There is an adage in copywriting, that much like Hemingway’s 6 word story on a napkin, probably never happened, but persists because it contains an important lesson.

Legend says that famous ad tycoon David Ogilvy was walking down the street when he saw a homeless man with the sign, “I am blind, please help.”

He didn’t give him money, but rewrote the sign. When he walked by later, the man’s cup was overflowing. The sign now read, “It is spring, and I am blind.”

By adding “it is spring” Ogilvy gave everyone walking by the opportunity to attach their own connotations, experiences, and stories about spring to the sign.

That is what Gambino did.

Childish Gambino’s song has 75 million views because the imagery in the video and his SNL performance show a glimpse of what is under the iceberg of those simple A and B parts.

A still from Childish Gambino's "This is America" music video. (source)

The parts are suddenly exposed as a pointed narrative about his experiences as an African American. The juxtaposed sections take on entirely new meaning as a critique of the dissonance between the perception and reality of his experiences, and how pop culture distracts us from turmoil.

He is communicating a very specific and personal truth with “This is America,” but its simplicity leaves enough below the iceberg’s surface for everyone to bring their individual perceptions of our country’s current political turmoil to their experience with the song.

It’s an uncomfortable, but profound song and video that speaks to a very universal discomfort happening in America right now.

Excuse the Cliche, But: Think Outside-of-the-Box

Don’t write generic marketing copy and content.

The next time you write copy, ask yourself, “is this an ad, or is it interesting?”

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/writing-tips-from-journalism-aristotle-childish-gambino

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republicstandard · 6 years

Text

US Embassy in Jerusalem Opening Tomorrow: Regional Unrest Ahead

The Iran-Palestine Peace Circus: Two Non-Deal-Deals in Likud Clown World

Deals! They come in three forms: Good deals, bad deals, and forced deals; the first two depend on whether you correctly assess your risks, but they’re agreed upon by both parties; the last depends on whether you’re being conquered or not. If you’re being conquered your only real choice is to fight, rather than accept a deal probably not offered in good faith to begin with. If you trust the word of a person who knows they have the ability to force you into an unfavorable compromise, they’ll probably, eventually, take to themselves even that which you have been offered.

This was the sentiment held by my best friend when growing up; a young Palestinian named Peter with a few Lebanese roots, exiled in an Australian capital city with his Christian family, separated from other family members exiled in Lebanon. They were some of the most welcoming, truly conservative people I have ever met, the strength of their family bond being an amazement to behold. Perhaps a strong family bond is easier when your birthright is stolen by a new nation which ejects you from the land of your nativity, finally your family being forced to settle halfway across the planet in a foreign country. Tough times make tough people.

Palestinians, as Christians, had been thriving in Palestine for almost two thousand years until 1947 when the government of Great Britain created a power vacuum, announcing it would remove its mandatory administration. In swept tens of thousands claiming a birthright lost to them in 70AD; though from a Christian perspective this birthright was rejected on Passover 33AD during a Messianic Regicide. Perhaps this is why the Palestinian Christians were the recipients of especially egregious disdain. Today, less than 30% of these Palestinian Christians worldwide still reside in their homeland.

Christian Zionism: Likud Christmas gift that keeps on giving

As a result of this exodus, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ which was 86% Christian in 1950, was by 2012 only 12% Christian; the rest of the town being Muslim. This de-Christianization of the birthplace of Christ is a direct result of the formation of Israel in 1948 – not the result of Muslims driving out Christians – though if you were to ask a Christian Zionist living in America what they thought of the situation, you’d think modern Palestinians were worshipping Molech, sacrificing babies on altars, Joshua having returned in a secular reappearance.

Pope Francis visited Israel/Palestine back in 2014 during the 50th anniversary of the first Papal visit to Jerusalem (1964 Pope Paul VI visit). During this 2014 visit Haaretz reported an inconvenient truth which might come as a surprise to some western Christians, but not Christian Zionists as it will go through one ear and out the other: The Palestinian Authority is far more accommodating towards Palestinian Christians than the administration in Israel;

... the PA’s record is far better than Israel’s. The president's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, is a Christian. So are two cabinet members, for Finance and Tourism, and two members of the PLO's executive committee. The deputy speaker of the Palestinian National Council, Qonstantin Qurmush, is a priest. Christians abound on boards of banks and chambers of commerce, and head its largest company, CCC. By contrast, in its 66 years, Israel has had no Christian presidential spokesman, government minister, or bank chairman. Where Palestine has eight Christians in its parliament, Israel has two. Where Palestine has at least five ambassadors, including to London and Berlin, Israel has none. … Israel’s prime minister [Netanyahu] ... in his first term in the late 1990s aroused Christian ire by backing construction of a mosque next to Nazareth’s Basilica of Annunciation, while his Palestinian counterpart, Yasser Arafat opposed it. [!!] ... Israel does give its Christians native citizenship, but when its leaders endlessly trumpet their status as a Jewish state, many feel they have second class status. They are not spared strip-searches at Israel’s airports. Exacerbating Christian anxieties, hate-graffiti – such as "Mary is a prostitute" – is daubed on church doors, and increasingly rife. Priests in Jerusalem say spitting on their habits has become well - a habit.

Despite this reality, adherents of the relatively new phenomenon known as Christian Zionism - with their ironic blindness to the implications of Messianic Regicide as applies to the land deed of Mosaic covenant - cheer on the consummation of the remaining land by an ethnic in-group so detached from the Old or New Testaments, it leaves a person actually familiar with that sacred text scratching their head in bewilderment.

This travesty bears heavy irony: Christians thus cheer the historical displacement of fellow Christians by a nation which despises the person of Christ, most of whom, as secular, regard not even the person of Moses; two men respected by almost all Muslims as two of six sacred prophets. Of course, secular leaders like Netanyahu will never miss an opportunity to wheel out the proverbial corpse of Moses endowed with everlasting political capital, citing the land deed promised by (to?) this titan of history as part of a conditional covenant.

It might sound like a generalization, but let’s face it: Christian Zionists actually believe themselves to epitomize the purity of right-wing conservative doctrine in the United States. They consider fellow Christians who hold a position of empathy towards Palestinians to be either ‘liberals’ or anathema to true Christianity. Accordingly, denouncing the false image of largely secular lebensraumist Zionism is a heresy too upsetting to Cyrus Scofield’s ghost. As a result, most Christians who don’t overtly agree with Scofield’s gibberish simply hold their silence. The Christian Zionist cannot but judge, though they should remember, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Well, I’m sorry to be the messenger carrying the uncomfortable flame of truth, but holding your silence is just as bad. It’s time to speak up; something early Church fathers were also persecuted for. It is our duty. It is what qualifies our Christianity. Never shrink from controversy because Jesus Christ died for this very same reason; testifying against this same ethnic group the Palestinians are now also confronted with, I might add. All Christians need to realize that ethnic Palestinians worldwide are over three times as likely per capita to accept the blessing of Jesus Christ than Jews; they also have a much higher conversion rate.

From the same Haaretz article quoted above :

The Knesset bans Christmas trees which sprout all over Palestine from public display on its premises.

The above should be read in context of the National Menorah being erected annually next to the National Christmas Tree directly south of the White House, which if not attended by US officials yearly to celebrate Hanukkah would be shouted from the rooftops as a sign of disrespect, anti-Semitism, probably even garnering hyperbolic insinuations that gas chambers were nigh. Oh, how accommodating we are in the west, regardless of the treatment of Christians by that nation claiming the name of Israel in the east. The Smithsonian magazine gives a little history of how the National Menorah was lawyered into the national capital highlighting the coincidental relevance of Iran ever since its inception in 1979 :

Every year, the White House has two holiday symbols on the Ellipse: the White House Christmas tree and the National Menorah. The tradition of the National Menorah dates back to 1979, and to an Orthodox Jewish leader in Washington named Abraham Shemtov, who thought the nation’s capital needed a menorah as well as a Christmas tree. Then, the secretary of the interior initially denied him a permit to put a menorah on government property, on the grounds that it would violate the First Amendment … Shemtov … “called his friend Stu Eizenstat, an adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Eizenstat gave the secretary a choice: Either approve the permit or deny the National Christmas Tree’s permit too. If he disobeyed, Eizenstat would take the matter straight to Carter, who would side with Eizenstat—a major embarrassment for the secretary.” Shemtov got the permit, and a tradition was born. That year, President Jimmy Carter participated in the lighting of the menorah, mentioning the Iran hostage crisis in his speech.

70 Years: Reversing the symbolism of Cyrus the Great

Cyrus Scofield wasn’t just the author of the most influential pro-Zionist commentary on the Bible, but his parents happened to name him after a man of completely opposite purpose; liberator of those who deserve covenant clemency. Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia is commemorated in Judaism and Christianity, for freeing the People of the Covenant in 539BC from a 70 year captivity in Babylon; the number 70 being of further importance in Christianity as Jerusalem was obliterated by Rome in the 70th year (70AD) since the birth of Christ. Cyrus also lived to 70 years of age and Trump was 70 years old when elected. Haaretz reported the religious buzz in December 2017 :

Christians and Jews Now Compare Trump to Persian King Cyrus – Will He Build the Third Temple? Like Cyrus 2,500 years ago, Trump is seen as an instrument of God. And the plan: to build the Third Temple on the Temple Mount – where the Al-Aqsa Mosque currently stands

Currently, in 2018, during the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence, the opportunity to invoke this important number and its relation to Cyrus the Great has not been missed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; leader of the Likud coalition in the Knesset. US President Donald Trump has been happy to indulge Netanyahu’s semiotic fancies for this anniversary by declaring Jerusalem to be the official capital city of Israel – a ‘holy’ grail endorsement justifying the 1967 border violations by Israel.

On March 1st – Purim (!) – Netanyahu made a speech at the United Nations HQ in NYC where he, characteristically, held up a Persian rug made in Iran in what the Jerusalem Post called a ‘Purim Parody’. He declared the rug a weapon of subversive warfare and a vector for money laundering by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Four days later, on March 5th, he met Trump and wife Melania in the White House for a presser ;

It’s always a pleasure to see you, both but this is the first time we meet in Washington – America’s capital – after you declared, Mr. President, Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. And this was a historic proclamation followed by your bold decision to move the embassy by our upcoming National Independence Day. I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory. So we remember the proclamation of the great King Cyrus the Great — Persian King. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon can come back and rebuild our temple in Jerusalem. We remember, 100 years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember seven[ty] years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people throughout the ages. And as you just said, others talked about it. You did it. So I want to thank you on behalf of the people of Israel. And I also want to — I look forward to our discussions on both challenges and opportunities. If I had to say what is our greatest challenge in the Middle East to both our countries, to our Arab neighbors, it’s encapsulated in one word: Iran. Iran has not given up its nuclear ambitions. It came out of this nuclear deal emboldened, enriched. It’s practicing aggression everywhere, including on our own borders. And I think we have to stop this country — the chants, “Death to Israel,” “Death to America.” Iran must be stopped. That is our common challenge.

Thus, Palestinian Christian and Muslim captivity by Israel, is portrayed as a period of Israeli captivity, Trump is likened to Cyrus the Great, the rebuilt Temple is invoked (!), and the actual Persians are portrayed as if they are Babylonians who need to be thrown off by the might of King Trump at the 70 year mark. Reversals! This is Likud Clown World!

#Netanyahu thinks he can complain about #Iran's nuclear program to the international atomic agency, Is he going to tell them about #Israel's illegal nuclear weapons program too?

— Partisangirl 🇸🇾 (@Partisangirl) April 30, 2018

Trump’s actions to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem during this 70th year, in spite of Palestinian protestations, is not exactly the sort of conciliatory stance a person makes when apparently just about to offer the Palestinians a deal for statehood – in good faith we are told. This deal which will be publicly tabled by the end of May 2018 is not a good deal. It’s not even a bad deal. It’s the third option; the forced deal. This is conquest in continuation. There is no good faith here towards the Palestinians.

A cadre of four comprising of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and wife, together with Jared Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump, are to open the US Embassy on the 70th anniversary; May 14th. I have a hunch that Kushner is Donald Trump’s chosen peace ambassador to present the deal shortly thereafter. Jared, the geopolitically inexperienced heir of a billionaire Orthodox Jewish New Jersey felon’s real-estate empire headquartered at the Kushner Companies building at 666 Fifth Avenue – who married the non-Jewish daughter of the first billionaire POTUS, shunning Rabbinical marriage custom – will perhaps be ‘offering’ a ‘peace deal’ in Jerusalem to the Palestinians and Israelis (which the Likud totally engineered). Could this get any more clown world?

Early reports are suggesting that this deal is for the Gaza Strip and half of the current West Bank excluding the Jordan Valley; including four peripheral and rather marginal neighborhoods in East Jerusalem as a capital. If true, this new West Bank would be a concentration camp for 3.3 million Palestinians forever placing Israel in charge of Palestinian water supplies, their contact with fellow Arabs in Jordan being cut off. Israel would have a complete choke-hold over this mini-state. If the Palestinians accept or are forced to accept this deal, the new nation could expect to be sanctioned and/or continue to be assaulted by a hostile Israel perpetually citing ‘self defense’; just like Syria and Lebanon, sovereignty would mean nothing.

If one checks the rising war barometer since the Iraq War – especially lately – one gets the impression this symbolic 70th year was singled out so that tensions around Iran and Palestine would climax simultaneously :

Sunni Saddam overthrown. Democracy brought to majority Shiite Iraq.

Shiites inevitably become the dominant force in Iraqi politics.

Shiite ascendancy allows a greater rift to open up between Baghdad and Erbil, fueling the Sunni Kurdish independence movement while Israel digs into the KRG oil and gas industry (previous article) readying it for integration into Israeli water and energy security agendas.

Shiite Iran becomes major power broker in Baghdad and Shiite Southern Iraq.

Sunni ISIS/Syrian Rebel/Al-Qaeda/Al-Nusra NATO-Saudi proxies break out like a virus in order to clear the required pipeline corridors and justify balkanization of Syria (previous article).

Iranian proxy Hezbollah drawn deeper into Lebanon, Syria, Iraq.

Hezbollah strengthened immensely in the Shiite public imagination for preventing the fall of Assad. This is great news for the Likud.

Israel now can claim Hezbollah/Iran have encircled them so that annexation of more Syrian and perhaps Lebanese territory can be claimed as ‘self-defense’ against Iran (actually happening as I type, as I predicted a week ago). This is simply more land theft or theft by proxy. As explained in a previous article, this is to assist Israel and the Saudis to carve out two pipeline corridors, 1) to bring oil and gas from a newly balkanized north-east Syrian puppet state and the KRG in northern Iraq, into Haifa via the Golan Heights, including water from the Euphrates, and 2) to tap the Gazprom Killer in Qatar, linking it with the EU, preventing Iran from tapping this same shared super-field and gaining access to either the EU or Chinese energy markets.

Iran non-deal-deal (explained below) for a nuclear program offered then revoked by successive administrations as if this wasn’t planned all along to provoke predictable reactions in Tehran; for example, the burning of the US flag in their parliament by government officials. Netanyahu, Likud & Co., sit back in glee at this wonderful public relations gift for the Zionist cause. Mission accomplished. Chaos can now resume as desired.

Jerusalem declared the official capital of Israel by the US President and the official location of a newly relocated US Embassy to be opened on May 14th, 2018; the Roman calendar date of the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

Palestine offered a “deal of the century” on statehood by President Trump, almost instantly endorsed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman – even though it isn’t public yet – who then threatened Mahmoud Abbas, telling him he has to accept the deal or resign (Isn’t it funny how this happens right after the recent major purge of royal rivals in Saudi Arabia?). It’s as if Salman were the inaugural recipient of the Zionist award for Wahhabist of the Year. I can imagine the award now; it would be a golden clown waiving the black flag of Jihad wearing a suicide vest of peace.

The billionaire Jewish Zionist Sheldon Adelson – the largest political donor in the US and Trumps biggest donor, who openly supports illegal settlements in the West Bank – waits until Trump revokes the Iran nuclear deal including a fresh slew of sanctions on Iran, before donating $30 million to save the House GOP majority. You’ve got to be good boys and girls before you get your pocket money!

Dear reader: None of this is deliberately synchronized.

These are all ‘coincidences’ following foreign policy ‘mistakes’ in Iraq.

Nothing to see here . . . move along now!

Likud Clown World: Come to the big top, to see the show!

The ‘liberal’ Brookings Institution in Washington DC – which is one of many fronts for tabling Zionist geopolitical agendas and presenting them as productions in the best interests of the United States – released a 156-page report in 2009 entitled “Which Path To Persia?” (PDF).

This report is basically a handbook for regime change, such as those which have occurred or been attempted during the Arab Spring (which began two years after the report was released). As I mentioned in a previous article, JINSA and Netanyahu’s Likud coalition have a fixation on Iran which is the crux of this very influential report I would advise serious students of geopolitics to read in full. On page 39 (pg.52 in PDF), the report states the following regarding Sanctions :

For those who favor regime change or a military attack on Iran (either by the United States or Israel), there is a strong argument to be made for trying this option [sanctions] first. Inciting regime change in Iran would be greatly assisted by convincing the Iranian people that their government is so ideologically blinkered that it refuses to do what is best for the people and instead clings to a policy that could only bring ruin on the country. The ideal scenario in this case would be that the United States and the international community present a package of positive inducements so enticing that the Iranian citizenry would support the deal, only to have the regime reject it. In a similar vein, any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians ‘brought it on themselves’ by refusing a very good deal.

Notice the inclusion of Israel side-by-side with the United States as dual antagonists attempting to convince every other world player of the need to take down Iran.

What actually happened when this planned Iranian nuclear deal was offered up by Obama in 2015? Rather than decline it, Iran accepted the terms. We can see in the report that the intent was for the deal to be rejected so the US and Israel could use the rejection to 1) prove to the world that the Iranian regime cared more about nuclear arms than peace, and 2) use the rejection to stir resentment internally in Iran, turning the Iranian people against the regime. This deal acceptance delayed Zionist plans to overthrow the regime using this initial approach, though in the section on Invasion, on page 65 (pg.78 in PDF), the report continues :

If the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely. With only one real exception, since the 1978 revolution, the Islamic Republic has never willingly provoked an American military response, although it certainly has taken actions that could have done so if Washington had been looking for a fight. Thus it is not impossible that Tehran might take some action that would justify an American invasion and it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would do so (although being too obvious about this could nullify the provocation). However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all.

This report is entirely candid that the desired outcome for the US and Israel is a full scale invasion of Iran!

As I hinted earlier, the foreign policy ‘mistakes’ made after the Iraq War which have led to an Iranian influenced Shiite regime talking over in Baghdad, were completely deliberate. The breakout of NATO asymmetric warfare proxies known as ISIS & Co., in Iraq and Syria, were also deliberate (Wikileaks). Hezbollah which is virtually a direct militia arm of the Iranian regime has been drawn down into Syria and they’re even more entrenched in Lebanon as the recent election has proven. Now Israel and Hezbollah are exchanging fire between the Golan Heights and the Syrian ‘buffer zone’ which I predicted in a previous article.

The truth is, the Iran nuclear deal was always going to be revoked in the event that Iran did not decline the offer. This is because it is a non-deal-deal; it was simply a circus apparatus in the world-class Iran Palestine Peace Circus brought to you by Likud Clown World.

The forced deal in Palestine is also none other than a non-deal-deal, being synchronized with the collapse of the Iran non-deal-nuclear-deal during Israel’s 70th year. This is being done so that a Palestinian rejection or acceptance can be tied into a greater conflict where asymmetric warfare techniques (such as false-flag military or terror attacks) can be used to create the PR necessary to sell Israel as the victim and the United States as the savior; rather than both being seen as aggressors having planned this in advance. Thankfully far more people are waking up to the reality of this circus.

What do the true aggressor’s desire? As I explained in my last two Balkanizing Syria articles (here and here), they desire the final rewiring of mid-east geopolitics: Pipeline corridors; Israeli lebensraum annexations; balkanization; death; misery; flag draped coffins; not to forget massive military industrial complex profits and war debts for the bonds salesmen – Americans can pay the bills and provide the bodies, as usual. US neocons and Zionist JINSA aligned apparatchiks in Washington designed all of this. It is a masterpiece of Hegelian dialectic.

I’ll leave you with one final ominous statement from this Brookings report reminiscent of the chilling “New Pearl Harbor” comment in the 1997 PNAC Rebuilding America’s Defenses report. This excerpt comes from page 66 (pg.79 in PDF), mentioning a “Tehran-sponsored 9/11” :

Most European, Asian, and Middle Eastern publics are dead set against any American military action against Iran derived from the current differences between Iran and the international community—let alone Iran and the United States. Other than a Tehran-sponsored 9/11, it is hard to imagine what would change their minds. For many democracies and some fragile autocracies to which Washington would be looking for support, this public antipathy is likely to prove decisive. For instance, Saudi Arabia is positively apoplectic about the Iranians’ nuclear program, as well as about their mischief making in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. Yet, so far, Riyadh has made clear that it will not support military operations of any kind against Iran. Certainly that could change, but it is hard to imagine what it would take.

NOTE: Public antipathy can only be manipulated using massive events like the September 11th, 2001, terror attacks in the US, which can be organized as false-flag operations if/when necessary.

I have a good idea exactly what and where such an event may occur, though I’ll save that for a future article. To be clear, I am not against Jews having a sovereign state of their own, but I question the wisdom of them having been given this particular land of all lands; including their M.O. towards their neighbors since their ascension. What is the statute of limitations on a particular land covenant granted by divine right in a largely secular state? 1900 years?

I urge the reader to take the time to read the “Which Path To Persia?” report. It’s quite obvious from the bold language and tone, the authors consider Iran to be a frustratingly peaceful nation actively attempting not to trigger a conflict, yet the authors are clearly attempting to work out schemes to implode Iran or to justify a military invasion – shades of Iraq WMD’s propaganda. These people are insane. People with psychological profiles like this, could either deliberately, or accidentally, trigger WWIII if public awareness of their intentions does not increase rapidly. It almost might be too late though, based on events taking place on the Syria-Israel border at this very moment.

I don’t know about you, but this Peace Circus is starting to insult my intelligence. Is Netanyahu Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King’s I.T., or am I just having a bad dream? At least a rogue intern got the best of this dangerous clown villain recently during a PowerPoint presentation :

A disgruntled intern slipped this slide into #bibi's speech about #Iran's nukes, it reminds people that #Israel tried to sell nukes to South Africa. Embarrassing! #Netanyahu pic.twitter.com/KdYAhdQA86

— Partisangirl 🇸🇾 (@Partisangirl) April 30, 2018

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