#society today has built such a culture of “it's not YOUR fault and if you cry about it hard enough someone will fix it for you” like no sir

[alwaysbewoke]

28 COMMON RACIST ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS

Below is a list of 28 common racist attitudes and behaviors that indicate a detour or wrong turn into white guilt, denial or defensiveness. Each is followed by a statement that is a reality check and consequence for harboring such attitudes.

1. I’m Colorblind.

“People are just people; I don’t see color; we’re all just human.” Or “I don’t think of you as Chinese.” Or “We all bleed red when we’re cut.” Or “Character, not color, is what counts with me.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Statements like these assume that people of color are just like you, white; that they have the same dreams, standards, problems, and peeves that you do. “Colorblindness” negates the cultural values, norms, expectations and life experiences of people of color. Even if an individual white person could ignore a person’s color, society does not. By saying we are not different, that you don’t see the color, you are also saying you don’t see your whiteness. This denies the people of colors’ experience of racism and your experience of privilege.

“I’m colorblind” can also be a defense when afraid to discuss racism, especially if one assumes all conversation about race or color is racist. Speaking of another person’s color or culture is not necessarily racist or offensive. As my friend Rudy says, I don’t mind that you notice that I’m black.” Color consciousness does not equal racism.

2. The Rugged Individual, the Level Playing Field and the Bootstrap Theory.

“America is the land of opportunity, built by rugged individuals, where anyone with grit can succeed if they just pull up hard enough on their bootstraps.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

These are three of the crown jewels of U.S. social propaganda. They have allowed generation after generation to say, “If you succeed, you did it, but if you fail, or if you’re poor, that’s your fault.” Belief in this propaganda is founded on a total denial of the impact of either oppression or privilege on any person’s chance for success.

Attacks on programs like affirmative action find rationalization in the belief that the playing field is now level, i.e., that every individual, regardless of color or gender, or disability, etc., has the same access to the rights, benefits and responsibilities of the society.

The rationalization continues: since slavery is ended and people of color have civil rights, the playing field has now been leveled. It follows, then, that there is no reason for a person of color to “fail” (whether manifested in low SAT scores or small numbers in management positions) EXCEPT individual character flaws or cultural inadequacies. These “failures” could have no roots in racism and internalized racism.

3. Reverse Racism.

A. “People of color are just as racist as white people.” B. “Affirmative action had a role years ago, but today it’s just reverse racism; now it’s discriminating against white men.” C. “The civil rights movement, when it began, was appropriate, valuable, needed. But it’s gone to the extreme. The playing field is now level. Now the civil rights movement is no longer working for equality but for revenge.” Or D. “Black pride, black power is dangerous. They just want power over white people.” (Include here any reference to pride and empowerment of any people of color.)

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

A. Let’s first define racism with this formula:

Racism = racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power.

To say people of color can be racist, denies the power imbalance inherent in racism. Certainly, people of color can be and are prejudiced against white people. That was a part of their societal conditioning. A person of color can act on prejudices to insult or hurt a white person. But there is a difference between being hurt and being oppressed. People of color, as a social group, do not have the societal, institutional power to oppress white people as a group. An individual person of color abusing a white person – while clearly wrong, (no person should be insulted, hurt, etc.) is acting out a personal racial prejudice, not racism.

B. This form of denial is based on the false notion that the playing field is now level. When the people with privilege, historical access and advantage are expected to suddenly (in societal evolution time) share some of that power, it is often perceived as discrimination.

C+D. C is a statement by Rush Limbaugh. Though, clearly he is no anti-racist, both c+d follow closely on the heels of “reverse racism” and are loaded with white people’s fear of people of color and what would happen if they gained “control.” Embedded here is also the assumption that to be “pro-black” (or any other color) is to be anti-white. (A similar illogical accusation is directed at women who work for an end to violence against women and girls. Women who work to better the lives of women are regularly accused of being “anti-male.”)

4. Blame the Victim.

“It’s their fault they can’t get a job, or be manager.” Or “We have advertised everywhere, there just aren’t any qualified people of color for this job.” Or “If he only worked harder, applied himself more, or had a stronger work ethic.” Or “If she just felt better about herself – internalized racism is the real problem here.” OR “She uses racism as an excuse, to divert us from her incompetence.” Or “If he didn’t go looking for racism everywhere…” (As if racism is so hidden or difficult to uncover that people of color would have to search for it.)

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

All “blame the victim” behaviors have two things in common. First, they avoid the real problem: racism. Second, they take away from the picture the agents of racism, white people and institutions, who either intentionally perpetuate or unintentionally collude with racism.

This is similar to agent deletion in discussions of rape. Statements referring to a woman being raped, many by focusing on her clothing or behavior at the time of the rape and delete the male rapist from the picture.)

As long as the focus remains on people of color, white people can minimize or dismiss their reactions, and never have to look directly at racism and the whites’ own responsibility or collusion.

5. The White Knight or White Missionary.

“We (white people) know just where to build your new community center.” Or “Your young people (read youth of color) would be better served by traveling to our suburban training center.” Or “We (white people) organized a used clothing drive for you; where do you want us to put the clothes?”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

It is a racist, paternalistic assumption that well meaning white people know what’s best for people of color. Decisions by white people, are made on behalf of people of color, as though they were incapable of making their own. This is another version of “blame the victim” and white is right. It places the problems at the feet of people of color and the only “appropriate” solutions with white people. Once more the power of self-determination is taken away from people of color. Regardless of motive, it is still about white control.

6. Lighten up. (Lighten? Whiten?)

“Black people are just too sensitive and thin-skinned.” Or Indians should get a sense of humor. We’re just kidding around.” Or “I didn’t mean anything racist; it’s just a joke.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Here are racism and agent deletion in partnership again. The problem and perpetrators are exonerated, because the rationale declares that humor isn’t hurtful. This form of denial serves most to trivialize the pain and reality of daily racism.

7. Don’t Blame Me.

“I never owned slaves.” Or “I didn’t vote for David Duke.” Or “None of my family joined the Klan.” Or “I taught my children that racism is wrong.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Often white people hear blame whenever the issue of racism is brought up, whether or not blame has been placed on whites. As beneficiaries of racism and white privilege, you sometimes take a defensive posture even when you are not being individually blamed. You may personalize the remarks, not directed personally at you. It is the arrogance of your privilege that drags the focus back to whites.

When whites are being blamed or personally accused of racist behavior, this defensiveness and denial further alienate you and may preclude you from examining your possible racist behavior.

8. BWAME.

“But What About Me. Look how I’ve been hurt, oppressed, exploited…?

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

This diminishes the experience of people of color by telling our own story of hardship. We lose an opportunity to learn more about the experience of racism from a person of color, while we minimize their experience by trying to make it comparable or less painful than ours.

9. We Have Overcome.

“We dealt with racism in the 60s with all the marches, sit-ins and speeches by Dr. King. Laws have been changed. Segregation and lynching are ended. We have some details to work out but real racism is pretty much a thing of the past.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

The absence of legalized, enforced segregation does not equal the end of racism. This denial of contemporary racism, based on inaccurate assessment of both history and current society, romanticizes the past and diminishes today’s reality.

10. The End Run, Escapism.

“Of course, racism is terrible, but what about sexism? Or classism or heterosexism?” or “Racism is a result of classism (or any other oppression), so if we just work on that, racism will end, too.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

I agree with Audre Lorde’s statement, “There is no hierarchy of oppression.” I would not establish a rank order for oppressions. At the same time, we cannot attempt to evade recognition and responsibility for any form of oppression.

Statements like the ones above divert attention from racial injustice to focus on some other form of oppression. They are usually said by white people, (women, working class people, lesbians, gay men or others) who experience both white privilege and oppression in some form. Whites are more willing and more comfortable decrying their oppression than scrutinizing their privilege. Oppressions are so inextricably linked that if whites allow their fear, guilt and denial to constantly divert them from confronting racism, even while we work to dismantle other forms, no oppression will ever be dismantled.

11. Due Process.

“Lady Justice is color blind.” White parents who tell their children, “The police are here to protect you. If they ever stop you, just be polite and tell the truth.” Then when a black teen is beaten or killed by police, those same parents say, “He must have been doing something wrong, to provoke that kind of police response.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

White people’s belief that the police, courts, the legal system and social services work without bias; that due process, fair trials, juries, judges, police officers and case workers have everyone’s, including people of color, best interest at heart. Or at least, no less than they do for white people. This belief clouds reality. Whites tend to look at isolated incidents rather than the patterns of institutionalized oppression.

12. The Innocent by Association.

“I’m not racist, because… I have Vietnamese friends, or my lover is black or I marched with Dr. King.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

(Perhaps, if all white people who say they marched with Dr. King actually had, the current situation would look different!) This detour into denial wrongly equates personal interactions with people of color, no matter how intimate they may be, with anti- racism. There is an assumption that our personal associations free us magically from our racist conditioning.

13. The Penitent.

“I am so sorry for the way whites have treated your people.” Or “I am sorry for the terrible things that white man just said to you.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

While there is probably no harm in the “sorry,” if it is not attached to some action taken against racism, it is most often just another expression of white guilt. Being an ally to people of color is not limited to an apology for other white people’s behavior, it must include anti-racist action.

14. The Whitewash.

“He’s really a very nice guy, he’s just had some bad experiences with Koreans.” Or “That’s just the way Uncle Adolf jokes. He’s very polite to the black janitor in his building.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

We’re trapped by another version of white guilt response. Whites attempt to excuse, defend or cover up racist actions of other white people. White people are particularly prone to this if the other person is close, family or friend, and if we feel their actions reflect on us.

15. Not Here in Lake Wobegon.

“We don’t have a racism problem here at this (school, organization, community).” or “We didn’t have a racism problem in this town until that Mexican family moved here.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

As white people, we do not have to think about racism when our school, organization or community is all white. Racism does not usually become apparent TO WHITES until there are people of color in their frame of reference.

16. I Was An Indian In a Former Life.

“After that sweat lodge I really know what it feels like to be an Indian. I have found my true spiritual path.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

This is spiritual or cultural appropriation and poses a serious threat to the integrity and survival of native cultures. To fill a void in their own spiritual core, some white people are drawn into the New Age garden to pick from a variety of native spiritual practices usually offered for sale. (White writers, such as Lynn Andrews and others, garner high profits from fictitious “Indian” writing and teaching, while many native writers can’t find publishers.) Since native spiritual practice is inseparable from history and current community, it cannot be disconnected from that context to service white people searching for life’s meaning. Appropriating selected parts of native cultures romanticizes the lives of native peoples while denying their struggles. Their land and livelihoods stolen, indigenous peoples now see white people trying to steal their spirituality. Rather than escape one’s white racism by finding a spiritual path, whites instead collude in one more way with the genocidal attacks on native cultures.

17. Straightening Up or Boys Will be Boys.

The white heterosexual who says, “We can’t talk about AIDS or homophobia because we’re trying to work in coalition with a Latino group.” White organizations in which women are unheard, disrespected or prevented from assuming leadership. “We’ll deal with any gender inequities or sexism after we solidify this coalition with the NAACP.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

When white people with privilege in some other aspect of their life (gender, sexual orientation, lack of disability, class, etc.) use their focus on racism as an excuse to not challenge and therefore perpetuate other forms of oppression, the consequence is a disingenuous and unsustainable commitment to justice.

18. The Isolationist.

“I thought we resolved this issue (racism) when it came up on the board last year.” Or “We need to deal with this specific incident. Let’s not complicate it by bringing other irrelevant issues into it.” Or “This only happened today because the TV news last night showed police beating that black kid.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Attempts are made to isolate a particular incident of racism from the larger context. We blame a publicized incident of racism outside our organization to rationalize an internal incident and to avoid facing the reality of racism within. When trying to resolve an accusation of racism within an institution, whites often see the incident in a vacuum, or as an aberration, in isolation from an historic pattern of racism in this institution and nation. Racism has been institutionalized so that every “incident” is another symptom of the pattern. When whites continue to react incident to incident, crisis to crisis, as though they are unconnected, we will find genuine resolution only further from our reach.

19. Bending Over Backwards.

“Of course, I agree with you.” (Said to a person of color even when I disagree) or “I have to side with Jerome on this.” (Even when Jerome, a man of color, represents opinions counter to mine.)

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Your white guilt shows up here as you defer to people of color. The person of color is always right, or you never criticize or challenge a person of color. You try not to notice that you notice they are black or native American or Latina or Asian. You don’t disagree, challenge or question a person of color the way we would a white person. And if you do disagree, you don’t do it with the same conviction or passion that you would display with a white person. Your racism plays out as a different standard for people of color than for white people. If this is your pattern, you can never have a genuine relationship with a person of color. People of color know when you are doing this. Your sincerity, commitment and courage will be rightly questioned. You cannot grow to a deeper level of trust and intimacy with people of color you treat this way.

20. Teach Me or Help Me; I’m Stuck.

“I want to stop acting like a racist, so please tell me when I do something you think is racist.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

While it is vitally important for white anti-racists to work with other white people, this detour again results in white people controlling the direction and focus of anti-racist work. White people will get stuck. They will get frustrated and impatient with themselves and other white people in this struggle. You’ll stay stuck if you don’t seek help from other white anti-racists. Your inclination in the past has been to ask people of color to help you. You should seek out other white people BEFORE you go to people of color.

Perhaps, as you become more trustworthy as allies, you will build genuine relationships with a few people of color who offer their reflections when you get stuck. But this is at their discretion, not yours. You can’t assume or act as though people of color should be so grateful for your attempts at anti- racism, that they will be willing to guide you whenever you are ready to be guided.

21. White on White, and Righteously So.

“What is wrong with those white people? Can’t they see how racist they’re being?” or “I just can’t stand to be around white people who act so racist anymore.” “You’re preaching to the choir” “You’re wasting your time with us; we’re not the people who need this training.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

You distance yourself from “other” white people. You see only unapologetic bigots, card-carrying white supremacists and white people outside your own circle as “real racists.” You put other white people down, trash their work or behavior, or otherwise dismiss them. You righteously consider yourselves white people who have evolved beyond our racist conditioning.

This is another level of denial. There are no “exceptional white people.” You may have attended many anti-racism workshops; you may not be shouting racist epithets or actively discriminating against people of color, but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage no matter what your intentions are. This distancing serves only to divide you from potential allies and limit your own learning.

22. Smoke and Mirrors.

You use the current PC language; you listen to the right music; we state the liberal line; you’re seen at the right meetings with the right people. You even interrupt racist remarks when the right people are watching and when there is no risk to us. You look like an anti-racist.

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

This is the “Avon Ally,” the cosmetic approach. People of color and other white anti-racists see through this pretense quickly. This pseudo-anti-racist posturing only serves to collude with racism and weakens the credibility of sincere white anti-racists.

23. I Have To Do My Personal Work.

“I have to do my personal work first.” Or “Ending racism is only about changing personal attitudes.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

If you assume that personal reflection and interpersonal work are the end of your job as an anti-racist, you would stay out of the public, institutional arenas. You would ignore cultural racist practices that don’t include whites personally. Whites wouldn’t take action, until they have finished ridding themselves of all racist conditioning. And since that complete “cure” will never happen, you would never take any institutional or cultural anti- racist action.

24. Whites Only.

“I have no connection with or accountability to people of color. I do all my anti-racism with whites only. I am accountable only to other white people.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

While it is vitally important for white anti-racists to work with other white people, this detour results in white people again controlling the direction and focus of anti-racism work.

25. The Accountant.

We keep a tally sheet. If we perform some “feat of anti- racism we expect reciprocity from an individual or group of color, usually with some prestige or power that can serve our interests.

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

“I scratch your back, you scratch mine” is NOT justice seeking nor ally behavior. It serves only to reduce justice work to some kind of power brokering currency.

26. Silence.

We stay silent.

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Your silence may be a product of your guilt or fear of making people of color or white people angry with you or disappointed in you. You may be silent because your guilt stops you from disagreeing with people of color. You may be afraid that speaking out could result in losing some of your privilege. You may be silenced by fear of violence. The reasons for our silence are many, but each time we are silent we miss an opportunity to interrupt racism, or to act as an ally or to interact genuinely with people of color or other white people. And no anti-racist action is taken as long as we are silent.

(A note about silence: Silence is a complicated matter. There are times when faced with a potential intervention situation that you may choose not to interrupt – for reasons of good sense or strategy. Anti-racists need courage, but taking foolish risks makes little sense. When the choice is between intervening in this moment, alone, or gathering allies to speak out later in a more strategic way, the latter may prove more effective.)

27. The “Certificate of Innocence.”

Sometimes you seek or expect from people of color some public or private recognition and appreciation for your anti-racism. Other times you are looking for a “certificate of innocence” telling you, that you are one of the good white people.

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

If your ally commitment depends on positive reinforcement from people of color, you set yourself up for sure failure. The first time a person of color is displeased with your actions, you could respond, “Well, if the very people I’m doing all this for don’t want my help, then why bother?” Clearly, you’re challenging racism for “them,” not for whites. You have not identified your self-interest, as a white person, for fighting racism. Until you do, you will not be able to sustain this lifelong journey.

28. Exhaustion and Despair – Sound and Retreat.

“I’m exhausted. I’m only one person. I can stop and rest for a while.” Or “Racism is so pervasive and entrenched, there just isn’t any hope.”

REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:

Despair is a real enemy of anti-racists. If your commitment is a lifelong one, we must find ways to mitigate the effects. Burn-out or desertion is of no use to the struggle. We can remember men who jumped on a “Take Back the Night” bandwagon, challenging violence against women – for a while, until the attention on them as good men waned … until the “glamour” of the issue faded.

One of the historical, repeated failures of “liberals” in the social justice movement has been their short-term and inconsistent commitment to the “issue du jour.” If you quit, for any reason, you are engaging your “default option.” As white people, you can rest, back off, or take a break from the frustration and despair of anti-racism work. There will be no significant consequence to you for this retreat. White people will not think less of you. But racism doesn’t allow such a respite for people of color. One of the elemental privileges of being white is your freedom to retreat from the issue of racism. “If things get too tough, I can always take a break.” And your work against racism doesn’t get done.

Each anti-racist action we take brings new racist action and challenges. People of color will continue to demand their rights, opportunities and full personhood. But racism in the United States won’t end because people of color demand it. Racism will only end when a significant number of white people of conscience, the people who can wield systemic privilege and power with integrity, find the will and take the action to dismantle it. This won’t happen until white people find racism in their daily consciousness as often as people of color do. For now you have to drag racism into your consciousness intentionally, for, unlike your sisters and brothers of color, the most present daily manifestation of your white privilege is the possibility of forgetting about racism. We cannot.

Authored by jona Olsson. Read the complete article here. “Detour-Spotting, for white anti-racists”

#RacistsAboutToBeMad #WhitePeopleWontBeAbleToDeal #YouTooRacistNonBlackPOC

[testudoaubrei-blog]

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

[akookminsupporter]

People who like pop culture stan rich people, even if we like to pretend we don't, or that they aren't that rich. We are all stanning rich people all the time. But when problems of social and financial divide in our society are heightened or more felt (currently partly due to the pandemic), cognitive dissonance gets interrupted and people tend to misplace a lot of anger and helplessness on the necks of random celebrities. The In the SOOP houses are big but doesn't every kpop idol get styled in ridiculously expensive clothing by stylists and isn't this whole thing part of a larger glamourous industry?

It isn't BTS's fault we live in the kind of hell where some people can't afford to be treated for cancer while Jeff Bezos goes on a dick rocket to space.

Some of the comments people have made about the SOOP houses have more to do with the politics of certain visuals because they look like a certain kind of rich people house that a lot of people find tacky. Sociologically, people see these kinds of houses as worse than more expensive but more minimalist houses or somehow more indicative of 'bad wealth'. This could be true I don't know. I agree with you that the SOOP houses are a set. People will be able to watch the soop for years to come whatever happens to them.

I have heard some of my friends say that what they love about watching K reality is that everyone lives in a "classy" normal looking apartment and does normal stuff like cooking and cleaning. There are fantasies and anthropological divisions happening there. It isn't an attitude that is all that different from one of my WASP friends rich parents who see outward displays of wealth as gaudy and "classless".

At the end of the day BTS are more charitable than we probably even know about. It makes as much sense to criticize a hollywood movie that costs two hundred million dollars to make than whatever got built for the soop. But when BTS are seen in big houses people take it personally. There must be better ways of reckoning with financial inequality than worrying about where BTS sleep.

So the problem is that the fact that they remodelled a property to record content that would be sold and consumed by fans like 98% of everything to do with BTS was too obvious? But them using private planes or wearing expensive clothes or buying art isn't? Doesn't that also make it obvious?

And I don't know but, I'm pretty sure if the guys had to record in the soop with the budget and accommodations of BV 1 for example, fans would also complain because they are millionaires! The company has money because of them! The least they could do is give them better accommodations and budgets according to the status they have today.

I'll say it again, I do think criticism of the rich getting richer every day while others are getting poorer is valid but criticising BTS or its agency for using the money for something work-related is a bit... I don't know. Especially when we have no idea what they did with the house afterwards.

Something that is important to point out and that someone already did in one of the reblogs of my post (sorry for not remembering your name) is that in the soop has a considerable amount of brands as sponsors, so a lot of the elements in the houses are most likely product placement.

[samwisethewitch]

What paganism is not

In my last post, I talked about what makes a person or a religion pagan. In this post, I’d like to clear up some common misconceptions about paganism. Some of these may seem like common sense, but I promise all of these are things people have said to my face after finding out that I identify as pagan.

So, for the record, paganism is NOT…

… a Christian heresy. As I mentioned in my last post, the traditions that modern paganism draws inspiration from predate Christianity — some of them by several thousands of years. Paganism is older than Judaism, the oldest Abrahamic religion, and may even predate the concept of monotheism. (Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion, is believed to have originated about 4,000 years ago. Sumer and Egypt, two of the first civilizations, had established “pagan” religions about 6,500 and 5,000 years ago, respectively.)

To be a heretic, a person must 1.) believe in Christian dogma, and 2.) knowingly violate that dogma. Someone who is not Christian, practicing a religion that predates Christianity, cannot be a heretic.

… dark or scary. When some people hear the word “pagan,” their mind immediately goes to dark-robed cultists sacrificing babies in the woods. This idea dates back to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when a wave of religious and moral panic swept the United States. Some of the things targeted as threats to Christian values were: Dungeons & Dragons, metal music, and yes, paganism. (Ironically, all things I absolutely love. Take from that what you will.) The misconceptions that began in the 1980s unfortunately still haunt modern pagan communities.

I hope we can all agree that occasionally rocking out and/or playing D&D does not make someone a bad person. Neither does being pagan.

In reality, most pagans are pretty chill people, and most pagan religions have some sort of code of ethics that forbids doing unnecessary harm to others. You’re much more likely to find pagans holding a healing circle in someone’s living room than performing dark rites under a blood moon.

That’s not to say all pagans are perfect, or that bad people can’t be pagan. Every group has a few bad apples, but the actions of these individuals does not reflect the attitudes or practices of the group as a whole.

… all about sex. Another negative stereotype is that pagans are obsessed with sex and/or perform deviant sex acts are part of their religious rituals. This misconception has unfortunately resurfaced in the last few years with the rise of far-right conspiracies like the Q-anon theory. (Which I hope I don’t have to tell you is bullshit.)

While it is true that pagans are much more open about sex than, say, Christians, most pagans see sex as just a normal part of human life. Even the groups of pagans who believe sex is sacred tend to keep it behind closed doors. Some Wiccan covens do include a ritual representation of the sexual union of God and goddess in their rituals, but it’s nothing more explicit than a knife being lowered into a chalice.

Pagans aren’t more or less obsessed with sex than any other group of people, but they are generally more accepting of it. Because sex has no negative moral implications in pagan faiths, practitioners may feel more comfortable or confident in their sex lives than those who believe sex is sinful. In my mind, that’s a good thing.

… a system without ethics. Some people are attracted to paganism because they come from a strict religious background and believe that pagans can do whatever they want without consequences. This misconception can lead to frustration when they learn that pagan faiths, like all religions, have rules.

As previously mentioned, most pagans have a clearly defined moral code. It may be as simple as “harm none” or a complex system of rules and rituals. Either way, the point is that pagans follow rules, even if they may not be exactly the same rules as other religions.

… only for hippies. On the opposite side of the pop culture spectrum from the “scary cultist” stereotype is the stereotype of pagans are tree-hugging hippies. While it is true that pagans tend to care deeply about the environment, to say that all pagans are hippies would be an overstatement. There certainly are pagans who fit this stereotype, but for the most part pagans look just like everyone else. Which is to say, you can’t tell their religion just by looking at them.

… New Age. Paganism and New Age spirituality are two different things that often get confused or conflated in pop culture. The two movements are actually quite different, although some pagans may also be involved in New Age practices.

Paganism is based on pre-Christian religions from Europe and North Africa. New Age spirituality was largely inspired by alternative spiritual movements of the 19th century, such as the New Thought movement, the Theosophical Society, and spiritualism. Core New Age principles include the Law of Attraction, the belief that all humans are spiritual beings, and the idea of universal life energy.

Some of these ideas are also present in some (but not all) pagan religions, but pagans and New Agers tend to take very different approaches to spirituality even when they have similar beliefs. I like to think of it this way: pagans take a “bottom up” approach, while New Agers take a “top down” approach. For pagans, spirituality is built on daily practices, rituals, and connections with the world and the people around us. New Agers have a much more cosmic mindset and tend to view everything through the lens of their soul’s journey. (Hence the popular New Age saying, “You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience.”)

Neither of these approaches is necessarily better than the other, but they speak to different personalities and different spiritual needs. In practice, they look very different.

If you’re interested in New Age spirituality, a series on paganism may not be of much help to you. Instead, you may want to look into books by authors like Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay.

… a way to rebel against your conservative family. In the 1990s and early 2000s, an author called Silver Ravenwolf made her name by publishing books about neopaganism marketed to teen girls. These books are extremely controversial among pagans, even today. Ravenwolf’s boooks are unfairly harsh (not to mention factually incorrect) in their depiction of Christianity, encourage readers to lie and manipulate people, and contain a lot of revisionist history. They also put paganism and witchcraft on the map as the hot new way to stick it to your parents.

I’m not saying you can’t be pagan if you’re a teenager or if you still live with your parents. (Hell, I was a teenager living at home when I first started reading about paganism.) What I am saying is that you should take an honest look at your motivations in practicing paganism. Are you genuinely attracted to pagan beliefs and values, or are you attracted to the mystery/edginess associated with it? If it’s the latter, there are lots of ways to explore the dark side without appropriating someone else’s religion.

… a trend or a phase. This is a new development that, honestly, I think is 90% Instagram’s fault. Certain influencers just make being pagan look so good. Capitalism has fully latched onto the pagan aesthetic, and you’ll find no shortage of retailers selling expensive knick-knacks for your altar.

For the record, I think experimentation is healthy. After all, the only way to find out if a religion works for you is to try it out for a while. But again, I think this comes down to intention. If you’re genuinely attracted to what pagan religions have to offer, then go for it. But if you’re more interested in posting cool photos of your altar setup, you don’t need to be pagan to do so.

[tricky-ghoul]

Why is “peeking at his first playboy” and “watching his first porn”, objectifying women and frat boy culture “railing as many girls as possible”, so celebrated by men as “teen boys crossing over to manhood” or “rite of passage”?

Why is “manhood” defined as getting lots of sex and male r@peyness so celebrated, then the society expect women and teen girls to “not be coerced or r-ped” and luckily stay virgins even though guys can force themselves on women and bully them for prudishness if the girls they want to hit on aren’t “sluts for male attention”?!

And they expect their crap to work out? Male logic and double standards are so destructive. Serious q, why

The only explanation I can come up with for why sexual prowess and promiscuity is praised in men by men, is that innate mammal need to spread their seed. Despite realizing the consequences (unwanted pregnancy, STDs etc), I think men still have a built in desire to copulate as much as possible just to propagate the species, which has snowballed into the mess we deal with today. That innate desire never went away, we’re animals, society fed it through the decades, we revolutionized sex, made it “empowering” to be overtly sexual, and now the monster has more fuel than it could ever need. Porn is a drug. The things it does to our psyche, especially the male psyche, is exactly like a drug. Men on porn are fiendish in the same way a heroin addict would do anything for the next hit. A lot of boys and men are getting sucked into abusing that drug in the exact same ways someone gets hooked on harsh chemicals. Porn is doing just as much silent insidious damage as it’s doing obvious damage through things like prostitution and trafficking.

I also think women are expected to cater to men, care for them, mother them, feed their every desire. It’s what society created, but I think a lot of women have their own built in need to just care, way too hard. I know I do. Sometimes it’s hard to realize you’re going out of your way to care for someone’s “needs” more than your own. We often want to keep the peace, can end up stuck in something toxic, give him what he wants cause it’s often safer and easier than standing up. Being expected to care at such a level creates an expectation that we’re responsible in a similar way to how a parent is responsible for the behavior of their child. To the extent that we’re responsible for their crimes when they’re committed against us, on every level. The victim could have prevented the rape. According to my ex-husband, it was my fault that he continued to use porn. I was too skinny, didn’t show enough skin, didn’t give enough head, didn’t cater to his every whim. So it was my fault. 🙄

I think the things you’ve mentioned are some of the reasons why radical feminism is so important. There’s a lot of ideas humans have had for so long about what it means to be a male or female, what is expected of you, what you should do if you want to be desirable or a good girlfriend or wife. Feminism has tried to fight back and say, no, we’re capable of a lot more than that and were not interested in catering to your sexual needs. The exploitation happens in slight, and it happens on a grand scale, and everything in between. All we can do is keep speaking up in every way possible, fight in all the ways we can safely fight, keep defending our boundaries, support each other and look out for the safety of our fellow women. Educating women and girls, especially younger girls that are just entering the age of dating, is sooo vital. How many girls would refuse a guy that enjoys porn if they realized what it would mean for their relationship? It’s so rare to find someone who hasn’t been brainwashed by porn! The more we draw lines, the more likely things can change, and that’s all I can really hope for.

[svvitchfoot]

interrobang: An Album Analysis

I really love interrobang. It’s a fantastic album, and there aren’t any songs I don’t like, which is pretty rare.

I think there’s two themes that are the most prevalent on interrobang, and they’re both intertwined: illusions and relationships. Originally I was thinking illusions and community, but the more I listened to interrobang, all of the ideas I had about community boiled down even more to being about relationships. Even the idea of community, that’s just a group of people who have some kind of common relationship. A fan community has a common relationship to the source material, a neighborhood community has a common relationship with, hopefully, each other in their neighborhood, the queer community has a common relationship to, well, identifying with queerness.

Communities, though, are also somewhat illusions. Can you touch a community? Can you measure some physical property of it? I mean, you can count the members, but the boundaries of what make a particular community are sometimes illusions. Some illusions are there to misguide us, some illusions are there to intentionally take us off track, some of our own invention, some are built by the society and culture that we live in.

By relationships, I don’t solely mean romantic relationships. Friends, family, mentors, coworkers, your neighbor that gives you vegetables, that guy who walks his dog past you at the same time every day so you always say hi, these are all relationships that we have with the people around us that aren’t contextualized romantically, but that are important, and inform the communities we identify with.

All of the songs on interrobang address relationships or illusions, or a combination, to some extent, but there are three in particular I want to talk about.

beloved address both relationships and illusions. the bones of us addresses relationships. splinter addresses illusions.

lost ‘cause looks at the relationship between two people, one who hurt the other, and whether or not they can fix what they once had.

fluorescent metaphorically talks about the illusions in society, the ones that we fall prey to and are misguided by.

if i were you approaches the idea of the illusion of differences, and whether or not we can actually get along with people who are different from us.

i need you (to be wrong) challenges the illusions of differences as well, asking us how we be in community and relationships with people who are different from us.

the hard way is hard to place, no pun intended. It talks about the relationships where you’re at fault and need to make amends, and the illusion that fixing things is easy, that accountability and amends will be easy to do, especially if you just ignore the problem.

wolves. are we awake? are we asleep? are we caught in a dream, an illusion, that we need to break?

backwards in time addresses our regrets about broken relationships, and the longing that we can have to fix them.

electricity wants the connection part of a relationship, actually being with the other person in a way that’s meaningful.

splinter looks at illusions, but specifically how they harm us. Anxiety caused by illusions is harm, but healing isn’t as easy as removing the illusions. These illusions will still plague us and harm us.

the bones of us reminisces about the relationships we used to have, the ones that we can still fight for and fix, because we care about the others involved in the relationship. These relationships built us into the people we are today, those people are part of us whether we like it or not.

beloved ties all of this together. It acknowledges the illusions of society and division, and comes to the conclusion that relationships are what counteracts the illusions. Not all of them, and not instantly, but relationships help us to shed the illusions and see things differently.

[religioused]

When the Spirit is in Charge

by Gary Simpson

Acts 10:44-48 (CEV)

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit took control of everyone who was listening. Some Jewish followers of the Lord had come with Peter, and they were surprised that the Holy Spirit had been given to Gentiles.

46 Now they were hearing Gentiles speaking unknown languages and praising God. Peter said, "These Gentiles have been given the Holy Spirit, just as we have! I am certain that no one would dare stop us from baptizing them." Peter ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and they asked him to stay on for a few days.

Reflection:

“While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit took control of everyone.” “The Holy Spirit took control.” Keep this line in mind. We will come back to the theme.

There is a lot going on today. This is Mother’s Day. We are combining Mother’s Day and Father’s Day into one day. We are celebrating family. This is also the second week of Asian History Month.

This is a day when we recognize and appreciate the many people who had parenting roles in our lives, including, but not limited to:

• Biological, foster, and adoptive parents.

• Parents of choice.

• Aunts, uncles, grandparents.

• Teachers.

• Neighbors, employers and supervisors.

As I prepare to light this candle, I encourage you to think of people who provided loving parenting and quasi-parenting roles in your life.

The second candle is for all members of our families.

The third candle is for the Asian people in our community and our lives.

We light these candles as a way of thanking God for the people who built into our lives, for families of origin and families of choice, and for Asians who pioneered Canada and who continue to pioneer Canada.

May is Asian History Month. During May, Canadians are encouraged to learn more about the achievements and contributions of Asian Canadians. A few groups we might not think of as Asian, include:

• Some Arabs, such Lebanese, and some Jewish people, and some Russians.

• Persians, Afghanis, Turks.

• Indians and Pakistanis.

There are so many Asian different countries of ancestry and so many different cultures, languages, and religions that we could spend years learning about our neighbors, friends, classmates, and colleagues.

Currently, I think we might be seeing more hate targeting Asian communities than we have seen at any other time since World War 2. The importance of learning about the history and contributions of Asians is very high. Some people are calling the Coronavirus the Chinese virus. Let’s compare hate crimes before and after the Coronavirus pandemic. A comparison of Vancouver hate crimes between January and September of 2019 and 2020 showed an 878% increase in hate crimes targeting Asians.(1) This is added to the ongoing problem of hate targeting many people of broadly Asian descent. About 18% of all Canadian hate crimes in 2017 targeted Jewish people. In 2017 17% of Canadian hate crimes targeted Muslims.(2) A total of 35% of all hate crimes were religious hate crimes. Because some Muslims and some Jewish people have Asian heritage, this means that some of the religious discrimination is targeting Asian people.

In contemporary society, it almost feels like there is no such thing as a freak accident – somebody always has to be at fault, so we seek to blame and to litigate. So some people are referring to the Coronavirus as the China virus. That might be a factor in the massive increase in hate directed toward Asians.

Because of the pandemic, we are afraid – afraid for our jobs and businesses, our freedom and convenience, our way of life. We are also afraid of getting sick. We may mask our fears with angry outbursts and hate. Some of the anger and fear targets Asian people. Fearing members of other groups, xenophobia, is nothing new. Some xenophobia was probably working behind the scenes in ancient Palestine.

Perhaps, Jewish people had reason to feel a little threatened by non-Jewish people. There is a history of conflict ranging over more than 4,400 years. An USA Today article indicates that Jerusalem was captured and recaptured at least 20 times. Conflict over Jerusalem seems to have started no later than 2,500 years before Christ and ended in 1967.(3) Over 575 years before Christ, Solomon's Temple was destroyed. Another Temple was built about 515 years before Christ.(4) Jewish protests against Antiochus IV resulted in a backlash against Jewish people. He marched on Jerusalem, ordered the killing of 80 thousand people and sold about the same number into slavery. He also desecrated the Temple.(5) By about 63 AD, the area of ancient Israel came under Roman rule.(6) Jewish people, once again, found themselves under the control of a foreign imperial power. Roman rule was not always ideal. Pontius Pilate was so brutal that in 37 CE, he was ordered to give an account to the emperor.(7) The roots of xenophobia were probably fed, watered, and nourished by oppression coming from Gentiles.

Earlier in Acts Chapter 10, Peter has a vision that shows Peter that God is a universalist God, an inclusive God for all people. Then we read part of Peter’s sermon and we see the Holy Spirit poured out upon the Gentile Believers. “I am truly convinced . . . that there is no favoritism with God, but that He is ready to receive any man in any nation who reverences Him and who does what is right.”(8) “The Holy Spirit took control.” As Peter is making the point that righteous people of all nations are accepted by God, the Spirit fills the Gentile followers of Jesus. This sermon could be the first sermon preached about Jesus.(9) There are a number of important elements in Peter’s sermon. I think two important parts of the sermon are the universal, worldwide nature of the Gospel, and the anointing of God being poured out upon Gentiles.

The dream helped Peter understand that the Kingdom of God is inclusive and universalist and that God breaks down the barriers of fear, prejudice, discrimination, and hate between groups of people. “The Holy Spirit took control.” The Spirit comes down on Jesus' Gentile followers. This manifestation of God was not expected by Jesus' Jewish followers and it was evidence that God accepted Gentile Believers completely. Seeing an unexpected move of God in the lives of others has the power transform our lives and to help us love people we used to fear or believe are either deficient or defective.

God’s love is impressive. From a Trinitarian perspective, God’s love is shown in the incarnation. “In Jesus, God entered the world and took on” human life. God loved and cared enough accept the “limitations of humanity.”(10) This is a love that let the world slander Christ, brand Christ a heretic, pursue Christ, and judge, crucify, and bury Christ.(11)

Vernon McGee’s Bible commentaries are interesting. He relates interesting illustrations. He tells a story about a small-town storekeeper. A family arrived and wanted to know what kind of a town it was. The wise storekeeper asked, “What kind of town did you come from?” The reply was that they came from an incredible town. People in their former town cared about each other. The storekeeper replied, “This is just the same kind of town.” The family decided that they just might make the town their new home. A little later, another visiting family arrived. They also wanted to know what kind of town it was. The storekeeper asked what their old town was like. The family indicated that the town was mean. The people did not care about anyone. The storekeeper replied, “This is just the same kind of town.” The second family decided to drive on.

A person who heard both stories asked what the storekeeper was doing, because he gave the two families very different responses. The storekeeper responded, “I've learned that any town will be the same kind of town that you left – because you will be the same kind of person.”(12)

When the Spirit of God is in control, we are a different people, a people filled with the Spirit of the risen Christ. Because we are different – Spirit filled, we notice that others are different too. When the Spirit is in control, love is present. The transforming love of the risen Christ is generally seen as a proof that we walk in the footsteps of Christ. John 13:35. “If you love each other, everyone will know that you are my disciples.”(13)

I am going to conclude with one more story. This is about how God changes people by the proof of the Spirit of God moving in people's lives who we do not think God moves in.

Grant is a United Methodist pastor. He has over 304 thousand followers on TikTok. He is a dynamic, loving figure on TikTok. He did not start as a progressive pastor. He was a conservative Evangelical. He admits that he was one of the kind of Christians who would leave comments on social media telling progressive Christians that they were going to hell. Something changed.

He relates that while he was still conservative, he was welcomed into the church and became friends with a person who helped change his life. This person, on his first Sunday at the church, came up to him, hugged him and said, “I am the resident lesbian,” and she welcomed him, telling Grant how glad she was that he was at their church. Grant was at the church to be the youth director. He got to know her, her former husband, and the children. The love they shared as a family caught his attention.  

He notes, “The first step to me changing my faith was seeing fruit in people that I previously thought were wrong.” He saw love in people he disagreed with and his theology started to change. He started to see complexity and nuance in the Bible. What I think was the key in his story of change is what he describes as “seeing the Spirit of God” in people he previously disagreed with and that made him realize that “God is love.”(14)

Notes

(1) Sherina Harris. "Reported Anti-Asian Hate Crimes up 878% in Vancouver: Police." 2020 October 30, 13 April 2021.<https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/anti-asian-hate-crimes-2020_ca_5f9c3403c5b61b5109e705a6>.

(2) "Facts and Figures: Discrimination and Hate Crimes Statistics." Government of Canada. 16 October 2020, 13 April 2021. <https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/federal-anti-racism-secretariat/facts-figures.html>.

(3) Oren Dorell. “Jerusalem has History of Many Conquests, Surrenders.” USA Today. 05 December 2017, 02 May 2021.

<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/12/05/jerusalem-history-israel-capital/923651001/>.

(4) David Horton, ed. The Portable Seminary. 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 2018), 239.

(5) Horton (2018), 240.

(6) Horton (2018), 241.

(7) Horton (2018), 242.

(8) William Barclay New Testament, Acts 10:34-35.

(9) William Barclay. The New Daily Study Bible: The Acts of the Apostles. Kindle ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), e-book.

(10) William Barclay. The New Daily Study Bible: The Letters of John and Jude. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), e-book.

(11) William Barclay. The New Daily Study Bible: The Letters of John and Jude. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), e-book.

(12) J. Vernon McGee. Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee. Kindle ed. (Pasadena, California: Thru the Bible Radio, 1998), e-book.

(13) Contemporary English Version.

(14) “Story Time: Deconstruction.” @pastor_g TikTok. 04 May 2021, 04 May 2021. <https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeqSR5KB/>

[bloody-wonder]

Every time I come across one of those posts or fics about how Andrew should feel bad about choking Kevin/how it was bad writing for Nora to have Andrew do it, it always seems to be Kevin superfans who are upset that Kandreil didn’t make it into the final draft. And every time I’m just baffled. How can people possibly feel so slighted by the exclusion of a pairing that Nora has said wouldn’t have made sense or been healthy in the final story anyway? The entitlement is just ridiculous

wowowow some juicy unpopular opinions are on the menu today!

i have a lot to say so buckle up. it’s gonna be one of those rants.

i have answered an ask about choking already. to sum it up: is choking kevin an acceptable mature way to express frustration at your bf being kidnapped by the mafia? no. is it in character for andrew? yes. will andrew apologize for it? no. will he and kevin still be friends? yes. 

first of all, i personally don’t see why kandreil would be unhealthy. i haven’t read nora’s statement about it but she didn’t elaborate, did she? it would be interesting to know why she thinks so but that’s unlikely to happen seeing as every word she utters about the characters she created gets her unproportional amounts of hate.

that being said, i totally see why kandreil would be out of character for the versions of kevin, neil and andrew that we see in the books. the relationships between kevin and the other two are certainly intense but i wish i didn’t have to suggest in the year of our lord 2020 that relationships can be intense without being sexual or romantic.

lets look at neil who’s canonically demi which means he has to have a profound emotional bond with a person in order to feel something like that for them. he has developed this bond with andrew throughout the books because they have similar backgrounds and are uniquely positioned to understand each other but more importantly because neil was put in a situation where he had to constantly actively communicate with andrew. andreil dialogues take up a large part of the books and enable us to see how andreil develops and works. nothing comparable happens between neil and kevin. they have a different dynamic altogether where neil looks up to kevin in the beginning for his exy skills and in turn kevin looks up to neil in the end for his being feisty in the face of imminent doom skills. neil chose to throw his anonymity away in order to stand up for kevin at kathy’s show which must mean he values kevin a lot, but he also antagonized him throughout the books, faulted him for not getting over his trauma in a timely manner and said the meanest things to him. a great and complex dynamic by all means. i have no complaints whatsoever and certainly don’t see them falling in love.

now lets look at andrew who isn’t aspec and has probably checked kevin out seeing as kevin is conventionally attractive. kevin & andrew is one of the most complex and interesting relationships i’ve ever seen in fiction. when we first encounter them their interactions are so intense that many readers (and neil) have interpreted them as a couple (because like i said before we tragically live in a society where tension is always seen as sexual). kevin and andrew met at such a time in their lives when they sorely needed something only the other was able to give: for kevin it was someone to stop him from returning to an abusive environment and for andrew it was someone who could see his real potential and worth behind his hostile manic exterior. so they started this weird co-dependent non-friendship which didn’t turn into anything else because - my big guess - neither of them wanted it to. andrew knows when he wants to fuck someone and knows how to arrange it but he didn’t with kevin because he already was a more important person to him than, for example, roland. the risks outweighed the benefits. but andrew did “arrange” it with neil probably because neil had something to offer which kevin had not. unlike kevineil where extensive relationship development had to take place in order for it to happen, kandrew could happen just because one of them suggested it. but guess what neither of them did and it’s canon. i for one am very happy that this unique exciting relationship wasn’t spoiled by romance.

finally lets look at kevin who isn’t a pov character like neil nor a character who’s constantly in neil’s focus of attention like andrew. we don’t have a comparable amount of information about kevin’s inner world so we have to surmise a lot of it just based on what neil cared to impart. so naturally the interpretations will differ. i personally see no signs of kevin being attracted to any person or any gender at any point in the books. there’s thea of course but she’s such an obvious last minute addition that i don’t even want to consider her. the kevin i know is living his best life as an unmarried childless aroace exy legend surrounded by friends and family and friends who are family. i’m aroace and imagining kevin single and happy is very important to me. it’s probably equally important to kandreil shippers to see some good polyamorous rep which is only slightly less rare in media than aroace rep. but the difference between me and kandreil shippers is that i have a magical ability to disagree with the author without cursing the very earth she walks upon.

ah yes, another difference is of course that they have an argument set in stone - kandreil was canon in earlier drafts. but do you know what else was there in the earlier drafts? jean was dead in them. so was erik in some of them which made nicky a different person altogether. also i distinctly remember nora writing that she has been developing this story for so long that she has shipped all the possible pairings at some point or another. kandreil aren’t special in that sense. what i am getting at is that in order to have a productive discussion we have to choose a particular draft of the story and stick to it, so if it’s a kandreil draft we have to know what else was different in that version, and if it’s the books then well kandreil isn’t canon in them end of story. 

that of course doesn’t mean that people can’t write absolutely stellar kandreil fanfics but it does mean that they have to dial down what you called “the entitelment”. because aftg means different things to different readers and if you insult the author for writing it the way you don’t like you also insult the readers who see themselves represented in the way the story is written. and kandreil fans are so aggressive. it’s smart of you sending the ask on anon cause otherwise they’d come for you so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. just the other day i saw a post which basically said that the reason kevin is portrayed in fics in such a reductive way and writers don’t know what to do with him except make fun of his exy obsession and alcoholism is because andreil is built on the bones of kandreil and, being excluded from this relationship by the author, kevin can never be happy. this take right here illustrates very clearly that the shipping culture damages human brain in such a way that a fulfilling life outside a romantic relationship becomes inconcievable. fic writers diminish kevin to those things not because nora decided she wants her final draft to be about andreil, but because most of them aren’t able to write about a character unless they’re in a relationship. maybe some day fanfiction will develop past that but today is not that day.

i have read some kandreil fanfiction to see what the fuss is all about and my expert opinion is that all of it is ooc. clearly in order for kandreil to happen some manipulations with the existing characters have to be made. i consider myself a kevin superfan but i mean the kevin as he is in the books (and in my awesome hc). the kevin in kandreil fics i don’t know, he’s a character from a book i didn’t read so he can do whatever and date whoever, i don’t care either way. i only care when people insult the books, andreil or nora because they’re bitter that their ship isn’t canon. what a way to live in the year of our lord 2020. 

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Your blog isn’t what I expected for someone who champions conservative values because it is very rich in celebrating culture and strikes a very humane pose. I learn a great deal from your clever and playful posts. Now and again your feminism reveals itself and so I wonder what kind of feminist are you, if at all? It’s a little confusing for a self professing conservative blog.  

I must thank you for your kind words about my blog and your praise is undeserved but I do appreciate that you enjoy aspects of high culture that you may not have come across.

My conservatism is not political or ideological per se and - I get this a lot - not taken from the rather inflammatory American discourse of left and right that is currently playing itself out in America. For example my distaste for the likes of Trump is well known and I have not been shy in poking fun at him here on my blog. Partly because he’s not a real conservative in my eyes but a .... < insert as many expletives as you want here > ....but mainly he has no character. My point is my conservatism isn’t defined by what goes on across from the pond.

Rather my conservatism is rooted in deeply British intellectual traditions and draw in inspiration from Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and other British thinkers as well as cultural writers like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Waugh. So it’s a state of mind or a state of being rather than a rigid ideological set of beliefs.

Of course there is a lot of overlap of shared values and perspectives between the conservatism found elsewhere and what it is has historically been in English history. But my conservative beliefs are not tied to a political party for example. I wash my hands of politicians of all stripes if you must know. I won’t get into that right now but I hope to come back and and address it in a later post.

As for my feminism that is indeed an interesting question. It’s a very loaded and combustible word especially in these volatile times where vitriol and victimhood demonisation rather than civility and honest discussion so often flavour our social discourse on present day culture and politics.

I would be fine to describe myself as an old school feminist if I am allowing myself to be labelled that is. And in that case there is no incompatibility between being that sort of small ‘f’ feminist and someone who holds a conservative temperament. They are mutually compatible.

To understand what I mean let me give you a potted history of feminism. It’s very broad brush and I know I am over simplifying the rich history of each wave of feminism so I’m making this caveat here.

Broadly speaking the feminist movement is usually broken up into three “waves.” The first wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries pushed for political equality. The second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, pushed for legal and professional equality. And the third wave, in the past couple decades but especially now, has pushed for social equality as well as social and racial justice. It is the first wave and bits of the second wave that I broadly identify my feminism with.

Why is that?

Again broadly speaking, in the first wave and overlapping with the second wave legal and political equality are clearly defined and measurable, but in the third wave (the current wave) social equality and social justice is murky and complicated.

Indeed the current feminist movement - which now also includes race and trans issues in a big way - is not a protest against unjust laws or sexist institutions as much as it is the protest against people’s unconscious beliefs as well as centuries-worth of cultural norms and heritage that have been biased in some ways against women but also crucially have served women reasonably well in unwritten ways.

Of course women still get screwed over in myriad ways. It’s just that whereas before it was an open and accepted part of society, today nearly all - as they see it - is non-obvious and even unconscious. So we have moved from policing legalised equality opporttunities to policing thought.

I understand the resentment - some of it sincere - against the perceived unjustness of women’s lot in life. But this third wave of feminism is fuelled in raw emotion, dollops of self-victimhood, and selfish avoidance of personal responsibility. Indeed it bloats itself by latching onto every social and racial outrage of the moment.

It becomes incredibly difficult to actually define ‘equality’ not in terms of the goals of the first wave of feminists or even the second because we can objectively measure legal, civil and political goals e.g. It’s easy to measure whether boys and girls are receiving the same funding in schools. It’s easy to see whether a man and woman are being paid appropriately for the same work. But how does one measure equality in terms of social justice? If people have a visceral dislike of Ms X over Mr Y is it because she’s a woman or only because she’s a shitty human being in person?

The problem is that feminism is more than a philosophy or a group of beliefs. It is, now, also a political movement, a social identity, as well as a set of institutions. In other words, it’s become tribal identity politics thanks to the abstract ideological currents of cultural Marxism.

Once a philosophy goes tribal, its beliefs no longer exist to serve some moral principle, but rather they exist to serve the promotion of the group - with all their unconscious biases and preferences for people who pass our ‘purity test’ of what true believers should be i.e. like us, built in.

So we end up in this crazy situation where tribal feminism laid out a specific set of paranoid beliefs  - that everywhere you look there is constant oppression from the patriarchy, that masculinity is inherently violent, and that the only differences between men and women are figments of our cultural imagination, not based on biology or science.

Anyone who contradicted or questioned these beliefs soon found themselves kicked out of the tribe. They became one of the oppressors. And the people who pushed these beliefs to their furthest conclusions — that penises were a cultural construction of oppression, that school mascots encourage rape and sexual violence, and that marriage is state sanctioned rape or as is now the current fad that biological sex is not a scientific fact or not recognising preferred pronouns is a form of hate speech etc— were rewarded with greater status within the tribe.

Often those shouting the loudest have been white middle class educated liberals who try to outcompete each other within the tribe with such virtue signalling. Since the expansion of higher education in the 1980s in Britain (and the US too I think), a lot of these misguided young people have been doing useless university degrees - gender studies, performing arts, communication studies, ethnic studies etc - that have no application in the real world of work. I listen to CEOs and other hiring executives and they are shocked at how uneducated graduate students are and how such graduates lack even the basic skills in logic and critical problem solving. And they seem so fragile to criticism.

In a rapidly changing global economy, a society if it wants to progress and prosper is in need of  valuing skills, languages, technical knowledge, and general competence (i.e critical thinking) but all too often what our current society has instead are middle class young men and women with a useless piece of toilet paper that passes for a university degree, a mountain of monetary debt, and no job prospects. No wonder they feel it’s someone else’s fault they can’t get on to that first rung of the ladder of life and decide instead that pulling down statues is more cathartic and vague calls to end ‘institutional systemic racism’. Oh I digress....sorry.

My real issue with the current wave of feminists is that they have an attitude problem.

Previous generations of feminists sacrificed a great deal in getting women the right to vote, to go to university, to have an equal education, for protection from domestic violence, and workplace discrimination, and equal pay, and fair divorce laws. All these are good things and none actually undermine the natural order of things such as marriage or family. It is these women I truly admire and I am inspired by in my own life because of their grit and relentless drive and not curl up into a ball of self pity and victimhood.

More importantly they did so NOT at the expense of men. Indeed they sought not to replace men but to seek parity in legal ways to ensure equality of opportunity (not outcomes). This is often forgotten but is important to stress.

Certainly for the first wave of feminists they did not hate men but rather celebrated them. Pioneers such as Amelia Earhart - to give a personal example close to my heart as a former military aviator myself - admired men a great deal. Othern women like another heroine of mine, Gettrude Bell, the first woman to get a First Class honours History degree at Oxford and renowned archaeologist and Middle East trraveller and power breaker never lost her admiration for her male peers.

I love men too as a general observation. I admire many that I am blessed to know in my life. I admire them not because they are necessarily men but primarily because of their character. It’s their character makes me want to emulate them by making me determined and disciplined to achieve my own life goals through grit and effort.

Character for me is how I judge anyone. It matters not to me your colour, creed or sexual orientation. But what matters is your actions.

I find it surreal that we have gone from a world where Christian driven Martin Luther King envisaged a world where a person would be judged from the content of their character and not the colour of their skin (or gender) to one where it’s been reversed 360 degrees. Now we are expected to judge people by the colour of their skin, their gender and sexual orientation. So what one appears on the outside is more important than what’s on the inside. It’s errant nonsense and a betrayal of the sacrifices of those who fought for equality for all by past generations.

Moreover as a Christian, such notions are unbiblical. The bible doesn’t recognise race - despite what slave owners down the ages have believed - nor gender - despite what the narrow minded men in pulpits have spewed out down the centuries - but it does recognise the fact of original sin in the human condition. We are all fallen, we are all broken, and we are all in need of grace.

Even if one isn’t religious inclined there is something else to consider.

For past generations the stakes were so big. By contrast this present generation’s stakes seem petty and small. Indeed the current generation’s struggle comes down to fighting for safe spaces, trigger warnings and micro aggressions. In other words, it’s just about the protection of feelings. No wonder our generation is seen as the snowflake generation.

A lot of this nonsense can be put down to the intellectually fraudulent teachings of critical theory and post colonial studies in the liberal arts departments on university campuses and how such ideas have and continue to seep into the mainstream conversation with such concepts as ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’, ‘whites lives don’t matter’, ‘abolish whiteness’ ‘rape culture’ etc which feels satisfying as intellectual masturbation but has no resonance in the real world where people get on with the daily struggle of making something of their lives.

But yet its critical mass is unsustainable because the ideas inherent within it are intellectually unstable and will eventually implode in on itself - witness the current war between feminists (dismissed uncharitably as terfs) who define women by their biological sex and want to protect their sexual identity from those who for example are championing trans rights as sexuality defined primarily as a social construct. So you have third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same issues. For instance there’s the sex positive feminists and there’s also anti-porn, sex negative feminists. How can the same thing either be empowering or demeaning? There are so many third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same exact topics that it’s difficult to even place what they want anymore.The rallying cries of third wave feminism have largely been issues that show only one side of the story and leave out a lot of pertinent details.

But the totality of the damage done to the cultural fabric of society is already there to see. Already now we are in this Orwellian scenario where one has to police feelings so that these feminists don’t feel marginalised or oppressed in some undefinable way. This is what current Western culture has been reduced to. I find it ironic in this current politically charged times, that conservatives have become the defenders of liberalism, or at least the defence of the principle of free speech.

To me the Third Wave feminism battle cry seems to be: Once more but with feelings.

With all due respect, fuck feelings. Grow up.

I always ask the same question to friends who are caught up in this current madness be they BLM activists or third wave feminists (yes, I do have friends in these circles because I don’t define my friends by their beliefs but by their character): compared to what?

We live in a systemic racist society! Compared to what?

We live in a patriarchal society where women are subjugated daily! Compared to what?

We live in an authoritarian state! Compared to what?

We live in a corrupt society of privileged elites! Compared to what?

Third-wave? Not so much. By vast majorities, women today are spurning the label of “feminist” - it’s become an antagonising, miserable, culturally Marxian code word for a far-left movement that seeks to confine women into boxes of ‘wokeness’.

For sure, Western societies and culture have its faults - and we should always be aware of that and make meaningful reforms towards that end. Western societies are not perfect but compared to other societies - China? Russia? Saudi Arabia? - in the world today are we really that bad?

Where is this utopian society that you speak of? Has there ever been one in recorded history? As H.L. Mencken memorably put it, “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.“

I prefer to live in a broken world that is rather than one imagined. When we are rooted in reality and empirical experience can we actually stop wasting time on ‘hurt feelings’ and grievances construed through abstract ideological constructs and get on with making our society better bit by bit so that we can then hand over for our children and grandchildren to inherit a better world, not a perfect one.

Thanks for your question.

[ahrorha]

Flame of Winter

Chapter 33

.

.

“I secluded myself.” Solas continued. “The other Evanuris thought I gave up and left me alone. I went to one of my palaces deep in the mountains, where now Skyhold stands. I hid there, trying to find a way to stop and punish the Evanuris. I couldn't defeat them on my own. To punish them, I knew I first had to weaken them. To achieve that, I had to take away their magic, their greatest source of power. So I formed the Veil, severing this world from the Fade. I created a prison within the Fade itself, locking them away for eternity. A fitting punishment for their misdeeds. I thought that with the Evanuris gone and the Fade hidden away, the People would finally be free.”

“I knew that in creating the Veil, life for the elves would change forever, but it was better than the alternative. The Evanuris were tearing the world apart and had to be stopped. I hoped that despite the lack of the comfort magic provided, the People would be safe. I hoped they would adapt, prosper and begin anew. But I was wrong.”

“By creating the Veil, I destroyed their world. Not only were countless marvels we had created destroyed, but it changed the very essence of the Elvhen themselves. The legends are wrong; it wasn't the arrival of humans that caused the beginning of ageing. It was me. The Veil took everything from the elves, even their immortality and their deep connection with magic.”

Eirlana shook her head. “Solas...”

“Don't.” he interrupted her. “You know how many elves exist today that have no idea what magic is. Something that should be a part of us. The essence of our very nature has all but gone. And I took it from them. In a sense, I made them all tranquil.”

She could see how responsible Solas felt, and he was. By creating the Veil, he had changed everything. But that didn't mean he was responsible for everything that happened afterwards. It also didn't explain why Solas was here now.

“What happened to you after you created the Veil? I saw in a memory in the Fade how your followers were persecuted. They were searching for you.”

“I was exhausted afterwards. Creating the Veil all but depleted my powers. I went into uthenera at a secret location. I could only sleep and watch as millennia went by. Although I had succeeded in stopping the destruction of the Fade and world, I didn't succeed in guiding the People into a new life.”

“It didn't take long before new wars erupted, fuelled by loyalists of the Evanuris. They tried to take control in an effort to fill the void left behind by the disappearance of the Evanuris. I had left instructions for my followers and allies to rebuild and guide the People into a better future, but they were ignored. Soon they were captured and killed for aiding me, as were all the others who were loyal to me. When the humans arrived, there was nothing left, and my name was all but a curse.”

“With the arrival of the humans came a new player to the Game. Demons and dragon queens, that were also affected by the separation of Fade and the waking world, preyed on them. They whispered to the humans that were talented with magic. Through dreams, they shared knowledge and secrets in an effort to reclaim what they had lost.”

“Strengthened by magic, it didn't take long for the humans to fuel the flames of destruction that I had created. War broke out between the humans and elves, and I could do nothing but watch as Arlathan was destroyed and Elvhenan fell. I witnessed how the elves were once again enslaved by the thousands and how our entire culture was destroyed.”

“When Andraste led her rebellion against the Tevinter Empire centuries later, there was almost nothing left. The elves only remembered vague legends and stories of Elvhenan. But they managed to build a new realm in the Dales after being freed, only to be brought down again by the exalted march. It wasn't solely the humans that brought down the elves but a combination of pride, fear, anger, greed and superiority on both sides. But that didn't matter for the end result. The elves were diminished once again. What was left of the People was either forced to live in human society's outskirts or wanders the lands like nomads with no place to call home, clinging to a past based on lies and stories. Wherever you look, it is the same; the elves are nowhere welcome and seen as lesser beings not worthy of a safe, normal life. They are blamed for everything, if it is disease, famine or unrest. With no rights, they cling to a meagre existence in poverty.”

.

Solas clasped his hands behind his back and looked at Eirlana. “When I finally awoke from uthenera, nothing I knew had survived. To me, the world and the elves existing nowadays are almost unrecognisable. The magic that once permeated everything has faded to a fraction of what once was. It felt like I made the world tranquil.”

“What did you do?”

“I regained consciousness slowly and weakened. One doesn't simply wake up after thousands of years. At first, I contacted a few of my followers through dreams. They had survived the turmoil of the ages. Either by staying hidden or like me waking up from uthenera. They were my eyes and ears throughout Thedas, and I learned about the people living now, the groups that are in power and the different cultures that exist today.”

“As my body recovered, I wandered the lands and saw with my own eyes how far the elves had fallen. I also discovered that the Veil I had created millennia ago had weakened considerably. It had degraded with the pacing of time, and many places showed signs of cracks and weak-spots. I feared it would eventually collapse entirely. But with the state the Veil was in, it would be a chaotic process. Some places would collapse sooner than others and would create a chaotic imbalance in the Fade itself. Not to mention the chaotic state the world would face during the ages it would take for the Veil to disappear entirely.”

“So I thought the best cause of action was to remove the Veil all at once.”

“But that would mean....” Eirlana stammered.

“Yes, the world would be plummeted in chaos all at once, but I thought it better to have a relatively brief period of chaos than wait decades of turmoil that would bring more damage to the world and Fade in the long run. But I soon encountered a problem. I needed to use the Anchor and my foci to enter the Fade and reverse the spell in order to restore the world as it should be. My foci had accumulated magical energy for millennia, but my body and magical powers were severely weakened after spending such a long time in uthenera. I was too weak to open the foci's seal and access its power.”

“I devised a plan to let it be opened by someone else. Through dreams and my network of spies, I had learned of the creature Corypheus and his mad plans to rise to godhood. I thought it best to solve two problems at once. I allowed Corypheus to find my orb through my agents.”

“You gave your orb to Corypheus willingly?” Eirlana asked in disbelief.

“Corypheus would have caused chaos with or without my orb. He had already gathered the Venatori and corrupted the Wardens, mages and templars long before he found my orb. The plan was for him to break to foci's seal and be killed in the process. After that, I would take possession of my orb, take the Anchor and enter the Fade to bring down the Veil.

.

Eirlana felt sick to her stomach, knowing how many people died through the explosion at the conclave. And how many more fell in the war against Corypheus. Not to mention the many spirits that got corrupted through the rifts. “What would have happened if Corypheus had died at the conclave and you succeeded and take down the Veil?”

“I would have watched as this world would burn in the raw chaos and begin anew. With the last of the Elvhen people that had survived until this age, I would have restored the world of my time... the world of the elves.”

Horrified, she stared at Solas. “That... that is monstrous.” she gasped. “Aren't we even people to you?”

For a brief second, Solas looked down before he faced her again. “Not at first.” he confessed to her, seeing the shock on her face.

“I had awoken in a world where most peoples conscious connection to the Fade was blocked. By forming the Veil, I took away the beauty of magic, creating whole populations with no affinity for magic at all. It was like walking through a world of tranquil.”

“Before I met you, I tried to contact the elves living in this age. First, through dreams, but only a few could hear me. After I awoke, I attempted to connect with the Dalish clans, teach them the truth about their history, and converse with their elders. Sadly only few were even willing to listen. They looked down on me, calling me a flat ear, a liar and a madman. I was confronted with ridicule and violence.”

“I also visited the alienages. I was more welcomed there; though some of the harhen believed me and my teachings, they were powerless. They had more pressing issues like racism, suppression, violence, famine and disease that their people faced.”

“And it was my fault. I took away the essence of the elves and caused their downfall. I was to blame that the elves are now living in the shadows of human society, clinging to false legends and onto a past that they don't understand.”

“I thought this world lost, that is until I met you.” He shook his head. “You started to change everything. When I encountered you in the Fade, I realised there were still things about this world that I didn't understand. Though at that time, I thought it to be insignificant. My plans were already set in motion, and I was determined to undo my mistakes. Corypheus possessed my orb, and I knew he would be at the Temple of Sacred Ashes.”

“My agents made sure Corypheus found just enough information to attempt to unlock the orb there. By coincidence, the Temple was built on the location I had carved a magical seal into the Veil when I created it. I knew it would be the best place to unlock the orb and enter the Fade. That Corypheus chose to be there at the time of the conclave wasn't part of my plan, and neither was using the Divine's life force in his attempt to unlock the foci. The instructions called for the aid of a person with a close connection with a spirit, but Corypheus twisted mind read them differently.”

.

It was unnerving to see Solas being so calm. In part, Eirlana could understand that he saw this world as a mistake, but it was difficult to hear him dismiss almost everyone living in it.

“You knew the conclave would explode?” she asked and felt almost afraid to hear his reply.

“Both no and yes.” Solas answered. “I knew there would be a release of magical energy, but I didn't expect it to be so violent and destructive. Nor did I anticipate for the explosion to rip such a big tear into the Veil and damaging the Fade. That it did only proves how weak and unstable the Veil has become.”

“I admit my plan was too hasty and ill-conceived—another mistake in a chain of failures. I hadn't foreseen that Corypheus had managed to find an effective form of immortality. Back then, when you found me in the mountains, I was desperate to find out what had gone wrong. Not only had Corypheus and my orb disappeared, but the resulting explosion had also destabilised the Veil. It was tearing apart uncontrollably, damaging the Fade and this world in its wake.”

“I knew I had to stop it somehow. I knew of Haven through my agents, and I suspected that whoever had survived the explosion would gather there. When Ryan appeared bearing the Anchor, I knew he was our only hope to stabilise and temporary heal the Veil. So I decided to stay and aid the fledgeling Inquisition. Though I must admit that dealing with Ryan's superstition and beliefs tested my patience more than once.”

“As we closed rifts and stabilise the region, I couldn't help but feel uneasy. I didn't know if Corypheus had survived and what he would do next, nor did I know what the state of my foci was. But, as you know, nothing happened immediately. I knew then that Corypheus hadn't succeeded in unlocking my orb because if he had, he would have destroyed us. So I waited and played my role of a humble apostate.”

“During those weeks we lived in Haven, it was an almost new experience. After spending ages as the leader of a slave rebellion, I suddenly lived among people who didn't know who I was. It was refreshing and reminded me of the days when I wandered through Elvhenan. In spending time among the people of Haven, I discovered the lives the people of this age lived, their joys and their struggles. Knowing how important the Inquisition would be in opposing Corypheus, I arranged for elven spies to work and live in Haven. They gave me the information and overview I needed. We also got to know each other and grew closer together during that time. And it made me realise I had judged the elves living now too harshly.”

“I struggled with myself. On the one hand, I had to revert the world back to the state it should be. But I also knew by doing so that I would destroy the lives of the people surrounding me. I knew I grew too attached, especially towards you, and tried to seclude myself. Something I found more difficult than I want to admit.”

“Then we finally managed to close the Breach. But as you know, our victory was brief. Corypheus attacked Haven to try to retrieve the Anchor. I was shocked to see that he was using my foci. He had managed to unlock it partially and could use a sliver of its power. Though I wanted to face him and retrieve my orb, I couldn't. I was too weak.”

“Seeing Corypheus alive and the mistake I made in giving my orb to him made me feel defeated. That night in the snowstorm alone and wounded, I was questioning my purpose. In trying to protect the Elvhen people, I created a world filled with lies, cruelty, and injustice. Greed and the need for power ruled again over the weak, and the elves were suffering once more. I had failed as the protector of the elves, and for a short moment, I gave up.”

“But giving up was never an option. You showed me that. You risked your life to save me, and it made me realise that I still had to fulfil my duty. I knew I had to fight and try again. The elven people deserved better. I owed it to them.”

“But first, Corypheus had to be stopped. By attacking the Inquisition, he had almost destroyed us, but we prevailed. And with Corypheus' plans finally revealed, I knew the Inquisition would redouble its efforts to stop him. But first, the Inquisition needed a new home to stand a chance, hence Skyhold. Originally I had other plans for my old home, but this was more important.”

“Once we settled there, I massively expanded my group of agents. I found elves that were willing to fight for a better future, for a chance to restore the elven people. As my allies grew in numbers, I turned my attention to the elves living now. Though they had lost much of the essence of being Elvhen, there were hopeful signs. Under the influence of the Breach and the rifts, many felt something stir deep within them. I also learned that Briala's spies working in the Crossroads had similar experiences. I knew then that not everything was lost and that the elves living now could regain some of their heritage. They could adapt and find a new life when the Veil disappeared.”

.

Solas smiled at Eirlana. “There was also you. You showed me like no other that there was hope.”

He took her hand and looked her in the eye. “I want you to know that everything we had was, no is real. I have never met anyone who could pull my attention from anything that easily. You accepted me even knowing I was hiding things from you. You made me feel emotions I thought I had lost forever. I love you with all my heart and soul. You have a rare and marvellous spirit. Even knowing my fate, I was unable to resist you.”

Under his intense gaze, Eirlana could feel butterflies fluttering in her stomach. Her heart leapt hearing him say those words. But she didn't understand why then he had left her. And why he was trying to leave her now.

“What do you mean? What fate?”

Solas let go of her hand, and his face hardened. “I walk the Din'anshiral. There is only death on this journey.”

Her stomach dropped. Solas thought he was going to die. She shook her head, trying to wrap her head around everything he had told her. “The Evanuris, they will be free again if the Veil disappears.”

“Something I can't let happen again. I will seal them permanently away, but doing so will likely take everything I have left.” he sighed. “I was always prepared to carry the sacrifice and burden for my actions. I would not have you see what I have to become. Too many lives will be lost again before this will be over.”

A chill ran through her as the feeling of dread filled her. “What about the non-elves? What will happen to the humans, dwarves and Qunari?”

“I am not entirely sure, but there is a reason why the dwarves lived underground, and the humans and Qunari only appeared after I created the Veil.”

“The headaches.” Eirlana whispered, remembering the effects of the Crossroads on the others.

He looked remorseful at her. “Many will perish during the chaos when I destroy the Veil, but I fear many more will die due to the direct contact with the Fade.”

She felt herself growing pale as she realised the scale of destruction Solas was talking about. She felt faint and staggered. Seeing her distress Solas quickly helped her to sit down on the remnants of a wall. He knew how soul-crushing the burden was of being responsible for the death of countless lives. He had already done it once, and he was going to do it again. He wished he could spare her from the cruelty of his plan, but in doing so, he would lie to her again. No, he wanted to explain so she would understand that he wasn't the monster history remembered him by.

.

Solas knelt down in front of her so he could look her in the eye. “I know how monstrous this sounds, but some things are inevitable. The Veil is broken and will disappear. It was always intended to be a temporary seal. So I could bring a hold to the destruction of the Fade and this world. I hoped that with guidance, the elven people would grow strong enough to oppose the ruling of the Evanuris. But things turned out much differently than my darkest predictions.”

“Not only have the elven people declined to mere shadows of what they once were. There are now humans living on their lands, ruling over them like they are a superior race. But it is not only the waking world that I changed. Through the Veil, I created an imbalance in the Fade itself. I blocked the spirits from a world they always could enter freely. By blocking them from it, they began longing for the living. Thus I am responsible for the existence of far more demons than there were in my time.”

“There is also the issue of the red lyrium, that it has appeared means that the seal containing the corrupted titan has weakened. Unfortunately, Hawke and Varric found the idol we used in the ritual to seal the titan. It was once guarded by dwarves that were loyal to Mythal. Sadly the whole thaig has perished over time.” “That the idol has been used only weakened the seals more, something that is evident by the spread of the red lyrium. My agents and I try to locate the idol to prevent even more damage. It is too dangerous to be used by anyone who doesn't know the full extent of what could be unleashed.” Solas sighed. “There are so many things differently than I ever wished for, but even if the outcome had been different, what I have to do next would have been the same. By creating the Veil, I put the world into a deep sleep, but it is awakening now. The Fade and waking world were once one, it was the natural state of the world, a state of balance that I disrupted, and now it tries to restore itself. The Veil is weakening, and many ancient beings are feeling it. The dragons are returning, the titans stir, and powerful beings of the Fade are waiting for the two worlds to be one again.”

“But I can't allow the Veil to continue to deteriorate like this. It would do too much damage to the Fade and destabilise this world in the process. If I do nothing, holes will appear everywhere, creating the same devastation as the rifts have caused. It would rip the Fade apart and corrupt countless spirits, not to mention the damage it will cause to the waking world. The Veil needs to be removed in a controlled manner. Like I told you earlier, it will plunge the world into chaos, but it will be for a relatively brief moment.”

“Though there will be much damage and many lives lost in the process, it is important that the natural order is restored. Spirits, demons, elves, dwarves and humans need to find their new place in the world. I have no doubts that that process will be difficult and terrifying for the living. And there will be many violent incidents.”

“Every mage, if it is elf, human or Qunari with magical talents, will suddenly find their powers amplified, and my studies show many would be unable to control them properly. Both humans and Qunari have received limited training because of the fear spread by the Chantry and Qun. This fear engraved in them will not do them any favours.”

“I believe elves and elf-blooded would fare better, but they need to be prepared to harness their abilities when the time comes. I have worked and searched for a way to control the impact the chaos will have when I bring the world back to how it was. Though many things will change for everyone, if they are spirits or beings of flesh and blood.”

“What I want is for the elves to be prepared. To give them the best chance to thrive in the new world. For that purpose, I have created havens for the elven people. Places where they can live, learn and train for that what is to come. I have gathered what is left of my followers, awakened others who still were in uthenera, and united the elves living now that heeded my call, be it Dalish or city elves. By educating and training the latter, I have discovered many things about the elves that live today. It gives me hope that not all is lost.”

“The crossroads.” Eirlana whispered.

“Yes. You to should have felt the effects of being close to the Fade. No, even when we were in Fade, you have felt it. How the Fade itself resonates with our being. How it nourishes and enlighten us. I believe some of the abilities the elves once naturally possessed have survived. They are just dormant, waiting for the Fade to return. Though I can't say the same for the humans. Many of them are not suited to live in such a world. The Qunari will also have a hard time, though they will struggle even more because of the teachings of the Qun. As for the dwarves, they are a hardy race, even if they have to return underground.”

.

In disbelief, Eirlana stared into the distance. Solas did understand her reaction. What he had told her was a lot to swallow, and for most, the implications of his plans would be considered monstrous. A part of him wished he didn't need to destroy the world a second time. He will take no joy in doing what he had to do. But he had to end what he sat in motion all those ages ago. Not that it mattered right now. He had to patiently wait and give her the time to gather her thoughts. He owed her that much.

Eirlana sat in silence for a while, thinking about all the things Solas had told her. It gave answers to so many questions and explained many things she had seen and witnessed. Though it was horrifying to think about the lives that would be lost if Solas carried out his plan, she partly understood him. It was true that the elves were second class citizens. She had seen the suffering and injustices the elves faced that lived in the alienages all across Thedas. In Tevinter, the elves met an even crueller fate, living as slaves. She knew all too well what it was like to have no will of her own. To be not seen as a person and to be subjugated to the whims of a cruel master.

Even if the situation of the Veil wasn't dire, and Solas would manage to unite all the elves and gain lands to call their own. She knew the humans would never accept the elves as their equals. She had no doubt there would be soon a war or even another exalted march to quell the elvish uprising, as they would call it.

She had witnessed and felt how those in power viewed the elves. They wouldn't tolerate an elven nation.

And besides that, the problem of the Veil would remain. She had noticed the scars in the Veil and the unrest of spirits since the closing of the Breach. Then there was also the corrupted titan, the Blight and the imprisoned Evanuris. She shook her head. This problem was far bigger than she ever imagined.

She looked at him, and although she had still many questions about what he had told her, her heart wanted to know one thing.

.

“Why did you leave?” Eirlana asked him.

Solas sighed. She was correct; he owed her an explanation. “My foci. Witnessing its massive amount of magical energy being released uncontrollably was shocking. More so was to see the orb being destroyed. It was my one hope to restore the world, and it was gone. I was in a state of disbelief. And there was also you; you had confessed to me that you knew who I was. You knew the biggest secret I kept from you. It put a lot of things into perspective. I was deeply ashamed; your confrontation and the loss of the orb; led to the only conclusion. I had to leave.”

“Wait, what things fell into perspective?” she looked at him, confused.

“Your reaction. You had withdrawn from me, didn't talk, and I could feel the fear, confusion and doubt whenever I approached you. You were rejecting me.”

“You could feel what?”

“I...” he cursed inwardly. He didn't intend to tell her about what he did to save her. He sighed. “I..., I am bonded with you.”

She frowned in confusion, not knowing what he meant.

“I... When the red lyrium that consumed you suddenly expelled from your body, it left countless wounds behind. You were bleeding severely. There was too much damage, too many wounds to heal. I poured all of my healing magic into you, but it wasn't enough. I could feel the life leaving your body. You were dying. In an act of desperation, I separated a part of my own life force and transferred it to you. It saved your life, but you are now forever bound to me. I am aware of you, even if you are not with me. I can sense the emotions that are the strongest within you.”

Eirlana was flabbergasted, she knew her body and magic had changed after she had awoken, but she never imagined it was Solas who had caused it.

“You know what I think? Is this... is this way my magic has changed.”

“No, as I said, I am aware of your peak emotions. You are overwhelmed and confused at the moment, but I don't need to feel them to know what you are feeling. It is only natural at the moment. And yes, you are bound to me and to my essence, my power. Though I must amid, I am surprised at how well you can wield that power. It was an old Elvhen practice to share once life force as an act of sealing a deep love and commitment.”

“And despite knowing how I feel, you thought I was rejecting you?”

“You did. After you discovered who I was and how I failed to save you and our daughter.”

“I was in mourning, you idiot.” In disbelief, Eirlana stared at him. “I had survived being tortured for days on end by two powerful demons. I lost our child, and at the same time, uncovered it was the child of a would-be god. I thought I failed you. I was afraid of how you would react that I found your secret, and I was right to be afraid. As soon as I tried to talk to you, you disappeared.”

“I...” he fell quiet. Now she was mentioning everything that went through her; her reactions made sense. He shook his head. Hadn't he told Cullen the same thing back then. How could he have been so stupid? And at the same time, he knew why. “I was afraid.” he confessed. “After you were captured, I was desperate. I was confronted with my own deepest fears.”

“Dying alone.” she said softly.

“Yes. I am older than I can remember, and almost all of the people I once knew and cared for are gone. When I was trapped in the nightmare webs in the Fade, I was surrounded by death. The world was destroyed, and I was surrounded by seas of blood and filled with bodies. All death because of me. In that dream, I found your battered body.” he shook his head. “When I found you in that cellar close to death and corrupted, I was beyond myself. I had come too late. You were dying, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was so afraid of losing you and still am. You have gotten too close to me already.”

“You are not going to lose me. Let me help you.”

“No. As I said, I walk the Din'anshiral. There is only death on my journey. I can't allow you to get involved. I have a duty, and I won't let you see what I have to become to accomplish that.”

“Stop painting yourself as a monster.”

He huffed a laugh. “Am I not a monster? I killed thousands of elves by creating the Veil and destroyed their world. And I have to do it again.”

“There has to be another way.”

“Don't you think I have thought about every possibility and outcome? The Veil, the Blight, the corrupted titan and the Evanuris. I have to face them all in order to save the Elvhen people. Regardless of with path I take, people will perish, and the world as we know it now will be destroyed in the end. All I can do is find the best outcome for the elves.”

.

Eirlana took a deep breath. “I didn't mean it like that. But thinking you are the only solution is the first mistake. I know you are trying to right a wrong, that you are trying to heal this world, but there are always different ways to accomplish it.”

Solas tilted his head. “Explain.”

“For example, a man has a leg that is badly wounded and infected. There are different actions you can take.” she counted her fingers down. “You can choose to do nothing. You can cut the leg of. You can try herbs and bandages. Try magic. Pray to the Maker or other gods. Or you can mix all of these up. In the end, all of these things can have the same outcome or a completely different one. He may be able to walk again free of pain, or he can perish despite your best efforts.”

“What I want to say is that you don't know everything. You must realise that by now. Let me help you. In my experience, it is better to heal with the combined knowledge of more healers than do everything on your own.”

Slowly he shook his head and looked down. “No, I can't burden you with my path. There are too many dangers, too many enemies that will try to harm you. You are not safe at my side. I am not safe. You should be as far away from me as possible.

“Solas.” she sighed his name. “I didn't say I will follow you blindly. I said I wanted to help you to look for solutions, whatever they may be. And do you really think that my existence and the bond we have is a secret? The Qun already tried to capture me, and I am pretty sure that I am now on the top list of people wanted by both the Inquisition and the Chantry. Not to mention the Evanuris.”

Solas whipped his head back up, his eyes big in alarm. “What about the Evanuris?”

“For starters, Falon'Din knows who I am.”

“How could he possibly know?”

“I met him, or at least a conscious reflection in the Fade. I told you how I stumbled upon a memory with you and him. I wanted to tell you more, but before I could, we were interrupted by Corypheus. Falon'Din was there with me in the memory, and he was very interested in the woman that had captured the lone wolf's heart.”

“How?” Bewildered, Solas quickly went over the construction of the prison he had made. “That is impossible. He is imprisoned forever. They all are.”

She huffed a small laugh. “How can you be this old and wise and be this blind and short-sighted at the same time. Do you think the Evanuris would just wait and do nothing in all those centuries? I don't know what this cage is, or whatever you put them in, but they have found a way out. At least a way back into the Fade.”

His eyes moved rapidly as he thought about all the implications this would have. He looked back at Eirlana. “Tell me exactly what happened. What did you see.”

“At first, it was like any other reflection in the Fade. It was the memory of a slave girl. I saw how she was offered to you by Falon'Din because you had lost a pet of yours. He was mocking you and reprehending you about how you had changed. The memory wasn't long and vanished as soon as the slave girl walked away from you. I was standing in front of your fading image, trying to comprehend that you were Fen'Harel. Suddenly the Fade shifted, and I was alone with Falon'Din. He circled and watched me like a predator. I could feel he had tremendous power and that he was dangerous. I also knew he wasn't a spirit nor a demon. He felt different. He studied me like a piece of meat, like I was a toy to him. He tried to ensnare me in golden tendrils, but I managed to break free. I fled from him, which made him laugh. The last thing he said was a promise he would find me again.”

“And finding me again he did, when I was trapped by Imshael and Xenbenkeck. I had been imprisoned and tortured for days and was very close to death. Suddenly Falon'Din appeared, and he was just as charming and dangerous as before. He called you a Mutton and a Dog, and was amused that I tried so hard to stay alive.”

Solas stood up and began to pace. These revelations had enormous consequences. If the Evanuris really were able to project their consciousness into the Fade, then that would mean they could be aware of all that had happened and the things he was planning to stop them once and for all.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked her.

“I wouldn't be alive without Falon'Din. He killed Xenbenkeck when she was about to kill me. Then he put me into a deep sleep, saying he would save me as thanks to a very old friend.”

Perplexed, he stared at her. “He was the one who cured you?”

“I don't know what he did. All I know is that I woke up back at Skyhold, badly hurt but alive and free of the red lyrium. But whatever Falon'Din did, I am pretty sure it wasn't to please you.”

.

“And there are others.” Eirlana continued. “I met Mythal, and she aided me to get to you.”

Solas froze again. “Mythal?”

“Yes, she was at Skyhold after you had disappeared. She gave me this amulet that activated the last eluvian for me.”

He looked first at the amulet, then at her. “This is important. How many days after I disappeared was this?”

“The night of the fifth day. Her energy came through the eluvian and merged with Morrigan's body.”

Solas began to pace again. He should have known that Mythal didn't simply would grant him her power and disappear. Why had she deviated from their plan? And why hadn't she confided in him? This was complicating things even further.

“And there is the third one.”

He stared at her, his head feeling dizzy by these revelations. “Who else did you meet?”

“It is something Falon'Din said to me. 'never has a mortal had the pleasure to pique the interest of three Evanuris.' This was before I met Mythal, and I don't think he spoke of her. I think he spoke of my teacher.”

Was that the reason her magic was so fluent, Solas thought. Was it because it was not a spirit who had taught her but one of the Evanuris.

“How did your teacher look like?”

“He had the appearance of a tall elf. He wore beautiful dark robes, embroidered with gold. His long dark hair fell over his shoulder; it was bound together with several golden bands. His eyes were an intense green.”

“Did his robe have a hood?”

“Yes, but when we were together, he seldom wore it up.”

“Dirthamen.” slowly, he shook his head and smiled, wondering what the odds were that a random act of kindness would bind him to one of Dirthamen's students.

Eirlana was surprised to see Solas smile. “Wasn't he your enemy?”

“Not directly. It is complicated. He once supported my efforts, helped me even to create safe havens for the freed slaves. He was a man more devoted to knowledge than to power. But his loyalty to Falon'Din was his downfall in the end. It was his knowledge that enabled the other Evanuris to slay Mythal, although he was tricked in giving it.”

.

They both fell silent and looked into the distance. Both with their own thoughts, mulling over the words they had shared.

Solas was the first to look at Eirlana. He was torn; on the one hand, he felt relieved. It was like a load had slipped from his shoulder, now he had been honest with her. It was both a blessing and a worry; how good it felt to finally talk with her. He was surprised that she was still here listening to him. Even after he had revealed his past and told her what he had done, she hadn't pulled away. He stared at her, scarcely believing she was there and still wanted to be at his side. She had not run away and cursed his existence.

His heart fluttered.

Was she right? Was there a way to remain together?

He knelt down in front of her again. Tentatively he took hold of her hand. He locked eyes with her and searched for an answer to the question that burned inside of him – A question he couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried. Could he take her back?

There, gazing in her winter-blue eyes, he found his answer

Yes.

Slowly and questioningly, he reached up and cupped her jaw with his free hand. His thumb ghosted over her cheek, wishing again he wasn't wearing gloves today.

Eirlana huffed a nervous laugh as he stared at her with an intense gaze. She had said so little, yet she hoped that what she told him had sunk through to him.

“You have to realise that people see me as the enemy,” Solas said, his gaze not leaving her eyes. “as a monster planning something terrible. I worry you do not entirely grasp the gravity of the situation... The Veil has to be destroyed. If you help me... If you remain at my side...”

“I will become the enemy.” she finished his sentence. “I know I will become a target for all the people that oppose you.” She mirrored his action by placing a hand on his cheek. “But I also know I don't want to be apart from you. Let me stay at your side and help resolve this mess.”

Now Solas had to huff a laugh; yes, it was a mess. He was quiet for a moment, debating if he really should risk it. He knew it would be so much more dangerous for her to be at his side, but letting her go... he couldn't. Then the images of her slapping him and calling him an idiot flashed through his mind; somehow, it reassured him.

Not letting go of her hand, he stood up, pulling her along with him.

“Come.”

Alarmed, she asked. “Whereto?”

He couldn't blame her for feeling uneasy. He stepped towards her and gave her a kiss. The kiss lasted longer than he intended, but he pulled back, reminding himself that his men were waiting for him.

“Home.” he answered her.

She stared at him, doubting her own ears. Was he really asking to come with him?

“Please, vhenan, come home with me.”

“I... Yes!” They both chuckled when her yes sounded louder than she intended.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

TLDR: Republicans believe themselves to be infallible and cannot be convinced otherwise

Republicans think America is perfect and always has been, while simultaneously believing that America is DOOMED and ON THE EDGE OF COLLAPSE at all times and want to bring us back to the Before Times™ when men were men and women were household appliances and minorities were someone else’s problem.  If you bring up a genuine critique of American culture or history they throw a pissbaby shit fit and start spewing nationalist platitudes, “America: Like It or Leave It!”  All their complaints stem from their perceived self-importance being eroded; they don’t like to realize that other people with differing opinions exist and should have their voices heard.  If a “brown” or a “black” or a “red” or a “yellow” is allowed to speak, that just means there’s one less space for a “white.”  All their complaints come from a slippery slope argument that if we don’t model our society after their specific cherrypicked interpretation of The Bible then we will degenerate into amoral savagery.

They say being gay is an abomination and allowing it will damn our children to hell; what they really think is that it’s gross and they don’t want to see things they think are gross.  There’s literally no good argument against marriage equality besides “I don’t personally like it.”  America is not a theocracy, so the belief system of Christianity should not be construed as the law of the land.  This stems from their belief that the Bible is infallible, “because the Bible says so.”  They don’t know and don’t want to know about the history behind it, nor the very contentious political landscapes at the times the books were written, nor the personal biases of the very human authors.  If the Bible is a literal textbook, then why?  What makes it so special?  By whose authority were its contents collated and designated THE Good Book?  If the Bible is literal, why not the works of Homer, or the Epic of Gilgamesh?  Just because the Bible says the Bible is right doesn’t make it so.  For the record, I am a Christian, and I think the Bible is just an old book.  I’m a Christian in that I follow the teachings of Christ, which can be summed up as “DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE.”  I live by that, and All the ChrINOs (Christians in Name Only) need to learn it.  Jesus would be ashamed of what he saw today.

They say that abortion is baby murder, on par with ritual human sacrifice and Satan worship. They don’t understand biology, they have a Sunday School understanding of philosophy, and live in a world so black and white that they can’t even imagine a reason someone would have an abortion besides that they’re a terrible person; a woman who would have an abortion is unfit to be a mother in their eyes because they see abortion as equivalent to smothering a baby with a pillow because you don’t want to take care of it anymore.  “He or she is alive, he or she has a heart beat!”  Well, at this point is is just a blob of tissue, not a living person; a heart beat alone does not make something alive or dead.  Your life comes from your brain, not your heart.  If someone is alive the moment their heart starts, then they must be dead the moment is stops, so CPR is necromancy.  A person isn’t considered dead until their brain is dead, so if they wanted to argue that life begins at brain activity they would have a stronger argument, though still weak because brain activity is not personhood either.  Patients in permanent vegetative states on life support may have some brain activity, but they are effectively dead.  There is no way a judge, appointed by senators elected by the people of the United States, can prove that not only do souls exist but that they are created the second a sperm fertilizes an egg.  If “souls” exist, they aren’t so much created as built up over time as we gain new experienced and our brains develop.  What we are is electricity in a ball of meat jelly in our skulls, and that comes to being at a point after which abortions are already banned.  Conservatives also just want to control women; Roe v. Wade isn’t explicitly about the right to an abortion, it is about the right to body autonomy.  Do women have the right to control their own bodies, or do they defer that right to their fathers and husbands?  Are women people or property?  Can a man make decisions on a woman’s behalf?  “You must forgive my daughter; as a simple minded woman she’s fallen into a stupor of female hysteria.  We’ll have the family doctor bring out the smelling salts and leaches.”

They say that certain vices are crimes against God, but only when some people do it.  Divorce is a sin because marriage is sacred, except when a conservative does it, then it’s totally justified because of such and such explanation.  Tattoos are the mark of the beast, worn by degenerates and lesbians, except when a conservative does it, then it’s just art and harmless self expression.  Marijuana is a gateway drug and we need to lock away its addicts and throw away the key, unless a conservative does it, then it’s just recreational, no big deal, we don’t want to ruin the [white] boy’s future because of it.  A black person who does cocaine is a criminal, a white person who does cocaine is a public figure (you’d be surprised how many actors and politicians regularly use coke; they have to have high energy 24/7 in case there are any cameras, so they need uppers to keep themselves presentable).  This all springs from the fundamental conservative philosophy of “it’s okay when WE do it, but not when YOU do it.”  That’s the long and short of it.  The in-group is allowed to do things, but the out-group isn’t.  It’s the Us vs Them mentality taken to the logical extreme; WE are people, THEY are monsters.  WE are allowed to have faults, THEY have to stay in line and follow all the rules.  OUR lives matter, THEIR lives are lesser.  When you strip away the showy bits and get down to the core of their beliefs, everything stems from their desire to hurt anyone who isn’t them.  They want power, they want to be special, they want the Good Guys™ to always prevail over the Bad Guys™, and they want to be the ones to decide who is good and who is bad.  Their opinions are the only ones that matter, everyone else is wrong because they’re not them.  Now, it’s not like you could solve every problem by opening up your mind to new opinions; there are some issues that are indeed black and white with objectively right and wrong answers, but they live in a world where they are incapable of being wrong.  They see personal growth as a betrayal of the self, that admitting a fault is terrible, that apologizing and learning from a mistake is traitorous.  No, they have to double down on every single one of their beliefs to re-instill it in their minds.  They can never doubt themselves, because God will punish them forever if they ever have doubt.  They can’t ask questions or look at things from other perspectives because that would be an admission that their perspectives are fallible.  They are afraid of changing their minds so much that they refuse to even listen when someone explains their opinions because they don’t want to have their minds co-opted by Satan’s LIES!  If they hear something convincing, it’s all over, their entire world collapses, everything they believe is a lie, they lose, they go to hell forever, The End.

That is the dichotomy under which Republicans live their lives.  Nothing matters but what they believe.  They don’t believe what they believe for logical reasons, so no amount of logic will ever make them not believe it.  They’re making up their own rules to win.  You’re playing Rock-Paper-Scissors and they throw Nuclear Bomb, which defeats all three, so you lose.  You say that’s not fair, they say tough.  You throw Nuclear Bomb, and they say they have a bomb proof shield, so the bomb doesn’t hurt them but kills you, so you lose.  You can’t even beat them at their own game because they’ve been playing it longer, and they cry foul when you stoop to their level, suddenly saying that you need to be the bigger person, walking right up to the line of admitting that what they do is wrong but not quite getting there, simply reverting to the complaint that you shouldn’t be allowed to do it.  “I can, but YOU can’t.”  That’s why it infuriates me when nobody ever calls out a Republican for their hypocrisy.  They do something, a Democrat does that exact same thing, they cry foul, but nobody ever says “well, you didn’t have a problem when you did it,” they just try to excuse their own actions rather than demand justification for theirs.  Democrats are always on the defensive, they always look like they’re losing even when they’re winning, so the Republicans can use that to build their base and rally together for the occasional victory (Democrats won 7 of the last 8 presidential elections; the last Republican to legitimately win the presidency was George H.W. Bush in 1988).

I don’t know how you’d even begin to fight someone who is this far down the rabbit hole of self denial.

Democrats self-reflect, Republicans self-deflect.

Democrats are progressive, Republicans are regressive.

Now I’m sure there are no Republicans reading this, but if there are they’ll make themselves known and “totally refute” everything I’ve said with some paper thin argument that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, but they don’t care because it stands up to them.  They only need to show one example of a Democrat failing to write off the entire party; they only need to show one black Republicans to deny the existence of racism; one gay Republican denies homophobia; one women denies sexism.  They are the party of tokenism.

They will point out the mote of dust in your eye and ignore the plank in their own.

Debate me, I have nothing better to do with my time, I’m a dirty libtard cuckflake soyboy beta with a case full of participation trophies and handouts paid for by other people’s tax dollars (funny, they think handouts are for degenerates, except when they get them.  Inheritance?  Privilege?  Never heard of them!)

[mllemaenad]

Why is everybody keep forgetting that elves had quite some forces and were not some helpless souls? Why do ppl forget that it's their own racism that initially caused the war in the Dales? Why everybody dismisses Minaeves' story about how her clan treated the unwanted mages? I mean Chantry sucks big time, but can we please stop making elves into some magic creatures that only do good. They do not. None of the races and religions in Dragon Age is perfect, yet one has a particular bias from fandom

Hi Anonymous person.

Um. Sorry, but … what? That’s … a lot of vitriol. I’m … going to do this point by point.

Why is everybody keep forgetting that elves had quite some forces and were not some helpless souls?

No one is claiming that the elves were ‘helpless’ in the sense that they were children, or somehow unable to fight. Elven sources are a bit spotty, for solid ‘in universe’ reasons, but there’s enough on the Emerald Knights to understand that they kicked some serious arse.

But. By the time Orlais set its sights on the Dales, it had already steamrolled over a bunch of other nations, effectively doubling its original size.

The grand nation of Orlais occupies a full quarter of the Thedosian continent and extends its influence far beyond its shifting borders. In ages past, Orlais flexed its military muscle, threatening territory belonging to Nevarra and Tevinter and outright invading Ferelden. One could argue that the Emperor or Empress of Orlais, regardless of competency, is the second most powerful person in Thedas – the first, of course, being the Divine.

…

Together, the two [Kordillus Drakon and Area Montlaures] transformed Orlais from a few squabbling clans controlling their own city states into an empire. Hand in hand, they conquered well into modern-day Ferelden and Nevarra, stamping out any worship of the Old Gods as well as lingering Alamarri and Ciriane Deities.

– World of Thedas Volume II

Sure, we have an account of the massacre of a pacifist nation (note that they are also vilified by the text, even though they are literally ‘helpless souls’ being overrun and slaughtered by an empire), but that is going to be the exception to the rule. Most of these ‘squabbling clans’ would have had warriors and fortifications. It didn’t matter. Orlais invaded, defeated them, forced them to convert – and absorbed the survivors. The Orlesian empire is The Blob.

Do you … not get how massive this thing is? A quarter of Thedas is under direct Orlesian control. That’s what came for the Dales. An almost endless supply of soldiers and weapons and supplies against one newborn nation. That’s what’s so scary about empires, once they get going: they can take the resources of the people they conquered yesterday – including the bodies of the actual people to be used as soldiers or workers – and use them against you today.

So yeah: big picture, they were ‘helpless souls’ being knocked down by the biggest bully in Thedas. They put up a hell of a fight – even took Montsimmard for a while – but they didn’t have the resources of an empire to sustain them, so they were screwed.

Why do ppl forget that it’s their own racism that initially caused the war in the Dales?

Okay so … racism. I feel like I keep saying ‘empires are bad’ and ‘conversion by the sword is bad’ and … these are somehow controversial statements that people want to refute? That’s … just a little bit scary, you know?

The elven people quite famously worked with humans. Specifically with the Alamarri rebels who took down the Tevinter Imperium. You know: Andraste?

At Shartan’s word, the sky

Grew black with arrows.

At Our Lady’s, ten thousand swords

Rang from their scabbards,

A great hymn rose over Valarian Fields gladly proclaiming:

Those who had been slaves were now free.

– Shartan 10:1.

– Dark Moon

There’s even a whole fucking verse about Shartan and his people making a bloody suicide run on the entire Tevinter army to try to rescue Andraste:

The Liberator drew the blade at his side

And charged the pyre, the freedom of the Prophet before his eyes,

But from the legion came a storm of arrows

Blacker than night. And the disciple who had fought side by side

With the Lady fell, along with a hundred of his People.

And among the Alamarri ten thousand swords fell to the ground in a chorus of defeat.

– World of Thedas Volume II

That’s pretty heroic! And pretty tragic! Elven slaves and human rebels standing side by side, fighting an empire. Winning, in the end, although at great cost. And yet what you’re trying to tell me is that the elves are ‘racist’ (also: not a great word to use in reference to an oppressed people because racism requires social power) rather than, say, justifiably worried about the growing power of a nascent empire?

He [Kordillus Drakon] began his holy quest at the ripe old age of sixteen by taking to the battlefield. At the time, each clan had its own variety of the cult of Andraste, its own rituals, traditions and versions of Andraste’s words. Young Drakon unified them by the sword.

– World of Thedas II

Orlais is aggressive and fanatical. It is running around slaughtering people who disagree with its religious beliefs. If you are a non-Andrastian nation sitting more-or-less on the Orlesian border, watching other nations fall and be forcibly converted – and those people just believed different things about Andraste – you have to know what’s coming. This really only goes one way. Are you really going to call closing your borders and prepping for conflict ‘racism’? Is that really the word you want to use?

Halamshiral, “the end of the journey,” was our capital, built out of the reach of the humans. We could once again forget the incessant passage of time. Our people began the slow process of recovering the culture and traditions we had lost to slavery.

But it was not to last. The Chantry first sent missionaries into the Dales, and then, when those were thrown out, templars. We were driven from Halamshiral, scattered. Some took refuge in the cities of the shemlen, living in squalor, tolerated only a little better than vermin.

– The Dales

Relations broke down completely when the Chantry sent missionaries. Because of course they did. The fact that Orlais fundamentally does not believe in religious freedom is the very thing that the elves are afraid of. It is also, you know, a pretext. Provocation meant to push the elves so they start something and Orlais can say it was their fault. There is almost always a pretext. The empire says it’s coming in to resolve a local conflict, or they’re dealing with an incident on the border, or they’re ‘liberators’. And then they stay. And they take.

Do you really mean to blame the elves for being conquered?

Why everybody dismisses Minaeves’ story about how her clan treated the unwanted mages?

No one has forgotten or dismissed Minaeve. Everyone is keenly aware that – on a meta level – Bioware did some quite ugly retconning in Inquisition to make both elves and mages look less sympathetic. Many people have noted that Minaeve’s story is the exact opposite of Lanaya’s story, and that neither Velanna nor Merrill talk about anything like that. Nevertheless, it is raised at least three times in Inquisition: by Minaeve, by Vivienne and by The Iron Bull. So yes, that is a deliberate retcon made at a late stage in the series in order to allow people to do exactly what you’re doing: yell that the elves are ‘just as bad’. It’s gross.

In universe, of course, it’s worth noting that Minaeve was seven when this happened. Whatever it was, it was terrible – but it may not have been what she thought. It’s also worth noting that the Dalish are wandering nomads with few resources, under constant threat from humans in general and templars in particular, and if they did find themselves forced to throw one mage child to the templars to protect the rest – that is fucking horrible, but says more about the world Orlais has created than it does about the elves.

But I have to ask – why do you think it’s so important that everyone remember a twenty-second pro-templar conversation with a minor character, instead of extensive conversations about elven society and losses with Merril and Velanna? Those are two grown women who have lived their whole lives as Dalish and have a keen understanding of the culture of their clans. Or whole novels about Fiona and Briala, respectively the leaders of the mage and elven rebellions?

I know the novels are supplementary material so I’m certainly not blaming anyone for being unfamiliar with them. But if there were things I wish people could always remember when talking about the elves – it would be those stories of oppression and revolution.

I mean Chantry sucks big time, but can we please stop making elves into some magic creatures that only do good. They do not. None of the races and religions in Dragon Age is perfect, yet one has a particular bias from fandom.

It’s … interesting that you brought ‘race’ into this. Because I didn’t. I haven’t been writing criticisms of ‘humans’. I’ve left the Rivaini alone; usually mentioned Fereldans favourably; I haven’t been talking about Antiva or Nevarra. They haven’t come up.

I was talking about the aggression of the Orlesian empire and its Chantry. The elves were brought up as possibly the people who have lost the most to Orlesian aggression. They’re certainly the best sourced of those people. I’ve talked about the Chasind and Avvar where I can (humans!). I’ve talked about dwarves and Qunari. I bring up the Daughters of Song and the Disciples of Andraste where I can, because I have references for them. I know that a whole lot of other cultures were destroyed by Drakon and his Chantry – but alas, I can’t say anything meaningful about them because there are no codex entries, in game dialogue or other reference materials for them.

Of course the elves are not ‘perfect’. While Zathrian’s rage is understandable, his decision to keep the curse going even when it began to threaten his clan was terrible. Merril’s clan was far too easily led to bully and exclude her; they were her family and someone should have stood up for her. Historically, the Dales probably made a mistake staying out of the Second Blight. I mean – I get it. The Blight softened up Tevinter enough to let the rebels take it down. It could have worked again against Orlais. But in retrospect – bad idea. Didn’t work.

Those are just examples. Of course there are more. But it doesn’t matter. That an elven character fucked up at some point does not change the fact that they face racial persecution as non-humans (and are pretty clearly coded as a combination of indigenous, Jewish and Romani people), that they face religious persecution as non-Andrastians and that the Orlesian empire stole their land and forced them into slums.

And I note all of this because of the … tenor of your Ask. Had you said something like “This elven stuff is great, but I’d like to chat about how the dwarves are basically facing an apocalypse and no one will help them, and also wouldn’t a story about a casteless revolution be great?” I would have said “Yes! Let’s talk about that!” Had you said something like “Isn’t it fucked up that the Qunari are treated largely as savage invaders, operating as an ‘Other’ it’s okay to hate?” I would have said “Yes! Yes, it is!”

But … this reads like a list of ‘reasons why people should stop pretending the elves don’t deserve to be oppressed’. And … somehow equates ‘Orlesians’ with ‘humans’?

I mean – surely you aren’t saying that our sympathies should not be with the frequently enslaved minority group who are forced to live as second class citizens in appalling slums, and who have been forcibly converted to a religion they don’t want to follow … but rather with the empire that took everything from them?

Because … I really hope not.

[workersolidarity]

Throwaway Culture: A Marxist Perspective

I never imagined I'd be interested in anything a Pope might have to say, but this caught my eye after Googling: Throwaway culture. It was something I had been thinking about all day.

I'm not religious in any way, and there are points of disagreement I have with how Pope Francis has framed Throwaway Culture, but he also gave voice to an aspect of Throwaway Culture I've personally been focusing on, our trained willingness to toss other human beings away like garbage.

So first my disagreement with the quotes above. Throwaway Culture isn't something that rose up out of nowhere from the bottom up. The set of ideas behind the development of the Throwaway Culture was something encouraged and developed from above. It began with the evolution of our Capitalist economy from one based on industrial production, into one driven largely by domestic consumer spending.

Beginning after the Second World War, consumerism began when US mega-corporations, hoping to take advantage of a better educated, wealthier population by encouraging families aspiring to be part of the expansion of the Petty-Bourgeoisie (Lower Middle Class), to buy disposable products that could simoly be thrown away after one use and replaced by subsequent purchases. This made life easier for busy Petty Bourgeois households to focus on their family, rather than the tedious cleaning tasks they were previously accustomed to.

At the same time, this fueled a massive economic expansion as the Resources and other spoils of America's development into an Imperialist Power poured back into the domestic economy. This created millions of stable, well paying jobs, funded further economic development and infrastructure, and further reinforced America's new status on the global stage as the major dominating Super Power.

Following the crises of the mid-70's and into the Reagan years, the Bourgeois politicians, grown fat after years of economic boom, were all too happy to oblige the further Corporate push towards Consumerism and the single use economy. Policy was used, not to discourage single use products and consequently heavy trash producing economy, but instead the State actively encouraged this evolution.

Movies and media began reflecting the turn towards Consumerism, encouraging a new culture, one of post-modern aloofness, cynicism and sarcasm. A brave new society was being built by cultural elites. They were creating a world where people were expected to be disgusted by the sentimentality and emotion of human interaction. It slowly became culturally taboo to feel deeply for anyone else but oneself. Sentimentality was treated as a sign of weakness, and by extension, someone who could never succeed under the Neoliberal Capitalist order. They'd managed to repackage an old idea (Classical Liberalism or laissez faire Capitalism) into a new ideological framework dominated by free markets, deregulation, global free trade and specialization, consumerism and financialization.

Everywhere you look, society tells you the only things worth investing yourself in are economic success and fame. In other words, public acknowledgement of your economic success, thereby enshrining a kind of reality television mindset into the id of the public. Everything else is just an expression of weakness.

Which brings us to today. A time when society seems to be breaking down. Many people are deeply disatisfied with their lives. Instead of being showered with fame and fortune, most people have had to experience extreme economic uncertainty, disappointment with their career, and an inability to accrue enough money to satisfy their habit of trying to buy their way to happiness. Just as we'd been trained since childhood to do.

Unfortunately, even the mountains of cheap plastic crap overflowing from landfills hasn't exactly left very many people feeling fulfilled.

For most people, this brave new world filled with opportunity and free wheeling human interaction, has turned out to be even more alienating than the 19th Century factories Marx once observed. Except today that alienation extends well beyond the workplace.

Despite spending endless hours a day perusing social media and bragging about ones latest good time, people are more likely than ever before to feel lonely and listless. The cool cynicism encapsulated in so many movies and television characters, has swiftly turned into bitter resentment, loneliness, depression, poverty and addiction.

Where once detachment seemed a hallmark of the successful Capitalist, the ironic optimism people once felt from leaving behind human emotions, particularly emotions such as love, simpathy and empathy, has devolved into a society willing to throw families living in poverty onto the streets, only to arrest them the next day for the crime of being homeless and visible.

Instead of Liberating society from life's ills, Throwaway Culture has led to a society willing to tolerate even the most offensive of injustices, stripping away the humanity for those who's fortunes never rose alongside Neoliberal Capitalism.

Consumerism, as encouraged by the newly reformed ideology of Neoliberalism, manifested itself most obviously in the 90's culture of Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism soon devolved into today's Throwaway Culture. Today, workers tolerate some of the most horrific conditions under Capitalism since the end of the Guilded Age.

A society with a high tolerance for extreme exploitation, oppression and abuse at the hands of both employers and the Bourgeois State was always a critical goal of the ruling elite. The Neoliberal ideology was built on, and driven into the minds of the masses as the tool with which to train the workforce into developing this tolerance, and it has largely succeeded. Workers today are more willing to blame themselves for their economic failures, as opposed to recognizing a system specifically designed to create the illusion of opportunity, while nearly always leading to economic mediocrity at best, and brutal destitution at worst.

That same Neoliberal alienating logic even extends to those around us. When someone loses a job,or can't pay their bills, or goes to jail for minor unpaid fines, we tell ourselves that they must not have worked hard enough. Why should we help these people when they won't help themselves? Yet, when we experience these same conditions for ourselves, instead of waking up to the reality of the inherent inequalities of Capitalism, we are trained to blame ourselves. Every economic failure we live through, no matter how absurd, how unavoidable, we see it as a failure on our part. We must have done something wrong right?

Neoliberal ideology has so infected the public mindset, that we fault ourselves for even the cruelest of outcomes, despite knowing we did everything we could, worked as hard as possible, and still we often suffer severe economic distress despite doing everything right.

It's been drilled into us from the time we are toddlers, that Capitalism offers success to anyone willing to work hard and make good decisions. (Good decisions as determined by Capitalist interests). Yet, even when this idea proves to be false, we blame ourselves rather than question Capitalism.

All of these markers of today's society are a direct result of unfettered Capitalism run amok. The Bourgeoisie and their Bourgeois State have so thoroughly manipulated the public consiousness, that we find ourselves steadfastly clinging to the assumptions of Neoliberal ideology. Capitalism has become indistinguishable in the public consiousness from ideas like "freedom", "democracy" and "the pursuit of happiness".

These buzzwords have served to make the Capitalist System omnipotent in the mind of the public. It has effectively taken the Capitalism out of the arena of politics. No longer is Capitalism something to be debated. It has officially become sacrosanct, scientific fact, and essential to personal freedom.

Taking all these assumptions of Neoliberalism to their logical conclusion brings us to today's cutting edge of Capital expansion and reproduction.

Anything can be a product to be sold on the market, even you and your most personal information, and the market is infallible. So if cruelty is a side effect of Markets, well than cruelty must be acceptable too.

As Marx once said, it's either Socialism or Barbarism. Well, the results are in and Barbarism is now a dominant feature within the frame of this Throwaway Culture and Neoliberal Capitalism.

So when Pope Francis talks about people individually taking responsibility to change their behavior, it's not that he's wrong. But he's purposely avoiding looking at the cause of today's culture. He is, like it or not, part of the elite. And the elite cannot effectively criticise, or criticise at all, other sections of the elite. That's why it has always been up to the Working Class to lead the Proletarian Revolution to Socialism. The Petty-Bourgeois reformers in Organizations such as the DSA cannot be depended on to challenge the basic tenets of Capitalism.

As much as I admire our DSA Comrades for their hard work, they seem incapable of acknowledging the Nature of Capitalism and the Bourgeois State. To understand Capitalism would mean to understand why Reformism and Electoralism within the context of the Bourgeois State can never succeed.

In much the same way, Pope Francis is incapable of confronting the threat Capitalism poses to his own Church. He neglects to see (or just ignores) the way the Church as been deeply intertwined with the fortunes of the Bourgeoisie, depending on wealthy benefactors to pay for the day to day operations of the Church.

Taking individual responsibility is something that must happen after we've cast aside the Bourgeoisie. It's something that must be confronted eventually, but only after we've begun to build a new Revolutionary Socialist society. A Socialist society must be built on empathy, collective success, collective liberation, collective wellbeing and collective responsibility. Only then is it warranted to even mention personal responsibility, which has always been another buzzword for the Capitalist Class.

Throwaway Culture has been so incredibly successful at raising the individual above all else (think the "rugged individualism" of the American ideal pushed upon us all our lives).

This is, of course, a necessary feature of Capitalist domination and exploitation. To control the masses, the Bourgeoisie must divide the masses, and the easiest way of sustaining and normalizing a divided society is by creating a culture centered around the individual while minimizing into insignificance the importance of the collective, the importance of community, and even minimizing the importance of family and friends.

This has been so successful that most human relationships have become so shallow as to be practically meaningless. This of course making it easier to allow Throwaway Culture to move from an attitude towards society generally, into an attitude towards even the most important relationships a person can experience in life.

After all, in order for someone to find it acceptable to throwaway even those closest to her, then her relationships with them must be reduced to simple, meaningless economic transactions between herself and those around her. (think of our holiday "traditions" that always seem to require consuming large amounts of disposable products, overcooking massive meals and giving of gifts. All of which require prolific spending that is treated as a competition)

This is essentially where we've arrived today. All relationships are being reduced to simple and meaningless economic transactions. And after all, as we've been trained to do all our lives, our economic interactions are always disposable.

Pope Francis is right to bring these issues into the fore for the world. The Church, just as Communities and families do, requires a certain degree of importance placed on human relationships. The Church brings people together under one roof on a weekly basis, and must convince them all that this religious Community is at least equal in importance to their economic concerns.

This where the analysis by, and strategies of, Historical Materialists and those employed by the Church for its own survival meet. Generally, throughout the history of Capitalism, the needs of the Bourgeoisie have run parallel with the needs of the Religious elites. But Throwaway Culture, Consumerism, and Neoliberal Capitalism are becoming antithetical to the very survival of the Church.

And I'm not necessarily calling the Pope an Opportunist. For all I know he may truly believe that Throwaway Culture and Neoliberal Capitalism go against the teachings of the Church. Still, we have yet to see either Pope Francis or the Church more generally turn against Capitalist ideology.

If Pope Francis and the Church really wants to challenge the Culture of Consumerism, just like Socialists he must name the enemy of the Collective: Capitalism, Imperialism and the International Bourgeoisie.

Additionally, no amount of idealism, religious or otherwise, will help us to defeat the Reactionary forces of Imperialism. Only a deep Materialist analysis and understanding of how we got here can open the eyes of the masses, and help us to develop the strategies and tactics we will need to defeat Capitalism on an international scale.

We didn't arrive at this point when Throw Away Culture dominates the ideological underpinnings of society overnight. Nor can we expect to sweep generations worth of manipulation, historical lies, and Bourgeois propaganda under the rug.

Opening the eyes of the masses will take time, and unfortunately time isn't on our side. A multitude of crises are converging more quickly than anyone could have predicted. Yet, for those of us living in the heart of the Imperialist world, we are vexed by the least developed Proletariat in nearly two centuries.

How we can develop and educate the Proletariat of the Western world fast enough to avoid complete disaster on a planetery scale? This is something we must organize around and work through.

The time for Academic Marxist papers and years of drawn out debates are over. Climate Change and sea level rise are occuring many times faster than anyone predicted just a couple decades ago. Capital, instead of working to solve this Global problem, is actively making things worse. Meanwhile our Throwaway Culture is corrupting the very souls of the masses. If change must occur quickly to save the planet, then the human race is headed in completely the opposite direction.

We must unite as Workers and begin the hard work of educating and organizing the Proletariat. We have to find a way of uniting and organizing behind a single Vanguard Party, and developing our Praxis without delay.

Capitalism is sucking the very humanity out of us all. Unless we act quickly with an urgency that matches the scale of the problems we face, and unless we put aside our differences and our final visions for the Socialist society to come, instead working together to develop the fledgeling Socialist Movement, than it may soon be too late to change course.

I want to live in a Society that values empathy. A Society that embraces the human condition and our human emotions. Not a culture that ignores the trashing of our planet, embraces greed and detachment, and assumes the consequences of our actions can be solved by idealistic notions of just moving to another planet once we've trashed and exhausted the resources of this one.

A want a world where those living in the Global South aren't starving while Americans throw away tens of thousands of tons of food a day, just to keep the homeless and hungry from getting a free meal out of our trash cans. How disgusting a society are we willing to live with?

And so even though I am motivated by objectively Idealistic notions of Community. I turn to Historical Materialism to understand how we got here, and how we may fix it.

Socialism offers the only way out.

I'm not so naive as to think simply appealing to our humanity is going to change anything. Even if suddenly the great masses of workers agreed with those appeals tomorrow, we would still be at the mercy of Capitalist exploitation, oppression and a Bourgeoisie ready and willing to use any destructive and violent means to enforce it's will. A simple look at the Middle East shows Imperialism is alive and well, and what it looks like when Western Bourgeois interests are threatened.

A strategy and set of tactics must be developed. Theory is only as good as the praxis it's used for. We must also provide for the development, education, and organization of the Working Class.

Lastly, we must be ready for massive resistance by the Bourgeoisie. They will almost certainly react with violence to any major challenges to their power and the system they've spent more than three centuries building. Potentially a violent Revolution and even civil war on a massive scale must be prepared for. Socialists cannot expect to passively win this war. One look back on Proletarian Revolutionary History should tell us all we need to know about what we must be ready for.

But NEVER forget Comrades, there's many many times more of us than their are of them! We will win the Revolution to come!

Solidarity Comrades

Workers of the world unite!

[dukeofriven]

From An Old Internet Veteran: Go, and Sin No More

I wish I could explain to young people how wild the internet was as it went from the ‘weird niche thing for lame nerds’ irrelevancy of the early 90s and the “Boy This World Wide Web Thing Sure Is Nifty”-style painful optimism that describes 97% of Western Culture between 1994 and 2002 to the ‘Mad Max But Statistically Less Australian” culture that was the internet from 2002 to around 2010. I come neither to praise this era of internet nor condemn it. I merely want understanding. I cannot polish a lumpen pile of rape jokes, Chuck Norris glorification, “ironic” racism, and numa numa fat shaming and say that it’s misunderstood comedic genius. Trash is still trash even if it wins a bunch of Emmys. But at the same time I cannot take you with me back to the 90s and get you to feel, on a visceral level, what it was like to live in a place where Bart Simpson was both promoted as a real and present danger to the moral upbringing of the world’s children and was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential icons of the 20th century. And because I cannot do that I cannot get you to understand how freeing it felt to be on the internet in that Mad Max era. Ten years before a yellow boy shouting “Don’t have a cow” while doing a pathetic kick-flip on a chunky skateboard was considered the potential downfall of humanity’s children, but now you could make something so risqué that the old-guard stuffed-shirt in 1994 would have died on the spot, his brain unable to consider anything so outside his moral world view. I cannot easily make you understand a time when nobody just said whatever it was they wanted, not just because they had no platform to do so but because the rigidity of social convention was so strong. Nobody ever had hardcore lesbian sex on Northern Exposure on prime time television. Nobody on the X-Files ever died by having their head smashed in a car door repeatedly like a melon until viscera spilled all over the pavement. You could not have made Game of Thrones or Steven Universe in 1995. Forget the graphics, forget the budget, you simply couldn’t do or say any of that on television for either kids or adults. The Mad Max internet changed that - changed the very firmament of what was acceptable in media for every genre and for every demographic.  Is this a good thing? Not particularly. Is this a bad thing? Not particularly. If this sound frustratingly ambivalent that’s because it is: were we to go back and do it all again, knowing all that we know now, would we do it the same way? No. But then, we would not know all that we know now had we not learned it by making the attempt in the first place.

This poor comfort for someone who dives into some 2006 webcomic with a reputation of a Legacy Touchstone and finds it full of ‘jokes’ about their gender, or sexual preference, or the liberal use of the r-slur, or a kind of hyper-suburban comedic racial ignorance. I am not here to argue that that had any value merely because it was transgressive. But the same space that opened-up to let such ugly things out also opened-up places for marginalized groups to made themselves known, groups who never before had such public voices.

Imagine an apocalypse. Imagine society rebuilding in the ashes. Imagine how many false starts and missteps there would be and you begin to understand just a little of what that period was like. It was embarrassing. It was cruel. It was childish and stupid. But in living through it we grew up. Or, at least, those of us capable of growing up grew up, and learned, and learned to be better - learned what better was. And then we built new places where other people could learn too - and spread the gospel of being better. One of the things that always irritates me when it comes to young people talking about the past is the unexamined privilege of knowledge being at your fingertips. It’s more than just everyone carrying a wireless-internet connected computer in their pocket at all times. It’s more than just a Wikipedia with hundreds of millions of articles and a reputation for fact sourcing. It’s more than just a Google that works. If you never experienced it you cannot imagine what using WebCrawler was like in 1995 against Ask Jeeves in 2005 against Google in 2015 - or even Google between 2005 and 2015. Most people don’t go around thinking about SEO and search engine algorithms but maybe we should because anyone who wants to go “this info’s been on the internet since day one so people have no excuse not to know it” disingenuously argues that information search and retrieval has been consistent across the decades. There was a time - not all that long ago - when to look something up on-line involved getting the tacit agreement of everyone in your household to lose the use of the sole telephone for as long as you were web browsing. There was a time - not all that long ago - when ‘looking something up’ was to burden everyone around you with inconveniences, and while you were doing your web searches there was no guarantee what you wanted could be found with the primitive technology of the day. Do you know how much I’ve learned since joining Tumblr in 2011? On a fundamental level, both about myself and the make-up of our species in terms of social conception? I recently went through a bunch of old posts, removing those with broken links and meaningless content, but also shit that just embarrasses me now - mostly opinions from a period where I hadn’t yet had a chance to learn because the spaces in which to learn it did not yet exist. It’s not just things like communities for [demographic X] - it’s things like “communities for [demographic X] with an ability to broadcast their voices and have platforms able to network their ideas and audience halls able to receive them and a search engine to guide people to that community and a basic understanding that the community even exists in the first place.” And this does not even begin to touch on internet access, something that even now is not a universal thing, and for which getting angry about people’s ignorance reflects a bias all its own. I say all this because I think that a core tenant of cringe culture is a myth of universal access to knowledge and universal awareness of one’s own ignorance. I look back on old posts of things I said and I cringe with self-hatred - cringe enough to rip them down and stuff them in the trash. “HOW DID I THINK THAT?” and “HOW DID I NOT KNOW?” But why should I have known - what, in my life, would ever have put better ideas across my desk? That I can meaningfully speak now about privilege and intersectionality and historiography is because between then and now I was put in a place to learn these things. I was exposed to ideas that I had never before been exposed to, and was given the grace to learn. I am tired of the expectation that every aspect of our past selves should be held to the same standard as the present. (Yes, to all the disingenuous bad-faith trolls out there, I obviously and of course am advocating for complete and total uncritical pardon for everything in the past ever. Were you a neo-Nazi ten years ago? Water under the bridge without question because that’s obviously, obviously, obviously the sort of extreme outlier case I am talking about good on you for being clever enough to notice.) But for the non-dipshits out there who understand how to read without injecting insincere hyperbole into every argument, I want us to be kinder to our past selves when we have learned to be better. It’s okay that you used to like Sherlock - there were genuinely fun things about it, and it’s okay that you didn’t possess an expert grasp of post-graduate feminist critical theory when you were 21. Or 31. Or 41. More concepts of academia have filtered into mainstream consciousness than ever before - and in saying that we should remember the corollary that ten, twenty, thirty years ago that was not the case. We knew less, had access to less, and were exposed to narrower viewpoints than we are today. It is unfortunate - but it was not our fault, and we cannot easily blame ourselves for it any longer. Nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing people taking umbrage that... oh, Farmer Joe McSmithHead of Buttnut, Alabama in 1963 was ignorant of internal Chinese politics and said some untrue things about Chinese Communism. But the only thing Farmer Joe had to tell him of the outside world was a radio that played country music, a TV with four channels and strict content guidelines to only show pleasant, moral, and god-fearing content, and the three books in the Buttnut library, two of which were the Bible. There have, and will always be, certain moral lines so obvious that people of any era should always be held accountable to them. But above that, in the more trivial space of media consumption, absorption, and critique, we have to learn to be more forgiving - to ourselves and to others, so long as in the present we have changed. Did you use the r-slur a lot because it was practically a form of punctuation on 4chan and that’s where you learned the ways of the internet? Did you learn the harmfulness of this practice and cease to do it? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. Did you and your friends used to make jokes about how Mexicans smelled because you saw Seinfeld do that in his standup and the whole TV laughed as though it was funny? Did you realize one day ‘wait a minute that’s actually super gross’ and stop repeating it? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. Have you gone back to a beloved childhood property and found it’s full of woman-beating and weird views on homosexuality? Did you find yourself able to critique this beloved thing and did not defensively double-down on shielding it from all harsh words? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. I will not allow us to dismiss the cruelty and hurt of Mad Max Internet Culture with a flippant ‘well that’s just how it was back then” but nor will I allow anyone to condemn us all as being consciously unfeeling, willfully ignorant, purposefully hateful. Some of us were. But some of us did not know, could not have known, needed to learn - and we were lucky enough to live in a time before cringe culture and cancel culture where we were allowed to have that opportunity to learn and grow. We need that today, for all young people who think themselves as woke as can be and ten years from now will look back and blush with shame for things they said and did in total ignorance. The sin is choosing to never change, not failing to change sooner.

[chiseler]

The Greatest Bad Writer in America? Weird, Forgotten Harry Stephen Keeler

Harry Stephen Keeler (1890-1967) enjoys a peculiar kind of fame as a writer. Or "paper-blackener," to quote him. The prose of his mystery novels and pulp stories, written from the 1920s into the 1960s, can be simultaneously balled up, discombobulated, lyrical, cryptic -- even going "utterly blooey" at times. This is from The Riddle of the Traveling Skull, published in 1934:

For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter's "Barr-Bag" which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2163 pearl buttons; nor of--in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel--or Suing Sophie!

Viewed through the appropriate lens, Keeler's manifest flaws become avant-garde virtues, as he seems to stretch the novel towards some new form, possibly the radio play or podcast. Neil Gaiman is a fan: "My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him."

Among the various devotees keeping this "forgotten author" alive, no one has proven more steadfast than Richard Polt, who chairs the philosophy department at Xavier University in Cincinnati and founded the Harry Stephen Keeler Society. http://site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/

Richard, give us an introduction to Keeler and his work -- and tell us what led you to dedicate so much time and energy to keeping his name alive.

I ran across Keeler by pure accident in 1996, and from the start I was thrilled by the feeling that I was onto something truly weird and forgotten. I’ve always enjoyed digging into some corner of culture, going deep enough that I discover things that just aren’t in sight of today’s conventional wisdom, and finding connections that I would never have found otherwise. That’s exactly what the world of Harry Stephen Keeler has done for me.

Keeler (1890-1967) was a lifelong Chicagoan. His father died when Harry was an infant, and his mother married a series of other ne’er-do-wells who also kept dying on her. Meanwhile, she ran a boarding house for vaudevillians—so Harry was exposed to a wide variety of theatrical types in a city that was teeming with immigrants. He studied to be an electrical engineer and worked for a while at a steel plant, but his real passion was writing. His mom feared that he was going insane, and had him committed to the asylum at Kankakee, Illinois in 1911-1912. But he was released, and managed to make a living publishing quirky little stories with twists. In 1919 he became the editor of the pulp magazine 10 Story Book, which published short fiction and pictures of half-clothed girls. He also edited magazines such as the Chicago Ledger and America’s Humor.

Keeler’s stories began to get more convoluted, and by the late ’20s he was publishing mystery novels with Dutton in the US and Ward Lock in England, including The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro, which drew on his experience in the asylum. Things were looking up, but the Depression cut into book sales at the same time as HSK’s novels took a turn for the bizarre. He typically built his novels on the skeleton of an old short story from his youth, or several of them woven together. Sometimes his wife, Hazel Goodwin Keeler, would also contribute a chapter. This all became the occasion for gloriously implausible tales, chock-full of long-winded speeches in dialect; caricatures of every ethnic group from “Swodocks” to “Celestials”; near-future technology such as intercontinental 3D television; and, inevitably, a surprise ending that sends your synapses on a rollercoaster ride. This stuff appealed to an ever narrower audience. Finally, Dutton dropped Keeler in 1942. He was published by the bargain basement Phoenix Press from 1943 to 1948. Ward Lock cut him in 1953. Then he wrote for Spanish and Portuguese publication at $50 a title—or just for himself.

There were definitely some bitterness and frustration in Keeler’s old age, and when Hazel died in 1960, he went into a tailspin. But then he married Thelma Rinaldo, his one-time secretary from America’s Humor, and as he put it, he caught hold of “the greased pig known as the will to live.” Harry collaborated with Thelma on some late novels that have been published only in recent years.

There are two perennial questions about Keeler: Was he mentally ill? And was he a bad writer? Most people’s initial reaction is that he was a terrible writer who had mental problems. But you can also make the case that he knew what he was doing and was very good at it; it’s just that he had an eccentric sense of humor that requires a special sensibility to appreciate. I’m inclined to this latter view, although he does keep me guessing. I suspect that he had some traits that we would classify as belonging to the autistic spectrum, such as a prodigious memory for facts combined with a superficial grasp of human emotion. A Keeler story is not about interiority; it’s about a complex plot that plays games with the reader’s mind.

Describe Keeler's trademark concoction, the "webwork plot." “Web-work” or “webwork” was Keeler’s term for a highly complex plot, which weaves together a number of strands. He introduced the term in 1917 in a series of articles for The Student-Writer, which he then expanded into a fairly long treatise, "The Mechanics (And Kinematics) of Web-Work Plot Construction" (The Author and Journalist, April-November, 1928). Keeler never claimed to have invented the term or the concept; he gave credit to now-forgotten pulp writers such as Bertram Lebhar. But he did consider himself to be a skilled practitioner, and his fans would surely agree.

What’s most delightful in HSK’s theoretical writings on webwork is the diagrams, which show graphically how various characters and objects intersect at key moments in the story. "Mechanics" distinguishes 15 types of “elemental plot combinations” and presents a mind-blowing diagram of Keeler’s 1924 The Voice of the Seven Sparrows. It’s a very tortured plate of spaghetti.

Some of Keeler’s novels (including Sing Sing Nights, Thieves’ Nights, and the series Hangman’s Nights) get their complexity from a 1001 Nights structure: a framework story embraces several stories told by characters. Other Keeler novels get their complexity from endless digressions and red herrings, or tons of factoids that may or may not turn out to be relevant to the main story. Often, the action is told or retold by an unreliable character, instead of being shown to us directly. Inevitably, there’s a big surprise at the end that makes you see the whole plot differently in retrospect.

If you take away the surprise ending, webwork looks a lot like the contemporary literary genre sometimes called “hysterical realism”—the massive, weird, convoluted stories of writers like Pynchon. Keeler pioneered the formal analysis of this kind of tale. If you have a mathematical mind, you’ll appreciate his advice for getting a webwork started:

In conceiving a story or inaugurating a plot which involves threads weaving with threads, if the thread A, or viewpoint character, should figure with the thread B in an opening incident of numerical order "n" (with respect to the incidents in the conditions precedent) there must be invented a following incident "n + 1" involving threads A and C; an incident "n + 2" involving threads A and D; an incident "n + 3" involving threads A and E; and so on up to perhaps at least "n + 4” or "n + 5"; and furthermore "n" must cause "n +1"; "n + 1" must cause "n + 2"; "n + 2” must cause "n + 3" etc.

I’ve tried it—it works!

What's it like living in and among Keelerian natterings over the long haul?

Like one of Pynchon’s paranoid plots, or like Borges’ fantasy encyclopedia that ends up colonizing reality, the Keelerian world has many unsuspected strands that create a webwork in which I am now enmeshed. I’ve read more obscure authors because they imitated Keeler (John Russell Fearn) or were friends of his (T. S. Stribling). I found out that my own great-grandfather, Wells Hastings, wrote a mystery novel that can fairly be described as webwork. And I taught myself some Dutch in order to read the 2010 novel De Sciencefictionschrijver, by Harold S. Karstens—a story about a man who becomes unhealthily obsessed with Harry Stephen Keeler and starts a correspondence with Richard Polt. Yes, Keeler’s world is absorbing—to the point where I have now been absorbed within the covers of a fictional exploration of that world, to be discovered, like Harry himself, by future eccentrics.

by Daniel Riccuito

[ozarkhealingtraditions]

Spiritism and Religion

I've talked elsewhere about the universal nature of Spiritism, but I thought it might be appropriate to look more closely at the topic of Spiritism's relationship to religious traditions. In this article I will be using quotes from the 1893 edition of The Spirits' Book, as translated by Anna Blackwell.

Early Spiritists came mostly from a Christian (specifically Catholic) background. Researchers would say this is for the simple reason that Kardec and his associates just so happened to be Catholic, and I would tend to agree with them, but for the fact that I believe what helped the Spiritist cause early on was growing from religious traditions that more emphasized mysticism than others. Many French Catholics, for instance, joined the Spiritist ranks under Kardec as a way to expand their already profound experience with the divine. With their doctrine of the Saints and angels who often intervene on human affairs, it was much easier for Catholics to reconcile a much broader spirit world than what is normally taught by religion.

Quakers, or members of the Religious Society of Friends, were also among some of the first participants in what we might label "Spiritualism," although the practices are as varied as there are practitioners. Since the beginning of the religious movement the Quakers have put an importance upon a continuing revelation and avoidance of reliance upon outdated texts. I think this could be one of the reasons why so many became quickly interested in Spiritualist and Spiritist thought. It can be connected to this idea of receiving sacred information directly from a divine source, rather than second or third hand. This belief is built into the religion itself, and even today participants in Quaker worship services often act as mediums for sacred messages.

As Spiritism grew as a movement, it slowly enveloped many of the occult movements of the time, including members of the Theosophical Society, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, etc. Without a doubt, many of the same influences upon the forming of these societies also influenced the codification of Spiritist beliefs, especially those of the Theosophical Society with their emphasis upon reincarnation and karmic debt. Nineteenth century Europe had an abundance of new occult societies, many already using the techniques of Spiritualism as a basis for their beliefs and practices. What Kardec brought to the table, among other things, was a more rational approach to the spirit world, based heavily upon an inward form of spirituality, less emphasis on what might be considered "strange" or "fringe" practices, and a more conversation-based practice of mediumship without the need for a spectacle.

Some of the more interesting varieties of Spiritism come when we look at how this philosophy spread to the French colonies (or other areas influenced by French culture). These are areas of the world that still to this day have high numbers of Spiritists. One of these is Brazil, which has the highest concentration of Spiritists in the world. There are a few ways traditional Spiritism manifests in Brazil today. First is by way of indigenous religious traditions like Umbanda. It's interesting to note that the areas of the world that still have a large Spiritist presence are areas where Spiritism and indigenous spiritual traditions have mixed. In the case of Brazil, Umbanda is the tradition most influenced by what we might call "traditional" Spiritism, as opposed to traditions like Candomblé. I should note here that I'm by no means an Umbandista, or an expert on most of these traditions I'm going to talk about, so if you have an interest I would seek more academic research. Currently, the majority of Brazil's Spiritists follow the teachings of Chico Xavier, a prolific writer and medium who authored over a hundred books with his spirit guides. Xavier was heavily influenced by the traditional Christian side of Spiritism, with an emphasis upon a personal relationship with Jesus as messiah and divinity. As a non-Christian myself, I can say that Xavier's works, while interesting in the scope of modern Spiritism, are hard to read for those not aligned with Christian faith. His works, however, are massively popular and have greatly influenced many other modern mediums and writers.

Throughout Central/South America and the Caribbean, Spiritism is known by the name Espiritismo, of which there are hundreds, if not more, varieties. In Brazil, as I've already mentioned, Espiritismo is mostly seen in the indigenous-based religions of Umbanda (as well as its cousins, Quimbanda and Macumba) as well as in a modern form of Christian Spiritism as taught by Chico Xavier. In Cuba and Puerto Rico the tradition of Espiritismo has also merged with indigenous beliefs to form the tradition of Espiritismo Cruzado, or "crossed" Spiritism, referring to the mixture of European Spiritism with indigenous beliefs and traditions. This also gave rise to Espiritismo de Cordon, another area of research for those interested in Espiritismo. In Venezuela, Spiritism has taken on a fascinating form in the Maria Lionza religion, another mixture of European Spiritism and indigenous traditions. Unlike other varieties of Espiritismo, Maria Lionza mediums channel not only indigenous figures and folk heroes of South America, but also Vikings, European Saints, and even East Asian philosophers.

Another religion that I couldn't possibly avoid mentioning is Đạo Cao Đài or Cao Dai (often called Caodaism), a Vietnamese religion founded in the early part of the twentieth century. As with other traditions we've mentioned, Cao Dai is a highly syncretic religion that combines indigenous Vietnamese beliefs with Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, holding everything together with the philosophy of European Spiritism. The religion itself was founded during an automatic writing session held by three Vietnamese spirit mediums well versed in the works of Kardec. Since the beginning, all of the major texts and revelations for the religion have been provided by mediums, a tradition that continues even today. Cao Dai mediums have famously channeled such spirits as the Jade Emperor,  Joan of Arc, and Victor Hugo, which might seen like an odd combination, but it fits perfectly within the Spiritist worldview.

What exactly is this worldview? While some critics have claimed that Kardec made Spiritualism dry, stuffy, and unappealing to anyone outside of academic circles through his codification, this is far from the truth. In his works, Kardec sought to address directly what he considered to be the faults of Spiritualism, mainly mediums (or so called mediums) tricking people out of their money to talk with dead loved ones, and needless rituals and prayers plucked from different traditions without discernment or understanding. Spiritism as it is defined by Kardec isn't a religious tradition at all, it's a philosophy. Some modern writers like to think of it as a "path" or "way," much like Sufism, which is traditionally thought of being beyond religion and at the same time contained within all religions. This is why Spiritism has easily been translated and merged with so many indigenous traditions. Spiritism provides a framework for viewing human relationships with the spirit world, a notion lacking in many mainstream religious traditions. It defines the form of the spirit, its function as we know it, and how the existence of our own immortal spirits affects the way we see our purpose in the universe. This framework is universal in nature, meaning it appeals to and can be translated into many different religious and spiritual traditions. While Kardec often wrote from a very Christian-centered worldview, his works are also filled with universalist ideals. His overall message is for the unity of humanity on the forward progression through the Spiritual Hierarchy.

Kardec's message (or I should say the message of the spirit entities as channeled by Kardec and his associates) emphasizes the mystical experience of the individual. When he asks the question whether worship (adoration in this edition of the text) is dependent upon external manifestations he receives this answer:

"True adoration is in the heart. In all your actions remember that the Master's eye is always upon you." The Spirits' Book, entry 653

And again, when he poses the question differently:

"Does God accord a preference to those who worship Him according to any particular mode? "God prefers those who worship Him from the heart, with sincerity, and by doing what is good and avoiding what is evil, to those who fancy they honour Him by ceremonies which do not render them any better than their neighbours." The Spirits' Book, entry 654

And perhaps one of Kardec's more direct answers of universalism:

"Do not ask, then, if any form of worship be more acceptable than another; for it is as though you asked whether it is more pleasing to God to be worshipped in one tongue rather than in another. Remember that the hymns addressed to Him can reach Him only through the door of the heart." The Spirits' Book, entry 654

Kardec presents a very specific form of monotheism in his works. In this system God represents a sort of formless, distant creator who doesn't require any sort of worship. Prayer then is for the benefit of the individual, not the deity. Underneath God are a host of spirits that fit into various positions on the Spiritual Hierarchy. These spirits act as guides and intermediaries for disembodied spirits and incarnated spirits, helping them to advance and elevate. Kardec addresses this belief when talking about Polytheism:

"As phenomena attesting the action of spirits have occurred in all ages of the world, and have thus been known from the earliest times, may they not have helped to induce a belief in the plurality of gods? "Undoubtedly; for, as men applied the term god to whatever surpassed humanity, spirits were, for them, so many gods. For this reason, whenever a man distinguished himself among all others by his actions, his genius, or an occult power incomprehensible by the vulgar, he was made a god of, and was worshipped as such after his death." The Spirits' Book, entry 668

That is to say, that in the past humans have confused what are called Higher Order spirits for deities, when in fact these spirits are on the same hierarchy as incarnated humans. This idea is similar to those found in Buddhism, where even deities, as powerful as they might be, are still bound by the wheel of life, death, and rebirth. In traditional Spiritism, the ultimate goal is to learn and advance to the point of absolute nearness to God. This idea is still held by many Spiritist groups around the world, but has also been transformed by others. Personally, I choose to think of the "ultimate goal" as a form of supreme altruism, a transformation of the individual spirit into an entity of pure love, similar to the bodhisattva in Buddhism. For me, this belief requires no supreme deity.

While traditional Spiritism has often been viewed in light of Christian values and ideals, it isn't inherently Christian at all. In fact, as I've said before, Kardec himself discouraged readers from taking Spiritism as a religion in and of itself, or even as a representative form of any religion. While Kardec himself might have been Catholic, as well as his early followers, Spiritism itself teaches a universal philosophy that can be utilized alongside countless religious and spiritual viewpoints. The deep connection with the spirit world, coupled with a commentary on humankind's purpose in the cosmos, has made Spiritism abundantly popular not only to adherents of what we might call "traditional" religions, but also those seeking to deepen their expression of indigenous spiritual beliefs. Some researchers have even described Spiritism as a revival of European animistic beliefs in a modern age, a sort of modernistic European shamanism. I wouldn't go that far, personally, but it's indeed interesting to look at the potential of this system in creating and maintaining a sense of continual sacred revelation for a people so often bound to static texts and unwavering religious dogma. In this way, Spiritism itself can be used as a tool of religious or spiritual reform, not just for the individual, but perhaps for society as a whole.