#that talks about philosophy and history and science and all these reasons that race as we know it doesnt exist etc

[proteuus]

citing readings from my first race/ethnicity class in my essay for my second r/e class like. this was written about people who converted to christianity in the 1480s but its the principle of it

[scotianostra]

On May 7th 1711 the Scottish philosopher David Hume was born.

I had the chance to post this on April 26th, as it also flags up as his birth date. The reason for this is the calendar change at the start of 1711, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, at times I have used the old style calendar, this year the latter.

As well as a philosopher David Hume was a historian and essayist, he is placed amongst the likes of John Locke, Francis Bacon, George Berkeley and Thomas Hobbes.

Hume is remembered for his influential system of radical philosophical empiricism, scepticism and naturalism. Hume intently believed that passion rather than reason governed human behaviour and that human knowledge was solely based on human experience.

Sadly, Hume gained fame much later in his life, his works having been appreciated and considered of immense value only posthumously. Hume began his literary journey with his masterpiece, ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’. Though the book was widely discarded and written off by the critics then, it is today considered as one of the post important works on history of western philosophy.

Hume found success only later in his life when he turned into an essayist. His job as a librarian in the University of Edinburgh helped him access a lot of research materials which provided him the guided information for his massive six volume masterpiece, ‘The History of England’. The book earned favourable response and became a bestseller. It was considered as a standard history of England during its time. He is considered as a pivotal figure in the history of philosophical thought.

As with many from past generations Hume has been scrutinised over the last few years due to his disgusting racist views. The University of Edinburgh removed the name of David Hume from one of its campus buildings, citing concerns that the 18th century philosopher’s views on race cause “distress” to modern day students. However, the move has been criticised by several academics, including some employed by the university. They pointed out that Hume’s wider writings offered profound insights into human nature and served as a source of inspiration to generations of thinkers.

In his essay, “Of National Characters,” Hume says:

I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation; no ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are Negroe slaves dispersed all over Europe, of which none ever discovered any symptoms of ingenuity, tho’ low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but ’tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.

Dr Asanga Welikala, a lecturer in public law at the university and co-convenor of the Keith Forum on Commonwealth Constitutionalism, was among those to oppose the renaming of the tower.

He wrote on Twitter: “I do not agree with this decision. David Hume’s thought has inspired me throughout a 20 year career working to further constitutional democracy in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. As an employee of Edinburgh University I was not consulted in this.”

There have also been calls for his statue to be removed from it’s prominent place on the Royal Mile.

[pagebypagereviews]

25 Books That Will Change How You Think Books have the profound ability to transform the way we think, feel, and perceive the world around us. From philosophical treatises to groundbreaking scientific studies, certain books have left an indelible mark on the minds of their readers, challenging preconceived notions and introducing new, often revolutionary, ways of understanding life and our place within it. This article explores 25 such books, each offering unique insights that promise to change how you think. Philosophy and Self-Reflection Philosophy has long been the cornerstone of critical thinking, pushing the boundaries of what we know and understand about our existence. These books provide profound insights into the human condition, encouraging readers to reflect deeply on their lives and beliefs. "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius - This series of personal writings by the Roman Emperor offers wisdom on stoicism and the importance of rationality and self-control. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl - Frankl's experiences as a Holocaust survivor form the basis of this book, which argues that finding meaning in all aspects of life is the key to personal fulfillment. "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho - Through the story of a young shepherd in search of worldly treasure, Coelho explores themes of destiny, dreams, and the importance of listening to our hearts. Psychology and Human Behavior Understanding the complexities of human behavior and the mind is crucial for personal growth and empathy. These selections delve into the science of thought, emotion, and behavior. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman - Kahneman introduces the dual-process theory of the mind and explores the wide-ranging impact of cognitive biases on our decisions and behavior. "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain - Cain's book is a celebration of introversion, challenging the extrovert ideal prevalent in society and highlighting the strengths of quieter individuals. "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg - Duhigg examines the science of habit formation and how understanding it can lead to positive change in individuals and societies. Science and Innovation The relentless pursuit of knowledge through science has led to some of the most groundbreaking discoveries in human history. These books capture the spirit of innovation and the awe-inspiring nature of the universe. "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking - Hawking's exploration of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to black holes, makes complex scientific concepts accessible to the lay reader. "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari - Harari traces the evolution of Homo sapiens from hunter-gatherers to rulers of the world, examining the ways in which biology and history have defined us. "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton M. Christensen - Christensen's influential book discusses how successful companies can do everything "right" and still lose their market leadership due to new, disruptive technologies. Social Sciences and Culture The study of societies and the cultural constructs that define them can offer invaluable insights into the human experience. These books explore various aspects of society and culture, from economics to race relations. "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond - Diamond investigates the reasons behind the unequal distribution of wealth and power across the globe, attributing societal success to geographical and environmental factors. "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell - Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success, arguing that we underestimate the role of context in achieving greatness. "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates - Written as a letter to his son, Coates's book is a powerful exploration of the experience of being Black in America. Literature and Storytelling Great literature has the power to transport us

to different worlds, allowing us to live vicariously through the characters and experience a multitude of emotions. These timeless works are celebrated for their deep insights into human nature and society. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee - Lee's novel is a profound commentary on racial injustice in the American South, seen through the eyes of a young girl. "1984" by George Orwell - Orwell's dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime has become synonymous with discussions on surveillance, government control, and individual freedom. "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger - Salinger's classic explores themes of identity, belonging, and alienation through the eyes of the troubled teenager Holden Caulfield. Conclusion The books listed above span a wide range of genres and disciplines, yet they all share one common trait: the power to profoundly alter our perspective on the world. Whether through exploring the depths of human psychology, unraveling the mysteries of the universe, or delving into the complexities of society and culture, these works challenge us to think differently and more deeply about our lives and the world around us. By engaging with these texts, readers are invited on a journey of intellectual and emotional growth that can be transformative. In the end, it is through the exploration of new ideas and perspectives that we continue to evolve and adapt in an ever-changing world. As we reflect on the insights offered by these 25 books, it becomes clear that literature and non-fiction alike have the unique ability to broaden our horizons and inspire change within us. Whether you are looking to understand more about yourself, society, or the universe, there is a book on this list that will challenge how you think and possibly change how you see the world. Embrace the journey of discovery, and let these transformative works be your guide.

[shirtlesssammy]

15x15: Gimme Shelter

Then:

Dean used his words to save the world once

Now:

At a food bank community center, three teens dole out food while stressing out about one attendant who’s breaking their cleanliness rules. Connor heads over to talk to the woman, but is stopped by the center’s pastor. The pastor challenges Connor’s motivation. ”We have rules, but we also have spirit too, right?” The pastor tells Connor to lead with compassion, so Connor brings the woman food instead of kicking her out of the building. 

Later, Connor walks home. Much like all other cold open walks, this one also involves a solitary alley. He hears someone calling his name. Trying to find the source of the voice, he trips and finds a talking teddy bear, and a metal hook around his neck.

Dean and Sam discuss research. Sam’s found a non-case, while Dean’s hit the jackpot in Atlantic City. Specifically, an unexplained blackout has him thinking that Amara’s enjoying her new gambling addiction on the East Coast. 

Cas pops up and thinks he should go with the brothers, but they tell him to stay put and babysit Jack. I say TFW is just better together, but I’m not writing this episode. Hrmph. The brothers are packed and ready to go, but Jack stops them in the war room to ask about the case Sam found.

Sam tells him it’s nothing. Dean encourages Cas and Jack to investigate --to keep Jack busy. Cas seems skeptical, but Dean insists.

Agents Swift and Lovato meet with the local law enforcement to learn more about the case. Sweet Jesus is it cute that Cas continues to use pop-star names. It’s cute that Jack takes after his father with the upside down badge. It’s cute that Jack recognizes the teddy bear and says he has one (Did Cas buy it for him? He has a history of buying stuffed animals for his quasi-children.) 

The sheriff tells them about the victim, and how the word ‘Liar’ was carved into him. 

Jack posits that this all seems demonic. 

Cut to Cas digging into the ground at a crossroads. Time to get some information. Cas buries a picture of himself that Dean took when he was wearing a cowboy hat (Don’t worry, Dean still has his copy, and keeps it safe…. for reasons.) and Jack sets up a social media account. He’s WAY under 13 years old, so he needs a parent’s permission. Cas grants it easily. (Also, ALSO!! ALSO, there are NOT too many cats on the internet. This writing is so OOC, smh.) 

A demon appears. 

He’s channeling his inner Crowley, and I suddenly miss the bugger for a moment. Zach, the demon, is very bored and desperately wants something to do. He’s not really British and tells the duo that no one's making demon deals right now. Rowena’s of the philosophy that “people will end up where they belong.” Cas realizes their mistake and moves to leave.  “Sam was right, it’s not a monster,” Jack laments. “He was half right. Sometimes humans can be the worst kind of monsters,” Cas adds. 

At the community center, a woman locks up, and grabs a whole lotta cash from the donation box before she bails. Once outside, she hears a voice call her name. She looks around but sees nothing. She turns back to her car to find a masked individual. A weird editing choice cuts back to her...and commercial. 

Cas checks in with the brothers. Dean tells Cas to be wary of those “Hallelujah types” and I’m like, wha? Cas is an ANGEL OF THE LORD. He’s been around the block, Dean. Lol for looking out for your BFF, tho. Also, second awkward moment of the episode when Dean just hangs up on Cas? I’m…

Sam voices his reservations about the whole finding Amara --lying to Amara --killing Amara plan. Say it louder for the brother in the seat next to you, Sam! 

(Boris: I’m just going to insert this in the middle of this recap and never mention it again. Can we trust Billie? Is her plan actually something that is GOOD for our TFW 2.0? What is her agenda and does it align with what we want? What if what SHE wants is as equally bad as what Chuck wants? What if we as an audience are getting played right now??) (Natasha: What if the strings she’s pulling are emotional and she’s playing a dangerous game of chicken with Dean’s rage and Chuck’s entitlement?)

Jack joins the community center. He watches Dr. Sexy the pastor in a prayer circle, and talks to a disillusioned young woman who asks him to fill out a form before walking away. 

Cas walks in separately and wanders over to Dr. Sexy the pastor praying with a parishioner, and tells him about the cash stealing Valerie. She never made it home. 

Cut to Valerie tied and gagged. Her hands are in an elaborate guillotine. She wakes. Her screams are muffled. A TV turns on and flashes the word ‘Thief’. And one of her fingers gets chopped off. A timer starts on the TV. AND WE ALL RECOIL. 

Jack finishes the paperwork and tries to talk to the girls working the food line. The one girl storms off, upset. Jack follows her and tells her that he didn’t mean to upset her. 

She tells him that Connor and her dated. Well, they watched a lot of old movies together.  (AHEM! AHEM! AHEM! “I’m your Huckleberry.” AHEM. Please stop the clowning, it hurts so much.) 

Jack confesses to the girl that he lost his mother. The girl tells Jack that her mom died three years ago, and now it’s just her and her emotionally unavailable father, the pastor. “I have more dads than most, and I’m always just feeling like I’m letting all of them down.” JACK!!!! The girl tells Jack to trust God, not people. 

And we laugh, and laugh, and, guh, laugh. 

Cas, meanwhile, meets with Dr. Sexy the pastor. 

Cas interrogates Dr. Sexy Pastor about whether anyone else has gone missing recently. Well, there was one guy who used to work for the “faith-based community” but they parted ways. Cas and the pastor enjoy a little god talk. Cas, the weary angel, opines that God just doesn’t care. The pastor has a different take on faith - it’s about the people of his church doing what they can to take care of each other. We learn that this church recently changed from a fundamentalist branch to something more welcoming. Connor was able to come out as gay due to the changes, so some good happened. (Hindsight thoughts: this makes his death and the “Liar” all the more awful.) “A saint is a sinner who keeps trying,” the pastor concludes...and if that ain’t the truth about Cas!

Sam and Dean are on the too-slow train to Atlantic City when Amara drops in during a gas stop and invites them out for pierogi. 

At Patchwork, the pastor asks Jack to share his journey of faith during a prayer circle. Jack falters, and Cas steps in. “I do know what blind faith is. I used to just follow orders. Without question. And I did some pretty terrible things. I would never look beyond the plan. Then, of course, when it all came crashing down I found myself lost. I didn’t know what my purpose was anymore. And then one day something changed. Something amazing. I guess I found a family. And I became a father. And in that, I rediscovered my faith. I rediscovered who I am.” BRB crying!

Later in the cafeteria, Jack asks Sexy Pastor, M.D. how he brought together so many people with different ideas of religion. “It’s not about what they believe. It’s what they do,” he reiterates. (I imagine, for a moment, an ending where Jack calls out to the whole world and all living creatures and Heaven and Hell unite to win the final confrontation and make a better world together.)

The tranquil moment is interrupted by the TV turning on to security feed footage of the victim. The timer runs out and she loses another finger and screams and screams. Jack rushes over to the TV and pulls out a USB stick from the back.

Meanwhile, the Winchesters dine with Amara.

They bring up Chuck’s destruction of the other universes and tell her they have a plan to stop him. They’ve got a nephilim on their side AND he’s super powerful. All they need is for Amara to help them trap Chuck and...WHAMMO. Amara gently refuses to betray her brother. She lays some new mythology on them. She and Chuck are twins - creation and destruction - and their splitting apart first brought life into the world. 

Cas and Jack barge into the church’s ex-AV tech’s room. And by that, I mean, Jack gets hurled through another door? Um. Okay. The part of me that grew up with 3 Stooges is HERE FOR IT, tbh. 

They discover the guy is dead, chained up in bed with cuffs, with the word “lust” painted above him.

Getting ready to leave town, Sam’s ready to accept Amara’s choice. Dean “Fuck Acceptance” Winchester heads back inside and corners Amara. He asks why she brought back Mary. 

Amara tells him that she wanted him to see that the apple pie dream life he’s always striving for isn’t real - that Mary was only human - and BETTER because of that. Amara thought that would help him to accept his life. Amara also thought that having Mary back would release Dean from his anger. 

He leans forward and lets her know that he’s furious. Everyone in this universe is trapped, he tells her - including her. And she’s doing nothing. Amara falters in the face of this, and then asks him if she can trust him. “I would never hurt you,” he LIES TO HER FACE. She tells him she’ll think about it.

That evening Sylvia, the pastor’s daughter, listens to her friend gush over the social media attention she’s getting after posting about the torture video. In a flash of rage, Sylvia stabs her friend and races away. Dr. Sexy Pastor finds the current (still alive) victim just as Sylvia catches up to him. She accuses him of laughing at her mother after her mother died from trying to heal by prayer rather than medical science. She accuses him of changing the church that her mother grew up in. Jack jumps into the fray and gets stabbed for his trouble. When Cas arrives, Sylvia is quickly subdued by his Vulcan forehead tap of slumber.

Cas yanks away the restraints from the victim (SOOOO strong) and then heals her fingers back on while the pastor looks on in wonder. 

For So Strong Science:

Later, they gather outside while Sylvia gets taken away in cuffs. The pastor still cares about his daughter and vows to get her help. The driver of the car is Zach the crossroads demon? Oookay. 

Cas and Jack drive home. In the truck of feelings, Cas asks Jack why he couldn’t share during the prayer circle. Jack confesses that he’s been lying. The spell Billie is doing with him is turning him into a bomb to be used against Chuck and Amara. It’ll work - they’ll cease to exist. But Jack will be obliterated too. “This is the only way they’ll ever forgive me,” he tells Cas. 

Cas is horrified. He can’t watch Jack die again! Cas refuses to watch Jack die again, but Jack seems to have fully embraced this as his necessary fate.

Back at the bunker, Dean heads for the whiskey bottle late at night when he spots Cas shuffling towards the exit. Jack’s settled in his room, Cas reports. Cas then tells Dean he’s going to look for “another way.” 

Oh AND, “In case something goes wrong and I don’t make it back, there’s something you and Sam need to know…” 

FADE. TO. BLACK.  

The Se7en Deadly Quotes:

You guys go Highway to Heaven that bitch

You look greener than Baby Yoda

“Did anyone find any tiny bags with chicken bones inside?” “Did anyone smell sulfur?” “Did anyone feel cold?”

There were too many cats

Where can I find the Kool-Aid?

I wanted you to see that your mother was just a person

It was a gift, Dean. Not a trial

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive! 

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Do the intellectual elites basically set the direction of how society thinks? Over the centuries, the general public has followed philosophical trends in the academic world so how do these beliefs and academic theories filter down into the mainstream? Is there anything we can do to stop it?

It may seem like in our current turbulent times that the elites do the thinking for the masses. And if one stands back to look at the flash points of intellectual history that indeed feels true. But equally one can stand back and ask critically if this is really so? 

Who are you actually talking about? Who are these intellectual elites? I dislike these generalisations because they are unhelpful. How does one define elite? Is it intellect? Is it cachet of social position? I think our so-called university elites - professors etc - are in their own existential crisis because of how commodified a university education is becoming. They are beholden to students as consumers. It’s a worrying trend.

Of course it didn’t use to be like that because then our intellectual elites had both recognised intellectual prowess and a social cachet. In other words they had power. I think the modern day academic is many ways a powerless and even pitiful figure at the mercy of university managers and money men.

Nor do I think one thinker dominates over others as they might have done in the past.

A case van be made that ideas today are democratised. Power resides wherever their is a vacuum. It doesn’t reside in the class room but on social media.

In our more recent times intellectual trends like post-modernism and now social critical theory have been seeping into the mainstream. Even Donald Trump has brought up critical race theory to the wider watching populace as a beating stick over the left.

But many ordinary people would be hard pressed to name the actual thinkers (outside of just lumping people together as an amorphous mass e.g. cultural marxists or far right conservatives). It’s more true to say that all ideas now fight in the market place of ideas as a product for people to consume blindly.

But why one idea takes off and another doesn’t is something I don’t have answer for. Or where is the point where ideas from top down meet reality from bottom up and create some kind of intellectual and social momentum? I don’t have time to get into that here.

Another thing is that like an MP4 download the compression size of the complexity gets eroded the more it is downloaded and passed around. In other words people start arguing over labels and top line arguments than actually grapple with the deeper and more complex ideas contained.

This isn’t to say there are no problems with such theories - e.g. critical race theory - because there are. For the record, I am hostile to such philosophies as a Tory as I am towards many lefty isms plaguing the modern university campus that find their way into the public square.

Rather than attack the messenger (ie people) one should critically examine the arguments from every side. This is true for any theory and wherever it comes from. We engage ideas not people.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record so let me play devil’s advocate and suggest an alternative if only to muse upon on it.

I was having a stimulating series of conversations with a professor of intellectual history and other academic historians and political scientists from prestigious French institutions at a friend’s dinner party not so long ago. Like any French dinner good conversation is expected along with good food and wine. Arguments are meant to be robust and even heated but never personal. Arguments are won as much by charm and wit as it is by intellect. It’s all very convival and civilised.

Anyway, we touched on many things from the sorry state French politics, Brexit, Trump, and Covid of course. The usual stuff I imagine. But because of who was around the table the discussion enjoyably explored much wider issues.

For me it’s always interesting to hear the premise from where people build their arguments. For the left secularist the Enlightenment becomes the cornerstone from which the lens of history is viewed and interpreted. For the conservative it’s anything before the 1789 Revolution. Both actually looked at change and the ideas therein as from top down. The ground up (or the view from below) was given short thrift.

I suggested an alternative premise more from a playful motivation than absolute empirical evidence - if only to liven things up a little as the conversation was becoming stale and even predictable.

Perhaps the direction of influence could also be seen the other way round? That is to say that philosophical theories formalise and develop ideas that are already in circulation in society and culture.

Did you get that? Let me explain.

Remember Hegel's beautiful and profound observation that 'the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. In the words what Hegel was saying was that philosophical theory comes afterwards, reflectively, when a development of ideas or institutions is complete and (he would add) in decline.

Plato's 'Republic', at least its political portion, was as the late Michael Oakeshott once put it, 'animated by the errors of Athenian democracy'. Any citizen could participate in politics and help determine policies and legislation without any knowledge of the relevant matters. Plato saw democracy as the politics of ignorance. If every other human inquiry or activity recognised expert knowledge - in his famous example, you wouldn't let just anyone, regardless of their lack of specialist skills, navigate a ship - why not politics, too ? Why should politics be special in not requiring knowledge of the proper ends and means of political action as a condition of participation. Think of this what you will, but the 'Republic' was rooted in its contemporary context and was a response to it.

Aristotle's 'Politics' is a theorisation of the Greek polis, which was already passing out of independent existence under the impact of Alexander the Great's conquests. Athens was a city-state, and a democracy (albeit a limited one). Even though Aristotle was not born in Athens his views were accepted until he was shunned after the death of Alexander.

Aquinas' 'Summa' was a response to the recovery of Aristotle's writings and to the ongoing beliefs and practice of the Catholic Church - as well, of course, to movements which he opposed in theology.

Hobbes' 'Leviathan' is clearly a recipe for avoiding the kind of political and social chaos caused by the French Wars of Religion and the English Civil Wars. They were in his rear-view mirror when he wrote his tome.

Hume's 'atomistic' view of the nature of experience as composed of distinct impressions and ideas drew on the model of Newtonian 'corpuscular' physics.

Kant's Critique of Pure Reason asks how knowledge is possible, with the glories of Newtonian physics in the background. His emphasis on the place of reason in ethics is fully in the spirit of the Enlightenment's celebration of reason.

John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty' was a counter-blast to the pressure toward conformity which he thought he saw in the England of his day.

Logical Positivism was a response to the huge, brilliant developments in science - relativity and quantum theory - and took the form of scientism, the view that scientific knowledge is the only form of deep and accurate knowledge (of all real knowledge).

Marxism was a response to the embryonic birth of the modern capitalist system after the industrial revolution in Britain. Both Hegel and Marx formulated their theories by what they observed was happening with the birthing pains of modern industrial capital society. Cultural Marxism is a different beast entirely.

I could go on.

I am not suggesting, of course, that there was anything crude or mechanical in the way these philosophies emerged from their contexts. They all added independent thought of great subtlety. But their problems and the terms of their solutions were set by their times, at least as they understood them. It’s plausible but may not be completely true. But that’s part of the enjoyment of musing upon whimsical thoughts without the conceit of being certain.

Anyway something to think about.

Thanks for your question.

[jochmus]

A Discussion of One Approach to a Universal Characteristic

I have felt inspired yesterday to make this attempt as a text post on Tumblr. By the subject’s weighty history and definition, it should by no means be an easy endeavor. However, there are two individuals from my readings that have inspired me, named John Locke and George Polya. Although I own both of the texts that interest me by these men, I have not read those specific texts unfortunately. Another influence was the eloquence of Euclid’s axioms, indeed I have not read the Elements either except for like the first page. I tend to become distracted very easily, and this is not something that I am very proud of. 

Now I must reveal my passion for the works of Ramon Llull. He was the guy behind the most complete version of Characteristica Universalis, but that is only because he managed to inspire Leibniz to come up with his Characteristica, which was never really worked on or implemented, and the system that Llull created is called Ars Magna, in four distinct stages. The term Ars Magna itself with regards to Llull refers to the Ternary Art, which refers to the wheels or volvelles that he used have elements or principles being divisible by 3. Furthermore this also by coincidence is the third phase of the art, but the phase and divisibility of the wheels are distinct things. 

Enough of Llull. Leibniz is really the only person to be regarded here, as it can be assumed that he wished to update Ars Magna to the science of the time and his own distinguished opinion. That being said, he never managed to create such a thing, but merely wrote to his collaborators and associates about what a proper implementation of this Universal Characteristic would look like. His letters are somewhere in the order of magnitude of 10^5, which is a complicated way of saying 10,000. Indeed I do not remember the estimated number from the Wiki, but I do believe it was something like 30,000. 

By the way, the Wiki does list 21 different attempts at Characterica Universalis, which is the number if I recall correctly, that this scholarly text on Llull mentioned that the man had written this many different version of his system. Quite interesting, but I cannot lower myself into base numerology. That has been superseded. To return to Ramon Llull for a moment, the man allegedly got his system from the Sufis. This precursor system is called Zairja, and there are a couple of texts available on that subject, one written by modern scholars and another written by a Tunisian historian who wrote the Muqaddimah. A hint for those of you curious about the latter text: The chapter about Zairja is in the third volume of that text, and is available on the Internet Archive. 

Back to Leibniz; for some reason essay writing is quite tiring. From what we can discern about what he stated that this system would look like, well I have some bad news. Leibniz simply took the diagram that Empedocles created in antiquity and said “There.” What I mean by this is that Leibniz just took the four elements and their supposed connections, in doing so adding another four nodes to the diagram, and being content with drawing lines between said nodes in order to ratiocinate (think) on paper. Anyone can tell that this is follysome since we now know for a fact that the Classical Elements theory is rubbish. In fact, I have a hot take that it was not only responsible for the idea of “race,” but also the idea of depression. I have created an acronym for the various iterations of Classical Element theory, that is “EHTR” (pronounced ‘ether’) or Element-Humor-Temperament-”Race.” Indeed this may come as quite a shock everyone, but Kant the philosopher was really racist and decided to rank the “races.” I am not going to get into this, but I will say that it may have become esoteric or something through the likes of Manly P. Hall, who mentioned the same scheme Kant used, albeit reordering some things, after the latter mapped it to an analogy about the caste system mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita. I can feel the cancelation brewing already. 

There are probably many different ways to attain this Universal Characteristic. I find that I have provided enough introductory information on this subject, so let us move on to the main part of this essay. Unfortunately, this whole thing was spurred on by a feeling of grandiosity, so I really don’t know how valid my intuition is. Furthermore I forgot what it was that I could use to implement Charicterica Universalis. That being said, I think it was along the lines of a study of analogy, using mathematics, so that we could potentially describe the various processes that underlie reality. The other part was a return to metaphysics proper, or the three general distinguishing features of it according to some textbook, those features being categorization (which is what I consider to be important in particular with regards to this endeavor), thinking and a sense of supremacy regarding the method. Personally I really don’t think that the last one means much, and is in fact a detriment to updating philosophy as should be periodically done in my opinion. Science will always push the boundaries. 

I am going to split the remainder of this essay into three parts: The first part will be about analogy; the second, categorization; and thirdly an obscure paradox that I came up with last night, as a bonus for making it to the end of the essay. You could just skip to the paradox, if you would like, in fact I will bold the title for you, in case I have wasted too much of your time and am boring you. 

On Analogy

I envision analogy as not something fundamental, as the man who wrote Zen and the the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance stated that analogy is irreducible to sub-elements; and I argue against that position taken by the author of that text. I am honestly getting tired of writing and I have written the later parts of this essay before I wrote this part, so here goes nothing. 

In the next part I briefly mention knot and graph theory. I envision analogies as graphs, as I was inspired by Schrödinger’s book What is Life that the genetic material was a crystal. Not true, but why could this crystal represent mimesis, as opposed to “genesis?” (Genesis as in genes, an improper way to say that mind you.) Yes, I really think that this is the case, but it does sound kind of crazy now that I have it on paper after having it in my mind for a few years. I don’t know. I dislike the designation that Dawkins created for such things, the “meme” which he literally took from some German scientist with the same first name, and removed the ‘n’ in mneme to create this Internet garbage we see today. 

Then there are the developments with the idea of metaphor. I don’t really feel like getting into these because I am too tired and I keep making typing mistakes. Just know that it is possible to limit portions of the structure of the analogy to make it more congruent with other analogies or structures. Lastly, it really feels like the literary criticism movement is starting to claim all of the universe as its “text.” That is a portion of Structuralism, at least, according to PhilosophyTube. She stated that Structuralism started as literary criticism, and what do we as human beings do? Why we map the text to the whole of the universe. Some could argue that is a kind of metaphysics were it to be loosely understood. ...

On Categorization

The general gist of what I am thinking of here is that Ars Magna’s major issue is that it is not chaotic enough, if that makes any sense. What I am attempting to get at here is the thing about the questions generated in that system solely referring to the statements created. There is no architecture or complexity there to be studied and afterwards engineered, as it is just base multiplication to generate the questions. What I would like, is for the creation of the questions to be irreversible and chaotic, indeed those are separate things, much like the weather. Knot theory, or graph theory would come into play here, I am not sure which but that is what my intuition is telling me. Also, many statements could be superimposed to generate a set of questions, or a single question. Hopefully my mathematical studies will enable me to investigate this further in the future. 

It must be stated now that the whole category term does apply in my opinion to Ars Manga. This is because the system abstracts the categories into a table of about 54 “elements” which are then combined a second time to produce very short strings of text, for instance “BCD.” Of course, the strings could very well be longer, and could incorporate more intricacy in this manner, but it is really the interaction between all of these strings which constitutes the architecture of the system, although this is done in a manner contrary to the mainstream Lullists, which is an anachronism, really. 

Case in point the categories must translate into natural phenomena and vice versa. At the same time, if the categories were generative, then they must be irreversible in order to be as intricate as possible. The sky is the limit with this, “New Lullism.” I don’t feel like explaining any more, but if someone wants me to tell them about why the standard categories must be reversible, and the generative categories the reverse, then I will explain this another day. Indeed, it may be a false distinction; there may very well be four types of category system, that is:

Standard reversible;

Generative reversible (Ars Magna);

Standard irreversible;

Generative irreversible.

That is all for this part.

The Paradox

There is a possibility for a Universal Library, but the one available on the Internet is not feasible for conducting research on, because it is an art website and is not powerful enough to locate texts and be practical. I am talking about an implementation for the Universal Library called the Library of Babel. You can visit the website at libraryofbabel.info. I do not have the energy to disclose the theory behind this whole thing right now, but on request I will write about it another day. 

The mathematical constant “pi” supposedly does not repeat. Yet there is a trichotomy to be established here, when the constant is juxtaposed with the Universal Library, either; 

1). The Universal Library is effected by Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (was stated by two separate mathematics professors to likely be the case);

2). Pi does indeed repeat minute portions of itself after a significantly large computation of it is conducted, with an upper bound order of magnitude of around 10^5000. Note that this is a back-of-hand calculation;

3). Pi cannot be mapped to the Universal Library.

This trichotomy may indeed be defective as I am not trained in logic, and also I had to make up the last one as I forgot what it was. Oh well.

Thank you very much for reading all of this. Have a swell day. 

[sciencespies]

America's First Black Physician Sought to Heal a Nation's Persistent Illness

https://sciencespies.com/history/americas-first-black-physician-sought-to-heal-a-nations-persistent-illness/

America's First Black Physician Sought to Heal a Nation's Persistent Illness

James McCune Smith was not just any physician. He was the first African American to earn a medical degree, educated at the University of Glasgow in the 1830s, when no American university would admit him. For this groundbreaking achievement alone, Smith warrants greater appreciation.

But Smith was also one of the nation’s leading abolitionists. In 1859, Frederick Douglass declared, “No man in this country more thoroughly understands the whole struggle between freedom and slavery than does Dr. Smith, and his heart is as broad as his understanding.” A prolific writer, Smith was not only the first African American to publish peer-reviewed articles in medical journals; he also wrote essays and gave lectures refuting pseudoscientific claims of black inferiority and forecast the transformational impact African Americans were destined to make on world culture.

John Stauffer, a Harvard English professor who edited The Works of James McCune Smith, says that Smith is one of the underappreciated literary lights of the 19th century, calling him “one of the best-read people that I’ve encountered.”

“The closest equivalent I really can say about [him] as a writer is [Herman] Melville,” adds Stauffer. “The subtlety and the intricacy and the nuance…and what he reveals about life and culture and society are truly extraordinary. Every sentence contains a huge amount.”

Smith was born enslaved in New York City, in 1813, to Lavinia Smith, a woman born in Charleston, South Carolina, who historians believe was brought to New York in bondage. While James McCune Smith never knew his father, a white man, university records indicate he was a merchant named Samuel Smith. (Amy Cools, a University of Edinburgh scholar who has conducted the most extensive research into Smith’s paternity, maintains, however, “Meticulous research has thus far failed to yield any records of [such] a Samuel Smith…indicating the name “Samuel” may possibly have been entered into [the] university records for convenience or respectability’s sake.”). Smith received his primary education at the African Free School #2 on Lower Manhattan’s Mulberry Street, an institution founded in 1787 by governing New York elites. Their aim was to prepare free and enslaved blacks “to the end that they may become good and useful Citizens of the State,” once the state granted full emancipation.

The school graduated a roster of boys who would fill the upper ranks of black intellectual and public life. Smith’s cohort alone included Ira Aldridge, the Shakespearean tragedian and first black actor to play Othello on the London stage; the abolitionist minister Henry Highland Garnet, the first African American to address Congress; Alexander Crummell, an early pan-Africanist minister and inspiration to W.E.B. DuBois; and brothers Charles and Patrick Reason, the first African American to teach at a largely white college and a renowned illustrator-engraver, respectively. These men’s achievements would be exceptional by any standard, but even more so, for a group who were born enslaved or deprived basic rights as free blacks.

They were also all leading abolitionists, contributing their varied talents to the cause. University of Connecticut literature professor Anna Mae Duane, who tells the intertwined life stories of Smith and his classmate Garnet in her book Educated for Freedom, says the boys at the African Free School spurred each other on to great success and that the school’s innovative method of teaching contributed to that. The schoolmaster, a white Englishman named Charles C. Andrews, brought with him from his home country the Lancasterian system to help one or a handful of teachers instruct a class of 500 boys. “The boys would teach other,” Duane says. “They were all deputized as assistant teachers, basically.” This had a galvanizing effect on their confidence.

“When you are learning something, you are learning from another black person,” Duane says. “There was so much they did for each other because of way the school was run. It gave this incredible sense of authority and community.” Just as they elevated each other, the boys were destined to do the same for their people. Garnet formed a club of among the boys, Duane says, and the boys took an oath to “get their education and free everyone down south.”

Even among this exceptional group, Smith stood out as the school’s star pupil. In 1824, the school selected him to address the Marquis de Lafayette when the abolitionist Revolutionary War hero visited the school during his farewell tour of America. Freed by New York’s Emancipation Act of 1827, and after graduating the African Free School at 15, with honors, the next year, Smith apprenticed to a blacksmith, while continuing his studies with area ministers.

He took instruction in Latin and Greek from his mentor, the Reverend Peter Williams, Jr., another African Free School alum, and the pastor of St. Philip’s Church, the leading black church in the city. Garnet recalls his friend working “at a forge with a bellows in one hand and a Latin grammar in the other.” In time, Smith would master French, and demonstrate proficiency in Spanish, German, Italian and Hebrew.

When Columbia University and Geneva College (now Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York) refused Smith admission because of his race, Smith’s benefactors raised funds so he could attend the University of Glasgow, which Stauffer describes as “a deeply abolitionist university at the time,” with ties to the abolitionist movement in New York. “Glasgow was a far better university than any American college at the time,” Stauffer said, and “on par with Oxford and Cambridge.” The university had been the seat of the Scottish Enlightenment just decades earlier, and had graduated pioneering thinkers including Adam Smith and James Watt.

At Glasgow, Smith was a charter member of in the Glasgow Emancipation Society, joining just before Britain abolished slavery in 1833. In a span of five years, he earned his bachelors, masters,’ and medical degrees, graduating at or near top of his class. Then, he completed his residency in Paris. The African American press heralded his return to the U.S. in 1837.

In New York, Smith established his medical practice at 55 West Broadway, where he also opened the first black-owned pharmacy in the United States. He saw both black and white patients, men and women. “[Whites] were willing to go to him because of his reputation,” Stauffer says. “He was widely recognized as one of the leading medical doctors in New York.…Even white doctors who were racists couldn’t help [but respect his expertise] because of his publications.” In 1840, Smith authored the first medical case report by an African American, titled, “Case of ptyalism with fatal termination,” but was denied the opportunity to present this paper on fatal tongue-swelling to the New York Medical and Surgical Society, “lest it might interfere with the ‘harmony’ of the young institution,” the society insisted. His paper, “On the Influence of Opium upon the Catamenial Functions,” was the first publication by an African American in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

While the foregoing represents Smith’s contributions to conventional medical research and treatment (and concerned mostly white patients), Smith dedicated considerable attention to challenging pseudoscientific justifications for African American oppression. The moment he stepped back on U.S. soil, he delivered a lecture titled “The Fallacy of Phrenology,” where he attacked the notion that head shape and size dictates the relative intelligence of different racial groups.

Having embraced at Glasgow Adolphe Quetelet’s pioneering application of statistics to social science, Smith frequently marshaled sophisticated statistical analysis to make his case. When the federal government used data from the 1840 census to argue that emancipated blacks in the North, when compared to those still enslaved, were “more prone to vice and pauperism, accompanied by the bodily and mental inflictions incident thereto—deafness, blindness, insanity and idiocy,” Smith mounted a campaign to refute the claim.

The Harvard-trained physician Edward Jarvis, who had initially supported these government findings, later joined Smith in exposing fundamental errors in the census. For example, Smith demonstrated that the census often tallied more infirm or “insane” black persons than there were black persons in a given state (“to make 19 crazy men out of one man”). More fundamentally, he showed the census failed to account for the higher mortality rate among the enslaved population—the murder of blacks, he charged, at young ages. In an 1844 letter to the New York Herald on the topic, he writes, “What mockery it is for men to talk of the kindness of masters in taking care of aged slaves, when Death has relieved them of so large a share of the burden!”

Smith served for 20 years as the medical director of the Colored Orphan Asylum, a position he assumed some years after he accused the asylum’s previous doctor of negligence for concluding that the deaths among his charges were due to the “peculiar constitution and condition of the colored race.” Smith made great improvements in the medical care at the institution, containing outbreaks of contagious diseases by expanding the medical ward to allow for greater separation and isolation of sick children. He saw the Quaker-run institution as one of the best schools in the city for black children, providing for them what the African Free School provided for him, with a critical difference: Duane says the philosophy of the African Free School was, “You need to admire a version of history that disconnects you from the history of slavery in this country…your own mother… You’re not orphaned but you orphan yourself. You leave the past behind.”

The leaders of the African Free School contemplated the children would educate themselves, gain freedom and repatriate to Africa. By contrast, Smith, says Duane, “saw education [at the orphanage] as a way of supporting families, of putting down roots in the U.S. And fighting for citizenship.”

He also knew an educated black population marked the beginning of the end of slavery. Slavery, Stauffer says, relies on a “totalitarian state” where no one is permitted to question the status quo. So, in the case of enslaved persons like Smith and his cohort who become free, he says, “That’s when they start speaking and writing profusely, and that’s what really fuels or creates the abolition movement.” Education and freedom of expression is anathema to slavery. “All slave societies do their best to prevent slaves from having a public voice, because if they do it’s going to wreak havoc on the society.”

Havoc was necessary if abolition could not be achieved by other means. Smith defied the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which required that citizens in free States aid in the recapture of persons fleeing bondage, as he met with other black activists in the back room of his pharmacy to arrange for the protection of runaways. In 1855, he co-founded the interracial Radical Abolitionist Party, with Frederick Douglass, former Congressman Gerrit Smith, and John Brown, the abolitionist man-in-the-arena, who in 1859 would lead a foiled attack on the federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to instigate a revolt among the area’s enslaved population. The party advocated a pluralistic, egalitarian society, for men and women of all backgrounds.

Unlike William Lloyd Garrison advocated “moral suasion” as the means to rid the nation of slavery, these radical abolitionists were prepared to use violence if it would liberate their brethren from bondage. Smith reasoned in an 1856 essay in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, “Our white brethren cannot understand us unless we speak to them in their own language; they recognize only the philosophy of force. They will never recognize our manhood until we knock them down a time or two; they will then hug us as men and brethren.”

Smith predicted the institution of slavery would not give up the ghost on its own. “African Americans recognized that violence is at the heart of slavery,” Stauffer says. “Without violence, slavery cannot exist…And so, [African Americans] were practical.”

In general, Smith and the Radical Abolitionist Party believed that white Americans needed to embrace African-American perspectives in order to see America in its true light and redeem it. He wrote, “[W]e are destined to spread over our common country the holy influences of principles, the glorious light of Truth.” This access to truth, he predicted, would be manifested in African American oratory, poetry, literature, music and art. Stauffer says that one of Smith’s lifelong interests was to reveal to people the unrecognized influence of Africans and African Americans in the advance of scholarship and culture. An 1843 publication records Smith proclaiming in an 1841 lecture:

“For we are destined to write the literature of this republic, which is still, in letters, a mere province of Great Britain. We have already, even from the depths of slavery, furnished the only music this country has yet produced. We are also destined to write the poetry of the nation; for as real poetry gushes forth from minds embued with a lofty perception of the truth, so our faculties, enlarged in the intellectual struggle for liberty, will necessarily become fired with glimpses at the glorious and the true, and will weave their inspiration into song.”

Indeed, as Smith observed, songs among the enslaved were already shaping American music in his time. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” a haunting spiritual about the separation of children from their mothers during slavery, would later, as musicologists acknowledge, form the basis for George Gershwin’s 1934 song, “Summertime.”

Smith himself made significant contributions to the American literary canon with a series of narrative sketches in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, which he called, “The Heads of Colored People.” With its title mocking the attempts of phrenology to diminish the worth of African Americans, Smith paints dignified portraits of everyday black people—a bootblack, a washerman—as examples of the unique personalities inherent to every human being.

Smith died in November 1865 of congestive heart failure, living his final years in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He and many black families fled Manhattan after the 1863 Draft Riots, where largely working-class Irish draft resisters assaulted and killed black New Yorkers and attacked charitable institutions associated with African-Americans and the war. Most distressing for Smith were these events of July 13 of that year, as reported by the New York Times:

“The Orphan Asylum for Colored Children was visited by the mob about 4 o’clock. … Hundreds, and perhaps thousands of the rioters, the majority of whom were women and children, entered the premises, and in the most excited and violent manner they ransacked and plundered the building from cellar to garret.”

The rioters burned the building to the ground. Fortunately, the staff managed to escort all the children to safety through a back exit. An ailing Smith was not at the asylum that day, and despite attacks in the vicinity of his home and pharmacy was not harmed. But he and other black New Yorkers were shaken. The mob ultimately killed an estimated 175 people, including many who were hanged or burned alive. It’s estimated that in the riot’s aftermath, Manhattan’s black population declined by 20 percent, many departing for Brooklyn.

“I didn’t know he was my ancestor,” says Greta Blau, a white woman who learned about Smith when she wrote a paper on the Colored Orphan Asylum for a class at Hunter College in the 1990s. While she had seen his name in her grandmother’s family Bible, he was a “Scottish doctor” in family lore. Only later did she make the connection. “I think all his children “passed,” she said, meaning that Smith’s descendants hid their black ancestry in order to enjoy the privileges of whites in a segregated world. The 1870 U.S. census recorded Smith’s children as white and they, in turn, married white spouses.

Knowledge of Smith’s achievements as an African American might have endured had he published books, but his essays from periodicals were more easily forgotten. Whereas Douglass was the most photographed American of the 19th century, only one portrait of Smith exists. Blau realizes why Smith’s children did not seek to keep his legacy alive: “In order for his children to be safe and pass, he had to be forgotten,…which is tragic.” In 2010, Blau arranged for the placement of a new headstone at Smith’s grave in Brooklyn’s Cypress Hill Cemetery.

Remarkably, several white descendants of Smith are interred in the same section established by St. Philip’s Church, the black church Smith attended. Blau’s grandmother, who died in 2019 at 99 years old, joined her for the ceremony at the gravesite, as did descendants from Smith’s other children, whom Blau first met when she contacted them to share the news of their ancestor. While other descendants she contacted did not welcome the news of her discovery, these distant cousins who joined her for the ceremony made the journey from the Midwest to be there. “They were proud of it. Just proud.”

#History

[arcticdementor]

On June 24, amid great cultural upheaval and unrest, Glenn Yu reached out to Glenn Loury, his former teacher, to record his thoughts about the current moment. An edited version of their conversation follows.

…

You may or may not have an opinion about that, but suppose the question were to arise in the dorm room late at night. Suppose you have the view that you’re not sure it’s racism, and then someone challenges you, saying, “you’re not black.” They say, “you’ve never been rousted by the police. You don’t know what it’s like to live in fear.” How much authority should that identitarian move have on our search for the truth? How much weight should my declarations in such an argument carry, based on my blackness? What is blackness? What do we mean? Do we mean that his skin is brown? Or do we mean that he’s had a certain set of social-class-based experiences like growing up in a housing project? Well, white people can grow up in housing projects, too. There are lots of different life experiences.

I think it’s extremely dangerous that people accept without criticism this argumentative-authority move when it’s played. It’s ad hominem. We’re supposed to impute authority to people because of their racial identity? I want you to think about that for a minute. Were you to flip the script on that, you might see the problem. What experiences are black people unable to appreciate by virtue of their blackness? If they have so much insight, maybe they also have blind spots. Maybe a black person could never understand something because they’re so full of rage about being black. Think about how awful it would be to make that move in an argument.

Suppose someone, a white guy, is arguing about affirmative action with you. Suppose he thinks that affirmative action is undignified because he thinks that positions should be earned, not given, but he allows that he doesn’t expect someone like you to understand that argument because you’re black. That would be terribly unreasonable— even “racist.” Yet I’m hard-pressed to see the difference.

…

People cry, “structural racism.” Is that why the homicide rate is an order of magnitude higher among young black men? They say structural racism. Is that why the SAT test-score gap is as big as it is? They say structural racism. Is that why two in three black American kids are born to women without a husband? Is it all about structural racism? Is everything structural racism? It has become a tautology explaining everything. All racial disparities are due to structural racism, evidently. Covid-19 comes along and there’s a disparity in the health incidence. It’s due to structural racism. They’re naming partners at a New York City law firm and there are few black faces. Structural racism. They’re admitting people to specialized exam schools in New York City and the Asians do better. This has to be structural racism, with a twist—the twist being that this time, the structural racism somehow comes out favoring the Asians.

This is not social science. This is propaganda. It’s religion. People are trying to win arguments by using words as if they were weapons.

…

And just so I don’t sound like a right-winger, observe that if I were a Marxist, I’d be furious at these people going around talking about “structural racism.” Structure, yes. Racism, no. Because if I were a Marxist, which I’m not, I’d understand the driving force of history to be the interaction between class relations and the means of production, the struggle between workers and capital in the quest for profit given the logic of capitalism. Though I don’t subscribe to it, that’s at least an intellectually serious theory. I know what people are talking about when they say we need more unions, when they say we need to break up big companies, when they say that the accumulation of wealth has gotten too great. When someone says that the logic of profit-seeking leads to war, at least I know what they’re talking about. I don’t necessarily have to agree with Das Kapital to understand that it’s a serious engagement with history.

Structural racism, by contrast, is a bluff. It’s not an engagement with history. It’s a bullying tactic. In effect, it’s telling you to shut up.

…

Yu: I’ve had conversations in the past few weeks that have ended very poorly; conversations that have spiraled out of control, where I’m suddenly a racist, so I’m on damage control. I just don’t know how to reach people in a meaningful way, and that’s very disturbing to me.

Loury: It is disturbing. I’m not a seer. My mouth is not a prayer book. I only say what I say based on my subjective assessment of it all. But it may be that, for a while anyway, there’s not going to be a whole lot of effective talking. It may well be that we have to imagine a world where effective deliberation and consensus is not within reach for us, and we’re going to have to manage that situation. It could get very bad. It could go to violence. This is what Sam Harris always says, and he’s got a point. He says that if we can’t reason together, then the only alternative for dispute resolution is violence.

I don’t know if you saw my piece in Quillette about the looting and the rioting, but I pick up these pieces published in the New York Times, respectable left-wing journals. I’m reading them, and the writer is saying, “America was founded on looting. What did you think the Boston Tea Party was?” Or, “You’re talking about looting when George Floyd lies dead? Oh, I see, black lives don’t matter as much as property.” These are, to my mind, incomprehensibly idiotic. I don’t mean that to cast aspersions. The civilization that we all enjoy rests upon a very fragile foundation. Look. I’m in my backyard. It’s very nice. I’ve got a lot of space. There’s a fence. The birds come. I have a lawn. It’s mine!

Now, if a homeless person comes and squats in my backyard, I call the police. I have him removed, forcibly. There should be no lack of clarity about whether George Floyd’s death somehow excuses or justifies burning a bodega to the ground that a Muslim immigrant spends his whole life building. Being confused about that, equivocating about that, splitting the difference about that—I don’t understand how we’re going to have a reasoned discussion. My thoughts go back to, protect civilization. Again, I know how that sounds. It’s hyperbolic. It’s exaggerated—but only a little! My gut response is that this is not the time for argument. This is the time to protect civilization and protect institutions. When people start toppling statues of Abraham Lincoln and spray-painting on statues of George Washington, “a slave owner,” things fall apart. The center cannot hold. We teeter on the brink of catastrophe.

…

Yu: If there’s no available policy intervention, and there’s also no way we can change people’s minds, then is it hopeless? Is disparity always going to be the case?

Loury: Yes. My answer is it’s hopeless. But let me rephrase the question, and I’m channeling Thomas Sowell now. You have two alternatives. You can live with disparities, or you can live in totalitarianism. Again, hyperbolic, I know. No, I’m not talking about Eastern Europe circa 1960, but look at it this way: there can’t be a disparity without somebody being on top. People don’t recognize this.

What groups are on top? What about the Jews? You could say, “There are too many Jews in positions of influence.” If there are too few black lawyers who are partners in big law firms, doesn’t it follow that are too many Jews who are partners at these big firms? If there are too few blacks who are professors of mechanical engineering at places like Carnegie Mellon, why aren’t there too many Korean professors at these places?

…

What is the nature of the world that we live in? Why would I ever expect that there would be parity across the board between ethnic, racial, cultural, and ancestral population groups in an open society? It’s a contradiction because difference is a very fact of groupness. What do I mean by a group? Well, it’s genes, to some degree; it’s culture; it’s networks of social affiliation, of intermarriage and kinship. I mean the shared narrative, the same hopes, the dreams, the stories. I mean the practices of parenting and filial piety and whatever else there might be.

A group is a group. It has characteristics. Those characteristics matter for whether you play in the NBA. They matter for whether you learn to master the violin or the piano. They matter for whether you pursue technical subjects or choose to become a humanist or a scientist. They matter for the food that you eat. They matter for how many children you raise and how you raise them. They matter as to the age when you first have sex. They matter for all those things, and I think everyone would agree with that.

But now you’re telling me that they don’t matter for who becomes a partner in a law firm? They don’t matter for who becomes a chair in the Philosophy Department somewhere? Groupness implies disparity because groupness, if taken seriously, implies differences in ways of living life. Not everybody wants to play the fiddle. Not everybody wants to dunk a basketball. Not everybody is frightened to death that their parents are going to be disappointed with them if they come home with an A-minus. Not everybody is susceptible to being swayed into a social affiliation that requires them to commit a violent crime in order to prove their bona fides. Groups differ. Groups are not evenly distributed across society. That’s inevitable. If you insist that those be flattened, you’re only going to be able to succeed by imposing a totalitarian regime that monitors everything and jiggers everything, recomputing and refiguring things until we’ve got the same number of blacks in proportion to their population and the same number of second-generation Vietnamese immigrants in proportion to their population being admitted to Caltech or the Bronx High School of Science. I don’t want to live in that world.

[dbittz]

Thoughts on a Resident Evil TV Show

I’ve been playing through the Resident Evil 2 Remake lately since I don’t have the RE3 Remake yet and it’s got me thinking about a Resident Evil TV show. There has been rumors and talks of one on and off but nothing consistent or reassuring.  This a long post. These are just my thoughts/something I’d like to see. Some spoilers for the RE Universe if you like don’t know anything. 

First and foremost, the show should remain as true to the source material as it can while having the flexibility to explore and create it’s story. 

Plot/Focus/Theme: The story should focus on The Umbrella Corporation and the people behind/working for the company. It should show the corruption and secrecy within Umbrella along with how the company turns people into monsters, allows us to explore the character and morals of the researchers working for Umbrella. Ideally, it would focus around a set of four characters as the raise up in the ranks. They are Albert and Alex Wesker, William Birkin, and Annette. These are some of the most prominent people behind Umbrella aside from the founders (who we’ll see but are often the mysterious puppeteers behind the scenes.)  Theme would be how our environment, the people we work with, change us for better or worse. While also exploring the morals and philosophy of science and eugenics since Umbrella was created as front for a bunch of old white guys to create the perfect society/race.

 Setting: The show should take place in the 1900’s, 1970-90s I think is the correct time frame. I think it’s important the show takes place around the same time the games did which took place during the time they were developed in the late 90’s. This will keep with the horror of the show but also allow us to see how advanced Umbrella really is and how powerful the company is. One of my favorite times we see this in the Resident Evil 2: Remake when you first enter the Umbrella lab and you see how clean, how futuristic the lab is compared to the rest of Raccoon city. Keeping the separation during that time is key to the story of Umbrella. There of course could be time jumps and there would be flashbacks to the creation and founding of Umbrella.

           The primary location would be the Umbrella Executive Training School and Laboratory with the Arklay mansion being constructed and by proximity the Arklay mountains/forest. This would allow us to fully explore the early stages of T-virus and Progenitor virus development and the parts the characters played. Raccoon City would exist as primarily an escape for our characters along with allowing us to explore the hold Umbrella had on the City and see the corruption with the officials.

 Characters: Albert Wekser- One of the most well known and popular characters in RE, Wesker was a part of a secret project by Oswell Spencer to create the perfect race. Exploring Albert’s background and how he became the man he is would be fun, especially considering Wesker is one of the people to betray Umbrella and bring the corporation down. Wesker, like most of the characters, would start of a young researcher, (late teens, early 20s) planted into Umbrella alongside Alex by Spencer. Albert is Spencer’s favorite and expects much from Albert. We’d be able to explore if Wesker was always the manipulator who didn’t trust even though he and Birkin are often considered friends so were they or did Albert just use William? We’d be able to explore his relationship with Alex, a relatively new character who like Albert has a lot expected of them. I like to think that are rivals and while they do “care” for each other in some way, their sibling relationship is nowhere near the relationship of Alexia and Alfred’s. Perhaps their relation is better than the Ashford twin’s relationship, especially considering the twins relationship could be seen as “abusive” with how Alexia treats Alfred as a solider and Alfred worships his sister. That’s just something the show explore along with Albert’s military training and the creation of S.T.A.R.S while building up his distrust and exit of Umbrella. He remains loyal to them but at what point did Albert start to question not only Umbrella but Spencer, the man who had him created, who “raised” him and gave him everything he needed to succeed? What exactly was his relationship with William like? Was Wesker always so serious and mysterious or was he carefree at some point? Why does he wear sunglasses? We can infure in later games they are to hide his mutation as a result of the virus he used in Resident Evil, but why did he always wear them? Were they an intimidation technique or did he need to wear them because the way he was created made his eyes extremely sensitive to light? There is so much to explore with Wesker like did he have any romantic relations with anyone? He has a son so when and who was that mysterious person or was Jake created like Wesker himself?

 Alex Wesker- Alex is similar to Albert but she wasn’t as praised by Spencer. Maybe it’s because she had a stronger love for literature and philosophy instead of virology or science? She stuck with it and rose in Umbrella because she was expected to, but maybe she didn’t love it. Exploring her character and background would be a lot of fun. She’s a new character connected to a lineage that has a strong history throughout the game so being able to explore her more and see how she differs from Albert would be a lot of fun. It’s also curious to note that she discovered the truth behind her and Albert’s creation so how does that affect her? Does she tell Albert? We see in RE: 5 that Albert didn’t know until he confronted Spencer and he didn’t handle it well so how did Alex handle it? I don’t have much to say about Alex considering she’s still so new but also because I feel like her mystery and the fact she’s always been overshadowed by Albert, and others, could help to develop and make her an interesting character.

 William Birkin- A child prodigy taken in by Umbrella. The biggest things the show should explore with William is his relationship with Annette, how betraying Marcus affects him and eventually causes him to leave Umbrella as he become more paranoid about his own work being stolen. Exploring how he discovers G and rises in the Umbrella ranks would also be fun. Exploring his friendship with Albert. Much like Albert, William has a lot of pressure on him to do great things and he has a bit of an ego because of his genius and, up until Alexia shows up, being the youngest person recruited by Umbrella. I think William sees both Albert and Annette as equals. As I mentioned before I think a big part of William’s character we’d need to explore in the show is how not only he becomes the perfect, immoral Umbrella employee but how he becomes more and more paranoid that the same thing that happened to Marcus will happen to him. His life work is going to be threatened so he has to do everything he can to stay in Umbrella’s favor, to make sure he stays on top. Alexia, a new prodigal child shows up and threatens his intellect and work so maybe he tries to have her killed but fails because Alexia was expecting it. William is a genius but as we’ve seen in his appearance in Resident Evil, he is also an extremely emotional man. Exploring how William goes from being the most hopeful, Umbrella Student, to just another immoral scientist to one completely consumed by Paranoia and obsessed with his work to the point where he begins to neglect his family would allow for a great and tragic character arch that will leave viewers feeling sorry for William cause we all know how his story ends, he becomes a literal monster as a result of his time at Umbrella and we have no reason to sympathize. He was just another immoral Umbrella scientist playing god. Yeah, he had a family, but he didn’t seem to care, all he cared about what his work. Exploring his rise and fall would give fans that connection, it would make them care so that when they see/hear what happens to William and the Birkin family in Resident Evil 2, they can sympathize.

 Annette- We don’t know much about Annette’s history prior to Resident Evil 2, so being able to explore her background and how she and William started dating would be interesting and fun. I like to think that Annette was the first person that William saw as an Equal instead of a rival. Albert was a friend, a rival, a conspirator, Alexia was a rival, but Annette was an equal that William could confide in, could trust with their work. I also like to think that while William may have been the genius behind G, Annette was the driving force, the one who pushed William and helped him with his success by being the clinical eye to their work. We see this in the Resident Evil 2 remake with how Annette is taking constant notes and observations on a mutated William while also taking responsibility to destroy the creature. William was the brains, Annette was the heart and together they were unstoppable. I think the relationship between Annette and William would be the only romantic relationship the show would have. We could explore options with Wesker, he does have a son after all, but William and Annette are the biggest known couple within Umbrella so exploring their relationship and seeing if there really was a love there or did they just marry because they were only ones they could trust with their work? I like to think that despite the affect Umbrella had on the two, they did love each other but as the years went on and they came closer to a breakthrough with G and William began to lose himself to his paranoia, their love began to die thus making them “married to their work.” That love is still clearly there as Annette struggled to kill William before he fully mutated but it’s possible their relationship was already on the rocks and the only reason they were staying together is because of Sherry and they felt they could only trust each other. Perhaps the two weren’t very expressive with their love and emotions, only showing them during times of triumph or success, such as discovering/creating G. I’ve always wondered, if the two were so committed to their work, why did they have a child? They are both very intellectual people so they must’ve known having a child would take them away from their work. They are upper class so they could have a nanny but still begs the question, why bother having a child in the first place? It’s possible Sherry was an “accident” something conceived as a result of one of their few moments of passion, expressed love as a result of something greater. Being an optimist, I like to think Annette and William did love Sherry, but Umbrella forced them to be distant, so they didn’t endanger her. Exploring Annette’s character outside of her marriage to William should be the first most thing, Annette is a strong character outside of her marriage, but it’s also important to explore that relationship because like I said, the Birkin relationship is the only real relationship we know of and we need that connection so we can better explore how Umbrella destroys lives.  

 Alexia and Alfred Ashford- The Ashford twins are only going to show up for maybe a season or a few special guest episodes. Simply because they are young and they got their own stuff to go through that doesn’t concern everything happening in the Arklay mountains/Raccoon city. I can see the two showing up one season, being brought by their father to show off Alexia to Spencer and the rest of Umbrella to prove he isn’t a failure for maybe a week or a couple months. Alexia, being a genius, would of course begin to make strides and overshadow our main cast while Alfred is simply there to help. Maybe there is a plot by William to kill Alexia, something Albert doesn’t advise, but he goes through with. Alexia expects it and simply is unphased by the attempt and uses it to further her own research/goals before she and Alfred leave. Alfred would primarily be there to support Alexia. We could also explore their relationships. They are very close and dependent on each other so seeing their teamwork would be a fun counter to perhaps how William and Annette work or how Albert and Alex’s relationship isn’t normal or perfect. It would also be interesting to explore if growing up in Umbrella is what made the twins so sadistic or was it the abuse of their father. It can be inferred that Alfred was more abused than Alexia, Alexia being the favorite because of her intellect with Alfred only being above average, so exploring that would also allow us to see how being raised in an environment where morals mean nothing can turn young great minds to crazy scientists. We’d obviously see a lot more of Alfred’s co-dependence on Alexia in their youth during their time on the show and how Alexia manipulate Alfred and turns him into the perfect loyal solider. Their relationship could be shown as creepy in that maybe their love for each other goes beyond sibling love or was it really there out of a need to survive? Alfred shouldn’t be shown as an idiotic lackey. He is intelligent, just not as intelligent as Alexia. His intellect could be shown in military skills, in his adult life he is a commander, and his ability to manipulate people just as well as his sister. It’s also possible Alfred is a bit more sadistic than Alexia, finding joy in tormenting those that threaten or oppose his sister. Alexia shows off while at the labs, but she’s bored by how simple and easy everything is. It doesn’t challenge her. They can, and should, be shown as spoiled brats but it shouldn’t be obnoxious, they do have manners and honor due to their family name and linage, but they do think that makes them better than some people. Maybe Alexia finds what she is looking for to complete her T-Veronica virus in the mountains or maybe it’s where she has her epiphany about ants. Like I said, the Ashford twins are a season, two at most but it’s important to include them because they are part of the Umbrella legacy and Umbrella problem.

 The Founders: The background and history of the founders up to the creation of Umbrella and after should be explored as it’s key to the corruption and evil within Umbrella but the entire show shouldn’t focus on them.

Oswell E. Spencer- Spencer can be shown and explored but much like in the games, Spencer should be more of a strange, shadowy figure controlling Umbrella and manipulating it to fit his goal of creating the perfect race and making him a god.

James Marcus- Perhaps the only founder we’ll see the most of, Marcus is the mentor to our group and the one pushing them to excel while doing his research into T-Virus. He shouldn’t be shown as a father figure or a good guy, he is a manipulative, science/research obsessed mad man who is just as bad as Spencer. He influences Albert and William, making them as corrupt and evil as he but his death, his betrayal should impact the two, and others, because that should be the moment that even their positions in Umbrella isn’t secure. The death of Marcus should be the point that really changes the cast as they continue to grow and work for Umbrella and realize the evil of the company and as they become infected with that evil.

Edward Ashford- is dead by the time of our story so most of our exploring of his character will be in flashbacks as we explore the creation of Umbrella and as he is mentioned by the Ashford, Spencer, and Marcus. Like the other founders, he’s not a good person but he is the first one to die, murdered by Spencer, so exploring how that affects Spencer and maybe even all of Umbrella could be a fun venture.

Alexander Ashford- I’m throwing him down here because when he is shown with the twins, he isn’t that important, he’s just their to kinda flaunt, throw blame, and demand more respect because he’s kind of a joke within Umbrella, even though he’s a genius because he manages to clone a person and creates the twins. He’d also be there to show why the twins do what they do to him. Yes part of it is because they were upset about being clones, being created just to feed Alexander’s ego and prove to the world and family that he isn’t useless, but I also believe that Alexander wasn’t the best father. He puts a lot of pressure on the twins to be prefect, to be intellectuals and save the family name, to serve it, with little care to them outside of that goal so it makes sense that the twins would turn him into an experiment.

 Other characters: We can show and mention other Umbrella researchers or show characters like Chief Ions, a young H.U.N.K. who has yet to earn his name, that John guy Ada manipulated for the third party organization (which should be explored more because we know very little about them other than the fact they are a competitor to Umbrella and hire people to infiltrate and steal secrets) ect. They can be seen, mentioned, and have important roles, but outside of the characters mentioned above, they don’t really serve much purpose except to further show how terrible and evil the Umbrella corporation is. It’d be fun to explore their relationships and how Umbrella affected them, but they should never pull focus from our main cast.  

 Last little thought: There can be mini outbreaks, there can be experiments that go wrong or escape but there should never be a major outbreak. We can hint at what sets off the events in Resident Evil Zero/1 but we should never have something that shows Umbrella could fully contain the situation. Umbrella’s own hubris and the corruption within is what brings the company down so while having stuff like a zombie or a hunter on the lose could be fun drama, it should never be a threat to the whole operation. It would also be a fun way to show how much power Umbrella has over elected officials and the media. Spies, corporate espionage, and other horror/science show drama can ensue to keep the show momentum going.

[qqueenofhades]

I have a question about your opinion as a historian about how to deal with problematic past. I am French, not American, so not quite as aware of what is happening right now in the US regarding statues as I probably should. My question is the following: many of the politicians who promoted (admittedly white) social equality in France, worked on reforming labor laws, etc, in the 19th / 20th century were certainly not anti-colonialist. How to deal with this "mixed legacy" today? Best wishes to you!

First off, I am honoured that you would ask me this question. Disclaimer, my work in French history is largely focused on the medieval era, rather than modern France, and while I have studied and traveled in France, and read and (adequately?) speak French, I am not French myself. So this should be viewed as the perspective of a friendly and reasonably well-informed outsider, but not somebody from France themselves, and therefore subject to possible errors or otherwise inaccurate statements. But this is my perception as I see it, so hopefully it will be helpful for you.

(By the way if you’re interested, my post on the American statue controversy and the “preserving history!” argument is here. I originally wrote it in 2017, when the subject of removing racist monuments first arose, and then took another look at it in light of recent events and was like “WELP”.)

There’s actually a whole lot to say about the current crisis of public history in a French context, so let me see if I can think where to start. First, my chief impression is that nobody really associates France with its historical empire, the same way everyone still has either a positive or negative impression of the British Empire and its real-world effects. The main international image of France (one carefully cultivated by France itself) is that of the French Revolution: storming the Bastille, guillotining aristocrats, Liberté, égalité, fraternité, a secular republic overcoming old constraints of a hidebound Catholic aristocracy and reinventing itself as a Modern Nation. Of course, less than a generation after the Revolution (and this has always amused/puzzled me) France swung straight back into autocratic expansionist empire under Napoleon, and its colonialism efforts continued vigorously alongside its European counterparts throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. France has never really reckoned with its colonialist legacy either, not least because of a tendency in French public life for a) strong centralization, and b) a national identity that doesn’t really allow for a hyphen. What I mean by that is that while you can be almost anything before “American,” ie. African-American, Latino-American, Jewish-American, Muslim-American, etc, you are (at least in my experience) expected to only be “French.” There is a strong nationalistic identity primarily fueled by language, values, and lifestyle, and the French view anyone who does not take part in it very dimly. That’s why we have the law banning the burka and arguments that it “inhibits” Muslim women from visually and/or emotionally assimilating into French culture. There is a very strong pressure for centralization and conformity, and that is not flexible.

Additionally, the aforementioned French lifestyle identity involves cafe culture, smoking, and drinking alcohol -- all things that, say, a devout Muslim is unlikely to take part in. The secularism of French political culture is another factor, along with the strict bureaucracy and interventionist government system. France narrowly dodged getting swept up in the right-wing populist craze when it elected Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen (and it’s my impression that the FN still remains relatively popular) but it also has a deep-grained xenophobia. I’m sure you remember “French Spiderman,” the 22-year-old man from Mali who climbed four stories of a building in Paris to rescue a toddler in 2018. He was immediately hailed as a hero and allowed to apply for French citizenship, but critics complained about him arriving in France illegally in the first place, and it happened alongside accelerated efforts to deny asylum seekers, clear out the Calais migrant camp, and otherwise maintain a hostile environment. The terror attacks in France, such as 2015 in Paris and the 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice, have also stiffened public opinion against any kind of accommodation or consideration of non-French (and by implication, non-white) Frenchpeople. The Académie Française is obviously also a very strong linguistic force (arguably even more so than the English-only movement in America) that excludes people from “pure” French cultural status until they meet its criteria. There really is no French identity or civic pride without the French language, so that is also something to take into consideration.

France also has a strong anti-authority and labor rights movement that America does not have (at least the latter). When I was in France, the joke was about the “annual strike” of students and railway workers, which was happening while I was trying to study, and we saw that with the yellow jacket protests as well. Working-class France is used to making a stink when it feels that it’s being disrespected, and while I can’t comment in detail on how the racial element affects that, I know there has been tension and discontent from working-class, racial-minority neighborhoods in Paris about how they’ve been treated (and during the recent French police brutality protests, the police chief rejected any idea that the police were racist, despite similar deaths in custody of black men including another French Malian, Adama Traoré.) All of this adds up to an atmosphere in which race relations, and their impact on French history, is a very fraught subject in which discussions are likely to get heated (as discussions of race relations with Europeans and white people tend to get, but especially so). The French want to be French, and feel very strongly that everyone else in the country should be French as well, which can encompass a certain race-blindness, but not a cultural toleration. There’s French culture, the end, and there isn’t really an accommodation for hybrid or immigrant French cultures. Once again, this is again my impression and experience.

The blind spot of 19th-century French social reformers to colonialism is not unlike Cold War-era America positioning itself as the guarantor of “freedom and liberation” in the world, while horrendously oppressing its black citizens (which did come in for sustained international criticism at the time). Likewise with the American founding fathers including soaring rhetoric about the freedom and equality of all (white) men in the Constitution, while owning slaves. The efforts of (white) social reformers and political activists have refused to see black and brown people as human, and therefore worthy of meriting the same struggle for liberation, for... well, almost forever, and where those views did change, it had to come about as a process and was almost never there to start with. “Scientific” white supremacy was especially the rage in the nineteenth century, where racist and imperialist European intellectuals enjoyed a never-ending supply of “scientific” literature explaining how black, brown, and other men of color were naturally inferior to white men and they had a “duty” to civilize the helpless people of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and so on, who just couldn’t aspire to do it themselves. (This is where we get the odious “white man’s burden” phrase. How noble of them.) So the nineteenth-century social reformers were, in their minds, just doing what science told them to do; slavery abolitionists and other relief societies for black and brown people were often motivated by deeply racist “assimilationist” ideas about making these poor helpless people “fit” for white civilization, at which point racial prejudice would magically end. This might have been more “benevolent” than outright slave-owning racism, but it was no less damaging and paternalistic.

If you’re interested in reading about French colonialism and postcolonialism from a Black French perspective, I recommend Frantz Fanon (who you may have already heard of) and his 1961 magnum opus The Wretched of the Earth/ Les Damnés de la Terre. (There is also his 1952 work, Black Skin, White Masks.) Fanon was born in Martinique, served in World War II, and was part of the struggle for Algerian liberation from France. He was a highly influential and controversial postcolonial theorist, not least for his belief that decolonialization would never be achieved without violence (which, to say the least, unnerved genteel white society). I feel as if France in general needs to have a process of deep soul-searching about its relationship to race and its own imperial history (French Indochina/Vietnam being another obvious example with recent geopolitical implications), because it’s happy to let Britain take the flak for its unexamined and triumphalist imperial nostalgia. (One may remark that of course France is happy to let Britain make a fool of itself and hope that nobody notices its similar sins....) This is, however, currently unlikely to happen on a broad scale for the social and historical reasons that I discussed above, so I really applaud you for taking the initiative in starting that conversation and reaching out for resources to help you in doing it. Hopefully it will help you put the legacy of these particular social reformers in context and offer you talking points both for what they did well and where their philosophy fell short.

If there does come a point of a heightened racial conversation and reckoning in France (and there have been Black Lives Matter protests there in the last few weeks, so it’s not impossible) I would be curious to see what it looks like. It’s arguably one of the Western countries that has least dealt with its racial issues while making itself into the standard-bearer for secular Western liberalism. France has also enthusiastically joined in the EU, whereas Britain has (rather notoriously....) separated from all that, which makes Britain look provincial and isolated while France can position itself as a global leader with a more internationalist outlook. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are currently leading the effort for the $500 billion coronavirus rescue package for the EU, which gives it a sense of statesmanship and stature. It will be interesting to see how that continues to change and develop vis-a-vis race, or if it does.

Thanks so much for such an interesting question, and I hope that helped!

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Dragon Dancer IV: Heart to Heart

Zihang and I walked down the streets of Tokyo at sunset on a warm spring day. He was carrying a backpack full of supplies. Even though supposedly he couldn’t fight, he was very strong and made a good pack mule. He was so good, he remembered to grab Ru’Yi’s carrier and the diaper bag when he ran out of the burning warehouse.

I was wearing a simple jeans and polo shirt combo provided by the hotel. Side-by-side, we looked like the couple we should have been. We looked like the future of Tokyo: A young man and a young woman with an infant.

A family with much room to grow and a long future ahead of them.

“My teacher knew your dad.” I said by way of beginning. “That’s why I saw the picture of you, when you experienced your first snow.”

Zihang kept his eyes forward and didn’t say a word in return.

“That’s why I know his name was Tianjiao Chu and he worked as a driver. And that his favorite food was braised intestines.”

I glanced up at him but still he stayed silent and expressionless.

I tried a different angle. “Don’t you think it’s strange that you don’t remember Lu Mingfei even though you went to the same school?”

That got a response. “Yeah. I’ve been trying to remember him and I can’t see him in my mind. It’s odd because, he said that when he went back to his high school he was an important person.”

“Right... and don’t you think its strange that you can throw a bookcase?”

“Brother says that he remembered I was very strong...”

“Did you think you were Superman?” I asked, giggling. “That bookcase is so heavy, not even four strong people can lift it. But you knew you could.”

He fell silent again and my smile faded. I forgot how difficult he could be to talk to. We’d grown so close as a couple, we could have long conversations even deep into the night on subjects like science, history, philosophy and art. 

I would ask him questions and he would give a serious but absurd answer, and I would laugh.

----------------------------------------------------

The grocery store was uncomfortably crowded with people making last minute purchases before going home after work. “What ice cream do you want?” He asked me.

I started to say that I wouldn’t have any, just out of habit, but then I saw that his head was down, standing in front of the glass doors in the frozen food section.

“Strawberry.” I said quietly. My emotions began to rise, boiling below the surface like water in a kettle.  “I... it’s pretty crowded. I’ll go to the baby section and get what I need.”

I quickly walked away to the back of the store, aiming for the public restrooms. Fortunately, one was open and I pushed my way inside shut the door and locked it, leaning against it.

I let go of the sobs I’d been holding back, covering my eyes with my arm.

I told myself I’d give myself one minute and one minute only. It wouldn’t take long for Zihang to reach the checkout line and I didn’t want to take too long or Nono and Mingfei might suspect something.

I missed his smile. I missed his arms around me, his kiss on my lips and neck and shoulder. I missed the comfort and company of someone who knew me and was there. Zihang was someone I could relax around.

I checked my phone. I had fifteen more seconds. I went and grabbed the tissues and wiped my face and nose. I stared at myself and forced myself to breathe deeply until the redness in my cheeks faded behind my dark skin.

After a few more seconds of forcing myself to relax, I felt ready to face the world again.

I opened the bathroom door and there was Zihang, leaning against the wall, the ice cream in the basket.

I froze. 

He didn’t look directly at me. He had to have heard me. The door wasn’t that thick. I swallowed hard, lowered my eyes and walked out.

“The baby section is the other way...” He mumbled.

We walked in silence while my mind raced wondering what he must think of me now.

When we reached the aisle I grabbed tube of the nipple cream that kept me from getting raw and chafed from Ru’Yi spit and also some more diapers and wipes. 

“I don’t like talking about my Dad.” He said. 

I stopped shopping and looked at him. He stared at his shoes.

“I don’t know what your teacher told you. But... he was pretty terrible. He married someone he couldn’t support and when they got divorced, he didn’t even fight for custody of me. He just said he would find a better job. But he was never able to stop being a chauffeur.”

“Oh...”

“He had the right to visit me once a month. But he would miss it a lot... And when he was with me... he was... really annoying and stupid.”

I folded my lips between my teeth. I’d forgotten that children with absentee parents, regardless of the reason, often resented them. Even though the Zihang I knew had come to terms with his father’s futile attempts at being a good father, this Zihang hadn’t had that sort of time. By telling him things the adult Zihang recalled fondly, I was hurting the teenage Zihang.

“I’m sorry...” I said.

He gave me a small shrug.

“My parents abandoned me as a baby.” I said. “I was left at a foster home with no name and no origin. My foster dad, Robbie, always told me that my mother was running from a dangerous circumstance. She left me behind because she was very afraid that I would get hurt.”

“So... for a long time I didn’t question it. But sometimes... I did feel a little angry that she didn’t come back to check up on me. Sometimes I would look for her, just in case she was watching in secret. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t true. But... when I was your age, I mostly forgot I had parents other than Robbie and Sandra.”

He stayed quiet, fidgeting with the straps on his pack. 

“...will you forgive me?”

He looked at me, his eyes shifting uncertainly. “Y...yeah.”

“Okay...” I chewed my lip and together we walked out to the check out line.

I suddenly noticed that people were whispering and glancing at us because we were a mixed race couple. They glanced at the baby muttering the word for ‘half’.

As Ru’Yi was growing, it was clear from her eyes that she had some Asian descent. Her hair also didn’t curl all the way, was jet black, and was silky but had thicker strands than mine. Anyone who looked at us could tell it was our child without question. I couldn’t believe anyone would look at Mingfei with his more European features and look at Ru’Yi and say, “Yeah that’s his kid!”

Once we made it back outside, however, Johann once again proved his powers of observation were far keener than the people at the College. “Who is the baby’s father?”

I laughed a little. “My teacher. If you hadn’t figured it out.”

“I was wondering... if it was Crow.” He said seriously.

“No! Oh no. No....” I shook my head emphatically.

“He is very fond of the baby and you know a lot about Hydra.” He explained, looking up in wonder. 

“Well, you’re wrong! Ru’Yi is a Chinese name! Chinese!” I grimaced. “I know a lot about Hydra because I had a major mission in Japan.”

No wonder if he asked me if I liked Crow earlier! I decided to just spill the beans. “The truth is... my teacher is her father.”

“Where is he?” He asked.

I sighed. “When I was still pregnant, he stayed home with me, but a week before Christmas, he was called away for one more job. He didn’t want to take it but he had a special skill that they really needed. I think he felt pressured.” I gave a little shrug. “I was okay with it too. The job was simple.”

“But later when the job was finished, he called me. He said he felt regret for leaving and thought about quitting his job.”

“What would he do after he quit?” Zihang asked, eyes wide.

“He was very smart and capable and we could live off savings no problem for a while. I wasn’t worried. I was surprised because he was very dedicated to his work and I did not expect him to quit.”

Zihang shook his head. “What happened?”

I didn’t know how to explain. If I said he disappeared, it would sound like he ran off. But if I said he died, it would be a lie. 

So I didn’t say anything and let Zihang draw his own conclusion.

When I didn’t answer he said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about sad things.”

“It’s okay...”

“I think... leaving was a mistake, but at least he said he was sorry. That makes him better than my dad.” Zihang said.

I smiled a little. “If we see each other again some day, I will tell him you said so.”

[evilelitest2]

I have an impression that some fandoms (like Lord of the Rings, Warhammer or Berserk) attract Alt-Right/Neo-Nazis a LOT more than other fandoms (like Song of Ice and Fire). Is this fact problematic for those fandoms?

Oh this question is difficult because I keep finding myself fans of things that Nazis also like, so a lot of my time is spent trying to drive them away from things that I like.  I’m a big Lord of the Rings and Berserk fan (not so much Warhammer) and Nazis showing up is a big problem.  I”m just going to talk through the examples you mentioned as to why Nazis like themt

Lord of the Rings has a lot of themes that Nazis are attached too, its has the conservative theme of loss of glory as things were great in the past and steadily degrade over time, morality as an absolute, a great war, and a largely male dominated story. Nazis tend to be attrached to very mythological stories which Lord of the Rings is, which is deliberatley written  Also the story is full of Catholic themes and imagery (though it is not an allegory cause Tolkien hated that.  Finally, Nazis have a huge fetish for Nordic/old Germanic history, and Tolkien was a Oxford Professor in Norse/Germanic mythology, and LOTRS is both Catholic and Pagan in a way that Nazis like.  So on a surface level the attraction makes sense.  however if you aren’t you know...stupid....then Nazi attraction to Lord of the Rings makes no goddamn sense

Tolkien hated the Nazis.  like he really really hated the Nazis, there is a great instance where he wrote a letter about how much he despises that the Nazis were ruining his field because people kept associating his work with the Nazis.  

Lords of the Rings is about a bunch of people of different races unifying and putting aside their bigotry in order to fight against a force of evil, with people who are close minded or intolerant being shown as bad.  No character in this work.  In the background of Lord of the Rings, one of the major reasons why Gondor fell from grace was that one faction of their monarchs were super into fantasy race science and tore the nation apart (which tolkien shows as bad) and the Numenoreans are British style Colonialists and that is shown as a bad thing.  

While Lord of the Rings has an almost all male cast, what is funny about LOTRS is how...unmaco the whole thing is.  War is not presented as glorious but a sad necessity, and the characters who love war inevitably fall (Feanor, Boromir, Thorin) while those who hate war do better.  Men are shown to cry regularly and are very emotionally expressive, and the book clearly values tenderness, mercy and softness more than traditionally masculine traits.  Unlike most works which lack female characters, LOTRS doesn’t feel like it is about marking an male only space, it feels like he just forgot to include them.  It is really telling that Tolkien was a Beowulf scholar, but his protagonist, rather than being a hyper masculine hero figure like Beowulf, is the sensitive kind and nonviolent Frodo.  

Its also worth noting that as a vet of the first World War, Tolkien doesn’t seem enamored with the glory of war, in fact glory doesn’t play much of a role in his books, war is devastating and scars those involved, Frodo himself can’t find peace due to his battle wounds 

Tolkien is really Catholic and as such there is a huge focus on forgiveness, mercy, and the inevitability of human failure and the importance sympathy.  He is less interested in the power of WILL as fascist works often are, and more about the acceptance of weakness as part of human nature, hence why no person can ever actually throw the ring away.  

Tolkien was also a bit of a Judeophile, he was really inter Jewish culture.    He was also anti colonial, anti Apartheid (he was from South Africa),   Tolkien’s work do have issues with race, but his issues were the anarchic views of race.  

Finally, Lord of the Rings, while it does have some parts of it that are problematic, is in many ways anti conservative.  It is nostlagic for the past, but characters who attempt to regain what has gone past (Elves, Sauron, Feanor) inevitable create more evil than if they had just accepted that the past is past and moved on.  Despite his drawing on Norse mythology, the story is not about a dramatic last battle, but living in a changing fading world.  

Berserk is...more complicated.,  Because while i’m a huge berserk fan, there are things in it that Nazis would like 

Firstly, Berserk is a very Nietzschian in philosophy, its about the power of will, individual struggling against destiny, Great Man narratives with most people being idiots, super grimdark, anti Christian context, a mythic story, its hyper masculine and its ultra violent.  And also quite sexist.

  Gust at first glance could fit a sort of fascist idealized version of a man, and if you only read like the first two chapters of Berserk you might see it as something which Nazis would like it.  Except what makes Berserk good is that it is beyond that, if it was just a violent power fantasy it would have faded with the 90s, what makes it good is when it moves beyond that sort of thing. 

 Even if you don’t read the story as a gay relationship between Guts and Griffith (and you are wrong if you don’t), it is about the self destructive nature of toxic masculinity, in fact that is what separates Guts from Griffith, Guts is able to start to move past his need to be cruel and open up, while Griffith doubles down and destroys everything he loves.  I have a lot of thoughts on Berserk.  

Warhammer Fantasy is complicated in terms of its relationship to fascism, if you are interested I can talk about that latter, but Warhammer 40k,while starting out as a punk anti totalitarian parody, has by this point become almost entirely co-opted by the Far Right in terms of fandom.    Because its a grim-dark parody of totalitarianism that nevertheless creates a world that conforms to a fascist world view, and while the Imperium of Man is an evil administration, it is also the one we are expected to sympathize with as our primary point of view characters.  

So it is really interesting that by a contrast, Song of Ice and Fire, despite being also a grimdark re-imagining of a popular genre, doesn’t really have a fascist fandom.   So here are the reasons for it.   

The story is pushing back against the mythologize of the middle ages that is so prominent in the fantasy genre, a mythologize that fascists themselves love.  Martin depicting medieval society not as a time when things were were simple and there was a clear image of glory war, instead it is shown as being just as murky politically as the modern day 

There are a lot of female characters and toxic masculinity is presented as bad.  Also lots of homosexuality 

Individual human will, while being a factor, is less important in the world of Song and Ice and Fire compared to the larger forces of history which are outside individual control

The story is explicitly anti Romantic and themes like “the Nation” The people” “Faith”  ect, instead all of these are shown as construct made by people

The story is also humanist, and avoiding both the absolute morality so beloved by fascists, but also it doesn’t really demonize people, most characters are shown as a mix of flaws and virtues.  

Interestingly some fascists do like Game of Thrones, but that is another matter.  

[scotianostra]

On August 25th 1776 David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and author, died.

As a writer Hume’s style was praised in his lifetime and has often been praised since. It exemplifies the classical standards of his day. It lacks individuality and colour, for he was always proudly on guard against his emotions. The touch is light, except on slight subjects, where it is rather heavy.

As a historian between his death and 1894, there were at least 50 editions of his History; and an abridgment, The Student’s Hume (1859; often reprinted), remained in common use for 50 years. Although now outdated, Hume’s History must be regarded as an event of cultural importance. In its own day, moreover, it was an innovation, soaring high above its very few predecessors. It was fuller and set a higher standard of impartiality.

As an Economist in his book the Political Discourses, which were incorporated in Essays and Treatises as Part II of Essays, Moral and Political. How far he influenced Adam Smith remains uncertain: they had broadly similar principles, and both had the excellent habit of illustrating and supporting these from history. He did not formulate a complete system of economic theory, as did Smith in his Wealth of Nations, the two were friends and must have talked at length about the subject, so although not really known as an economist you have to wonder how much Smith was influenced in there talks.

It wasn’t until the years after his death that Hume was seen as a philosopher he conceived of philosophy as the inductive science of human nature, and he concluded that humans are creatures more of sensitive and practical sentiment than of reason. Based on his understanding of the mind as “filling in the gaps” in our perceptions in order to make sense of our experiences, Hume explains that the mind itself is a concept rather than a necessarily existing substance. He writes, “What we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and suppos’d, tho’ falsely, to be endow’d with a perfect simplicity and identity.”

Whatever field he was involved in he excelled and is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English. I might not understand all his philosophizing, I do however admire that a Scot has influenced some of what are perceived as the most brilliant minds on the subject to follow him.

Also I would much rather give his toe a a rub rather than the statue of a certain dog, Hume wouldn’t have liked this as he seen superstition as a way that led to belief in religion, he was a bit of an atheist oor David.

As with many from past generations Hume has been scrutinised over the last few years due to his disgusting racist views. The University of Edinburgh removed the name of David Hume from one of its campus buildings, citing concerns that the 18th century philosopher’s views on race cause “distress” to modern day students. However, the move has been criticised by several academics, including some employed by the university. They pointed out that Hume’s wider writings offered profound insights into human nature and served as a source of inspiration to generations of thinkers.

The University of Edinburgh premises at 40 George Square, which was opeened in 1963, was once called the David Hume Tower, In September 2020, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the university announced that they would be renaming the tower to 40 George Square. The university stated that Hume's "comments on matters of race, though not uncommon at the time, rightly cause distress today. A lot of people still refer to itinit former name, in fact just recently someone commented on my photot of Edinburgh taken from Craigmillar Castle, which showed the tower promenintly in front of the castle, as DHT, which it was often referred to as.

[arcanalogue]

Notes on the Tetractys: Vol. 1

I have promised to do some writing about the Tetractys, so here it goes.

The first time this symbol blipped onto my radar was in 2009, when I learned about the it via somebody else’s artwork. At that point I had studied a bit of Greek philosophy and a heap of that Hebrew-adjacent mysticism that modern occultists appear to have bet everything on.

There’s literally no end to the amount of information out there about all of my favorite subjects, just waiting to be learned! This is why it’s so daunting for beginners who want to connect to certain magickal traditions: you want to know your shit, but we’re talking about areas of study which are notoriously difficult to access, and in many cases have been selected against in the great evolutionary arms-race of education. And then there are the gatekeepers upon gatekeepers upon gatekeepers...

The internet is an amazing tool for educating oneself, but there are so many ways to use it, and not a lot of instructions (just endless corrections). It takes a dexterous and inquisitive mind to exercise its potential in any focused way — to know what there even is to search for in the first place, and then how to search for it, how to dig into the crevices you find between related subjects and mine them for additional information... which informs future searches, etc.

But we still have it so much easier than anyone who came before us! Reading about the ways in which knowledge was passed down from teacher to student, from generation to generation, during the times of Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers is just fascinating to me. How did they manage to keep the chain from breaking? 

Then you realize how many chains did break along the way. Those we have access to are just the ones which gained a critical mass of interest, or happened to be preserved, or managed to survive all the historical incidents that have wiped out massive amounts of history. 

We gradually realize that at virtually any point during its existence, a thing can be lost. Sometimes these things are lost on purpose, other times they slip through our fingers as we reach for other things. And then in some rare instances, a lost thing can be found again. So there’s often a continuity in a thing’s existence that isn’t evident in our historical record — which, from a distance, could probably be visualized as a string of lights blinking on and off again as various things (ideas, objects, people) are lost, forgotten, rediscovered, and then lost again, blipping across humankind’s awareness and then retreating, over and over across centuries.

Basically we humans are playing a giant “don’t let the balloon touch the floor” game with our own history, except with billions of people and balloons in play at once, and some of the players unfairly seem to be armed with pointy sticks. It’s an absurdly clumsy scenario, and no matter how well we try to play together... suffice to say, there will be casualties.

The Greeks knew this. They’d already seen it! Which is why some of the traditions you read about were so strict, or so eccentrically intense. These teachers knew their entire body of work could go up in smoke, literally anytime. In many cases they’d observed it firsthand. In some instances, they’d personally wielded the torches! Since the very dawn of technology, probably pre-dating language itself, humans have been engaged in informational warfare.

This is one way that teachers, inventors and explorers actually manage to change the course of history: by determining who can be trusted with emerging information. That’s why security and access remain central to conversations about technology to this very day. What is beneficial to keep secret, and what should be made available to the public? 

Some make these choices wisely, others choose unwisely, and everything we see around us is basically the grand result of all those choices.

Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be about the Tetractys? 

*bops balloon back toward ceiling*

There’s a reason why certain symbols and designs from antiquity remain in play today, thousands of years later. It’s the same reason that creators are constantly trying to create new ones, or in some cases just scooping up old symbols, dusting them off, remixing and repurposing them for a new mission.

Symbols and patterns are sticky. We like looking at them, thinking about them, playing with them. Remember how you did this as a child, over and over: encountering a new symbol, you would draw it, repeat it. As a product of embedding it in your own memory, you leave it where it may be found by someone else. As a technology, symbols are uniquely equipped for longevity in the human world.

The human eye and brain are linked in a way that’s predisposed to recognize patterns, and pattern recognition is key to learning (among many other things) mathematics.

Mathematics (which I’m terrible at, so don’t worry, this isn’t about to become a math blog) will always the key to understanding the reality we inherited, and to seeing its potential as we gradually fabricate a new one.

The Tetractys is both a symbol and a pattern, which makes it especially sticky and especially fun to play with. With very little explanation, its layers of meaning begin to unfold in the mind. It teases, it reveals, it obscures. The Tetractys nudges us new toward thresholds of awareness, echoing the cascading effect of reality’s formation described in the Tetractys itself.

As such, it remains its own best recommendation. Is it any wonder that Pythagoreans flipped their collective lids over it?

The author at Organelle writes:

“What [Pythagoras] was gave us is nothing like what it at first appears to be. This is why people were swearing by his name for having brought this simple diagram into the world of human experience: a toy which none could own, and anyone with a stick and some dirt could instantly play with. It requires no manufacture — it cannot not be stolen or co-opted, and ‘giving it away’ causes the giver and the gifted to become ‘exponentially more wealthy’ — in ongoing progressions.“

As early mathematicians fleshed out new concepts, and invented new symbols to represent their discoveries, they were basically just skipping stones further down the stream, packaging ideas in ways that other humans would be able to recognize and access and build upon. Sometimes this was done in full public view, but often they worked in secret, because their bodies of work (as well as their actual bodies) were vulnerable to being dismantled by anyone who found them threatening.

The reason I chose to begin writing about the Tetractys this way was to highlight that there are many different forms of information, many forms of teaching, many forms of learning. And, as we have finally proven, the world is also full of different kinds of human intelligence, capable of many different things. We’re slowly digging out from preconceptions imposed on us by minds that were overly concerned with ideals; any deviations from the ideal were considered to be of lesser value, selected against.

That’s one consequence of hierarchical religious thinking, and it’s not hard to see how even the Tetractys — with its depiction of reality cascading downward from a perfected “monad” state to an earthly “tetrad” — could end up appearing to confirm earlier humans’ preconceptions about what human perfection ought to look like, sound like, be like. Contemplating the pure language of mathematics, or seeking the pure spiritual experience, we crave to reform ourselves and our world to reflect this pursuit. 

Science and religion were conjoined for so long in our ancient history, it’s not surprising that notions conflating scientific purity and spiritual purity still turn up everywhere you look. We’re hooked on them! You see it a lot in New Age thought, and the desire to find confirmation of our spiritual beliefs in “natural” phenomena; the dreaded quest for “authenticy.”

I wanted to start by pointing out that I am not qualified to teach others in the formal sense. I have no accreditation. My academic pedigree is limited to... well, words written in a blog post, however thoughtfully I manage to string them together.

To learn tarot and other various practices, first I had to learn how to learn. For the most part, my education was missing this crucial step. I’ve always been quite naturally absorbent, but the moment my curiosity in any subject was satisfied, I considered my work done. 

That’s probably how most people function when left to their own conclusions... unless survival dictates otherwise. But some of us discover we simply have to keep evolving, keep looking for answers, in order to endure. How do I adapt to survive in this world? What are its qualities? Where are its boundaries? What am I actually capable of?

Taking responsibility for my own education in the longer term is one of the greatest accomplishments in my life. I never thought so before; it’s been too easy to focus on everything I’m still lacking. But now that I’m looking back from my forties, I see a surprising amount of continuity and steady progress. By now I’ve also noted the way knowledge fades when it’s seldom-used, so that means I’m often stuck with the humbling, non-glamorous chore of re-learning everything that used to be right at my mental fingertips.

The Tetractys flickered in and out of my awareness back in 2009, and then lit up again years later when I was working on a series of instructional posts about the minor arcana cards. 

This was the phase in my own practice when I began to leave the Tree of Life and other Qabalistic studies behind; the deeper I’d dug into them, the more I had to admit that my questions weren’t being answered — and in the meantime, I was being inundated with information that I had no practical use for. And as a non-Jewish person who reads and discusses the tarot quite often, I became uncomfortable relying on concepts related to the Hebrew alphabet that had been passed down by Western occultists.

At best, I had to admit that it was no longer helping me survive in this world.

Researching the overlapping history of the Tree of Life and the Tetractys, I realized this was a much firmer basis for my own personal investigations. The history of numbers and of symbolism has no direct path! But it’s very easy to end up sticking to the most well-trod path, even if it’s not going exactly where you’d hoped.

The Tetractys jewelry I created with Azamel was a way of marking that commitment with a reminder to keep learning, to question and refine my own interest in the subjects that appeal to me. I must be willing to adjust course, even if it means wandering through grass higher than my head. That feeling of ignorance and vulnerability is reminiscent of being child again, and comes with all of the wonder and discovery of childhood, as well as the requisite bumps and mistakes and redundancies.

In upcoming posts, I will share some of what I’ve learned from the Tetractys and how I’ve reinvested that into my tarot practice. I’m not “teaching” you how to use the Tetractys in your tarot practice, but I’m happy to help give the balloon another bump, and point to sources that might give you that delightful cascading sense of awareness. 

By now I know many of you personally (even if just a bit!) and I know that our love of that feeling is one that knits us together. It also unites us with all the teachers and students of past traditions, many of whom made tremendous sacrifices just to be able to pursue and relive that feeling.

Thanks for reading! And special thanks to those who snapped up this bit of jewelry early on, it has meant the world to have SOME small thing to show for the long months sitting here in the vast semi-darkness of 2020. Developing the consecration ritual for the Tetractys jewelry, I felt almost like I was visiting people, imagining their surroundings, their cards, their questions.

It’s comforting to be surrounded by so many who are still searching, still learning. I do not believe this ever ends, even after death.

[ezrisdax-archive]

Thoughts on a fun way to make a Star Trek/Mass Effect crossover? Or characters interactions cross-series?

like a full crossover? hmmm, certainly it’d be a parallel worlds type situation where I feel in Trek world the Leviathans didn’t evolve and create the Reapers and thus life wasn’t constantly wiped out and that’s why there’s more of an alien populace in the galaxy to explain the stark differences. And then time travel would get involved too since ME takes place before Trek.

So depending on which Trek you’re gonna go with (which for me I can pick any) there’s some wormhole shenanigans going on only what they call wormholes are the dark energy spots that Reapers use in ME time. The crew is investigating them when they go through it and end up in ME time (or if you want the ship accidentally goes through a la Voyager crossing over quadrants).

At first the crew is clearly trying to not get involved but can’t resist the chance to explore and learn the differences and when they realize this isn’t their actual past and can interact with the place more, which brings them into contact with the Normandy which has been sent to investigate the strange readings so we get to crew interactions of (which I’ll put under a cut cause it got long):

Spock and/or Tuvok, and Liara discussing the Vulcan Mind Meld versus the Asari meld and coming to the conclusion that they might have a genetic link back

Tali and B’Elanna having a field day comparing notes (and complaining) on what it’s like keeping a ship together when you don’t have all the parts you really need since Tali used to do that with the Quarian ships and B’Elanna does that now

Kirk and Shepard discussing choices made that shape worlds for better or worse despite the best of intentions and geeking out over model ships. You can’t tell me that doesn’t happen.

Bashir and Mordin are the only people able to understand each other in their speed talking and excitedly sharing notes about different aliens.

Worf and Wrex and Grunt immediately start a fight (bonus points for Wrex insulting Worf for sounding like Uvenk whom Dorn voices)

Seven and Legion (in a world where he lives, what do you mean he dies) discussing what it’s like going from a hive mind to being individuals and coming to find yourself and who you are as a person, like Legion clearly was more involved in finding this aspect for his people as opposed to Seven who had it forced on her but they share the desire now to learn and become an individual and protect those they care about

Janeway and Shepard blow something up by accident while trying to investigate something because of course they do

Samara and Deanna sitting down and just discussing life because I feel like these two would be friends and smirking at their friends antics and secretly betting on who’s gonna get into what danger

I actually have a lot of thoughts about paragon!Shepard and Michael being similar characters in the sense of having this burden of the galaxy placed on them and speaking out against things that people refuse to see except for the crew they’re apart of and trying to warn people of a war and do their best to prevent it and bring people together

Tilly and Tali and Gabby together would be a delight I feel, just talking excitedly about everything under the sun. including the sun.

Sulu and Joker arguing who's a better pilot and Sulu being fascinated how Mass Effect fields work when it comes to piloting and Joker proudly explaining it

Sisko tries to adopt Grunt from Shepard (no I’m mostly kidding, I think that Sisko and Shep have a great deal of respect for each other in caring for the crew and having in placed in an almost god like reverence in certain situations and the struggles with that. and then also Sisko brings back baseball to the Mass Effect world. Shepard absolutely hates that)

I figure the EMH would actually be most interested in biotics and the science of that and writing down to make a paper to publish as the first hologram to do so.

Likewise EDI is fascinated with hologram technology that Trek’s have and if the ships have ever developed sentience in any way and if she can incorporate some of that technology into the Normandy to further her own development

I think Kira gets along with Wrex and is angry at Salarians on his behalf once she hears what was done to the Krogan because the genocide of a species hits hard with her

Tilly and Samantha are even worse than Bashir and Mordin at talking so fast no one gets it but them and they very much do enjoy talking to each other

Tom and Steve have shuttle races until they’re ordered back by their bosses because really guys

Geordi has a lot of talks with EDI, some about his friendship with Data and the human side of interacting with a being that’s trying to learn about humanity themselves but most about the ship and the benefits of integration with it that allow you to be aware of everything that’s happening on it

also Data and EDI tell the worst jokes and everyone regrets this

Picard and Thane drink tea together and discuss philosophies and Thane talks about his species old artifacts and how they were lost to his culture and Picard just listens with interest and some ideas on how you could maybe get those back

Jadzia and Jack get along surprisingly well, they have a holodeck fight at one point and Jadzia takes tricorder readings of biotics and then they go out drinking together

on the flip side Ezri and Miranda get along in terms of being forced to live up to unreasonable family expectations (all though far less harsh in Ezri’s case) and having to carve out your own identity and also like...weirdly everyone hating you for no other reason than your character exists

Bev gets into playing poker with Kaidan and Steve and now they’re all trying to beat each other constantly at it

Saru and Liara get along the easiest at first and discuss the wild things their crews get up to and how they eventually just started to go along with the madness

Kasumi keeps trying to steal from Tuvok but can’t manage it and thinks it’s the best challenge she’s had in years. Tuvok just wants to talk to Thane and get back to the Delta Quadrant already captain.

Harry and Jacob get to talking about having to prove themselves and always being looked over and the troubles of trying to get your own command

Bones hates all of this, Kirk what the hell have you done now. That said he and Zaeed get to drinking and talking about the bullshit that comes from space travel. All though Zaeed’s is more about how annoying it is to try to kill someone in it. Bones thinks he’s just over exaggerating and not a mercenary at first.

James keeps showing off for literally everyone and turning things into a competition with whoever he can when it comes to physical activities, he’s still sulking that Data beat him until he finds out that Data is an android and then calls foul on it.

Odo and Zaeed grumble about everything together

B’Elanna and Ashley have a book club that they don’t tell anyone about and share romance novels and poetry while complaining about how everyone doesn’t expect it from them and that’s part of why they don’t tell people those parts of themselves

Uhura gets the translators turned off on the Normandy to listen to everyone’s dialect and language and is quick to pick up on it, she’s especially good with Drell and enjoys conversing with Thane in it

Liara is absolutely freaked out that Deanna sounds like her mother and Deanna is absolutely using this to troll her whenever she can because it amuses her

Grunt and Chekov get into arguments about history of all things despite that people keep pointing out that they’re from alternate worlds and therefore it’s different anyway

Chakwas and Chakotay sit down to talk about what it’s like sorta taking care of the crew and just ridiculous stories of things they’ve put with

Riker at one point talks to Miranda about clones and dealing with someone who is the same genetically as you but isn’t you and do you have a relationship with them or leave them be (they don’t come up with an answer really)

Mordin gets banned from taking samples of other aliens

Nog and Gabby talk one point about being sorta new to the experiences of war and frontline suddenly and the horrors that come with it and share their experiences of being trapped by the Reapers vs being in a Jem’Hadar fight and coming back from that

Guinan doesn’t care much for Javik but they do have one good discussion about what it’s like being one of the last of your species and seeing so many of them die due to a machine race (and worse, converted to serve that race) that you just can’t fight back against no matter how much you try (or that’s what they thought at the time)

Samantha and Spock and Kirk and/or Airiam have strategy game nights and really get into it and Spock will typically leave while Sam and Kirk are still geeking out over it until the morning

Quark is banned from the Normandy point blank

Worf tries to get everyone to appreciate Klingon opera, the only one he manages to get into it are Grunt and Legion

Scotty is especially fascinated with the drive core of the Normandy and talks to Adams about it constantly

Chakotay and James having a boxing match at one point

Jake interviews like everyone and is thinking about turning this experience into a novel and enjoys listening to everyone’s stories

O’Brien and Garrus get caught up in calibrations, can you come back later

okay this literally is getting too long already but I could keep going. I think then there’s a group discussion about the Borgs vs the Reapers and the troubles everyone faces in those fights and a lot of back and forth about things that have worked for one crew that may help someone else out (like the Changeling cure to maybe help the Genophage cure or vice versa)

[resourcesofcolor]

    Abolishing The Racist European Epistemology

As an Indigenous Austronesian, I genuinely believe that moving away from the Western/European worldview and unlearning Western sociocultural proclivities will lead to a greater, compassionate society... or move forward with an exclusively community-centered, feminist, anti-corporatism worldview that we can all strive to cultivate in current and future generations! 

Epistemology is commonly defined as the system of knowing. A civilization’s system of knowing ultimately molds their cultural and socioeconomic system; their entire reality. The European epistemology, and especially the development of European science, has justified the objectification of life, the death of the spirit, and the death of human connection prevalent in ancient and traditional Indigenous worldviews: the spiritual, egalitarian practices of Hinduism and Buddhism, the animism of Shintoism, Native American spiritualism and African polytheism which values all things, animate and inanimate; the reverence-worship of ancestral spirits in the Indigenous Austronesian islands, community-based and matriarchal. Even before the system of knowing, predecessors of modern humanity were altruistic and communal, caring for their sick, elderly and disabled: the natural empathy of a socially and emotionally intelligent prey species. 

Accepting beneficial Non-European concepts today and furthering education on the historical and intrinsic value of environmentalism and altruism in Indigenous knowledge is crucial to our survival as an inherently communal species. 

Allowing Western society to proceed the narrative of history going forward in 2020 is unquestionably dangerous.

From The Social Epistemology of Morality: Learning from the Forgotten History of the Abolition of Slavery:

“The dominant narratives Western countries tell about themselves is that they took the lead in advancing human rights throughout the world. The West has achieved enough self-awareness to recognize its own capacity for mass human rights violations in slavery, imperialism, the Holocaust, and other crimes against humanity--although it has forgotten many of its crimes. In the dominant Western historical narratives, however, the West has forever been an auto-didact, arriving at the true principles of morality through its own self-sufficient reasoning, figuring out for itself when it has failed to apply them, self-correcting its course, and taking the lead in teaching these principles to the rest of the benighted world. It does not imagine that it had to learn fundamental moral truths from those whom it victimized, particularly not from people of African descent.”

Without context, it already paints a familiar picture of the Western world, and America in particular. With contexts, it explains how Haiti, and Haiti alone, was the first country in history to abolish slavery: “...the site of the only successful slave revolt in world history.”

Today, Haiti’s valiant, winning revolt in the history of slavery in the Western world is not widely known, or known at all.

From the very first chapter of Yurugu--- An African Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior:

Indigenous and/or Non-European epistemological systems have always deeply respected the universe and environmentalism: their societal, cultural and architectural structures working with nature, instead of against it. Valuing life, instead of objectifying it. 

The Western/European epistemology devalues and neutralizes Indigenous knowledge even as it simultaneously adopts them. From How Indigenous Knowledge Advances Modern Medicine & Technology:

“For centuries, Indigenous people’s lives depended on their knowledge about the environment. Many plant species — including three-fifths of the crops now in cultivation and enjoyed across the globe — were domesticated by Indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. Corn, squash, beans, potatoes and peppers are just a few examples of foods that now contribute vastly to global cuisine!”

“Indigenous knowledge about the medicinal properties of plants has been instrumental in pharmacological development. For example, as settlers arrived in North America, Indigenous people helped newcomers cure life-threatening scurvy through conifer-needle tonics that were rich in vitamin C.”

Indigenous science and modern science must work together in harmony the the progress towards safe medical treatments and cures. 

     The death of the spirit, the ushering in of European philosophy: naturalism, individualism, and, ultimately, racism... 

The entire concept of racism (and how it became systematic + created the imaginary concept of Race, based exclusively on phenotypical appearances with no scientific basis or evidence of its validity) is part of European and American history. “Black” was initially defined by white people, originated from their European-sourced racism and the White’s obsession with their own concept of whiteness.

From White Supremacy In Eurocentric Epistemologies: On The West’s Responsibility For Its Philosophical Heritage by Björn Freter:

“By reading some of the important so-called enlightened and enlightening [European] philosophers, such as the exemplars Voltaire, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, one can find blatant white supremacist racism. Consequently, it is very likely that their racism affected the construction of their philosophical edifices. However, it seems Western scholarship has demonstrated little interest to address this problem. It is not that the texts I engage here are hidden; at least then I could claim a conspiracy. Rather they appear to be widely intentionally disregarded. If philosophy is to retain its integrity, then a work of amelioration must be done, and these destructive, fracturing epistemologies must be addressed.”

Freter goes on to address the racism inherent in Immanuel Kant’s philosophical work, an influential German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment; xenophobia is blatantly present in Kan’s work: 

“Humanity is in its greatest perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians are already of lower talent. The Negroes are much lower and at the lowest there are parts of the American people.”

“Mr. David Hume (an influential Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, also racist) challenges anyone to cite a single example in which a Negro has shown talents, and asserts that among the hundreds of thousands of blacks who are transported elsewhere from their countries, although many of them have even been set free, still not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality, even though among the whites some continually rise aloft from the lowest rabble, and through superior gifts earn respect in the world. So fundamental is the difference between these two races of man, and it appears to be as great regarding mental capacities as in colour. The religion of fetishes so widespread among them is perhaps a sort of idolatry that sinks as deeply into the trifling as appears to be possible to human nature. A bird’s feather, a cow’s horn, a conch shell, or any other common object, as soon as it becomes consecrated by a few words, is an object of veneration and invocation in swearing oaths. The blacks are very vain but in the Negro’s way, and so talkative that they must be driven apart from each other with thrashings.”

The compulsory and “pragmatic” dehumanizing of African (and Asian) spirituality/epistemology while ignoring the systematic disadvantages of non-white people is, in itself, racist. It is where such prejudices all began. To consider that racist European philosophies influenced the modern world’s systematic racism... unthinkable? No. Unsurprising. The Western/European epistemology gave birth to racism as it is understood today-----  which was “reformed” or replaced through capitalism.

     Slavery & Capitalism Are Irrevocably Connected

From The Old World Background to European Colonial Slaver:

Slavery was integral to America’s socioeconomic development, and the socioeconomic development of Europe preceding it. It is an unquestionable aspect of America’s culture and history. The moral monstrosity of slavery permeates every proverbial fiber of capitalism, as they are incestuously connected. 

Tipping practices in America can trace its origins to slavery. Wet nursing was primarily done by black female slaves, abused by white upper-class female masters. As slaves became free, those who could not afford to leave the continent were forced to remain in America’s earliest service industries. 

From Black Perspectives, reflecting on Eric William’s Capitalism & Slavery:

“At its most basic, (and setting the question of semantics aside for a moment) the Williams thesis held that capitalism as an economic modality quickly replaced slavery once European elites accumulated the vast surplus capital from slavery that they needed in order to bankroll their industrial revolution. After providing the material foundation and the trade infrastructure that fueled Europe’s dramatic transformation towards modernity, slavery, according to Williams, began a rapid decline in the early nineteenth century. As the new global standard of industrial capitalism took hold, Williams found that antislavery sentiment conveniently accelerated in support of an apparently more efficient and less capital intensive method of commodity production.  Slavery, in short, was no longer needed. Ideological superstructure followed the economic base. Labor coercion continued post emancipation in the form of sharecropping and wage peonage as former slaves quickly experienced proletarianization. In the end, technological change, modern agricultural methods, and industrial factories supplanted traditional agrarianism and ended the older feudalistic relationships of slavery.Nearly every aspect of this thesis has been scrutinized, amended, embellished, and/or overturned by subsequent scholarship.  

Attempts to [describe] the precise features of capitalism and slavery while tracing their relationships to one another over time also proliferated well beyond William’s original set of questions. Perhaps the most sweeping account to recently push outward from the Williams thesis is The Making of New World Slavery (1997) by Robin Blackburn. For Blackburn, slavery not only enabled European capitalism but also the entire cornucopia of European modernity itself. In exploring the interdependence of slavery and capitalism it turns out that, for Blackburn, Williams actually did not go far enough. Blackburn details how a vast cosmos of forces from modern nation-states, tax systems, financial industries, consumer economies, and a host of other political, ideological, economic, and cultural transformations were all built upon the backs of enslaved Africans.  Rather than finding a stark shift in the age of emancipation from slavery to capitalism, however, Blackburn describes an ever thickening dialectic between slavery and modernity at large, with capitalism serving as only one of many transformative processes that grew directly out of slavery between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries.  While Blackburn would argue against the idea that slavery was unprofitable or on a path towards natural extinction at the dawn of the nineteenth century, he does find that Williams was generally correct in describing the role of slavery’s surplus capital in fueling industrialization in the European metropole.” 

[...] “By way of a tentative conclusion, slavery and capitalism might best be described as inseparable yet also irreducible to one another. They must be understood as both distinctive yet permanently connected.  Certain aspects of each system overlap with one another while other parts of each system seem to stand apart."

Through understanding European’s epistemology and the historical and interconnected contexts of racism, slavery, capitalism, and white privilege in Western development, and the Western world as we know it today, we can learn to deconstruct and abolish it: in our personal lives, and hopefully externally!