#the argument that promotion of family values and work as a dominating force in peoples lives falls apart as fast as you can say reaganomics

[nogoodnikolai]

I’d make the argument that the sitcom “traditional family” is not a reflection of reality, but rather a confluence of narrative tropes, stereotypes and market research. It was the perniciousness of the stereotypical domcom that inspired the creation of the Simpsons!

I don’t want to make wanton accusations, but this line of thinking, in addition to being an oversimplification of genre trends, reads rather reactionary. It’s one thing to argue that work is too dominant a force in our lives (I agree!); it’s another to argue that this is a state that exists in contrast to an idealized past wherein happiness was derived from belonging to “traditional” family units.

the transition in the past two decades from family sitcoms and ‘friends all living together’ sitcoms to workplace comedies signifies a larger shift in how work dominates our lives and leaves no space for traditional family or community raising in this essay i will

[acti-veg]

Hello acti. I've been lurking in the comments of a veganuary yt spot and responded to some, one of them replied to me something along the lines of "A vegan diet is eurocentric and subjects to a binary worldview. Meat = bad, plants = good. If you try to force this mindset on the world, even though the human diet is much more diverse, it's a form of colonialism". What would you've said to that? I interpreted it as the typical 'veganism is racist and ableist' reproach. I'm not that educated in politics so it's a bit beyond my understanding when anti-vegans start with such phrases and words.

My argument has always been that there are separate conversations to be had in spaces which aren’t dominated by consumer culture, but it is not the place of white, western advocates to tell indigenous people what to do, for example, there are plenty of indigenous activists already doing that work. When a person who absolutely does belong to a consumer culture is presenting you with this argument, it is nothing more than a ‘woke’ get-out clause. Remind them that we are not talking to subsistence hunting communities here, or remote villagers who rely on their family goat - we are talking to them, in this space, where they absolutely do have other options.

The view that animal suffering is wrong and should be prevented or minimised is not ‘eurocentric,’ the concept that it is credits thousands of years of eastern thinking on ahisma and the moral value of animals to Europe. Is jainism ‘eurocentric,’ since they too object to eating animals on the basis of animal suffering? Every religion that has ever existed, and every indigenous group that we’re aware of have had something to say about the spiritual and moral place of animals - these are not ‘eurocentric’ concerns, and neither is veganism - the insistence that they are ignores thousands of years of eastern thought and practice.

It is not ‘colonialism’ for a westerner to advocate veganism in the west, where they live. It is not ‘colonialism’ to promote the view that animals should have rights and that unnecessarily exploiting animals is wrong. To claim that to advocate against animal suffering and cruelty is to be ‘colonialist’ is an absurd reach, and 99% of the time, is used as nothing more than a silencing tactic.

Colonialism is the ranchers cutting down indigenous land in the Amazon, 91% of which is used for cattle grazing. Colonialism is the clearing of indigenous land to make way for soy to feed farmed animals. Colonialism is the enforcement of western dietary standards, such as dairy, on populations of colour whose bodies are poorly adapted for them. All of these issues are perpetuated by the animal agriculture industry that they directly support, and which I almost never see mentioned even in brief in these discussions.

[memecucker]

Today, eugenics brings to mind the Nazis and the death camps but the Nazis were late on the scene. It was in Britain and America that modern eugenics developed, initially through the work of English polymath Francis Galton, who coined the term ‘eugenics’, and subsequently through a host of eminent scientists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Eugenic ideas were enthusiastically welcomed by the great and the good, from both left and right, including Beatrice Webb and Marie Stopes, William Beveridge and Julian Huxley, Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot, John Maynard Keynes and Winston Churchill.

At the heart of eugenics lay two fundamental social beliefs. The first was the embrace of a top-down rational scientific organisation of society, the second the acceptance that certain groups were by nature unsuitable for society and should be restricted, kept out or eliminated.

Both beliefs were linked to worries about democracy, nourished by the coming of universal suffrage. ���No scientifically ordered state’, Aldous Huxley wrote, ‘could be democratic; it would be aristocratic: the most intelligent would be the rulers.’ Unfortunately, he added, ‘we have universal suffrage: the vote of the half-wit is as good as that of the one-and-a-half wit’.

Eugenics fused a desire for social reform with reactionary ideas about democracy, immigrants, the disabled and the poor. It led to hundreds of thousands of people being incarcerated and forcibly sterilised as ‘unfit’. Even after the Holocaust and the Nazi death camps had discredited the racial science on which eugenics was built, eugenic ideas – and policies – remained ingrained. In Sweden, for instance, sterilisation programmes continued into the 1970s.

The persistence of eugenic ideas can been seen in debates about poverty. From the 1960s concept of the ‘culture of poverty’ to David Cameron’s ‘troubled families’ programme, postwar social policy has remained shackled to ideas incubated within the eugenic movement.

It can be seen, too, in the population control movement – the belief that social problems in Africa or Asia are the products of overbreeding. Forced sterilisation may no longer be policy in the west, but western governments and NGOs have pressured countries such as India to sterilise tens of millions of its citizens. In 2013, the saintly David Attenborough suggested that it was ‘barmy’ to send food to famine-stricken parts of the world because it encouraged population growth.

Few people today talk about “imbeciles” or the “unfit”, nor show much enthusiasm for state-sponsored selective breeding programmes. But the two key themes of eugenics have returned to dominate public debate.

On the one hand, many worry that the uneducated masses are undermining the possibilities of rational social policy. ‘Was it desirable, was it even safe’, Beatrice Webb asked in 1923, to ‘entrust the poor and uneducated… through the ballot box with making and controlling the government of Great Britain with its enormous wealth and its far-flung dominions?’ A century later, many agree with Richard Dawkins, who argued after the Brexit referendum that ‘it is unfair to thrust on to unqualified simpletons the responsibility to take historic decisions of great complexity and sophistication’.

Then there is the fear of the ‘Other’. Immigration was always an obsession for eugenicists, and has become one again today. Immigrants, we are told, weaken social and racial bonds, are freeloaders and criminals, and lack the values necessary for healthy societies. Demographic arguments have re-emerged. Fears that Muslims are breeding too fast, or that whites are becoming a minority group, are not just promoted by the far right but given legitimacy by mainstream thinkers.

Contemporary fears about eugenics usually focus on genetic advances and the possibility of ‘designer babies’, an issue that Saini and Pearson tackle in the second part of their documentary. Far less attention is given to the ways in which attitudes to democracy, the working class and immigrants echo those of the past. But it is perhaps in those attitudes, even more than in genetic ideas, that the ghosts of eugenics continue to haunt the contemporary world.

[robert-c]

Big Business vs Small Business

I admit to having a love/hate relationship with both sides of this title. 

The Big Business can accomplish things through economies of scale that are completely unthinkable to the small business. Its command of capital makes virtually all significant research and discovery possible because investing in the unknown is both risky and costly, even if the payoff (admittedly most often a long shot) can be huge.

However, Big Businesses tend to be overly conservative, as in risk avoidance. The momentum of what has worked for them in the past tends to blind management from thinking of something new. The people who rise to the top in such a business tend to be unimaginative, status quo keepers. Right up until bankruptcy, the argument that following what we know has been true in the past always seems to make more sense, because it appears to be less risky and in some minds “more prudent”.

While Big Businesses often do get away with treating their employees unfairly, they are the easier to force into compliance with regulations and laws due to their public profile as long as others are willing to make a concerted effort at exposing their illegal behavior. (And as long as the mindless, blind faith believers in the goodness of big business don’t make too much of an impact.)

Small Businesses are the soul of invention and creation. They are often captained by people whose vision was ignored by their former big business employers. Their close contact with their employees, who make their business successful, gives them a chance to ensure their vision is implemented correctly. This contact usually (but alas not always) makes them willing to treat their employees as well as the business can afford. Unfortunately without the resources of the big business, wages and benefits typically suffer by comparison to the larger organization.

At the same time, by virtue of their size, they are often exempt from many regulations put in place to protect applicants and employees from discrimination and to provide minimal employee benefits. Because the Small Business is typically totally owned by a single individual, or family, there are little to no checks and balances to protect against the failings of the owner. The confidence to strike out on one’s own is a rare and special quality; which sometimes can lead to arrogant and egotistical behavior that ignores or discounts the contributions of others, and blocks consideration of any idea or advice that doesn’t originate in their own head. Worse still is the thought that their employees should feel honored and consider it a privilege to help the owner achieve their dreams. All too often they treat the personal lives of employees as if they were somehow under the control of the business because of the presumption that they might reflect poorly on the owner.

I’ve seen some Big Businesses try to act like the small ones. A charismatic CEO seeks to impose his vision on the whole organization and talks the talk of all employees having a stake in the business and the authority to do their jobs as if they “owned the business”. But in practice, the ideas flow only from the top down, others never make it up the chain, and employees soon realize that they can act as if they owned the business only so long as they can successfully act like the CEO would in each case. Not surprisingly, few employees choose to risk their jobs on their ability to “read the mind” of the boss.

While I doubt any Big Business has really managed to capture the nimbleness and commitment of the best of the small businesses, I’m willing to admit to the possibility. At the same time I would be more suspicious the more the business tries to advertise itself that way. Because committing resources to image making is exactly the sort of thing a Big Business can afford to do much more easily than actually becoming that sort of entity.

In my consulting career I had hoped to help Small Businesses by giving them the tools and expertise of the large businesses at rates they could afford. It was my hope and belief that the innovation and enthusiasm of the Small Business coupled with the techniques of the big business could make them even more successful. It was to be the validation of the free enterprise system’s competition mythos beating the power of moneyed big business. Though I had some successes, I discovered that there were a lot more of the Small Businesses that were just the tiny fiefdoms of petty tyrants than there were those who understood the value of consistent policies and procedures.

So here I am, at the end of a long career of trying to be professional and fair and encourage better practices for businesses of all sizes. The harshest lesson I have learned is that egotistical and greedy people out for power and/or money seem to dominate too many of the roles in businesses (big and small) and that it is only law, regulation and vigilance that keeps them from even more disastrous cutting of corners on safety, quality and basic human decency. It isn’t just the decision makers and their cheerleaders who are to blame. It’s also all of the rest of us who fail to realize that “capitalism” can be the incentive for this sort of anti-social behavior, and that even at its very best, it is biased in favor of short term results.

When touting the successes of capitalism let’s not overlook the role public incentive played in some of our greatest and most important developments.

A transcontinental railway, that knitted together a diverse and far flung country, bringing goods from one coast to the other much more rapidly, and spurring all sorts of businesses. Who knows when such an effort would have been completed without land grants to the railroads. In a purely “free market” the payoff would have seemed far off and hard to control especially since so many other businesses (and the people) could potentially benefit from the effort.

The Federal promotion of the Interstate highway system (as a grander follow up to establishment of “US” highways) certainly gave the automotive industry quite a boost; as well as trucking companies, providing viable competition to rail.

The space program and the race to the moon may have been born of a cold war rivalry and image grandstanding, but the innovations engendered by that program kicked computers, satellites and a whole host of technologies into high gear and rapid development. Even beyond the electronics, materials science benefited from the seeds planted in the early research to achieve these goals.

I’m happy when businesses, large or small, can make improvements in the cost or range of options (while keeping the quality) of any good or service. But I’m also mindful that in addition to sometimes needing a boost to move in the right direction, they also sometimes need a brick wall to stop them from moving in another.

Call me whatever name makes you feel comfortable (socialist, communist, etc.); it will only underline your ignorance of their definitions. I am not now, and never will be again, a devotee of laissez faire capitalism. I believe it works best when it is regulated to enforce some consideration for the general welfare and safety of the consumers and employees who actually make a business a success. It succeeds in its promise of a better life and opportunity for all where there are legal disincentives to counter the very real financial incentives to “do it on the cheap”, to play fast and loose with the truth, etc. The excuse of profit cannot be an unimpeachable defense for every decision. As much as we all like to imagine ourselves as powerful individuals, free to act as we wish, perhaps to one day be a “billionaire”, I think it’s time to temper that image with one that is a bit more realistic; one where we acknowledge that almost nothing is accomplished by someone truly on their own and alone, unconnected to others.

Even the “pulp fiction” of the nineteenth century that glorified the possibility of rising to success from humble beginnings recognized “luck” as a factor, (e.g. Horatio Alger’s “Luck and Pluck” among others). So even the myth-makers of this rags to riches version of capitalism acknowledged that other factors had to be in play, beyond hard work and good ideas.

So big business or small there are challenges to do it right.

If you are a Big Business, instead of seeking to be seen as an “employer of choice”, BE that employer. Walk the talk of employees being able to do the right thing for customers on their own decision. Respect the ideas of the professionals who work for the company when they have ideas or reservations about managements’ ideas. Instead of meetings where all we hear about are the grand plans of the executive council, how about basic education about the business and solicitation of ideas about strategies going forward? WHEN these ideas are gathered and evaluated management can come back with a meeting about executive plans with clear answers to why this path was selected over others. NOW with everyone understanding the plan they will be in a better position to support it with their own decisions. And since none of these decisions can be made perfectly, perhaps (humbling as it may seem) management should establish and communicate the criteria which will mean the current strategy has failed and open the discussion up to a new approach. Despite the apparent awkwardness of such an idea, it is a whole lot better than the pretense that nothing has gone wrong, which fools no one you would really want working for you.

If you are a Small Business you may already enjoy the benefit of everyone understanding what the business is about and what needs to be done to succeed. What you need to be mindful of is the lack of attentiveness to ideas from any level of the staff as well as inconsistencies in policies and pay that reflect personal biases.

It truly is my fervent hope that all businesses will be successful by doing the right things by their employees and customers. When they don’t, I consider it a failing of our cultural morality as well as a failure of regulation and law.

[theloobrush]

The liberal legacy

Last night my work colleague was assaulted by a group of around ten teenagers as he went about his job  just outside our regular workplace. The gang was gathered in the car park which is accessed by a narrow alley way between streets. My colleague is sore and shaken but recovering and the police were called.

Earlier this week i had reported individuals and small groups gathering around our work place, in defiance of the prohibition on people going out without good reason and forming large groups. We are in the middle of a pandemic that has taken the lives of over 2,000 people in the UK and a stupid minority continue to flout controls that are designed to save lives, including their own and their families. And if the youth think they are invincible, and won’t be touched at all by this virus, they are dead wrong. Yesterday a previously healthy 13 year old boy in London died from the virus. The other week a 19 year old died. 

We live in a society that promotes individual freedom and autonomy as the supreme virtue and value, almost as important as life itself. I call this the ‘liberal legacy’ and you will be well aware of the thinkers, bohemians, politicians and cultural influencers who have created and perpetuated the modern Zeitgeist of hyper-individualism.

But freedom to do what?  People should be free in order to become the best they can be, to have the opportunity to develop their talents and abilities to the fullest. To  securely be themselves in their private lives, and with their personal possessions if this harms none. But a warped notion of unqualified freedom has dominated the West since the 1960s at least, sustained by social elites, and left-wing groups in particular. They demand freedom for its own sake, though such freedom is, in itself, neither bad or good. A specific characteristic of modern liberals is they refuse to  accept that anyone’s freedom is subject to a higher purpose or general constraint, even that we are all bound by ethical duties to each other. Instead they focus on a philosophically ungrounded idea of ‘rights’. They reject all hierarchies of value and meaning, so they refuse to make value judgements. They are,at best, amoral. Then these amoral ideas seep down from the elites to all parts of the population, even the most dim witted and degraded, through the media and state educators.  The worst of people interpret the  elite’s doctrine of unqualified freedom as a licence to do what the hell they want, believing (rightly) that the elites are not going to challenge them and that any restrictions will be lightly imposed and barely enforced. Not surprisingly, at a time of national emergency, the authorities cannot get a substantial minority to co-operate with simple instructions to protect the population as a whole. 

What to do?  We need to begin a cultural, political and legal transformation, that will gradually repair the damage that our present elites have caused. We need to reverse the decades of erosion of the natural ties that bind society.  While the authorities may now go in hard with the full powers of the state, these shows of force will not be sufficient or sustainable without large scale public co-operation. Everyone has a responsibility for finding the offenders and enforcing law and order in their communities. To deal with the lesser offenders we need to inculcate a culture of shame. We need to shame those who are persistently anti-social. We need them to know their behaviour is unacceptable to the people around them.  They need to be derided and shunned. This public shaming can be done by social media. No more patting the bad boys on the head. No more joking about what scallywags some young people are. All anti-social behaviour needs to be publicly challenged - and consistently. We need to change the social narrative. And in a legal revolution, the community, not elite judges or out of touch magistrates, should determine the sentences for crimes that have been committed against the community. We need to bring home the idea that crime is against us, the people, their people, not ‘the state’ or ‘the crown’.

So there needs to be an end to the pity culture, and the culture of excuses. We can insist individuals take full responsibility for their actions. There is an argument that no one’s behaviour is absolutely free, and many criminals are  undoubtedly mentally disturbed or addicted to substances. Let us be completely clear: this is no reason not to impose strong measures. We must still take all necessary measures to contain the criminal  ‘cancer’ and ‘virus’ (cancers and viruses operate unconsciously of course). We need to stop discussing what people ‘deserve’ and look  simply at the effect of their actions. If their personality defects are persistently causing significant harm then, irrespective of why they are the way they are, they need to be restrained. If necessary, excluded from mainstream society as a matter purely of public protection. And as we are considering only public safety, they should not be released until they have ceased to be a significant threat to the community. Their behaviour within the prison system and level of compliance and personal development should dictate when they are ready to be released. With the benefit of the doubt given more readily for non-violent offences. For violent and sexual offences, the offender should be incarcerated or if allowed out, always subject to life long licence whereby they can be recalled at anytime for anti-social behaviour.  If there is a therapy they need and that is effective, provide it by all means, but they can’t at the same time  be free to cause mayhem. 

There should be mandatory drug testing for all offenders. All chronic addicts need to be rounded up and detained indefinitely, until they are detoxed and have demonstrated they are  likely to stay clean. Within the correction system they should be made to achieve targets of behavioural modification, evidence of change of attitude and general compliance with the correctional system.  I know that in some cases this will require that addicts be detained for many years. So be it. These individual’s minds are so damaged and deranged by addiction, they  are not free in any meaningful sense, so what harm is done by depriving them of what is only an apparent liberty?  Such a policy (of mass incarceration of addicts) will be costly, but still less costly than the total amount of money currently spent within all sections of society  on the consequences of their behaviour  including policing, resuscitating and treating adults for their medical complications, the costs to businesses and physical and mental injuries of crime victims, increased insurance premiums,  and social welfare support.  The mass incarceration of chronic addicts will also deprive the drug gangs of their main customers. 

Present drug policy has failed. To legalize all drugs would make the current  social and health disaster endemic, producing a permanently drug addled and brain damaged underclass, a zombie class. If drugs were legalised the addicts’ behaviour would continue to have massive consequences for society which no reasonably citizenry should bear.

 Attempts at public ‘ drug harm education’   continue to be a failure among a certain section of society. No person in the UK today is unaware of the damage caused by drugs (or for that matter, cigarette smoking) Reasonable people would modify their behaviour, I agree. But a minority are not able to be reasonable; they live carelessly, reckless not only about their health but the health of their children and others. Similarly, the decades long police focussed ‘War on Drugs’ is also a failure: we know attempts to interrupt suppliers are also ineffective; as each supplier  is neutralized, they are simply replaced with others, ever more cunning and vicious, and this will always be the case as the drugs trade is so lucrative. 

In a further blow to the narcotic culture, we need  to end cash welfare payments to those with addictions, replacing these with regularly ‘topped up’ prepayment cards that can only be used through  law abiding retailers, and for all  transactions to be tracked. Welfare payments are the public’s money after all, and we all have a right to see that welfare, which is taken from our taxation, is spent on real needs rather that lauderred into the hands of organized crime and terrorists. (By the way,I’m no right wing scrooge. I’m  all for the generous upgrading of welfare support for children, the disabled and carers, as long as these payments come with accountability).

As for the  the sickest, most violent paedophiles and rapists, and serial child killers, it is time to remove the velvet glove from the iron fist. If we can be sufficiently certain we have caught the actual offenders, I have no moral problem with the worst of the worst being euthanized, just as you would euthanize a rabid dog.

[partyinthecookiejar]

THE MOON SIGNS AND THE EARLY ENVIRONMENT

The Moon indicates our emotional style. But equally important, it indicates how we experienced our mother and our early environment and how that affected us psychologically. Our early environment and the type and degree of nurturing we received are critical in shaping our psychology and establishing a sense of security and trust. In this culture and in most others, the father teaches the ways of the world and how to function in it. The mother's role, on the other hand, is to build the foundation of security, trust, and love necessary for healthy feelings about others and ourselves. If this foundation is cracked or insufficient, we will not have the emotional resources to face our task as an adult of providing for our own survival and that of others.

Our family and our early environment are selected by the soul before life and can, therefore, be read in the chart. The Moon and its aspects, the ruler of the fourth house and its aspects, and the planets in the fourth house and their aspects describe our early environment. They also describe the mother and her attention to us. More accurately, they describe our experience of her and our early environment. Although these aspects describe both the early environment and the mother, the planets within the fourth house seem to describe the environment more than they do the mother. And the houses of the fourth house ruler and the Moon describe the mother's interests and where she puts her energy. If we have been more influenced in our early years by our father or another caretaker, the Moon and the fourth house will describe that individual.

Moon in Aries

The early environment of this Moon sign is likely to be colored by competition and conflict. The conflict may be between the parents, the siblings, or any combination of family members. This Moon sign also may signify animosity or anger on the part of the mother toward her family or spouse or in general. In any case, the home environment is often tense and competitive, and the individual who grows up in it may be tense and angry as well. On a more positive note, the mother may be strong, independent, assertive, and possibly athletic and encourages these traits in her child. Some with this Moon sign have families who are involved in the military or athletics. In general, the environment is more masculine and encourages the development of masculine traits even in its female children.

Moon in Taurus

Unless the Moon is afflicted, the Taurus Moon's early environment is likely to be peaceful and stable and meet the child’s physical needs. The home is likely to be comfortable. The family may even be well-off financially. The mother is often affectionate, dependable, and a good cook. However, little attention may be given to emotional and intellectual needs. With this Moon sign, security and material comforts often supersede emotional needs. Consequently, many with this Moon sign repress or are unaware of their feelings. Children in such families often follow the model presented them by finding comfort and satisfaction in material things rather than in people. Love becomes equated with food and gifts. As a result, their relationships may be with toys, food, or television.

Moon in Gemini

Gemini Moons are likely to be bright and intellectually inclined, and the mother fosters this. The mother usually plays an educative role and happily meets the child's intellectual needs. This is a home where education is valued and reading and schoolwork are emphasized. However, the child’s emotional and physical needs may not be attended to as enthusiastically. Although the mother may be an intellectual role model, she may be less helpful in modeling other skills, such as intimacy and managing in the world. She may not be very affectionate or emotionally demonstrative. In some cases, the mother feels more like a friend, a peer, or an aunt.

Moon in Cancer

This Moon sign is ideal for establishing a solid foundation for adulthood. Unless the Moon is afflicted, the mother probably enjoyed being mother and homemaker. She is likely to have met the child's physical and emotional needs. When our physical needs are met, we feel valued and recognized; when our emotional needs are met, we learn to value and trust our feelings. Feelings are important because they point to our needs, and only by having our needs met can we grow physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. So, recognition of our feelings is crucial in our early years. It is how self-worth is built and tantamount to being validated as an individual. The Cancer Moon's mother is someone who attends to her child's feelings and makes herself available physically and emotionally, which supports the development of self-esteem. On the other hand, the ties with the mother can be too close. The mother is identified with her children and may be possessive, smothering, and overly protective. This may make it difficult for the child to grow up and establish an independent identity.

Moon in Leo

When it is not afflicted, the gift of this Moon sign is a firm sense of self and self-worth. Confidence can go a long way in life. This gift of confidence instilled by the mother establishes a foundation for the Leo Moon's future successes. The mother's warm, expressive nurturing style lends confidence to her child. She is likely to have showered her Leo Moon child with attention and affection, so the child comes to expect this from others. This may, in part, be a self-promoting act in that she views her child as an extension of her own ego and love flows from this place of pride. Her child can do no wrong because it is her child. She is likely to encourage her child’s creativity and self-expression and may be creative herself. She is dramatic, forceful, and a show-stealer. The child learns to get her attention by doing the same.

Moon in Virgo

The early nurturing that Virgo Moons receive may be dedicated but dry. The mother is likely to be efficient, orderly, hardworking, and responsible but emotionally inexpressive. She is educated and thorough in her approach to motherhood, studying all the latest manuals about raising children. This care and attention is noticed by the child and makes up in many ways for the mother's lack of warmth and playfulness. Nevertheless, Virgo Moons may struggle with expressing their emotions, having not had a model for this. Although they may not learn to be emotionally expressive, the dedicated care given to them is often sufficient to build their self-esteem. They, in turn, make dedicated and efficient mothers. On the other hand, the child’s self-esteem might be undermined if the mother is hypercritical and fussy, as is often the case with this Moon sign. In that case, the individual is likely to become self-critical or critical of others too.

Moon in Libra

When not afflicted, this Moon sign represents a beneficial home environment. The early home life is likely to be harmonious and peaceful, and the mother takes pride in providing a home that is both aesthetically pleasing and emotionally supportive. The absence of conflict and argument in the home is often apparent with Libra Moons, for they mirror this non-confrontational style in their relationships. They are likely to have learned how to negotiate and compromise in this early atmosphere, which can later serve them well in their own family relationships and work. The mother might be artistically inclined, refined, and well-versed in social etiquette. Culture and the arts might be emphasized in the home.

Moon in Scorpio

The early environment of Scorpio Moons is often difficult and intensely emotional. Abuse or misuse of power and authority are a possibility, leaving the individual angry or repressed. The mother or another family member may be domineering, manipulative, possessive, or controlling. There is often an undercurrent of hostility and resentment in the home and a sense of deep, dark secrets that no one is allowed to speak about. The secrets could include such things as violence, sexual abuse, addiction, criminality, psychological problems, or illegitimate children. On the other hand, the mother may have been highly attentive to the child's emotional needs and bonded deeply with him or her. This is fine for the infant, who needs this bonding, but as the child matures, this can feel overbearing and possessive. Since identification by both parent and child is so strong, Scorpio Moons often have difficulty breaking the tie with their mothers as adults. The emotional intensity of this relationship often continues over the years. This deep psychic connection between the mother and child may, in fact, originate in a former lifetime.

Moon in Sagittarius

This Moon sign often represents a less traditional nurturing experience. The mother's nurturing style is easygoing and liberal. Freedom is important to her and this attitude is conveyed to the child by allowing him or her freedom to explore, ask questions, and investigate life. However, there may be too little responsibility expected from the child and too few rules to allow the child to develop the inner discipline necessary for adulthood. Or, the mother may be off having her own adventure. So, although the mother may be a model of independent action and adventure, she may not be available to provide the security and stability that a child needs. She might lack responsibility and behave more like a friend than a parent. It is common for those with this Moon sign to live in a foreign country or be influenced by foreigners when they are growing up, perhaps by traveling a lot. The military family is an example of this. The family values freedom more than they do stability. They often move or travel a lot.

Moon in Capricorn

With this Moon sign, something may be lacking in the early environment. The mother may be ill and unable to care for the child, absent from the child's life, depressed, repressed emotionally, over- worked, or unable to cope with the duties of motherhood. Sometimes the mother dies. Harshness is another possibility. The mother may be unloving, overbearing, strict, rigid, and restrictive, allowing little leeway for the child to act like a child or express his or her emotions. In any case, the child receives insufficient mothering. On the other hand, the early home life may be stable, secure, orderly, and attentive to responsibilities, supplying the child with the structure and discipline needed to function effectively in the world as an adult.

Moon in Aquarius

The Aquarius Moon's early home life and mother are likely to be unique or unusual in some way. The individual may grow up in a household with progressive ideas about child rearing and considerably more freedom than most children. This free and tolerant atmosphere exposes the child to ideas that other children might not encounter. However, although this is an advantage intellectually, the child may have difficulty getting his or her need for closeness met. Aquarius, although tolerant and altruistic, is not known for its emotional warmth. Young children, however, do need close emotional interactions with adults to form a solid foundation of trust and a sturdy sense of self. As a result, Aquarius Moons may learn at an early age not to expect others to meet their emotional needs. Consequently, as adults, they may have trouble addressing the emotional needs of others. When afflicted, this Moon sign may indicate a chaotic home, inconsistent nurturing, divorce, or a disrupted home life, which can leave emotional scars and affect the individual's ability to form intimate relationships later on. Several moves or changes in the early years are common. These can either cause insecurity or teach the individual to make the best of change.

Moon in Pisces

Pisces Moons may undergo some loss or hardship in relation to the mother. She may be psychologically incapable of caring for her child, mentally ill, addicted to drugs or alcohol, or neglectful. On the other hand, she may be artistic or musical. She is often religious, kind, and selfless. Religious or spiritual activities may be carried out in the home. In either case, Pisces Moons learn compassion, either through their own suffering or their mother's compassionate care. When they are cared for lovingly, they learn to care lovingly for others. If they have been neglected, however, they may grow up with the same psychological damage as their mother and be prone to drug abuse and mental illness.

[dreaming-of-the-ethereal-world]

Astrology Chart: The Regal Emperor Archetype

July 26, 1993 Numerology Associations: Self and Art Tarot Associations: The Sun and Chariot Animal Associations: Hawk  and Peacock Deity Associations: Apollo and Hera Sun and Earth Dominant Key Personality Traits: Compassionate, Energetic, Hard-Working,  Artistic, Spontaneous, Dedicated Sun Sign: Leo Shows: The Basic Personality   Can come off a bit prideful. Hates showing weakness in any form, likely not a mushy person in the slightest. VERY business savvy, incredible common sense. One of the best senses of humor of the whole zodiac. Constantly moving on to the next best thing. Loves spoiling his friends. Moon Sign: Scorpio Shows: The Emotional Aspects, The True Soul   He isn’t necessarily intensely emotional, however there is something very intense here. He can see beyond facades and cut right to the core of a person. There can be a deep-seated need for transformation and rebirth that can manifest itself in different ways. This person seems to attract emotional upheaval, however this doesn’t need to be dramatic or overwhelming. In some way, he will seek out intense experiences. There can be an unconscious need to test his own strength. High energy of self-awareness exists here. Doing things halfway or having meaningless relationships simply doesn’t fulfill him. He may often have a strong fear of betrayal, thus he will seek out commitment. Once committed, he can be the most loyal and protective partner.   This person spends a lot of time controlling and mastering his emotions. His intuition is outstanding, although it can be self-serving at times. He radiates strength. Even in the absence of experience, he may “just know”. It would be difficult to shock or scare him away in the face of emotional honesty. Some people instinctively want to lean on him. This ability to understand human motivation and nature can be too close for comfort for some, and very comforting for others. Mercury Sign: Cancer Shows: Communication Style, Intelligence   These people communicate with feeling, conveying a sensitive, withdrawn, and thoughtful nature to the people they interact with. If this is the only personal planet in Cancer in their chart, they may come across as more personal and sensitive than they actually are. hey are slow to respond at times, giving others the impression that they are deep thinkers. They probably are just that. Cancer is a meditative and reflective sign. Still, Mercury in Cancer people are much faster at forming opinions and making decisions than they appear. Because they listen so well to others, this speed is not obvious. They pick up people’s emotions in conversations. They are the best listeners of all the signs. In fact, it is extraordinarily easy for them to get “lost” in the other person’s expression and opinion. For a while, they can almost lose their own opinions and completely step into the other’s shoes.   Mercury in Cancer is generally attracted to poetry, archaic language, expressions of yesteryear, and the like. Because they are so aware of others’ emotions, they can be somewhat diplomatic in their dealings with people. Venus Sign: Gemini Shows: Relationship Style, Values.   He appreciates lightheartedness in love. Although he is willing to talk (perhaps endlessly) about the relationship, you may get the feeling that he glosses over some of the deeper issues. In love, his tastes change often, and it can be hard to know what to expect from one day to the next (or, sometimes, from one hour to the next!). Curiosity motivates him on romantic and social levels. “Variety is the spice of life” is his attitude in love, in social relationships, and with personal possessions. He is sociable, communicative, and interested. He can be animated and fun but may also keep his distance on an emotional level. Attractions often begin with words, as he tends to bond more readily on a mental level. Mars Sign: Virgo Shows: Sexual Desire, Energy, Action This is productive and busy person, who is goal-oriented and practical. Although he can be a little scattered at times, simply because he is doing so many things at any give time, Mars in Virgo natives get things done quite well! He has a knack for handling a wide variety of tasks at once, and a tendency to take on perhaps too much at the same time. This person derives plenty of energy and life force from the things he does; his work, hobbies, and any kind of projects he takes on. An idle Mars in Virgo native is a sorry sight, indeed. Fidgety, nervous, worried…all of these things are a sure sign that a Mars in Virgo person has either too little to do, or far too much on his plate. There is a perfectionist at the heart aura here. He’’ll be the first to deny this, but it’s there! He’ll worry when he is not producing anything, and he will worry about whether what he’s produced will measure up. An earthy and sometimes nervous sexuality generally characterizes this person. In a sense, his performance in bed is similar to his work. This person wants to be good at what he does. He will generally be open to experimentation, if only to feed his curiosity and to feel savvy. There’s often a shy and humble side to Mars in Virgo in any area that involves putting himself out there and letting go. But experience and knowledge are important to this individual, and this drive generally wins over his natural reticence. Jupiter Sign: Libra Shows: Sense of Purpose, Reactions to Difficulty  His natural graciousness and talents at promoting and mediating can often bring them many opportunities. He is intellectually adventurous and willing to learn. He is open minded and impartial. Because of this, he often is persuaded to change his mind through the arguments of others. He can also see all sides to an issue. Saturn Sign: Aquarius Shows: Responsibilities, Commitment , Serious Nature  He can be very concentrated, methodical, and organized. Uranus Sign: Capricorn Shows:Self-Discovery  He is ambitious and enterprising. She can be very serious minded with a strong sense of responsibility. Neptune Sign:Capricorn Shows: Dreams, Idealism, Illusions This is a person who dreams of stable home life, most likely desiring to be a spouse and parent. Pluto Sign : Scorpio Shows: Self-Empowerment  He may be drawn to activities that will involve him emotionally. Intensity is the key word. He knows how to bring things that are hidden out into the light. He fights for human rights and has a talent for helping the unconventional become accepted. There is a strong sexual aura here as well. Lilith Sign: Aries Shows: Dark-side   He fears unworthiness and failure. Icarus Complex, Impulsive, Independent, Passionate, Rebellious, Fierce. He can be prone to compare himself to others. To overcome this, he should not measure his own success by other peoples, but to value himself as a unique individual and realize that he is in the process of doing a lot of good for others. Houses: 1st: Sun Shows: First Impressions  He is warm and personable but exciting; it’s not a safe charm, it’s an electric one. He is easy to talk to but hard to befriend. brightness, cheerfulness, confidence; high self-esteem; expressive mannerisms. 2nd:Mercury Shows: Environment, Money, Work, Values  Powerful, clever, well-thought-out , you aren’t as flexible as you have the potential to be    3rd: Venus Shows: Communication, Siblings, Friends, Community Ever-flitting, ever-flying; so envied and admired, artistic thinker. 4th: Pluto Shows: Home, Family  Pluto in the 4th house individuals may of had to deal with a mother that was plutonic herself. She may have taken her emotions out on her children, been very restrictive, possessive, domineering, obsessive, or there could have been something to cause all of this in her - a death in the family, mostly, because Pluto rules death. Death can mean a lot of things though. Divorce, actual death, the endings to things can all mean death. The childhood may have been very complex, dark and twisty, and many traumas may have been felt or occurred in the childhood (by the mother, probably). These individuals with Pluto residing in the 4th house may have had to grow up fast, and became wise at a very young age, feeling as if they’ve felt the world’s pain just inside their own household. 5th: Jupiter Shows: Self-Expression Expansion through breaking free in freedom of expression. He is growing and learning by letting himself shine, express, and freeing his creativity for all of the world to see. This is a theme for him in life naturally, however, his choice to grow lies within the choice to put himself in the spotlight.. Whether that be on stage, in a relationship, or at home.. When he shines his light, He is expanding his spirit. This is such a beautiful placement for that reason. He will continuously find his spirit deeper by expressing that Leo energy. 6th: Saturn Shows: Fear fear of the unexpected, uncontrolled, untested. fear of imperfection, low standards, degradation 7th: Uranus Shows: Relationships, Marriage Rebellious, unconventional, and unique partners, this will lead to Aquarian partners. There is an air of chaotic, unusual, eccentric and exciting relationships. 8th: Neptune Shows: Relationships With Neptune residing here, the individual’s intuition is very developed and very powerful. Sex is a very spiritual and important experience for these people, as to them it represents a complete spiritual act of merging with another soul to form one. By losing their own boundaries and self within another, they satisfy their spirit as well as their physical self. With the planet of dissolving and confusion in the house of sex, there can definitely be confusion with one’s sexual identity. There can also be a fear of letting go with some people with this placement, especially if Neptune is poorly aspected or if Saturn is involved somewhere with this. He may fantasize frequently about unavailable people, or people he is not involved with currently. This person can also have very poor coping mechanisms, this can lead to self destructive behavior when sad/depressed/angry. He most likely doesn’t have a fear of death.   9th: Mars Shows: Travel, Morals,  playful, frank, sincere .   Midheaven: Venus Shows: Career Comedian, Actor, Counselor, HR, Musician, Social Work 11th: Mercury Shows: Social Life humanitarian, unique, individualistic,  disorganized social circles at times, overly talkative every now and then 12th: Moon Shows:  Area of Healing and Emotional Comfort  Emotional comfort through art and self-discovery

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The Truth About Some Of Feminism’s Most Popular Lies

I know a lot of young women are getting pumped up and becoming one with the whole feminism thing, and I get it, you want to be part of some cool sisterhood and feel empowered by believing there’s an embodiment of evil that you can unite and crush together. I get it. There are two problems here though, it’s not a sisterhood and your enemy doesn’t exist. 

Feminism does promote a cliquey, sisterhood mentality, that part is true but the moment you step out of line, come up with your own opinions or challenge preconceived ideas, you stop being a sister and become the enemy. They despise freedom. They believe women should be protected from most aspects of public life, especially speech as if women are so weak and fragile that they can’t deal with mere words and can’t face adversarial situations and challenging views without the protective arm of feminism around their shoulders. 

Instead of sending the empowering message of “a woman can overcome anything life throws at her”, they rather send the infantile message of “a woman can shut down and censor anything life throws at her”. Women should be encouraged to fight back against opposing views, to engage in political battles on the street and to win the argument, not just scream and insult your way into silencing someone who dares to argue with facts. 

Rather than assuming that all men and every aspect of society are inherently programmed to mistreat women, we need to believe that human interaction should be free from constraint. Believe in unequivocal and uncompromising freedom of speech, and the free exchange of ideas between people in order to reach a more progressive outcome. The only way to do this is through an uncompromising belief in freedom. Freedom is everything you are in the western world. You aren’t a victim and you sure as hell aren’t oppressed. 

I keep hearing these same misconceptions over and over again and as women we need to stop falling for it, we’re only making ourselves look dumb. Let’s start with the wage gap. As I’ve posted many times, if you want to be paid more, then start putting more thought into your college major. The subjects which young feminists are gravitating to in order to be seen as “good, enlightened, educated feminists” only exist to attract those who are too lazy to study a real subject, they were created specifically for young feminists which may seem really awesome at the time but it gets you nowhere in the real world. Men on the other hand, they dominate the majors which lead to the highest paying jobs, not because of sexism but because they love to be challenged and to work hard - something feminism discourages altogether. There’s nothing stopping you from taking education more seriously so let’s make that our first goal, agreed? 

The second part of this wage gap discussion is, well it’s a myth. Feminists still to this day go on about it, complaining that when we enter the workforce we’re inevitably going to be given 23 cents less to our male colleagues just because we have different genitalia. How this hysteria began was by a kindergartener’s calculation of average income between men and women regardless of job position or any other factor, they compare male surgeons to female lunch ladies and scream OMG WAGE GAP! 

It has never been a direct comparison in wages, this isn’t about two people working for the same company in the same position with the same experience and working the same hours. Paying women less simply for being a woman is illegal. If it was really happening, why aren’t millions of women taking their employers to court for gender pay discrimination and ignoring the Equal Pay Act, an enforced law to ensure pay equality? Well probably because it doesn’t happen outside of feminism’s imaginary cruel misogynistic, woman-hating world.

Now this isn’t saying that most men don’t retire with more in their bank accounts because it’s true, men end up with more money, but it’s not because they’re being paid more for doing the same job as a woman, they’re simply being paid for jobs women don’t want to do. A lot of men earn more for that exact reason. They earn it. They dominate the hard, dirty, dangerous jobs that require more hours, later hours and involve higher risks for accident and death. They are also more willing to push themselves and fight for top positions. Again, something feminism discourages as they feel like it’s automatically owed to them. 

This is only talking about men closer to retirement age. When you begin to look at younger people, there’s a funny little fact that feminists love to exclude from their victim narrative: young women earn more than young men. Women are paid more than men until they reach their 40s, according to an official assessment of the gender pay gap by the Office for National Statistics. Women in their 20s have earned more than men in the same age group for the past decade and now women in their 30s are also paid more than males. Whether it’s because far more women are attending and graduating from college than men or whether it’s the direct result of affirmative action where women are being gifted scholarships and job positions for being women, that’s up for you to decide. Either way, you won’t ever hear a feminist talk about it.

That is not an attack on women and that obviously doesn’t include all women but these are the facts. Something else to take into consideration too: not every woman wants this. Not every woman cares about ending up with 23% less than their husband in retirement because they value family life more than their hours worked and how many men they competed with, they care about having children and living a loving, relaxed and homely life and that is their choice. The extra money they miss out on, they gain in a stronger, closer and invaluable bond and relationship with their children and it’s the father who gets 23% less of a bond. It’s all about perspective and personal choices. 

It’s probably why the large majority of women aren’t feminists - in order to be a feminist, you must see your decision to be a housewife or stay at home mom as proof you’re a victim to men and you must always be in competition with men. Most women simply don’t give a fuck lol most of us aren’t batshit crazy and aren’t constantly looking to blame men and see ourselves as victims. Most women just want to do what makes them happy and it’s about time feminists stop shaming these women for wanting a “gender conforming” life. 

Let’s focus on feminism’s next excuse to be lazy and unmotivated: their excuse about it being harder for women to break into typically dominated male fields. I really don’t need to spend much time on this one because as we all know, any woman is just as free to study STEM majors and are just as likely to be employed in STEM fields, even more with a little help from our friend affirmative action where now women have a 2:1 advantage when applying for a STEM job over men. 

Let’s think about why there may be less women in STEM fields, is it sexism or do women just make different choices? According to the US Department of Statistics women in STEM switch majors at a far higher rate than men once they realize that it’s too hard for them, sometimes all females drop out until there are only men left in classrooms and feminists scream sexism. How is this logical? Where is the accountability for women? Feminists also constantly go on about these hostile, sexist environments in math and engineering but you never hear them complain about biology, agriculture, vet medicine or law where women are flourishing. Is it possible that feminism only turns on the victim switch when men outperform women but stays quiet where women succeed? It appears so. 

Women earn more PhDs than men in the humanities, social sciences, education, life sciences. Men prevail in engineering, physics and computer science. Does our social constructed gender stereotypes or the patriarchy explain these differences? Or could it just be in the pursuit of happiness men and women take slightly different paths? When men and women get asked how they like to spend their free time, more men than women say they would enjoy manipulating tools and taking apart and putting together machines. Women are more likely to say they prefer to work with people or living things. The key word here was prefer. Having different preferences which leads to different levels of performance in different fields doesn’t make it sexist, it makes it a part of life. 

Girls do better in school, go to college more, graduate more and with higher grades, and in STEM have a 2:1 advantage when job seeking over men. Yet we are told this is not enough and because there’s still more men in some STEM fields, it has to be sexism. Have we ever considered the possibility that women just aren’t as interested as men? Believing in equality doesn’t mean that we have to force women into something they simply don’t want to do or aren’t as interested in to achieve equal ratios. It isn’t sexism, it is preference. A study asked STEM professors why they believe there aren’t as many women in STEM and almost all agreed it is because differences in interest between men and women. Men aren’t keeping women out of STEM, more women simply would rather be doing something else and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Their final excuse probably bothers me above all and that’s when they say young women aren’t as interested because they don’t have as many women to inspire them or be role models. My question is, why do we need women role models? If we believe in equality so much, why can’t we look to a man who has achieved something great or a man in power and say “wow, he has a lot of characteristics that I could strive to attain and take on board, I should be that, embody that, go for it girl and become a boss just like this guy!” Would feminism ever find it acceptable for a man to say that boys need men as role models instead of women? No. So what’s the difference? Surely this is a better approach to encourage girls to get into male dominated fields than to scream sexism and send the message that young girls can only be inspired by their own gender. It has a bit of a sexist smell about it, if you ask me. 

Honestly, I think there is a lot more equality than we want to recognize because when we recognize that we can do the same things and achieve the same potential as men then we realize it’s really our fault and there’s no patriarchy to blame for our shortcomings and laziness. Are we ready to own our shit and make changes to the way we approach life or are we going to keep blaming men and encouraging victimhood? 

Feminism isn’t setting a good example but we as women need to stay calm and don’t let our emotions get in the way of our goals. Feminism tells us that the only way to crush “the patriarchy” is to be loud and obnoxious, to put men in their place, to walk around with our boobs and ass out and to stop caring about our looks and hygiene - and then they tell us to take them seriously. Sorry ladies, the world doesn’t work that way, you simply don’t get to be a slob and a CEO at the same time whether you’re a man or woman and regardless of where you live, professionalism is the same everywhere you go. That’s something feminism hates. They believe professionalism is the patriarchy, that professionalism is rich white men in the sky controlling our bodies. Give me a break. If you want others to take you seriously, first you have to take yourself seriously, it’s really not that difficult.

Use your voice as a strong woman but please, don’t be a screeching fucking feminist. Stay professional as possible and stay focused. People don’t want to take medical or legal advice or any type of professional advice from someone who isn’t rational or smells and looks like a furry garbage can or talks like a tantrum throwing child, that only sells insecurity and distrust. 

If you want a position of power, if you want to be taken seriously - be strong, be smart, don’t ever think something is owed to you for being a woman and don’t ever believe you are a victim of mythical white men controlling your every move. That is paranoid, borderline psychotic thinking and you need to stay as far away from this mindset as possible. This is why I encourage everyone to be ourselves rather than feeling like we have to be feminists. 

[archeilia]

The Truth of Gender Equality in Indonesia

Disclaimer on: this is an article of opinion, without any intention of disregarding any person, organization, or company.

I remember when I was little, I got slapped twice by a boy. I got slapped pretty hard, and that is for the reason that I stand up for my girl friend. He didn’t win the argument, but he slapped me to shut me up. And when I stated this simple fact, he slapped me again.

I am an extremely lucky girl. My family is filled by strong women, and they were all supporting me to be an empowered one. No early marriage (not even questions about it), no ‘because you’re a woman’ excuses, no recommendations on being a house wife, no gender limitations in any of my request, dream, or activity. My father supports me to ride motorcycle, and he forced me to understand all my vehicle’s components, at least so I will know if something’s wrong.

I got into college, and I am surrounded by educated men and women, with such big dreams and hopes, and majorities are strong enough to achieve it. If I look back to my college times, our days were now seems like a utopia. Heated discussions were our daily feeds, and both men and women are allowed to sit at the table. Yes, there were less women in the table, less women who speak up, but I always see that as a form of apathy and ignorance. Most women in my campus preferred simple matters; study, having fun, being with other girls, less complicated discussions and politics (though I personally think girls’ friendships are even tougher politics). So I spend my days among men.

I joined a music organisation, which were full of open minded and creative people. I was treated like a man, and I tried to empower the juniors also, unconsciously. My life, have very little exposure of gender inequality, it made me less sensitive of that issue. I have never been treated differently, just because I am a girl.

As I was graduated and enter the work force, I faced my first encounter of huge gender inequality. My department were the one dominated by men, with so little amount of women.

All this time, I thought I am better in building relations with men, than with women, but no, it didn’t feel like that.

They treated me differently, because of my gender. I have privileges, because of my gender. And I hated this privileges. The men were treated harsher than women, for the reason of gender. On the other side, the women got less knowledge than men, for the reason of gender. It’s harder for women to create bond, and again, because they are women.

“Yeah, it’s tougher because you’re a woman”

“Don’t worry, you’re a woman, it’ll be OK”

“yeah, well, you’re a woman, so… ”

“No need to do that… Let the men do that”

That was all common phrases to be heard around. To be honest, I never thought myself as a feminist, I never really fought for the rights of women. I do make excuses to get out of something because I am a woman. I use ‘PMS’ reason when I fight with my bf, I use my gender as an excuse to run from my father while he showed me how to change tires (which was ineffective, and made him mad). But I was mad experiencing all this. It takes all my strength not to snap back when someone uses those phrases to me.

I bet reading this, you would  think, “Ah, it’s not that bad..she’s exaggerating.” Well, because of that way of thinking, this habit keeps growing. Habit of undermining one gender and expecting incredible strength of another. Maybe I am exaggerating, maybe I am not. It is all about portions. I did adapt to it as well, but there are too many of it already, and that’s why someone need to point this out. 

As I was resigning from my job, my boss suggested me to stop working and just go get married. As if it was my life goal. As if I don’t have any other dreams. As if it was my only fate and what I meant to be, one and only. However, I knew that he meant nothing by it, and he have no idea whatsoever that it was seriously insulting to me. 

But still, I was lucky. The company was one of the prestigious company that promoting gender equality. They try to add more diversity. Women’s opinions still being heard, they treat women with respect, and giving equal payment. Yet it’s still powerless in facing the common perspective that has been rooting deeply in the society. 

Once I dig further into this issue, I found that there are a lot more of worst cases than me, and if we traced it back, yes, it was all bring us back to the gender inequality topic. Sexual harassment, a case of a woman in Jakarta being raped, and the perpetrator got such light  sanction compared to what he  has done to the woman. As for another example, the fact that suspiciously, only few cases brought to light concerning marital rape. The reason of this is Indonesians that often clouded by religion rules on women that makes it misinterpreted how should we value and treat woman. 

Yes, men may be family leaders, but that doesn’t actually make women have any less role in the family. It doesn’t mean that women are not allowed to work, to pursue their dreams, to have a leader position. And it also doesn’t make a role of housewife means it’s not a kind of work. It needs to be value just the same as the men that every day working at the office. More importantly, it doesn’t mean that any woman has less voice than men. A wife or not, none of any religion permitted men to force and using violent for a woman’s body. And, a man or not, none of any people should be treated inhuman just because they bear the stereotype of ‘stronger’. 

Well, I am writing this not in the hope of changing something big in an instance, but at least, maybe, someone will reconsider their acts toward another person. It’s challenging to change a way of thinking that has been shaped since little,  to pluck out some ideas that has been so deeply planted. It is for me, to be honest. I am writing this, for a reminder too to myself, that we are actually just the same, with different roles and strengths, and there are people sometimes who are an outlier of the general condition.

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Finale Draft for Annotated Bibliography

The science of altruism (TED): 

Published June 29th, 2016. Religious def: loving others as you love yourself. “Altruism is what defines who we are as humans and where we come from.” Survival of the fittest. Cooperation has been found to be more effective than the survival of the fittest for a species as a whole (Ex. ants/bees/primates/ bats etc.) (Think of my bio-anthropology class lesson when we talked about this.) Controlled experiments with toddlers where someone will drop something or try to complete a task. TWO main things happen- babies/toddlers will normally try to help and pupil dilation that is linked to concern or empathy happened (When babies couldn’t help their pupils dilated more.) An argument against altruism is people are ration and self-interested (ex. Baker baking bread to sell for money for himself instead of feeding people) BUT people make irrational decisions all the time for various reasons, we are complicated with altruistic tendencies. He then talks about race privilege and inherent advantages in institutions which I didn’t understand how it connected. He claims altruism is in our genetic legacy 

TEDx Talks. “The Science of Altruism | Dustin Daniels | TEDxFSU” Youtube, June 29th, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brqg4HA3mUI&feature=youtu.be. 

Richard Dawkins on Altruism and The Selfish Gene (video of Dawkins):

Published September 1st, 2012. Charles Darwin argued in his book origin of species that the evolution of life on earth evolved through a brutal competition of existence. Altruistic behaviors in animals could include warning cries, group grooming. Richard Dawkins uses the science of genetics to crack the code of altruism. Genes are what build us up and make who you are. Dawkins claims we are survival machines who carry our genes and our goal is to pass on the genetics through reproduction so they live on, (essentially genes are immortal. The survival of the fittest really only means the survival of the genes. A gene that did not look after itself would not survive; the meaning of selfish gene

 How do selfish genes give us altruistic behavior? Different answers: Kinship- the altruistic gene is passed around a family and given kin selection where they will do what it takes to make sure their family survives. Reciprocal altruism- you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Give favor to receive one back someday. But wait those can’t be the only reasons b/c after all humans give to charity, give blood, cry at the blight of strangers and humans are generally nicer than the selfish gene theory would suggest- Goes against the dog eat dog world that Darwinism suggests. There are arguments against the selfish gene theory like consultation behavior seen in chimps. The veneer theory- the idea that morals are a thin veneer on top of the inherent animal nature of us. The veneer theory argues that humans are inheritably selfish and nasty. Darwin suggests that we have gone beyond kin selection and that humans have a lust to be nice. Such as be nice to whoever you meet because in nature animals are parts of small groups where they know everyone in their group more likely to be surrounded by kin and cousins. That could still be there in humans but we have gone too big and now feel that way with everyone. Darwin compares being nice to being horny. A misfiring of the gene. EX: Humans are horny in nature to reproduce but now we have contraception to not have kids but we are still horny knowing we have kids-that is a misfire of that gene. Being nice to people could be wired into us from when humans lived in small groups of close kin and groups of close acquaintances within it would pay to reciprocate favors. 

Andy80o, “Richard Dawkins on Altruism and The Selfish Gene”. Youtube, September 1st, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8C-ntwUpzM&feature=youtu.be.

The Biological and Evolutionary Logic of Human Cooperation (paper):

Published 2005 Intro talks about how there is a debate between reciprocal altruism and altruism for the good of the group (in humans.) The scholars (the collective) write that “human prosocial behavior is fundamentally incompatible with the economists model of the self-interested actor and the biologist’s model of the self-regarding reciprocal altruist. Basically saying humans are NOT only nice to receive a benefit for it. The collective argues that the solution to the puzzle is an altruistic human pre-disposition to work for the good of the group, arising by group selection. That view contradicts decades of work in biology, economics, and other fields which say humans are only altruistic for underlying selfish reasons. Strong reciprocity- a descriptive term for “people tend to behave prosocially and punish antisocial behavior at a cost to themselves even when the probability of future interactions is low or zero”-- Basically being nice to someone you will most likely never see again. The question isn’t IF people do that or not (it is known people do) but WHY. Different ideas on why we are altruistic: kin Selection- acts benefiting genetic relatives, reciprocal altruism- scratch my back ill scratch yours, indirect reciprocity- acts are given based reputation (not wanting a bad one) and signaling- signaling others you are nice so they should be nice to you. All those give back to the altruist. The collective argues that it’s none of that but instead, it is a genuine force not explained by those four mechanisms. Where they differ is on the origin of the altruistic behavior. Conclusions: Behavioral mechanisms are not perfect goal-seeking devices BUT INSTEAD, context-specific physiological systems that respond to environmental cues in order to engage what was, on average over the course of evolutionary history, the appropriate action. A study found humans would do more good to others and the environment when watched by a robot with human-like eyes.  Studies did find that cooperation increases when you add in Kinship. It was found that human cooperative mechanisms are not in equilibrium with our environment. They argue that there is a biological (proximate) and evolutionary (ultimate) logic to human cooperation. One theory is that our social environment (society) has advanced in a gene’s eye blink (really fast) and that our brains are the same, leaving humans with strange tendencies leftover from past eras. Leading to this being the answer to the puzzle. According to the collective “the moral sentiments that have lead people to value freedom, equality, and representative government is predicated upon strong reciprocity.” But we can not RELY on people being naturally nice due to any of the theories above (ex; pirate rule in 18th century or other war stuff) BUT b/c humans can not be relied upon for the good of the group we must craft social, economic, environmental and political interactions to ensure cooperation against selfish temptation.

Burnham, Terence C., and Dominic D. P. Johnson. “The Biological and Evolutionary Logic of Human Cooperation.” Analyse & Kritik, vol. 27, no. 1, Jan. 2005. OneSearch, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/auk-2005-0107

Can Altruism be unified (paper):

Published November 14th, 2015. Different kinds of altruism (ex. Biological/evolutionary altruism and psychological altruism.) Biological altruism focuses on fitness exchanges- what are the outcomes? Psychological altruism is based on the intentions- an act is Psychological, not due to the outcomes but due to the intentions of the actor. There are other forms that are not just biological or psychological- which we will call helping altruism. The goal of this paper is to clarify the taxonomy of altruism concepts and to consider whether this diversity merely constitutes distinct concepts loosely related and collected under the rubric of altruism or if there is a deeper unity. There is no set number amount of concepts of altruism, it depends on implied meanings in various uses of altruism. But a study in 2013 has made four (4) distinct concepts that are widely used but in this study, she is making several adjustments to that and making her own three (3). Biological Altruism- altruism tied to biological fitness. Linked to core behavioral dispositions (give example.) Psychological Altruism- The actor just wants good for others with no reward. Based on facts about the psychological states of individuals. (give example.) Helping Altruism- The concept that humans help other humans just for the sake of doing the action of helping someone. By definition, this behavior does not rely on an individual psychological state but as humans as a whole. (give example.) How are these all connected together? She argues that altruism is simply polysemous- that the same word is used for what are clearly distinct concepts. Claims since all are labeled altruism that they all have some kind of connection with them but they are all different. In the paper, it claims each type of altruism can be independent of the other two. Ex. assisted suicide could count as helping, despite being detrimental to fitness; tampering with birth control may be unhelpful, despite promoting biological fitness. (a nested view that they are all connected is wrong in her words.) But, she claims altruism is still all one big family of an idea. They are all altruism and any act that falls under those three is an altruistic ideal. She argues that there is a one big framework/framespace of altruism that you can look at to see how they are all connected. She then goes on to talk about how they are all connected together but I don’t really need that information or my paper.

Ramsey, Grant. “Can Altruism Be Unified?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, vol. 56, Apr. 2016, pp. 32–38. EBSCOhost, DOI:10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.10.007.

The evolution of altruistic social preferences in human groups(paper): 

Published February 5th, 2016. This paper is about how altruism came to be. There are three hypothesis

Human cooperation is built on the same evolutionary foundations as cooperation in other animal societies, and that fundamental elements of the social preferences that shape our species’ cooperative behavior are also shared with other closely related primates. 

Selective pressures favoring cooperative breeding have shaped the capacity for cooperation and the development of social preferences and produced a common set of behavioral dispositions and social preferences in cooperatively breeding primates and humans. 

The third hypothesis is that humans have evolved derived capacities for collaboration, group-level cooperation and altruistic social preferences that are linked to our capacity for culture. 

Cooperation among unrelated individuals, who do not share direct genetic interests in offspring is uncommon in nature. Current evidence shows that other primates (specifically other chimps) cooperate in a number of contexts. This paper claims studies on altruism for both humans and chimps in controlled environments can give misleading data, it is really hard to study altruism in nature. Even so, it is obvious that humans cooperate more and with more partners than chimpanzees. The cooperative breeding hypothesis says that back in the day mothers needed help raising their offspring so it made a logical evolutionary practice to take care of other people. The cultural group selection hypothesis helps explain how human societies are able to combine high levels of altruism with low levels of relatedness. Cooperative breeding in humans may be part of a broader system of group-level cooperation ( Giving food to a family who didn’t have a successful hunt) 

Joan B. Silk, and Bailey R. House. “The Evolution of Altruistic Social Preferences in Human Groups.” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, vol. 371, no. 1687, 2016, p. 1. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.24768660&site=eds-live.

The Psychological Benefits of Receiving Real-Life Altruism (paper):

This paper talks about a big survey that was conducted in Venezuela. Since altruism is a human concept and not just an American one it is everywhere. The survey had 148 participants (79 men, 67 women, and 2 unknown) (all but 8 were born and raised in Venezuela.) Most were between the ages of 21-40 years old and had at least one college degree. The sample size responded to an online questionnaire about an experience where they got unexpected altruism and how they felt afterward and how it made them think about human nature. This paper is talking about the effects of altruism compared to the others I’ve looked at which normally ask where it came from or why. Out of the 148 people, 64.2% responded with an event of unexpected altruism and out of that 64.2 %, 75%  reported the experience changed their view of life at least strongly. Very few (4.2%) responded that it didn’t affect their views on life at all. Interestingly women were more likely to say they got a boost of gratitude in life than men. People who said that altruistic events made a strong impact on their life were more likely to be very religious. This study wanted to see the effects of receiving unexpected altruism. The foundings were that those who did experience an unexpected altruistic act had way better mental health than those who did not. 

Hoffman, Edward, et al. “The Psychological Benefits of Receiving Real-Life Altruism.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, vol. 60, no. 2, Mar. 2020, pp. 187–204. EBSCOhost, DOI:10.1177/0022167817690280.   

A Selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place - Egoistic Altruism (video):

Published March 18th, 2018. This video takes a different approach to the idea of Altruism. It claims that Altruism instead of being an evolutionary concept is a newer concept for our societies (besides kinship altruism.) It focuses more on the future of our societies rather than past societies. They used the terms zero-sum game (the output of economic “pie” would stay the same year by year unless taken) and positive-sum game (the “pie” was getting bigger each year giving people more “pie”.) The positive-sum game came from the industrial revolution. When people get what they want they don’t stop, instead of human nature is to then want something better and improve things for themselves. The positive-sum world has only existed for 0.1% of human history and people are not used to it. Claims that in a positive-sum world it is in your personal self best interests that every human is well of/ including people in countries you will never meet. The more people are well off the better your own life is. That is due to the fact that the better off people are the more people have the freedom and education to the positive-sum world making it better (like a circle kinda.) Improving the lives of those who are worse off has a multiplying effect. Here is an example: a Farmer in a small nation has no effect on you, but if you make him and his family better off then his kids could go to college and make new inventions or contribute to a social function that does affect you. (the research output of humanity would be many times what is it now.) You should want to make the world a better place for others, for your self. Reminds me of the expression the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago the second-best time to plant a tree is right now. I personally do not think this will happen. It is a good idea and one people should strive for I just can not see it happening in the real world. 

Kurzgesagt. “A selfish Argument for Making the World a Better Place - Egoistic Altruism.” Youtube, March 18th, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvskMHn0sqQ&feature=youtu.be. 

Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism (video): 

Published May 20th, 2013. This video starts off really dark talking about an event in China where a two-year-old girl was hit by a van and badly bleeding out, she was passed by 3 pedestrians who looked at her and walked past and run over by another van until a street cleaner sounded the alarm (she died.) Peter claims that there are still kids who are dying in the world every day (19,000) and even tho we are not walking past them if we aren’t helping them we are basically walking past them. He talks about a kind of altruism called effective altruism - basically altruism that you feel with both the heart and the head. Making sure you feel for what you are doing but also using your head to make sure that it is effective. 

Singer, Peter. TED. “Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism.” Youtube, May 20th, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Diuv3XZQXyc&feature=youtu.be

Neural, Cognitive, and evolutionary foundations of human altruism (paper):

This paper looks at altruism from a psychological and neural perspective. It looks at altruism evolutionary origins. Claims that all species’ acts are unified by common psychological and neural mechanisms. This article goes on about how if you look at nature from a Darwinism approach surely it doesn’t make sense for organisms to be altruistic. There are two different models of altruistic behavior that explain the conundrum of altruism. The first is kin selection. I have already written about kin selection a bit reviewing other sources but a quick recap of it is being altruistic to those you share a kinship too (found in chimps and monkeys a lot and other social animals.) Kin selection is thought to be a biological desire to help strengthen the overall groups survival rather than just individual survival. Kin selection is not very helpful at explaining human altruism because humans can be nice/feel a desire to be nice to total strangers. The other model is reciprocal altruism. I have also talked about this kind of altruism. It is behavior that is directed to non-kin. The general idea of reciprocal altruism is helping someone so you will get something back by helping them in a later date (you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours.) This paper explains the different kinds of reciprocal altruism: One is reward expectancy, the expectation you will be rewarded by being altruistic. Serotonin, it has been found that those with higher serotonin are more in favor of cooperation. Care-based altruism. Being altruistic by caring for your offspring or other vulnerable offspring. Alloparenting- is like care-based altruism but it is the enthusiastic care of parents towards infants, even babies that are not related to them. Empathic concern- otherwise known as empathy. This one is also relatively unconfirmed on what biological or psychological reason humans feel empathy towards other humans

Alloparenting is the most likely direct origin of care based altruism. Care based altruism is supported by oxytocinergic limbic structures like the amygdala. Conclusion of the paper: “Altruism is a central organizing principle among group-living mammals, and there are few species for which this is more evident than humans.” Human altruism is found frequently in human social interactions. This author thinks with the increase of interest in altruism that eventually we will be able to get a better understanding of the neural and psychological bases of altruism in humans.

Marsh, Abigail A. “Neural, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Foundations of Human Altruism.” WIREs: Cognitive Science, vol. 7, no. 1, Jan. 2016, p. 59. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=112128886&site=eds-live.

A Simple and General Explanation for The Evolution of Altruism (paper):

This paper starts off with the puzzle of where altruism fits in the evolutionary theory. (natural selection and survival of the fittest). How can natural selection favor individuals that carry helping traits, over those that carry selfish ones? This paper is meant to provide a fundamental explanation for how altruistic traits evolve. This article pulls on a lot of examples of human behavior such as the public goods game and the prisoner’s dilemma. There is actually an equation for the best results and outcomes for the public goods game. The desire of this paper is to find out how altruistic genotypes are chosen through natural selection over selfish genotypes. The model of the equation can be modified for other situations as well. The problem with this article and equation is it does not factor in environmental variables. This paper does argue that the evolution of altruism is the same for all species. Just like in almost every other source I have looked at, they credit kin selection and reciprocal altruism to be the biggest backing of how altruism evolved. By the end of this article, it accurately defined different terms but did not come up with a conclusion. In fact, in my opinion, the last paper I read was simpler and easier to follow. 

Jeffrey A. Fletcher, and Michael Doebeli. “A Simple and General Explanation for the Evolution of Altruism.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 276, no. 1654, Jan. 2009, p. 13. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=35363018&site=eds-live.

Other notes that I like: 

(Darwin 1859, ch. 6) “Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect which… inevitably causes the death of the insect” Origin of Species. This caused a problem in Darwin’s theory of natural selection because his idea of survival of the fittest would get rid of behavior like this. 

The traditional views of both evolutionary biology and psychology left little room for altruism. (Darwinism and self preservice) 

[englishchinesetranslations]

Frankfurt meets Holywood

ABSTRACT This short presentation summarises Adorno and Horkheimer’s The Culture Industry. We shall first review the key premises underlying the work, then summarise the main ideas. I shall offer some critical comments before examining historical developments since the work’s publication to determine the degree to which it remains historically relevant.

The Culture Industry is one chapter from the five-chapter book, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer’s Marxist analysis of the evolution of Enlightenment thought and Western rationalism, first appearing in 1944. I shall first characterise the work in terms of it primary theoretical foundations, then summarise the central ideas within the chapter. I shall then offer some critical comments and finally bring its ideas into the modern world to see if it is still relevant and the degree to which historical developments since its publication have validated its central thesis (or otherwise).

The Culture Industry, together with the rest of The Dialectic of Enlightenment, is founded upon a number of premises. The primary premises derive from Marxism and from Horkheimer’s understanding of the import of Marxism for academic activity. The foundational premise is both metaphysical and ethical; that capitalism is a necessarily destructive force which must be resisted and (eventually) destroyed. The reason for this is that capitalism alienates people, making all humans unhappy (Sayers, 1998). This fact is of such paramount importance that everything should be oriented around it. As a result, all philosophy and all social science should concentrate on capitalist-produced human suffering to the exclusion of all else. It also follows that there is an imperative to subsume everything under the drive to produce a communist revolution. In this it respect is not possible to engage in politically neutral thought; if one is not actively supporting the revolution, one is actively supporting capitalist domination of the people (Horkheimer, 1993). A secondary foundation derives from Horkheimer’s formulation of critical theory; that the division between disciplines, and even different branches of philosophy, is limiting and destructive and they should be fused together (Berendzen 2013, Horkheimer 1993).

In tune with the anti-rationalist theme of The Dialectic of Enlightenment, and deriving more from Adorno than Horkheimer, there is the Neitzschian approach which holds that poetic and artistic styles of argument are preferable to logical ones and which makes aesthetics, rather than metaphysics, the paradigm of philosophical discourse (Zuidervaart 2011). In adopting elements of an aesthetic approach, three further premises serve as foundations to Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the culture industry. The first is a fundamentally different approach to art works than that seen in English and French aesthetic philosophy, which, since the 18th century, have focused on taste and other subjective aspects of artistic expression (Morizot 2013, Shelley 2010). In contrast, the German aesthetic tradition focused on the artwork itself and its putative objective qualities. Commencing with Christian Wolff (Hammermeister 2002), there is an acceptance in the German aesthetic tradition that art can be objectively evaluated in terms of the amount of truth it contains. On this basis, whether a work of art is good art or bad art is not subjective opinion, but objective fact. Furthermore, there is a general agreement within the tradition that the experience of art can change a person, particularly on an ethical level (Hammermeister 2002). As a result, art has the capacity to challenge, or even disrupt, social structures. It follows that art therefore has the potential to serve as an emancipatory tool in service to a Marxist assault on capitalism.

It is not my intention to critique The Culture Industry on the basis of these premises. To do so is to cease engaging with The Culture Industry itself and to engage instead with those who have developed the premises it accepts. For example, if one does not accept that all humans are in a state of suffering, one is debating with Karl Marx, not Adorno or Horkheimer. I shall therefore “bracket” the Marxist and aesthetic premises. Instead I will commence with a summary of its most important arguments, then offer some comments.

The Culture Industry contains four main themes; the characteristics of the culture industry, the culture industry as domination, the culture industry’s domination of the individual’s internal landscape, and a characterisation of the products of the culture industry as “rubbish” (p.1) and “barbarity” (p.5).

Key ideas in The Culture Industry

Film, radio and print all form part of a unified industry whose aim is the psychological domination of the masses in the service of capitalist leaders (p.1). It is designed to promote submission to the existing power structures and is structured and run so as to prevent communication of alternative ideas (p.1, p.6). Anyone who does not cooperate with this program is ruthlessly kept out of the culture industry (p.2, p.7, p.16). People think they like the products of the culture industry, such as films and magazines, but they are mistaken and do not enjoy them (p.4, p.8). The fact they mistakenly believe they like these products is evidence of their total subservience to their capitalist oppressors; it is a “misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done” (p.8).

Every single film, magazine, radio show and popular song is exactly the same as every other one (p.1). They are all just rearrangements of meaningless clichés – “the details are interchangeable” (p.3), they are “the stone of stereotype” (p.15). The apparent differences between them are illusionary marketing techniques to which we all slavishly conform (p.3).

The culture industry does not produce anything worthwhile. All films, magazines and radio shows are “rubbish” (p.1), and intended to be rubbish:

“The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce.” (p.1)

The fact that dominant members of the culture industry are paid so much money is proof that their work has no social value:

“when their directors’ incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed.” (p. 1)

People think films show real life as it genuinely is (p.4). This is used to brainwash people by showing them the futility of resistance and the value of conformity (p.10). All the characters are the same in order to make movies easy to understand. All plots in all movies show that there is no real chance of improving one’s lot in society and that one should accept one’s place, that only blind chance offers any possibility of improvement (p.11).

The introduction of sound into movies has destroyed people’s ability to resist this brainwashing because sound in a movie overwhelms the audience and prevents them from thinking or reflecting on what they are watching (p.4, p.14). Furthermore, people have been pre-programmed to react in certain ways and so could never react genuinely anyway (p.4). Cartoons are also representative of real life (p.10). The constant extreme violence seen in cartoons is a warning to the audience that this is what will happen to them if they resist capitalism (p.10). If we closed all cinemas and radio stations, only stupid people (“the slow-witted” [p. 10]) would miss them.

People are no longer individuals, but mere “pseudo individuals” (p. 18). They are now “merely centres where the general tendencies meet” (p.18). Mass culture has made the individual “fictious” (p.18). The competitiveness in capitalist society destroys genuine human friendship and makes everyone “virtually a Nazi” (p.18). The use of first names between people is part of the destruction of the individual. The family name provides individuality by linking a person to his history. When people call each other by their first names genuine friendship becomes impossible (p.23).

The culture industry populates the inner world of people by making them believe the existing social order can satisfy all their desires and needs, by dictating what those needs are, and by terrorising people with fear of the violent consequences which would befall them, the least of which is destitution and exclusion, were they to resist (p.1, p.17). Everyone’s attitudes, interests and beliefs are all the same, all dictated to them by the culture industry and enforced through social pressure (p.16, p.17). What people take to be their characteristics of individuality are, in fact, nothing more than meaningless and minor variations overlaying and disguising complete uniformity (p.16). All this is done to keep people submissive to elite capitalist masters (p.16). People think they like this system and that they are happy, but they are wrong. In reality they dislike this system and are suffering, but have been so mentally dominated by capitalism they don’t realise their own unhappiness (p.17).

Jazz has no cultural merit, but is just “stylized barbarity” (p.5). The effect of jazz is to destroy culture (p.5, p.17). It lacks a harmonious arrangement of parts and therefore cannot contain objective truth in the manner of works by composers such as Mozart (p.17). Popular music is littered with appalling musical mistakes (“gross blunders” [p.9]) which we cannot recognise because popular music lacks any standards (p.9).

The culture industry is corrupt because it is dedicated to pleasure (p.12). All joy and value has been removed from personal leisure. Leisure is now a form of work which no one enjoys. It is instead profoundly boring. This is because the leisure industry does not allow people to make any mental effort (p.11) because “the liberation which amusement promises is freedom from thought” (p. 11). This is made worse by a focus on having fun, because laughter and fun prevent happiness. This is because “moments of happiness are without laughter” and “delight is austere” (p. 11). In the words of Adorno & Horkheimer “laughter is a disease which has attacked happiness” (p. 11) and “in the culture industry, jovial denial takes the place of the pain found in ecstasy” (p.11). As a result leisure now promotes resignation and submission to capitalist domination (p.12).

Art’s purpose, from Romanticism to Expressionism, was to rebel against existing social structures as a “vehicle of protest” (p. 3). The culture industry has destroyed this by not believing that art can convey truth (p. 6). Mechanical reproduction of art destroys its beauty because it “leaves no room for that unconscious idolatry which was once essential to beauty” (p.11). It is against the function of art to be cheaply or widely accessible. The commercial sale of art has made the commodity value of art obvious, whereas before this value was hidden. Previously, art’s main social function was to offer a counter-cultural construct. This was possible because art evolves independently of social forces. Its truths therefore represent alternatives to the truths of the dominating social structures (p.20). Cheap and affordable art destroys society because it is available to everyone (p.21). Here we see Benjamin’s concept that the hand-created artwork possesses a mystical aura which is lost when the object is mechanically reproduced (Benjamin 1936). The correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin has been described as “one of the most significant in the history of neo-Marxist literature” (Buck-Morss 1977: 139). Indeed, it was Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction which prompted the writing of The Culture Industry (Andre 1979).

When art was expensive, people took it seriously. The cost made people engage deeply with it and it exercised moral restraint on them. Making art freely available debases it and removes its truth value (p.21). This represents an “abolition of educational privilege” (p.21) However, this does not open previously exclusive spheres to the masses, it merely results in the decay of education. The masses lack the education to appreciate the genuine artistic products presented to them by modern art (p. 21).

The Culture Industry also addresses the impact of advertising and its effect on language, plus a few other points which I have ignored as they are tangential to the central themes.

Critique

As indicated, I do not intend to address its philosophical premises, such as Marxism, except to note that a Marxist perspective does not automatically lead to that expressed in The Culture Industry (Baugh 1990, Gartman 2012). I will therefore commence with analysis of the methodology, according to the standards of the Frankfurt School itself, as laid down by Horkheimer (1993).

Horkheimer and Adorno had each laid down a requirement that philosophy and social science work together (Horkheimer 1993, Muller-Doohm 2004), but there is no social science in this work. One of the central propositions in The Dialectic of Enlightenment is that quantitative research is misleading and invalid. However, there are qualitative forms of social research available such as interviews, life stories and oral histories. Any of these would have been in keeping with the methodology Horkheimer advocated.

On these grounds, on the grounds laid down by the authors themselves, the work is methodologically sub-standard.

There is a complete lack of argumentation or any effort to explain or justify the propositions of which the chapter consists. Not only is no evidence provided, no attempt is made to justify any of the propositions in the chapter (Rose 1979). As was the case with quantitative research, a traditional syllogistic argumentative structure would be against the central thrust of the work. However, some argumentation is essential to provide justification for their positions. If we do away with all argumentation, knowledge is not possible, only statements of opinion. In the absence of reasons for holding a particular proposition, no debate or understanding is possible; one either accepts the statement because they already believed it, or one doesn’t. On this basis we cannot accept The Culture Industry as a work of philosophy, but rather as nothing more than a loosely connected set of personal opinions, lacking evidence or reasoning. At best it is a political position statement. At worst it is mere intellectualisation of narrow-minded cultural prejudice.

More substantially, The Culture Industry fails to demonstrate why capitalism must produce this state of affairs, why capitalism cannot produce any other state of affairs, or how this is different from societies not dominated by capitalism. It has been argued, for example, that Adorno’s understanding of capitalism was hampered by his lack of serious investigation into non-capitalist societies (Jarvis 1998). A Marxist analysis does not have to lead to the conception of culture described in The Culture Industry. For example, Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of culture, particularly the differences between “high art” and “popular art” is founded on a Marxist perspective, yet reaches almost diametrically opposing views (Gartman 2011).

The conception of the human is also highly problematic, and potentially contradictory. Adorno, in particular, was a Freudian (Whitebook 2004, Jarvis 1998, Witkin 2003, Zuidervaart 2011). Freud’s psychodynamics postulate a complex of processes and structures inherent within the human being through which social influences are mediated. Furthermore, the Freudian account of ego-formation gives primacy to the family environment, especially relations with the parents, while social factors come a far distant second and then only via the mediation of the family (Freud 1976). Under a Freudian account, the human is not, then, a blank and neutral space allowing capitalism free reign. Adorno and Horkheimer cannot be consistent with Freud unless they provide an account which explains how capitalist thought overwhelms and dominates these inherent dynamics.

Possibly the most important criticism lies in the aesthetic dimension. Let us leave aside the issue of whether art can be assessed according to objective criteria, or whether it is possible for a musical style to contain “mistakes.” As with Marxism, these are bracketed foundational premises. Firstly, the conception of art, especially classical music, as being revolutionary or as resisting the existing social structure, is not supported by historical evidence. For example, Mozart’s The Magic Flute was written for, and first performed in, Theater auf der Wieden, a popular, commercially-oriented, theatre in Vienna. This was not emancipatory or revolutionary art, but merely popular entertainment for the masses. Rather than rebel against the existing order, it is replete with Enlightenment philosophy popular at the time and argues in favour of monarchy (Fisher 2001). At the other end of the social spectrum, music has been known to serve as an elitist identifier which serves to reinforce the position of the dominating elite. For example, membership of The Anacreaontic Society, a popular, but private, musical club active in London in the late 1700’s, was considered a marker of social status. Members included the Prince of Wales and leading nobility and it was understood at the time that membership conveyed elevated social rank (McVeigh 2012). Whether there have been some artists who have sought to produce art which offers emancipatory functions is, for our purposes, irrelevant. What the two examples provided here demonstrate is that art cannot be said to always or necessarily serve an emancipatory role. The Culture Industry’s binary division of emancipatory historical art in opposition with imprisoning low art of today thus collapses.

Perhaps the most fundamental criticism of The Culture Industry relates to the contention that all output of the culture industry is the same, nothing more than the rearrangement of a limited set of clichés. I think, as many others do, this is simply the cultural prejudice of someone who cannot read a foreign culture. We all have to learn how to understand art. There is nothing inherent or natural about classical music, as Adorno and Horkheimer indicate when they refer to the need for education in order to understand art. Jazz is not to be judged by the standards of classical music, but by the standards of jazz. Any language, and any communicative system, works by recombining a limited set of components, in speech – syllables, in writing – letters, in both – words. Applying Adorno and Horkheimer’s “sameness” would lead to a position that all writing is the same because it is merely a rearrangement of the same old 26 letters. Unless we understand the components from which a communication is constructed, we lack the foundation necessary to understand the communicative event itself. Most art works in this way, through a combination of pre-existing elements and a reflective dialog of similarity and difference which plays against the audience’s past experiences and expectations (Lucy 2001, Silverman 1983). Film is an especially complex artistic product, and relies upon many conventions understood by the audience, which were never natural and had to be learned (Buckland 2000). When Adorno and Horkheimer contest that sound in movies makes it impossible to reflect on the content, they are not making a universally valid analysis, merely indicating they grew up on silent movies, and have not developed the skills for “talkies”. The introduction of sound into film was disruptive of cinematic understanding for many people and for many years (Perkins 1993).

An alternative interpretation is that what we have here is one cultural group (Adorno & Horkheimer’s) contesting with another for domination of the cultural field. Such contestation takes place when one cultural group seeks to disvalue or invalidate the status of the cultural practices of the other group. What is being contested is not the content of the practices, but the attributions of value and social status which society accords them. This is surely obvious when they insist the practice of calling people by their first names renders true friendship impossible. This is nothing more than the more formal German society rejecting the more informal American society.

Cultural differences may well account for many of the concerns Adorno and Horkheimer express with American culture. Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory identifies six values by which to define culturally-derived personality characteristics; individualism versus collectivism; uncertainty avoidance; power distance (strength of social hierarchy), task orientation versus person-orientation, long-term orientation and indulgence versus self-restraint (Hofstede 1991). By 2004 Hofstede’s work has been cited in over 20,000 works (House 2004). The dominating methodology within inter-cultural research, it has been used for many international studies. There is a consistent finding that Germany and the United States are strongly different in the dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, indulgence versus self-restraint and individualism versus collectivism (House, 2004). As high uncertainty avoidance society, Germans tend to preferences for specialist experts, the view that there is only one true interpretation of any issue, grand unifying theories, ideological intolerance, discomfort with not being productively occupied and a greater propensity to regard the average person as uninformed. By contrast, as a low uncertainty avoidance society, US citizens are more likely to tolerate multiple competing interpretations and ideologies, minimising work in favour of leisure, relativism, and a preference for generalists over experts. As a more collectivist society than the USA, Germans are more likely to see identity as deriving from family and social networks, whereas Americans are more likely to see identity as residing in one’s distinguishing personal characteristics and achievements. These characteristics are generally shared by all countries speaking the same language (Hofstede 1991, House 2004). Scope forbids more detailed exploration of the differences, but it is apparent from the above that many of Adorno and Horkheimer’s reactions to the American culture industry can potentially be attributed to nothing more than a clash of cultures.

Adorno and Horkheimer indicate that it requires education to derive moral benefit from art, but that such education cannot be given to the masses. This is the primary focus for criticism served on them from within the Marxist camp. The consequence of their position is that one needs to be a member of a limited elite in order to achieve emancipation from capitalism; that liberation is impossible for ordinary people. This requires a stratified society in which a hyper-educated elite live in liberation above an oppressed majority, exactly the sort of society Marxism is supposed to oppose (Baugh 1990)., though perhaps reminiscent of the worst aspects of Soviet socialism. Marxist philosopher, Bruce Baugh, goes so far in his paper, Left-Wing Elitism: Adorno on Popular Culture (Baugh 1990), as to suggest that the presence of such a view within Adorno and Horkheimer’s work is not emancipatory, but is rather another example of capitalist domination:

If mass consciousness is so corrupted that it is beyond the power of art to transform it, there is nothing to indicate that the corruption of consciousness is any less grave among the elite, even though it may take a different form. Indeed, there is nothing as indicative of one’s having been conditioned by late capitalist ideology as the belief that one’s intellectual knowledge of the system liberates one from the constraints of such conditioning. (Baugh 1990, p.76)

Finally, we will conclude by bringing the work into the modern context. Even if we accept it as it is, we are required to ask to what degree it is applicable today. Here the rise of the prosumer and of collaborative capitalism become problematic. A prosumer is someone who both consumes and produces (Curran 2004). Youtube videos are prosumer products, as is Wikipedia, all of Facebook, Twitter, and much of EBay. The rise of the prosumer indicates the domination of the masses by a limited capitalist elite is not the only possible form of capitalism. The popularity of Youtube, now the media of choice, a complete alternative to TV for an entire generation, is evidence that even the culture industry need not be a top-down dominating system. Prosumers are also the driving force within collaborative capitalism, a newly emerging form currently seeing accelerated growth with the rise of 3D printing (Curran 2014). Collaborative capitalism works on low-margin limited production by individuals for direct sale (or barter) to other individuals (Curran 2014). Thus history has shown there is nothing in capitalism which requires that it produce only the forms described in Adorno and Horkheimer’s The Culture Industry. Quite the reverse, the massive profits generated by Facebook and Youtube and the rise of collaborative capitalism have demonstrated through the laboratory of history that it is possible for capitalism to exist very happily in a world where the products of the Culture Industry are produced by the masses themselves and people consume products obtained outside the dominating economic institutions.

Conclusions

The positive reception to The Culture Industry amongst Marxists indicates the descriptions it offers conform with pre-existing Marxist prejudices. Since no evidence or argumentation is presented, there is no mechanism by which one who is not in agreement can be swayed. As such, the work can do little more than crystallise or confirm pre-existing perspectives and reactions to modern society. The work is therefore of interest as a summary of popular left-wing attitudes to American mid-twentieth century culture. As we have seen, there is much evidence to suggest it is not so much a Marxist analysis as a clash of cultures, and this critique is commonly made. Furthermore, where the implications of key points are investigated the work emerges as accepting both Marxist and anti-Marxist perspectives. Indeed, it is the lack of argumentation which conceals this internal inconsistency. The work is not consistent with its Freudian premises any more than it is consistent with its Marxist premises. Thus, even if we accept the premises behind the work, as we have, The Culture Industry still emerges as highly problematic. Perhaps even more tellingly, capitalist developments in the 21st century have shown that there is no inevitable necessity to the cultural forms described in The Culture Industry. For these reasons, there may be a better use for The Culture Industry than treating as a work of social or philosophical thought. Instead, the primary value lies in treating it as a work of sociological research – a qualitative account of the perceptions of, and reactions to, mid-20th Century US culture by upper-echelon German émigrés.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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DAINOW: Frankfurt meets Holywood: Adorno and Horkheimer’s “The Culture Industry”

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Zuidervaart, Lambert, (2011) ‘Theodor W. Adorno’ in Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

[mideastsoccer]

Illiberals and autocrats unite to craft a new world media order

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr

Underlying global efforts to counter fake news, psychological warfare and malicious manipulation of public opinion is a far more fundamental battle: the global campaign by civilisationalists, autocrats, authoritarians and illiberals to create a new world media order that would reject freedom of the press and reduce the fourth estate to scribes and propaganda outlets.

The effort appears to know no limits. Its methods range from seeking to reshape international standards defining freedom of expression and the media; the launch and/or strengthening of government controlled global, regional, national and local media in markets around the world; acquisition of stakes in privately-owned media; advertising in independent media dependent on marketing revenue; demonization; coercion; repression and even assassination.

Recent examples abound. They include a more aggressive Chinese approach to countering critical coverage of the People’s Republic that violates international norms of diplomatic conduct, the use of technology to spy on journalists, researchers and activists by, for example, the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia; the jailing of journalists across the Middle East and North Africa and in countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh, US President Donald J. Trump’s identification of mainstream media as “the enemy of the people,” and the killing of journalists across the globe including the murder last year of Jamal Khashoggi.

The effort to create a new world media order is enabled by a tacit meeting of the minds among world leaders as well as conservative and far-right politicians and activists that frames global jockeying for power in a world order that would replace the US-dominated system established in the wake of World War Two and take into account the rise of powers such as China, India and Russia.

The emerging framework is rooted in the rise of civilisationalism and the civilizational state that seeks its legitimacy in a distinct civilization rather than the nation state’s concept of territorial integrity, language and citizenry.

It creates the basis for an unspoken consensus on the values that would underwrite a new world order on which men like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Victor Orban, Mohammed bin Salman, Narendra Modi, Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump find a degree of common ground. If anything, it is this tacit understanding that in the shaping of a new world order constitutes the greatest threat to liberal values such as human and minority rights as well as freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

To be sure, independent media have often made life easier for those seeking to curb basic press freedoms. Valid criticism has put the media on the defensive. The criticism ranges from coverage of US special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into now apparently unfounded allegations that Mr. Trump and his 2016 election campaign had colluded with Russia to false assertions in the walk-up to the 2003 Iraq war that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The nuts and bolts of creating a new world media order are highlighted in a recent report by Reporters Without Borders that focuses on efforts by China, a key driver in the campaign, to turn the media into a compliant force that serves the interest of government rather than the public.

The 52-page report asserts that “over the course of the last decade, China has actively sought to establish an order in which journalists, scholars and analysts are nothing more than state propaganda auxiliaries.”

While the report focuses on China, the issues it raises in terms of what constitutes journalism and the role of the media as the fourth estate that holds power to account and ensures that the public has access to accurate information and continued snapshots of history as it unfolds go far beyond Beijing’s efforts.

So does the lifting of the asylum and arrest in Britain this week of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The Assange case raises issues of definitions of journalism. It also shines a spotlight on the field of tension between a free press and illiberal, autocratic and authoritarian leaders and governments that increasingly dress up their attempts to curb media freedom in civilizationalist terms.

The Assange case forces both the media and government, particularly in democratic societies, to determine the boundaries between journalism and whistleblowing.

Leaving aside allegations that Wikileaks played a role in alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and criticism of Assange’s style and personality, Wikileaks operated as a channel and post office box for whistle-blowers and as a source for media that independently authenticate and asses the news value of materials presented. In doing so, Wikileaks provided a service rather than added-value journalism.

To be fair, some of the issues raised in the Reporters Without Borders report pose broader questions about the standards on which proper journalism should operate rather than the right of governments, irrespective of political system, to try to ensure that their views and positions are reflected alongside their critics in media reporting.

The report lists among Chinese efforts the lavishing of money on modernizing and professionalizing China’s international television and radio broadcasting, investment in foreign media outlets, buying of vast amounts of advertising in foreign media, and invitations to journalists from all over the world to visit China on all-expense-paid trips.

The report also notes that China organizes its own international events as an additional way of promoting its repressive vision of how the media should function.

Hardly unique, these aspects of the Chinese effort, while noteworthy, primarily pose issues for the media. They raise questions about the standards to which media owners should be held, the way politically and geopolitically driven advertisement should be handled and whether journalists and independent media, or for that matter analysts and scholars, should accept paid junkets or avoid any potential jeopardizing of the integrity of their reporting and analysis by paying their own way.

More troublesome is the report’s assertion that China does not shy away from employing what it describes as “gangster methods.”

The report asserted that “China no longer hesitates to harass and intimidate in order to impose its ‘ideologically correct’ vocabulary and cover up the darker chapters in its history. International publishing and social network giants are forced to submit to censorship if they want access to the Chinese market.”

Moreover, Chinese embassies and Confucius Institutes serve as vehicles for attempts to impose China’s will and counter perceived persecution by what it sees as hostile Western forces that seek to tarnish the People’s Republic’s image.

China’s vision of a new world media order is grounded in a 2003 manual for Communist Party domestic and external propaganda published with a foreword of then party secretary general Hu Jintao.

The manual sees journalists as government and party propagators who exercise self-censorship by “handling properly the balance between praise and exposing problems.” Mr. Xi amplified the message in 2016 during a rare, high-profile visit to the newsrooms of China’s top three state-run media outlets, the party newspaper People’s Daily, news agency Xinhua, and China Central Television (CCTV).

“The media run by the party and the government are the propaganda fronts and must have the party as their family name. All the work by the party’s media must reflect the party’s will, safeguard the party’s authority, and safeguard the party’s unity. They must love the party, protect the party, and closely align themselves with the party leadership in thought, politics and action,” Mr. Xi told media workers, the term China increasingly is using to replace journalists as a designation.

Chinese journalists have been banned from writing personal blogs, are advised daily by the party about which stories to emphasize and which to ignore and obliged to attend party training sessions.

The title of Reporters Without Borders’ report, ‘China’s New World Media Order’, borrowed a phrase coined by Li Congjun, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee and former head of Xinhua.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2011, Mr. Li cast the need for a new media order in civilizational terms. Media of all countries had the right to “participate in international communication on equal terms” and should respect the “unique cultures, customs, beliefs and values of different nations,” Mr. Li said.

Mr. Li’s argument and language were straight out of the civilisationalists’ handbook that employs the theory of cultural relativism to oppose universal definitions of human rights and basic freedoms and argue in favour of such rights being defined in terms of individual civilizations. Civilizationalists also use cultural relativism to justify their tight control of the Internet that ranges from blocking websites to creating a Chinese wall between national networks and the worldwide web.

Mr. Li was two years later even more straightforward about what China was trying to achieve. “If we cannot effectively rule new media, the ground will be taken by others, which will pose challenges to our dominant role in leading public opinion,” he asserted.

China’s purpose was also evident in Mr. Li’s systematic reference to the media as a mass communication industry rather than journalism as a profession. “This is not insignificant,” the Reporters Without Borders report said. “By treating the media as an industry whose mission is to exercise influence on the state’s behalf, (Li’s) ‘new world media order’ abolishes the watchdog role the media are meant to play.”

Foreign affairs columnist Azad Essa discovered just how long the Chinese arm was when Independent Media, publisher of 18 major South African titles with a combined readership of 25 million, fired him for writing about the crackdown on Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.

Mr. Essa was told his column had been discontinued because of a redesign of the groups’ papers and the introduction of a new system. China International Television Corporation (CITVC) and China-Africa Development Fund (CADFUND) own a 20 percent stake in Independent Media through Interacom Investment Holdings Limited, a Mauritius-registered vehicle.

Mr. Essa’s experience notwithstanding, Chinese efforts to create its new world media order have produced mixed results.

Various autocrats such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Zayed have bought into the order’s coercive and surveillance aspects.

The two crown princes have In some ways been at the blunt edge of efforts to create a new world media order with their demand that Qatar shut down its state-owned Al Jazeera television network as one of their conditions for the lifting of the Saudi-UAE led diplomatic and economic boycott of the Gulf state that has been in place since June 2017.

They also put themselves at the forefront by employing cutting edge Israeli technology and former US intelligence personnel to spy on journalists and dissidents across the globe.

For their part, Chinese technology companies that would provide much of the new world media order’s infrastructure have had something of an uphill battle.

Attempts by Baidu, China’s leading search engine, to establish local language versions in Japan, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and Indonesia flopped commercially.

Ironically, the very freedoms China was trying to curtail worked in its favour when a US federal court in the southern district of New York ruled against pro-democracy activists who were seeking to restrict Baidu’s ability to delete from searches terms censored in China. The court argued that Baidu’s filtering of terms was a form of editorial judgment.

Similarly, Chinese technology giants like Tencent with its unencrypted WeChat instant messaging app and controversial telecom equipment and consumer electronics manufacturer Huawei have scored where Baidu has failed.

WeChat, whose traffic passes through Tencent’s China-based servers that are accessible to Chinese authorities, claims to have more than one billion users, ten percent of which are outside China. Huawei, that accounts for 15 percent of the world’s smartphone market, has been accused of providing surveillance technology to Iran as well as Xinjiang and is suspected by a host of Western nations of posing a risk to national security. The company was accused of installing a “backdoor” in some of its products that allows secret access to data.

Even more fundamental than the role of technology providers in the creation of a new world media order, is China’s ability to persuade nations in Asia and Africa to emulate its draconic laws governing cybersecurity and the Internet.

Chinese tech start-ups such as Leon, Meiya Pico, Hikvision, Face++, Sensetime, and Dahua have achieved unprecedented levels of growth on the back of more than US$7 billion in government investments over the last two years.

Export of those technologies have prompted countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania to introduce or contemplate introduction of legislation authorizing measures ranging from obliging Internet companies to store data on local servers to criminalizing content that authorities deem to be propaganda, calls for public gatherings or cause for disruption or divisiveness

CloudWalk, a Guangzhou-based start-up has finalized a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Zimbabwe to build a national “mass facial recognition program” in order to address “social security issues.” Zimbabwe has installed a Chinese system that allows the government to monitor passengers at airports, railways, and bus stations.

If the Reporters Without Borders report proves anything, it is that China is a major source of the problem. It is however but one source. China may have significant clout and considerable resources, but it is not alone in its civilizationalist approach towards crafting a new world media order. Its aided by autocratic and authoritarian regimes as well as the world’s illiberal democrats.

Finnish paper Helsingin Sanomat drove the point home when Mr. Trump met Mr. Putin in Helsinki in July of last year. Some 300 of the paper’s billboards, lining the road from Helsinki airport to the summit, welcomed the two men “to the land of free press.”

Headlines on the billboards reminded them of their recent attacks on the media. Said one billboard: “Media-critiquing Trump has changed the meaning of fake news.”

Helsingin Sanomat editor Kaius Niemi added in a statement that the paper wanted to remind Messrs. Trump and Putin of the importance of a free press. “The media shouldn’t be the lap dog of any president or regime,” Mr. Niemi said.  

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

[mrmichaelchadler]

DOC10 2019 Preview: Hail Satan?, One Child Nation and Seven More Highlights

One of the most exciting cinematic events in the Windy City is upon us, the Chicago Media Project’s DOC10 Film Festival, kicking off Thursday, April 11th, and running through Sunday, April 14th, at the Davis Theater, 4614 N. Lincoln Ave. Now in its fourth year, this impeccably curated marathon of nonfiction marvels has introduced me to many of my most cherished films in recent memory, several of which ended up on my Best of the Year lists, including Nanfu Wang’s “Hooligan Sparrow,” Albert Maysles’ “In Transit,” Eugene Jarecki’s “The King,” Theo Anthony’s “Rat Film,” Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami’s “Sonita,” Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and perhaps my personal favorite, Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap.” The latest edition of DOC10 promises to be every bit as strong as its predecessors, featuring such enticing titles as Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s Sundance prize-winner, “American Factory,” about the conflict-laden partnership between Chinese and American factory workers. For my annual preview piece, I had the opportunity to screen nine of this year’s selections in advance, the first of which instantly emerged as a surefire contender for my eventual list ranking the Top 10 Films of 2019.

There is tremendous value in any movie that can teach us something about ourselves, and my major takeaway from Penny Lane’s “Hail Satan?” is the revelation that I may be, in fact, a Satanist at heart. Like many members of The Satanic Temple, the subversive religious/activist group observed by Lane’s droll lens, I was an ardent follower of Christian values until my faith became disillusioned by the limitations of God’s grace. Everyone’s “F—k this!” moment arrives in a different form, and for one member of the unholy congregation interviewed here, it occurred when he was informed that Gandhi, founder of nonviolent activism, would go to hell because he didn’t worship Jesus. Hence, the fallen churchgoer decided to join the aforementioned Temple founded in 2013 as a separate organization from the apolitical Church of Satan, which originated back in 1966. 

What links these disparate groups is their belief in Satan not as a supreme being but as a symbol for those who refuse to conform to the dominant patriarchy. When compared to the Ten Commandments, the seven tenants of The Satanic Temple are infinitely more appealing (act with empathy, believe in science), not to mention more critical as the planet teeters on the brink of environmental catastrophe. Rather than embrace our impending doom by waiting for the Second Coming to arrive, the Temple aims to conjure heaven on earth by championing religious pluralism over fanaticism, utilizing weapons of satire to enlighten a nation backsliding into Christian supremacy. 

Lane brilliantly examines how “one nation under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance around the time that Billy Graham was demonizing communists and Paramount Pictures was shipping Ten Commandments plaques as a promotional stunt for their new Charlton Heston vehicle—the same ones that are currently being placed in front of government institutions, a brazen attempt to demolish the separation between church and state while perpetuating the myth that America is a Christian nation. It’s only fitting that the producers of “God’s Not Dead 2” funded the reinstatement of one such monument after it was mowed down by a disgruntled Christian, no less. Of course, the Temple received the brunt of the blame for insisting that a statue of occult deity Baphomet be erected next to every public plaque espousing one particular religion’s law, not for reasons of evangelism, as noted by Temple spokesman Luciean Greaves, but to teach the United States a civics lesson. 

The editing by Amy Foote and the incredibly prolific Aaron Wickenden has the cathartic jolt of vintage Michael Moore trolling, as Satanists, their tongues placed devoutly in their cheeks, deliberately provoke their godly opposition into revealing their worst selves. As a rebuke to the Westboro Baptist Church’s grotesque anti-LGBTQIA protests at funerals, the Temple has same sex couples make out over the grave of Fred Phelps’ mother, thereby supposedly turning her gay in the afterlife. By removing the stigma of shame from their sexuality, the Satanists’ lifestyle is antithetical to the repression preached by a church whose claims of moral superiority are forever invalidated by their history of abuse. Chris Marker put it best in his 1983 masterwork, “Sans Soleil,” when he said, “Censorship is not the mutilation of the show, it IS the show. The code is the message. It points to the absolute by hiding it. That’s what religions have always done.”

“Hail Satan?” screens Saturday, April 13th, at 9:30pm with director Penny Lane in attendance.

Michael Moore may not be a Satanist himself, but he is most certainly a disciple of Mike Wallace, the notorious “60 Minutes” interviewer profiled in Tel Aviv-born director Avi Belkin’s remarkably even-handed and utterly mesmerizing new movie. Without relying on a narrator, Belkin enables the words of his subjects to speak for themselves in “Mike Wallace Is Here,” causing the titular news icon to emerge as no less complex or towering a figure as Charles Foster Kane. He comes across simultaneously as a heroic journalist determined to bring corrupt individuals and corporations to justice, an attention-seeking ass who must prove he’s more than a commercial shill by asking argumentative questions even when the topic doesn’t call for it, and a dramatist verging on sensationalism, as evidenced by the tight close-ups and hard-hitting questions that made his first hosting gig on “Night Beat” a smash. 

Casting himself as the hero while accentuating the beads of sweat forming on the brow of his unlucky guest, Wallace approached his on-air chats as if they were police interrogations. Rather than massage the ego of his famous interviewees, he forced them to respond to nasty character attacks, at times delivered with a dose of unnecessary rudeness. Yet when Watergate broke in the early years of “60 Minutes,” Wallace single-handedly caused the show’s ratings to skyrocket by drawing on his ties in the Nixon administration to land one-and-one exclusives that ensured the guilt would be viewed up close and personal.

The ticking clock that punctuates each segment on “60 Minutes” with an added sense of urgency operates at the rhythm to which Wallace’s life tirelessly marched. His compulsion to make the most of his days was intensified by the sudden death of his young son, Peter, and in a heartrending chat with his longtime co-anchor, Morley Safer, Wallace opens up for the first time about his suicide attempt, which occurred during the years when General William Westmoreland attempted to sue him over his unflattering inquiries. No footage from Lumet’s “Network” is needed in order for the parallels between Wallace and Howard Beale to be made clear—both desired to cut through the B.S. by illuminating the truth, turning them into overnight ratings draws for moguls more concerned with star power than substance. 

Bill O’Reilly insists that his own on-air bullying was directly inspired by Wallace’s temperament, yet there’s no question the revered media personality, who lived to 93, outclassed the disgraced Fox News pest on every level, as witnessed by his countless prophetic exchanges with history-makers like Donald Trump. Though the future president, in his late 30s, voices no interest in politics, he changes his tune dramatically when Wallace unearths Trump’s statement that he could negotiate an arms control agreement with the Soviets. There are echoes of Gabriel Byrne’s psychiatrist on HBO’s “In Treatment” in how Wallace asks his subjects the very questions he refuses to answer about himself. Hats off to Belkin’s perceptive editor, Billy McMillan, for selecting interview excerpts from legends like Rod Serling or Bette Davis to illuminate certain truths about Wallace, suggesting how the mutual recognition of one’s shared experience is part of what makes this sort of conversation so addictive.

“Mike Wallace Is Here” screens Friday, April 12th, at 7:15pm with director Avi Belkin participating in a Q&A via Skype.

As director, cinematographer and editor of “Midnight Family,” Luke Lorentzen has served up a knockout of a sophomore feature effort. Following the daily routines of the Ochoa family, which typically veers from causal monotony to life-or-death intensity in the matter of a heartbeat, the film had me holding my breath for sizable portions of its running time. When the Ochoas must zoom through traffic in their private ambulance to the scene of an accident, barking at pedestrians through their speakers, Lorentzen places his camera in both directions on the dashboard, and the resulting footage is as gripping as any action sequence you can name. Since Mexico City has less than 45 ambulances to serve its population numbering around nine million, the for-profit business of transporting patients to hospitals is one that the Ochoas are only too eager to embrace. 

16-year-old Juan, the most talkative EMT of the family, admits that he enjoys the thrill of his job. Though he doesn’t like to see people get hurt, he stresses that a degree of excitement is crucial for his line of work, considering how strenuous it can become on a busy night. Lorentzen never sugar-coats the personalities of his subjects, nor does he attempt to conceal his presence, as Juan takes pleasure in razzing family members before the lens. A little more context regarding the corruption of the “new administration” and its enabling of a local police force seeking bribes would’ve been welcome, yet also may have taken away from the picture’s intimate perspective.

Most unsettling is the way in which the Ochoas drag race their competition at top speeds, potentially causing a fatality themselves on their way to land another customer. Once they arrive at the unfortunate site, however, any petty squabbles or juvenile fixations instantly evaporate, as the family exhibits a bedside manner that is the very definition of professional. For me, the heart of the film is contained within the moment when the Ochoas tend to 18-year-old Andrea, the victim of a crushing headbutt from her boyfriend who subsequently fled from the scene. She’s worried about the expense of fixing her broken nose, and initially avoids giving the family the number for her parents, until Fer—the father of the clan—satisfies her request for a hug so that she’ll be able to catch her breath. Meanwhile, Juan telephones her mother to calmly explain the situation, displaying the maturity of a man several times his age. 

Lorentzen maintains a respectful distance from the action, keeping his focus fixed on the strength of the Ochoas rather than the vulnerability of their patients. One interaction late in the film is so painful that it doesn’t even end up on camera, as I found myself wincing at the despair in the subjects’ voices. Like many of the protagonists highlighted at DOC10 this year, this brave family is comprised of outsiders filling the void of an inadequate establishment unfit to serve the people. Even with endless road bumps on the imminent horizon, these real-life superheroes keep their collective foot planted on the gas. 

“Midnight Family” screens Friday, April 12th, at 9:30pm with director Luke Lorentzen and producer Kellen Quinn in attendance, as well as producer Elena Fortes via Skype.

Winner of two major accolades in the NEXT section of the Sundance Film Festival, Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera’s “The Infiltrators” is reminiscent of last year’s under-seen gem, “American Animals,” in how it blurs the line between narrative and documentary while incorporating genre tropes into the nonfiction medium. Rather than follow the formula of a heist flick, the film occasionally takes the form of a prison break thriller, as members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance embark on a mission to penetrate the walls of the Broward Detention Center, where undocumented immigrants are held hostage for years on end. A chilling overhead shot views the inhabitants wandering about their outdoor cage in orange jumpsuits, so close to freedom and yet stamped down into the earth. 

The Dreamers who head the NIYA aim to turn themselves into Broward so that they can work within the system in order to defy it, ultimately leading to the freedom of the wrongfully incarnated. Though “The Infiltrators” isn’t nearly as stylish as “American Animals,” and is somewhat more convoluted, it at least has the benefit of having subjects that are much more sympathetic. Most compelling of all is Viridiana Martinez, the young NIYA member who practices what she’ll say to Border Patrol as if rehearsing for a school play, while her partner-turned-director Mohammad Abdollahi encourages her to maintain a “natural desperation.” It’s in these moments where the story most effectively coalesces with Ibarra and Rivera’s self-aware style. 

Since so much of the action occurs within Broward’s forbidden walls, the filmmakers resort to staging scenes between the inmates and juxtaposing them with real footage of the people working on the outside. When toggling from an actual subject to their fictional counterpart, the actor’s name will flash on the screen, a touch that’s a bit excessive since the recreations are easy to decipher from the other footage. In fact, the film’s nagging problem is that its conflicting styles never fully gel. The actors’ behavior registers as noticeably stilted and bland when contrasted with the actual subjects, whose flubs and triumphs occurring in real time make for much more suspenseful viewing than sequences shot and blocked like a TV movie. 

The juxtaposition of these approaches constantly took me out of the film, yet in terms of visualizing the story, the actors do a solid job of filling the blanks, while detailing how to navigate an inherently corrupt system, such as how to go about obtaining more visitors. The most seamless illusion occurs when Abdollahi converses with one of the inmates—voiced by an actor—on the phone. Less successful is the moment when an actor is made to flap his gums to audio so murky it’s incoherent, though that misstep is thankfully a fleeting one. What makes this DOC10 screening worth attending, above all, is the fact that all proceeds of its ticket sales will go to supporting the family of its subject, Claudio Rojas, whose recent deportation is a distressing end coda to the film’s final, jarring cut to black.  

“The Infiltrators” screens Sunday, April 14th, at 4:30pm with the following in attendance: director Alex Rivera; Aneesha Gandhi, Managing Attorney at National Immigrant Justice; and Aarón Siebert-Llera, Immigrant Rights Attorney at ACLU.

Set to provide a rousing, “RBG”-esque opener for this year’s DOC10 is Rachel Lears’ “Knock Down the House,” a Netflix film purporting to be about four grassroots contenders in the 2018 congressional election, yet it’s not long before the screen time quickly prioritizes the clear rising star among the candidates. There’s no denying the megawatt charisma, bracing intellect and revitalizing optimism of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was elected Representative of New York’s 14th district, and has never ceased in her outspoken support of environmental reform. Put a camera on her and she is an instant star, delivering fiery speeches from the House floor designed to shame the moneyed interests that have turned America into an oligarchy, shredding any trace of democracy while shutting out the voices of the electorate. 

Lears begins the film by showing Ocasio-Cortez at her former, oft-referenced waitressing gig, and concludes with the precise moment when the wildly publicized underdog realized that she won on election night. It’s impossible to watch this scene without getting a lump in your throat, and the same is true of the scene that follows it, as Ocasio-Cortez delivers a tearful monologue about her late father—while seated in front of the Capitol Building—that, in a narrative feature, could’ve easily earned her an Oscar. She is a politician in the true mold of our celebrity culture, with a massive social media following and two PACs—namely Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, both featured here—in her corner, and though the chief aim of the film is uplift, I couldn’t help being wracked with anxiety.

With charges of campaign finance law violation recently surfacing against her, courtesy of intimidated conservatives, it’s worth pondering whether her criticism of America’s broken political machine is hypocritical. Would she still have won had she and the two PACs been more transparent about their spending? It may not amount to anything significant, and certainly pales in comparison to the importance of the issues Ocasio-Cortez is fighting for on a daily basis, but I can’t help feeling weary of anyone who appears too good to true, perhaps because I, as an American citizen, have been burned too many times before. Lears certainly succeeds in crafting a human portrait of the politician, celebrating her status as a woman of color from the Bronx, as she mops the floor with her opponent, Joe Crowley, who’s resigned to coasting toward an “all-but-certain victory,” as foolishly dubbed in the press. 

There’s a great scene where she compares her own campaign mailing, laying out specific bullet points of her beliefs, with Crowley’s much bigger and vaguer “strategist” ad. She’s unpopular not only with conservatives but establishment democrats, neither of which are above misogynistic putdowns (“Who’s that stupid woman?” exclaims a Crowley supporter). Conspicuously relegated to the sidelines are the three other candidates, most egregiously Amy Vilela of Nevada, whose crusade for better health care is fueled by the death of her 22-year-old daughter. She succumbed to a blood clot that doctors refused to treat after she couldn’t produce proof of her insurance. Consoling Vilela after her election night loss, Ocasio-Cortez says, “Sometimes it takes a hundred people to run in order for one to get through.” Let’s just hope the right one did. 

“Knock Down the House” screens Thursday, April 11th at 7:30pm with director Rachel Lears, producer Sarah Olson and executive producer Stephanie Soechtig in attendance.

“You are not mature enough to tell it like it is,” Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said to the world leaders in attendance at last December’s UN Climate Change COP24 Conference. “Even that burden you leave to us children.” Hearing words like that being uttered authoritatively by a 15-year-old should shake every adult to the core. Perhaps it had to take the mind of a girl with Asberger’s to envision with piercing clarity what we are all too comfortable in shielding from view. The existential dread that led the young Nobel Peace Prize nominee to found the global #FridaysForFuture movement reverberates through every frame of Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky and Nicholas de Pencier’s “Anthropocene: The Human Epoch,” an alarming and gravely beautiful illustration of our species’ legacy of destruction. 

Many of the shots lensed by de Pencier initially resemble abstract paintings until the camera pulls back far enough to reveal the humans, so small in stature and yet so catastrophic in their footprint. Alicia Vikander, sounding like a mournful angel, informs us that we are currently in the midst of the sixth great extinction, the casualties of which are sampled in a rather artless slo-mo montage similar to those shamelessly manipulative ads for animal shelters. Though Vikander’s on-the-nose narration acknowledges that mankind could escape its own self-inflicted fate by utilizing its “tenacity and skill” to come up with potential solutions—the germs of which we see in armed Kenyan nature preserves or London air raid shelters converted to grow fresh produce—the film is mainly concerned with the immense, seemingly irreversible effect we’ve had on the planet’s ecosystems.

A lot of these horrendous alterations have already been well-documented, and the film simply rubs our noses in it, such as the bleaching of our priceless coral reefs, the rising of our sea levels, and the unprecedented amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere (an equally appropriate title may have been “Something’s Gotta Give”). Indeed, many of the film’s most awe-inspiring shots exemplify mankind’s tenacity in birthing god-like contraptions: the giant bucket wheel excavator gnashing away at a mountainside in Germany; Nigeria’s Redeemed Christian Church of God built to seat a congregation numbering one million; the Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland that takes 20 minutes to get through by train (we view the whole trip in one dazzling shot not unlike the astronaut’s cosmic voyage in “2001”); or the astonishingly detailed carvings made from mammoth tusks that have been thawed out due to the permafrost. The Hong Kong carver says this material is preferable to the tusks of an elephant, since it won’t be long until they are no less a distant memory than the mammoths. 

By the end, the earth appears as ailing as the men of the cloth in Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” and Schrader’s “First Reformed,” bewildered by forces of indifference beyond their control. Has there ever been a wake-up call as profound as Thunberg’s refrain, “Our house is on fire”?

“Anthropocene: The Human Epoch” screens Saturday, April 13th, at 1pm with directors Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier in attendance.

Festivalgoers in need of a pick-me-up after the bleakness of “The Human Epoch” should look no further than this year’s crowd-pleasing closing night selection, “The Biggest Little Farm,” in which filmmaker John Chester chronicles the eight-year odyssey taken by him and his wife, Molly, to build regenerative farmland in Moorpark, California, located an hour north of Los Angeles. Guiding their meticulous approach is the wisdom of biodynamic consultant Alan York, who instructs that the creation of microorganisms is essential in keeping life flowing. As charmed as I was by the Chesters at first sight, their film admittedly appears to have been cobbled together from plot threads that have already proven to work better as Emmy-winning short films, aired as part of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday. 

The first third especially moves at such a tight clip, it plays like the condensed season of an upcoming TLC series (think “My Big Fat Fabulous Farm”), with narration provided by Kevin Costner’s earnest farmer from “Field of Dreams” (“Everyone told us this was crazy,” he recalls, before revealing that “it all started with a promise we made to a dog”). Animated sequences evocative of Michael Sporn’s 1987 gem, “Lyle, Lyle Crocodile,” foreshadow the series of children’s books that the couple plans to launch next month, while the slo-mo closeups of birds and insects would fit snugly into a BBC special. What’s left on the cutting-room floor is an overarching sense of spontaneity, leaving the sentimental swells of Jeff Beal’s score to inform us how to feel as the director’s narration spells out the significance of things.

Even with all these reservations, the film still won me over in the end, revealing surprising depths as it progresses in part because it doesn’t shy away from showing the difficulties of such a monumental undertaking, however abridged they may be in the final cut. For those viewers aiming to craft their own sustainable ecosystem, which the couple began to do in the middle of a record drought, the film is chockfull of illuminating insights. Kids delighted by the first act should be forewarned that no animal is impervious to the appetites of nature, no matter how much the camera adores them. Chester himself starts to find discomfort in naming livestock that will eventually be eaten, and there’s a poignant moment where he sees the eyes of his beloved dog mirrored in the hollow stare of the ravenous coyote he’s just gunned down. 

Rather than eradicate the pests that seek to fracture the idealistic perfection of his manmade habitat at Apricot Lane Farms, he learns to take advantage of its self-perpetuating cycle, allowing nature to run its course. Unlike Timothy Treadwell, whose tragic romanticization of bears led to his own demise, the Chesters don’t turn a blind eye to the reality of their surroundings, embracing the bittersweet truths of life’s impermanence in a way that is both physically and spiritually fulfilling. With climate change directly causing the climactic wildfires that endanger the couple’s land, the way of life they have forged here stands as a vital beacon for the revitalization of mankind’s uncertain future.

“The Biggest Little Farm” screens Sunday, April 14th, at 7pm with director John Chester participating in a Q&A via Skype along with Paul Gaynor of White Oak Church, Melissa Flynn of Green City Market and Jim Slama of FamilyFarmed in attendance.

A specialty of DOC10’s ace programmer Anthony Kaufman is his curation of films that are less concerned with narrative than they are with fully involving you in the sensory experiences of an unconventional life. Simon Lereng Wilmont’s “The Distant Barking of Dogs” is one of those miracles of nonfiction cinema where the camera seems to be hovering like a ghost in the presence of its subjects, never noticeably intruding on the action or drawing attention to itself, even as danger encroaches on the horizon. Set in the small Ukrainian village of Hnutove, located a mile from the front lines of a seemingly unending battle between government forces and pro-Russian separatists, the film centers on 10-year-old Oleg, an endearing soul with a face that appears to have been lifted from Norman Rockwell’s easel. 

With his parents both gone, he lives with his beloved grandmother, Alexandra, who insists on remaining in their longtime family home even as neighbors flee to safety and missiles threaten to obliterate them at any moment. Though Jarik, Oleg’s cousin and roughhousing companion, has moved out of town with his mother, he quickly returns to his grandmother’s side, feeling infinitely more secure in her arms. He also has no intention of returning to peers who bully him about his Russian accent. As Jarik’s mom chats with Alexandra, she describes the surreal nature of their predicament, replying, “I got lost in my dreams for a second,” a line that proves to have enormous resonance.

If Wilmont’s film consisted of written dialogue, it would contain one of my very favorite scripts of the year, portraying the richness of the fantasy world that the children utilize as a vital mode of escape. “I’ll only fart and it will make you fly into space!” Jarik declares to his cousin before they both dissolve into cathartic giggles. There are shades of Malick in Wilmont’s gorgeous cinematography, though he avoids the temptation to let the landscapes upstage the eloquent faces of his human protagonists. Even a sweet kid like Oleg is prone to exploring his curiosity with violence, since its animalistic rumblings are a commonplace occurrence. After being goaded by an older local kid into firing a gun, Oleg shoots at frogs in a well, creatures as entrapped as Hnutove’s remaining inhabitants. Alexandra is rightly horrified when her grandchild guiltily admits what he did, yet such behavior is only natural when living in unthinkable circumstances. 

The illusion of safety is what all parents and guardians desire to craft like a mental cocoon for their children, and this mighty grandma has gone to great lengths to block out the nightmares for Oleg and Jarik, from wallpapering the house with transporting images of tranquil forests to singing nightly lullabies as nearby explosions cause the walls to shudder. Yet she is also choosing to live in denial, staving off the inevitable, such as when she works all night to hide the fact that she cannot get her hands to stop shaking. In one painterly shot, Wilmont splits the frame in two, as the delighted boys bask in the blue glow of their TV, unaware of the agony endured by Alexandra, who sits on the bed next to their’s while illuminated by the stark light of a nearby room. It’s only a matter of time before the distant, bloodthirsty dogs are perched on their doorstep. 

“The Distant Barking of Dogs” screens Sunday, April 14th, at 2pm with director Simon Lereng Wilmont interviewed via Skype by WBEZ’s Julian Hayda.

Among the definitive images of modern nonfiction cinema is that of Nanfu Wang, camera in hand, aiming her searing lens to capture forbidden truths that are guaranteed to enlighten us all. She was one of the great discoveries I made at the inaugural DOC10 festival, which featured her stunning directorial debut, “Hooligan Sparrow,” about the courageous Chinese activist Ye Haiyan. She followed that a year later with the equally impressive “I Am Another You,” where she turned her attention to the precarious nature of freedom in American society. Now she returns to China for her third triumph, “One Child Nation,” which just earned the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and is already destined to be named among the year’s best films. 

Though I was initially caught off guard by the autobiographical nature of her work, which she narrates in first person while weaving her own story with that of her subject, I now believe this signature approach has not only enhanced each of her features exponentially, but stands as a rebuke to China’s prioritization of the collective over the individual. Wang is adamant in chronicling the personal toll of heartless policies, and in the case of her latest film, she explores the wide-ranging ramifications of her home country’s one-child policy launched in 1979 and enforced until 2015. Yes, the world is inarguably overpopulated, yet this law—like so much of the corruption logged in “Hooligan Sparrow”—is really a matter of insidious control, where family planning officials administer forced abortions while kidnapping “excess” children from their parents before selling them to orphanages for international adoption.

Having just brought new life into the world in the form of her baby son, an experience she explains was like “giving birth to her memories,” Wang allows her early days of motherhood to inform how she goes about studying the policy’s wicked game of manipulation, one that is dependent on its participants keeping their emotions detached. Her mother shares a devastating story of how she helped her brother abandon his daughter in the marketplace where she eventually died—her face covered in mosquito bites—so that he could try for a son, the prized goal for every parent to ensure the future of their family name. We see the aching sadness in the eyes of a teen, Shuangjie Zeng, who was separated from her twin sister currently being raised in America. As Wang asks Zeng whether she’s spoken to her sister about the possibility of visiting China, a sensitive topic that causes the girl to laugh uneasily, considering the resistance of adoptive parents to dig too deep into the past, the camera holds on her face as her smile falls, leaving us with an expression that tells us everything we need to know. 

One midwife wants to atone for the sins she committed by following orders, while another shows no remorse, arguing that she was fighting a “population war” and chuckling in bewilderment at the frenzied behavior of the women whose babies she helped destroy. Artist Peno Wang began photographing discarded fetuses after finding them strewn among piles of garbage, and echoes the filmmaker’s thoughts by noting, “Indoctrination destroys humanity.” Co-directed with Jialing Zhang, who has also earned acclaim for her own muckraking features, Nanfu Wang’s “One Child Nation” is as invaluable a document of truth as it is poetry of the highest order. Perhaps no shot better embodies the essence of Chinese society than that of children blissfully riding on a merry-go-round. As soon as one of them dares to step outside of the circular structure, they land face-first in the mud. 

“One Child Nation” screens Saturday, April 13th, at 3:30pm with director Nanfu Wang participating in a Q&A via Skype.

For the full festival line-up or to purchase tickets, visit the official site of DOC10.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2Gfv23k

[omg-chronoscontracter]

Some Frustration on Homosexuality Debates

I rarely get into the political face of debates unless it involves the work and politics around the issues of health, sexuality and mutual respect for others. However, I am furious with some of the disgusting comments about homosexuality that is being circulated in this day and age.

50 years ago, the United Kingdom abolished homosexuality as crime within the private acts of their own homes. With Sexual Offences Act decriminalising homosexuality, people were free to explore and experience their sexualities in a law abiding way. Many people alive who were homosexual were given a criminal sanction against their names and have had their records tarnished by backward and illogical statements. 50 years later an apology has been made with many people pardoned for their experience and crimes. Well SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASSES. Personally, gratefully, I never lived in such a time but I can safely say an apology is unacceptable as the issue should never have arisen. More so, you add posthumous pardons to those affected by this terrible deed.

When ‘Maggie Thatcher milk snatcher’ came was prime minister we saw Section 28 in full force which in a nutshell refused for public attention and promotion of homosexuality as the normal. When the book ‘My Two Dads’ came out, this stuck 2 fingers up to the prime minister and started working towards telling her that her preferences on a normal society will not be tolerated. People often refer too the bible and other religious texts as absolute, hence the workings of Westboro in America. The main cause for concern, and main references, refers to the notion of ‘idolatory’ and ‘abomination’ of same sex desires/acts. Yet, there is nothing exclusive to say within the bible that those who practice homosexuality are in fact beasts waiting to burn in hell. People must breach love and not hate in this times, we must be brought together.

I would like to turn to certain countries with ‘backward’ values. I will not mention them for fear of comeuppance and for stupid people using it as a racist point against me. However, how can they deny homosexuality as normal? How can you judge others? Why is a man and woman the gold standard with regards to being normal? The one true explanation refers to reproduction, man and woman reproduce in order to keep the world turning. What happens then to the woman who cannot get pregnant or man who is firing blanks? In the basic definitions they are homosexuals as they fall into the category of cannot give birth.

Consider the gay marriage debate. This will have huge impact wherever it occurs. In the United Kingdom I believe the publicising has done more harm than good. It was demonised by the media and thus forming a demonization of homosexuals now. So much hatred exists because gay marriage was forced into peoples faces and private lives regardless of their sexualities. Now gay marriage has occurred, the answer will be much like the feminist accomplishment for women to vote. Like women in those times discovered, they had the right to vote so what is the issue, a similar argument that will be used to undermine gay marriage. In theory, the civil partnership could have given the same rights as marriage. There needed not be this great big who har.

Furthermore, look at a lot of these haters. I guarantee a good proportion of you will be described on Grindr as ‘downlow’ or ‘curious’ wanting to experience something whilst being straight at the same time. Say you are straight with a cock in your mouth or a dick in your arse. I tell you now, there are more stories of gay sex in places like Dubai, India and Thailand that is undercover than what I see on Grindr daily. There is nothing wrong with being bisexual except the environment from which you have been brought up in and the way you and others around you have been brought up. Historically, nature is full of homosexuality and sadomy. Throughout history homosexuality was both a normal practice and a domination of power to reaffirm societal roles and rules.

Yet, we still face stigmatization. Russia is leading one of the biggest most inhumane acts to homosexual people that has ever occurred (retrospectively probably the most). The governments are doing nothing, yet, we are meant to have human rights. In other countries people are imprisoned for being gay, killed, beaten and turned away from their families just for being who they are. These displays of violence will not stop homosexuality, just like shock therapy, torturous techniques, psychoanalytic sessions etc. Sadly, people travel the world with these ideas and superimposed them on the society they have come to.

What about people who complain about gay pride when they say they want their straight pride? You get your straight pride everyday. Those with these ideas judge us. Let me ask a straight person a question, when did you last fear holding hands with your partner in the street? When did you last not go out in case someone disapproved of your sexuality? I can assure you that even in what has been described as a liberal society is not that liberal. I myself have had abuse hurled at me, been called a ‘paedophile’ for holding hands with a guy in front of children. I have experienced both physical aggression and psychological abuse. I have been at the mercy of people where I have remained tight lipped about my sexuality and views because it is safer, such as in taxi’s, meeting new professionals and with certain people who are meant to be friends. So many countries have a long way to go.

Spread love, religion does. Don’t hate because you are not in fear. Stay strong.

[thedeadshotnetwork]

What Donald Trump’s Books Say About Winning Donald Trump appeared in many guises—billionaire real-estate tycoon, golf-course mogul, beauty-pageant impresario, reality-television star—before his blindsiding rise to the presidency of the United States last year. One of his least recognized roles is also one of the most revealing: success writer. Thirty years ago, in 1987, Trump’s The Art of the Deal leapt onto the bestseller list as a rollicking account of his business triumphs that, according to a glowing New York Times review , “makes one believe for a moment in the American dream again.” A string of advice tracts followed over the next two decades, among them 2008’s Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life and 2004’s Trump: How to Get Rich . These books present the Trump formula for upward mobility, what he describes in Think Big as “a recipe for success that the top 2 percent live by and that you too can follow to be successful.” Although ghostwritten, they also epitomize Trump’s sentiments and sensibility. In language alternately disarming and appalling, they explain his view of the world, and the values that drive him. Trump’s books fall into one of the oldest, most influential genres in American popular culture: the success tract, or literature on how to get ahead in life. In the early republic, Benjamin Franklin advocated “virtue” as the pathway for aspiring individuals unshackled from aristocratic tradition. In the 1800s, Horatio Alger offered hard work and “character” as habits that would produce prosperity in a competitive market society. For a 20th-century society dominated by bureaucracies, Dale Carnegie urged strivers to cultivate human relations and an attractive “personality.” But Trump’s writing has destroyed many of this tradition’s essential elements. To be sure, he borrows certain tried-and-true elements from Franklin, Alger, and Carnegie—unstinting labor, positive thinking, careful delineation of goals, mental focus. But he also peddles directives that ignore what these writers perceived as their obligation to shape good people and a good society. Instead, Trump’s injunctions look inward to promote a relentless self-aggrandizement, and outward to manipulate a world of facile images. These qualities, and their appeal to a popular audience, have reshaped America’s success tradition. They have jettisoned its moral ethos for one of bristling self-regard. *  *  *   The notion of making it—achieving a higher social status, earning more money, gaining respectability—is almost embedded in the genetic code of Americans. From their earliest arrival on the Atlantic seaboard, New World settlers displacing the land’s original inhabitants combined a rough embrace of personal advancement with different beliefs about religious, political, and social freedom. Whether chasing trade profits in tobacco or establishing representative assemblies, colonial Americans idealized the individual released from traditional restraints. Franklin, America’s first great success writer, voiced such aspirations in Poor Richard’s Almanack (“A penny saved is two pence dear,” “He that waits upon Fortune is never sure of a dinner”) and then offered more extensive praise for prudential and virtuous habits in his famous Autobiography . The American socioeconomic landscape burgeoned in the early 1800s, due to the explosive growth of steamboats and railroads, factories and commercial farming, geographic expansion and trade networks. Reflecting on this new fluid society, success writers extolled individual opportunity in a market society. Alger, the most influential of them, published a series of mass-market novels from mid- to late-century with titles such as Struggling Upward and Ragged Dick . They romanticized the self-made man who rose from modest circumstances through hard work, emotional self-control, and upstanding moral character. Readers devoured these books. As literature, the Alger tales were trainwrecks with their fanciful plots and sentimental language. But as cultural documents they brilliantly captured the desires of an attainment-minded age. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had entered an era defined by consumer capitalism, large-scale social and economic institutions, and corporate liberalism with its notion of regulated competition. A fittingly revamped success ideology emerged. In 1936, Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People burst onto the cultural scene, attracting millions of readers with a message that emphasized the importance of a winning personality and skilled human relations for standing out in a bureaucratic milieu. Carnegie argued that the success seeker must “make the other person feel important,” “avoid arguments,” and “keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant.” Decades later came Trump, who followed this well-worn path with his own formula for success. First, his books stress that defeating (or crushing, if possible) your opponents is the key to upward mobility. Economic and social life is an arena for survival where the soft perish and the alpha male prevails. “The world is a vicious and brutal place,” Trump writes in Think Big . “They want your job, they want your house, they want your money, they want your wife, and they even want your dog. Those are your friends; your enemies are even worse!” In this Hobbesian world where life is “nasty, brutish, and short,” Trump insists, the successful individual must cultivate hard-nosed traits to prosper. Trump’s father, himself an accomplished real-estate entrepreneur, taught his son to be forceful and dogged. Young Donald took to this naturally. He relates in The Art of the Deal an episode in the second grade where “I punched my music teacher because I didn’t think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled.” An adolescent stint in military school taught him to remain assertive while channeling his aggression into achievement. Trump drew a clear conclusion: “You can’t be scared. You do your thing, you hold your ground, you stand up tall, and whatever happens, happens.” The successful person, according to Trump, must strike back at anyone who crosses him.  “My motto is: Always get even,” he writes in Think Big . “When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.” He recounts how a real-estate competitor, for example, once hoodwinked him in a complicated deal, initiated a lawsuit, and then offered to settle for a life-time membership in one of his golf clubs. Trump accepted, but then publicly humiliated the man at every opportunity. He admits, “I love getting even. I get screwed all the time. I go after people, and you know what? People do not play around with me as much as they do with others.” Trump also advocates ruthlessly pursuing goals, exploiting any advantage over a competitor, and maintaining flexibility when maneuvering against opponents. But he forbids retreating. “If you admit defeat, then you will be defeated,” he declares in Think Big . While some of Trump’s lessons may sound commonplace, more unique is his advice to generate publicity by manipulating the media, a dictum that would have dumfounded his success-writing forebears. Early on in his career in the New York real-estate market, Trump learned to capture the public imagination by playing the media. “One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better,” he says in The Art of the Deal . When razing a landmark building to prepare for Trump Tower, he suffered a torrent of negative stories but pointed out that most of them described how the demolition made way for “one of the world’s most luxurious buildings.” Trump’s conclusion: “Bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.” At the heart of the Trump formula for winning, however, lies the larger-than-life persona. His architecture of the self rejects earlier models in the American success tradition—Franklin’s “virtue” and Alger’s “character” and Carnegie’s “personality”—to focus on creating a Titan image, a persona that doesn’t earn respect or kindle affection, but that radiates power and inspires awe. Trump’s Titan first appears in The Art of the Deal , frequenting establishments such as the exclusive Le Club because “its membership included some of the most successful men and the most beautiful women in the world.” To become a Titan, one must go “first class all the way. ... Let everything you do and own convey an image of importance. Own a first-class car, carry first-class luggage, go to first-class restaurants, and shop in first-class stores.” The Trump persona specializes in, above all, the art of the gasconade. He notes shrewdly, “I play to people’s fantasies. ... People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole.” *  *  *   With its pragmatism and disregard for questions of morality, Trump’s approach to success makes no attempt to link an oversized personal image to a deeper notion of personal growth. Readers get no sense of how Trump’s vision helps create good people, either individually or collectively, as in Franklin’s virtuous republic, Alger’s bourgeois utopia, or Carnegie’s well-adjusted bureaucratic society. Trump’s reflections on family say little about love or even personal happiness, instead stressing no-nonsense issues of trust and support. While Trump values loyalty and recommends hiring and rewarding individuals who will stick by you, ultimately the success seeker can only depend on blood ties: “You can trust family in a way you can never trust anyone else,” he asserts in The Art of the Deal.   Similarly, Trump’s thoughts on women seldom address their humanity, talents, or role in the achievement of love and happiness. In The Art of the Deal , he dutifully claims, “I’ve hired a lot of women for top jobs, and they’ve been among my best people.” But in the commentary that follows, he depicts women primarily as status symbols for successful men. He describes the clubs he joined in New York as places where you’d likely see “a wealthy 75-year-old guy walk in with three blondes from Sweden.” Trump ventures into pop-anthropology analysis in Think Big , arguing that modern success-seeking is a male-dominated endeavor “only a short step out of the jungle. In primitive times, women clung to the strongest males for protection. …  High-status males displayed their prowess through their kick-ass attitudes.” For proof, Trump offers his own record of sexual conquest: The women I have dated over the years could have any man they want; they are the top models and the most beautiful women in the world. I have been able to date (screw) them all because I have something that many men do not have. I don’t know what it is but women have always liked it. … Beautiful, famous, successful, married—I’ve had them all, secretly, the world’s biggest names. Finally, the moral vacuum surrounding Trump’s success advice appears in the reward he holds out. The payoff for following his formula is wealth, and the flashier the better. His books are replete with paeans to gold-spangled display. From renovating glitzy hotels in Manhattan to building a lavish casino in Atlantic City, Trump relishes glamorous business projects. His crowning achievement was the 1983 completion of Trump Tower in the heart of New York, which demonstrated “how big a building I can legally build,” he describes in The Art of the Deal . These creations, along with his opulent penthouse apartment in New York and spectacular residence in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, comprise the hard-earned fruits of success. “I know people are responding to my passion for beauty and style, which is reflected in my work,” he confesses in Think Big . Build it bigger and they will come. * * * Franklin, Alger, and Carnegie tapped into many of Americans’ deepest needs and desires fueled by the standards and structures of their respective ages.  So what does Trump’s writing reveal about the author and the contemporary culture that has proved so receptive to his message? The Art of the Deal , after all, gained more than a million readers while his other books have sold briskly. Clearly, his approach guided his victorious presidential campaign: Denigrate any opposition, employ bravado, manipulate the media, elevate personal image over substance, eschew structured organization, and depend on your family. But Trump’s books also cut deeper to illuminate several modern American values and characteristics. The appeal of his extravagant level of wealth reveals the deep hold of consumerism in modern American life. In a society where religious guidelines, loyalty to social institutions, and standards of bourgeois morality have waned over the last century, material accumulation has emerged as one reliable measure of value and achievement . Trump’s message also reflects the postmodern quality of American culture in its tendency to create reality through publicity and media. “Brand yourself and toot your horn,” he instructs in How to Get Rich , and this injunction stands as a centerpiece of his success creed. Lastly, Trump’s image signals the allure of celebrity for Americans. Indeed, his habitual use of “truthful hyperbole” to shape an attention-grabbing public persona is the essence of fame. No wonder he created a reality-television show called—what else?— The Celebrity Apprentice . Despite Trump’s complaint in Think Big that young people have been spoiled by the “instant gratification ethic of the ‘me generation,’” Trump’s oeuvre can be easily read as one long tribute to himself. Franklin’s ruminations on virtue, Alger’s sentimental renderings of the character ethic, and Carnegie’s admonitions on the need for skilled human relations fall to the wayside before Trump’s imagined, inflated self. Unlike his predecessors, Trump offers a particularly empty sketch of American attainment. Readers get the sense that success-seeking is an addictive, even amusing compulsion, but not a very meaningful one. Dimly aware of this problem, Trump turns to a set of banal rationalizations. Unable to attach any larger significance to the pursuit of social advancement and multiplying wealth, he admits in The Art of the Deal , “If you ask me exactly what the deals I’m about to describe all add up to in the end, I’m not sure I have a very good answer. Except that I’ve had a very good time making them.” In Think Big , he suggests that winning is its own reward: “I love to make the big score and to make the big deal. I love to crush the other side and take the benefits. Why? Because there is nothing greater.” Trump’s portrait of modern success perhaps conjures the final scenes of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane , where a brooding and angry Charles Foster Kane sits alone in the great hall of his immense mansion, Xanadu, surrounded by opulence but abandoned by loved ones. One wonders if Trump watched the film all the way through before claiming it as his favorite movie. It is, after all, a tale of an entrepreneur who rises to fortune and fame through media manipulation, develops an enormous ego, enters politics as a populist celebrity before falling into disgrace, spends much of his life bullying others until they desert him, and dies without grasping the meaning of his life. Citizen Kane offers an American vision of personal improvement and social advancement that has shrunk to the vanishing point. It has much in common with The Art of the Deal and its ilk, works that put forth a grandiose portrait of winning where big, bigger, biggest actually materializes as small, smaller, smallest. November 12, 2017 at 11:24AM

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Pope's at "(Re)Thinking Europe Conference": Full text

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Pope's at "(Re)Thinking Europe Conference": Full text

(Vatican Radio) Here is the full text of Pope Francis’ remarks at the conference on (Re)Thinking Europe: a Christian Contribution to the Future of the European Project, sponsored by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE): 

Address of His Holiness Pope Francis  to the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community

Saturday, 28 October 2017

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Authorities, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am pleased to join you at the conclusion of your Dialogue on the theme (Re)Thinking Europe – a Christian Contribution to the Future of the European Project, sponsored by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE).  In a particular way I greet the President of the Commission, His Eminence Cardinal Reinhard Marx, and the Honourable Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, and I thank them for their kind words.  To each of you I express my deep appreciation for your active contribution to this important discussion.

In these days, your Dialogue has allowed for wide-ranging reflection on the future of Europe from a variety of viewpoints, thanks to the presence of leading figures from the ecclesial, political and academic sectors, and from civil society as a whole.  The young have been able to present their expectations and hopes, and to share them with their elders, while these in turn have drawn on their own reflections and experiences.  It is significant that this meeting was intended above all to be a dialogue, pursued in a spirit of openness and freedom, for the sake of mutual enrichment.  It has sought to shed light on the future path of Europe, the road that all of us are called to travel in surmounting present crises and facing challenges yet to come.

To speak of a Christian contribution to the future of the continent means, before all else, to consider our task, as Christians today, in these lands which have been so richly shaped by the faith down the centuries.  What is our responsibility at a time when the face of Europe is increasingly distinguished by a plurality of cultures and religions, while for many people Christianity is regarded as a thing of the past, both alien and irrelevant?

Person and community

          In the twilight of the ancient world, as the glories of Rome fell into the ruins that still amaze us, and new peoples flooded across the borders of the Empire, one young man echoed anew the words of the Psalmist: “Who is the man that longs for life and desires to see good days?”[1]  By asking this question in the Prologue of his Rule, Saint Benedict pointed the people of his time, and ours as well, to a view of man radically different from that of classical Greco-Roman culture, and even more from the violent outlook typical of the invading barbarians.  Man is no longer simply a civis, a citizen endowed with privileges to be enjoyed at leisure; no longer a miles, a soldier serving the powers of the time; and above all, no longer a servus, a commodity bereft of freedom and destined solely for hard labour. 

          Saint Benedict was not concerned about social status, riches or power.  He appealed to the nature common to every human being, who, whatever his or her condition, longs for life and desires to see good days.  For Benedict, the important thing was not functions but persons.  This was one of the foundational values brought by Christianity: the sense of the person created in the image of God.  This principle led to the building of the monasteries, which in time would become the cradle of the human, cultural, religious and economic rebirth of the continent.

          The first and perhaps the greatest contribution that Christians can make to today’s Europe is to remind her that she is not a mass of statistics or institutions, but is made up of people.  Sadly, we see how frequently issues get reduced to discussions about numbers. There are no citizens, only votes.  There are no migrants, only quotas.  There are no workers, only economic markers.  There are no poor, only thresholds of poverty.  The concrete reality of the human person is thus reduced to an abstract – and thus more comfortable and reassuring – principle.  The reason for this is clear: people have faces; they force us to assume a responsibility that is real, personal and effective.  Statistics, however useful and important, are about arguments; they are soulless.  They offer an alibi for not getting involved, because they never touch us in the flesh.

          To acknowledge that others are persons means to value what unites us to them.  To be a person connects us with others; it makes us a community.  The second contribution that Christians can make to the future of Europe, then, is to help recover the sense of belonging to a community.  It is not by chance that the founders of the European project chose that very word to identify the new political subject coming into being.  Community is the greatest antidote to the forms of individualism typical of our times, to that widespread tendency in the West to see oneself and one’s life in isolation from others.  The concept of freedom is misunderstood and seen as if it were a right to be left alone, free from all bonds.  As a result, a deracinated society has grown up, lacking a sense of belonging and of its own past.

            Christians recognize that their identity is primarily relational.  They are joined to one another as members of one body, the Church (cf. 1 Cor 12:12), and each, with his or her unique identity and gifts, freely shares in the common work of building up that body.  Analogously, this relationship is also found in the areas of interpersonal relationships and civil society.  By interacting with others, each one discovers his or her own qualities and defects, strengths and weaknesses.  In other words, they come to know who they are, their specific identity.

          The family, as the primordial community, remains the most fundamental place for this process of discovery.  There, diversity is valued and at the same time brought into unity.  The family is the harmonious union of the differences between man and woman, which becomes stronger and more authentic to the extent that it is fruitful, capable of opening itself to life and to others.  Secular communities, likewise, are alive when they are capable of openness, embracing the differences and gifts of each person while at the same time generating new life, development, labour, innovation and culture.

          Person and community are thus the foundations of the Europe that we, as Christians, want and can contribute to building.  The bricks of this structure are dialogue, inclusion, solidarity, development and peace.

  A place of dialogue

            Today the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the North Pole to the Mediterranean, cannot miss the chance to be first and foremost a place of candid and constructive dialogue, in which all participants share equal dignity.  We are called to build a Europe in which we can meet and engage at every level, much as in the ancient agorá, the main square of the polis.  The latter was not just a marketplace but also the nerve centre of political life, where laws were passed for the common good.  The presence of a temple dominating the square was a reminder that the horizontal dimension of daily life ought never to overlook the transcendent, which invites us to see beyond the ephemeral, the transitory and the provisional.

          This leads us to reflect on the positive and constructive role that religion in general plays in the building up of society.  I think, for example, of the contribution made by interreligious dialogue to greater mutual understanding between Christians and Muslims in Europe.  Regrettably, a certain secularist prejudice, still in vogue, is incapable of seeing the positive value of religion’s public and objective role in society, preferring to relegate it to the realm of the merely private and sentimental.  The result is the predominance of a certain groupthink,[2] quite apparent in international meetings, which sees the affirmation of religious identity as a threat to itself and its dominance, and ends up promoting an ersatz conflict between the right to religious freedom and other fundamental rights.

          Favouring dialogue, in any form whatsoever, is a fundamental responsibility of politics.  Sadly, all too often we see how politics is becoming instead a forum for clashes between opposing forces.  The voice of dialogue is replaced by shouted claims and demands.  One often has the feeling that the primary goal is no longer the common good, and this perception is shared by more and more citizens.  Extremist and populist groups are finding fertile ground in many countries; they make protest the heart of their political message, without offering the alternative of a constructive political project.  Dialogue is replaced either by a futile antagonism that can even threaten civil coexistence, or by the domination of a single political power that constrains and obstructs a true experience of democracy.  In the one, bridges are burned; in the other, walls are erected.

          Christians are called to promote political dialogue, especially where it is threatened and where conflict seems to prevail.  Christians are called to restore dignity to politics and to view politics as a lofty service to the common good, not a platform for power.  This demands a suitable formation, since politics is not the “art of improvising”.  Instead, it is a noble expression of self-sacrifice and personal dedication for the benefit of the community.  To be a leader demands thoughtfulness, training and experience.

  An inclusive milieu

          Leaders together share responsibility for promoting a Europe that is an inclusive community, free of one fundamental misunderstanding: namely that inclusion does not mean downplaying differences.  On the contrary, a community is truly inclusive when differences are valued and viewed as a shared source of enrichment.  Seen in this way, migrants are more a resource than a burden.  Christians are called to meditate seriously on Jesus’ words: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35).  Especially when faced with the tragedy of displaced persons and refugees, we must not forget that we are dealing with persons, who cannot be welcomed or rejected at our own pleasure, or in accordance with political, economic or even religious ideas.

          Nor is this opposed to the duty of all government authorities to address the migration issue “with the virtue proper to governance, which is prudence”.[3]  Authorities should keep in mind the need for an open heart, but also their ability to provide for the full integration, on the social, economic and political level, of those entering their countries.  We cannot regard the phenomenon of migration as an indiscriminate and unregulated process, but neither can we erect walls of indifference and fear.  For their part, migrants must not neglect their own grave responsibility to learn, respect and assimilate the culture and traditions of the nations that welcome them.

  Room for solidarity

          Striving for an inclusive community means making room for solidarity.  To be a community in fact entails supporting one another; bearing burdens and making extraordinary sacrifices do not fall to some few, while the rest remain entrenched in defence of their privileged positions.  A European Union that, in facing its crises, fails to recover a sense of being a single community that sustains and assists its members – and not just a collection of small interest groups – would miss out not only on one of the greatest challenges of its history, but also on one of the greatest opportunities for its own future.

          Solidarity, which from a Christian perspective finds its raison d’être in the precept of love (cf. Mt 22:37-40), has to be the lifeblood of a mature community.  Together with the other cardinal principle of subsidiarity, it is not limited to relations between the states and regions of Europe.  To be a solidary community means to be concerned for the most vulnerable of society, the poor and those discarded by social and economic systems, beginning with the elderly and the unemployed.  At the same time, solidarity calls for a recovery of cooperation and mutual support between the generations.

          An unprecedented generational conflict has been taking place since the 1960’s.  In passing on to new generations the ideals that made Europe great, one could say, with a touch of hyperbole, that betrayal was preferred to tradition.  The rejection of what had been passed down from earlier generations was followed by a period of dramatic sterility.  Not only because Europe has fewer children, and all too many were denied the right to be born, but also because there has been a failure to pass on the material and cultural tools that young people need to face the future.  Europe has a kind of memory deficit.  To become once more a solidary community means rediscovering the value of our own past, in order to enrich the present and to pass on a future of hope to future generations. 

          Instead, many young people are lost, without roots or prospects, “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:14).  At times they are even “held captive” by possessive adults who struggle to carry out their own responsibilities.  It is a grave responsibility to provide an education, not only by offering technical and scientific knowledge, but above all by working “to promote the complete perfection of the human person, the good of earthly society and the building of a world that is more human”.[4]  This demands the involvement of society as a whole.  Education is a shared duty that requires the active and combined participation of parents, schools and universities, religious and civil institutions.  Without education, culture does not develop and the life of the community dries up.

  A source of development

          A Europe that rediscovers itself as a community will surely be a source of development for herself and for the whole world.  Development must be understood in the terms laid down by Blessed Paul VI: “To be authentic, it must be well rounded; it must foster the development of each man and of the whole man.  As an eminent specialist on this question has rightly said: ‘We cannot allow economics to be separated from human realities, nor development from the civilization in which it takes place. What counts for us is man – each individual man, each human group, and humanity as a whole’”.[5]

Work certainly contributes to human development; it is an essential factor in the dignity and growth of the person.  Employment and suitable working conditions are needed.  The last century provided many eloquent examples of Christian entrepreneurs who understood that the success of their ventures depended above all on the ability to provide employment opportunities and dignified working conditions.  There is a need to recover the spirit of those ventures, for they are also the best antidote to the imbalances caused by a soulless globalization which, more attentive to profits than people, has created significant pockets of poverty, unemployment, exploitation and social unease.

It would also be helpful to recover a sense of the need to provide concrete opportunities for employment, especially to the young.  Today, many people tend to shy away from certain jobs because they seem physically demanding and unprofitable, forgetting how indispensable they are for human development.  Where would we be without the efforts of those whose work contributes daily to putting food on our tables?  Where would we be without the patient and creative labour of those who produce the clothes we wear or build the houses in which we live?  Many essential professions are now looked down upon.  Yet they are essential both for society and, above all, for the satisfaction that they give to those who realize that they are being useful in themselves and for others, thanks to their daily work. 

Governments also have the duty to create economic conditions that promote a healthy entrepreneurship and appropriate levels of employment.  Politicians are especially responsible for restoring a virtuous circle that, starting from investments that favour the family and education, enable the harmonious and peaceful development of the entire civil community.

  A promise of peace

Finally, the commitment of Christians in Europe must represent a promise of peace.  This was the central concern that inspired the signatories of the Treaties of Rome.  After two World Wars and atrocious acts of violence perpetrated by peoples against peoples, the time had come to affirm the right to peace.[6]  Yet today we continue to see how fragile is that peace, and how particular and national agendas risk thwarting the courageous dreams of the founders of Europe.[7]

Being peacemakers (cf. Mt 5:9), however, does not mean simply striving to avoid internal tensions, working to end the bloodshed and conflicts throughout our world, or relieving those who suffer.  To be workers for peace entails promoting a culture of peace.  This requires love for the truth, without which authentic human relationships cannot exist; it also requires the pursuit of justice, without which oppression becomes the rule in any community.

Peace also requires creativity.  The European Union will remain faithful to its commitment to peace only to the extent that it does not lose hope and can renew itself in order to respond to the needs and expectations of its citizens.  A hundred years ago, in these very days, the battle of Caporetto was fought, one of the most dramatic of the First World War.  It was the culmination of that war of attrition, which set a sinister record in reaping countless casualties for the sake of risible gains.  From that event we learn that entrenchment in one’s own positions only leads to failure.  Now is not the time, then, to dig trenches, but instead to work courageously to realize the founding fathers’ dream of a united and harmonious Europe, a community of peoples desirous of sharing a future of development and peace.

  To be the soul of Europe

Your Eminence, Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Guests,

The author of the Letter to Diognetus states that “what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world”.[8]  In our day, Christians are called to revitalize Europe and to revive its conscience, not by occupying spaces, but by generating processes[9] capable of awakening new energies in society.  This is exactly what Saint Benedict did.  It was not by chance that Paul VI proclaimed him the Patron of Europe.  He was not concerned to occupy spaces in a wayward and confused world.   Sustained by faith, Benedict looked ahead, and from a tiny cave in Subiaco he gave birth to an exciting and irresistible movement that changed the face of Europe.  May Saint Benedict, “messenger of peace, promoter of union, master of civilization”[10] make clear to us, the Christians of our own time, how a joyful hope, flowing from faith, is able to change the world. 

Thank you.

  [1]  SAINT BENEDICT, Rule, Prologue, 14; cf. Ps 34:12.

[2] La dittatura del pensiero unico, Morning Reflection in the Domus Sanctae Marthae Chapel, 10 April 2014.

[3] Cf. Press Conference on the Return Flight from Colombia, 10 September 2017.

[4] SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Declaration Gravissimum Educationis (28 October 1963), 3.

[5] PAUL VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio (26 March 1967), 14.

[6] Cf. Address to Students and Academic Authorities, Bologna, 1 October 2017, 3.

[7] Cf. ibid.

[8] Op. cit., VI.

[9] Cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 223.

[10] PAUL VI, Apostolic Letter Pacis Nuntius, 24 October 1964.

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