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abovethetitletheatre · 5 years ago

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What is a Play

Extract from The Theory of the Theatre by Clayton Hamilton

A play is a story devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an audience.

This plain statement of fact affords an exceedingly simple definition of the drama,—a definition so simple indeed as to seem at the first glance easily obvious and therefore scarcely worthy of expression. But if we examine the statement thoroughly, phrase by phrase, we shall see that it sums up within itself the entire theory of the theatre, and that from this primary axiom we may deduce the whole practical philosophy of dramatic criticism.

It is unnecessary to linger long over an explanation of the word "story." A story is a representation of a series of events linked together by the law of cause and effect and marching forward toward a predestined culmination,—each event exhibiting imagined characters performing imagined acts in an appropriate imagined setting. This definition applies, of course, to the epic, the ballad, the novel, the short-story, and all other forms of narrative art, as well as to the drama.

But the phrase "devised to be presented" distinguishes the drama sharply from all other forms of narrative. In particular it must be noted that a play is not a story that is written to be read. By no means must the drama be considered primarily as a department of literature,—like the epic or the novel, for example. Rather, from the standpoint of the theatre, should literature be considered as only one of a multitude of means which the dramatist must employ to convey his story effectively to the audience. The great Greek dramatists needed a sense of sculpture as well as a sense of poetry; and in the contemporary theatre the playwright must manifest the imagination of the painter as well as the imagination of the man of letters. The appeal of a play is primarily visual rather than auditory. On the contemporary stage, characters properly costumed must be exhibited within a carefully designed and painted setting illuminated with appropriate effects of light and shadow; and the art of music is often called upon to render incidental aid to the general impression. The dramatist, therefore, must be endowed not only with the literary sense, but also with a clear eye for the graphic and plastic elements of pictorial effect, a sense of rhythm and of music, and a thorough knowledge of the art of acting. Since the dramatist must, at the same time and in the same work, harness and harmonise the methods of so many of the arts, it would be uncritical to centre studious consideration solely on his dialogue and to praise him or condemn him on the literary ground alone.

It is, of course, true that the very greatest plays have always been great literature as well as great drama. The purely literary element—the final touch of style in dialogue—is the only sure antidote against the opium of time. Now that Aeschylus is no longer performed as a playwright, we read him as a poet. But, on the other hand, we should remember that the main reason why he is no longer played is that his dramas do not fit the modern theatre,—an edifice totally different in size and shape and physical appointments from that in which his pieces were devised to be presented. In his own day he was not so much read as a poet as applauded in the theatre as a playwright; and properly to appreciate his dramatic, rather than his literary, appeal, we must reconstruct in our imagination the conditions of the theatre in his day. The point is that his plays, though planned primarily as drama, have since been shifted over, by many generations of critics and literary students, into the adjacent province of poetry; and this shift of the critical point of view, which has insured the immortality of Aeschylus, has been made possible only by the literary merit of his dialogue. When a play, owing to altered physical conditions, is tossed out of the theatre, it will find a haven in the closet only if it be greatly written. From this fact we may derive the practical maxim that though a skilful playwright need not write greatly in order to secure the plaudits of his own generation, he must cultivate a literary excellence if he wishes to be remembered by posterity.

This much must be admitted concerning the ultimate importance of the literary element in the drama. But on the other hand it must be granted that many plays that stand very high as drama do not fall within the range of literature. A typical example is the famous melodrama by Dennery entitled The Two Orphans. This play has deservedly held the stage for nearly a century, and bids fair still to be applauded after the youngest critic has died. It is undeniably a very good play. It tells a thrilling story in a series of carefully graded theatric situations. It presents nearly a dozen acting parts which, though scarcely real as characters, are yet drawn with sufficient fidelity to fact to allow the performers to produce a striking illusion of reality during the two hours' traffic of the stage. It is, to be sure—especially in the standard English translation—abominably written. One of the two orphans launches wide-eyed upon a soliloquy beginning, "Am I mad?... Do I dream?"; and such sentences as the following obtrude themselves upon the astounded ear,—"If you persist in persecuting me in this heartless manner, I shall inform the police." Nothing, surely, could be further from literature. Yet thrill after thrill is conveyed, by visual means, through situations artfully contrived; and in the sheer excitement of the moment, the audience is made incapable of noticing the pompous mediocrity of the lines.

In general, it should be frankly understood by students of the theatre that an audience is not capable of hearing whether the dialogue of a play is well or badly written. Such a critical discrimination would require an extraordinary nicety of ear, and might easily be led astray, in one direction or the other, by the reading of the actors. The rhetoric of Massinger must have sounded like poetry to an Elizabethan audience that had heard the same performers, the afternoon before, speaking lines of Shakespeare's. If Mr. Forbes-Robertson is reading a poorly-written part, it is hard to hear that the lines are, in themselves, not musical. Literary style is, even for accomplished critics, very difficult to judge in the theatre. Some years ago, Mrs. Fiske presented in New York an English adaptation of Paul Heyse's Mary of Magdala. After the first performance—at which I did not happen to be present—I asked several cultivated people who had heard the play whether the English version was written in verse or in prose; and though these people were themselves actors and men of letters, not one of them could tell me. Yet, as appeared later, when the play was published, the English dialogue was written in blank verse by no less a poet than Mr. William Winter. If such an elementary distinction as that between verse and prose was in this case inaudible to cultivated ears, how much harder must it be for the average audience to distinguish between a good phrase and a bad! The fact is that literary style is, for the most part, wasted on an audience. The average auditor is moved mainly by the emotional content of a sentence spoken on the stage, and pays very little attention to the form of words in which the meaning is set forth. At Hamlet's line, "Absent thee from felicity a while"—which Matthew Arnold, with impeccable taste, selected as one of his touchstones of literary style—the thing that really moves the audience in the theatre is not the perfectness of the phrase but the pathos of Hamlet's plea for his best friend to outlive him and explain his motives to a world grown harsh.

That the content rather than the literary turn of dialogue is the thing that counts most in the theatre will be felt emphatically if we compare the mere writing of Molière with that of his successor and imitator, Regnard. Molière is certainly a great writer, in the sense that he expresses clearly and precisely the thing he has to say; his verse, as well as his prose, is admirably lucid and eminently speakable. But assuredly, in the sense in which the word is generally used, Molière is not a poet; and it may fairly be said that, in the usual connotation of the term, he has no style. Regnard, on the other hand, is more nearly a poet, and, from the standpoint of style, writes vastly better verse. He has a lilting fluency that flowers every now and then into a phrase of golden melody. Yet Molière is so immeasurably his superior as a playwright that most critics instinctively set Regnard far below him even as a writer. There can be no question that M. Rostand writes better verse than Emile Augier; but there can be no question, also, that Augier is the greater dramatist. Oscar Wilde probably wrote more clever and witty lines than any other author in the whole history of English comedy; but no one would think of setting him in the class with Congreve and Sheridan.

It is by no means my intention to suggest that great writing is not desirable in the drama; but the point must be emphasised that it is not a necessary element in the immediate merit of a play as a play. In fact, excellent plays have often been presented without the use of any words at all. Pantomime has, in every age, been recognised as a legitimate department of the drama. Only a few years ago, Mme. Charlotte Wiehe acted in New York a one-act play, entitled La Main, which held the attention enthralled for forty-five minutes during which no word was spoken. The little piece told a thrilling story with entire clearness and coherence, and exhibited three characters fully and distinctly drawn; and it secured this achievement by visual means alone, with no recourse whatever to the spoken word. Here was a work which by no stretch of terminology could have been included in the category of literature; and yet it was a very good play, and as drama was far superior to many a literary masterpiece in dialogue like Browning's In a Balcony.

Lest this instance seem too exceptional to be taken as representative, let us remember that throughout an entire important period in the history of the stage, it was customary for the actors to improvise the lines that they spoke before the audience. I refer to the period of the so-called commedia dell'arte, which flourished all over Italy throughout the sixteenth century. A synopsis of the play—partly narrative and partly expository—was posted up behind the scenes. This account of what was to happen on the stage was known technically as a scenario. The actors consulted this scenario before they made an entrance, and then in the acting of the scene spoke whatever words occurred to them. Harlequin made love to Columbine and quarreled with Pantaloon in new lines every night; and the drama gained both spontaneity and freshness from the fact that it was created anew at each performance. Undoubtedly, if an actor scored with a clever line, he would remember it for use in a subsequent presentation; and in this way the dialogue of a comedy must have gradually become more or less fixed and, in a sense, written. But this secondary task of formulating the dialogue was left to the performers; and the playwright contented himself with the primary task of planning the plot.

The case of the commedia dell'arte is, of course, extreme; but it emphasises the fact that the problem of the dramatist is less a task of writing than a task of constructing. His primary concern is so to build a story that it will tell itself to the eye of the audience in a series of shifting pictures. Any really good play can, to a great extent, be appreciated even though it be acted in a foreign language. American students in New York may find in the Yiddish dramas of the Bowery an emphatic illustration of how closely a piece may be followed by an auditor who does not understand the words of a single line. The recent extraordinary development in the art of the moving picture, especially in France, has taught us that many well-known plays may be presented in pantomime and reproduced by the kinetoscope, with no essential loss of intelligibility through the suppression of the dialogue. Sardou, as represented by the biograph, is no longer a man of letters; but he remains, scarcely less evidently than in the ordinary theatre, a skilful and effective playwright. Hamlet, that masterpiece of meditative poetry, would still be a good play if it were shown in moving pictures. Much, of course, would be sacrificed through the subversion of its literary element; but its essential interest as a play would yet remain apparent through the unassisted power of its visual appeal.

There can be no question that, however important may be the dialogue of a drama, the scenario is even more important; and from a full scenario alone, before a line of dialogue is written, it is possible in most cases to determine whether a prospective play is inherently good or bad. Most contemporary dramatists, therefore, postpone the actual writing of their dialogue until they have worked out their scenario in minute detail. They begin by separating and grouping their narrative materials into not more than three or four distinct pigeon-holes of time and place,—thereby dividing their story roughly into acts. They then plan a stage-setting for each act, employing whatever accessories may be necessary for the action. If papers are to be burned, they introduce a fireplace; if somebody is to throw a pistol through a window, they set the window in a convenient and emphatic place; they determine how many chairs and tables and settees are demanded for the narrative; if a piano or a bed is needed, they place it here or there upon the floor-plan of their stage, according to the prominence they wish to give it; and when all such points as these have been determined, they draw a detailed map of the stage-setting for the act. As their next step, most playwrights, with this map before them, and using a set of chess-men or other convenient concrete objects to represent their characters, move the pieces about upon the stage through the successive scenes, determine in detail where every character is to stand or sit at nearly every moment, and note down what he is to think and feel and talk about at the time. Only after the entire play has been planned out thus minutely does the average playwright turn back to the beginning and commence to write his dialogue. He completes his primary task of play-making before he begins his secondary task of play-writing. Many of our established dramatists,—like the late Clyde Fitch, for example—sell their plays when the scenario is finished, arrange for the production, select the actors, and afterwards write the dialogue with the chosen actors constantly in mind.

This summary statement of the usual process may seem, perhaps, to cast excessive emphasis on the constructive phase of the playwright's problem; and allowance must of course be made for the divergent mental habits of individual authors. But almost any playwright will tell you that he feels as if his task were practically finished when he arrives at the point when he finds himself prepared to begin the writing of his dialogue. This accounts for the otherwise unaccountable rapidity with which many of the great plays of the world have been written. Dumas fils retired to the country and wrote La Dame aux Camélias—a four-act play—in eight successive days. But he had previously told the same story in a novel; he knew everything that was to happen in his play; and the mere writing could be done in a single headlong dash. Voltaire's best tragedy, Zaïre, was written in three weeks. Victor Hugo composed Marion Delorme between June 1 and June 24, 1829; and when the piece was interdicted by the censor, he immediately turned to another subject and wrote Hernani in the next three weeks. The fourth act of Marion Delorme was written in a single day. Here apparently was a very fever of composition. But again we must remember that both of these plays had been devised before the author began to write them; and when he took his pen in hand he had already been working on them in scenario for probably a year. To write ten acts in Alexandrines, with feminine rhymes alternating with masculine, was still, to be sure, an appalling task; but Hugo was a facile and prolific poet, and could write very quickly after he had determined exactly what it was he had to write.

It was with all of the foregoing points in mind that, in the opening sentence of this chapter, I defined a play as a story "devised," rather than a story "written." We may now consider the significance of the next phrase of that definition, which states that a play is devised to be "presented," rather than to be "read."

The only way in which it is possible to study most of the great plays of bygone ages is to read the record of their dialogue; and this necessity has led to the academic fallacy of considering great plays primarily as compositions to be read. In their own age, however, these very plays which we now read in the closet were intended primarily to be presented on the stage. Really to read a play requires a very special and difficult exercise of visual imagination. It is necessary not only to appreciate the dialogue, but also to project before the mind's eye a vivid imagined rendition of the visual aspect of the action. This is the reason why most managers and stage-directors are unable to judge conclusively the merits and defects of a new play from reading it in manuscript. One of our most subtle artists in stage-direction, Mr. Henry Miller, once confessed to the present writer that he could never decide whether a prospective play was good or bad until he had seen it rehearsed by actors on a stage. Mr. Augustus Thomas's unusually successful farce entitled Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots was considered a failure by its producing managers until the very last rehearsals, because it depended for its finished effect on many intricate and rapid intermovements of the actors, which until the last moment were understood and realised only in the mind of the playwright. The same author's best and most successful play, The Witching Hour, was declined by several managers before it was ultimately accepted for production; and the reason was, presumably, that its extraordinary merits were not manifest from a mere reading of the lines. If professional producers may go so far astray in their judgment of the merits of a manuscript, how much harder must it be for the layman to judge a play solely from a reading of the dialogue!

This fact should lead the professors and the students in our colleges to adopt a very tentative attitude toward judging the dramatic merits of the plays of other ages. Shakespeare, considered as a poet, is so immeasurably superior to Dryden, that it is difficult for the college student unfamiliar with the theatre to realise that the former's Antony and Cleopatra is, considered solely as a play, far inferior to the latter's dramatisation of the same story, entitled All for Love, or The World Well Lost. Shakespeare's play upon this subject follows closely the chronology of Plutarch's narrative, and is merely dramatised history; but Dryden's play is reconstructed with a more practical sense of economy and emphasis, and deserves to be regarded as historical drama. Cymbeline is, in many passages, so greatly written that it is hard for the closet-student to realise that it is a bad play, even when considered from the standpoint of the Elizabethan theatre,—whereas Othello and Macbeth, for instance, are great plays, not only of their age but for all time. King Lear is probably a more sublime poem than Othello; and it is only by seeing the two pieces performed equally well in the theatre that we can appreciate by what a wide margin Othello is the better play.

This practical point has been felt emphatically by the very greatest dramatists; and this fact offers, of course, an explanation of the otherwise inexplicable negligence of such authors as Shakespeare and Molière in the matter of publishing their plays. These supreme playwrights wanted people to see their pieces in the theatre rather than to read them in the closet. In his own lifetime, Shakespeare, who was very scrupulous about the publication of his sonnets and his narrative poems, printed a carefully edited text of his plays only when he was forced, in self-defense, to do so, by the prior appearance of corrupt and pirated editions; and we owe our present knowledge of several of his dramas merely to the business acumen of two actors who, seven years after his death, conceived the practical idea that they might turn an easy penny by printing and offering for sale the text of several popular plays which the public had already seen performed. Sardou, who, like most French dramatists, began by publishing his plays, carefully withheld from print the master-efforts of his prime; and even such dramatists as habitually print their plays prefer nearly always to have them seen first and read only afterwards.

In elucidation of what might otherwise seem perversity on the part of great dramatic authors like Shakespeare, we must remember that the master-dramatists have nearly always been men of the theatre rather than men of letters, and therefore naturally more avid of immediate success with a contemporary audience than of posthumous success with a posterity of readers. Shakespeare and Molière were actors and theatre-managers, and devised their plays primarily for the patrons of the Globe and the Palais Royal. Ibsen, who is often taken as a type of the literary dramatist, derived his early training mainly from the profession of the theatre and hardly at all from the profession of letters. For half a dozen years, during the formative period of his twenties, he acted as producing manager of the National Theatre in Bergen, and learned the tricks of his trade from studying the masterpieces of contemporary drama, mainly of the French school. In his own work, he began, in such pieces as Lady Inger of Ostråt, by imitating and applying the formulas of Scribe and the earlier Sardou; and it was only after many years that he marched forward to a technique entirely his own. Both Sir Arthur Wing Pinero and Mr. Stephen Phillips began their theatrical career as actors. On the other hand, men of letters who have written works primarily to be read have almost never succeeded as dramatists. In England, during the nineteenth century, the following great poets all tried their hands at plays—Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, and Tennyson—and not one of them produced a work of any considerable value from the standpoint of dramatic criticism. Tennyson, in Becket, came nearer to the mark than any of the others; and it is noteworthy that, in this work, he had the advantage of the advice and, in a sense, collaboration of Sir Henry Irving.

The familiar phrase "closet-drama" is a contradiction of terms. The species of literary composition in dialogue that is ordinarily so designated occupies a thoroughly legitimate position in the realm of literature, but no position whatsoever in the realm of dramaturgy. Atalanta in Calydon is a great poem; but from the standpoint of the theory of the theatre, it cannot be considered as a play. Like the lyric poems of the same author, it was written to be read; and it was not devised to be presented by actors on a stage before an audience.

We may now consider the significance of the three concluding phrases of the definition of a play which was offered at the outset of the present chapter. These phrases indicate the immanence of three influences by which the work of the playwright is constantly conditioned.

In the first place, by the fact that the dramatist is devising his story for the use of actors, he is definitely limited both in respect to the kind of characters he may create and in respect to the means he may employ in order to delineate them. In actual life we meet characters of two different classes, which (borrowing a pair of adjectives from the terminology of physics) we may denominate dynamic characters and static characters. But when an actor appears upon the stage, he wants to act; and the dramatist is therefore obliged to confine his attention to dynamic characters, and to exclude static characters almost entirely from the range of his creation. The essential trait of all dynamic characters is the preponderance within them of the element of will; and the persons of a play must therefore be people with active wills and emphatic intentions. When such people are brought into juxtaposition, there necessarily results a clash of contending desires and purposes; and by this fact we are led logically to the conclusion that the proper subject-matter of the drama is a struggle between contrasted human wills. The same conclusion, as we shall notice in the next chapter, may be reached logically by deduction from the natural demands of an assembled audience; and the subject will be discussed more fully during the course of our study of The Psychology of Theatre Audiences. At present it is sufficient for us to note that every great play that has ever been devised has presented some phase or other of this single, necessary theme,—a contention of individual human wills. An actor, moreover, is always more effective in scenes of emotion than in scenes of cold logic and calm reason; and the dramatist, therefore, is obliged to select as his leading figures people whose acts are motivated by emotion rather than by intellect. Aristotle, for example, would make a totally uninteresting figure if he were presented faithfully upon the stage. Who could imagine Darwin as the hero of a drama? Othello, on the other hand, is not at all a reasonable being; from first to last his intellect is "perplexed in the extreme." His emotions are the motives for his acts; and in this he may be taken as the type of a dramatic character.

In the means of delineating the characters he has imagined, the dramatist, because he is writing for actors, is more narrowly restricted than the novelist. His people must constantly be doing something, and must therefore reveal themselves mainly through their acts. They may, of course, also be delineated through their way of saying things; but in the theatre the objective action is always more suggestive than the spoken word. We know Sherlock Holmes, in Mr. William Gillette's admirable melodrama, solely through the things that we have seen him do; and in this connection we should remember that in the stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from which Mr. Gillette derived his narrative material, Holmes is delineated largely by a very different method,—the method, namely, of expository comment written from the point of view of Doctor Watson. A leading actor seldom wants to sit in his dressing-room while he is being talked about by the other actors on the stage; and therefore the method of drawing character by comment, which is so useful for the novelist, is rarely employed by the playwright except in the waste moments which precede the first entrance of his leading figure. The Chorus Lady, in Mr. James Forbes's amusing study of that name, is drawn chiefly through her way of saying things; but though this method of delineation is sometimes very effective for an act or two, it can seldom be sustained without a faltering of interest through a full-grown four-act play. The novelist's expedient of delineating character through mental analysis is of course denied the dramatist, especially in this modern age when the soliloquy (for reasons which will be noted in a subsequent chapter) is usually frowned upon. Sometimes, in the theatre, a character may be exhibited chiefly through his personal effect upon the other people on the stage, and thereby indirectly on the people in the audience. It was in this way, of course, that Manson was delineated in Mr. Charles Rann Kennedy's The Servant in the House. But the expedient is a dangerous one for the dramatist to use; because it makes his work immediately dependent on the actor chosen for the leading role, and may in many cases render his play impossible of attaining its full effect except at the hands of a single great performer. In recent years an expedient long familiar in the novel has been transferred to the service of the stage,—the expedient, namely, of suggesting the personality of a character through a visual presentation of his habitual environment. After the curtain had been raised upon the first act of The Music Master, and the audience had been given time to look about the room which was represented on the stage, the main traits of the leading character had already been suggested before his first appearance on the scene. The pictures and knickknacks on his mantelpiece told us, before we ever saw him, what manner of man he was. But such subtle means as this can, after all, be used only to reinforce the one standard method of conveying the sense of character in drama; and this one method, owing to the conditions under which the playwright does his work, must always be the exhibition of objective acts.

In all these general ways the work of the dramatist is affected by the fact that he must devise his story to be presented by actors. The specific influence exerted over the playwright by the individual performer is a subject too extensive to be covered by a mere summary consideration in the present context; and we shall therefore discuss it fully in a later chapter, entitled The Actor and the Dramatist.

At present we must pass on to observe that, in the second place, the work of the dramatist is conditioned by the fact that he must plan his plays to fit the sort of theatre that stands ready to receive them. A fundamental and necessary relation has always existed between theatre-building and theatric art. The best plays of any period have been fashioned in accordance with the physical conditions of the best theatres of that period. Therefore, in order fully to appreciate such a play as Oedipus King, it is necessary to imagine the theatre of Dionysus; and in order to understand thoroughly the dramaturgy of Shakespeare and Molière, it is necessary to reconstruct in retrospect the altered inn-yard and the converted tennis-court for which they planned their plays. It may seriously be doubted that the works of these earlier masters gain more than they lose from being produced with the elaborate scenic accessories of the modern stage; and, on the other hand, a modern play by Ibsen or Pinero would lose three-fourths of its effect if it were acted in the Elizabethan manner, or produced without scenery (let us say) in the Roman theatre at Orange.

Since, in all ages, the size and shape and physical appointments of the theatre have determined for the playwright the form and structure of his plays, we may always explain the stock conventions of any period of the drama by referring to the physical aspect of the theatre in that period. Let us consider briefly, for purposes of illustration, certain obvious ways in which the art of the great Greek tragic dramatists was affected by the nature of the Attic stage. The theatre of Dionysus was an enormous edifice carved out of a hillside. It was so large that the dramatists were obliged to deal only with subjects that were traditional,—stories which had long been familiar to the entire theatre-going public, including the poorer and less educated spectators who sat farthest from the actors. Since most of the audience was grouped above the stage and at a considerable distance, the actors, in order not to appear dwarfed, were obliged to walk on stilted boots. A performer so accoutred could not move impetuously or enact a scene of violence; and this practical limitation is sufficient to account for the measured and majestic movement of Greek tragedy, and the convention that murders and other violent deeds must always be imagined off the stage and be merely recounted to the audience by messengers. Facial expression could not be seen in so large a theatre; and the actors therefore wore masks, conventionalised to represent the dominant mood of a character during a scene. This limitation forced the performer to depend for his effect mainly on his voice; and Greek tragedy was therefore necessarily more lyrical than later types of drama.

The few points which we have briefly touched upon are usually explained, by academic critics, on literary grounds; but it is surely more sane to explain them on grounds of common sense, in the light of what we know of the conditions of the Attic stage. Similarly, it would be easy to show how Terence and Calderon, Shakespeare and Molière, adapted the form of their plays to the form of their theatres; but enough has already been said to indicate the principle which underlies this particular phase of the theory of the theatre. The successive changes in the physical aspect of the English theatre during the last three centuries have all tended toward greater naturalness, intimacy, and subtlety, in the drama itself and in the physical aids to its presentment. This progress, with its constant illustration of the interdependence of the drama and the stage, may most conveniently be studied in historical review; and to such a review we shall devote a special chapter, entitled Stage Conventions in Modern Times.

We may now observe that, in the third place, the essential nature of the drama is affected greatly by the fact that it is destined to be set before an audience. The dramatist must appeal at once to a heterogeneous multitude of people; and the full effect of this condition will be investigated in a special chapter on The Psychology of Theatre Audiences. In an important sense, the audience is a party to the play, and collaborates with the actors in the presentation. This fact, which remains often unappreciated by academic critics, is familiar to everyone who has had any practical association with the theatre. It is almost never possible, even for trained dramatic critics, to tell from a final dress-rehearsal in an empty house which scenes of a new play are fully effective and which are not; and the reason why, in America, new plays are tried out on the road is not so much to give the actors practice in their parts, as to determine, from the effect of the piece upon provincial audiences, whether it is worthy of a metropolitan presentation. The point is, as we shall notice in the next chapter, that since a play is devised for a crowd it cannot finally be judged by individuals.

The dependence of the dramatist upon his audience may be illustrated by the history of many important plays, which, though effective in their own age, have become ineffective for later generations, solely because they were founded on certain general principles of conduct in which the world has subsequently ceased to believe. From the point of view of its own period, The Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher is undoubtedly one of the very greatest of Elizabethan plays; but it would be ineffective in the modern theatre, because it presupposes a principle which a contemporary audience would not accept. It was devised for an audience of aristocrats in the reign of James I, and the dramatic struggle is founded upon the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Amintor, in the play, has suffered a profound personal injury at the hands of his sovereign; but he cannot avenge this individual disgrace, because he is a subject of the royal malefactor. The crisis and turning-point of the entire drama is a scene in which Amintor, with the king at his mercy, lowers his sword with the words:—

But there is Divinity about you, that strikes dead My rising passions: as you are my king, I fall before you, and present my sword To cut mine own flesh, if it be your will.

We may imagine the applause of the courtiers of James Stuart, the Presumptuous; but never since the Cromwellian revolution has that scene been really effective on the English stage. In order fully to appreciate a dramatic struggle, an audience must sympathise with the motives that occasion it.

It should now be evident, as was suggested at the outset, that all the leading principles of the theory of the theatre may be deduced logically from the axiom which was stated in the first sentence of this chapter; and that axiom should constantly be borne in mind as the basis of all our subsequent discussions. But in view of several important points which have already come up for consideration, it may be profitable, before relinquishing our initial question, to redefine a play more fully in the following terms:—

A play is a representation, by actors, on a stage, before an audience, of a struggle between individual human wills, motivated by emotion rather than by intellect, and expressed in terms of objective action.

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sorryyourenglishteachersucked · 2 years ago

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It boils down to the fact that it's easier to get smug and angry over aesthetics you ASSOCIATE with bad behavior than it is to address the behavior itself.

In this case, we examine the fact that there are obnoxious anti-intellectual types in online fandom spaces. This is, again, a fact. Say it's not true or it's deeper than that all you want, it won't change the fact that it's fairly easy to find people who say that Divergent is an Objectively Better book with fewer unfortunate implications than 1984 (ah yes, the series that can easily be read as being about how militarized law enforcement is a fun job for Cool Kids and cops are only bad when led astray by an evil shadowy faction of elites who control all the knowledge and being able to express more major personality traits than you see in others makes you innately genetically superior to everyone else and that's why they hate you, I see no potential unfortunate implications there whatsoever...but that's another breakdown for another day and no I am not accusing Veronica Roth nor anyone who liked the series of believing these potential implications to be literally true), and all adult literature is just stuffy old white men whining about their divorces.

But the leap from "these arguments are anti-intellectual, reductive, and even potentially dangerous when we're experiencing a silent cult boom (see: QAnon, antiscientific wellness mysticism, etc.) and seeing antivaxxers taken as seriously as actual epidemiologists" to "fanfiction and 'tropes' are DESTROYING literacy and no one knows how to engage with a text anymore like they USED to" is every bit as unsubstantiated and dangerous!

First of all, while the internet does have the potential to spread anti-intellectualism and conspiracy theories and misinformation to people who might otherwise have never gotten caught up in it (note the aforementioned cult boom, how antivaxx propaganda spread enough to be considered a "side", etc.), the impact isn't actually as major as it looks - there is an aspect of sampling error. A lot of things you see people say on the internet are things they were already thinking, but never said out loud where you could hear it before. The media critiques you would see used to be heavily curated - printed in their own special sections of newspapers and magazines, by educated professional critics. Fun fact: because of this, The Great Gatsby was critically panned in its time - because the people who were writing the critiques were part of the demographic being criticized by the text, and they recognized and hated this, they thought it was just a load of holier-than-thou jealous bullshit poking at made-up problems; the mostly-unheard common man's opinion turned out to be the one history generally agreed with.

Now, though, with social media, you hear a much broader sampling of everyone's thoughts. You no longer have to be a professional critic to publish your opinion, you can just head on over to tumblr or Twitter or TikTok to hear everyone's thoughts, from old-school professional critics, to paid shills presented as "professional critics", to 14-year olds so intensely burned out on their horrible English teacher's insistence that they memorize someone else's analysis to regurgitate The Singular Correct Answer for a standardized test that they'd rather eat a stinkbug than try to apply the analytical skills they're allegedly-but-not-actually being taught in their leisure time, to grown adults who never grew past that burnout and feel condescended to any time a story challenges them in any meaningful way.

All of those people, in some form or another, have existed all along. You just never heard from most of them before.

Second of all, if you're complaining about "tropes" destroying media...you are, in fact, the one who doesn't know what they're talking about. "Trope" is not a synonym for "cliche". People using them as "gotcha"s didn't invent the term. Tropes are just story elements - it's impossible to write a comprehensible story without any; that's the same as demanding food without ingredients. They are a useful tool for actual media analysis - one of many, yes; anyone who tries to tell you that they constitute an inherently better approach than any other is absolutely full of it, but that's just it - there are many equally valid and useful approaches to analyzing any story. Picking apart the building blocks and looking at where they came from and how else they've been used - which is what analysis by tropes is - is just as valid of an approach to finding meaning as looking at recurring motifs within a story.

Third of all, fun fact: reading trashy absolute hot garbage for fun is better for literacy than not reading for fun at all. In fact, I'll just leave this one to xkcd-

I'd like to find a corpus of writing from children in a non-self-selected sample (e.g. handwritten letters to the president from everyone in the same teacher's 7th grade class every year)--and score the kids today versus the kids 20 years ago on various objective measures of writing quality. I've heard the idea that exposure to all this amateur peer practice is hurting us, but I'd bet on the generation that conducts the bulk of their social lives via the written word over the generation that occasionally wrote book reports and letters to grandma once a year, any day.

Analyzing fiction is a skill that takes practice - just like sports basics, and just like basic-level literacy. You get the most practice when you're just out there having fun with it and casually integrating it into your daily life. Analyzing low-quality fiction, even with a singular and potentially reductive framework, won't destroy your ability to analyze fiction. All it will do is teach you where self-indulgent "garbage" works for you, and what will get really old and grating once you see it too many times, and how to tell the difference. Even someone who can only break a story down into its component tropes for the sake of determining what fanfics it's begging for, and nothing more, is still successfully, validly doing more literary analysis than someone who leaves a story with no thought other than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" - which is more or less how most people have approached stories throughout history.

(In fact, that's why I made this blog in the first place: to encourage using media that you find for fun to really intentionally build those skills instead of just...reaching the peak of Mount Stupid about them and from there getting into a bunch of horrible internet fights over inconsequential subjects that end in disaster far more consequential than blorbo wars. Because let's be honest - you're lucky if high school English actually taught you those skills instead of just making you memorize some sad facsimile thereof.)

It's easy to hate on these things because, yeah, on a superficial level, some people who do really obnoxious and even destructive things go absolutely wild for them. No shortage of loud voices treat fictional characters like real people, and real people like fictional characters, and get mad at you for knowing the difference, while claiming to be experts in literary analysis because they predicted what was going to be a popular ship once. Yes, TikTok is full of hot takes from burned-out teenagers who think that a poorly-written slash pwp is inherently more valuable toward resisting the status quo than The Great Gatsby ever was, and any historical context is just an excuse to make them read boring pointless dusty old nonsense. Yes, floating around the internet makes it frustratingly easy to find people who will argue, without a trace of irony, that Steven Universe is unapologetic fascist imperialist propaganda but Top Gun is just good harmless action fun, and a lot of them will very much be Fandom Types.

But this is very much a case of correlation not equalling causation, and focusing on the associated aesthetic instead of the actual problem renders you (1) at risk of falling into ALL kinds of reactionary neophobic garbage...and (2) even at best, kind of a huge pretentious jerk.

You're likely at your own peak of Mount Stupid.

I can't even describe to y'all how much the side of tumblr that's proud of like, not caring what "tropes" are, and thinking fan-fiction is of no value, is just a pile of pseudo-intellectual bullshit.

It's all based on assuming the intellectual high ground over Cringe Stupid People~ who only read repetitive fanfiction. Meanwhile i consume fuck all of "Media" aside from...spending Literally hours a day reading literary journals, academic publications, and ancient and medieval texts. I don't read fanfiction. I don't watch TV, as in "have never logged onto a netflix account in my life." I've read more of egyptian papyri, or ancient Greek poetry, or the fucking Annals of Tacitus in the last year than fanfiction.

Like do you want to start on the ✨intellectual high ground?✨ Do you really want to play "Who's read the most dead people?" Some of us are super mega goblin brain autistic and also devoting an education and career to this shit, hi.

Guess what, I don't give a flying fuck if someone wants to read 20 coffee shop AU's in a row of their favorite characters. It's not the collapse of the intellectual world. Everyone should do what makes them happy and read what makes them happy, we don't get long on this earth.

Fanfiction isn't inherently worse than any other kind of writing, it makes no sense to say so, and nothing you do is going to stop people from reading the stories they like. If you look at folklore studies, you'll see a lot of similar constructs to the ones we have to describe fanfiction. And tropes? Tropes have existed for a hell of a lot longer than "genre" has, they actually substantially describe stories, and the majority of "Real Book" readers consume the same tropes over and over in reading thrillers and romance with the same formulas.

"Ao3 tropes" are being used by bookstores, discussed in classrooms, and they will be used to understand how people in this time told stories, and acting like that's the death of art is bizarre. This stuff is fascinating and it's cool.

Also. People's reading choices absolutely weren't more erudite (or less horny) in The Past.

Do you think the "novels" people in the 18th century freaked out over were intellectual masterpieces? Do you think Greeks in ancient Athens somehow had some greater ability to discuss Literary Narrative Techniques than people now do? Do you think any rando common person on the street watching Shakespeare perform would have a super smart and educated take on the Themes Present Within The Text?

Maybe teens on tiktok failed 10th grade english class or whatever, but storytelling is a living creature millennia old, breathing in the lungs of people across centuries that, for the most part, couldn't even read. Telling stories and being told stories is human nature and that's just the coolest shit to me

#reblogs #literary analysis #anti intellectualism #mount stupid #correlation vs. causation #sorry your english teacher sucked

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bloojayoolie · 6 years ago

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Bad, Future, and I Bet: The five stages of red-pill 1. Generic conservative: The generic conservative realizes something about society doesn't quite sit right with him, there is a "gut feeling" that "something is wrong" with the way people conduct themselves in terms of behavioral norms, moral standards and so on. However, he is unable to articulate his opposition to liberalism outside of a liberal context and accepts liberal principles such as a belief in the moral goodness of equality as taken for granted, so liberals generally run rings around him Typical argument: "First gay marriage, what next? Pedos marrying kids? Bestiality?" Typical liberal response: "Slippery slope fallacy much? They said the same thing about black people being allowed to vote 2. Libertarian: The libertarian takes his opposition to liberalism and tries to establish a philosophical foundation for most "generic conservatives" do not merely voice their opposition to the perceived speaking, the libertarian takes this sm impracticality of liberal plans, economic tep further and l framework of one based around economic freedom t degree, he is capable of attacking the current system effectively, but utterly ineffective in challenging it morally or ethically since libertarianism tends to adopt a non-interference attitude to ethics and Typical argument: "You do not right have to right to appropriate other people's wealth. Taxation is theft. Typical liberal response: "Tell that to the Scandinavian states that achieve so much with high tax rates. I bet you believe in creationism too." 3. The radical right Most people on the right stop at stage 2 of the red pill process, those who dig deeper go further however start to realize that something isn't quite right about libertarianism's general refusal (outside of people like Hoppe) to take a moral stand against degeneracy. This leads them to unorthodox political philosophies that stand well beyond the pale of acceptability, such as fascism. For the first time in their lives, they start to articulate moral and ethical opposition to liberal principles rather tha pical argument: "if you import third world people, you import third world problems. We need to act for our people and our Nation, not for Jews, Blacks or Hispanics res 4. Traditionalism: efourthstage is traditionalism. The red-pilled individ soteric (by present day ra ards ua erarc rea entire trajectory for the past two centuries s Revolt of 1789 has been disastrous. Typically the traditionalist will identify with traditional modes of European government IC ical arqument: simply point out the error of principle that has provided the foundation of this constitution and that has led the French astray since the first moment of their revolution. ons like its predecessors, has been drawn up for Man. Now, there is no such thing in the world as Man. In the course of my life, I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc. I am even aware, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But, as for Man, I declare that I have never met him in my life. If he exists, I certainly have no This constitution is capable of being applied to all human communities from China to Geneva. But a constitution which is made for all nations is made for none: it is a pure abstraction, a school exercise whose purpose is to exercise the mind in accordance with a hypothetical ideal, and which ought to be addressed to Man, in the imaginary places which he inhabits.. What is a constitution? Is it not the solution to the following problem: to find the laws that are fitting for a particular nation given its population, its customs, its religion, its geographical situation, its political relations, its wealth, and its good and bad Now, this problem is not addressed at all by the Constitution of 1795, which is concerned only with Man. Typical liberal response: Imao so u think women shouldn't vote 'n shiet? Get with the times grandpa xD It's 2016, not 1816 5. Hoppean Libertarianism The fifth and final stage of the red pill is Hoppe libertarianism. Realizing the traditionalist morals of old would not be sufficient to guide a modern society, not to mention its penchant for coercion, the red-pilled individual will seek guidance in the works of Austrian economist Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Alas, Dr Hoppe's works on why monarchy is better suited to protect individual rights than democracy will certainly capture the attention of the now-traditionalist 4th-stage-pilled individual. Even more, Dr. Hoppe's conclusions that there can be no tolerance towards democrats, socialists, communists or any other collectivist mindset in the free society will seduce the red-pilled individual into realizing a world composed of thousands of different privately-owned microstates would usher in a prosperous and glorious age Typical argument: "Predictably, under democratic conditions the tendency of every monopoly to increase prices and decrease quality - will be only more pronounced. Instead of a prince who regards the s private property, a temporary caretaker is put in charge of the country. He does not own the country, but as long as he is in office he is permitted to use it to his and his proteges' advantage. He owns its current use usufruct but not its capital stock. This will not eliminate exploitation. To the contrary, it will make exploitation less calculating and carried out with little or no regard to the capital stock, i short-sighted. Moreover, the perversion of justice will proceed even faster now. Instead of protecting pre-existing private property rights, democratic government becomes a machine for the redistribution of xisting property rights in the name of illusory social security A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person but falls instead into the same moral category a domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a "free good") or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but...who knowingly act wrongly... [Blesides having to be tamed or even physically defeated [they] must also be punished... to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future imal of either the harmless sort (to be Private property capitalism and egalitarian multiculturalism are a cultural conservatism. And in trying to combine what cannot be combined, much of the modern libertarian movement actually contributed to the further erosion of private property rights (just as much of contemporary conservatism contributed to the erosion of families and traditional morals). What the countercultural libertari that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social "discrimination" and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multicultural-egalitarian life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarians. In other words, libertarians must be radical and uncompromising conservatives ely a combination as socialism and iled to recognize, and what true libertarians cannot emphasize enough, is ilies, authority, communities, and social ranks are the empirical-sociological concretization of the abstract philosophical-praxeological categories and concepts of property, production, exchange, and contract. Property and property relations do not e apart from families and kinship relations." Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference. And cultural relativism is incompatible with the fundamental-indeed foundationalfact of families and intergenerational kinship relations inship relations imply cultural absolutism. Typical liberal response: None. This degenerate would've already been employed as a consumer good or been physically removed from society

#funny #lol #humor #memes #meme #memehumor #dank memes #funny pics #rolf #lmao #Bad #Future #and I Be

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years ago

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04/06/2021 DAB Transcript

Deuteronomy 29:1-30:20, Luke 11:37-12:7, Psalms 78:1-31, Proverbs 12:19-20

Today is April 6th welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it's great to be here with you today as we continue moving into this month. And there’s a lot going on in the first part of this month, right? We move into the fourth month and then we had Good Friday and Easter. And, so, we’re just kinda moving just a couple of days from there. So, just getting settled into the month of April, a month where the seasons change. And here in the northern hemisphere where I live in the United States in the rolling hills of Tennessee, new life begins to spring forth for sure, in earnest. And, so, that's where we find ourselves, I guess in the year. In the Bible we find ourselves in the book of Deuteronomy, which is the last book of the Torah or the Pentateuch and we are nearing the last part of that book. We will finish that book this…well…at the end of this week. So, let's dive in and listen to what Moses continues to say, how he continues to present who the people are, where they've come from, who God is and where they're going lest they ever forget so that Moses departs history knowing that…that on his watch, his conscience is clear. Today, Deuteronomy chapters 29 and 30.

Commentary:

Okay. We need to talk about some things from the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy and from the gospel of Luke as well because they…they both…like right in our face today offering us the chance to examine ourselves. So…so, in the book of Deuteronomy Moses is…is kind of reaching the conclusion of the things that he has to say. And we know this. We’ve said it a bunch of times this is the last things that he does have to say. And, so, as he's sort of reaching a bit of a crescendo, he says words to the people, but these words aren’t only just for those people they are for future generations and they still apply. And, so, these are Moses words. “This command that I give you today is certainly not too difficult or beyond your reach. It’s not in heaven, so that somebody has”…and I’m paraphrasing here…”so that somebody has to go up to heaven and get. It’s not on the other side of the sea so that somebody has to travel to the other side of the sea to get it. The message is very near you. It’s in your mouth, it’s your hearts so that you can follow it. So, see today I have set before you, life and prosperity and death and adversity. I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set it before you, life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live. Love the Lord your God and obey Him and remain faithful to Him, for He is your life, and He will prolong your days as you live in the land.” So, like there’s all kinds of things we could talk about but can we just make it simple. This is your choice. Okay. You have a choice and it's not too hard. Choose to live. And we make that choice by being obedient, by following the path, the…the narrow path that leads to life. That's the way Jesus will describe it. That is the objective here, that we love God with all of our heart, and that we love each other as ourselves.

When we turn to the gospel of Luke and come back alongside Jesus He is having a confrontation with the religious leaders, the people responsible for what we just said, the people that are responsible to remind everybody to choose life and to love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves. These are the people that oppose Jesus. These are the people Jesus opposes because He opposes what they’re doing. These are the religious instructors and leaders. These are the people that think they have it figured out. These are the people who think they can speak on behalf of God and control the people while doing it. I mean there's a lot of parallels, there’s just a lot of things that still are in the world today that Jesus would probably oppose in the same way. And what is He ultimately upset about? He’s upset that the people are being deceived and led astray. And He…He’s exasperated with the hypocrisy of it. And, so, I quote again from the Scriptures, this time from the lips of Jesus instead of Moses, “woe to you Pharisees, you give a tenth of mint, rue, and every kind of herb and you bypass justice and love for God. These things you should have done without neglecting the others.” In other words, you're giving and denying justice at the same time. How’s that gonna work out? Then He goes on. “Woe to you Pharisees, you love the front seat in the synagogue and the greetings in the marketplace.” In other words, you love to be seen. You love to be acknowledged for your position, but you are not obedient to your position. You are not doing what you were ordained or commissioned to do. You’re like unmarked graves. People could walk over it and not even know. So, at this point…point in the story, there’s like a scribe, an expert in the law, a teacher of the law who’s was like, “you know, when you say this stuff that's kind of offensive to us too.” And, so, he's just…he just goes there. “Woe to you experts, you people that think you’ve got it all figured out a know it. Woe to you. You are loading the people with burdens that are hard to carry and you're not willing to carry your own burden, not even with one of your fingers. You've taken away the key to knowledge. You didn't go in and you hindered everyone else from trying to go in.” Okay. We can read that and we can see Jesus confrontation with the religious leaders and we can just kind of like offset them as the antagonistic people in the story or we can understand like this is an opportunity to look in the mirror. How much do we flaunt our religion? Being an expert? Knowing everything? Throwing versus at people to…to control them in some way or another? Throwing versus at people to be right? Posting things to be right? Like our heart isn’t after redemption at all. It's to be right and to be seen. If that strikes, like if that lands anywhere near home then we need to understand that hard as that might be to swallow, we’re looking an awful lot like a Pharisee. But we have a choice. We get to collaborate. We get to participate.

And the call today coming out of the book of Deuteronomy is that we choose to live, that we choose life, that we choose this narrow path that leads to life, that we understand there is only one source of life. And, so, there is only one place to go for life. If we could get…get that to land, then maybe we could shift our orientation and understand that running hard after God is the only option to live. Everything else is us trying to be our own sovereign, and how…like…like when we learn our lesson? Like, how many walls do we have to hit? How many pits do we have to fall into? When do we learn this? What would be the downside of going for it? What would be the downside of saying, “that's it, nothing else will distract me, I will not turn to the right or the left. I will love the Lord my God with all of my heart. And in the process, I will love everyone around me as He does because this isn’t my story to tell. I’m a part of something greater and when my chapters told, I want my chapter to read that I was deeply in love with my Father, and we shared a grand adventure together.

Prayer:

Father, we enter into these things. These…these things are actually pretty probing and…and convicting even. They bring us to a point of consideration, and we invite Your Holy Spirit into these things so that we might repent, so that we might change, change our minds and move in a different direction, one that seeks after You and only You, knowing You are the source of life itself. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

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dailyaudiobible.com is home base, and it's the website, it’s where you find out what's going on around here. And there’s always something or another.

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And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement there are a number of numbers that you can dial. But first, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the red button up at the top in the app that looks like a button, the red one, a hotline button. You can press that and share from anywhere in the world. If you are preferring to use the dial, like the telephone, in the Americas 877-942-4253 is the number. In the UK or Europe 44-20-3608-8078 is the number to dial. And if you are in Australia or that part of the world 61-3-8820-5459 is the number to call.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey, it's Corey up in __ I just finished listening to the DAB today and man I'm…I…I'm in a good mood. Beloved I think it is in Texas, your call about messing yourself it brought some very needed laughs to me. I was on my way to work and I am in tears laughing at that one, laughing with you not at you. It's been the hardest stretch lately for me and my family and, woah, that one lifted my spirits today on the way to work. So, I appreciate your vulnerability and honesty. That was awesome. Hilarious. So, thank you for your call. I just appreciate you. Alright guys. Thanks. Bye.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family this is Renzo from Florida. I just want to pray for this lady that called up about her son Micah that is just struggling. He doesn't know You Lord and is not a believer. I just want to pray for him. Father God I just thank You for everything that You give to us Lord. I thank You for the ability to just pray for people that are in this Daily Audio Bible community, Lord. And just please just help Micah to just accept You as Your Lord and savior. Please help him accept You as Lord and we just thank You for everything You do Lord. Thank You for sending Your son down on the cross for us. Thank You, Jesus for everything You do for us. And just please just help his mom just keep praying for him and trusting in the Lord. And please help them to just have faith that surpasses all understanding. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Jesus loves you guys. I’m praying for you guys. God bless.

Happy Good Friday DABbers this is Colette calling from California I hope that your day is going as well as it could be knowing that our Lord and savior Jesus Christ gave up His life so that we could have life. I'd like to make a comment regarding the sister who shared the funny story with us of her sitting on a zoom call and thinking that she was quietly just going to express herself and ended up sitting in her own mess. At the risk of spiritualizing that scenario some things did occur to me, that there were some biblical principles in that and there are oftentimes we are making decisions and we end up sitting in our own mess because we did not consult the Lord. Something as simple as, “well I'm not going to claim that on my taxes” and then we get audited and end up sitting in our own mess. “O I think I'll just date him I know he doesn't know the Lord and I know about you know being unequally yoked, but I think it'll be OK” and it blows up in our faces. So, we end up doing what? Sitting in our own mess. I'm sure each of you can think about a scenario where you made your own decision outside of Gods, you know, principles and values and we end up sitting in our own mess. So, thank you sister for sharing that story. I did get quite a giggle out of it and certainly brought to mind a lot of lessons as well. God bless everyone.

Hey DAB family this is Brookie 545 I’m just calling to pray for some people from April 3rd. Victoria Soldier we just continue to lift up your sister-in-law who's in the hospital for healing and your nephew who's in jail. Lord we ask that You just unite this family and just create a peace and just Your serenity over this time. Lord we just pray for repentance where it needs to be in her nephew and we just ask for her sister-in-law just to trust You Lord with her son's life. And we lift up Victor to You, Delta Alpha Foxtrots friend who is in the hospital suffering from covid who just went into incubation. Lord You are the ultimate healer. Holy Spirit just guide the doctors with wisdom and knowledge. Give peace to the family. God we are just asking for a miracle that this man walks out of the hospital healthy and alive. Lord I also lift up sparky from Texas to You and praise God that they found out why he was depressed, the testosterone levels. God I just pray that You give the doctors wisdom and knowledge to find the correct treatment, to correct his depression and whatever else is ailing. And Lord I just thank You that his family has been so supportive. Lord we just trust You going forward in this process and again I just praise You for those answers. And God I also lift up Mattie to You. I thank You that she is so focused and wanting to persevere in school and work with this new job. God I just ask that You give her calmness, peace, wisdom, perseverance and just trust in You that You are going to work all things for good. I pray that You bring the right people in her life to come alongside her in this time, that You give her good community and we just trust You in the process. Amen.

Good morning this is Donna from California and I woke up with Mommy's Little Rock from Arkansas on my mind this morning. You had called in on April 1st lost your mom a few months ago, your beloved mom. I'm so sorry for your loss. I was reminded though of the passage in scripture about when Jesus was on the cross. I'll just read it. It's so beautiful and it's a very good day to be reading it it's Holy Saturday. When Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple who he loved standing nearby he said to her, woman here is your son and to the disciple here is your mother. From that time on this disciple took her into his home. And you know, you've got…we are all your mom, where all your mom's here and we’ll never take the place of your own mom, your…your flesh and blood mom but we are all each others…we all belong to each other and I just wanted to reach out to you and tell you that that's the beauty of…of being a part of a community such as this. We…we have sons and daughters, we have moms, we have dads, we have brothers and sisters. It's a big family. It's a wonderful family. And I just…I send you a great big hug. The other thing I would encourage is, I don't know if you have earthly children, but you do have children here. Reach out to them too. Be the mom for them. And I hope you have a beautiful resurrection day.

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lepeintre-louis-david · 4 years ago

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dIt fell to one of his (David’s) rivals in the arts, to Vincent- who always retained an unalterable esteem for his colleague- to unmask the lie. He replied to the editor:

Paris, 27 April, 1792

Sir, I have just read in the supplement to your newspaper of Tuesday, April 24, a letter which was addressed to you under the name and with the supposed signature of M. Ritt, exhibiting artist. A letter which was indeed sent to the curating judges for the funded works (1).

I will not allow myself any reflection on the content of the letter; I will limit myself to telling you that this letter signed Ritt cannot be from him, since he left for Saint-Petersburg towards the middle of last February.

I leave you to consider, Sir, what manner of character carries out forged writing and signature, and I have no doubt that you will hasten to repair, in your next issue, an error into which you were led astray and which has been spread through your paper.

Vincent Of the Académie de peinture

But David was more truly in love with glory than with wealth and, satisfied with the proof of esteem he had just received, he sent the President of the National Assembly a new withdrawal (nb: from being awarded funding) in the following terms:

2 May 1792, Year IV of Liberty

M. President,

Having obtained from my colleagues the commissioner-judges the maximum prize awarded to works of painting and sculpture, etc., as decreed by the National Assembly, I experienced the lively sentiment produced by the free suffrage between competitors; but having obtained all that can be desired by the man whose glory is his only need I hasten to beg the National Assembly to find it good that I should renounce a prize which, adding nothing to encourage me furthert, and which, being (instead) distributed amongst several artists whose talents are already worthy, would support in them tendencies which they could not otherwise develop for lack of opportunity.

Convinced that the term of ‘encouragement’ contained in the decree should solely apply to these artists, I thought that having already had works ordered by the nation, such as that representing the Serment du Jeu de Pomme (Tennis Court Oath), I couldn't accept these others, as that would be a violation of the law forbidding the accumulation of several advantages by the same person.

However, my colleagues, in spite of my formal renunciation and the reasons which I explained to them, awarded me the maximum which they fixed at 7,000 livres.

By persisting in my refusal, I think. M. President, that the National Assembly would render a real service to art, for which this sum is intended, if it authorised the commissioner-judges to divide this sum of 7,000 livres into three portions, including one of 3,000 livres and two of 2,000 livres. This provision will increase the number of artists to be funded and will decrease the regret felt by the commissioners at not having been able to do justice to all those who deserved it, the number of which were limited by the decree.

I am, with respect etc.

David

(1) I’m translating a little liberally here, as the French is literally les travaux d'encouragement. However, since a direct translation in English wouldn’t make sense, I’ve translated with a view to the purpose: that is, to award government funding to support (’encourage’) various artists.

#jacques-louis david #art history #révolution française #ch3_lpld

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mr-kiwi-the-wizard · 2 years ago

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Susen stood before her mentor, Lord Magius Augury the Blue, in her white novice vestments. Ready to receive his blessings for her journey. Augury looked the young girl up and down while stroking is white beard. He was a mage of Blue, of Order, of Law. But his ward walked a different path to his own. It did not come as a shock when she spoke to him last night. Seeking permission to explore the world as it is now. For if the goddess, Mercy truly did save humanity then the others who were among them must be elsewhere. Including the child's parents.

*It would seem she is to become a true priest in the sense of the word.*

"It is important, young Acolyte.” He paused to see if there was a shift in her eyes. That she was truly listning. “For any member of the order of white to journey and see the world through their own eyes before settling in place. It is even more important now as we are unaware of the fate of the rest of our kind. This new land has so far been fraught with hardship and strife. The journey you must undertake will not be an easy one." The Lord Magius removes a well polished silver sceptre from the mantle behind him. It is adorned with gemstones and well weighted at the top. A glamorous sign of office. But notably also a formidable weapon given its enchantment.

"Susen, Acolyte of the way of white. The time for your journey has now come. There is little more of the holy magics that i can teach you.“ He hands her the sceptre. Its weight is clearly apparent. ”So it now falls to you to be a beacon of light in the darkest places of this world.

Are you ready child?"

Susen nods and hangs the sceptre from her belt.

"Very well I shall now go over your final lesson on the holy magics of spirit. Understanding what i am about to tell you and applying it first hand shall start you off truely on your path to becoming a White Magius."

The church had no lighting from fire nor candles. It was unnaturally lit by magic indefinitely. Casting no shadows. Despite this, the magics the old man began to incant filled the room with brilliant blue light. Plumes of colourful smoke began to weave around his hands as he held them out in front of him and in his hand appeared a small box. Inside lay, several neatly placed bottles and herbs as well as a small object wrapped in cloth. She removed the object and unwrapped it to reveal a silvery icon of an angelic woman. She was of the likeness of the Goddess Mercy no less and In her hands she held a brilliant white gem.

"Its beautiful master but what is it exactly? Its not made of pure silver. And this stone is not a diamond i'm familiar with."

"It is a Mythril statuette of Lady Mercy carrying a white dragonstone, my child. Should you find Lady Luna's duty has led astray malicious or corrupt souls into the world of the living. Hold aloft the holy symbol and incant those words she spoke upon the day that she died."

*The day that she died.*

It has felt like many years now but really. It has only been a few months since that night. When she saw Lady Mercy. Goddess of the way of white and sister to the Moon Goddess Luna standing atop the hill in the far distance. And incant that one single word.

“Survive.”

The Dragonstone held by the statuette begins to shine with holy brilliance as the room became a pale white for only a split second.

She nodded to Augury and placed it back inside the box..

"Thank you Master."

"You are welcome, my child. I have raised you as my pupil since you were only little to prepare you to serve the Gods as a Magius. I know you will serve the Goddess well for us."

She hugged the old Mage and left the church with the box in hand.

The old Mage stroked his beard once more.

*Of all the gods that stayed behind, girl. Why choose the one who has left this world for good?*

It was dark. Darker than most nights. The sky had gone crimson red with clouds swirling overhead. Black soot and ash covered the sky blotting out the moon's light. My white robe was beginning to stain black with soot. My mind was hazy and the world around me was spinning. I was unsure where I was. I was uncertain if I cared. This place felt familiar though. Wooden floor boards next to stone. I could see the stone embrasures in the torch light let off by the walls braziers. There was commotion around me. There was screaming. Soldiers in metal and cloth were rushing back and forth trying to defend the wall from the darkness beyond. I could hear the roar of distant beasts. I stopped and stared out across the frigid landscape from were i stood to get my bearings and could see nothing more than silhouettes and a dark plume of smoke towering so high the distance, as if its were some eldritch monster seeking to blanket the world in darkness. suddenly I feel a pressure on my ears and see a flash of fantastic light from the darkness within the black plume. Suddenly my ears pop as the light explodes outwards annihilating all In It's path; Men, beast, friend, foe. And as it was about to strike us I hear a whisper.

"Survive"

****

I wake up in a cold sweat. My bedsheets were hot and stuffy. I threw them off and cradled my head as reality flooded back into focus. I hear a knock on my door and a familiar voice echos in.

"Susen? Are you ok?"

"I… I'm fine." I manage. The door creaking open for a helmeted warrior to poke her face in with a lit candle in hand.

"You sure? You screamed quite loudly." The warrior entered the chamber, sword in one hand and a candle in the other.

"I'm fine Harriet… it was… that nightmare again."

Harriet put her sword away as she walked over and placed the candle on the bedside table. She sat down next to her mistress with a serious look on her face which slowly gave way to tears. She took her into a deep embrace, holding tightly.

"Don't worry Mistress, the worst has come to pass, I'm here to protect you ."

"Thank you Harriet. I think I can go back to sleep now."

"I'll be right here if you need me Mistress." As she stood up at attention. Susen laid back in bed and pulled her bed sheets back on her while Harriet stood watch in the room a little longer before leaving to her post outside the door. She stared through the large window that peered into the horizon. Looking at the moonlit night and the great maelstrom in the far distance that was once their home. The worst has come to pass but there was still much to come.

#lorecraft: tales from drakken #writing

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safetyteam · 5 years ago

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What are TERFs and Why the Safety Team is Not

Darcy Richardson

You may have seen it. The acronym is certainly getting a lot of attention in the last week in a time when the world is, and should be, lifting up the voices and lives of the black community. So, what does it mean?

TERF is an acronym that stands for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist and was credited as being coined by Viv Smythe who wrote about it in a blog post regarding the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's policy of denying admittance to transwomen. She denies that she was the one who originally came up with the term.

Nowadays members of this philosophy also use the term “gender critical.” This form of “feminism” excludes transwomen because “gender critical feminism” is not gender focused, it’s sex focused.

Gender critical or TERFs apply their “feminism” only on those born with female genitalia and assigned female at birth. This reductive view of what makes a woman a woman has a lot of overlap with good old-fashioned misogyny. In fact, TERF activist groups like The Women’s Liberation Front have joined forces with anti-women groups to oppose transgender rights and in the process fought for laws that reduce the right of cisgender girls and women.

One such movement has been focused on the use of bathrooms and school sports. Forgive me if I fail to see how forcing girls to show their genitalia to play soccer is feminist in any way.

It should go without saying but reducing women to their genitalia is not progressive.

In fact, it’s something feminists have fought against for decades. A girl does not become a woman just because she has started menstruating. An older woman does not cease to become a woman because she hit menopause. Some cisgender women (those assigned female at birth who agree with that designation) don’t menstruate. That doesn’t make them less of a woman. This is the same attitude that causes breast cancer survivors to feel less of a woman when they’ve had a mastectomy, or women who’ve struggled with infertility or those who have had hysterectomies. It also completely ignores the reality of intersex individuals.

We have seen our healthcare argued against in our politics. In fact, the fight is still ongoing as politicians wade into health policy to interject their opinions into health care that should only be between a woman and her doctors, and doctors deny female (especially black female) pain. This happens because health care for those parts that gender critical “feminists” are so focused on are considered “other.”

But maybe I’m just upset because I’m on my period, right?

Gender critical “feminists” often object to the term TERF because they say they don’t exclude all transgender people, only transwomen. This seeming acceptance of transmen into the fold is also rooted in misogyny. Not only does it deny these men their identification and reality, they do so in a paternalistic attitude that infantilizes women. These poor deluded “women” have succumbed to societal pressure to not like women and so have transitioned to become a man. This attitude denies the right of women to know their own mind. They can’t possibly be stating their reality, they have only been led astray by outside forces.

Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, darling.

Transwomen meanwhile are often portrayed as sexual predators or agents of the patriarchy trying to invade female spaces. But this ignores the reality that cisgender men are rarely punished for being sexual predators or for violence against women. This focus on transwomen as dangerous marginalizes an already marginalized group but also acts as a distraction from the fact that cisgender men are the greatest risk to women.

Thankfully, this movement is not considered the face of feminism in the United States. However, it has become the prevalent voice in the UK. Enter J.K Rowling, who not only chose a time of great civil rights momentum with the ongoing protests in support of black lives, but also chose Pride month to voice toxic attitudes that hurt the trans and intersex community, and ultimately cisgender women themselves. A response and factcheck by the advocacy group Mermaid UK can be found here.

On June 12th, 2020 during Pride month and on the 4th anniversary of the Pulse shooting that killed 49 members of the LGBTQ+ community, the current administration announced they had rolled back healthcare protections for the LGBTQ+ community and women seeking abortions. These have real world consequences like the preventable death of Tyra Hunter, who was denied emergency help when she was in a car crash simply because she was trans.

Transwomen are at even greater risk for sexual violence than cisgender women. In addition, they face the very real risk of violence and discrimination based on their very existence. The gay/trans panic defense for crime up to and including murder has only been outlawed in eight states.

Our trans sisters are in danger.

The Safety Team’s belief is, and always has been, that women deserve the right to walk the world safely. We have a right to take up space and be heard. And for that reason, cis and trans girls and women are always welcome in our classes. To be very clear we are a gender focused organization.

To all the trans girls/women and nonbinary individuals out there, your existence matters. You have the right to be safe, and walk the world without fear, and we’ll help you fight.

More information and resources can be found in the links below:

https://www.pridecentervt.org/

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

https://www.translifeline.org/

http://www.outrightvt.org/

#transrightsarehumanrights translivesmatter transwomenarewomen

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dfroza · 5 years ago

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A warning against liars

is seen in Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the Letter of 2nd Peter with chapter #2:

In the past there arose false prophets among God’s people, just as there will continue to be false teachers who will secretly infiltrate in your midst to divide you, bringing with them their destructive heresies. They will even deny the Master, who paid the price for them, bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow immoral lifestyles. Because of these corrupt false teachers, the way of truth will be slandered. They are only out for themselves, ready to exploit you for their own gain through their cunning arguments. Their condemnation has been a long time coming. But their destruction does not slumber or sit idly by, for it is sure to come.

Now, don’t forget, God had no pity for the angels when they sinned but threw them into the lowest, darkest dungeon of gloom and locked them in chains, where they are firmly held until the judgment of torment.

And he did not spare the former world in the days of Noah when he sent a flood to destroy a depraved world (although he protected Noah, the preacher of righteousness, along with seven members of his family).

And don’t forget that he reduced to ashes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, condemning them to ruin and destruction. God appointed them to be examples as to what is coming to the ungodly. Yet he rescued a righteous man, Lot, suffering the indignity of the unbridled lusts of the lawless. For righteous Lot lived among them day after day, distressed in his righteous soul by the rebellious deeds he saw and heard.

If the Lord Yahweh rescued Lot, he knows how to continually rescue the godly from their trials and to reserve the ungodly for punishment on the day of judgment. And this especially applies to those who live their lives despising authorities and who abandon themselves to chasing the depraved lusts of their flesh.

They are willfully arrogant and insolent, unafraid to insult the glorious ones. Yet even angels, who are greater than they in power and strength, do not dare slander them before the Lord. These individuals are nothing but brute beasts—irrational creatures, born in the wild to be caught and destroyed—and they will perish like beasts. They are professional insulters, who slander whatever they don’t understand, and in their destruction they will be destroyed. For all the evil they have done will come crashing down on them. They consider it their great pleasure to carouse in broad daylight. When they come to your love feasts they are but stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions as they feast with you. They are addicted to adultery, with eyes that are insatiable, with sins that never end. They seduce the vulnerable and are experts in their greed—they are but children of a curse!

They have wandered off the main road and have gone astray, because they are prophets who love profit—the wages they earn by wrongdoing. They are following the example of Balaam, son of Beor, who was rebuked for evil by a donkey incapable of speech yet that spoke with a human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.

These people are dried-up riverbeds, waterless clouds pushed along by stormy winds—the deepest darkness of gloom has been prepared for them. They spout off with their grandiose, impressive nonsense. Consumed with the lusts of the flesh, they lure back into sin those who recently escaped from their error. They promise others freedom, yet they themselves are slaves to corruption, for people are slaves to whatever overcomes them.

Those who escape the corrupting forces of this world system through the experience of knowing about our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Messiah, then go back into entanglement with them and are defeated by them, becoming worse off than they were to start with. It would have been much better for them never to have experienced the way of righteousness than to know it and then turn away from the sacred obligation that was given to them. They become illustrations of the true proverb:

A dog will return to his own vomit

and a washed pig to its rolling in the mud.

The Letter of 2nd Peter, Chapter 2 (The Passion Translation)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments continues with the theme of justice and integrity with chapter 19 of the book of Leviticus:

The Eternal One spoke to Moses.

Eternal One: Go, talk with the community of Israel, and tell them that they are to be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy. I want all of you to honor your mothers and fathers and keep My Sabbaths, for I am the Eternal your God. Do not turn from Me to follow useless idols or cast metal images of other gods, for I am the Eternal your God.

When you sacrifice a peace offering to Me, present it correctly so you are accepted. Your peace offering should be consumed the same day you present it or the day after. But you must burn any of the offering that is still left on the third day. If any of it is eaten on the third day, your offering will not be accepted; by then it has become foul. Anyone who consumes the peace offering on the third day will bear his guilt and suffer the consequences, for he has desecrated what has been set apart for Me. That person must be cut off from his people.

When you harvest the crops of your land, do not gather the grain all the way to the edges of your fields or pick up what was overlooked during the first round of harvesting. Likewise do not strip the vines bare in your vineyard or gather the fallen grapes. Leave the fallen fruit and some grapes on the vine for the poor and strangers living among you; for I am the Eternal your God.

Eternal One: Do not take what is not yours or conduct business dishonestly or lie to each other. Do not swear to a lie in My name. If you do, My name is profaned. I am the Eternal One.

Do not mistreat your neighbor or steal from him. Do not keep the payment of a hired hand overnight, but compensate him for work at the end of the day. Do not mock the disabled by shouting a curse at a deaf person or putting something in the way to trip up the blind. Instead, honor and fear your God; I am the Eternal One.

In a court of law, do what is just, not unjust. Do not favor one side or the other, the poor or the wealthy; instead, judge your neighbor fairly. Do not go around spreading malicious lies about other people. Do not take a stand that would endanger your neighbor’s life. I am the Eternal One.

Do not harbor a deep hatred for any of your relatives. If your neighbor is doing something wrong, correct him or else you could be held responsible for his sin. Do not seek revenge or hold a grudge against any of your people. Instead, love your neighbor as you love yourself, for I am the Eternal One.

Honor My decrees. Do not breed two different species. Do not plant two different sorts of seed in your fields. Do not wear clothing made from two different kinds of material.

If a man has sexual relations with a slave woman who is promised to another man but has not yet been redeemed or freed, then they will face an inquiry. Neither the man nor the woman will be put to death because she was a slave and not a free woman when the offense took place. The man must present to Me a ram as his guilt offering at the entrance of the congregation tent. The priest is to sacrifice the ram of the guilt offering before Me to cover the man’s guilt; then the guilty man’s sin will be forgiven.

When you go into the land and plant fruit-bearing trees, you are not to eat the fruit right away. It’s off-limits for three years. When the fourth year arrives, all the fruit of those trees must be regarded as sacred, a praise offering to Me. When the fifth year arrives, you are finally allowed to eat the fruits of those trees. If you demonstrate your faith by following this procedure, these trees will be even more productive. I am the Eternal One, your God.

Do not consume any meat while the blood is still in it. Do not practice divination or fortune-telling. Do not cut the hair at your temples or trim your beard. Do not make cuts in your body for the dead or mark yourselves with tattoos. I am the Eternal One.

Do not defile your daughter by forcing her into prostitution. If you do, you not only corrupt her but you also infect the land with prostitution and wickedness. Keep My Sabbaths and respect My sanctuary. I am the Eternal One.

Do not turn to mediums or consult with those who communicate with the spirits of the dead. Do not go near them, or else you will defile yourselves. I am the Eternal your God.

You are to stand in respect for the older people in your community. You must fear your God. I am the Eternal One.

Don’t take advantage of any stranger who lives in your land. You must treat the outsider as one of your native-born people—as a full citizen—and you are to love him in the same way you love yourself; for remember, you were once strangers living in Egypt. I am the Eternal One, your God.

In business dealings, be fair and do not cheat. Measure accurately length, weight, and volume. Your scales are to be accurate, your weights true, and your containers standard. I am the Eternal your God, who led you out of Egypt.

You are to keep all My directives and all of My rules, and do as I have instructed. I am the Eternal One.

The Book of Leviticus, Chapter 19 (The Voice)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for friday, may 15 of 2020 with a paired chapter from each Testament along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

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defenderchickinrecovery · 5 years ago

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Accepting Your Story

I’ve been thinking a lot about the direction I want to take this blog. As an addict, alcoholic, and compulsive gambler, I am a selfish and self-centered person. While I am excited about this blog, and how it will benefit me, the program teaches us to be of service to others. As a result, I think the best direction for this blog is to share where I’m at in my recovery each day, and then connect it to a larger issue I see in the world. My hope is that my blog will help someone else, and that through this writing process, I’ll find out what my calling is. I feel like I have all these ambitions and ideas - my mind is always racing with a million thoughts - but I have no idea how to put them into practice. One of my goals for this blog is to find out how to take what’s in my head and put it to good use in the world.

As some of you may know, I’m a huge fan of John Kim, aka @theangrytherapist. My outpatient individual treatment counselor Julio suggested I follow @theangrytherapist on Instagram last year. I was skeptical at first - I mean, why would I want to follow someone who goes by “theangrytherapist”??? - but I reminded myself in that moment that 1) I said I would be willing to go to any length for my recovery and 2) Julio has never once lead me astray.

I was immediately hooked after I started following John Kim on Instagram. I am now subscribed to his daily texts - only $5 per month - and I’ve purchased some of his work. With the daily texts, you can expect a document every Friday on a particular topic. Recently, I’ve been pondering some concepts from one of his “documents” last month. One of the concepts is about accepting your story. John Kim writes:

“If you spend most of your life trying to deny your story, you’ll never reach your full potential. Here’s why. Your potential is activated when you are giving - and by giving, I don’t mean feeding the homeless. I mean being in a state of sharing your unique gifts. To get there, you have to be maneuvering into a state of authentic or honest self. If you are consumed by and/or holding onto all the shit that has happened to you in the past, it blocks that process. You are now taking. You are sucking energy, being angry, resentful, discouraged, and collapsing on yourself. This cycle only leads to giant tubs of ice cream, a television, and a sunken couch.”

When I read this passage, it hit me like a ton of bricks. This cycle he’s describing, this is the cycle that led me to alcohol, drugs, compulsive gambling and toxic relationships. John Kim says that I have to accept everything I went through in order for change to occur. And if I’m understanding him correctly, I will only be able to share my “unique gifts” with the world if I accept my story.

I have always had a desire to contribute to society, to make this world a better place, but I was misguided in my approach. I was holding onto a lot of shit as I went through the process of becoming an attorney. As a child, I never felt like I was good enough. I remember telling myself at a very young age that the only way to get attention was to achieve. By achieving, people would pay attention to me, people would love me. So here I was, a young, ambitious child, who wanted to change the world, but I’m also battling a lot of internal crap. Soon achievements became more about feeding my own ego, rather than helping others. I was so consumed by what I had experienced as a kid, that I couldn’t see that I was making things worse, and that I was self-destructing.

What’s crazy is that I didn’t see any of this as it was happening, and it took hitting my rock bottom to realize my way was not working. It took being kicked out of my mother’s house in Gold Beach and living with a meth dealer in a shack to find myself. Well, I didn’t find myself in that shack, but something shifted in me and I decided I wanted help. I was ready to see if there was a different way to approach life.

I never thought I’d revisit my dreams of practicing law, influencing the law or changing the law. I had literally given up on that prospect when I went to treatment in March of last year. But when I was in treatment and applying for jobs, it was an attorney I interviewed with – for a paralegal position – who reminded me I shouldn’t “waste” my talents. I didn’t get the paralegal position – he didn’t think I had enough sobriety – but his words stuck with me. He had read all the articles about me on the web, and he still saw value in me. He thought there was still hope for me. But really, what he was telling me was that it wasn’t just about me, I was giving up on something that could help others. This attorney is still a friend today. I check in with him every couple of months with an email or a phone call. I thank God every day for this man because he renewed my spirit, he reminded me that I can - and should - make a difference in the world, and that I have the tools to do it! Now the task is to figure out how to do it, and to do it the right way.

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alicemccombs · 6 years ago

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I Ching for the Day

2 K'un / The Receptive Changing to 3 Chun / Difficulty at the Beginning #HealEarth

June 10, 2019 Sunrise Waxing Moon Question: What does Earth need most to be healed at this time? 2 K'un / The Receptive Changing to 3 Chun / Difficulty at the Beginning Cast Hexagram

2 K'un / The Receptive https://ichingfortune.com/hexagrams/2.php Above K'un the Receptive, Earth Below K'un the Receptive, Earth Introduction This hexagram is made up of broken lines only. The broken lines represents the dark, yielding, receptive primal power of yin. The attribute of the hexagram is devotion; its image is the earth. It is the perfect complement of The Creative the complement, not the opposite, for the Receptive does not combat the Creative but completes it . It represents nature in contrast to spirit, earth in contrast to heaven, space as against time, the female-maternal as against the male-paternal. However, as applied to human affairs, the principle of this complementary relationship is found not only in the relation between man and woman, but also in that between prince and minister and between father and son. Indeed, even in the individual this duality appears in the coexistence of the spiritual world and the world of the senses. But strictly speaking there is no real dualism here, because there is a clearly defined hierarchic relationship between the two principles. In itself of course the Receptive is just as important as the Creative, but the attribute of devotion defines the place occupied by this primal power in relation to the Creative. For the Receptive must be activated and led by the Creative; then it is productive of good. Only when it abandons this position and tries to stand as an equal side by side with the Creative, does it become evil. The result then is opposition to and struggle against the Creative, which is productive of evil to both. Judgement The Receptive brings about sublime success, Furthering through the perseverance of a mare. If the superior man undertakes something and tries to lead, He goes astray; But if he follows, he finds guidance. It is favorable to find friends in the west and south, To forego friends in the east and north. Quiet perseverance brings good fortune. Judgement Commentary The four fundamental aspects of the Creative sublime success, furthering through perseverance"--are also attributed to the Receptive. Here, however, the perseverance is more closely defined: it is that of a mare. The Receptive connotes spatial reality in contrast to the spiritual potentiality of the Creative. The potential becomes real and the spiritual becomes spatial through a specifically qualifying definition. Thus the qualification, "of a mare," is here added to the idea of perseverance. The horse belongs to earth just as the dragon belongs to heaven. Its tireless roaming over the plains is taken as a symbol of the vast expanse of the earth. This is the symbol chosen because the mare combines the strength and swiftness of the horse with the gentleness and devotion of the cow. Only because nature in its myriad forms corresponds with the myriad impulses of the Creative can it make these impulses real. Nature's richness lies in its power to nourish all living things; its greatness lies in its power to give then beauty and splendor. Thus it prospers all that lives. It is the Creative that begets things, but they are brought to birth by the Receptive. Applied to human affairs, therefore, what the hexagram indicated is action in conformity with the situation. The person in questions not in an independent position, but is acting as an assistant. This means that he must achieve something. It is not his task to try to lead--that would only make him lose the way-but to let himself be led. If he knows how to meet fate with an attitude of acceptance, he is sure to find the right guidance. The superior man lets himself be guided; he does not go ahead blindly, but learns from the situation what is demanded of him and then follows this intimation from fate. Since there is something to be accomplished, we need friends and helpers in the hour of toil and effort, once the ideas to be realized are firmly set. The time of toil and effort is indicated by the west and south, for west and south symbolize the place where the Receptive works for the Creative, as nature does in summer and autumn. If in that situation one does not mobilize all one's powers, the work to be accomplished will not be done. Hence to find friends there means to find guidance. But in addition to the time of toil and effort, there is also a time of planning, and for this we need this solitude. The east symbolized the place where a man receives orders from his master, and the north the place where he reports on what he has done. At that time he must be alone and objective. In this sacred hour he must do without companions. So that the purity of the moment may not be spoiled by fictional hates and favoritism. The Image The earth's condition is receptive devotion. Thus the superior man who has breadth of character Carries the outer world. Image Commentary Just as there is only one heaven, so too there is only one earth. In the hexagram of heaven the doubling of the trigram implies duration in time, but in the hexagram of earth the doubling connotes the solidity and extension in space by virtue of which the earth is able to carry and preserve all things that live and move upon it. The earth in its devotion carries all things, good and evil,, without exception. In the same way the superior man gives to his character breadth, purity, and sustaining power, so that he is able both to support and to bear with people and things. Changing Lines (1, 5) Six at the beginning means: When there is hoarfrost underfoot, Solid ice is not far off. Just as the light-giving power represents life, so the dark power, the shadowy, represents death. When the first hoarfrost comes in the autumn, the power of darkness and cold is just at its beginning. After these first warnings, signs of death will gradually multiply, until, in obedience to immutable laws, stark winter with its ice is here. In life it is the same. After certain scarcely noticeable signs of decay have appeared, they go on increasing until final dissolution comes. But in life precautions can be taken by heeding the first signs of decay and checking them in time. Six in the fifth place means: A yellow lower garment brings supreme good fortune. Yellow is the color of the earth and of the middle; it is the symbol of that which is reliable and genuine. The lower garment is inconspicuously decorated--the symbol of aristocratic reserve. When anyone is called upon to work in a prominent but not independent position, true success depends on the utmost discretion. A man's genuineness and refinement should not reveal themselves directly; they should express themselves only indirectly as an effect from within. Transformed Hexagram 3 Chun / Difficulty at the Beginning https://ichingfortune.com/hexagrams/3.php Above K'an the abysmal, Water Below Chen the Arousing, Thunder Introduction The name of the hexagram, Chun, really connotes a blade of grass pushing against an obstacle as it sprouts out of the earth--hence the meaning, "difficulty at the beginning." The hexagram indicates the way in which heaven and earth bring forth individual beings. It is their first meeting, which is beset with difficulties. The lower trigram Chen is the Arousing; its motion is upward and its image is thunder. The upper trigram K'an stands for the Abysmal, the dangerous. Its motion is downward and its image is rain. The situation points to teeming, chaotic profusion; thunder and rain fill the air. But the chaos clears up. While the Abysmal sinks, the upward movement eventually passes beyond the danger. A thunderstorm brings release from tension, and all things breathe freely again. Judgement Difficulty at the Beginning works supreme success, Furthering through perseverance. Nothing should be undertaken. It furthers one to appoint helpers. Judgement Commentary Times of growth are beset with difficulties. They resemble a first birth. But these difficulties arise from the very profusion of all that is struggling to attain form . Everything is in motion: therefore if one perseveres there is a prospect of great success, in spite of the existing danger. When it is a man's fate to undertake such new beginnings, everything is still unformed, dark. Hence he must hold back, because any premature move might bring disaster. Likewise, it is very important not to remain alone; in order to overcome the chaos he needs helpers. This is not to say, however, that he himself should look on passively at what is happening. He must lend his hand and participate with inspiration and guidance. The Image Clouds and thunder: The image of Difficulty at the Beginning. Thus the superior man Brings order out of confusion. Image Commentary Clouds and thunder are represented by definite decorative lines; this means that in the chaos of difficulty at the beginning, order is already implicit. So too the superior man has to arrange and organize the inchoate profusion of such times of beginning, just as one sorts out silk threads from a knotted tangle and binds them into skeins. In order to find one's place in the infinity of being, one must be able both to separate and to unite.

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#HealEarth #EarthHeal #The HealEarth Project #I Ching #I Ching for the Day

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argyrocratie · 8 years ago

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Anarchism,Majorities and minorities

a great short article by Errico Malatesta (translated with the help of google from here ) it’s a bit like the tyranny of structurelessness but anarchist and from 1897,also a polemic against Merlino who was kind of the Murray Bookchin of the time.

“Dear companions, I look forward to the forthcoming publication of the newspaper L'Agitazione and wish you the most complete success. Your newspaper appears at a moment when necessity is much felt, and I hope it may be a serious organ of discussion and propaganda, and an effective means of bringing together and tightening the scattered ranks of our party. You can count on my help to the extent that my forces, unfortunately weak, will allow me. For this time, if only to inaugurate my future collaboration, I will write to you about a few points which concern me personally in a certain way, but which are not without importance in relation to general propaganda. As you know, our friend Merlino now goes astray in the vain attempt to reconcile anarchy and parliamentarism; writing In his letter to the Messaggero, that "parliamentarism is not destined to disappear altogether and that there will always be something left, including in the society we wish", he recalls an article I had Written and sent to the Chicago anarchist conference in 1893, in which I maintained that "for certain things the opinion of the majority will necessarily have to prevail over that of the minority." That's right ; And today my ideas are no different from those I expressed in the article in question. But in quoting a sentence from me, truncated to support a thesis different from the one I was arguing, Merlino leaves in shadow and ambiguity what I really meant. To know that there were at the time-and there are still some today-many anarchists who, confusing form and substance and interested more in words than in things, 'Constituted a sort of' ritual of anarchist truth 'which hindered their action and led them to support absurd and grotesque things. Thus, for example, assuming that the majority does not have the right to impose its will on the minority, they conclude that nothing should be done that is not unanimously approved. Confusing the political vote which is used to give themselves bosses and voting, which is a convenient and quick way of expressing one's own opinion, they considered any kind of vote as anti-anarchist. Or else: a meeting was called to denounce violence by the government or employers, or to show popular sympathy for such and such event; People would come, listen to the speeches of the organizers, listen to those of the opponents and then leave without expressing their own opinion because the only way to express it was to vote on the different motions ... and that to vote was not anarchist. A circle wanted to make a poster: different editorials were proposed and the opinions of the members of the circle were divided on this subject; There was an endless discussion, but it was never possible to know what was the predominant opinion because it was forbidden to vote; And therefore: either the poster was not drawn, or some drew from their side the one they preferred; The circle dissolved when in fact there was no real dissension and it was only a question of style. The consequence of this way of acting, which they asserted to be a guarantee of freedom, was that only a few, best endowed with oratorical qualities, made and defeated the discution while those who did not know, Nor dare to speak in public, and who are still the vast majority, did not count at all. And then the other, more serious and deadly consequence for the anarchist movement was that the anarchists did not believe themselves bound by workers' solidarity and that they were going to work in the midst of a strike because the strike had been voted by the majority when they opposed it. And they even went so far as not to dare to call out as scoundrels the so-called anarchists who asked for money from the bosses and received it to fight a strike in the name of anarchy - I could tell names, if i must. It was against these aberrations, and others like those, that the article I sent to Chicago was published.

I argued that there would be no social life if there was really nothing to be done together that was not unanimously agreed upon by all. Ideas and opinions are in perpetual evolution, and differentiate themselves by degrees, whereas practical realizations suddenly change by leaps; And that if ever one day everybody was perfectly in agreement on the advantages of this or that, it would mean that for that thing there would be no further progress. Thus, for example, if a railway was to be made, there would certainly be a thousand different opinions on the course of the track, on the equipment, on the type of locomotive and wagons, the location of stations , Etc., and these opinions would change day by day, but if we want to make this railway, we must choose between the different opinions existing, and we could not change the route, the location of the stations or the type of locomotive every day . And if we choose, it is better to satisfy the greatest number; Provided, of course, to give to the minority all the freedom and all the means possible to propagate its ideas, to experiment and to try to become the majority. It is therefore reasonable, just and necessary that the minority should yield to the majority, for all that does not admit several solutions at the same time; Or when differences of opinion are not of such importance that it would be worthwhile to divide, wich each fraction acting in its own way; Or when the duty of solidarity imposes union. But the fact of yielding for the minority must be the effect of free will, determined by the consciousness of necessity: it must not be a principle, a law, which therefore applies in all cases, Even when the need is not really felt. This is the difference between anarchy and any form of government. The whole social life is full of these necessities where one must forget one's own preferences so as not to hurt the rights of others. I enter a cafe, I see that the place I prefer is occupied, and I am going to sit quietly elsewhere where, perhaps, there is some wind which does not do me any good. I see people talking so that they make it understood that they do not want to be listened to and I move away, which may be bothering me, so as not to disturb them. But this I do because it is imposed on me by my instinct as a social man, because I am accustomed to living among men, and by my interest in not being treated badly; If I were to act otherwise, those whom I would disturb would soon make me understand, in one way or another, the annoyance that comes from being a boor. I do not want legislators to tell me how I should behave in a cafe, and I do not think they can teach me the education I would not have learned from the society in which I live . How then does Merlino draw from all this that a remnant of parliamentarism will have to exist even in the society we wish? Parliamentarism is a form of government in which the elected representatives of the people, assembled in a legislative body, make laws which please them , by a majority of votes, and impose them on the people with all the coercive means available to them. And it is a remnant of these fine prerogatives that Merlino would like to retain, even in Anarchy? In Parliament, we talk, discuss, deliberate and that we will always do, in any possible and imaginable society: is this what Merlino calls a remnant of parliamentarism? It would be to play too much on words, and Merlino is capable of employing other methods, and much more serious one, in a discussion. When we were both debating with these anarchists who were opposed to any congress because they see it as a form of parliamentarism, Merlino does not remember what we both supported? Namely that the essence of parliamentarism is in the fact that parliaments make laws and impose them; Whereas an anarchist congress only discusses and proposes resolutions that are binding only after approval of the constituents and only for those who approve them. Or would the words have changed their meaning now that Merlino no longer has the same ideas? “

#anarchism #communism #Errico Malatesta

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bloojayoolie · 6 years ago

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#funny #lol #humor #memes #meme #memehumor #dank memes #funny pics #rolf #lmao #Bad #Future #and I Be

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