#this is your brain on reification

[media-research-reified-abyss]

this is your brain on reification - 11042016 - slingshot collective

-Amelia Cat Annalee Brown

[artbyblastweave]

The thing about Aura theory is, I'm glad it's not canon but there's no real mystery about why people find it compelling, right? Because it would dovetail with a lot. Half the point of Amy's character is that being adopted by the Dallons is the familial equivalent of sticking a guy in a very slow trash compactor, and having her spend all her time next to the emotional-manipulation-equivalent of a cracked fuel canister is the perfect power-driven reification of that. This is a kid who's whole deal is that her brain is getting cooked by simplistic, judgmental narratives about good and evil picked up from her family, and over here you've got the perfect golden girl she can never measure up to, with a power literally designed to make everyone around her buy into traditional narratives about superheroes- a power she wound up with because of her own fears of failing to live up to those impossible, unrealistic narratives. And "Oh, I'm immune to your Aura via overexposure" is a very don't-upset-the-status-quo kind of lie for Amy to be telling herself. Altogether, if everyone involved is getting cooked like a hotdog by this thing- it's not thematically necessary but it would be aligned. The main reason not to do it, and the reason I think Wildbow went so far out of his way to shut it down within the text of Ward, is of course the implicit victim-blaming angle, the implication that if only that gosh-durned Victoria hadn't been so trigger happy with that aura of hers we could have avoided all that mess, she was "asking for it". And, fair's fair, a lot of bottom-of-the-barrel fanfic that came out between Worm and Ward worked that angle and it was as obnoxious and bankrupt as it sounds. But of course once you've committed to this plotline to the extent that Worm and Ward did you're kind of cooked on the unfortunate implication front anyway, too little too late

[epistemebabu]

KUNDALINITRIC AND THICK WITH ISOPROPYL FIRE

evon,

ebon,

ebon,

ebon,

not s crack but patching like

kinting soon yo sue the she

that nade it like a pot

pitter-patter patching now

@maxyou'll wanna see this

@max1461

@max1461

@max1461

egregore of you to me, to lurk as I see

(ana ta anatomize,

gazing keen with razor eyes, po tem ptoem kin)

(think of it like this. you interact with your person-model of the material thing, bot the thing itself. YUDKOWSKY lights at naya nah bot maya huh not exactly but trust me bro)

(See that fronting? Fiction-brain. I have lots of noise in person-models {in the CSH sense} from obligately superimposing mengele on them {diabetes], and so I must resolve it with reification, or else lose the thread and become the world-model. It's kind of like the idea that schizophrenics are bot really conscious; it's more a "the way the society of mind is structured" relationship than a thing about whether there is an experiences. @Aellagirl has the idea of becoming the sex body; that is to say, the ego-thread is lost, but the harmonic of the experience allows persp. to maintain a stable metronomic fashion, ehich is mote hedonic. I have the opposite experience, where my thread is annihilated vy dissonance, binding me to ghosts and death. I have powerful funger trauma, as you might expect, ehich is why I leave the misspellings in; if the other eants to help, who am I to disagree? If consciousness is the resolution of conflicting motor prohrams, "accidents" are boise and Trapped priors calling to ve saved. Wu wei, brudda. Acetylcholinergic as fuck.)

Anyway. Max, to resolve your mouth issues, you want to unify theb patch with the ego-thread, or at least a stable harmonic. Do you have any phones that hit the patch? I know you are linguistics. Otherwise! If I had your problem, with my resources;

Very spicy food; maybe matching the sensation will let it integrate? This is ehy Korean food, I suspect, though of course aesthetic is a spiral, and any direction can experience an elaboration and reification.

Microdosing; you want to flatten the energy landscape, such that you don't beed so deep a boise to bridge the distance between the chords. Mushrooms can be greon for like $100 AUD; DMT is similarly nearby, and you are a reddit refugee. Don't be scared of DMT at a low level; being all "entities and coma freak me" is like taking thumbrpinters as your prototype for LSD. Just use less of it and it's convenient, which is ehy it's known for being the drug of choice for heavy psychonauts; it's like ketamine, in that you can do it and then finish lunch at the office. Psychedelics are general-purpose language-learning performance enhancers, also, because their ehole thing is removing sensory filtering defaults, which let you notice the formants foreign languages use for discrimination. Like, lock/rock as a minimal pair for a native Japanese speaker, y'know?

Chemognosis is how I am approaching this, because it is reliable. Perhaps you would have a different way, but I'm not so meaningfully knowledgeable otherwise.

[mysticallion]

The Heart of Illumination

Imagine for a moment that you are gathered around a campfire one starry summer night, listening to someone tell a story. Beyond the obvious, though, what’s actually happening here?

There’s a lot going on in that particular moment, of course, an ineffable amount, actually, but for the sake of exploring, let’s just focus on a small piece of the aural aspect of this experience. The same understanding follows regardless of the specific direction we approach it from, but it’s easier to extrapolate from the small to the large than to attempt to immediately grasp the whole.

So, when you hear someone speak, it is of course actually a complex event, a dynamic relationship between a lot of “different” physical and mental processes, from the propagation of sound waves to the fleshy mechanics of the ear to the nervous system’s lightning-like axon pathways and flickering impulses to the brain’s heavily interpretive dance of filtration, consolidation, reification and subsequent regurgitation as, not just the “story” but the whole grokking experience of “the story.” So it’s not just the words and meaning; it’s the whole gestalt, the “present moment” actually “appearing” with (and as) “meaning” within your consciousness—only of course to be immediately gobbled up by its own neural networks for further mental mastication and processing, etcetera ad infinitum.

All of that is absolutely amazing, of course, almost unfathomably so despite the fact that it’s all (more or less) neatly enfolded within the realm of scientifically accepted “psychophysical phenomena.”

But then again, why not? It’s all just information, right? It’s all just input/output, just a moment of material and energetic exchange and expression? If it can be seen, no matter how complex, it can eventually be intellectually grasped, right? Or so we “moderns” tend to arrogantly presume.

So what is it, then, that actually knows all this? Not intellectually, of course; that’s just more of the same game; just more brain-made input/output. But what is it that actually makes this experience…well, an actual experience? What affects the actual lived and living moment? What makes experience obvious? What renders it visible or tangible (or audible, in this case)? What lights it all up?

So, as we said, it’s not the intellectual functions. Clearly, also, it’s not the sound waves or the ear drum or the nervous data. How can data “know” data? And besides, this data like all data, both input and output, is constantly, incessantly changing. That’s all it is, really: just an endless stream of shapeshifting bioenergetic change. So how can this background of “whatever knows” be any of that? Can the movie know the movie?

So what is it, then, that is aware of all this? What is it that is always here, always present no matter what, in every single moment and situation, this field of simple gnosis, simple immediacy? Does it change with its contents? Is it affected in any way by this nonstop mental patterning of contact and content? Can it, as what “sees,” ever be seen? Does it have any boundaries? Does it have any means of grasping or holding onto anything, or is that just another cognitive function like attention and memory? In fact, other than this “direct and immediate knowing” that it is, can it have any actual properties or substantiality, any form or dimension, at all? Or must it necessarily be intrinsically free (or empty) of all that, in order to allow for all of that? If it had any actual form or substantiality in and of itself, how could anything freely manifest and change, as it obviously does?

Anyway, you get the point. It is not the content that’s actually, ultimately important in the long run, no matter how amazing or complex or mysterious or electrifying it may be. What is being “sought” in this sort of direct inquiry—an experiential inquiry that lies at the very heart of all the world’s great spiritual systems—is this very Field of Awareness that is actually always-already right here, immediately present, blatantly obvious, in this and every moment of existence/experience. It is within this knowing field that all experience unfurls, but unfortunately, the Field itself is habitually confounded with its contents. Thought gets mixed-up with awareness, as does memory, emotion, sensation and identification. But they are not the same. One changes; the other abides. Or, better said: change occurs within and to that which abides. This unexamined confusion is what is typically called, in spiritual parlance, ignorance. The complex chain of events that follow from such ignorance (and the actions it fosters) is what leads to and perpetuates suffering. So only understanding—legitimate, personal, direct, experiential understanding—can possibly “cure” all that. This is why we practice.

It’s a complex mess, hard to deconstruct and understand; harder still to directly experience; hardest of all is to encompass all this in one’s ongoing day-to-day perspective until it becomes automatic by virtue of its sheer obviousness.

Awareness—not your individual consciousness and its unique display, but the impersonal basic, fundamental Space of Awareness behind and before and beyond all that—is actually the source and the substance, the space and the immediacy, of all existence and experience, which are just different words for the same thing. Intrinsic Awareness, simple vivid clarity, unborn and unchanging, perpetually present, always open and unbound, free from any underlying cause or condition, is what lies at the heart of all Reality. It is your own “spiritual heart” as well. How could it possibly be otherwise?

[mangocheesecakeicecream]

and of course another problem is the problem that was very well described by Foucault and by Nietzsche which is the problem of reification and what does it mean reification it's the illusion that is created the moment the name is given so the moment you adopt the name to to name yourself or your problem as ADHD you start to believe that this name that is signifier is actually related to a specific referent that there would be a referent at the level of the body that is responding to that name and so many people when they accept the diagnosis for themselves think that actually it says something about their brains that their brain is wired in a certain way and the same is true for example for psychosis but then again when we look at basic research on the brain in psychosis for example there is no real difference between the brain of someone suffering from psychosis and someone who's not suffering from psychosis the only differences that have actually been observed are very small mean differences and the differences that were observed have  no clinical value at all for example what we do know is that on average the brain volume of someone who is vulnerable for psychotic episodes is a bit smaller on average than someone who's not vulnerable to psychotic episodes but actually this has no clinical value at all we don't know what it means it's just there and another thing for example that we know also like a small average difference is that the psychomotor development and speech development for people who later develop psychosis is just a little bit later a couple of months on average later than someone who's not vulnerable to psychosis but what does this mean we don't know what it means we don't know anything what we could do with this at the clinical level so this is what has been observed at the level of the brain what has not been observed is for example that certain areas in the brain would not be working very well or that certain Communications between brain areas would be deficient that's not what has been observed there is no difference at that level and at the same time when people use these names they start to believe that actually there is some change at that level and that's the problem that Nietzsche and Foucault pointed to with their concept of reification and reification is you could say like something of a thought error when you in which you attribute material reality to a name whilst nothing is proving that there would be a material reality connected to it but these are two very strong tendencies like the popular message from scientific research on the one hand the the question of reification and obviously it's also the psychiatric world who stimulated both tendencies because if people believe that there is something biological about a mental health problem there is kind of it is quite Justified to ask the government for money to do research on it so those doing research within biological Psychiatry have often been surfing on the waves of the popularity of that discourse Often by publishing results journals starting from smaller samples and preliminary results and then saying like Okay we found something and now research is needed on a large scale and big populations and that we need more money and this is often what you can see in psychiatric Publications especially from a couple of years ago when there was this demand ever and again for more money to finally prove the point and so also like government and funding agencies are also eager in sponsoring this kind of research and then you have like a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than sound scientific thinking and I guess here we have a basic problem globally at a societal level

-Stijn Vanheule

[mysticallion]

This sounds so simple, and it is simplicity itself when the yogi is actually able to do so. But that’s the problem: “relax in the natural state” requires not simply the understanding of what that phrase implies but also the ability to do so and maintain it, which is not an easy thing for most people to do.

This was my problem thirty years ago when I first encountered Dzogchen. Simply put, although I could understand and even appreciate its wisdom and tenants intellectually, I was too concept-bound to actually employ its directives in the manner they are meant for.

On the one hand, Dzogchen spoke almost exclusively about “just relaxing into your natural state” and “letting it be as it is,” and on the other it seemed to describe certain“results” that I was unable to understand much less duplicate by “simply relaxing.” And this was, at least in part, because I wasn’t fortunate enough to have an actual realized person—a Guru, as it were, who has already achieved the necessary understanding and skills to maintain this “natural state”—to point out to me the nature of my own mind/experience so that I might experience it directly, and so practice from that starting point. Rather, it took a great many years of study and practice and experiential learning within the “lower” schools, and, in my case at least, schools of thought and practice outside the normal settings typical to this type of education (such as Advaita Vedanta, Shamanic practices, Zen, mindfulness, Tantra, Magik, various schools of Energy Work, the Diamond Approach, and a great deal of philosophy, psychology and theoretical physics).

See, the “problem” is that the Dzogchen tenets are (mostly) written for mature practitioners of meditation—for professionals, one might say. These folks have typically gone through years of immersive learning and meditation by the time someone “introduces” them to “the nature of mind” such that they may “relax into it.”This is why Dzogchen instructions, which can seem (and actually are) so simple, tend to mislead and confuse people who approach it from the outside in a more academic or conceptual manner.

More specifically, Dzogchen instruction usually are only given to long-term practitioners who have completed many successive “levels of understanding,” who have “cleaned up” their own stream of consciousness (from its usual cluttered disarray of reflexive impulsivity) to a high degree, and who have developed many of the prerequisite “skills” such as the ability to enter into and “deliberately if effortlessly”maintain a certain “non-state” of “non-meditation” and the ability to actually, deeply relax as this while maintaining a high level of alertness.

In other words, Dzogchen instruction requires that the practitioner be able to mediate as Awareness, as opposed to meditating “as a meditator” from the usual perspective of cognitive, brain-made states. Put yet another way, “just sitting” requires the meditator to be able to discern and distinguish Awareness from all of its contents, including identity, and to rest in this vast, open, fundamental and non-dual Space, regardless of what or whether any mental content arises. This “basic space”—which is basic Awareness, or “the natural state”—is what Reality is viewed from In Dzogchen. This is as opposed to the normal (learned or developed) way we habitually perceive, which is through obscuring layers of thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions and some sort of constructed identity. This is to say, for the practitioner of Dzogchen, most of the habits of cognitive processing and reification have either been deconstructed and eliminated, or are “seen through” and spontaneously released even as they occur. It’s something like stepping all the way to the back of the theater and enjoying how it all incessantly unfolds—not so much the story, the drama itself, but rather how, rather than being a solid, objective reality apart from us, our usual experience is actually a sort of passing, photon-thin production of energy, of light and vibration, a production created by the natural functions of the brain-mind but known entirely by, through and within Awareness.

This is what it means to say that a Dzogchen yogi “relaxes into the natural state” and experiences from this selfless, unbound perspective; whereas a regular practitioner (or a non-practitioner) experiences from the “usual” (and illusory) perspective of a created, cognitive state. That “created state” may be either mundane (normal, as it were) or profoundly “spiritual,” but ultimately it is a state, and therefore temporary and ultimately unsustainable; whereas simple, basic, empty Awareness-itself is not a state. Awareness is the intrinsic Field of Being that enfolds and transcends all experience, all states; it is the simple, non-personal Presence that lies behind every moment of perception.

In my personal experience, it takes a great deal of practice to even understand, much less “practice” Dzogchen. I think this is especially true for most modern, “Western” (as in, educated) folk, as they (we) tend to be much more lost in the tangle of thoughts and other such mental beasties. For me at least, understanding what is meant by “emptiness” and “the natural state” and “the nature of mind” and “just relaxing” and “let it be” and “as it is” all required a great deal of learning and unlearning, of study and practice, of experience and directly, intensely seeing my own processes arising and unfolding, before I could become “simple enough” to “relax in the natural state.” I’m sure it is difficult in different ways for different people, but it is a fundamental mistake to “think” you “understand” Dzogchen as “simply doing nothing” and leave it at that. Doing nothing is more difficult than you might think.

"The idea is that if one doesn't do anything--does not try to create a special state of mind, does not try to get something and just let the mind relax in the natural state, that is all that is required. No need to analyze: no need to reject one's experiences, hold onto them, or manipulate them.

Once all the mind's tricks are gone, then rigpa or awareness is just revealed by itself."

Anam Thubten

[37q]

people are too small with karma. if you dont go down this ethical rabbit hole than youre not thinking hard enough.

my active negligence to properly dispose of food waste in my house manifests as a fruit fly problem. no, it manifests as a fruit fly problem, its in the allegedly quantifiable factor in my brain that i root my value formation and judgment in. no, it manifests as my response to the problem, its in the reproduction of my desires and attachments to the root stability of my values. no, it manifests as the consequences of my response to the problem, its in the continuation and internal conception of the karmic experience.

no, the karma is merely in the natural phenomenon. the fruit flies in their karma of instinct are quantifiably beheld to conditions beneficial to their incubation cycle, and their karma manifests as my cyclic negligence and proactivity in disturbing those beneficial conditions. a hyperreal being, who affects them and their environment in ways beyond their comprehension. regardless of the subjectivity, and no matter how errant or irresponsibly the life is facilitated, it cant avoid experiencing the pain of growth, hunger, injury, death, all within the prison of fear-and-scarcity based cognition. its karma is to be born and shackled by its conditions, my karma is to produce the conditions for such a suffering birth; its karma is to be thrown around by the world, mine is to do some of the throwing and second guess myself every time.

the karma is the fact that my material betterment lies not in their liberation but in their material injury as individuals and as a population. the karma lies in my reification of valueless experiences that i judge "beneficial" or "detrimental". half inside, half outside, but synthesized nondually and materialized with change-on-a-leash in the pursuit of stability or comfort. my material conditions, my sensing, my feeling, my judgment, my feelings, my reaction, my feelings, all playing with the world like its a sandbox and never seeing beyond the consequences in front of me. regardless of whether its negligence or proactivity, the karma is in constraining my perception of the world with my judgment, attachment, and reaction to its conditions.

my karma is in singlehandedly maintaining the mass life, suffering, and death of this local fruit fly population. theres no going back to before my and their karma ripened (population growth), and the only solutions paved ahead of me are just... plots and plots of open tilled soil, waiting for more karmic seeds to be sown (active pest control or inevitable population degrowth). my karma is to produce more karma in a desperate, delusional, and ultimately dualistic attempt to not resolve but cover old karma.

in the end though my karma is in breaking the cycle, learning the lessons of suffering to mitigate the necessity for karmic solutions in the first place. nurturing the fruit flies as a whole like theyre a gravely ill loved one, someone whose suffering is unjust and natural, whom i can only ferry thru their inevitable, cyclic ripening of karma.

saṃsāra relies on false hobsons choices, and makes the nondual solution seem conceptually impossible. breaking the cycle will always seem illogical or impossible when the production of logic and possibility themselves, in our minds and our lives, are rooted in forces which perpetuate the cycle.

[yugotrash]

I would love to hear your thoughts about people having OCs screwing up tumblr's comprehension of society.

do not expect the same level of intellectual rigour that ive cultivated on my page but i am so ready to present my bullshit

essentially I associate havings OCs with having middling-to-solid drawing skills and being heavily into fandom. as well all know fandoms are piles of noxious muck that comparatively few people can dive into and still retain their dignity and capability for normal human interaction. however, OCs take things further, because if fandoms gave us things like annoying gifs and drooling afte rancid british moids, OCs gave us fursonas and miku hatsune binder thomas jefferson. i think for a sizeable portion of tumblr users, OCs were an extension of the impulse you should have outgrown by the time you got to secondary school. now, however, instead of your crudely drawn original pokemon or whatever that you compared with your classmates, you got people customizing their blorbos by attachingng progressively weirder and edgier traits to them. "MY blorbo is an asexual demiromantic serial killer with a penchant for vulture culture!!" And to me there's not a huge step from viewing characters like this to thinking that you yourself can be made interesting if you made up increasingly niche labels for yourself which contributed to the rapid proliferation of micro-identities on here.

Additionally, even mediocre art, the primary medium through which the existence of OCs is expressed, has a way of garnering attention and pulling you into these online circles that reinforce Extremely Online behaviours. To me, the relatively recent explosion of tiktok and tumblr kids identifying as "systems" and making up DID personas is directly linked to the weird phenomenon of tumblr/deviantart OC culture. Now im gonna really go off the rails and say that I am a firm believer that reification of concepts through visual representation has proven so powerful to the weak of mind that it could generate a feeling that these blorbos from your head are in some way real, in some way parts of you. I've known a person who trooned out largely through progressive identifying with visual representations of his blorbo. His brain turned to mush, he lost all sense of what is actually really possible for him to be in society, because he could commission smut art of a being he invented in his head. Sadly I do not consider him a particularly uncommon specimen in that regard.

And just how little OC culture is related to the ostensible goal of an "original character" is that even when the characters are actually put into some kind of narrative - you know, the thing you make up characters for - they are overhwhelmingly bad to mediocre pieces of writing.

[thanatos-girl]

No More Miserable Monday Mornings

For many of the students and staff at Goldsmiths College at the time of Fisher’s death, there was no sidestepping the sense of sociopolitical impotence he had begun to describe in his lecture series. An intense desire to take up the gauntlet of radical dismantling put forth in these sessions — and in his writings more generally — was expressed almost immediately, in order to address the localised crisis of depressive anhedonia that had engulfed the university in that moment — a pervasive mental health crisis, during which Fisher’s suicide was sadly not an isolated incident. 

Serendipitously, it was on that first Monday morning after Fisher’s death that this deeply negative moment took on a perversely affirmative resonance. 

Each of the five “Postcapitalist Desire” lectures had been held first thing on a Monday morning at 9am. The sixth lecture never took place but, after news of Fisher’s death on Friday the 13th spread throughout the university over the weekend, many students chose to show up in his classroom anyway on the morning of 16th January 2017. 

A class of twenty doubled, perhaps trebled, in size as faces familiar and unfamiliar, from both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, gathered together on an abjectly miserable Monday morning, waiting for Fisher himself to walk through the door and reveal his hoax. After some time spent in silence, an impromptu listening session began instead. 

Although it was likely just an arbitrary instance of administrative scheduling, it was hard not to imbue the timing of Fisher’s lectures with some deeper significance. The penultimate post on his famous k-punk blog, before it fell silent forever, had presented an audio mix, fittingly entitled: “No more miserable Monday mornings” — a title that would also find itself repurposed within his unfinished Acid Communism introduction. It was a phrase that recast that old anti-capitalist adage in a newly positive light: “You don’t hate Mondays, you hate your job”. In the immediate context of Fisher’s life, it took on a double meaning, as both a call for the end of work and perhaps a sly Lyotardian acknowledgment that he nonetheless loved working with his students, who likewise loved working with him. With this understanding in mind, it was this mix that Fisher’s students chose to listen to on that mournful Monday morning in mid-January.

The mix starts, appropriately, with Sleaford Mods’ “Jobseeker” before passing through the rise and fall of the counterculture. Psychedelic pop gives way to dub which gives way to disco. The pressure cooker of twentyfirst-century working-class fury finds itself harnessed and redirected until the mix fades out to Chic’s blissful 1978 track “At Last I Am Free”. 

The mix is a tonic, and a mode of consciousness-raising presented chronologically in reverse, where the political fury of today re-establishes contact with the cultural joy of the counterculture. But this mix is not a nostalgic longing for a lost moment. It simply takes advantage of the fact that these songs, these cultural artefacts, still exist and are still at our disposal — much like the potentials they represent. 

In this sense, it is a mix that emphasises the political function of each track over its aesthetic form. Taken as a whole, it auto-affects the brain into a state of joyful indignation reigniting an aesthetic moment long since reified into an all too timely collection of commodified genres and fetishised vinyl records. Despite this process of aesthetic reification, the freedoms these songs promise remain soulful, and this emboldened soul rattles the subjugated body out of its contemporary complacency. It is a mix that may slide from 2008 to 1978, but the message nonetheless remains future-oriented. There are alternatives and there are tomorrows. There is a world to be transformed. 

1. “Jobseeker” by Sleaford Mods (The Mekon, 2008)  2. “House in the Country” by The Kinks (Face to Face, 1966)  3. “Rat Race” by The Specials (The Specials, 1979) 4. “Too Much Work Load” by Singers & Players (Revenge of the Underdog, 1982) 5. “Boss Man” by Rhythm & Sound (See Mi Yah, 2005) 6. “Tethered to my Hot-Spot” by eMMplekz (Your Crate Has Changed, 2013)  7. “Smithers-Jones” by The Jam (Setting Sons, 1979) 8. “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down” by Ann Peebles (I Can’t Stand the Rain, 1974) 9. “Spaceship” by Kanye West feat. GLC and Consequence (The College Dropout, 2004) 10. “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)” by Spandau Ballet (Diamond, 1982) 11. “Stoned Love” by The Supremes (New Ways but Love Stays, 1970) 12. “Psychedelic Shack” by The Temptations (Psychedelic Shack, 1970) 13. “Off the Wall” by Michael Jackson (Off the Wall, 1979) 14. “Can’t Stop Playing (Makes Me High)” by Dr Kucho! & Gregor Salt (2015) 15. “Lost in Music (Special 1984 Nile Rogers Remix)” by Sister Sledge (1984) 16. “At Last I Am Free” by Chic (C’est Chic, 1978) 

From anger and sadness to collective joy … from work that never ends to endless free time …

via Postcapitalist Desires: The Final Lectures, released posthumously, edited by Matt Colquhoun

[intersectionedge-blog]

objectification and silence

Due to the acts of objectification I’ve resigned from many of my dreams. Ok, maybe not resigned, but I’ve hidden them, silenced which is a „step out” in the eyes of „social”,  and even not - stepping out in this case is nonperceptible, it’s just something which existed before (which existence becomes veiled, not-remembered) and now isn’t there. Many of these acts have never seemed gender-based, only the mechanism was confusingly similar. So, since I’ve discovered that I used to embrace sometimes the others’ objectification, reification of my own passions and interests, I’ve subsequently noticed that it was not the lack of my dedication or an internal „error” of what I’ve considered as such, but the act of object-making of some very intense and complex spheres of my life which were leading me to silence them and hide. Once I’ve taken the objectified perception of these from the others, a perception which is demeaning, they started to seem unattainable, cause that abstract notion of what I think and what I do had nothing to do with its complexity I’ve had felt so far. Anyway, the act of silencing in the face of objectification is one of the most spread aspects of gender inequality (or inequity), well studied within the feminist theory (but maybe not well analyzed). Right now I’m starting to think that if we really need to embrace elements of patriarchal common-sense, we should more trace not within this which is easily caught upon the gender-based structures of disapproval, depreciation, demeaningness and - inequality (or inequity). It wouldn’t be a real hegemony indeed if its particular focal points are so easy to notice. So, as many women along history have silenced their voices (as an act of presupposed agency in the face of depreciating social surrounding) or their voices have been silenced in the full variety of ways (just think about an example, or even an exemplum of suicider in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s „Can subaltern speak?” essay). I've done the same many times, still underlining the mistake of such action and trying not to get hypnotized by the poetics of the agency of silence or martyrology of being silenced. Penelope, weaving and weaving, and weaving until her husband Odysseus won’t come back - her life being transformed into constant passive present after his departure, the life which can’t come into an active being, cannot reach the past, so also the future, which are the basic formats of having a sense of one’s own identity. Her life can „cling to life” only in the presence of the man who has made her his. Or, for example, the act of hiding one’s nominal and possible to situate identity in the aim of reaching  and expressing one’s identity in the sphere where accompanied by this proper nominal one it was impossible to enter - I am thinking here about many women writers and painters who were publishing under the masculine name. Many, many more examples well exposed today, but let’s come back to fragments of my own story. When we broke up with my boyfriend, my life came upon the passivity and I felt the lack of some part of myself which I used to believe I have had before we’ve met. And it’s anything I’ve decided, what’s more - even I didn’t want it since the very beginning of our relationship - I’ve been visualizing ourselves as two individuals making something together, and panicky opposed any supposed act of his bad treatment of me. Even though, the social rule was making its job above us. And I knew that he won’t experience the same sense of lack I did, which was making me even more depressed and understating my yet low sense of self-esteem. What my brain was suggesting me to do - and still is - was to cease my possible physical presence within spatial spheres in our city and among our friends which have both became common, and I know it will be a hard struggle not to do so. Cause it’s a mistake. But there were a few people, amongst which - my mum, who had advised me to „step out” „for my own own peace of mind” and self-realization without obstacles. And for the same very reasons, I won’t do this.   The small things I am trying to unveil and analyze through my own experiences lately, start to work for my image as „tilting at windmills” and this is another process of silencing ongoing. But I’m not scared of it, it’s just not worthy of a thrill. Because, once I talk about it to some other people, sometimes I hear „I’ve had a sensation like you’ve been writing about me” or „thank you, have nothing more to add”. These are not the only responses I get - I talk about my experiences to men, too, since many of them are my close friends. We even don’t imagine how many „obvious” experiences have been isolated thanks to support-based common-experiences-exchange within many women’s (family, friends) and also feminist circles. So many of them don’t even acknowledge possible man’s presence within. And yet there are so many men who really want to hear and share their opinion even if they’re not feminists. They are simply people who „want to understand”, „want to know more”. Until we won’t start speaking without a filtrating view, men will think that these experiences are only exceptions linked to particular-kind-of-men and doing so, they will never consider themselves as possible bearers of this heritage. And we are, we all are. We talk a lot about a sexist hate-speech, I’d suppose that we are not of the same grade familiar with discussing the approval-like sexist speech. And we make a mistake by our temptations to ban some kind of expressions. This language set is rooted within deeper mental structures. Focusing on the outer layer is undoubtedly important, but each time we notice that we should shift on what’s below. And some sadly experienced women, won’t gain anything by hating man, by finding a mental shelter saying that men are just oppressive, that men think with balls etc. - that way we only enact the same discursive patriarchal structure inside which it is placed a notion that women are just more quiet, and think with their hearts. It’s awful. As a woman, I bear the capacity of feeling well by creating in silence, by closing my thoughts in exclusive circles, by feeling even great working „from below” or „close-enough-to” without the aim to be in the center. Please do notice that I’m not saying about „doing so”, but about „feeling good within”, the same as I’m not assuming that this feeling isn’t also a part of some men’s lives.  And since I am a performer and I feel more comfortable by performing in the center these two feelings were always fighting with each other in some focal points in my past life until today, and for sure they will. So, turning back to what I have marked out in the title of this reflection, my dedication to dance world (in many different forms) has been strongly objectified by reducing the whole dense complexity of my feelings for dancing to simply „an ambition” which made me get hooked. By reducing it into an ambition I was gaining sometimes a subliminal message - „chill girl, don’t be so ambitious, so zealous, it’s   o n l y   your passion, or maybe even - a hobby”, a domesticated activity. „Only” is an illusive and an excellent tool of the objectification act. What has happened - I made myself quit dancing, but dancing didn’t quit me. I started to dance in darkness, in empty spaces, when there was nobody or everybody was asleep, like I didn’t want to get caught on this denuding act, which appeared almost like a tightlipped romance. And what’s more, I even found a beauty of incredible poetics which seemed to flourish from within that conspiration-like silence, strange but not an exceptional mixture of grief and pride! But I did get caught once, on my own wish. We were at my friend's house, having rest during the middle of winter. My two close friends were lying down on the couch. I turned on some music, and, accidentally, started to dance. After all, when I was lying down on the pavement still stunned of what has just happened when the last pulsations of a past event were resonating through my body, a friend of mine looked at me and said: „like... I don’t understand. Really.” and this „not-understanding” referred to the hung above question why this isn’t a part of my today’s living. It is, indeed, but a hidden part. I am still trying to trace why is it so easy sometimes to lose control while the objectification act is ongoing. Losing control means - to embrace it, even partially, but a partial embrace of passiveness always tends to totalization. This way, you leave the part of yourself behind and maybe this is what Sartre meant - „... it is not that I perceive myself losing my freedom in order to become a thing, but my nature is - over there, outside my lived freedom - as a given attribute of this being which I am for the Other”, while writing on voyeur’s shame. Only by living within lived freedom we are able to put our pieces together. It is never possible in its totality. But by acknowledging the impact of the shameful objectification, we are able to keep a compensation, which is never not fully embraced by the other’s notion what-like we are. Your space of experiencing, once objectified, becomes limited, call it a box (like today’s coaching „priests”), the square (like Beatniks), or whatever else you like. But an objectification’s goal is to close you inside an object, on the outside of which - there is only silence.

[volimetangere]

Born a Crime, Trevor Noah

Written in 2016, Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime is a memoir that details episodes of his childhood in South Africa. The episodes are often prefaced by historical context on apartheid and race relations in South Africa or anecdotal vignettes from Noah’s life.

Race, Identity and Self-Making

Noah calls himself a "chameleon" (56), referring to his capacity to temporarily be part of different ethnic and cultural groups through his knowledge of different languages. He sees language as crucial for loosening the reification of racial difference in South Africa: "[i]f the person who doesn't look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code" (50). Despite the feeling of otherness due to phenotypical racial difference, a shared language creates this discomfort of similarity within difference. Noah's mother's knowledge of Afrikaans helps them avoid the stereotype of being like other "blacks," and Noah's knowledge of the Zulu language prevents him from being robbed by a group of Zulu men (55). Noah's knowledge of many languages protects himself from hostility towards perceived otherness. Through his own ability to be a chameleon, he suggests that the perception of difference is often arbitrary. It is not that difference doesn't exist, but Noah's capacity to align himself with different people through his languages shows that there is a mystification of what makes one group of people ontologically different from another. While there are real socioeconomic consequences of being Black, coloured, or white in South Africa, Noah's languages and the relatively light shade of his skin enables him to shift, sometimes unwillingly, between the three categories available for racial classification.

Through his memoir, Noah emphasizes that at some point life will force you to pick between Black and white - he cannot have the freedom of transcending racial categories as he sometimes does through his ability to be a chameleon. As a kid, Noah chose to be in the B classes with Black classes rather than move ahead with the white kids (59). He choses his relationships with the Black kids over a higher probability of upward mobility. However, when he steals some chocolates with his friend, Teddy, the camera reads Noah as white in relation to Teddy's darker skin (159). It is a brutal moment where the gaze of the camera and South African society saves Noah through their racial classification of Noah's body in relation to Teddy's. In their misrecognition of Noah as white through the camera footage, Noah cannot choose to align himself with his friend, fearing the repercussion of being expelled and going to prison.

Freedom and Upward Mobility

Noah points out the lack of jobs available to Black people after apartheid formally dissolves (208). Education becomes complicated; it is both crucial and futile. Education is crucial for Black people to understand their position in history and potentially start being a cause rather than an effect of history in their dreams of freedom (61; 184). However, Noah points out the generational debt that slavery incurs on the Black generation of the post-apartheid era: "So many black families spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of the past. That is the curse of being black and poor, and it is a curse that follows you from generation to generation. My mother calls it 'the black tax.' Because the generations who came before you have been pillaged, rather than being free to use your skills and education to move forward, you lose everything just trying to bring everyone behind you back up to zero" (66). Noah shows us that post-apartheid is not some era in which the effects of slavery are relegated to the past. Education cannot benefit Black children to the degree in which it is lauded in public discourse due to the generations of economic and social impoverishment experienced by Black families.

But Noah credits his mother for her education of him, rather than the education system itself: "[s]he raised me like a white kid--not white culturally, but in the sense of believing that the world was my oyster, that I should speak up for myself, that my ideas and thoughts and decisions mattered" (73). The entitlement that white children are born to becomes an invaluable gift when given to Noah. His mother thinks, "Even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I've done enough" (74).

Noah's memoir does not portray an uncomplicated ascent towards whiteness and incorporation into the public sphere. In his portrayal of "the hood," in which he feels like a imposter due to his capacity to leave, he talks about "grassroots" crime that cares for the community--there's an unspoken rule that resources must be shared by those who have an abundance (218). Despite the precarity of "the hood" and the impossibility of getting out for many, there are moments where "the hood" acts like a heterotopia against the zero-sum nature of individualist, capitalist gain. But "the hood" is also a place where you can lose everything: Noah loses his CD writer, his only way of making income, and has to recreate his future from nothing. But the dreams his mother gave him were not nothing--they helped him get out.

[printarchive]

https://slingshotcollective.org/this-is-your-brain-on-reification/

[mysticallion]

The Waking Dream of Experience

In truth, you have never experienced anything directly and immediately. Never. All experience, as it manifests in consciousness, is actually a mental interpretation, a process which takes the raw data of the senses and combines it into what you call “me” and “my experiences” or “reality.” Of course, this “reality” we experience is not some sort of precise translation of, or correspondence to, actual (big-R) Reality. Not even close.

The overall process seems simple enough—at least in the basic way we tend to think of it: energy impacts our senses, which translates it into nerve impulses that travel to the brain and create experience. But of course it’s not that simple at all.

For one thing, nerve conduction is an organic process that takes a definite amount of time to unfold. Impulses move quickly from contact to perception, but there is a genuine physical time lag automatically built into human conscious experience. This means that the “experience” is actually taking place in awareness after it has already occurred in Reality. Your present is actually your past.

In addition to this “organic time lag,” the information composing any particular signal is substantially degraded by the transformation (from energy into nerve impulses) and transmission (nerve induction) process. Further, large amounts of raw sensory data are simply discarded, and the rest is heavily processed, sorted and compiled based on existing structures within the particular individual’s nervous system. That is to say, this already radically-altered “new information” is further filtered through existing preconscious psychological (learned) processes. In other words still: all human experience is immediately “prejudiced” based on the specific historical, cultural and social “learnings” and experiences of the particular individual.

Finally, all of this heavily-altered data is combined in a process called reification, which brings together all the disparate sensory signals and impulses and cognitive overlays in such a way as to create the illusion of an unified “experience” in consciousness. That is to say, the photons that strike your retina, the tactile signals from your fingers, and the air molecules entering your nasal passages, although from different “sources,” are in time recombined by the brain into a single “experience” of you enjoying a rose—or hating a rose, depending on your personal prejudices. This is, however, clearly an illusion. Because it’s not Real. It’s a limited reproduction.

In summery: you have never, ever experienced anything, including your own body, directly. ALL human experience is mitigated by the natural physical limits of the sensory and nervous systems, as well as by neurological and psychological predispositions. But most importantly: What you call “experience” is ALWAYS a psychosomatic re-creation of REALITY. You have never touched anything or anyone directly. ALL human experience—with one exception—is in fact a facsimile, a dynamic mental construction, a mind-made reproduction occurring within consciousness and composed entirely of consciousness.

That single exception is of the direct and immediate realization of Presence-Being-Awareness, or Consciousness itself, which is actually always already the background to all our regular “experience,” and which is the essence of what we all REALLY are beneath the trapping and coverings of mind. In other words still: only Consciousness can know itSelf directly.

[thaforni94]

#LUBALUKOVARESEARCH

Luba Lukova is an designer and artist, her thought-provoking posters show her ideas of what she expects that the world can be changed. Her creations are most about themes of humanity and injustice worldwide.

Lukova is internationally recognized, New York-based as one of the most original image-makers working today. Her posters tend to have economy of line, colour and text to present essential themes. Her messages reflects the human condition, fundamental fairness, and justice. Her use of striking, metaphoric images gives the viewers art to not only appreciate visually but intellectually.

In my opinion, her work is incredibly powerful and tought provoking. She uses just a few elements to tell what she wants to show the viewers. In her art, less is more. The graphic elements have fine details but the intent is still clear. She presents incredible arts using her simplicity.

According to the Gestalt Law, is correct to say she uses in most or her works, refication, trying to add in the original images, addition of another images that she wants to warn the viewers about.

The consistency of her works are functional, the meaning and action is consistent to reinforce the learnability and understandability of what she wants to warn the viewers. And also, her style and appearance is repeated to enhance recognition in all her posters.

Is common that she uses not more than 2 or 3 colours, in each poster, and the colour normally, is just to accentuate the idea of what the poster is showing. 

Her works: 

Brainwashing - In my opinion, Lukova show the viewers how the media can destroy your own toughts, tastes, "shaping" people's brain in the way that media wants.

Gestalt law: reification 

Peace - In my opinion, Lukova shows that for we have peace, we need to stop the war. 

Gestalt law: reification, figure and ground, similarity, proximity.

Ecology - In my opinion. Lukova try to call attention to the human destroying our nature. The importance that we need to stop deforesting our world. 

Gestalt Law: reification

Sources and photos: https://www.museumofdesign.org/lubalukovadesigningjustice

https://www.lukova.net

[liu02020ma]

Quantum Mind and Social Science Unifying Physical and Social Ontology

Alexander Wendt Department of Political Science The Ohio State University

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Quantum-Mind-and-Social-Science%3A-Unifying-Physical-Wendt/7a70f301b8c80d61faede6d1a8bd349dfe91d340

Contents Acknowledgments page x 1 Preface to a quantum social science 1 Why are we here? 1 Introduction 2 The causal closure of physics 7 Classical social science 11 The anomaly of consciousness 14 The mind–body problem 14 Intentionality and consciousness 18 The threat of vitalism 21 The anomaly of social structure 22 Where is the state? 23 The threat of reification 25 As if explanation and unscientific fictions 26 My central question, and answer in brief 28 Re-inventing the wheel? 34 Situating your observer 36 Part I Quantum theory and its interpretation 39 Introduction 39 2 Three experiments 43 The Two-Slit Experiment 43 Measurement is creative 46 Collapse of the wave function 46 Complementarity 48 The Bell Experiments 50 The Delayed-Choice Experiment 54 3 Six challenges 58 The challenge to materialism 59 The challenge to atomism 60 The challenge to determinism 62 The challenge to mechanism 63 The challenge to absolute space and time 65 The challenge to the subject–object distinction 66 vii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-08254-0 - Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology Alexander Wendt Frontmatter More information viii 4 Five interpretations 70 The problem and a meta-interpretive framework 71 Instrumentalism: the Copenhagen Interpretation 73 Realism I: materialist interpretations 76 The GRW Interpretation 76 The Many Worlds Interpretation 77 Realism II: idealist interpretations 81 The Subjectivist Interpretation 81 The Bohm Interpretation 85 Part II Quantum consciousness and life 91 Introduction 91 5 Quantum brain theory 95 Your quantum brain 96 The Frohlich tradition 98 ¨ The Umezawa tradition 101 Assessing the current debate 102 6 Panpsychism and neutral monism 109 Panpsychism 111 Background 112 Defining ‘psyche,’ aka subjectivity 114 Projecting subjectivity through the tree of life 116 . . . And then all the way down 119 The combination problem and quantum coherence 123 Neutral monism and the origin of time 124 7 A quantum vitalism 131 The materialist–vitalist controversy 132 Life in quantum perspective 137 Cognition 139 Will 139 Experience 141 Why call it vitalism? 143 Part III A quantum model of man 149 Introduction 149 8 Quantum cognition and rational choice 154 Quantum decision theory 157 Order effects in quantum perspective 157 Paradoxes of probability judgment 159 Quantizing preference reversals 161 Rationality unbound? 164 Quantum game theory: the next frontier 169 9 Agency and quantum will 174 Reasons, teleology, and advanced action 175 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-08254-0 - Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying Physical and Social Ontology Alexander Wendt Frontmatter More information Contents ix Free will and quantum theory 182 The philosophical literature 183 The Libet experiments 185 10 Non-local experience in time 189 The qualitative debate on changing the past 191 The Epistemological view 192 The Ontological view 193 The physics of changing the past 198 Part IV Language, light, and other minds 207 Introduction 207 11 Quantum semantics and meaning holism 210 Composition versus context in meaning 212 Quantum contextualism 215 12 Direct perception and other minds 222 The problem of perception 223 The dual nature of light 226 Holographic projection and visual perception 228 Semantic non-locality and intersubjectivity 230 The theory of mind debate 230 Semantic non-locality and other minds 233 Three objections considered 237 Part V The agent–structure problem redux 243 Introduction 243 13 An emergent, holistic but flat ontology 247 Supervenience meets externalism 250 Agents, structures, and quantum emergence 255 Downward causation in social structures 260 14 Toward a quantum vitalist sociology 267 The holographic state 268 The state as an organism 273 The state and collective consciousness 275 The politics of vitalist sociology 281 Conclusion 283 Night thoughts on epistemology 284 Too elegant not to be true? 288 Bibliography 294 Index 345 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-08254-0 - Quantum Mind and Social Science: Unifying

[theeroticbookreview]

Kiss Me, Kill Me Anthology by Bestselling Authors

  Title: Kiss Me, Kill Me. Anthology for American Forests Authors: Ashleigh Giannoccaro & Jason Hes ▪️ Yolanda Olson ▪️ J.M Walker ▪️Elizabeth Cash ▪️ Emery LeeAnn ▪️ Ellie Midwood ▪️ Peyton Banks ▪️ K. Larsen ▪️ C.M Radcliff ▪️ Donna Owens ▪️ Virginia Johnson ▪️ Petra J. Knox ▪️ A.A. Davies ▪️ Murphy Wallace ▪️ Ally Vance ▪️ Renee Dyer ▪️ Ed Bar ▪️ William Joseph ▪️ CF Rabbiosi ▪️ Avery Reigns ▪️ Muriel Garcia ▪️ HB Jasick Genre: Dark & Gothic Romance Release Date: August 13, 2019  

  USA Today and International Bestselling authors come together to deliver stories of dark decadence for a cause. Watch A Serenade of Fireflies follow Sweet Caroline as she attempts to hide her Silent Deception from the Alpha. Only in Stolen Dreams will you learn the secrets of Our Tormented Love, that are kept under Locke & Key. Can you survive The Syndicate or will you run from the White Widow and fall prey to her Beautiful Mercy? Be careful not to swallow the sweet poison of Bloodlust and become one of the vanished. With Stained Hearts, follow along with the Master Marionette as he captures his Twisted Little Bird whether she’s Ready or Not. Will the Writhe finally bid a long Goodbye to The Dark Knight as endures the sorrow of the night’s bitter song. Try not to do a Double Take when the Message Received is MINE: Press Start to Continue, because the monsters that lurk in these woods Watch Me Losing Faith in The Kiss. And when all is said and done, watch as Getting Her Back in her bloodstained Stiletto heels becomes a much easier task than originally assumed.    

  Elizabeth Cash is an avid lover of all things dark and sexy. She spends most of her time inside textbooks earning her degree, all while playing the mother role to her awesome kiddos and writing words when she can for all her horror loving fans! ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Author Avery Reigns is a multi-genre author who bleeds words onto paper from the heart. She loves writing from the darkest places inside her mind, creating stories woven for those with an open mind, stories based on truths or familiar stories stretched beyond belief. Avery is a kind and determined coffee addict who hides her demons well. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   A. A. Davies is the darker half of Abigail Davies' brain. A. A. Davies writes dark romance and wants her readers to automatically know when they're getting this. Abigail Davies grew up with a passion for words, storytelling, maths, and anything pink. Dreaming up characters—quite literally—and talking to them out loud is a daily occurrence for her. She finds it fascinating how a whole world can be built with words alone, and how everyone reads and interprets a story differently. Now following her dreams of writing, Abigail has found the passion that she always knew was there. When she’s not writing: she’s a mother to two daughters who she encourages to use their imagination as she believes that it’s a magical thing, or getting lost in a good book. If she’s doing neither of those things, you can be sure she’s surfing the web buying new makeup, clothes, or binge watching another show as she becomes one with her sofa. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Virginia Johnson is a multi-genre author that will dabble in anything. She hates walking on the beach and a hangover is her most regrettable moment. Writing gives her great pleasure and the ability to kill without consequence. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●● A lover of cats and books, equally, Petra J. Knox is an author of Dark Romance, including the bestselling Reverse Harem series, Saving Setora. Editor, wife, and mom, she lives in the desert of Eastern Washington, dreaming of thunderstorms and rolling, green pastures. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   H.B. Jasick: I live in Springfield, Missouri with my husband, and our two daughters. I have a Bachelors Degree in Mathematics and History Education that I don't actually use. My Favorite things include: movies, music, books, dachshunds, the color brown, LISTS, The Denver Broncos, sushi, coffee, Moscato d'Asti, and terrorizing all of my friends. My Favorite Books: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy & Public Enemies by Brian Burrough. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Murphy Wallace is an International Bestselling Author with works in several different genres, but most of her work has been in Dark Romantic Suspense. She currently resides in a small Eastern Florida town with her husband, who doubles as her best friend and their two boys. When she’s not getting in touch with her inner child at Disney World, or enjoying everything that Florida has to offer with her family, she enjoys writing and watching true crime documentaries. She has a cat named Maisy who is her constant writing partner. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   K. Larsen gives good words, born in Maine, she fled the state for a short period to experience, well, anything else, but now resides there again. She writes romantic suspense and psychological romance primarily but has dabbled in most romance sub-genres. She sometimes writes with Mara White, when something viral sparks a fire between them. They've been known to wrench hearts from chests and tears directly from readers eyes. And sometimes she writes with Yolanda Olson, they've been known to push the boundaries of readers moral compasses. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Emery LeeAnn is an International Best Selling Author who lives in Ohio with her family. Besides being addicted to coffee, she is a true believer that variety adds spice to your life. Writing in every genre gives her the variety she craves. Her characters like to invade her mind every hour of the day usually waking her up in the middle of the night. Loving the dark and gray side of things, she is exploring her passion with the written word. There are many wonders to come from her in her twisted Wonderland..... Stick around you may find you enjoy her special brand of torture. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Donna Owens: Who am I that's a good question? I'm a Dark poet and a lover of all things scary and gory A wife to Bill Owens whose the love of my life A mother to Joseph Scholl my only son A grandmother to three amazing grandsons I also have two adorable furbabies I've lived many places in my life and currently live in Savoy TX but Cleveland Ohio will forever be home to me My writing has been published in The Raven's series By R.L.Weeks Southern Fried Anthology and I was lucky enough to a guest author in Shivers with the amazing author Emery LeeAnn Writing dark poetry is something I truly love And I hope you as reader will enjoy. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Muriel Garcia is an indie author from Belgium. She started writing in 2005 but never published anything until 2015 when she decided to bite the bullet and just do it. She's grateful for all the amazing people she got to meet through her passion for writing. The 'Last Hangman MC Series' is the one that made people find out about her but since then she released a contemporary series - Love At Firsts - and a dark gory thriller trilogy - The Reaper Trilogy - which people have compared to Stephen King on crack — thing she's rather proud of. Some of her favourite things include snowy days, live music, horror movies, ghost stories, travelling and of course, a cosy day spent with a good book. Feel free to keep in touch with Muriel, she loves to hear from her readers. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Jason Hes: A visionary, a man, a reification of the most contradictory and illusive darkness in our collective unconscious … keeping the thug life alive. Jason Hes is a Johannesburg-based author who lives with his cat and loves to write horror stories. Our Immaculate (an occult horror story set in an all-girls school) is his debut novel. Sleight of Hand, a YA LGBT dark fantasy novel is his second, co-written with Ilse v Rensburg. Locke & Key, written with Ashleigh Giannoccaro, is his first dark romance. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●● Bestselling Author Ashleigh Giannoccaro writes edgy dark romance and erotic horror, self published by choice she writes the stories others don’t dare. Currently rising in Johannesburg South Africa with her husband and two daughters Ashleigh enjoys writing stories that make you fall in love with the unlovable and leave you asking questions. When not writing she can be found with her kindle in a sunny spot reading or traveling with her family.   ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●     Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. After obtaining her BA in Linguistics, Ellie decided to make writing her full-time career and began working on her first full-length historical novel, "The Girl from Berlin." Ellie is continuously enriching her library with new research material and feeds her passion for WWII and Holocaust history by collecting rare memorabilia and documents. In her free time, Ellie is a health-obsessed yoga enthusiast, neat freak, adventurer, Nazi Germany history expert, polyglot, philosopher, a proud Jew, and a doggie mama. Ellie lives in New York with her fiancé and their Chihuahua named Shark Bait. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   William Joseph was born in Lakewood New Jersey. He grew up in nearby Pine Beach New Jersey and has lived there his entire life. An only child and highly imaginative, William Joseph spent a lot of time writing growing up, but it wasn’t until he finally felt that he had a story to tell with THIS IS WAR that he stuck with it from beginning to end. During this time, William Joseph attended Ocean County College and graduated with honors and two degrees. While in college, he also attended a creative writing class, where, for the first time, he shared his work with other people. Sharing a short story with them and seeing how he could emotionally connect with his readers got him hooked. His short story was published in his college’s literary magazine, and since then, the pursuit for publishing his work began, as well as the dedication and dream of writing more books and stories. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Ed Bar is the international best-selling author of In the Dark, The Slutty Bride and The Man in the Woods. He's a native-born Missourian but has spent years traveling the country. When he's not writing, he spends his time hiking, fishing and playing with his pit bull. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Renee Dyer is a New Hampshire girl through and through. She began writing because staring at trees got boring and her mom gave her a journal to make her stop talking all the time. She’s a tea-drinking, Supernatural-watching, Patriots-loving, fuzzy sock obsessed, craft hoarder, who fights with her characters, but typically gives in because their ideas are better. Most days (because it feels like a frozen tundra three quarters of the year) you can find her huddled on her couch, under a blanket with a hot drink in her hand and typing or reading. Stories are her passion. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●     Yolanda Olson is an award winning and international bestselling author. Born and raised in Bridgeport, CT where she currently resides, she usually spends her time watching her favorite channel, Investigation Discovery. Occasionally, she takes a break to write books and test the limits of her mind. Also an avid horror movie fan, she likes to incorporate dark elements into the majority of her books. You can keep in touch with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.   ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   J.M. Walker is an Amazon bestselling author who recently hit USA Today with Wanted: An Outlaw Anthology. She loves all things books, pigs and lip gloss. She is happily married to the man who inspires all of her Heroes and continues to make her weak in the knees every single day.   ●●●●●●●●●●●●●���●●●●●●●     Peyton Banks is the alter ego of a city girl who is a romantic at heart. Her mornings consist of coffee and daydreaming up the next steamy romance book ideas. She loves spinning romantic tales of hot alpha males and the women they love. She currently resides with her husband and children in Cleveland, Ohio.   ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●     C.M. Radcliff lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two demon children. Known as the Psycho Queen, she speaks fluent sarcasm, dark humor, and has the mouth of a sailor. If she isn't reading or writing, she's probably on an adventure with her little family. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   Ally Vance has been writing since she was a teenager, and studied Professional Writing at college. It has been a long time dream of hers to finally become a published author. She finally achieved this in 2018 with her Bestselling debut book, Flower in the Dark. Ally writes Dark Romance genre, and also poetry, she is willing to expand into other genres if the inspiration takes her. Ally also co-writes with her close friend Michelle Brown under the pen name Ally Michelle. Ally lives in Kent, in the United Kingdom with her husband and stepson. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●   C.F. Rabbiosi: Charity used to be a Registered Nurse in California, and though she doesn't use her two degrees in the field anymore, they have helped her with her real passion- writing. She happily writes the day away using her in depth Anatomy, Physiology and Psych background to make her death scenes more real and her killers more... colorful. But it's not all about the blood, because more than anything she loves hot romance. Her heroines are kick-ass and her men are all the dangerous and gorgeous beasts you love to hate. Her style is beautifully gruesome and inspired by the amazing dark romance/dark erotica writers: Trisha Wolfe, Natalie Bennett, and Jennifer Bene. She lives in the beautiful university city of Columbia, MO with her incredible husband and three girls, and loves yoga- almost as much as living and writing in her own fantasy world. ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●  

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