#this is your brain on reification | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mangocheesecakeicecream · 5 months ago

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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

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the-feminist-philosopher · 2 years ago

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This came up in my notes again. So I wanted to take the time to draw people's attention to how much RadFems/TERFs sound like infamous misogynist and homophobe Jordan Peterson, and incels in general:

“Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects. And you can say ‘Well it’s only symbolic that women are nature,’ it’s like no, it’s not just symbolic. The woman is the gatekeeper to reproductive success. And you can’t get more like nature than that, in fact it’s the very definition of nature.”

-Jordan Peterson

“Our society faces the increasing call to deconstruct… [stability] to include smaller and smaller numbers of people who do not or will not fit into the categories upon which even our perceptions are based. This is not a good thing. Each person’s private trouble cannot be solved by a social revolution…”

-Jordan Peterson

“Women are choosy maters. Most males do not meet female human standards. It is for this reason that women on dating sites rate 85 percent of men as below average in attractiveness. It is for this reason that we all have twice as many female ancestors as male… It is Woman as Nature who looks at half of all men and says, ‘No!’ … Human female choosiness is also why we are very different from the common ancestor we shared with our chimpanzee cousins, while the latter are very much the same. Women’s proclivity to say no, more than any other force, has shaped our evolution into the creative, industrious, upright, large-brained… creatures that we are. It is Nature as Woman who says, ‘Well… my experience of you so far has not indicated the suitability of your genetic material…’”

-Jordan Peterson

“The fact that women can be raped hardly constitutes an argument against female sexual selection. Obviously female choice can be forcibly overcome. But if the choosiness wasn't there (as in the case of chimpanzees) then rape would be unnecessary.”

-Jordan Peterson

Through their sex-essentialist philosophy, RadFems/TERFs naturalize a patriarchal social order and naturalize it's tools of terror. A penis is not "naturally" a weapon. It is an organ, just like the vagina. Just an organ. But it is the patriarchy that assigns just organs moral value. It is the patriarchy that makes just an organ a symbol of power and force.

The man = aggressor and woman = recipient of aggression we commonly see in rad fem circles actively contributes to the patriarchal system of gender differentiation which dehumanizes women and strips them of their agency. And I don't know if I can emphasize that enough.

The TERF ideal that women are inherently good-natured, the decent victims of terrible crime who should instead be adored by society for their unique biology, and who are in need of the (masculinist) state’s (paternalistic) protection from those men contributes to placing women on this pedestal. This is responsible for the reification of gendered associations that tend to decrease the perception of women as empowered agents, or even human. Placing women on that pedestal literally strips them of their agency and humanity. And by placing women on that pedestal, the masculinist state and its actors can justify violence against women when we step off.

This is called “Benevolent Sexism”. Benevolent sexism requires gender differentiation, or the idea that “men are men” and “women are women,” and that these two groups are and should be fundamentally separate. It is responsible for the social prescription that each group must stay within certain bounds of behavior and public and private life.

One of these social prescriptions is a sex role paradigm that assigns to men the role of Aggressor and to women the role of passive Recipient, stripping women of their agency and thus encouraging men to act on behalf of women.

The violence we see is socially constructed and socially encouraged. It is NOT a biological strategy or an evolutionary development. We see that certain conditions promote such violence. Where violence is encouraged, where people see no accountability for their violence, and where people have social groups that accept or excuse violence are more commit violence, we see more violence.

This violence is very real. Naturalizing it does not solve it.

Because if men are naturally violent, if the penis is naturally a weapon, and if their violence is a biological strategy, then there is no ending the patriarchy. Our oppression becomes inescapable.

I don't know how else I can make this clear.

RAPE does not exist for the purpose of reproduction, the continuation of ("male") genes and the continuation of family lines. RAPE is not a natural or biological phenomenon.

The idea that RAPE is a product of evolution is a theory pushed forth by some men to discount holding perpetrators accountable. There is a reason feminists have long rejected the biological theory of rape. Such a theory naturalizes rape, and in-turn normalizes it's existence rather than regarding it as the perverse, depraved and inhumane crime that it is.

This application of Social Darwinism is insidious. Because once we accept rape as natural to men and the continuation of the human race, we pave a path to justify rape for the perseverance of human populations and the continued "domestic supply of infants." It will be used to justify that some men are naturally more inclined to rape than others. And it will be used to justify holding anyone capable of pregnancy as chattel for the purposes of propagating the race while discarding any "female" or "woman" who cannot produce as desired.

Accepting it as simply an evolutionary development carried out by "males" with limited social skills or limited mating opportunities for the chance to propagate at all is concession. It is concession to an oppression tactic; to a tactic used to strip people of their autonomy. If we accept it as something natural, it becomes something inescapable.

It would mean that no matter what type of hierarchical system we abolish, no matter if gender exists or not, no matter what we do, rape will always exist. If rape is natural, no matter if the patriarchy and gender is abolished, rape will still exist. This would mean that the bodily oppression of female people through rape will still exist outside gender and outside the patriarchy. This would mean that reproductive injustice is natural to our species.

Because rape is "natural" to our reproduction.

And as someone who has worked with rape and domestic crises centers, this rhetoric is very harmful to survivors of assault.

"Rape can be about control and dominance. It can also be about hate and hostility. A rapist usually believes misogynistic rape myths like the idea that women play hard to get. They feel they are entitled to someone else's time and body. They get off on depriving someone else of power. There is a link between narcissism and rape with repeat offenders displaying signs of narcissism. Men who rape sometimes have antisocial tendencies, so they really don't care about social perceptions of them.

However, it is important to note that there is no evidence that mentally ill men are more likely to rape compared to non-mentally ill men.

Social pressure and culture have greater influence over someone's behavior than genetics or biology. Those who feel sure they can get away with rape without punishment are more likely to report they used coercive behavior. Those with friends who display aggressive behavior or acceptance of aggressive behavior are themselves more likely to engage in aggressive behavior." X

A rapist typically knows their victim and is often sexually experienced and the acquaintance-rapist rarely resort to the SAME levels of physical force or violence that stranger-rapists or serial rapists employ.

If something is culturally reinforced and rooted in what someone is taught, raised to view, and in how they're socialized, then it is not a biological strategy. It is a social tactic of an oppressive system.

Power is socialized.

Rape is either an instinctual urge to reproduce or something that reproduces a power dynamic under an oppressive system. It cannot be both. Because, by it's nature, rape steals power and autonomy from the victim. So, if rape is a natural strategy for reproduction, then that power dynamic is natural too.

This ideology would mean that rape will always exist as a biological system. It would mean that the deprivation of bodily autonomy and the dominance, power, and control reinforced through rape is natural. And if it is natural, then it is inescapable.

So, either it is an instinctual desire to propagate genes or it is a socially construction tactic for power, control, and dominance within an oppressive system. And if your answer is, "our socials just reinforce what is instinctual," then I'll remind you that even without the cultural, we are still left with the instinctual. If rape is not solely socially constructed among humans, then it will continue to oppress you even without gender and the patriarchy. It would thus always exist, and especially so if you enforce this material and physical reality you base your ideology on.

Because the more we reinforce that "males" and "females" are inherently, biologically different, the easier it is for us to be alienated and dehumanized by the system that oppresses us. The more we encourage this idea that we're so fundamentally different and fundamentally incompatible and practically separate species, the more likely we will be treated as only the reproductive capacity you insist on defining us by.

You do not change our societal views on the FEMALE SEX simply by emphasizing women as our sex. You said it yourself. They are socialized to view our SEX to be subhuman. To the patriarchy, what makes us lesser is our biology; our reproduction; our parts; our SEX.

You are also applying our modern understanding of a social concept to the past. You are applying the idea that genetic relation is what makes someone a legitimate heir/child. This is itself a social construction of how descent and family works. Back in the day, biology did shit-all to legitimize an heir. The only thing that legitimized someone's children as their own and legitimized their inheritance was marriage. Bastards did not have inheritance rights.

And before civilization? We had no systems of law and land ownership through which concepts of inheritance- and thus heirs- would have been necessary.

Today, despite the prevalence of adoption and extended and blended families, we hold that biology is paramount in the creation of family; that what is most important in your "legacy" (a social construct) is the continuation of you through genes. And while such a social constructed existed in the past, only today is such a concept largely divorced from marriage (in some places).

"If the reason for rape is reproduction, then men and children would never be victims of rape. And if it's reason was reproduction and the continuation of a man's genes, we would see proportional statistics across nation, culture, race, and ethnicity. Women of color are at a greater risk of rape than white women, and women in war-torn countries are at a greater risk than women living in peace. If it's purpose was for "males" to pass on their genes, then sex workers wouldn't face higher numbers of assault and we'd see a consistent trend of a rise in assaults in countries with falling birth rates.

And if your theory were the case, we'd also see similar incident of rape among straight, bisexual, and lesbian women. We'd also see little to no incident of rape among transwomen if this were the case as they cannot get pregnant."

The reason "people with vaginas are raped," does not work grammatically isn't because it centers "person" and thus personhood, but because it is in the passive voice. If I replaced that with "women," we'd still run into the same issue.

"Women are raped and impregnated." By who?

Advocates and feminists most certainly use the active voice, and encourage it's use. Rather than "Women are raped," thus making their rapist some shadowy, unknown figure and making rape something done to her rather done by someone, we would say, "Josh raped Sarah." The subject should perform the action.

That would go for other examples too:

"Steven was robbed." -> "Josh robbed Steven."

"My cat was run over." -> "Josh ran over my cat."

"The road was crossed by the chicken." -> "The chicken crossed the road."

Medical research does not lack clarity because of gender or because of an internal sense of self. It lacks clarity because what is oppressed is not just gender identity, but also sex. Sex was oppressed before the concept of gender existed, sex was oppressed when "gender-roles" (a term that did not exist until the 70s) looked very different, and it would be oppressed even if gender distinctions did not at all exist.

Defining us solely as our sex does not challenge this and does not change sex-based oppression. Because if certain people are oppressed on the basis of sex, using the basis of that oppression (sex) as THE concept which defines and connects them only reinforces the binary and hierarchy that oppresses us. The patriarchy has always striven to divide us into fundamentally separate and supposedly incompatible binaries and has always striven to define as as our sex; to define us as our capacity for reproduction; to define us as "females."

It has always striven to define us by our parts, by our functions, by our capacity to produce ova, by our immutable biology -- and THEN to tie norms and standards and expectations to this. Without the norms and standards and expectations, we still have the patriarchy reducing us as nothing more than machines for the reproduction of workers, soldiers, and the race.

Gender- in terms of roles and norms- may be a social construction used to reinforce social hierarchies under the patriarchy, but the way to fight that is through epicinity. Epicinity, defined as a lack of gender distinction, is- in part- making language gender-neutral.

Gender-neutral language may include the use of person-centered language ("person with the capacity for pregnancy") or a lack of gendered distinction in a word's use ("woman" and "she" or "man" and "he" being used to refer to anyone, regardless of sex). Epicinity means allowing for people to be non-binary, agender, androgynous, and trans.

Epicinity means not reinforcing binaries. Trans/Cis is not a binary. AFAB/AMAB is not a binary. Woman/Man is not a binary. Male/Female is not a binary. TME/TMA is not a binary. TRA/TERF is not a binary.

You are advocating for a biological hierarchy that does not exist. You are advocating that men and women are fundamentally different because, why? The oft misunderstood and oft weaponized sexual dimorphism?

"Biology and it’s discourse are still structured by historic and current social and political views. That includes using “sexual dimorphism” as an excuse to justify the racist and misogynistic standards used by TERFs in their Sex Pattern Recognition, and the classification and categorization of faces. It’s constant emphasis in arguments for sex separatism is a political choice influenced by one’s socialization, rather than one that can claim to neutrally reflect what the world is “really” like.

So too is the insistence on defining “woman” as “females.” Emphasizing a label that is ascribed to all at birth is also a political choice influenced by one’s socialization, (rather than one that can claim to neutrally reflect what the world is “really” like).

Sex, as much as gender, is socially and culturally imbued. That is not to say that sex does not exist or that there is no advantage to acknowledging that different bodies have different organs that require different care (a cervical exam v. a prostate exam, for example). This also does not mean that “female” doesn’t refer to a sex. It does. It also is still something that is ascribed to people at birth.

All of the terms we use and concepts and standards we apply to bodies are still influenced by patriarchal, white supremacist, and heteronormative standards, including the classification of sex. And we’re inherently biased about the level of differences when we talk about humans, as humans. The fact you perceive the differences you do doesn’t necessarily reflect our actual level of genetic and anatomical diversity, because those differences you perceive are a result of your environment.

Because it is a fact that humans today display relatively limited sexual dimorphism. It is also a fact that most of our sexual dimorphis cannot readily be seen, like the placement of hips or size of bronchi.

I want to let you know that I hate you. I have not felt such disdain for someone since confronting the boy who was stalking me in secondary school.

I'd forgotten what hate feels like. I'd forgotten that hate is a silent rage; one that makes you go cold at your core.

For you to tell me this- privately message me this at that- after I explicitly told you that I was assaulted by an adult woman as a child in a room full of women and girls- is cruel.

My cheer leading coach held me down as I kicked and screamed for my mother. She stripped me bare while every woman and girl in the room stood around and watched. They did nothing. I was alone in a female-only space and violently stripped of my bodily autonomy, dignity, and integrity.

She looked me in the eye and tole me and told me it was okay because, "We all look the same. We're all female here."

She was a very real risk to my bodily autonomy and bodily integrity. I took my "chances," and I guess my "luck" just ran out faster than yours.

I'd try to suffocate myself to death a year later.

I was 7.

#txt #feminism #I want to let everyone know that the individual #who sent me these DMs did apologize #clearing the drafts

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yugotrash · 3 years ago

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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.

#asks #anonymous #i typed this out at 22:37 under rum and coke influence so #grains of salt and so on and so on

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baeddling · 3 years ago

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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

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mysticallion · 4 years ago

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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.

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intersectionedge-blog · 6 years ago

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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.

#writers on tumblr #writer #feminism #sartre #freedom

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mysticallion · 5 years ago

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Existential anxiety—knowing that you are inevitably going to die—is the ultimate source of human fear. Even when you’re not thinking about it, it festers in your subconscious as a constant low-level angst, and in your body as a chronic activation of the sympathetic (fight/flight) nervous system. But death as some sort of eternal finality is a fraud perpetrated by the brain-mind, which chronically seeks to create an “entity” somehow separate from the very fabric and ground of its own Reality.

You call this entity “me.” But really this “me” is a composite creation of the nervous system. The functions of cognition combine with raw sensory data and, through reification, are psychologicaly solidified into the conceptual sense of self-identity. This is what spirituality calls your “ego,” your ever-changing mental story of who or what you “are.”

But you are not, fundamentally, your story. You are Life itself. You are Reality itself, presenting itself to Itself in this endlessly diverse and reflective manner. Reality is Self-Aware Energy in unceasing metamorphosis, and That never dies; It merely, constantly, lovingly changes form.

You—the individual self—are a momentary function of Reality. But fundamentally you are nothing less than that very same Reality itself. Existential anxiety is thus a deeply held but mistaken concept, nothing more, a conviction born of ignorance (of the actual facts of existance), born from an unexamined sense of identification created and contained entirely within the confines of the brain-mind. It is ultimately an illusion.

Understand all of this—explore and feel your own underlying Realness rather than exclusivly identifying with the passing phenomena of the body and brain-mind—and the underlying anxiety that governs most of your life and behavior will slowly dissolve.

As an individual entity, a person, you will die; face this and accept it fully. But as Reality, you will not. Face and accept this fully as well, and you will finally, really start to live.

Namaste 🙏 🦁

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volimetangere · 3 years ago

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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.

#trevor noah #born a crime

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printarchive · 3 years ago

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

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thaforni94 · 4 years ago

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#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

#lubalukova #designer #digitaldesign

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liu02020ma · 4 years ago

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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

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theeroticbookreview · 5 years ago

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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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#anthology #kissmekillme #newrelease

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confrontingbabble-on · 7 years ago

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“The following briefly describes some of the most common fallacies:

ad hominem: Latin for "to the man." An arguer who uses ad hominems attacks the person instead of the argument. Whenever an arguer cannot defend his position with evidence, facts or reason, he or she may resort to attacking an opponent either through: labeling, straw man arguments, name calling, offensive remarks and anger.

appeal to ignorance (argumentum ex silentio) appealing to ignorance as evidence for something. (e.g., We have no evidence that God doesn't exist, therefore, he must exist. Or: Because we have no knowledge of alien visitors, that means they do not exist). Ignorance about something says nothing about its existence or non-existence.

argument from omniscience: (e.g., All people believe in something. Everyone knows that.) An arguer would need omniscience to know about everyone's beliefs or disbeliefs or about their knowledge. Beware of words like "all," "everyone," "everything," "absolute."

appeal to faith: (e.g., if you have no faith, you cannot learn) if the arguer relies on faith as the bases of his argument, then you can gain little from further discussion. Faith, by definition, relies on a belief that does not rest on logic or evidence. Faith depends on irrational thought and produces intransigence.

appeal to tradition (similar to the bandwagon fallacy): (e.g., astrology, religion, slavery) just because people practice a tradition, says nothing about its viability.

argument from authority (argumentum ad verecundiam): using the words of an "expert" or authority as the bases of the argument instead of using the logic or evidence that supports an argument. (e.g., Professor so-and-so believes in creation-science.) Simply because an authority makes a claim does not necessarily mean he got it right. If an arguer presents the testimony from an expert, look to see if it accompanies reason and sources of evidence behind it.

Appeal to consequences (argumentum ad consequentiam): an argument that concludes a premise (usually a belief) as either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. Example: some religious people believe that knowledge of evolution leads to immorality, therefore evolution proves false. Even if teaching evolution did lead to immorality, it would not imply a falsehood of evolution.

argument from adverse consequences: (e.g., We should judge the accused as guilty, otherwise others will commit similar crimes) Just because a repugnant crime or act occurred, does not necessarily mean that a defendant committed the crime or that we should judge him guilty. (Or: disasters occur because God punishes non-believers; therefore, we should all believe in God) Just because calamities or tragedies occur, says nothing about the existence of gods or that we should believe in a certain way.

argumentum ad baculum: An argument based on an appeal to fear or a threat. (e.g., If you don't believe in God, you'll burn in hell)

argumentum ad ignorantiam: A misleading argument used in reliance on people's ignorance.

argumentum ad populum: An argument aimed to sway popular support by appealing to sentimental weakness rather than facts and reasons. This can lead to bandwagon fallacies (see below).

bandwagon fallacy: concluding that an idea has merit simply because many people believe it or practice it. (e.g., Most people believe in a god; therefore, it must prove true.) Simply because many people may believe something says nothing about the fact of that something. For example many people during the Black plague believed that demons caused disease. The number of believers say nothing at all about the cause of disease.

begging the question (or assuming the answer): (e.g., We must encourage our youth to worship God to instill moral behavior.) But does religion and worship actually produce moral behavior?

circular reasoning: stating in one's proposition that which one aims to prove. (e.g. God exists because the Bible says so; the Bible exists because God influenced it.)

composition fallacy: when the conclusion of an argument depends on an erroneous characteristic from parts of something to the whole or vice versa. (e.g., Humans have consciousness and human bodies and brains consist of atoms; therefore, atoms have consciousness. Or: a word processor program consists of many bytes; therefore a byte forms a fraction of a word processor.)

confirmation bias (similar to observational selection): This refers to a form of selective thinking that focuses on evidence that supports what believers already believe while ignoring evidence that refutes their beliefs. Confirmation bias plays a stronger role when people base their beliefs upon faith, tradition and prejudice. For example, if someone believes in the power of prayer, the believer will notice the few "answered" prayers while ignoring the majority of unanswered prayers (which would indicate that prayer has no more value than random chance at worst or a placebo effect, when applied to health effects, at best).

confusion of correlation and causation: (e.g., More men play chess than women, therefore, men make better chess players than women. Or: Children who watch violence on TV tend to act violently when they grow up.) But does television programming cause violence or do violence oriented children prefer to watch violent programs? Perhaps an entirely different reason creates violence not related to television at all. Stephen Jay Gould called the invalid assumption that correlation implies cause as "probably among the two or three most serious and common errors of human reasoning" (The Mismeasure of Man).

excluded middle (or false dichotomy): considering only the extremes. Many people use Aristotelian either/or logic tending to describe in terms of up/down, black/white, true/false, love/hate, etc. (e.g., You either like it or you don't. He either stands guilty or not guilty.) Many times, a continuum occurs between the extremes that people fail to see. The universe also contains many "maybes."

half truths (suppressed evidence): A statement usually intended to deceive that omits some of the facts necessary for an accurate description.

loaded questions: embodies an assumption that, if answered, indicates an implied agreement. (e.g., Have you stopped beating your wife yet?)

meaningless question: (e.g., "How high is up?" "Is everything possible?") "Up" describes a direction, not a measurable entity. If everything proved possible, then the possibility exists for the impossible, a contradiction. Although everything may not prove possible, there may occur an infinite number of possibilities as well as an infinite number of impossibilities. Many meaningless questions include empty words such as "is," "are," "were," "was," "am," "be," or "been."

misunderstanding the nature of statistics: (e.g., the majority of people in the United States die in hospitals, therefore, stay out of them.) "Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive." -- Wallace Irwin

non sequitur: Latin for "It does not follow." An inference or conclusion that does not follow from established premises or evidence. (e.g., there occured an increase of births during the full moon. Conclusion: full moons cause birth rates to rise.) But does a full moon actually cause more births, or did it occur for other reasons, perhaps from expected statistical variations?

no true Christian (no true Scotsman): an informal logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion. When faced with an example, rather than denying it, this fallacy excludes the specific case without reference to any objective rule. Example: Many Christians in history have started wars. Reply: Well no true Christian would ever start a war.

observational selection (similar to confirmation bias): pointing out favorable circumstances while ignoring the unfavorable. Anyone who goes to Las Vegas gambling casinos will see people winning at the tables and slots. The casino managers make sure to install bells and whistles to announce the victors, while the losers never get mentioned. This may lead one to conclude that the chances of winning appear good while in actually just the reverse holds true.

post hoc, ergo propter hoc: Latin for "It happened after, so it was caused by." Similar to a non sequitur, but time dependent. (e.g. She got sick after she visited China, so something in China caused her sickness.) Perhaps her sickness derived from something entirely independent from China.

proving non-existence: when an arguer cannot provide the evidence for his claims, he may challenge his opponent to prove it doesn't exist (e.g., prove God doesn't exist; prove UFO's haven't visited earth, etc.). Although one may prove non-existence in special limitations, such as showing that a box does not contain certain items, one cannot prove universal or absolute non-existence, or non-existence out of ignorance. One cannot prove something that does not exist. The proof of existence must come from those who make the claims.

red herring: when the arguer diverts the attention by changing the subject.

reification fallacy: when people treat an abstract belief or hypothetical construct as if it represented a concrete event or physical entity. Examples: IQ tests as an actual measure of intelligence; the concept of race (even though genetic attributes exist), from the chosen combination of attributes or the labeling of a group of people, come from abstract social constructs; Astrology; god(s); Jesus; Santa Claus, black race, white race, etc.

slippery slope: a change in procedure, law, or action, will result in adverse consequences. (e.g., If we allow doctor assisted suicide, then eventually the government will control how we die.) It does not necessarily follow that just because we make changes that a slippery slope will occur.

special pleading: the assertion of new or special matter to offset the opposing party's allegations. A presentation of an argument that emphasizes only a favorable or single aspect of the question at issue. (e.g. How can God create so much suffering in the world? Answer: You have to understand that God moves in mysterious ways and we have no privilege to this knowledge. Or: Horoscopes work, but you have to understand the theory behind it.)

statistics of small numbers: similar to observational selection (e.g., My parents smoked all their lives and they never got cancer. Or: I don't care what others say about Yugos, my Yugo has never had a problem.) Simply because someone can point to a few favorable numbers says nothing about the overall chances.

straw man: creating a false or made up scenario and then attacking it. (e.g., Evolutionists think that everything came about by random chance.) Most evolutionists think in terms of natural selection which may involve incidental elements, but does not depend entirely on random chance. Painting your opponent with false colors only deflects the purpose of the argument. (From the email that I get on NoBeliefs.com this appears as the most common fallacy of all.)

two wrongs make a right: trying to justify what we did by accusing someone else of doing the same. (e.g. how can you judge my actions when you do exactly the same thing?) The guilt of the accuser has no relevance to the discussion.

Use-mention error: confusing a word or a concept with something that supposedly exists. For example an essay on THE HISTORY OF GOD does not refer to an actual god, but rather the history of the concept of god in human culture. (To avoid confusion, people usually put the word or phrase in quotations.

_______________________

Science attempts to apply some of the following criteria:

1) Skepticism of unsupported claims

2) Combination of an open mind with critical thinking

3) Attempts to repeat experimental results.

4) Requires testability

5) Seeks out falsifying data that would disprove a hypothesis

6) Uses descriptive language

7) Performs controlled experiments

8) Self-correcting

9) Relies on evidence and reason

10) Makes no claim for absolute or certain knowledge

11) Produces useful knowledge

Pseudoscience and religion relies on some of the following criteria:

1) Has a negative attitude to skepticism

2) Does not require critical thinking

3) Does not require experimental repeatability

4) Does not require tests

5) Does not accept falsifying data that would disprove a hypothesis

6) Uses vague language

7) Relies on anecdotal evidence

8) No self-correction

9) Relies on belief and faith

10) Makes absolute claims

11) Produces no useful knowledge”

https://www.nobeliefs.com/fallacies.htm

#atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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localbizlift · 6 years ago

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The erosion of Web 2.0

It seems quaint to imagine now but the original vision for the web was not an information superhighway. Instead, it was a newspaper that fed us only the news we wanted. This was the central thesis brought forward in the late 1990s and prophesied by thinkers like Bill Gates – who expected a beautiful, customized “road ahead” – and Clifford Stoll who saw only snake oil. At the time, it was the most compelling use of the Internet those thinkers thought possible. This concept – that we were to be coddled by a hive brain designed to show us exactly what we needed to know when we needed to know it – continued apace until it was supplanted by the concept of User Generated Content – UGC – a related movement that tore down gatekeepers and all but destroyed propriety in the online world.

That was the arc of Web 2.0: the move from one-to-one conversations in Usenet or IRC and into the global newspaper. Further, this created a million one-to-many conversations targeted at tailor-made audiences of fans, supporters, and, more often, trolls. This change gave us what we have today: a broken prism that refracts humanity into none of the colors except black or white. UGC, that once-great idea that anyone could be as popular as a rock star, fell away to an unmonetizable free-for-all that forced brands and advertisers to rethink how they reached audiences. After all, on a UGC site it’s not a lot of fun for Procter & Gamble to have Downy Fabric Softener advertised next to someone’s racist rant against Muslims in a Starbucks .

Still the Valley took these concepts and built monetized cesspools of self-expression. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are the biggest beneficiaries of outrage culture and the eyeballs brought in by its continuous refreshment feed their further growth. These sites are Web 2.0 at its darkest epitome, a quiver of arrows that strikes at our deepest, most cherished institutions and bleeds us of kindness and forethought.

So when advertisers faced either the direct monetization of random hate speech or the erosion of customer privacy, they choose the latter. Facebook created lookalike audiences that let advertisers sell to a certain subset of humanity on a deeply granular level, a move that delivered us the same shoe advertisement constantly, from site to site, until we were all sure we had gone mad. In the guise of saving our sanity further we invited always-on microphones into our homes that could watch our listening and browsing habits and sell to us against them. We gave up our very DNA to companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, a decision that mankind may soon regret. We shared everything with everyone in the grand hope that our evolution into homo ligarus – the networked man – would lead us to become homo deus.

This didn’t happen.

And so the pendulum swings back. The GDPR, as toothless as it is, is a wake up call to every spammer that ever slammed your email or followed you around the web. Further, Apple’s upcoming cookie control software in Safari should make those omnipresent ads disappear, forcing the advertiser to sell to an undifferentiated mob rather than a single person. This is obviously cold comfort in an era defined by both the reification of the Internet as a font for all knowledge (correct or incorrect) and the genesis of an web-based political cobra that whips back to bite its handlers with regularity. But it’s a start.

We are currently in an interstitial period of technology, a cake baked of the hearty camaraderie and “Fuck the system” punk rock Gen X but frosted with millennial pragmatism and desire for the artisanal. As we move out of the era of UGC and Web 2.0 we will see the old ways cast aside, the old models broken, and the old invasions of privacy inverted. While I won’t go as far to say that blockchain will save us all, pervasive encryption and full data control will pave the way toward true control of our personal lives as well as the beginnings of a research-based minimum income. We should be able to sell our opinions, our thoughts, and even our DNA to the highest bidder and once the rapacious Web 2.0 vultures are all shooed away, we will find ourselves in an interesting new world.

As a technoutopianist I’m sure that were are heading in the right direction. We are, however, taking turns that none of us could have imagined in the era of Clinton and the fax machine and there are still more turns to come. Luckily, however, we are coming out of our last major skid.

Photo by George Fitzmaurice on Unsplash

#marketing

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