#those can be solves by just educating them instead of reminding them that the opposition hates them

[angelthingy]

(this was written AFTER writing the tags, so reading those first might make more sense!)

wrote this on another post somewhere but since i ended up writing an essay in the tags forgetting to mention it i felt i should add that in now

as much as i think it’s important to have empathy to any side in queer discourse, the important thing to me is that the word discourse itself implies that there’s a debate

sometimes. there is not a debate

sometimes. they are just wrong

people saying “aro people aren’t queer” is NOT a debate, they’re just wrong. aro people are queer go away

people excluding trans people from communities isn’t a debate, they’re just wrong and possibly terfs/radfems!

just wanted to clear that up because i generally get kinda anxious whenever i talk extensively about a topic because!! i am not the best at using words to describe my thoughts!! because my thoughts often dont happen in words and instead in concepts which is a lot harder to explain!!!!

all queer discourse could be stopped if we all just remembered that in the eyes of conservative fascists we're all dirty queers polluting their kids minds who need to be eradicated at all costs

[kcatta-wodahs]

Making Lore Out of the Angel Event

Im the definition of 'its not that deep but I'm going to dig a hole to make it that deep'

In this case its me making it that deep because otherwise this event is upsetting so I'm making some dark lore theories to make it make sense to me.

I'll have a lot of spoilers below. For the event and everything I know, which is up to like lesson 32 I think.

Basically, TLDR; this was an attack by Michael/their Father on Devildom. Simeon and Diavolo have successfully negated the threat by turning it into a game.

TLDR Thesis; The Celestial Realm is governed through careful mind control. The Demon Bros are not "avatars" because of being demons- they have been cursed by their Father to suffer as no other demon nor angel has to.

First we hear direct from Michael, and he's giving these bangles that appear to brainwash the main cast.

This was an attempt by their Father to bring them back under his control. By control, I mean this literally.

I've felt for a long time that the way the Celestial Realm seems to be run is... shady. It's a utopia to outside appearances only, and those who have been most deeply embroiled in the Great Celestial War know this.

The Great Celestial War was over free will, rather than the specifics of Lilith's situation. She was the catalyst for a long-time-coming revolt against the rulers of the Celestial Realm.

My logic for this:

The reason for Lilith's expulsion goes against the current action plan of the Celestial Realm. Peace between the realms? Sure, but their Father is bound to realize that you put angels, humans, and demons together you're going to end up with more angels like Lilith, who fall for other races. Why would he accept this truce if he lost his favored children over an issue that is very similar? Did he have a change of heart? Heavens no.

Luke's behaviour towards the demon's seems case-and-point. Luke is not the strange one out of the angelic transfer students- Simeon is. Not only that, Simeon is chosen not in an attempt to promote peace, but to protect Luke from being influenced. (Which is, again, the whole point\of the exchange program.)

That time we went to the Celestial Realm for real - Lucifer was worried. Scared, even. This can be explained by, you know, the War and Lilith.. but I wonder if it may be more sinister. Like perhaps being brainwashed.

Diavolo and Barbatos weren’t required to wear bangles to become less “demon-like” for the “party”. This is because the bangles were a ploy to get the brothers back.

My theory is that when an angel begins to show signs of rebellion or questioning the divine order, they are forcibly stopped. Michael is that enforcer, and these 'gifts' are a method of stopping them.

The bangles cause a person to act *perfectly angelic* against their free will. The people affected become all smiles and sunshine, so clearly nothing could be wrong with it, right? They’re happy, right?

No. Very not right, and we can see that through Satan.

Poor Satan is always the exception to the rule of the Brothers, as his circumstances are different from everyone else's.

In this case though, he's the one who provides insight on this mind control. 

Let me remind you of the quotes Satan gives us during this time:

“I feel worked up.” “I don’t feel like myself at all.”

“It feels like something foreign is forcing my heart to be calm.” “Like my heart... becoming tranquil.”

Satan has never been an angel. He has never experienced this before. He has something the other brothers don’t: self-reflection. Satan can tell the difference between his feelings and feelings that are being imposed upon him. He tells you what he feels - “worked up” and “not like himself” and he is not smiling during this. He’s clearly unhappy, even though an angel might say he should feel unburdened by losing his anger.

He even mentions this.

“Normally, that wouldn’t seem like something bad, right?” “Something isn’t right.” “Maybe you shouldn’t come near me when I’m in this state.”

Satan is under the effects of the bangle, being forced to act angelic, but he can tell something “isn’t right.” He clearly shows that he thinks this is a “bad” thing, not because being calm is bad, but because it’s not “normal”. And can I remind you that he’s the Avatar of Wrath? The Sin that is most likely to be dangerous to be around - and yet it’s only when his anger is forcibly quelled that he thinks you should stay away from him. He knows that this is not something to desire. He knows that it is not happiness.

“I can’t concentrate on reading today.”

I mean, he’s obviously going through a lot, so that’s fair. But I have the theory that if he were to try and research this condition he wouldn’t be able to either. I have a theory about the Garden of Eden. My theory is about Paradise.

Remember when Eve ate the fruit? Do you know what that fruit was? Sin?

No. That fruit was knowledge.

Specifically, knowledge of good and evil. Now, why would this knowledge be something to keep from those under the control of the Celestial Realm? It sounds rather like they might be able to then make their own decisions of what is right and wrong.

Satan has known this from the beginning. Knowledge is power. The Ruler of the Celestial Realm, the other demons’ Father, knows this, too.

Why are there no other Avatars?

Sin was not something inherent to Devildom. Sin is a judgement sent from the Celestial Realm. There are no other Avatars because they are a wholly angelic creation. There are other posts that have examined the Sins as outlets, and how each of the brothers are attempting to find ways to allow themselves to express their sin so it does not overtake them.

From the get-go, we are shown that these Sins are a defining point for the brothers, but we’re also shown that they cause more trouble than anything else. Again, part-and-parcel of being a demon, right?

So why aren’t other demons like this?

Look at Diavolo and Barbatos, or even just the background demons who work across Devildom. Look at No. 2. They are all far more complex, and could even be considered normal. No. 2 is specifically meant to be based off of Mammon and his greed, but is much more rounded when we interact with it.

If Diavolo is meant to be the ruler of demonkind -- the paragon of what a demon should be -- then why would he not be the epitome of all of these Sins in one? What is Diavolo, instead?

Diavolo is accepting.

Hold up a moment here. What? Sorry y’all but it sounds to me like Mr. Demon Daddy King trusts his son enough to pass the kingdom on to him... so that must mean that Diavolo is behaving as a demon should.

Barbatos doesn’t question Diavolo’s choices. Nobody does. He’s an all around popular ruler. Devildom seems to be quite.. the opposite of what we’ve been trained to expect, huh? Trained by who exactly?

What are the Demon Brothers?

Cursed. They don’t act like other demons because they’re not like other demons. When they rebelled against their Father, they were punished for this act, but I posit that the punishment and the exile were two different acts. Their Father knew that leaving the Celestial Realm was not punishment to those who desired free will. So instead, he gave them Sin. Something that Demons are not normally bound to.

But how would the brothers know this? They only know what they’ve been taught by angels about demons. Surely these new, pressing desires come from turning into demons..? 

So, why was this not taken seriously?

Short answer: it was. But in the way that aligns with Diavolo’s ultimate goals.

Diavolo wants peace. 

Let’s Talk About Simeon

Simeon is an enigma and a half isn’t he?

Simeon is close with Michael, closer than Luke in any case. Now, I’ll be honest, I can’t remember if it was a fanfiction I read that said this or if it was canon so uh - forgive me. But Simeon was chosen to accompany Luke as an exchange student so that Luke would get some education. Simeon says this is to help relations, as Diavolo wants, but of course that’s what you would say as a sleeper agent?

Now, don’t get sad. Because we love Simeon here and we support him.

Simeon is wise and neutral. He seems to support the brothers, and even still wishes to foster a relationship with them. This could be seen as an attempt to bring them back, or some such, but I like to think that Simeon knows what’s wrong with the Celestial Realm.

Simeon, however, doesn’t think that a revolt can solve it. Simeon is working with Diavolo to create a form of peace - and has been transparent about the fact that Michael chose him to prevent Luke from being corrupted. I like to think he’s also been transparent with Diavolo about Michael’s actual goal. 

Simeon believes that the races should co-exist and love freely. How could love be evil, after all? Whether or not this is a new concept to him (because of his falling for you) or if this is just who he is, I’ll leave up to you and your preferences, but since he is now no longer undateable, it is established that he does not believe love between angels and humans to be bad - as his Father did with Lilith.

What happened, then?

My theory is that Simeon told Diavolo that Michael had given him a task - to give these bangles to the brothers to remind them of the joy they were missing by disobeying the Divine Order. Either that, or to brainwash them into coming back home. 

Simeon’s position would be revealed to Michael if he didn’t give the brothers the bangles, but he does not want to instigate another war either. So he told Diavolo Michael’s plan. 

Diavolo wants peace, and he knows that with time, the brothers can overcome this mind control as they had in the past - especially with his help. 

So thus comes the “party”. 

An excuse to make the bangles seem like a “harmless” gift, that had only gone wrong because of strange magical interference, when really they had done exactly what they were supposed to.

And a wonderful way to maintain peace while leaving the Celestial Realm to stew in their own pots. 

Simeon gets to maintain his facade for everyone - and put on a show for Michael as being loyal. He also gets to show Luke that perhaps being wholly angelic isn’t the way for some people, letting him learn a little more about peaceful coexistence. Nothing happens to ruin Diavolo’s grand plan for peace, and he gets to learn more about the curse that is set upon his friends - One that he hopes to be able to break someday, so they can live their lives unfettered by their Father.

[arcticdementor]

Martin Gurri's The Revolt Of The Public is from 2014, which means you might as well read the Epic of Gilgamesh. It has a second-edition-update-chapter from 2017, which might as well be Beowulf. The book is about how social-media-connected masses are revolting against elites, but the revolt has moved forward so quickly that a lot of what Gurri considers wild speculation is now obvious fact. I picked up the book on its "accurately predicted the present moment" cred, but it predicted the present moment so accurately that it's barely worth reading anymore. It might as well just say "open your eyes and look around".

…

In conclusion, 2011 was a weird year.

Gurri argues all of this was connected, and all of it was a sharp break from what came before. These movements were essentially leaderless. Some had charismatic spokespeople, like Daphni Leef in Israel or Tahrir-Square-Facebook-page-admin Wael Ghonim in Egypt, but these people were at best the trigger that caused a viral movement to coalesce out of nothing. When Martin Luther King marched on Washington, he built an alliance of various civil rights groups, unions, churches, and other large organizations who could turn out their members. He planned the agenda, got funding, ran through an official program of speakers, met with politicians, told them the legislation they wanted, then went home. The protests of 2011 were nothing like that. They were just a bunch of people who read about protests on Twitter and decided to show up.

Also, they were mostly well-off. Gurri hammers this in again and again. Daphni Leef had just graduated from film school, hardly the sort of thing that puts her among the wretched of the earth. All of these movements were mostly their respective countries' upper-middle classes; well-connected, web-savvy during an age when that meant something. Mostly young, mostly university-educated, mostly part of their countries' most privileged ethnic groups. Not the kind of people you usually see taking to the streets or building tent cities.

Some of the protests were more socialist and anarchist than others, but none were successfully captured by establishment strains of Marxism or existing movements. Many successfully combined conservative and liberal elements. Gurri calls them nihilists. They believed that the existing order was entirely rotten, that everyone involved was corrupt and irredeemable, and that some sort of apocalyptic transformation was needed. All existing institutions were illegitimate, everyone needed to be kicked out, that kind of thing. But so few specifics that socialists and reactionaries could march under the same banner, with no need to agree on anything besides "not this".

…

Gurri isn't shy about his contempt for this. Not only were these some of the most privileged people in their respective countries, but (despite the legitimately-sucky 2008 recession), they were living during a time of unprecedented plenty. In Spain, the previous forty years had seen the fall of a military dictatorship, its replacement with a liberal democracy, and a quintupling of GDP per capita from $6000 to $32000 a year - "in 2012, four years into the crisis there were more cell phones and cars per person in Spain than in the US". The indignado protesters in Spain had lived through the most peaceful period in Europe's history, an almost unprecedented economic boom, and had technologies and luxuries that previous generations could barely dream of. They had cradle-to-grave free health care, university educations, and they were near the top of their society's class pyramids. Yet they were convinced, utterly convinced, that this was the most fraudulent and oppressive government in the history of history, and constantly quoting from a manifesto called Time For Outrage!

So what's going on?

Our story begins (says Gurri) in the early 20th century, when governments, drunk on the power of industrialization, sought to remake Society in their own image. This was the age of High Modernism, with all of its planned cities and collective farms and so on. Philosopher-bureaucrat-scientist-dictator-manager-kings would lead the way to a new era of gleaming steel towers, where society was managed with the same ease as a gardener pruning a hedgerow.

…

Realistically this was all a sham. Alan Greenspan had no idea how to prevent recessions, scientific progress was slowing down, poverty remained as troubling as ever, and 50% of public school students stubbornly stayed below average. But the media trusted the government, the people trusted the media, and failures got swept under the rug by genteel agreement among friendly elites, while the occasional successes were trumpeted from the rooftops.

There was a very interesting section on JFK’s failure at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy tried to invade Cuba, but the invasion failed very badly, further cementing Castro’s power and pushing him further into the Soviet camp. Representatives of the media met with Kennedy, Kennedy was very nice to them, and they all agreed to push a line of “look, it’s his first time invading a foreign country, he tried his hardest, give him a break.” This seems to have successfully influenced the American public, so much so that Kennedy’s approval rating increased five points, to 83%, after the debacle!

…

In Gurri's telling, High Modernism had always been a failure, but the government-media-academia elite axis had been strong enough to conceal it from the public. Starting in the early 2000s, that axis broke down. People could have lowered their expectations, but in the real world that wasn't how things went. Instead of losing faith in the power of government to work miracles, people believed that government could and should be working miracles, but that the specific people in power at the time were too corrupt and stupid to press the "CAUSE MIRACLE" button which they definitely had and which definitely would have worked. And so the outrage, the protests - kick these losers out of power, and replace them with anybody who had the common decency to press the miracle button!

…

Any system that hasn't solved every problem is illegitimate. Solving problems is easy and just requires pressing the "CAUSE MIRACLE" button. Thus the protests. In 2011, enough dry tinder of anger had built up that everywhere in the world erupted into protest simultaneously, all claiming their respective governments were illegitimate. These protests were necessarily vague and leaderless, because any protest-leader would fall victim to the same crisis of authority and legitimacy that national leaders were suffering from. Any attempt to make specific demands would be pilloried because those specific demands wouldn't unilaterally end homelessness or racism or inequality or whatever else. The only stable state was a sort of omni-nihilism that refused to endorse anything.

(I’m reminded of Tanner Greer’s claim that the great question of modernity is not “what can I accomplish?” or “how do I succeed?” but rather “how do I get management to take my side?”)

Gurri calls our current government a kind of "zombie democracy". The institutions of the 20th century - legislatures, universities, newspapers - continue to exist. But they are hollow shells, stripped of all legitimacy. Nobody likes or trusts them. They lurch forward, mimicking the motions they took in life, but no longer able to change or make plans or accomplish new things.

…

How do we escape this equilibrium? Gurri isn't sure. His 2017 afterword says he thinks we're even more in it now than we were in 2014. But he has two suggestions.

First, cultivate your garden. We got into this mess by believing the government could solve every problem. We're learning it can''t. We're not going to get legitimate institutions again until we unwind the overly high expectations produced by High Modernism, and the best way to do that is to stop expecting government to solve all your problems. So cultivate your garden. If you're concerned about obesity, go on a diet, or volunteer at a local urban vegetable garden, or organize a Fun Run in your community, do anything other than start a protest telling the government to end obesity. This is an interesting contrast to eg Just Giving, which I interpret as having the opposite model - if you want to fight obesity, you should work through the democratic system by petitioning the government to do something; trying to figure out a way to fight it on your own would be an undemocratic exercise of raw power. Gurri is recommending that we tear that way of thinking up at the root.

Second, start looking for a new set of elites who can achieve legitimacy. These will have to be genuinely decent and humble people - Gurri gives the example of George Washington. They won't claim to be able to solve everything. They won't claim the scientific-administrative mantle of High Modernism. They'll just be good honorable people who will try to govern wisely for the common good. Haha, yeah right.

…

Gurri divides the world between the Center and the Border. He thinks the Center - politicians, experts, journalists, officials - will be in a constant retreat, and the Border - bloggers, protesters, and randos - on a constant advance. His thesis got a boost when Brexit and Trump - both Border positions - crushed and embarrassed their respective Centers. But since then I'm not sure things have been so clear. The blogosphere is in retreat (maybe Substack is reversing this?), but the biggest and most mainstream of mainstream news organizations, like the New York Times are becoming more trusted and certainly more profitable. The new President of the US is a boring moderate career politician. The public cheers on elite censorship of social media. There haven't been many big viral protests lately except Black Lives Matter and the 1/6 insurrection, and both seemed to have a perfectly serviceable set of specific demands (defunding the police, decertifying the elections). Maybe I've just grown used to it, but it doesn't really feel like a world where a tiny remnant of elites are being attacked on all sides by a giant mob of entitled nihilists.

…

At the risk of being premature or missing Gurri's point, I want to try telling a story of how the revolt of the public and the crisis of legitimacy at least partially stalled.

Gurri talks a lot about Center and Border, but barely even mentions Left and Right. Once you reintroduce these, you have a solution to nihilism. The Left can come up with a laundry list of High Modernist plans that they think would solve all their problems, and the Right can do the same. Then one or the other takes control of government, gets thwarted by checks/balances/Mitch McConnell, and nothing happens. No American Democrat was forced to conclude that just because Obama couldn't solve all their problems, the promise of High Modernism was a lie. They just concluded that Obama could have solved all their problems, but the damn Republicans filibustered the bill. Likewise, the Republicans can imagine that Donald Trump would have made America great again if the media and elites and Deep State hadn't been blocking him at every turn. Donald Trump himself tells them this is true!

With this solution in place, you can rebuild trust in institutions. If you're a Republican, Fox News is trustworthy because it tells you the ways Democrats are bad. Some people say it's biased or inaccurate, but those people are Democrats or soft-on-Democrat RINO traitors. And if you're a Democrat, academic experts are completely trustworthy, and if someone challenges them you already know those challenges must be vile Republican lies. Lack of access to opposing views has been replaced with lack of tolerance for opposing views. And so instead of the public having to hate all elites, any given member of the public only needs to hate half of the elites.

You could think of this as a mere refinement of Gurri. But it points at a deeper critique. Suppose that US left institutions are able to maintain legitimacy, because US leftists trust them as fellow warriors in the battle against rightism (and vice versa). Why couldn't one make the same argument about the old American institutions? People liked and trusted the President and Walter Cronkite and all the other bipartisan elites because they were American, and fellow warriors in the battle against Communism or terrorism or poverty or Saddam or whatever. If this is true, the change stops looking like the masses suddenly losing faith in the elites and revolting, and more like a stable system of the unified American masses trusting the unified American elites, fissioning into two stable systems of the unified (right/left) masses trusting the unified (right/left) elites. Why did the optimal stable ingroup size change from nation-sized to political-tribe-sized?

…

The one exception to my disrecommendation is that you might enjoy the book as a physical object. The cover, text, and photographs are exceptionally beautiful; the cover image - of some sort of classical-goddess-looking person (possibly Democracy? I expect if I were more cultured I would know this) holding a cell phone - is spectacularly well done. I understand that Gurri self-published the first edition, and that this second edition is from not-quite-traditional publisher Stripe Press. I appreciate the kabbalistic implications of a book on the effects of democratization of information flow making it big after getting self-published, and I appreciate the irony of a book about the increasing instability of history getting left behind by events within a few years. So buy this beautiful book to put on your coffee table, but don't worry about the content - you are already living in it.

[loisalloisa]

THEORIES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

These theories that are chosen are somehow made us felt easier to understand and to make an informational words to provide enough information for those who are willing to take a risk or have plans upon joining the entrepreneurship field.

Innovation is the creation, development and implementation of a new product, process or service, with the aim of improving efficiency, effectiveness or competitive advantage. Innovation is not only about thinking a new idea to be implemented but it is also a subject that enables you to invent or make some things that can be useful for the future. These are the things that will either help us for our growing economy. It may be hard to invent some equipments but if you do it with a group that has a potential to make it public or to produce more equipments and the government will approve these inventions and provide some materials needed and to introduce these to all the people who are willing to use your inventions, then there will be a big possibility that the economic development will grow differently not for the negativity but it will grow and give people a lot of positive thoughts. Introducing new innovation to people are actually a hard task especially to the community that are not interested but if you introduce it slowly and let them see a process that you, yourself is using the product that is being invented, there will be a possibility that they will be interested to your innovation.

Years from now, we’ll all be hearing about newly invented technologies that can be useful for the economic growth. The video is related to the theory because as the example given like amazon. In Amazon they are experimenting for a drone delivery. They develop a new echo device which is named “alexa” instead going to amazon.com they can order it by just telling alexa. In the video it also shows the innovations of spotify and tinder.

 Video: https://youtu.be/avWVPaJFgFk

Keynesian theory stated that the government should increase demand to boost growth. Keynesian believes that consumer demand is the primary driving force in an economy. As a result, the theory supports the expansionary fiscal policy. Its main tools are government spending on infrastructure, unemployment benefits, and education. The government should practice a proper handling of financial needs to be able to manage a business properly. The government should also know how to analyze the demands of a business and should know how to balance rates of a certain needs for each developments of government and in that way the government will easily improve. According to the British Economist, John Maynard Keynes, developed this theory in the 1930s,  had defied all prior attempts to end it. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, used Keynesian economics to build his famous New Deal program in his first 100 days in office,  FDR (Frequency Domain Reflectometry) increased the debt by $3 billion to create 15 new agencies and laws. He used his skills by analyzing the demands of his business, balancing the rates of the certain needs for the developments.

           The rates of a certain needs for the developments. The videdo is related to the theory because it shows how to practice about handling financial needs and to manage proper business, it talks about  earning money, efforts and improvements of skills. It is important on how to manage money or to give the best effort in order to earn more money. More effort, more money and the growth of the economy will increase. The growth of the economy also depends on the strategy that the entrepreneur used. The government should also learn different kinds of strategy to be able to have a lot of options in case the growth of the economy will be slowing down. Being able to understand the meaning of learning some strategies will lead you to a good economy.

 Video: https://youtu.be/qC-U76O76X0

For this theory, entrepreneurs or people handling a business should be prepared whatever the result of their hard works. There are times that even if we did our best, we actually sometimes fail, it is either we lack business strategies or it’s just that we lack information. We need to accept and face the failures because in that case, we will be able to learn on how to solve and make ways for a new opportunity. In opening business or innovating a technology, we must be also prepared for the result, it’s either we fail or we can receive success. The reason why other entrepreneurs, some of them haven’t tried to experience failures, it’s not because they have a lot of connections but they are also a street-smart people.

Receiving failures does not mean that you are not capable of making and to continue your small business, but failures also give you a lesson, and that lesson will lead you to a better path or to a better option that will help you grow your business. Taking risk is not very easy at all, it may include political fights but if you know how to handle it properly, you’ll be able to manage it with your own hand. Money is one of the problem when it comes to business, but it does not mean that if you will do an illegal action, if you are really willing to let your business grow, you must take a path, take a risk to communicate, ask for a help or you should work hard for your business to be able to make it public. It’s better to have a lot of communications when it comes to business, because in that way, you’ll be able to share your business but always be careful for people who you trust for your business, you may be able to experience dealing with scammers. We chose to relate this video in this this theory because it shows the different franchisers taking risks and facing some lost profits from their growing business.

 Video: https://youtu.be/duQow41bTx0

We can easily begin with Weber's words: "Socialology is a science which tries to understand social action in terms of interpreting, thus explaining its course and effects." In addition, when action takes other people's actions into account, it is social action and is thus oriented towards it" (Weber, 1947). Fair choices or action theory may be interpreted as the potential understanding of Weber's programme, but one which is very unique is to call upon us to follow the least complicated conception of social action from which we can analytically describe its course and consequences." It thus departs from many post-Weberian (and for that matter pre-Weberian) theoretical traditions-particularly those of phenomenological persuasion-where the aim seems to be to tilt in a completely opposite direction, namely to find ways of conceiving (social) actions that are locally detailed and complex. Why this heterodox stance should be embraced by rational choice theory would hold us down below.

The video below is very relatable into this theory. Tim Cook likes to be reminded of where he came from. He never wasted his money for nothing. Thus, he spend his fortune for helping people for social problems. It could also be a reminder for all part of entrepreneurships that we should all be a good role model because being one of it will always lead you to become a successful entrepreneur.

Video: https://youtu.be/swOtYThF8JQ

Alertness is the basic notion in Kirzner's theory of entrepreneurship. Alertness leads people to make valuable discoveries capable of satisfying human desires. In their alertness to hitherto unnoticed possibilities, the role of entrepreneurs lies. According to Kirzner (1999), Alertness has the ability to bring tremendous value to a business, because it helps entrepreneurs to be aware of changes, shifts, opportunities and overlooked possibilities. Kirzner believes that entrepreneurial alertness cannot be taught. However, this belief has been critiqued because market research and customer discovery can clearly help to recognize certain types of opportunities. But a rebuttal might be that knowing that market research was needed in the first place is entrepreneurial. This video also relates the theory of kirzner’s, it shows how subway was getting more money because of their commercial which many people called a healthy brand. But in 2008 due to the world suffering from recession, subway was alert and introduce new promotion because of that the sales increased in 17%. The entrepreneur was also alert to price differences.

 Video: https://youtu.be/duQow41bTx0

[emilx311]

As a dragon Tobirama was used to being hated and feared and chased away from the children he only wanted to teach. When he is discovered with his latest batch of students he is prepared for the same thing to happen. Madara however, has different plans. 

Written for MadaTobi week Fantasy and Creatures. I may end up coming back to play around in this universe more as I had a few ideas that didn't make it into this fic. 

If you enjoy my work please consider supporting it by buying me a coffee

Tobirama has lived a long life. In that time, he has seen and learned many things. It would be hard not to as he had made it his mission to learn as much as he possibly can. He has also passed that knowledge on to as many as he can. As much as he values the things he has learned, he values the chance to pass the, on more, much to the irritation of many. He really did not see what the other races found so objectional about his habit of teaching, but their reactions were extremely irritating. He had to work hard to bury his instincts every time the adults dragged his students away and banned them from ever seeing him again. Separating a dragon from its hoard was always dangerous after all, though given his nature, Tobirama knew he would always have to be different. As much as he wanted to, he knew that he couldn’t just kidnap his students. They needed their homes and families and other things he just could not provide to them in order to thrive. Because of this he had forced himself to develop an almost unheard-of amount of control over himself.  

Everyone knew that dragons had a hoard that they guarded with deadly force. Everyone knew that to touch a dragon’s hoard was tantamount to suicide. This was, on the whole, true. What was not true was the perception other species had that all dragons hoarded things like gold and precious gems which they hid in caverns. What was not true was the assumption that if you saw a dragon you were close to its hoard and in extreme danger of being attacked. It was the rise of these ideas that had his kin hiding further and further away from the world with every passing year.

The reality of it was that, like with other species, each dragon was different-in hoard and in temperament.  Once they hit puberty, young dragons would begin to feel the urge to hoard, what they then began to collect was unique to each dragon. Something in them would tell them what they needed to collect, and once they had enough of it, dragons would move out of their parent’s dens to create their own. There was no real way to tell what a dragon would be driven to hoard when they reached this stage, though sometimes an educated guess could be made.

His elder brother Hashirama, for example, had always been drawn to the forest. Their parents always had to fight to get Hashirama to return to their mountain den at night. So, it had surprised no one when he began collecting and growing saplings. He was now the proud owner of a huge forest filled with all sorts of plants and animals in addition to his trees. The first ones he’d collected were all planted around the meadow he and his mate slept in, near the very center of the forest.

Mito, Hashirama’s mate, was a water dragon. She hoarded seals, and books on sealing (she also had lots of ink, brushes, and paper, but that was more for practicalities sake than instinct). These she hid in a cave hidden by a small spring near his brother’s meadow. Tobirama had never seen her full collection, though they would occasionally do trades.

His cousin, Touka, had ended up the opposite of his brother when it came to her hoard. Everyone had assumed she would hoard naginatas, or at least weaponry, given her love of them. Instead she had begun hoarding calendars, though she claimed they hadn’t felt quite right, they were the best she could find to appease her instincts. This was solved a few years ago when she had noticed other species with boards and calendars which read X days since Y. Something had clicked, and soon her walls were covered with these. In typical Touka fashion she had proceeded to use them to mock the rest of them by filling them with captions such as “Since Hashirama apologized to a twig”, or “Since Tobirama’s lab blew up”. The worst apart was that she made sure to keep them accurate and up-to-date (Tobirama suspected Mito may have made her some seals to help with that).

His own hoarding of knowledge was not a surprise to his family, though his hoarding of students was. He had, for a time, tried simply seeking out knowledge, but it had quickly become clear that this was not enough for his instincts. Some inner part of him screamed that his knowledge needed to be shared. Screamed as it saw children of all species left unable to so much as spell their own names. Intelligent children who could do so much with the things he knew. Tobirama was unable to do anything but give in to that voice. And so, no matter how often it ended in anger and pain, he continued to seek out students to teach over and over again. He couldn’t bring himself to regret doing so even as the pattern seemed set to continue to repeating itself.

He certainly couldn’t bring himself to regret his current set of students, spread out around him. Six children from the village down the hill from their current location or the surrounding clans. Hiruzen was a skinchanger from a clan of them. His alternate form was a monkey, and he loved to swing through the trees no matter which form he was in. Torifu was part giant. Though he was still small, Tobirama was sure he would grow as tall and strong as the rest of his clan. Homura, Koharu, and Danzo were all human and Tobirama refused to tolerate anyone calling them lesser for it. Humans were just as important to the world as any other species and deserved as much respect and consideration as any other. Finally, the last member of the group was Kagami, a young phoenix from the Uchiha clan. He was a hyper and happy youngster, always hoping around and ready with a joke and a laugh. Quite different from his solemn and reserved clansmen who Tobirama had observed on occasion over the years.

No, he could not regret taking the chance to teach these six.  Could not regret answering their questions. Could not regret telling them tales from lands far away. Could not regret teaching them about the forests, about the trees and plants that could heal and hurt. Could not regret the practical and survival tips he had given them. Could not regret encouraging their curiosity and drive. Could not regret the chance to impart a bit of his precious knowledge to others who could use it. He wishes, as he always does, that he could have had longer with them, that he could have taught them more, but he cannot-does not-regret choosing to teach them in the first place. Does not regret it even as he meets wide black eyes with red flames hidden within from across the clearing. Does not regret even as he stares at the one who will take these six away and cause him so much pain.

He knew, of course, that the adult phoenix would be able to tell what he was at a glance. Even in his humanoid form the telltale signs of his species were impossible to ignore. The long, curled horns poking up through his hair, his eyes with elongated pupils which he knew practically glowed with all the intensity of a dragon’s love for their hoard, not to mention his distinct markings. Though most of those were hidden under the simple long-sleeved shirt and pants he wore but the three on his face stood out starkly against his pale skin. There was nothing he could do about them. Just as the Uchiha could not hide or smother the flames that burned within them dragons were unable to disguise the marks of their nature. If you knew what to look for, and most did, it was always obvious when a dragon was about. Which, of course, did nothing to help their persecution and isolation.

Tobirama breathed deeply and prepared himself for the inevitable pain and separation that was to come. He pushed down his instincts, the part of him that growled to change forms and take his students away to his den where he would be free to protect and teach them without interruptions. He firmly repeated to himself all the reasons why that was a bad idea as he waited for the explosion that always followed an adult’s discovery of his teaching, but it never came. The Uchiha seemed stunned. All he did was stand silently and stare at him. Tobirama was rather disconcerted by it (and also slightly concerned honestly). The silence stretched on lone enough for the children to notice the arrival of the second adult.

“Madara-shishou?” Kagami asked in confusion after he had turned to see what his teacher was looking at. He tilted his head in a silent question, what was his mentor and clan head doing all the way out here?

“Brat”, Madara managed to shake himself out of his shock, “you’re supposed to tell someone where you’re going when you leave the compound”. He gave his younger clansmen a stern look with that reminder, it was for his own safety after all. The boy did at least look slightly abashed at that.

“But I was with my friends! And Tobirama-sensei, who’s an adult, was here the whole time to watch us so it was safe!” Kagami protested. Madara rolled his eyes.

“Perhaps so, but we didn’t know that did we?” He pressed the younger.

“Oh…I’m sorry for worrying you shishou!” Kagami declared, sounding honestly contrite about it. He was not a bad child, Madara knew, he just got overexcited.

“It’s alright, but do try to remember in the future. Now, why don’t you introduce me to this teacher of yours, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him around before” Madara commented, his eyes once again seeking Tobirama out.

“Right! Madara-shishou this is Tobirama-sensei. He’s been teaching us a whole bunch of cool stuff! Sensei, this is Madara-shishou, he’s the head of my clan!” Kagami was practically vibrating with happiness about being able to introduce two of his favourite people. Tobirama hated to think of how disappointed the boy was going to be when this meeting ended with him never being allowed to see Tobirama again.

“Thank you Kagami” he said, giving the boy a gentle smile and ruffling his curly hair. “Now, it’s almost dinner time so you and your friends should be heading home while Uchiha-sama and I have a quick chat”. He made sure to keep the smile on his face as he shoed his students back towards the village ignoring the familiar pang of pain the separation brought him.

“Madara” the man next to him spoke up. He turned to the phoenix in surprise and confusion, only to see a light blush spread out over his cheeks. “Please, there’s no need for the formality, just call me Madara”.

“Madara” Tobirama agrees, noting the small shiver the other gives when he does. He feels wrong-footed and more than a little confused. Being civil when the children were around made sense, he wouldn’t have wanted to alarm them after all. But they were gone now, so where was the yelling? The demands for him to leave the children alone? The threats of what would be done to him if he ever dared come near them? Those were what he was expecting, what he had always been faced with in the past, so he has no idea how to react when Madara just smiles at him.

“You have a beautiful voice” comes out of his mouth and Madara is horrified. He’d meant to say something cool and intelligent, something befitting his position as Uchiha clan head, but his brain seemed to have decided to desert him. This was not what he’d been expecting when he’d followed Kagami to find out where the brat had been sneaking away to lately. His first glimpse of the man had taken his breath away, even though the other had been facing away from him. Wanting some time to compose himself and also to observe what was going on. Even with his immediate attraction he was very aware that the being was a strange adult who was along with a bunch of children including one from his clan. No matter how beautiful his figure lithe figure may be, Madara wouldn’t hesitate to kill the other if he had done anything to harm any of the children.  

It became quickly apparent that this was not at all the case. All six of the children visibly adored him, talking over each other to tell “sensei” what had been happening lately. The other man had laughed, a sound that seemed to reverberate straight through Madara’s core, and had kindly scolded them to take turns. He sat them down in a circle, a change in position which revealed his face to the phoenix for the first time. Madara is fairly sure his heart honestly stopped for a few moments at the sight of it. The horns had told him that the other was not human from the start, but now he could tell that the other was, of all things, a dragon! (Could share his lifespan, wouldn’t loose him, a voice deep inside him whispered.) He was also the most beautiful creature Madara had ever laid eyes on, and he could only imagine how much more amazing the other’s true form must be.

Gleaming curved ivory horns stuck out of soft looking silver hair that almost matched them in shade. A narrow, delicate face with full pink lips and sharp silver brows lay under that, the features only enhanced by the three deep red lines painted on them. Lines the same colour as the dragon’s eyes. Deep ruby orbs that shone with all the passion his species were known for, but which were also soft with affection and pride for the children in front of him as he praised their accomplishments and patiently answered their questions.

Madara was honestly not sure how long he’d been watching them for before his body decided on its own to step out into the clearing. His inner flame had been twisting inside of him, trying to reach out, to claim this beautiful perfect creature he had found. And then, those eyes he’d been admiring had met his and it had been all he could do to hold onto his form. All he could do to stop the flames inside him from rushing up to consume him and renew him to his true form of air and fire, to soar out of those flames and scream his find and his claim for all to hear. Even now he could still feel the flame in him flickering at his skin in an attempt to escape.

“Er, thank you?” Tobirama replied, not really sure what else he could have said to that. He really was feeling very wrong-footed at the moment. He had expected yelling and threats; he was used to yelling and threats. He was not used to receiving compliments, especially not from adults of other species. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time a non-dragon adult had had a peaceful conversation with him! (There were a few exceptions, griffins for example got along well with dragons but few other species did.) Deciding he would really rather get this over and done with so he could go safely let his irritation, anger, and pain out before licking his metaphorical wounds, he tried to prompt the other back on track. “You want to talk about Kagami and the others I assume?” This, thankfully, did seem to shake the phoenix out of his trance…at least mostly.

“Oh, um, Kagami? Kagami, yes!” He stutters out before clearing his throat and trying again for something more cohesive (how was he supposed to focus on words with his fire licking his limbs with delicious warmth as they reached out for the other?). “I mean, yes, if you have a minute, I would very much appreciate that” he amended, pleased with himself for actually making sense. Tobirama nodded slowly. That was, again, not what he was expecting-which seemed to be becoming a theme with the phoenix.

“Of course,” he responded, tilting his head towards the other and silently urging him to get on with it.

“Oh um, well, Tobirama-may I call you Tobirama?” Madara paused long enough for the dragon to nod. “Tobirama” he repeated, just to taste the feel of it on his lips, “Tobirama I would very much appreciate it if you could give me a quick summary of what you have been teaching Kagami and the others. And, if possible, we could try to make some of it align more closely with what he is being taught by others. Also, it would be good to find a permanent time for you to meet, and perhaps arrange for a meeting place a bit closer to the village? You can continue meeting here if you’re more comfortable with that, but it would be nice to have the children closer in case anything happens. Oh, and um, the elders will likely want another adult to sit in on your lessons for awhile, just to be sure everything is okay. Because they’re paranoid and don’t really know you, not because you’re doing anything wrong or because you’re untrustworthy! Because you seem very kind and good with them and…” Madara trailed off, his blush returning full force. He’d started off so well, but he didn’t want Tobirama to think that Madara thought he was doing anything wrong! He flicked a glance at the dragon and found him looking shocked, as though Madara had struck him, not just asked him about some logistical matters.

“Are you, um, are you okay? If something I said would cause a problem, we can likely work something else out” he tried to reassure the other, reaching out but stopping short of actually touching. Tobirama, meanwhile, blinked wide red eyes and wondered if he was dreaming.

“You-you’re not telling me to never come near them again? You want to let me keep teaching them? You do know what I am don’t you? You can’t have missed it!” Tobirama’s words were barely above a whisper and were coloured with old pain and suppressed hope. Madara felt his own heart ache in sympathy while his flames flared again, this time accompanied by the urge to hunt down anyone who had ever hurt the other and drown them in fire. ‘Later’ he promised himself, for now he had to reassure Tobirama that he would not be another to hurt him.

“No, I’m not. I watched you with the children today”, he refused to be ashamed of protecting his clan, and especially Kagami. Somehow, he knew that Tobirama would understand. “And they clearly all but worshiped you. It was also clear how much you cared for them in turn. You were kind and patient and encouraged them to learn and question. You push them, but do not get angry if they fall, and instead you help them to stand again even more strongly. I saw nothing to make me think that you would ever harm them. Instead, I saw many things that showed how much of a positive influence you are on them. Why would I separate Kagami from someone who both encourages him and actively helps him to be better? As I said, the elders will probably want another adult to observe for a time to be absolutely sure, but I wouldn’t just cut you off without cause!” Madara harrumphed and crossed his arms at the end of his impassioned speech. Tobirama was looking at him with awe and growing hope, but there was one thing the phoenix had not mentioned which still made him warry of trusting Madara’s words.

“Most would consider my species cause enough to chase me away” he forced himself to say, watching the other’s reaction closely. Madara’s eyes flashed red visibly with fire and made a noise of contempt.

“Most people are idiots. Dragons are only dangerous if you provoke them first. The chance to learn from a creature as old and wise as you is an opportunity few could ever dream of and ought to be treasured as such!” The phoenix grumbled. Most species could be dangerous, could cause harm if they really wanted to! Dragons could certainly be very dangerous, but they were still sentient beings and deserved the respect other species took for granted!

Tobirama stared at the huffing phoenix before him, angry not at him but on his behalf, and felt something shift within him. The other male was beautiful, he noticed distantly under the waves of relief crashing through him. He was tall and broad with clear muscles defining his body. His pale skin was off-set by his dark eyes (which, as Tobirama had noticed earlier, glowed with his inner flames) and his absolute main of black hair which hung long and wild down his back. He had already shown he had all the passion and fire his kind were known for, and protective instincts that would do any dragon proud. He cared for his family, but was not rash, as shown by how he’d observed and gotten a feel for what was happening before revealing himself to Tobirama. And, most important to his draconic instincts, the phoenix had been close to his hoard but had not taken from it, had in fact found a way to help Tobirama keep it!

‘Helped use keep what is ours’ his instincts whispered to him. ‘Helped protect our hoard. Trustworthy, smart, strong, a good mate’ they insisted. ‘Claim, mate, keep’ they urged him, insisting the other had already shown his willingness by protecting their hoard. Tobirama was thankful for his practice and control since he was well aware that the other had no idea what he’d just down and how significant it was to his kind. He couldn’t simply lunge over and bite his claim unto the phoenix, no matter how much he may want to. His instincts were right that the other would make a wonderful mate.

“Thank you” he said, reaching out to grab and squeeze Madara’s hand. He made sure to meet the other’s eyes so that the phoenix would be able to see his sincerity. “Really, thank you. I do not know that there are words able to express the true depth of what you have just done for me. You have shown me kindness where no other ever has, and no matter how long the years of my life I will not forget it. I am happy to agree to your conditions; I only hid my lessons because I believed that I would be driven away. The only thing I would request is that you be the one to accompany the children to their lessons. You have proven yourself to be fair in judgement and not inclined to rashness. Also, it is selfish, but I would very much like the chance to get to know you more, and if you would permit it, to court you.” Tobirama knew he was blushing terribly by the time he was done, but he had always believed it better to be honest and straight forward about things.

Madara stared at him, at this beautiful creature that care so for a member of his clan, and who was thanking him for the chance to continue to do so. Who had apparently been driven away from others he had cared for so often he felt he had to hide. At the dragon that made his flames sing as no one ever had. At the man who had easily agreed to all his conditions in order to keep teaching his charges. At the one his soul desired who wished to spend more time with him. Who trusted him over others! Who had just asked for the chance to court him. Triumph and glee flared through him. He knew that his form was wavering slightly and that the bottom of his hair was starting to smoke, but he could not care less. His grin widened even more as he took the hand holding his and weaved their fingers together.

“I would love nothing more than to get to know you, but there is no need for you to court me. My flame and my soul have burned for you since I first saw you with the children earlier. If you would have me, they will burn for you until the flame is no more” he swore to Tobirama. The dragon would not recognize the traditional phoenix vow meant to be given to the mate their instincts chose, but he could clearly understand the weight the words carried. Tobirama took Madara’s other hand in his and made his own vow.

“You have protected what is precious to me without greed or incentive. You have proven yourself more than worthy of being my mate. I would have you and mark you as mine to possess and protect as fiercely as I do my hoard. I would give you everything I have and am, and take all you have and are as mine in return until my heart no longer beats to love it and my body cannot move to defend it”. As with Tobirama, Madara did not recognize the words themselves, but could tell from the power and gravity of them what they were.

Magic and fire flashed from their combined hands once Tobirama finished speaking, marking the moment their vows were burned into their very souls. A moment later Tobirama was lunging forward and sinking his fangs into the phoenix’s neck, leaving his permanent mark and claim on the man that was now his mate. He stepped back just as Madara finally lost the battle he’d been waging with his flames. They burst out of him, erupting everywhere and burning anything close to him to ash except for Tobirama. The dragon was now tied to Madara and his flames could and would never do him any harm. He emerged from the flames in bird form and used the moment from the explosion to push him higher as he screamed. He screamed out his victory and his triumph to the skies before swooping back down to swirl around his mate, trailing flames which did no more than tickle the dragon as he went. Tobirama laughed in elation at the display before copying his new mate and transforming. He let loose a roar to match Madara’s as he launched himself into the air to join the phoenix in the skies.

[carsieblanton]

SOMETIMES THE PERSONAL ISN’T POLITICAL

How data made me a revolutionary

I’ve been going to church occasionally, with a friend of mine and her granddaughter. I wasn’t raised in the church and I am not a believer, but I am beginning to understand the value of gathering with some of your neighbors once a week, reflecting together and singing some songs.

It’s too bad, I now realize, that this version of church is so muddied up with all those other versions of church: the one where the church is a platform from which to manipulate great swathes of people into voting against their own interests, for example; or the one where the church is used as a battering ram against women and LBTQ people; or the one where the church turns out to be a massive pedophilic child abuse ring.

From the pew of my little church in New Orleans, I see the version of church that people love so dearly. I can see that it’s possible for the same idea to be at once a force for good in our private personal worlds, and a force for evil in our shared political world. 

Some of our personal convictions work a lot better if they remain personal. When we try to make them political (i.e., attempt to apply them to society as a whole), they don’t achieve what we hoped and intuited they would, and sometimes they even hurt, instead of helping.

I think many of my liberal readers already embrace this idea, when it comes to Christian Republican convictions (”one man, one woman!”, “it’s a child, not a choice!”, “thoughts and prayers!”). But strap in, Lib Dems, cus I’ve got a piece for you, too. 

THE ABORTION RATE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS

To further illustrate the concept, let’s talk about abortion.

If you really hate abortion, and you’ve never read any data on the topic, I can see how you might think that making abortion illegal is a good way to drive down the abortion rate. 

Alas, it has been tried a number of times, and the data has revealed that it is not. The real-world result of banning abortion is not fewer abortions, but more dangerous abortions. 

So truly noble-hearted pro-lifers (I’ve met some!) should face the fact that abortion bans are not good legislation. They are supposed to result in fewer abortions, but they don’t. Instead, they kill a bunch of pregnant women (which, I hope we can agree, is pretty anti-life).

Similarly, “abstinence education” does not result in fewer teen pregnancies, “thoughts and prayers” does not result in fewer mass shootings, and “building a wall” will not result in more jobs or less crime.

All of these ideas are “political” only in that they are being used successfully to manipulate voters. None of them is (or can become) a successful policy, according to our hardworking and underappreciated friend, data. 

For contrast, here’s some data that could be really useful in policy-making, if anyone bothered to read it:

Countries with more restrictions on abortions tend to have higher abortion rates. When countries with legal abortion provide women with access to free birth control, on the other hand, the abortion rate plummets by AS MUCH AS SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT. 

Legalizing sex work has been shown to decrease reported sexual assault and rape by THIRTY PERCENT OR MORE. Providing safe online venues for sex workers to find clients (the opposite of the recent SESTA and FOSTA bills) has been shown to REDUCE THE FEMALE HOMICIDE RATE BY 17%. (Read that again. It’s insane. Now read this. Or, if you don’t feel like reading, just listen to this podcast.)

There are six times as many vacant houses in the US as there are homeless people, and it costs a ton of money to police the homeless population for nonviolent offenses. Why don’t we just give them houses?

Isn’t data cool?!???

This is why it’s a good idea to craft legislation and political strategies based on data, rather than on what feels intuitively or emotionally "right”. When we are unwilling to examine that distinction, we run the risk of 1) turning our adorable private beliefs (thoughts! prayers!) into ineffective, counterproductive, or dangerous political policy, and 2) ignoring data that can actually save lives, in favor of continuing to debate ideas that are politically pointless (eg: “is abortion right or wrong?”). 

PLASTIC DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS, EITHER

But guess what other ideas are personally adorable and politically pointless? “Don’t use straws”. Also “go vegan”, “buy organic”, “reduce, reuse, recycle”, and “impeach Trump”. Regardless of their intuitive or emotional impact, none of these ideas has a snowball’s chance in hell of addressing the problems they aim to address, and thus, as political strategies, they are more or less “thoughts and prayers”. Here’s why:

Worldwide plastic production is projected to increase by 400% by 2050. 

Organic food still has a conspicuous lack of conclusive evidence for its benefits to health or the environment. 

Despite the fact that vegetarianism and veganism appear to be trending in the U.S. and Canada, global meat consumption is on the rise and is projected to continue rising steeply (76% by mid-century).

That’s because the entire populations of the U.S. and Canada make up only 4.75% of the total world population (and dropping), with the world population expected to double by 2074.

(And, y’all, I hate to remind you, but impeaching Trump (almost certainly) gets us President Pence: an equally insane demagogue who is poised to enact possibly-even-more-terrifying policies.)

I’m not arguing that these ideas have no impact, or that they are bad ideas for you to apply to your personal life (e.g. if you have a Trumpian psychopath living in your household, you should certainly kick him out). I’m arguing that their impact on the problems they aim to solve is so immeasurably, impossibly small, that they will never get within a mile of the ballpark of solving them. 

And that therefore, going vegan or eschewing plastic straws is in fact not a political act, but a personal one; like going to church, or getting a pedicure. 

I’m not saying this to bum you out, or to judge you (I literally just got a pedicure). I’m saying it because when we pretend that “don’t use straws” is a political strategy, and will help us to address the life-threatening global crisis of ocean pollution, I think we are perpetuating a kind of confusion which could perhaps inhibit our ability to engage with these problems on the level of reality.

Which is, unfortunately, where most of us will have to continue living.

SCALE IS CONFUSING

The difference between political ideas and personal ideas is scale. The ocean, for example, is not a pool in your backyard (which you can simply refrain from filling with plastic). It’s a body of water which covers the entire planet, and is affected by all human activity. And “all human activity”, although it is made up of a bunch of individuals doing individual activities, cannot be accurately portrayed by the phrase “a bunch of individuals doing individual activities”. It’s better described in terms of human systems: institutions, governments, militaries, cities, countries, corporations and industries.

To approach these massive, complex, ocean-polluting systems as though they are a collection of individual people sipping beverages through straws is an ineffective tactic. So ineffective, it really can’t be called a tactic at all.

One way to determine whether something is a good tactic is to ask yourself: if this project was 100% effective, what would be the measurable result? Eg:

If 100% of humans stop using straws: ocean pollution will decrease by up to .025%

If 100% of humans switch to organic food: the environmental benefits will be mixed, and we will grow 25–34% less food.

That’s not to mention the fact that it is probably impossible to achieve a 100% effectiveness rate with ideas like these, because so far they are available to only a small subsection of people in a few very wealthy countries.

So, no matter how intuitively correct they may seem, at the scale of the entire globe (the scale where the oceans and the atmosphere exist), these ideas have roughly the same impact that “thoughts and prayers” have on mass shootings: they make a lot of people feel better about the fact that they are doing nothing to address a looming, life-threatening crisis. 

If you ask me, we like to think that these ideas are politically effective for exactly that reason: because otherwise we will have to face the coming apocalypse of climate change, and the fact that humans on-the-whole are doing approximately jackshit about it. 

And I understand why you’d want to avoid that! It’s fucking terrifying.

But my hunch is that we should instead admit that we’re doing jackshit about climate change, that the straws and the veganism and the potential impeachment were a waste of political energy, and that we are all absolutely terrified.

If we need to calm our nerves after that, we can go get pedicures. 

And then perhaps, with a clearer head and calmer nerves, we can work on creating some actual political strategies. 

YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE WORLD BY YOURSELF

Out here in terrifying reality, large-scale problems require large-scale solutions. And although it is intuitive to think that large-scale solutions are made up of lots of small-scale solutions (stop each person from using each straw!), it is sadly untrue. Complex systems – countries, economies, organisms – just don’t behave like a collection of small parts. 

Similarly, major societal changes aren’t really made of a bunch of individual people making a bunch of individual changes. They are made of large-scale, long-term, coordinated applications of science, money, propaganda, and strategic organizing.  

The right wing seems very clear on this fact, and uses it to great political effect (for example, we are still debating the “rightness” of abortion, despite its total irrelevance to policy-making, because they realized in the 1970s that debating abortion gets more people to vote Republican). 

On the liberal left, though, I think there is some confusion about it. “The personal is political”, “think globally, act locally”, and “be the change you want to see in the world” get thrown around a little too frequently, and usually as advertisements for water bottles. 

How quickly we forget that when Gandhi said “be the change” (which, by the way, he didn’t), he was probably referring to organizing millions of his countrymen in revolutionary acts of civil disobedience, towards a specific and well-defined political goal. He was not talking about buying a glass water bottle.

A relevant term to introduce here might be “phase transition”. A phase transition is when a system suddenly jumps from one phase to another. Boiling water is a good example: as you gradually turn up the heat on a pot of water, it just becomes gradually hotter water, until you get to 100C. Then, all at once, it becomes boiling water. And boiling water (in order to release the gas that the water is transitioning into) behaves very differently from hot water.

What we need to survive on this planet is not incrementally fewer straws and more Priora, it’s a global phase transition into an entirely different societal structure. And the individual consumer approach (“ask everyone to stop using plastic straws, then ask them to stop driving SUVs, then ask them to stop eating beef…”) is not just devastatingly slow, it is doomed to ineffectiveness. 

It’s like trying to boil a pot of water by doling it out into Dixie cups and asking your friends to breathe hot air onto each individual cup. Intuitively, it seems like it might eventually work (the water is getting hotter, right?), but alas. No matter how good a job we each do with our little paper cups, the water will never boil.

If we want to boil the water, we need to pour all our cups into the same pot. 

CANADA IS NOT THE WORLD 

“But Canada is banning single-use plastic!”, you say. “Isn’t that a large-scale solution?” 

Again, and unfortunately, it is not. Although “all the straws in Canada” is a lot more straws than “that one straw you’re using now”, it is still not even in the neighborhood of enough straws. The scale of plastic straw usage in Canada, when compared to the scale of plastic pollution in the oceans that span the planet earth, is just one more lukewarm Dixie cup. 

The idea that Canada’s plastic ban is “a big win for the environment” only illustrates how resigned we are to losing. We are so resigned, we aren’t even capable of thinking about the problem at the appropriate scale. 

If the Canadian single-use plastic ban has a 100% success rate, the oceans will continue to be 100% fucked by plastic. 

That’s partly because there just aren’t that many Canadians. It’s also because consumer plastics are mostly not what ocean pollution is made out of (just like personal cars are mostly not what climate change is made out of).

And finally, it’s because everyone is not going to stop using plastic. Everyone is also not going to stop using petroleum-burning vehicles, or cows, or rice paddies. Everyone is not going to stop doing anything, unless and until the global industrial system allows us to do so. 

We are still using petroleum not because we haven’t yet convinced each individual person to stop, but because the entire world economy is based on petroleum, and every powerful government on earth includes or is influenced by representatives of the petroleum industry. We are still using petroleum because the petroleum industry has its own lobbyists and politicians and spies and assassins and propagandists and governments. 

We are still using petroleum because, at this point in history, the petroleum industry has a lot more influence over us than we do over it.

This may seem like bad news. But here’s the good news: we are not a bunch of individual people, facing a bunch of individual problems. We - the humans - have just one big problem. Our problem is that we have created a world where the petroleum industry is more powerful than any person, idea, government, or country. And so is the banking industry, and the tech industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, and the prison industry, and the war industry. 

And all of these industries share one goal, to the exclusion of all others: profit. 

Which means that most of the major societal changes happening on the planet are determined not by data, or democracy, or cute social media campaigns, or the pursuit of the greater good; but by the pursuit of profit, for each company, in each quarter. 

And these companies and industries are so committed to that narrow goal - hogtied to it, really - that they are willing to hijack elections and start wars and crash the global ecosystem to pursue it. And all of us who share the planet with them - the humans, and the animals, and the oceans - are at the mercy of that pursuit.

The shorthand for this problem is “late-stage capitalism”. 

When we are thinking on the global scale - which, again, is the only scale where we can have a measurable effect on the global phenomena of oceans and atmosphere - it becomes clear that the only way to tackle climate change at this point (having failed to do jackshit so far) is to fundamentally change the way the world works. 

We need a phase transition.

But you don’t have to take it from me; take it from this team of independent scientists in their report to the U.N.

WE ARE ALL IN THIS TERRIFYING THING TOGETHER

If you’re a person who thought buying organic was a political act, I apologize. You’ve been duped. But it’s not your fault! The idea that our personal consumer choices have an impact on the global economy is not an accident. It is, in fact, a feature of capitalism.

It is good for capitalism when we believe that our personal choices are political choices, because it keeps us from focusing on large-scale problems and organizing to solve them (which, at this point in history, cannot be good for capitalism). Consumer-level environmentalism creates lots of new markets, while having no negative impact whatsoever on the industries that actually run the planet and profit off of its devastation. 

If we want to start making political choices, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as heroic individuals, able to single-handedly stop climate change by buying a different phone case. We are part of the world, which is a small place, entirely and inseparably interconnected, and has one very big problem, which we can only solve together.

The big problem thrives when we believe that we are separate people facing separate problems. It thrives when we worry about ourselves, and our beliefs, and what kind of water bottle to buy. It thrives by keeping us distracted, divided, and self-interested.

The truth is, banning straws will not solve our problem, because our problem is bigger than straws. It’s bigger than plastic, and styrofoam, and carbon emissions. It’s bigger than AK-47s and abortion bans. Impeaching Trump won’t solve it, because our problem is bigger than Trump; in fact, our problem is even  bigger than “men”.

There is only one man, his name is capitalism, and he’s got us all by the pussy.

SOME COOL DATA ABOUT SOCIALISM

I am a socialist, which means I think we ought to organize our societies around some motives other than profit. I don’t buy that the profit motive is particularly sacred or efficient (except at making profit - it’s very efficient at that), and I prefer almost all the other motives: creativity, kindness, lust, humor, fun. 

I dream of a highly democratic post-capitalist society wherein politically-invested citizens make collective, data-driven decisions about how to allocate the resources of this one small planet that we share.

Before we get to the data, a few clarifying points:

I have scoured the internet for months, and I’ve finally found the best and most succinct summary of the difference between capitalism and socialism. Thank you, comrade Teen Vogue.

If you’re an American, you might’ve inadvertently ingested a bit of data-averse anti-communist propaganda in your lifetime. Just to check, read this fascinating and brief history of U.S. anti-communism (which, somehow, doesn’t even mention COINTELPRO). 

And finally: no, the Nazis were not socialists.

“Socialism has never worked.” 

According to the World Wildlife Fund, there is only one country in the world which is currently “sustainable” in terms of both human development and environmental footprint: Cuba. 

Here is a comprehensive comparison of health outcomes for socialist vs. capitalist countries, using data from the 1970s and 80s. It finds that Cuba made significantly more gains than its neighbors in all available health indicators (life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality and employment), as did China (as compared to India) and the Soviet Union (as compared to West Germany and Austria). Cuba currently has the lowest infant mortality rate in history and one of the highest literacy rates in the world.

All of this is to say that “has never worked” is the kind of blanket statement that is designed to shut down conversations. In my opinion, there is a more productive conversation to be had by asking questions such as “in what ways has socialism worked and not worked? What about capitalism?”

“Authoritarianism! Gulags! Freedom!”

The United States (a capitalist democracy) currently has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with starkly disproportionate incarceration of black Americans. Currently, about 80% of U.S. prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, and 22% of U.S. prisoners are awaiting trial (they have not been convicted or sentenced).

Israel is a capitalist democracy and a close ally of the U.S. In May, Israeli forces murdered 16 peaceful protesters and wounded 65, including children and paramedics. Exactly one year before, they killed 65 peaceful protesters and wounded 2,400. (For the record, I am a Jew, and there is nothing anti-Semitic about acknowledging the fact that Israel is currently engaged in a number of human rights violations.)

Then, of course, there’s slavery, the holocaust, the Trail of Tears, The Troubles, the Tuskegee Experiments, and compulsory sterilization, to name just a few. All of these acts of violence were carried out within capitalist societies, under the direction of capitalist governments. Is it possible that we are biased against the failures of socialism not because they are worse than those of capitalism, but because capitalism is the dominant paradigm? Is it possible we are experiencing just a touch of Stockholm Syndrome?

“Innovation! Entrepreneurship! Freedom!”

Cuba just invented the world’s first cancer vaccine, without a speck of venture capital. Actually, public (government) funding gave us most of the vaccines we use today (unless we are Jessica Biel); along with the internet, most of our aviation and space technology, the cameras and touch-screens on our phones, and even Google and Tesla.

About 30% of research worldwide is currently funded by public money (mostly government grants). Private money is not inherently more “innovative” than public money; the thing that spurs innovation is access to money, period.

And of course, there is the dark side of privately-funded innovation: the rising cost of insulin, the $750 pill, the possibility that a single company may one day own the entire food chain, and the likelihood that when it comes to research, there is a relationship between funding source and conclusion.

“But people are lazy! And there’s not enough food! And Soviet bloc housing is ugly!”

It doesn’t matter if people are lazy, we have robots. An Oxford study recently found that 47% of U.S. jobs (and around 13% of jobs worldwide) may be “lost to automation” over the next two decades. And many of our jobs are already bullshit: polls have found that 37% of full-time workers in the UK and 25% in the US are “quite sure that their job makes no meaningful contribution to the world”. Let’s step back a moment and consider the phase “lost to automation”; why is this a “loss” at all? Why aren’t we thanking the robots for allowing 47% of Americans to go ahead and be lazy? (The answer, my friends, is capitalism.)

We have more than enough food. Hunger is caused by inequality, not scarcity.

Speaking of inequality, I believe this line of panic stems from a gross misperception about just how much wealth the world has already stockpiled. The U.S. (for example) has quite a lot more money than Russia did in 1917; if we divided all the wealth evenly, each American household would have $760,000. That’s not to say we should do exactly that, it’s just to illustrate that this number is enough to provide quite a high standard of living for everyone - way higher than most of us are currently accustomed to. If the U.S. were to transition to socialism, there is no reason we couldn’t live in style with free healthcare, gorgeous homes, and delicious petri-dish meat.

So what is the actual objection, here?

REVOLUTION: A PRACTICAL, DATA-DRIVEN POLICY IDEA

What all this data says to me is that capitalism has outlived its usefulness. More than 3 billion people on this planet already live in poverty; tens of thousands of children are dying each day from hunger and preventable diseases; we are currently seeing a global refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions, and it’s likely that 1 billion more people will soon be displaced by climate change. 

The only political idea I’ve come across that will allow us to respond to so many crises of such magnitude is to stop doing capitalism. And I believe that a massive, strategic, well-organized movement of many millions of people can make that phase transition happen.

I know it seems impossible. But in the words of my late hero, Ursula K. Le Guin:

“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” 

Our only hope, at this late date, is to pour all our water into one pot. That’s what “organizing” is; that’s what Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton were doing, and that’s what we all need to start doing. I don’t think this blog post will launch a revolution (sorry, trolls), but I think it was worth writing, because it’s my opinion that American liberals - a huge voting bloc with a ton of money - will be considerably more useful to the revolution if we stop wasting our breath, time and political energy on straws.

If you agree, go make friends with your local socialists (I recommend PSL). Give them your folding money to spend on organizing, instead of blowing it at Whole Foods (so Whole Foods can turn around and spend it on union busting). Commit to educating yourself and others about how capitalism works, what it’s done so far, and what the alternatives are. 

All of these activities will have more political impact than going vegan, AND you get to eat bacon.

Resources and suggested readings:  

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism by Kristen Ghodsee

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin (if you prefer fiction)

Sorry to Bother You (if you prefer movies)

[linkspooky]

Vasuki and Washuutski

This is from an old post: 

The Washuu name itself may be connected to the tale of Vasuki. Source x, and also @hysyartmaskstudio​, and @karnasofsun on twitter.]

Nagaraja, or king of the naga or snakes, is a hindu mythological word associated with several separate king dragon/snakes. One of these is Vasuki, which in japanese is rendered as Washuukitsu. Vasuki has several myths about being tied to a mountain or holding things together. [x]

The chapter entitled “Saved from the Web” also featured this nod to hinduism, but at the end the characters who showed up, in spiderweb imagery on the background of their panels was V. Either as a reminder that Urie had not truly escaped from the Web, or they had been the ones who maintained the web by setting up the conflict that drove him there in the first place.

Hindu mythology also shows a war of binary opposition, between devas and asuras (angels and demons respectively), when one side became weakened they sought a ritual stirring of ‘Kasian Samut’ which is the ocean of milk, which thickened and concentrated will become the nector of immortality. 

Vasukira, king of the naga had to bind his massive body around Mandra the mountain, into Kasiam Samut in order to mix it. The devas also used the asuras into stirring for them, by saying they will share it with them when the ritual ends. However Vasukira grew tired and released poison by the end of the ritual.

The connections to tokyo ghoul then, are a bit obvious in this chapter alone we are given a small sampling as to what might be the source of the ghoul’s extended vitality.

 Vasukira releases both a poison and it brews an immortality elixir the same way V views the poison that is released by Dragon as a source of life for them.

There are already pieces of foreshadowing in place to suggest that either V, or humanity at large is seeking immortality through ghouls, or at least at the labor and behest of ghouls the same way Asura labored for the immortality of the Devas at the cost to themselves.

V already also has in their possession, a way of preserving their grown up garden children who are destined to only live half lives, and also the members of the Oggai operation who were revived via ghoul cells. It’s likely that this medicine may just be the dissolved ghouls, pure rc cells then packed into liquid bottles and traded in secret by V. They also use a giant grinder in order to make them, and oh so conveniently, have a war going against the ghouls which provides them with a near infinite supply of dead ghouls in order to continue making this medicine if it really is concentrated Rc Cells.

V has also, already disposed of the main head of this brewing process in Furuta’s hostile takeover. Perhaps modeling the same way Washuukitsu, in order to make his immortality elixir did so at great cost to himself and his own body.

Achievable immortality, the mixers are definitely V, but they were born with half lives in the first place. They’re probably desperate to extend their lives by any means possible not rule over humanity forever with immortality. It’s more likely that the race of angels, the humans in this metaphor will be the one to reap the benefits of the conflicts created by ghouls and half ghouls. At least if things were to continue to spiral uninterrupted.

This is where I brought my original post to an end but, I’d like to discuss on that point as well. Let’s talk about the morality of V’s reckless way of extending their lives for a moment. Take doesn’t really have any kind of comeback for Kaiko’s taunts, even though he knows the truth of Kishou’s wants and sacrifices perhaps better than anybody else. 

It makes sense that Take doesn’t really have anything to say in response though, as I’ve said in the previous two chapters, nobody on the side of the alliance has really surpassed V morally. Technically they’re fighting for the right side because they don’t want the world end, but in a good philosophy bad philosophy sense we don’t really know what the moral philosophy that the Goat Alliance is fighting for because they don’t even know themselves.

Take himself even describes the mist that causes ghoulification as a “toxin” as if V accepting the poison into their bodies somehow made them dirty, or unclean now that they’ve become ghouls.

It is a toxin in a sense that in some patients it’s causing cancer like symptoms and tumor formations, but what about the cases where all it does is turn them into ghouls. Of course, unwilling change of species is still a violation of the body but a human doesn’t suddenly become lesser if they are transformed into a ghoul.

There are some patients who aren’t experiencing the ROS overload or cancer like symptoms that Saiko displays, some of them are just turning into plain old normal ghouls. Of course the world would be unsustainable if everybody turned into ghouls but do those people really need to be cured? Wouldn’t it be more practical to just stop the spread of the poison and find a proper food source and education source for all the new converted ghouls instead?

The thing is, being turned into ghouls unwillingly, living as ghouls is still seen as the worst fate ever (even to Take who was part of a ghoul rebellion), because the vast majority of the cast hasn’t even solved nor thought about the central conflict of the series. They all have a case of “ghoul icky.” So we see V’s desperate attempts to extend their lifespan in an entirely unsympathetic light.

V is chopped apart horrifically by the CCG agents and ghouls alike, but it’s fine, they’re the bad guys, they’re completely disposable. In the manga which has been arguing against “otherization” tactics when fighting enemies and dehumanizing them, there’s a suspicious lack of any humanity in V itself.

V however, are a matured zero squad They’re grown up garden kids. It’s explicitly confirmed for us in this chapter, but it was laid out by Furuta a long time ago.

They’re quite literally bred and then raised from birth with the sole purpose of killing ghouls. Unlike all the ghoul investigators who chose their job, and can walk away any time without any consequence at all and just quit and start a new life, the V agents are born into this life and they only have a half life to live such a pitiful life in the first place. 

Before you say I’m sympathizing with V though, I’m not, they’re obviously the villains. Yet at the same time I have to wonder if Goat has any moral high ground over them, and if that’s the challenge the narration has to take. V is undefeated so far, because the CCG’s tactics are V’s tactics, and Marude hasn’t changed anything at all from his playbook besides “listen to Hide sometimes.”

The Washuu are much more responsible for the state of the world, and they were the ones actively breeding human beings, conducting human experimentation and profiting off of it. V were cogs in the machine who went along with Furuta’s plans for a coup because it was literally their only way to keep living.

Matsuri frames his revenge against V as a noble revenge against his father, when V was dispatching a tyrant who controlled all of their lives from birth, and profited off of it entirely. There’s also the fact that Marude, and Hide are completely okay with cooperating with Matsuri. Matusri’s entire reasoning for doing so is not because of regret for his actions, he doesn’t feel an ounce of regret for what he did as a Washuu and a ring leader of V. He’s only doing it to survive when this is all over.

As for the loss of human life it took to create dragon, quite literally nobody in the entire cast cared that Kaneki devoured 100 children willingly in order to extend his own lifespan as well. 

 Then there’s Kimi, who was completely okay with Dragon happening if it allowed her to prove the useful medicine of ghoul science. Medicine is a life extending technique as well. 

Her motivations are also entirely selfish as well. It’s not that ghouls are killed simply for what they’re born as, exterminated on sight without even due process so innocent ghouls are just as likely to be killed as mass murderers. She needs to change the world so she can get back together with her boyfriend. 

It makes me wonder if in a way V itself are the asuras of the myth. They’re the ones being tricked into brewing the immortality elixir for the rest of society, because as bred half ghouls and garden children they’ve been disposable since the beginning. They’re the other and the bad guys, so nobody cares that much if they’re overcome by the alliance and slaughtered entirely to produce a better world where ghoulification and ghoul medicine are now norms for humanity to reap the benefit of. 

In the past, V was at least being used that way by the Washuu in order to stage their shadow conflicts. It’s pretty clear V considers themselves a separate entity after the Coup, so all of their earlier actions were much more likely orchestrated by the Washuu before Furuta took control, for the benefit of solely the Washuu.

As I’ve said before, not a lot of these characters care that much about the actual morality of the ghouls vs human conflict. That’s something they need to do in order to ideologically overcome V. V is bad because they kill ghouls, but they were half humans raised from birth in order to do so. There are plenty of human characters in the cast who slaughtered ghouls left and right in the past with no remorse at all, and completely chose that lifestyle. The CCG is like a day job they don’t punish deserters they could have left the conflict any time. V are half ghouls they were born into it, the conflict is literally inseparable from their beings. 

To make a better world, these characters first have to think “How am I better? How will I be better?”

The theme of the manga ultimately is “Live”, so it’s rather fitting that the motivation of the villains is a simple desire for them to live as well. 

[hotelconcierge]

YOUNG ADULT FICTIONS

Slate Star Codex, “Some groups of people who may not 100% deserve our eternal scorn,” defending Harry Potter political analogies:

Comparing politics to your favorite legends is as old as politics and legends. Herodotus used an extended metaphor between the Persian invasions of his own time and the Trojan War. When King Edward IV took the English throne in 1461, all anybody could talk about was how it reminded them of King Arthur. John Dryden’s famous poem Absalom and Achitophel is a bizarrely complicated analogy of 17th-century English politics to an obscure Biblical story. Throughout American history people have compared King George to Pharaoh, Benedict Arnold to Judas, Abraham Lincoln to Moses, et cetera.

Well, how many people know who Achitophel is these days? Even Achilles is kind of pushing it. So we stick to what we know – and more important, what we expect everyone else will know too. And so we get Harry Potter.

“But a children’s book?” Look, guys, fantasy is what the masses actually like. They liked it in Classical Greece, where they had stories like Bellerophon riding a flying horse and fighting the Chimera. They liked it in medieval Britain, where they would talk about the Knights of the Round Table slaying dragons as they searched for the Holy Grail. The cultural norm where only kids are allowed to read fantasy guilt-free and everybody else has to read James Joyce is a weird blip in the literary record which is already being corrected. Besides, James Joyce makes for a much less interesting source of political metaphors (“The 2016 election was a lot like Finnegan’s Wake: I have no idea what just happened”)

Hoo boy did he walk into that one.

Plebeians have been plebeian forever, granted, although the age of SSC’s examples (Medieval Britain?) is telling: contra the above, the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow literature exists whenever the majority of the population is literate.

But regardless, SSC (for the record, mostly Good) is being fooled by branding. No one compares the “fantasy” elements of Harry Potter to the U.S. political system. The fantasy elements are irrelevant, which is why Hamilton works just as well. Wannabe pundits compare the characters. And it is the characters, their psyches, the ambiguity that persists after two millennia of debate, that has made The Iliad stand the test of time. As clever as Artemis Fowl may be, it’s naive to pretend there’s no difference.

What makes it obvious that Deadpool (rating: R) is a kid’s movie while 2001: A Space Odyssey (rating: G) is not? Turn on the TV and flip through a few kids shows—nothing educational, I’m talking epilepsy triggers. After a couple, you’ll notice a unifying theme: everything is turned up to the max. All the characters are live/laugh/loving, fighting, crying; the soundtrack goes major or minor for every ephemeral mood. The characters have saucer eyes and exaggerated movements, The Emoji Movie being the logical conclusion of the genre, every motivation gets a musical number, these shows are MAXIMALLY EXPRESSIVE, leaving no doubt as to what emotion you are supposed to feel by the microsecond.

Please hear that I mean no disrespect when I say that this is why people with autism like Disney.

Q: Why did it feel good to watch [Disney movies] over and over again, that you kept wanting to? Watch them over and over again? How did that feel to you?

A: It felt comforting.

Q: Comforting.

A: It felt comforting.

Q: Why?

A: Because it would help me with...reducing my autism. (Radiolab)

Nothing wrong with that. Partisan bullshit aside, Harry Potter is great. But it’s important to recognize the limitations. Young adult fiction can have complex characters, worldbuilding, and rules of magic/ethics/rationality as long as the complexity is spelled out for you. “Snape was mean to Harry...but [flashback] that’s because, deep down, he was still in love with Lily...” What such stories will never ask you to do is intuit that Snape had tribulations, they assume that you have no instinct for cognitive empathy, which you don’t, which is why your politics are vapid. 

(When fiction deprives you of access to any character’s mind or explanation of events, you feel the opposite of comfort: horror. Saw is not a scary film because it is nothing but explanations; a Kafka story feels “off” even before shit goes down because the world and the characters refuse to show their work.)

Young adult fiction is a stepping stone, good if it helps you get better at understanding people without a Wes Anderson narrator whispering in your ear. Unfortunately, the ability to parrot accepted opinions is often taken for the ability to derive judgments of one’s own. I’m thinking of a homestuck 13 year old who is constantly told that he/she is “so mature” for getting straight A’s and being well-spoken with the dinner guests and not ditching class to smoke brick weed with Devin. Whether or not those behaviors are good, the kid isn’t mature, he or she is well-trained, and if you keep claiming maturity then you are going to stunt development. Sorry: not having an adolescent rebellion means you didn’t complete adolescence. The result is neotenous adults who are not overly sensitive—as conservative media would claim—but rather overly dependent on external rules. Cards Against Humanity is so funny, right? You get to say bad words, but it’s only a game.

“Help, I was a gifted kid and now I’m a normal adult!” Different adjective, same problem. Once Hal Incandenza is typecast as “gifted,” everyone will find it convenient to grade him (praise/no praise) on whether he is living up to his label. How do you look gifted? You can solve P vs. NP......or you can read the dictionary. I’ll bet that every ex-gifted kid who now uses “adulting” as a verb is a fan of those faux-pretentious memes, “mfw she confuses epistemics and ontology,” fitting Wikipedia philosophy into preformed joke structures, lowbrow expressions of highbrow concepts, a few college words to suggest immeasurable depths. You do what you know: exert the minimum necessary effort to convince other people of your intelligence. But you can’t convince yourself.

The consequences are predictable. Imposter syndrome. Scrupulosity. Sexual fetishes suffixed with -play. Gushing compassion ruined by the inability to picture how one appears to the outside world. Neediness. Ill-fitting jeans. Trouble with romance, and not because they don’t know how—deep down they do—but because they cling to a rulebook (“milady”) instead of trusting instinct. They were never allowed to have instincts. For that matter they’ve never really wanted, never felt a desire that wasn’t assigned, which is why: open relationships, switched majors, medicated anxiety, and ambivalence, ambivalence, ambivalence.

I know how heavy lies the burden of wasted potential. So please take this in the gentlest possible way: you were never that great. Greatness is a meaningless thing to apply to a kid, or a college student, or any idea that hasn’t forced it’s way onto paper. The only path is forward. “It’s our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” I think that’s Dumbledore, take it or leave it—there’s a time and a place for young adult fiction.

Coming soon:

THE FALSE POSITIVES

THE FALSE NEGATIVES

[arcticdementor]

Oscar Wilde supposedly said George Bernard Shaw "has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends". Socialist blogger Freddie DeBoer is the opposite: few allies, but deeply respected by his enemies. I disagree with him about everything, so naturally I am a big fan of his work - which meant I was happy to read his latest book, The Cult Of Smart.

DeBoer starts with the standard narrative of The Failing State Of American Education. Students aren't learning. The country is falling behind. Only tough no-excuses policies, standardization, and innovative reforms like charter schools can save it, as shown by their stellar performance improving test scores and graduation rates.

He argues that every word of it is a lie. American education isn't getting worse by absolute standards: students match or outperform their peers from 20 or 50 years ago. It's not getting worse by international standards: America's PISA rankings are mediocre, but the country has always scored near the bottom of international rankings, even back in the 50s and 60s when we were kicking Soviet ass and landing men on the moon. Race and gender gaps are stable or decreasing. American education is doing much as it's always done - about as well as possible, given the crushing poverty, single parent-families, violence, and racism holding back the kids it's charged with shepherding to adulthood.

…

For decades, politicians of both parties have thought of education as "the great leveller" and the key to solving poverty. If people are stuck in boring McJobs, it's because they're not well-educated enough to be surgeons and rocket scientists. Give them the education they need, and they can join the knowledge economy and rise into the upper-middle class. For lack of any better politically-palatable way to solve poverty, this has kind of become a totem: get better schools, and all those unemployed Appalachian coal miners can move to Silicon Valley and start tech companies. But you can't do that. Not everyone is intellectually capable of doing a high-paying knowledge economy job. Schools can change your intellectual potential a limited amount. Ending child hunger, removing lead from the environment, and similar humanitarian programs can do a little more, but only a little. In the end, a lot of people aren't going to make it.

So what can you do? DeBoer doesn't think there's an answer within the existing system. Instead, we need to dismantle meritocracy.

DeBoer is skeptical of "equality of opportunity". Even if you solve racism, sexism, poverty, and many other things that DeBoer repeatedly reminds us have not been solved, you'll just get people succeeding or failing based on natural talent. DeBoer agrees conservatives can be satisfied with this, but thinks leftists shouldn't be. Natural talent is just as unearned as class, race, or any other unfair advantage.

One one level, the titular Cult Of Smart is just the belief that enough education can solve any problem. But more fundamentally it's also the troubling belief that after we jettison unfair theories of superiority based on skin color, sex, and whatever else, we're finally left with what really determines your value as a human being - how smart you are. DeBoer recalls hearing an immigrant mother proudly describe her older kid's achievements in math, science, etc, "and then her younger son ran by, and she said, offhand, 'This one, he is maybe not so smart.'" DeBoer was originally shocked to hear someone describe her own son that way, then realized that he wouldn't have thought twice if she'd dismissed him as unathletic, or bad at music. Intelligence is considered such a basic measure of human worth that to dismiss someone as unintelligent seems like consigning them into the outer darkness. So DeBoer describes how early readers of his book were scandalized by the insistence on genetic differences in intelligence - isn't this denying the equality of Man, declaring some people inherently superior to others? Only if you conflate intelligence with worth, which DeBoer argues our society does constantly. It starts with parents buying Baby Einstein tapes and trying to send their kids to the best preschool, continues through the "meat grinder" of the college admissions process when everyone knows that whoever gets into Harvard is better than whoever gets into State U, and continues when the meritocracy rewards the straight-A Harvard student with a high-paying powerful job and the high school dropout with drudgery or unemployment. Even the phrase "high school dropout" has an aura of personal failure about it, in a way totally absent from "kid who always lost at Little League".

DeBoer isn't convinced this is an honest mistake. He draws attention to a sort of meta-class-war - a war among class warriors over whether the true enemy is the top 1% (this is the majority position) or the top 20% (this is DeBoer's position; if you've read Staying Classy, you'll immediately recognize this disagreement as the same one that divided the Church and UR models of class). The 1% are the Buffetts and Bezoses of the world; the 20% are the "managerial" class of well-off urban professionals, bureaucrats, creative types, and other mandarins. Opposition to the 20% is usually right-coded; describe them as "woke coastal elites who dominate academia and the media", and the Trump campaign ad almost writes itself. But some Marxists flirt with it too; the book references Elizabeth Currid-Halkett's Theory Of The Aspirational Class, and you can hear echoes of this every time Twitter socialists criticize "Vox liberals" or something. Access to the 20% is gated by college degree, and their legitimizing myth is that their education makes them more qualified and humane than the rest of us. DeBoer thinks the deification of school-achievement-compatible intelligence as highest good serves their class interest; "equality of opportunity" means we should ignore all other human distinctions in favor of the one that our ruling class happens to excel at.

So maybe equality of opportunity is a stupid goal. DeBoer argues for equality of results. This is a pretty extreme demand, but he's a Marxist and he means what he says. He wants a world where smart people and dull people have equally comfortable lives, and where intelligence can take its rightful place as one of many virtues which are nice to have but not the sole measure of your worth.

…

I'm Freddie's ideological enemy, which means I have to respect him. And there's a lot to like about this book. I think its two major theses - that intelligence is mostly innate, and that this is incompatible with equating it to human value - are true, important, and poorly appreciated by the general population. I tried to make a somewhat similar argument in my Parable Of The Talents, which DeBoer graciously quotes in his introduction. Some of the book's peripheral theses - that a lot of education science is based on fraud, that US schools are not declining in quality, etc - are also true, fascinating, and worth spreading. Overall, I think this book does more good than harm.

It's also rambling, self-contradictory in places, and contains a lot of arguments I think are misguided or bizarre.

…

At the time, I noted that meritocracy has nothing to do with this. The intuition behind meritocracy is: if your life depends on a difficult surgery, would you prefer the hospital hire a surgeon who aced medical school, or a surgeon who had to complete remedial training to barely scrape by with a C-? If you prefer the former, you’re a meritocrat with respect to surgeons. Generalize a little, and you have the argument for being a meritocrat everywhere else.

The above does away with any notions of "desert", but I worry it's still accepting too many of DeBoer's assumptions. A better description might be: Your life depends on a difficult surgery. You can hire whatever surgeon you want to perform it. You are willing to pay more money for a surgeon who aced medical school than for a surgeon who failed it. So higher intelligence leads to more money.

This not only does away with "desert", but also with reified Society deciding who should prosper. More meritorious surgeons get richer not because "Society" has selected them to get rich as a reward for virtue, but because individuals pursuing their incentives prefer, all else equal, not to die of botched surgeries. Meritocracy isn't an -ocracy like democracy or autocracy, where people in wigs sit down to frame a constitution and decide how things should work. It's a dubious abstraction over the fact that people prefer to have jobs done well rather than poorly, and use their financial and social clout to make this happen.

…

I think DeBoer would argue he's not against improving schools. He just thinks all attempts to do it so far have been crooks and liars pillaging the commons, so much so that we need a moratorium on this kind of thing until we can figure out what's going on. But I'm worried that his arguments against existing school reform are in some cases kind of weak.

DeBoer does make things hard for himself by focusing on two of the most successful charter school experiments. If he'd been a little less honest, he could have passed over these and instead mentioned the many charter schools that fail, or just sort of plod onward doing about as well as public schools do. I think the closest thing to a consensus right now is that most charter schools do about the same as public schools for white/advantaged students, and slightly better than public schools for minority/disadvantaged students. But DeBoer very virtuously thinks it's important to confront his opponents' strongest cases, so these are the ones I'll focus on here.

…

These are good points, and I would accept them from anyone other than DeBoer, who will go on to say in a few chapters that the solution to our education issues is a Marxist revolution that overthrows capitalism and dispenses with the very concept of economic value. If he's willing to accept a massive overhaul of everything, that's failed every time it's tried, why not accept a much smaller overhaul-of-everything, that's succeeded at least once? There are plenty of billionaires willing to pour fortunes into reforming various cities - DeBoer will go on to criticize them as deluded do-gooders a few chapters later. If billions of dollars plus a serious commitment to ground-up reform are what we need, let's just spend billions of dollars and have a serious commitment to ground-up reform! If more hurricanes is what it takes to fix education, I'm willing to do my part by leaving my air conditioner on 'high' all the time.

…

DeBoer spends several impassioned sections explaining how opposed he is to scientific racism, and arguing that the belief that individual-level IQ differences are partly genetic doesn't imply a belief that group-level IQ differences are partly genetic. Some reviewers of this book are still suspicious, wondering if he might be hiding his real position. I can assure you he is not. Seriously, he talks about how much he hates belief in genetic group-level IQ differences about thirty times per page. Also, sometimes when I write posts about race, he sends me angry emails ranting about how much he hates that some people believe in genetic group-level IQ differences - totally private emails nobody else will ever see. I have no reason to doubt that his hatred of this is as deep as he claims.

But I understand why some reviewers aren't convinced. This book can't stop tripping over itself when it tries to discuss these topics. DeBoer grants X, he grants X -> Y, then goes on ten-page rants about how absolutely loathsome and abominable anyone who believes Y is.

Remember, one of the theses of this book is that individual differences in intelligence are mostly genetic. But DeBoer spends only a little time citing the studies that prove this is true. He (correctly) decides that most of his readers will object not on the scientific ground that they haven't seen enough studies, but on the moral ground that this seems to challenge the basic equality of humankind. He (correctly) points out that this is balderdash, that innate differences in intelligence don't imply differences in moral value, any more than innate differences in height or athletic ability or anything like that imply differences in moral value. His goal is not just to convince you about the science, but to convince you that you can believe the science and still be an okay person who respects everyone and wants them to be happy.

He could have written a chapter about race that reinforced this message. He could have reviewed studies about whether racial differences in intelligence are genetic or environmental, come to some conclusion or not, but emphasized that it doesn't matter, and even if it's 100% genetic it has no bearing at all on the need for racial equality and racial justice, that one race having a slightly higher IQ than another doesn't make them "superior" any more than Pygmies' genetic short stature makes them "inferior".

Instead he - well, I'm not really sure what he's doing. He starts by says racial differences must be environmental. Then he says that studies have shown that racial IQ gaps are not due to differences in income/poverty, because the gaps remain even after controlling for these. But, he says, there could be other environmental factors aside from poverty that cause racial IQ gaps. After tossing out some possibilities, he concludes that he doesn't really need to be able to identify a plausible mechanism, because "white supremacy touches on so many aspects of American life that it's irresponsible to believe we have adequately controlled for it", no matter how many studies we do or how many confounders we eliminate. His argument, as far as I can tell, is that it's always possible that racial IQ differences are environmental, therefore they must be environmental. Then he goes on to, at great length, denounce as loathsome and villainous anyone who might suspect these gaps of being genetic. Such people are "noxious", "bigoted", "ugly", "pseudoscientific" "bad people" who peddle "propaganda" to "advance their racist and sexist agenda". (But tell us what you really think!)

…

This is far enough from my field that I would usually defer to expert consensus, but all the studies I can find which try to assess expert consensus seem crazy. A while ago, I freaked out upon finding a study that seemed to show most expert scientists in the field agreed with Murray's thesis in 1987 - about three times as many said the gap was due to a combination of genetics and environment as said it was just environment. Then I freaked out again when I found another study (here is the most recent version, from 2020) showing basically the same thing (about four times as many say it’s a combination of genetics and environment compared to just environment). I can't find any expert surveys giving the expected result that they all agree this is dumb and definitely 100% environment and we can move on (I'd be very relieved if anybody could find those, or if they could explain why the ones I found were fake studies or fake experts or a biased sample, or explain how I'm misreading them or that they otherwise shouldn't be trusted. If you have thoughts on this, please send me an email). I've vacillated back and forth on how to think about this question so many times, and right now my personal probability estimate is "I am still freaking out about this, go away go away go away". And I understand I have at least two potentially irresolveable biases on this question: one, I'm a white person in a country with a long history of promoting white supremacy; and two, if I lean in favor then everyone will hate me, and use it as a bludgeon against anyone I have ever associated with, and I will die alone in a ditch and maybe deserve it. So the best I can do is try to route around this issue when considering important questions. This is sometimes hard, but the basic principle is that I'm far less sure of any of it than I am sure that all human beings are morally equal and deserve to have a good life and get treated with respect regardless of academic achievement.

…

That last sentence about the basic principle is the thesis of The Cult Of Smart, so it would have been a reasonable position for DeBoer to take too. DeBoer doesn't take it. He acknowledges the existence of expert scientists who believe the differences are genetic (he names Linda Gottfredson in particular), but only to condemn them as morally flawed for asserting this.

But this is exactly the worldview he is, at this very moment, trying to write a book arguing against! His thesis is that mainstream voices say there can't be genetic differences in intelligence among individuals, because that would make some people fundamentally inferior to others, which is morally repugnant - but those voices are wrong, because differences in intelligence don't affect moral equality. Then he adds that mainstream voices say there can't be genetic differences in intelligence among ethnic groups, because that would make some groups fundamentally inferior to others, which is morally repugnant - and those voices are right; we must deny the differences lest we accept the morally repugnant thing.

Normally I would cut DeBoer some slack and assume this was some kind of Straussian manuever he needed to do to get the book published, or to prevent giving ammunition to bad people. But no, he has definitely believed this for years, consistently, even while being willing to offend basically anybody about basically anything else at any time. So I'm convinced this is his true belief. I'm just not sure how he squares it with the rest of his book.

…

"Smart" equivocates over two concepts - high-IQ and successful-at-formal-education. These concepts are related; in general, high-IQ people get better grades, graduate from better colleges, etc. But they're not exactly the same.

There is a cult of successful-at-formal-education. Society obsesses over how important formal education is, how it can do anything, how it's going to save the world. If you get gold stars on your homework, become the teacher's pet, earn good grades in high school, and get into an Ivy League, the world will love you for it.

But the opposite is true of high-IQ. Society obsessively denies that IQ can possibly matter. Admit to being a member of Mensa, and you'll get a fusillade of "IQ is just a number!" and "people who care about their IQ are just overcompensating for never succeeding at anything real!" and "IQ doesn't matter, what about emotional IQ or grit or whatever else, huh? Bet you didn't think of that!" Science writers and Psychology Today columnists vomit out a steady stream of bizarre attempts to deny the statistical validity of IQ.

These are two sides of the same phenomenon. Some people are smarter than others as adults, and the more you deny innate ability, the more weight you have to put on education. Society wants to put a lot of weight on formal education, and compensates by denying innate ability a lot. DeBoer is aware of this and his book argues against it adeptly.

Still, I worry that the title - The Cult Of Smart - might lead people to think there is a cult surrounding intelligence, when exactly the opposite is true. But I guess The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education sounds less snappy, so whatever.

…

I try to review books in an unbiased way, without letting myself succumb to fits of emotion. So be warned: I'm going to fail with this one. I am going to get angry and write whole sentences in capital letters. This is one of the most enraging passages I've ever read.

School is child prison. It's forcing kids to spend their childhood - a happy time! a time of natural curiosity and exploration and wonder - sitting in un-air-conditioned blocky buildings, cramped into identical desks, listening to someone drone on about the difference between alliteration and assonance, desperate to even be able to fidget but knowing that if they do their teacher will yell at them, and maybe they'll get a detention that extends their sentence even longer without parole. The anti-psychiatric-abuse community has invented the "Burrito Test" - if a place won't let you microwave a burrito without asking permission, it's an institution. Doesn't matter if the name is "Center For Flourishing" or whatever and the aides are social workers in street clothes instead of nurses in scrubs - if it doesn't pass the Burrito Test, it's an institution. There is no way school will let you microwave a burrito without permission. THEY WILL NOT EVEN LET YOU GO TO THE BATHROOM WITHOUT PERMISSION. YOU HAVE TO RAISE YOUR HAND AND ASK YOUR TEACHER FOR SOMETHING CALLED "THE BATHROOM PASS" IN FRONT OF YOUR ENTIRE CLASS, AND IF SHE DOESN'T LIKE YOU, SHE CAN JUST SAY NO.

I don't like actual prisons, the ones for criminals, but I will say this for them - people keep them around because they honestly believe they prevent crime. If someone found proof-positive that prisons didn't prevent any crimes at all, but still suggested that we should keep sending people there, because it means we'd have "fewer middle-aged people on the streets" and "fewer adults forced to go home to empty apartments and houses", then MAYBE YOU WOULD START TO UNDERSTAND HOW I FEEL ABOUT SENDING PEOPLE TO SCHOOL FOR THE SAME REASON.

I sometimes sit in on child psychiatrists' case conferences, and I want to scream at them. There's the kid who locks herself in the bathroom every morning so her parents can't drag her to child prison, and her parents stand outside the bathroom door to yell at her for hours until she finally gives in and goes, and everyone is trying to medicate her or figure out how to remove the bathroom locks, and THEY ARE SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM. There are all the kids who had bedwetting or awful depression or constant panic attacks, and then as soon as the coronavirus caused the child prisons to shut down the kids mysteriously became instantly better. I have heard stories of kids bullied to the point where it would be unfair not to call it torture, and the child prisons respond according to Procedures which look very good on paper and hit all the right We-Are-Taking-This-Seriously buzzwords but somehow never result in the kids not being tortured every day, and if the kids' parents were to stop bringing them to child prison every day to get tortured anew the cops would haul those parents to jail, and sometimes the only solution is the parents to switch them to the charter schools THAT FREDDIE DEBOER WANTS TO SHUT DOWN.

I see people on Twitter and Reddit post their stories from child prison, all of which they treat like it's perfectly normal. The district that wanted to save money, so it banned teachers from turning the heat above 50 degrees in the depths of winter. The district that decided running was an unsafe activity, and so any child who ran or jumped or played other-than-sedately during recess would get sent to detention - yeah, that's fine, let's just make all our children spent the first 18 years of their life somewhere they're not allowed to run, that'll be totally normal child development. You might object that they can run at home, but of course teachers assign three hours of homework a day despite ample evidence that homework does not help learning. Preventing children from having any free time, or the ability to do any of the things they want to do seems to just be an end in itself. Every single doctor and psychologist in the world has pointed out that children and teens naturally follow a different sleep pattern than adults, probably closer to 12 PM to 9 AM than the average adult's 10 - 7. Child prisons usually start around 7 or 8 AM, meaning any child who shows up on time is necessarily sleep-deprived in ways that probably harm their health and development.

School forces children to be confined in an uninhabitable environment, restrained from moving, and psychologically tortured in a state of profound sleep deprivation, under pain of imprisoning their parents if they refuse. The only possible justification for this is that it achieves some kind of vital social benefit like eliminating poverty. If it doesn't, you might as well replace it with something less traumatizing, like child labor. The kid will still have to spend eight hours of their day toiling in a terrible environment, but at least they’ll get some pocket money! At least their boss can't tell them to keep working off the clock under the guise of "homework"! I have worked as a medical resident, widely considered one of the most horrifying and abusive jobs it is possible to take in a First World country. I can say with absolute confidence that I would gladly do another four years of residency if the only alternative was another four years of high school.

If I have children, I hope to be able to homeschool them. But if I can't homeschool them, I am incredibly grateful that the option exists to send them to a charter school that might not have all of these problems. I'm not as impressed with Montessori schools as some of my friends are, but at least as far as I can tell they let kids wander around free-range, and don't make them use bathroom passes. DeBoer not only wants to keep the whole prison-cum-meat-grinder alive and running, even after having proven it has no utility, he also wants to shut the only possible escape my future children will ever get unless I'm rich enough to quit work and care for them full time.

When I try to keep a cooler head about all of this, I understand that Freddie DeBoer doesn't want this. He is not a fan of freezing-cold classrooms or sleep deprivation or bullying or bathroom passes. In fact, he will probably blame all of these on the "neoliberal reformers" (although I went to school before most of the neoliberal reforms started, and I saw it all). He will say that his own utopian schooling system has none of this stuff. In fact, he does say that. He sketches what a future Marxist school system might look like, and it looks pretty much like a Montessori school looks now. That just makes it really weird that he wants to shut down all the schools that resemble his ideal today (or make them only available to the wealthy) in favor of forcing kids into schools about as different from it as it's possible for anything to be.

I am so, so tired of socialists who admit that the current system is a helltopian torturescape, then argue that we must prevent anyone from ever being able to escape it. Who promise that once the last alternative is closed off, once the last nice green place where a few people manage to hold off the miseries of the world is crushed, why then the helltopian torturescape will become a lovely utopia full of rainbows and unicorns. If you can make your system less miserable, make your system less miserable! Do it before forcing everyone else to participate in it under pain of imprisonment if they refuse! Forcing everyone to participate in your system and then making your system something other than a meat-grinder that takes in happy children and spits out dead-eyed traumatized eighteen-year-olds who have written 10,000 pages on symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird and had zero normal happy experiences - is doing things super, super backwards!

[thesupergamercorpus]

Image source:  https://math.mit.edu/~apost/courses/18.218_2018/ — 18.218, Topics in Combinatorics: Combinatorics of Grassmannian

Keywords and ideas

Combinatorics → an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting;

Combinatorics → quickly makes things grow exponentially e.g. DNA, Latin alphabet etc.;

“What does this remind me of?” → making use of combinatorics;

Small practices such as 20 minutes of mindfulness produce big results thanks to combinatorics;

Public education → makes little use of the power of combinatorics;

Taking an occasional break to make use of the power of combinatorics and also extend your forgetting curve.

Abstract

Today I want to talk about how powerful making neural connections can be, and why I think most students these days don’t spend enough time on this process. First the definition of combinatorics grabbed from Wikipedia:

Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many applications ranging from logic to statistical physics, from evolutionary biology to computer science, etc.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics — Combinatorics

So what are some examples showing the powers of combinatorics?

Examples of the power of combinatorics: DNA and the Latin alphabet

One example is from the book ‘What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches’ by Erwin Schrödinger, Roger Penrose (Foreword). The example is that of DNA, namely how such small and low amount of units can produce such big results like us humans. Answer: combinatorics. But how can we imagine this concept better?

Well, let’s take a look at the Latin alphabet: A, B … Z. With just 26 letters, we can make hundreds of thousands of words, and this is not where combinatorics comes to an end. With those words, we can make millions of combinations, which makes up sentences. Sentences make up books and ideas, and so on. We can quickly see how combinatorics doesn’t only play at the level of the Latin alphabet and neither does it only operate at the level of DNA. The things quickly grow exponentially.

So I hope with these examples, the answer to the question “How does such tiny units as DNA produce such big results as us humans?” becomes more obvious, namely thanks to combinatorics. Again, if we go back to the definition grabbed from Wikipedia above, combinatorics is also used in evolutionary biology.

The power of combinatorics in learning: making neural circuits and neural connections

You can probably see a lot on the internet how people are saying that the more knowledge you have, the faster you learn. In my experience, that’s pretty much true. The question now becomes, how can we make something that is already exponential even more exponential?

Well, one thing I personally deliberately perform whenever learning things, is asking myself “What does this remind me of?” Actually, this process is almost happening subconsciously by now. One answer that this question brought me to, is this chapter. The book didn’t explicitly tell me how combinatorics enhances learning, I had to make that connection myself, and here I am, making hundreds more connections when typing.

Another way to make use of combinatorics, is to simply try to make one connection between two concepts e.g. combinatorics and learning. Once you have made that connection, simply think about it, write about it, and maybe even teach others. These practices enable you to use the power of combinatorics in a more subconscious manner rather than consciously i.e. making the connection between combinatorics and learning consciously. What do I mean by “in a subconscious manner?” Well, everything that I am writing about right now is flowing impromptu. Again, the only connection I consciously made was between combinatorics and learning.

All these practices creates new neural circuits and connections. There are many more ways to make use of the power of combinatorics, but I suggest reading these two chapters of mine: 10/06/2019—My Learning Trajectory, Chapter Two: Things That Increase The Quality of My Learning

and

10/12/2019—My Learning Trajectory, Chapter Three: How I Learn

This also seems to immediately give an answer to the question I had for a long time already: “How do these little practices give such big results in my life?” Again, thanks to me writing this chapter right now, the unplanned answer seems to be combinatorics. Thanks to combinatorics I am able to have all this information at such a young age

Flaw of public education: not making use of combinatorics

So what could be the other extreme end, the opposite of combinatorics? I guess this quote would suffice:

“The telephone book is full of facts, but it doesn’t contain a single idea.” —Mortimer Adler

I honestly think public education relies too much on standardized testing and rote memorization, things that don’t require students to know how to make use of the power of combinatorics. Why would you, as a student, spend an extra 2 hours a day to make combinations between concepts when such answers and ideas won’t be present on a standardized test or bump up your grade? The school doesn’t care that you made a combination between entropy and intelligence. No, the school just wants you to learn the definition of entropy (when studying physics) or intelligence (when studying psychology), and nothing more. I really hope this will change in the future (which it probably will, look at all those YouTube videos from experts).

By the way, see the chapter 10/04/2019—Intelligential Entropy where I do make the connection between entropy and intelligence.

Taking an occasional break from learning

So instead of trying to learn and memorize more and more information, after a while you need to sit back, relax, and let your mind wander and daydream about everything you have soaked up. Note all your ideas down, think about them, write about them, teach them, and you will make thousands of neural connections in a short period of time that would normally take days, weeks, or even longer.

This causes you to not only make use of combinatorics, but also extends your forgetting curve, the rate at which you forget information. How? By recalling the things, but also making new neural connections that will lead to the same concepts. So if one neural connection is weakened, you still have many more leading to the same concept.

Lastly, it is all about sacrificing the present for a better future or “the tortoise beats the hare” concept. It doesn’t matter if you learn the things slowly right now, it will accelerate over time, exponentially.

My own examples of using the power of combinatorics

08/25/2019—Top-down thinking > bottom-up thinking and 08/31/2019—Top-down, bottom-up thinking, sorting algorithms, and working memory → Here I made the connection how top-down thinking is more efficient in learning new things, and also why.

09/01/2019—Possible Lack of Free Will and Psychological Therapies → Here I made the connection between a possible lack of free will and how that concept should influence psychological therapies, psychotherapists themselves, and even amongst everyday people.

09/11/2019—Entropic Learning Model → This is a model based on the idea that if you reduce entropy locally (in your brain) by making neural connections etc., you will also reduce entropy externally (your environment).

And many more examples to give, but I will keep it as it is right now.

John von Neumann making use of the power of combinatorics

George Dantzig is the mathematician who thought that two problems on the blackboard were homework. He solved them and handed them, albeit a bit later, so he thought they were overdue.

Here’s the plot twist: They were two famous unsolved problems in statistics with which the mathematics community struggled for decades.

When George Dantzig brought von Neumann an unsolved problem in linear programming “as I would to an ordinary mortal”, on which there had been no published literature, he was astonished when von Neumann said “Oh, that!” before offhandedly giving a lecture of over an hour, explaining how to solve the problem using the hitherto unconceived theory of duality.

Afterword

Remember how DNA are such tiny units yet produce such big results? Same thing with making just one connection between two concepts, doing mindfulness 20 minutes a day etc. The small things do matter.

Image: made with Cmaps, see: https://cmap.ihmc.us/

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 10/20/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Sunday, October 19th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS), Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Sunday Sun Nation Newspaper (SS).

HEADS TO REPORT ON STEWARDSHIP – Five chairmen from statutory corporations face the public to give reports on their stewardship, at the Barbados Labour Party’s (BLP) 81st annual conference to be held in Queen’s Park. It will be one of the highlights of the October 25 to 27 conference whose theme is BLP 2019 – A Refreshing Change for Barbados. “We’ve asked for the five chairpersons of boards to report to Barbados. It will be streamed to all Barbadians and this is the first time that this has happened at the conference. We are asking the chairmen of the Barbados Port, the Transport Board, the Barbados Water Authority, the Sanitation Service Authority and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to report on their stewardship and reflect on the challenges, their leadership and direction they are going and just to be part of the idea we are an open, transparent, honest Government,” said chairman of the conference planning committee, Kirk Humphrey at a media briefing yesterday. (SS)

DRIVE TO TAP WIND ENERGY – Barbados’ energy sector is set for major transformation with the introduction of wind energy generation facilitated by the Barbados National Oil Company Limited (BNOCL), in conjunction with the National Petroleum Corporation (NPC). The initiative is expected to reduce energy costs to average Barbadians. The wind generation project funded by the Inter-American Development Bank has commenced with a detailed wind study of key sites through a partnership with Barlovento Recursos Naturales from Spain. It will also involve community outreach and town hall sessions to engage with key stakeholders regarding the initiative’s potential benefits and impacts. (SS)

MARIOTT GOING ELEGANT – Major changes, including a rebranding, hotel sales, and management shake-up, are likely as part of a BDS$260.2 million deal that will see global hospitality giant Marriott International acquire Barbados-based Elegant Hotels Group. But officials of Marriott International Hotel Licensing Company revealed that if Elegant’s shareholders said yes to the sale, the company’s more than 1 100 employees in Barbados would be secure as IHLC “does not intend to make any material headcount reductions within the Elegant Group as a result of the acquisition”. The potential benefits from the acquisition were welcomed by Minister of Tourism Kerrie Symmonds yesterday, who told the Saturday Sun “their interest in making this kind of investment in Barbados is a very clear testimony to the fact that Barbados is again being seen as a destination which is working well, and is worthy of major investments”. (SS)

TURF CLUB SACKS TWO OFFICIALS – The Barbados Turf Club has made two notable changes at the end of the second season maintenance break. Gone are race course consultant Gerry Alleyne, who held the post for just under two years, and paddock and building maintenance consultant Naz Issa. When the third season runs off on November 9, David Archer is the man tasked with filling the roll of track and paddock consultant. Archer who took up the post from last Tuesday worked at Bloomfield as property manager and was manager at Valley Plantation. Both Alleyne and trainer Issa who had replaced Charles Downie following his retirement back in 2017, got their letters of termination last Monday. (SS)

NEW POLITICAL PARTY IN GUYANA – A new political party, promising campaign financing legislation, was launched here as Guyana prepares to hold fresh regional and general election on March 2 next year. The Citizenship Initiative (CI), which has also indicated that it has no intention of joining with either the People’s National Congress (PNC), which is part of the ruling coalition administration and the main opposition People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C), said it intends to change the way issues related to politics are addressed in Guyana. “Our key platform has to do with leverage in parliament. Now to answer the question of coalition, let me say very explicitly now: Our message is that this adversarial politics by the two giants continues to be the primary burden for the development of Guyana. “Coalition is not an option…You can’t say that you have goals that you want to attain, you change the status quo and then join the status quo,” said the party’s executive member, Ruel Johnson. Apart from Johnson, who is the government’s cultural advisor, the other founding members are web developer Shaz Ally, the managing director of a private school, Alphonso de Armas, educator Ronda Ann Lam and business executive, Yonnick David. Ally said Guyana has been looking to find its way since it gained independence in 1966 but has instead found itself marred by ethnic divisions, limited opportunities and questionable leadership. He said Guyana has put power in the arms of two major political parties who have been in control for over 50 years while many of the country’s struggles and problems remain. He said the new party is focused on chartering a better course for all of Guyana and its members would be representative of the entire society. Johnson said Citizenship Initiative, whose symbol is a scale balancing two water lilies, will contest the upcoming elections and if successful, would be pushing for constitutional reform as a priority. He said the party is also focused now on naming Presidential and Prime Ministerial candidates and will address that issue as it rolls out its plans and programmes. President David Granger named the election date after Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo was successful in tabling a motion of no confidence in his coalition administration last December. The PPP had been pushing for an early poll, but the head of state said he would have only announced the date when the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM0 had indicated to him that it was prepared to conduct the elections. (SS)

TRINIDAD PM SPEAKS OF PLOT TO ASSASSINATE AG – Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has linked opposition operatives to a plot to assassinate Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi and warned the population of Trinidad and Tobago that they should not consider the threats to be a joke. “We have told this country that many of them stole public money and will be held to account. We have been accumulating the evidence through the legal channels and they know that and that’s why one of the first meetings I have had in Whitehall (Office of the Prime Minister) in recent times with the security forces of this country involved is to determine how to protect the Attorney General because persons have paid money to kill him,” Rowley told a public meeting of the ruling People’s National Movement (PNM) here on Friday night. “Understand what we are dealing with in this country. I tell you this not because I am being irresponsible, because I want you to know (and) you can’t say you don’t know. I want you to know because I am the Chairman of the National Security Council,” Rowley added. He reminded supporters of the June 1990 murder of then attorney general Selwyn Richardson, who was shot by unknown assailants as he was entering his driveway to his home, adding “those of you who think it is a joke, let me remind all of you that somebody, somewhere in this country, killed Selwyn Richardson and up to this day that matter has not been solved”. “Let me tell all of you again, who have much to say, desperate people do desperate things,” Rowley said, reminding the meeting of the two attempts that had been made on his life in the lead up to the 2015 general elections. “On two occasions they hired a killer to kill me. The first killer refused and determined that somebody has to know this and went and told a government official. The government official came and told us. We told the police. “While we dealing with that they went and found another one. He too refused and by this time Special Branch (of the police) was involved and Special Branch knew about it. There’s honour among thieves in this country. It appears there’s honour among killers too,” Rowley said. He said that apart from the police, he also had to secure private security and in some instances were being told where he should and should not go because of the dangers involved. “That happened in Trinidad and Tobago in 2015 and they know what they did and they know what they are facing because we have told this country that many of them stole public money and will be held to account,” Rowley said. He warned supporters against “all of them who have your future in hand to bring you this land of milk and honey they have reason to want to get back in office more than anybody else, because only when they get back into office they can kill everything that is live now and that is their primary motivation . . . .” Earlier, National Security Minister, Stuart Young, told the public meeting of the “disturbing” pattern being observed involving known members of the main opposition United National Congress (UNC) and the members of the criminal underworld. Young, indicating that he was coming out of the Parliament where he could have been afforded parliamentary immunity to make the statement, said that he had been informed that “very high ranking members of the opposition, the UNC opposition, at the highest, highest levels . . . are engaging in active conversations and communication . . . with the criminal elements in our society. “You know that in National Security one of the things we did was to pass anti-gang legislation and you remember how hard we had to fight for that to make it a crime in Trinidad and Tobago to be part of a gang and to participate in gang activities. So it is now criminal to be part of a gang, to communicate with gangs . . . that is now a crime in Trinidad and Tobago. “I stand here tonight without fear of contradiction to tell you that at the highest level of the opposition they are engaging the criminal elements,” Young, who is also an attorney said, pointing a finger also at sitting opposition members of both houses of Parliament. (SS)

CYCLIST SERIOUSLY INJURED IN COLLISSION – A pedal cyclist was seriously injured in a collision along the Oistins Hill Road in Christ Church Saturday evening, police say. Around 5:18 pm the cyclist – identified as 50-year-old Lloyd Cummins of Unity Road, Gall Hill, Christ Church – was riding down Oistins Hill when he lost control of the bicycle and fell. Cummins injured his head in the fall, causing him to lose the ability to speak. He was transported by ambulance to the QEH where medical personnel said he was semi-conscious. Investigations are ongoing. (BT)

MOTHER WANTS JUSTICE FOR SON - Parents of the 11-year-old boy killed by three former Princess Margaret Secondary School students want the full extent of the law to be visited on their son’s killers. This was revealed when convicted manslayers Maria Antoinette Goddard, Doniko Javier Alleyne and Shaquille Shamar Khallel Bradshaw returned to the No 2 Supreme Court on Friday. Goddard, then 12, now 22, of Parish Land; Alleyne, also then 12, of Balls Land, and Bradshaw, then 14, now 24, also of Balls Land, Christ Church, were found guilty, earlier this year, of unlawfully killing – manslaughter – Ian Gibson on September 20, 2009. Principal Crown Counsel Alliston Seale prosecuted the matter. Attorney Angella Mitchell-Gittens represented Alleyne and Goddard, and attorney Arthur Holder appeared for Bradshaw during the trial. (SS)

TWO ON MURDER CHARGES REMANDED – Two St Michael men charged with the island’s 37th murder earlier this month were remanded to prison when they appeared in the District “A” Magistrates’ Court yesterday. Christopher Anderson Shepherd, a 20-year-old shop assistant, of Queen Street, The City, and Rio Richian Jelani Malcolm Benn, 28, of Upper Dukes Alley, Nelson Street, The City, were not required to plead to murdering LeAndrew Sharvar Coward, 33, formerly of Field Place, Bayville, St Michael, on October 3. Prosecutor Vernon Waithe later asked that accused Benn be released back into police custody in relation to further investigations. Acting Magistrate Joy-Ann Clarke ordered that Benn be released into police custody until Monday. The magistrate, however, remanded, both he and co-accused Shepherd to HMP Dodds until November 15. (SS)

FIND ROOM FOR HAYNES – West Indies fast bowling great Michael Holding has urged Cricket West Indies (CWI) not to discard outstanding former teammate Desmond Haynes but to absorb him into the coaching set-up of the men’s team. Haynes, a member of the legendary West Indies sides of the 1970s, 80s and early 90s, missed out on becoming head coach of the regional side last week after CWI appointed his former opening partner, Phil Simmons. However, Holding contended that Haynes still had a valuable role to play and said CWI and Simmons needed to utilise his skills in order to enhance the struggling side’s development.  (SS)

CRUNCH TIME FOR WALES – Weymouth Wales and Clayton’s Kola Tonic Notre Dame will be hoping to keep their Capelli Cup hopes alive after their crucial championship stage clash tonight at the Wildey Turf. Both teams have been drawn in a mouth-watering group with University of the West Indies (UWI) Blackbirds and only a victory will be satisfactory if they are to progress to the quarter-finals. One of Wales’ strengths this season has been the quality they have been able to call on off the bench. The Dames’ domestic form has been inconsistent recently but they have shown a strong attacking threat and greater creativity from midfield so far and their improved cohesion should serve them well against a stacked Wales. (SS)

FOGGING SCHEDULE OCTOBER 21-25 – The Ministry of Health and Wellness’ fogging programme will continue in four parishes this week. On Monday, October 21, the St Peter districts to be fogged are Diamond Corner, Lower Castle, Upper Castle, Gays Road, Mount #1 & #2, Boscobelle, Collins, and the environs. The team will be in St James on Tuesday, October 22, spraying Sion Hill, Sion Hill Terrace with avenues, Westmoreland, Porters Road, Lancaster, and surrounding areas. On Wednesday, October 23, the St George districts of Bird Hill, Sinclair Road, Coral Drive, Bakers Close, Grace Drive, Haggatt Hall Development, Cutting Road, Mapp Hill, Dash Valley, Hanson Heights, and the environs will be sprayed. Areas to be fogged in Christ Church on Thursday, October 24, are Sargeant’s Village, Bartlett Road, Sargeant’s Village Tenantry Road, Browne’s Road, Smith Road, Warners Gardens, and neighbouring districts. The team will return to St James on Friday, October 25, to fog Paradise Heights, Hopefield Close, Wanstead Drive, the 2nd, 4th and 6th Avenues of Wanstead Terrace, West Terrace, West Terrace Gardens with Avenues 1 to 16, Oxnards, Violet Circle, Cherry Drive, West Terrace Heights and surrounding areas. Fogging takes place between 4:30 and 7:30 pm each day. Householders are reminded to open their doors and windows to allow the spray to enter. (BT)

WEATHER – Synopsis: A surface to mid-level ridge pattern is the dominant feature. Forecast: Fair to partly cloudy with a few brief isolated showers. Wind: Generally easterly at 10 to 30 km/h. Seas: Slight to moderate in open water with swells from 1.0m to 1.5m. Tonight Synopsis: A surface to low-level shearline will be approaching the island. Forecast: Fair to occasionally cloudy with a few brief scattered showers. Wind: ENE – E at 10 to 30 km/h. Seas: Slight to moderate in open water with swells from 1.0m to 1.5m. (BT)

NEW LOCATION FOR BLP CONFERENCE – The Barbados Labour Party’s 81st annual conference will take place in Queens Park this year. Chairman of the conference planning committee Kirk Humphrey said the location was reflective of the refreshed party as it was open, close to parliament and was a venue where founder Sir Grantley Adams laid many political pronouncements. Under the theme BLP 2019 – A Refreshing Change for Barbados, the three day conference being held from October 25 to 27, will feature an award ceremony, speeches, an address from the Prime Minister and a concert where members of parliament will perform. One of the highlights will take place on October 26, when the chairmen of the Transport Board, Barbados Port Authority, Barbados Water Authority, Sanitation Service Authority and Queen Elizabeth Hospital will be giving reports on their stewardship. (SS)

UWI HONOURS FACEBOOK DIRECTOR – Hundreds crossed the stage at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, on Saturday morning.  During the first graduation ceremony, scholars from the Faculties of Humanities and Education, Science, Medicine and Technology and Law all accepted their scrolls with pride. Director of Diversity at Facebook, Maxine Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, was conferred with an honourary doctor of laws. (SS)

There are 74 days left in the year Shalom!  Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps #bajannewscaps #newsinanutshell

[sherryyeliu]

Art for Activation

Just like the word in “A Tale of two cities.”

“It was the best of times; it was the worst times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…….We had everything before us. We had nothing before us; we were all going directly to heaven, We were all going direct the other way.”

I think this description does not only apply to the age of the French Revolution. But today’s as well. 

It turns out, good and evil always are relative. Everyone should gently and sturdily embrace their time and shoulder on their responsibilities. Change the subject or state something positive in response could have a possibility of seeing a hopeful world.

The industrial revolution has resulted in the rapid evolution in human society which produces an enduring vision of the world and causes profound effects. The world is witnessing the coming of global contemporaneity.  The continuous development leads to increasingly complicated relations in each field, environment, culture, history, economy, as well as politics and it seems to be going somewhere uncontrollable. 

Under this circumstances, the contemporary art practised a pluralistic perspective could be as a valid strategy to activate the 'zones of silence', and this is the crucial point for change. Because art can be related to discovery, education, exchange and cooperation.

The following are the key points of the art engagement 

Decolonisation

Reinhabiting

Contemporaneity

Site-specificity

Participation

In these part, I would like to combine my experience in Art field Japan with some theory to explore how art activates a community. 

This area consists of 200 small villages, located in the southern region of Niigata, with a wonderful landscape. However, this area had been ever abandoned by the government.    

From its name, we can see the situation.

Echi —— Uninhabited

Go—— Economic depression

So, what happened in the early 20th century.

This area is buried in the snow for more than six months of a year, and therefore it led to low production in agriculture and population loss. Due to the low-speed development, The villagers had lost their pride in their hometown and local culture. At the end of the 20th century, this area hadn’t entered into the automobile society yet, They had no sense of identity for a new city or a new country.

However, what this area looks like today. It has experienced a fantastic development and become the most outstanding example in the world. It is a favourite place in Japan and has held some international communication events.

why art was associated with this area in the 20th century, the government has tried to do many ways, but there was no effective improvement because of the four complicated problems: passive attitude, place identity, culture shock and decline of the economy.

In 1995, an art director Fram Kitagawa proposed a bold idea that public art is a valid strategy. He wrote this book to record the whole festival.

However, a challenge was that how could the young modern art be grafted on such an ancient farming civilization? No one believed that holding an art festival can help them to solve practical economic and social problems.

How art did?

Decolonisation 

Gruenewald (2003a, p. 9）states that the significant factor involved in decolonisation is the development of the ability to recognise ways of think that injure and exploit other people and place. 

Nikos Papastergiadis and Gerardo Mosquera (2014) mention that the vitality and value of culture rely on exchange and is benefited by communication.

Therefore, communication is the top priority. It took Fram 7 years to publicize everywhere and organized a volunteer team “ Koheibi” that consists of young people from different backgrounds. Developing empathy in the relationship between them and residents.

It requires artists to see beyond the private and individual and establish a relationship with residents upon mutual interests and mutual respect.

Instead of dominating art to space, Art in this place should be a collective experiment which finally is responded actively and extended widely to a multicultural form.

Reinhabiting

'Reinhabition involves identifying, affirming, conserving and creating those focus of cultural knowledge that nurtures and protect people and ecosystem.’ (Gruenewald, 2003a, p. 9)

The typical feature of the social theory is that "the lack of interest in the place, material context and the land, the social science also tend to the generalization without the consideration of specific context. And this caused the placelessness in Modernity while postmodernity requires the recognition of the multiplicity of places. (Somerville 2010)

As the centre of experience, the local place explains how the world works and how their lives fit into the space they occupy. Therefore, it is necessary for residents to rediscover and rethink this place.

(Provided by Tokamachi City Tourist Association)

                      ‘Gift for Frozen Village’ Takahashi Kamasata, 2012

Rethink the nature

It is important to rebuild the confidence of their hometown by rediscovering nature. This, in turn, can change their attitudes and make them rethink nature. Artists created a variety of artworks to reflect the beauty of nature, this is an example, this artwork names ‘Gift for Frozen Village’, artist fully utilized the snow’s features to combine with the people, fields and forest around, each resident was told to plant a LED “light seed” to bloom in the snow. Gradually, villagers were no longer afraid of the snow. Instead, they began to enjoy the snow and finally, they proposed a slogan “snow is our friend”. 

A new view appeared in their familiar scene could draw more concerns, and it gradually benefits to the awareness enhancement as well as encourages the local residents rediscovering their environment, nature and civilizations, reviewing place values and a possibility of art and land. (Kwon 2004, p.66)

Learning about the resource 

“Empty House” project

Artists point out to employ the empty house project that rebuilds the destroyed house and school and transform them into the natural resource museum. 

photo credit: Echigo tsumari.jp

                       ‘The Rice Field’， Ilya & Emilia Kabakov ，2000

Developing a sense of place and Recognition of the culture

Talking About the recognition of the culture. Integrating the local culture into artworks can help them to realize their own value:  agricultural society

“The Rice Field”. Before the first art festival held, artists came here and were deeply touched by seeing farmers working hard among the snow in the early spring. So they set up coloured farmer images about farming in the farmland. In the meantime, they set up a viewing platform on the opposite of the rice field. With a poem which praises their farming culture. 

Contemporaneity

It really differs from the Modernity, and it requires artworks bridge the gap among pastness, presentness and future, and this finally engages with the sensitive and incisive social issues of our time, to evoke some positive response. (Smith 2006)

Recording the changes in the multiple time series could draw more attention to the age of terror and prompt to an active confrontation throughout time, things, and thoughts (Bennett 2012). 

‘The Rice Field’， Ilya & Emilia Kabakov ，2000

Reproduce life and reconstruct space had established a new relationship between man and man, man and field.

This work highlights the culture of this place but also draw the attention to develop the place image and enhance personal identity. Moreover, In scenes reminiscent of the cultivation, this work evokes the consideration of the current situation and explore a direct experience of multiple time series.

According to (Stephen 2015), more than 50% of farmlands had been reused in 2006, and almost 90% of the land was used in 2015.

The last class， 2006

Review the history

This work is one of the ‘empty house projects’, and it was a school destroyed by a snowstorm. Now it has been rebuilt to reflect the difficulties of livelihood issues and the sustainability of education by the emphasis on the absence of children.

Windows are all in black, and the whole space is filled with the darkness. At the end of the corridor, there is a microphone amplifier with the sound of the heartbeat as well as flashing lights.

The desks and chairs stacked together and are covered with huge white cloth and projected the image with flower and fuzzy light spot. Faint light shakes through the darkness. The dreams of the past intertwine with memories, reminding the time and minds in that time. There were many young lives.

The deconstructive translation seems to increase the sense of empathy, which removes the specificity of identity and let our body to connect with the place.

Ubusuna House   Yoshitoki Irisawa and Kuhihiro Ando, 2006

Back to the past 

Reuse the abandoned house and reappear the scene of life to evoke people’s memories.

Ubusuna House is inspired by life, ceramicists use local clays to draw a disused house, each surface of the objects in this area such as pit furnaces, stoves, roods and the floor has been decorated with ceramics. Originally it was artwork for exhibition and currently has been used as a restaurant. Artists invited women to manage these art houses and cook local food to tourists. This has created job opportunities for locals and attracted people to come back. No more is a personal house, it seems to be a heritage of community culture.

As traditional culture, ceramics carries on the history and memory, and the return of these residents also connect the pastness with the presentness. 

It is reported that the number of population in Niigata increased from 75000 in 1990 to 800,000 in 2018. (Yoshiaki Ito)

Site-specificity & Participation

At the moment of global contemporaneity. Things and places are interrelated. Place as a connecting zone, requires the recognition of the multiplicity and complexity of places (Somerville 2010,p.327).

Although some parts of the memory in the place could be painful, there is no denying that place is the most productive. As a framework for creating, visual proofs rooted in physical reality might generate new story and memories. (Somerville 2010, p.328)

Art in combination with daily life could be the physical contact with the specific place which contributes to a public context and the alternative representation. This is also the chance to increase participation and connect society.

Gift for Frozen Village

Forest School

Consideration of the natural environment and culture value

Gift for Frozen Village and Forest School highlights the importance of the Site-specificity. They present the different functions of the snow as well as the utilise of the physical feature of the place.

The figure of forest school is abstracted by the snake to respond to the local field culture, and according to the surrounding geographical characteristics and weather conditions, its materials, colour and construction have been deeply considered. Made of the thick acrylic, windows can perfectly combine the building with the surrounding environment regardlessness of the change of season. The apparent colour and the huge figure can navigate the directions in the field and particularly in winter, it will be mainly covered by snow, but the snow wall is still visible. Nowadays, the school has been transformed into a natural science museum that displaying all of the wild animal specimens in this place and the traditional farming tools. The artist collected stories from villagers and cooperated with bioscientists to employ this project, transforming the abandonment of the school into a social environment that presents the value of countless personal, collective and agricultural history.

Cai Guoqiang, 2015 ‘Penglai island.’

Participation and Education & Culture Sustainment

This is a collective experiment, Penglai island, which is organized by Cai, a Chinese artist. In China, Penglai is an ideal place where is peaceful and without any conflicts. He used Penglai island to describe Echigo, with different transportations made by children around it, when he designed it, he taught children to design different patterns, then invited old people who master the traditional handicraft techniques to teach children that use local materials to weave. And he just wanted to express that Echigo is a beautiful paradise and industrial society would not destroy it. This work exchanged the traditional culture of two different countries and also contributes to the protection and inheritance of traditional techniques.

The Transformation of place to art also involves the changes in spirit and recognition. Participation, as a contributor, is the significant factor to maintain sustainable communications and exchanges. (Bishop 2006, p67). 

Walter Benjamin proposed that art can be explored into a social intervention and provide a means of producing which allows the multi-participation with viewers (Bishop 2006, p11). 

Collective elaboration is the priority of art practice because the production is local and responsive. So art cannot be pre-empted to dominate before the local people sharing their stories. During the process of creating, the local story must be integrated. And this finally creates an active mode of production with the function of connecting a community and restoring the social bond.

In this tour, I learned and gained a lot. Before I came here, I have never thought of that Social engagement can be like this. The Most surprising is the participation and acceptability of art in here is so high. Travellers and volunteers come from all over the world, and local residents organize spontaneously to be the manager for protecting these art places. By now, more than a thousand artworks are permanently displayed in here.

In the closing ceremony, everyone was here, even the art festival director Fram Kitagawa and the mayor of Nigata. The interaction between us is really grateful and enjoyable, and I realize that art can create more possibilities and carry a lot of importance to the development of our life and future. under a state of passive reception, art might be our opportunity to break through, as it can connect life and culture, integrate all things together and prompt our thinking. 

[element-effect-blog]

Being Nice at Work (& as a Leader) Doesn't Hold You Back

On a hot, Houston summer day this past June, Daniel (my husband) came home from work like any other day.

However, rather than greeting me in my office -- which sits right off our front door -- he found me at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine.

“What are you doing in here?” Daniel asked.

As soon as I opened my mouth to answer him, I burst into tears.

I started to tell him about my day -- unfortunately, I couldn't answer him in any sort of coherent way, through my sobs.

"Take a break, slow down," he said. "Start from the beginning." 

An Ordinary Meeting That Made Me Question Everything

I had just come off a nine-hour IMPACT leadership team meeting. (No, it wasn't the fact that it was nine hours that made me cry.)

Each month, the IMPACT leadership team gets together for a day to discuss progress against our organizational objectives, address issues that need to be addressed globally within the company, and talk about future business plans.

Even though it's a full day's worth of candid discussion, brainstorming, and problem-solving, I typically feel invigorated and ready to take on the next month, following those meetings.

I know I represent my department the best I can, fight for what I think is right for the company, and bring my A-game every time.

(I even put on jeans instead of my beloved yoga pants, even though my leadership team peers only see me from the shoulders up. #remotelife)

We don’t necessarily battle in these meetings, but things can get heated because we’re all so passionate.

I love getting to express this passion since I usually tend to be more reserved and collected, especially in front of those I manage. The leadership team meeting is a space where I can speak freely without judgement.

After a long day, as we were wrapping up and discussing how the meeting went, I was called "sweet."

No, it wasn't a compliment. It was a direct answer to the question of how we could improve -- and I, specifically, was advised that I could stop being so nice.

My immediate reaction is that I was being called weak, or someone who lacked the necessary passion to be a leader.

So, whereas I normally walk away from these meetings feeling like I communicated effectively -- that I’m strong and that I’m meant to be in a leadership position -- that comment made me question everything.

But then I decided questioning myself was a stupid exercise.

I started my career at 22 as a graphic designer for a small resort in middle-of-nowhere Missouri.

I didn't achieve that in spite of being nice. I've gotten to where I am because I'm nice.

Mad Men Is Alive & Well in Some Corners of New York City

I love being nice. In fact, I pride myself on it.

When I was in second grade, I remember vividly my dad picking me up from a friend’s house and talking to my friend’s parents while I fiddled around a little more.

On the way home, he told me that my friend’s mom said I was the nicest girl her daughter knew. He also told me, with a boastful smile, it wasn’t the first time he’s heard that from other parents.

This moment of making my dad proud by being myself has stuck with me ever since. Being nice matters to people.

Fast-forward to my junior year of college, I went on a trip to New York City through the Mizzou School of Journalism strategic communications program.

We visited seven advertising agencies to learn more about the industry and where we could fall within it once we graduated.

How did it go? Well, I'll say this... 

Even though the Mad Men-era was 50 years ago, the culture of advertising being a dog-eat-dog world is still alive and well -- especially on the famous Madison Avenue. Sadly, this culture is also romanticized, even though we all see fault in it.

So, quite frankly, while I didn't meet everyone at each of the agency's we visited, a large majority of those I did meet on that that trip were jerks.

(That may sound flippant, but when I say “jerk,” I mean six out of the seven agencies we went to were full of people who must have been directly transported from 1965 through some sort of time machine.)

They were proud to step on their peers’ toes to win a pitch.

They thought it was funny how they could waste client money for “big ideas” whether they got results or not.

They stopped working in the early afternoon to drink in their fully stocked bar in the break room.

In general, they were more attracted to the idea of the Mad Men culture than doing good work for clients who genuinely needed help.

I decided right then that I would never move to New York City to work at a big, traditional agency. This was not my tribe.

An Agency That Believed in the Power of Nice

Kaplan Thaler -- now part of Publicis, a global agency based in Paris -- stood out from all of the rest. Of all the agencies we went to, it was the only one with memorable work we all actually knew.

(If you’ve ever heard of the Aflac commercials, you might also be familiar with their work.)

As we walked in their conference room for a presentation about their agency, I expected the owner to stand up and say how amazing they are for a couple hours. Then, they would get us drinks to show us how hip they are.

Instead, the creatives behind the Aflac campaign introduced themselves and told us the story of how the duck came to life. They were funny, engaging, and exuded passion for their work.

When they were done, Linda Kaplan Thaler, the agency principal, closed out our session.

Thaler talked about her agency -- but not in a misplaced, prideful way. She talked about their culture, and how we, as students, could get ahead by following one simple rule:

In the advertising world. In New York City.

Nice Translates into Healthier Organizations

In the book, Thaler talks about how “nice” companies have lower employee turnover, lower recruitment costs, and higher productivity. She also gives personal examples of how being nice can serve you in making more money in life, and being happier and healthier.

This book could not have come into my life at a better time.

The University of Missouri School of Journalism is an amazing educational program, but it is not always a nice place. 

My friends and I seemed like the only people who realized that one day we might all be coworkers and should focus on building ourselves up, not tearing each other down.

That's why, when I read The Power of Nice, I was relieved.

It was a gentle reminder that I was operating under my values and didn’t have to change to conform to some strange culture within the education system or business world.

There’s an odd sense of purpose when you stop trying to be something you’re not.

I’ve noticed a recurring theme in myself that the universe always provides nice wakeup call moments like this -- and that is when I start to cave under the pressure to act a certain way that is not inherently myself, I fail.

Conformity Is Not a Necessity

When I first started at IMPACT, I was on the receiving end of a lot of coaching around needing to be more assertive.

I was working as a strategist with clients who needed to trust me. When I’d discuss communication challenges I was having with my mentors, I was told I wasn’t confident and needed to be more bold.

The only issue is I was confident. That wasn't a problem.

(By the way, telling a confident person to be more confident is very confusing advice.)

I knew I was smart and I knew the strategy I was prescribing was the right thing to do. I knew I could educate and obtain buy-in from my clients.

After so much feedback stating the opposite of how I felt, I started to doubt myself.

I googled things like, “how to be more assertive.” 

But I only found worthless articles like these:

11 Ways To Stop Being Too Nice At Work & Start Being Assertive(but...I like being nice. We’ve established this. Why can’t I be both?)

Stop Being Nice All the Time and Start Embracing Your Inner Bitch(Ugh! Since when does bitch equate to leadership?)

(How does doing more lead to apologizing less? And there’s that “bitch” word again…)

Even googling "being nice at work" is demoralizing:

Then, I realized something.

Why do I have to be a bitch to get ahead?

I’m going to go into this at some point in another article at a later date, but I do want to acknowledge here that there is a problem with our society coaching women to be a bitch to get ahead.

You don’t need to be a bitch, and neither do I.

But back to this moment when I had given up on Google.

Whenever I start to doubt myself -- which was starting to happen in this moment, since I couldn’t figure out my client communication issues and was being told it was because I wasn’t assertive -- I ground myself by listing out my accomplishments.

This helps me remember that I don’t completely suck at life and this one little blip doesn’t define me. Looking at my list gives me a wake up call to focus on the real issue rather than let self-doubt navigate and muddy my thought process.

I sat down in that moment and made a list in my Evernote called “Things.”

I blurred it out, but, as you can see, it’s really called “Things.”

Turns out it was a pretty long list.

I could stop worrying that I wasn’t doing a good job or in the wrong profession, because I clearly was and just needed to fix this one problem.

When I fully contemplated the real issue, and how it was perceived that I wasn’t assertive enough, I realized that I was communicating to the C-suite level contacts within my accounts the same way I was communicating to the marketing managers.

I was giving way too much detail, talking way too long before getting to the point and providing data that wasn’t helpful to them.

I instead worked on improving the real issue -- focusing on tailoring my messaging based on my audience in conversations, not my confidence.

Earn Trust by Trusting Yourself

As I’ve stepped into in a leadership role at IMPACT, I have had to play my list game more times than I’d like to admit.

The problems I’ve uncovered about myself are not as simple as tweaking how I communicate.

The larger problem is any advice I seek out online is so twisted and stereotypical into how a leader should act.

This stressed me out when I first became a manager. The advice I’d read simply did not align with my values.

(I don’t want to be a bitch, okay?)

So, instead of trying to fit into the archaic mold of leadership, I focused on what I could control and the levers that would catapult me the quickest into becoming an effective leader; that being my strengths.

If you haven’t heard of , it’s a book and concept that says to focus on your strengths vs. trying to improve your weaknesses.

You take an assessment and find out what your top strengths are, and each one is categorized into four themes: Strategic Thinking, Executing, Influencing, and Relationship Building.

According to my assessment, my top strengths are:

Strategy (Strategic Thinking)

Achiever (Executing)

Competition (Relationship Building)

Ideation (Strategic Thinking)

Focus (Executing).

In looking at my own strengths, I am equally strong in strategy and execution, but have zero influencing strengths.

I have a team of directors that report to me, and I bet you can guess which strength theme I was looking for to complement the team.

Once I started to focus on myself over what books and articles told me to be, I started growing faster in my career than I ever have.

Being Called "Sweet" Was a Gut Punch

"Wait, what about that leadership meeting?" 

To illustrate the full blow of being called sweet in the context of that leadership meeting in June, let me backup to start of this year.

Prior to forming The Sales Lion, Marcus ran a swimming pool company that cracked the code on inbound marketing, which he wrote about extensively in his book.

A lot of people know him from his teachings -- but for me, I had been a fan of his since 2011, when I was working in a digital marketing agency that specializes in swimming pool marketing.

I have followed his career ever since.

So, when his career led him to IMPACT, it was a surreal moment for me. He sits on our leadership team, and now I’m in a strategic business meeting with someone I’ve admired for so many years.

He was the one who called me “sweet,” and when he did, I was crushed.

Immediately, I thought, “Great. Marcus Sheridan thinks I’m weak.”

Why "Sweet" Sounded Like "Weak" to Me

To be fair, Marcus wasn’t trying to insinuate anything other than I was perhaps holding back. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and further proves the point of the title of this article.

But, at the time, I didn’t know Marcus very well.

We had been in a handful of meetings together, but hadn’t had a full conversation with just the two of us yet.

I don’t even remember the full conversation of how saying I was sweet was a negative thing -- but my instant reaction was that he was trying to make me fit a mold of being an “assertive, bitch boss,” that I would never want to be.

It also struck a nerve because it pointed out an area I already know is not a strength -- my influence over others.

As much as I know focusing on my strengths has helped me improve the most, the fact of the matter is I still lead a department and need to find some kind of way to influence and motivate others.

The combination of feeling resentful that I was being misjudged and my insecurities spilling over that I wasn’t influential is what made me so upset.

I let the noise of my fear cloud the real issue he was trying to address.

Getting to the Bottom of the Real Issue

Chris suggested I reach out to Marcus to build a better relationship with him. He knew him better than I did at the time and could see the our lack of alignment happening in real-time.

I took his advice, and I set up a call and learned more about where Marcus was coming from with his feedback.

In our meeting, he said I am intelligent with visible passion for our organization, but have a tendency to undersell myself and my ideas.

"Oh. That wasn’t so bad.He didn’t tell me I’m completely inadequate to do my job," I thought to myself.

Was he telling me I need to yell in those meetings? No.

Was he telling me I need to be more assertive? No.

Was he telling me to be a bitch boss? Hell no.

He coached me on choosing better words and remaining firm in my delivery of an idea. That makes a lot more sense to someone who is already confident. My delivery is off.

I have since caught myself on three occasions using passive language vs. active language when stating my idea. So, in my head, I changed up how I was going to say something at the last minute and used a calm, but firm tone to show how I really felt about it. And it worked.

Once I was able to -- again -- let go of the worry around what was happening and focus instead on the real issue, and what I could control to fix it, I was able to grow.

Find & Master Your Own Style

I share all of this to you, you confident, calm, reserved, thoughtful leader, to show you that you don’t have to change what’s good about you.

Instead, focus on how to make what makes you great, even better. You can have your own style and still be effective.

Maybe you like being weird. Maybe you have pink hair. Maybe you love Star Wars -- hi, Chris. Whatever is your thing, it’s okay!

You don’t need to fit into the age-old mold of what a great leader is. You only need to focus on the real challenges you’re experiencing from a lense of what you can control and improve on your own.

Being nice is perfectly acceptable.

In fact, , most of whom I’ve met are nice, end up creating the strongest teams of high performers.

Keep your chin up. The world needs more nice people like you.

This content was originally published here.

[mysterious-soul-blogger-blog]

5 Days of Poetry

Day One

The poem, “The Eight of September,” written by Pablo Neruda is about the final day. The day of judgment. The day of resurrection. I agree with this poem because of what it is saying. To me, it is about how the world will end. The signs to the ending of the world. Those who believe in Christianity, Islam and some other religions, do believe in these signs that describe the final day and even those who believe in the big bang theory, have a similar idea for this concept. In my religion, Islam, I learned about actions. I have a personal connection with this poem. Ever since I was a young girl, the day of resurrection was one of the main things I learned in my religion. It was the scariest day, the day when no soul will be living and we will be questioned by God for our actions. We believe that there will be earthquakes, cracks, volcanoes, and the sun will be coming down, making us drown in our own sweat. And then, when we die, we will have our souls come back into our bodies. Then we’ll see God on his throne, waiting to either punish us or reward us. Just like this poem. It says that we will be sweating because of heat, drowning because of tsunami, falling because of earthquakes which causes us to die. Then we rise once again, waiting for God to come, and telling us our destiny. One of the main reasons why I do agree with this poem is because of the really similar ideas it has with my beliefs, and the fact that it makes sense to me. A line that I really like from the poem is,” A strange door opened, between us, and someone, with no face as yet, waited for us there.” I like this because its suspenseful, and only those that agree with this poem, really understand what its going yet. It is somewhat beautiful to me because I think its trying to say, tat we don’t know how God looks, or how he’s like, but what we do know is that he is waiting for us. Overall this poem had a deep meaning about how the world was going to end, and I agree with it.  

  Day Two

“Relentless as the Tarantula,” by Charles Bukowski, is about problems. It is saying that no matter where you are, or who you are, problems will never leave you alone. It doesn’t matter if you’re the richest or happiest or the healthiest, in one way or another you’ll have problems. These problems will consume you. They won’t let you be happy or stress-free, they will haunt you until you crave in and die, or become miserable. A theme that is demonstrated in this poem is struggles. As humans we are always going to struggles. Either its physical, emotional or economical. Struggles are the foundation of suicide, of unhappiness, of no peace. This poem reminds me of the world. Every time something terrible happens, and it finally gets solved, another problem appears. It is a never ending cycle of problems. A few weeks ago, a boy at the age of twenty-one, committed suicide. His family, his friends and his peers were confused as to why a brilliant guy like him would do that. They believed that he had everything, and he was leading a pleasant life. He had money, he had a girlfriend, he had a good education and he had family, so why would he want to take away his own life? That’s they thing with problems though, not everyone can see them. Many are not noticeable to anyone besides the one dealing with it, and this causes the person to go into isolation, think negatively, and allowing the problem to take over, while the person shows one story on the outside but on the inside, is fighting its own demons. Personally, my family and I have had only a few days were we didn’t have problems or something to worry about. Last year, we found out my grandma had kidney failure, after that my grandpa got hospitalized, and sadly passed away. Then we had to start treatment for my grandma. My mother had a court case and was being sued by the opposition team with 2 million dollars. And plenty of money problems. This is an example of only the bigger problems I had over the last years, but there were millions of smaller ones too. It’s the cycle of life and we can’t control it. Problems are for everyone and they will never let you truly be happy because they are always coming for you. As soon as you think you got rid of one, another one is waiting on the right moment to attack you. Problems are a test from God. So instead of isolating yourself, and ultimately hurting yourself, ask for help from those who care about you, because they will help you, and you will get through it. In my religion, it is said that this world is meant to be a difficult, and an unhappy place, because this world is meant to be hell, and once you get through this, heaven will be waiting for you.

  Day Three

The poem, “Nothing but Death,” written by Palo Neruda is about death. It is saying that death is inevitable, that no matter who you are, or where you are, death will come find you and take you with it.  This poem describes the impact of death. It portrays death as a very dark and negative thing, just like how most people see it around the world. The poem also talks about the various ways death hides. That death will come to you in the most surprising way. Personally, I agree with this poem. I do think that death is waiting for us, that its look at each and everyone one of us, waiting till its our turn for it to take. I like the feeling of darkness and coldness that surrounded the poem because it does a wonderful job at describing how many people actually do feel. Nobody likes death. Death takes a husband away from a wife, a mother away from a daughter, a child away from its parents, a friend away from its best friend. Death leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of those who are affected by it. It leaves heartache and tears. For most people, death is the scariest thing because once death approaches there is no going back. It is the final thing that will take one away from earth permanently. Once death approaches, its too late to say sorry, or to say how you feel, because although the body might still be on earth physically, the soul is gone. I faced my first actual meeting with death, when my grandpa was taking away from me, last year in October. My grandpa was my best friend. He would spend all his time with his grandkids, and would never allow our parents to yell at us. He was my protector, my very own angel. But then he got sick. He fell and broke his hipbone and although it was not that serious, death used that as an excuse and took him away from me. My grandpa was finally getting better and one day, the nurses called us and told us he’s not looking too good. So we send a few hours with him, all his children and his grandchildren, at the hospital. And his health starts to improve. But then all of a sudden, his eyes roll to the back of his head, and he’s gone. He stopped responding. He left all his love ones in tears. My dad and my uncles, though I never once saw them in pain, that day they sobbed on their mothers lap, my older cousins, who think tears are for losers, that say they help on to my grandpa’s hand, telling him to wake up, and me, never felt a heartache, that day I felt like my heart was going to break into two. This is the story of death. Death is the most depressing and horrible thing in the world. Yet each one of us will face it because death is the inevitable.    

  Day Four

“The History of One Tough Motherfucker,” written by Charles Bukowski is about the relationship between a cat and its owner. It talks about the struggle they went through to get to where they are right now. It talks about how the cat got ran over by a car and people told the owner that the cat will die sooner or later because of this injury. The owner never gave up and the cat actually improved although it was never the exact same again. This poem is saying that you shouldn’t give up. The cat went through so many obstacles and although it would have been easier for the cat to give up, it never did. It proved the doctor, and those others that claimed that he wont get better, wrong. It had the determination to do so because there was someone that cared so much for him, and he supported the cat. He never gave up on him and they took baby steps to recovery together. And when the impossible turned to possible, the cat and its owner became famous. Famous because the story and courage of the cat influenced him to do something creative. He wrote beautifully because he was inspired by the cat. Bu none of the audience seen that. They wanted to hear the story as to what encouraged him to what he does so nicely, and when he tried to say it was because of his cat, they simply ignored him. And although the fame surrounds him, he and his cat know that this is bullshit because the fame simply does not matter to them.  A theme in this poem which was prominent throughout the text was patience. It took a lot of patience and time for the cat to heal, and yet the owner never rushed him. “’You can make it,’ I said to him. He kept trying, getting up falling down, finally he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested, then got up.” This quote demonstrates patience and determination because the cat never gave up. It kept trying over and over again, even though recovery seemed impossible. This poem reminds me of my cousin’s cat. It was the first pet I gotten close too. The cat went through a lot. It was shot with a gun and then ran over a car. And although the cat tried to recover, he never made it but he still gave it all the he had. Giving up should never be an option. Even though people all around you don’t believe in it, you should still give it your best and if it still not enough for you, it might encourage others around you. Believe in yourself and encourage people to keep on trying.

  Day Five

The poem, “Saddest Poem,” written by Pablo Neruda, is about the author expressing his feelings about a girl. It says that the saddest poem that he can write is about this girl that he once loved. By saying this, it expresses how much this lady really meant to him and how much it effected him. The poem is talking about a relationship between a man and a woman. They both loved each other yet the used one another as well. They had a romantic relationship but somehow they fell apart and moved on. This poem reminds me of relationships all around the world. Now a days, many relationships last only for a short while because people just use each other for their own benefits and once they get what they want, they toss their partner out. A lot of relationships are also based on lust. Relationships are a lot weaker and less meaningful as they were before. Instead of fixing relationships as they did before, they simply throw it away. And even if one partner wants more in a relationship, they don’t say it and end up losing their loved one. They see them moving on and even though they are filled with anguish, they still don’t say what’s truly in their hearts.  I believe that people now a days don’t truly know the real meaning of being in a committed relationship. I think that the author should have chased after the girl especially because the way he describes how he feels without her, is heartbreaking. But he is planning on forgetting her, and hoping to move on because he says, “Although this may be the last pain she cause me, and this may be the last poem I write for her.” This quote expresses the fact that the author is now ready to move on as he wont recall on their memories. My favourite line in this poem is, “What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her. The night is full of stars and she’s not with me.” First of all, I believe that sometimes people think that love in enough to have someone stay by them, but that’s not the case. You need many other attributes as well. There should be understanding, appreciation, communication, trust and many other things.  I also believe that the author is saying that even though she left him, the stars are still shining. That there is some hope for him. I like this line because it tells you to never give up and that things will get better. To have hope. This poem is talking about relationship struggles and heartache, but it still tells you that you shouldn’t be surrounded in pain, but instead move on and be happier.

[teachanarchy]

As the world economy shifts away from manufacturing jobs and towards service industry and creative jobs, there’s a consensus among parents, educators, politicians and business leaders that it is crucial students graduate into university or the workforce with the ability to identify and solve complex problems, think critically about information, work effectively in teams and communicate clearly about their thinking.

While many teachers agree with this premise, they don’t often know exactly how to teach these skills explicitly, especially because many of the mandates and required curriculum seem to push in the opposite direction. Process-oriented skills are hard to pin down; teachers can see them in certain students, but developing these competencies in students who aren’t already demonstrating them can be tricky. A few teachers in Ontario, Canada have been experimenting with tools they think could make the difference.

Jason Watt has always had very high expectations for his students, whether they were seven-year-olds in grade two or the young adolescents he now teaches in grade seven at Norseman Junior Middle School. But Watt was frustrated that in order to meet his expectations his students would often have to redo their work six or seven times. He often received writing responses that were a simple sentence and he was struggling to empower his students to push their thinking further. Many of them already had deeply ingrained ideas about what they were and weren’t good at, what they could and couldn’t accomplish.

“I wanted the kids to realize there is no bad answer,” Watt said. “There’s just an appropriate answer or a not-quite there answer.” In a training on “integrative thinking” at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Watt finally found the tools he needed to develop students’ critical thinking. Several Ontario school boards (the Canadian version of school districts) are now supporting training in the effort.

Originally developed by Rotman’s former dean, Roger Martin, integrative thinking is a broad term to describe looking for solutions through the tensions inherent in different viewpoints. Martin noticed that effective CEOs understood that their own world view was limited, so they sought out opposing viewpoints and came to creative solutions by leveraging seemingly opposing positions. For the past seven years, a spin-off group called the I-Think Initiative has been training teachers in the Toronto area on how integrative thinking can build critical thinking in students from a young age.

LADDER OF INFERENCE

One of the tools Jason Watt learned about in his training is called the ladder of inference. It’s a model for decision making behavior developed by Harvard professors Chris Argyris and Donald Schön. Essentially, it helps students slow down and realize which data they are taking into account when they make a decision and how the data they choose is informed by their past experiences. Assumptions are often made in a split second decision because the brain is wired to prioritize data that confirms the model a person already holds. The ladder of inference is a way to check those assumptions.

Watt first used the ladder in a very basic way; he showed his grade two students an image of a soccer player lying on the ground, one leg up, holding his head. The image was intentionally a little vague. At first Watt’s students concluded that the man had fallen. But as they worked their way up the ladder of inference they began to notice different aspects of the image and add those to their “data pool.”

“Students started to realize there was a lot more going on in the picture just in terms of data than what they first said,” Watt said. For example, students would say the man was hurt. That’s not a data point, it’s an inference. Watt could tease out from them that they thought the man was hurt because he was on the ground, holding his head and had a pained look on his face. “I started getting much deeper, more thoughtful answers from students,” Watt said.

As students practiced using the ladder of inference in various content areas they also started to use it on their own when dealing with social problems. When there is a disagreement, students now use the ladder of inference to back up and think through the data they chose and the assumptions that stemmed from that data. Watt says now students solve problems on their own or ask a friend to help them make their ladders.

“We’ve learned that there’s nothing wrong with questioning, so the kids have become much more willing and accepting of criticism because it’s not really criticism anymore,” Watt said. He feels the integrative thinking tools have naturally encouraged his students to build a growth mindset about all aspects of life because multiple viewpoints or ways to solve a problem are a core part of why integrative thinking works. Difference is the strength of the model.

PRO/PRO

Another integrative thinking tool called the pro/pro chart offers some good examples of how students are learning to think flexibly. Most people are familiar with pro/con charts, but in a pro/pro chart the group thinks through the positives of two different ideas. Rather than deciding between two choices, this tool helps students identify the positive traits of different viewpoints, and then create a third option by merging the good qualities of both.

Watt asked his students to brainstorm ideas for the worst restaurant of all time. When they had a good list of terrible ideas, Watt then asked groups of students to each take one idea and explain why it was the best restaurant of all time. One group had initially proposed a restaurant with no seating would be the worst; they reframed that to say if everyone was standing up they would move through the restaurant faster and turn more of a profit. A second group had said a restaurant in the woods would be terrible; they reframed that as dining under the stars.

“They were coming up with these really good ideas out of a terrible idea,” Watt said. “It helps kids see that they are capable and switches those mindsets.” Watt built on the activity, asking the groups to pitch their ideas in a Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den style contest. Students came up with hilarious slogans and designs for their restaurants and what started as a silly, fun activity became a rich interdisciplinary project with written and oral communication, presentation skills, media literacy, and of course, the process skills that enable them.

“The students now are no longer afraid to think,” Watt said. “They’re being more creative thinkers.” He even uses integrative thinking in math instruction, asking students to use the ladder of inference to determine information in a word problem, or asking them to do Pro/Pro charts for different multiplication strategies and then letting them come up with their own third way. His students’ math scores started skyrocketing, and even better, they no longer felt they weren’t “math people.”

PROVOKING SELF REFLECTION

Jennifer Warren became curious about integrative thinking through her daughter who kept coming home from her grade six classroom saying things like, “we had the most interesting discussion today.” That piqued Warren’s interest.

“The way she was talking about her own thinking developing, I was kind of thinking I didn’t think my students were saying the same kind of things,” Warren said. She wanted to be sure she was provoking the same response from her high school English students at Dundas Valley Secondary School in Hamilton. So when her board of education decided to fund the I-Think training she signed up.

The integrative thinking tools gave Warren a solution to a problem she and many other teachers have struggled with for a long time: how to deepen student thinking. Until then, Warren had tried to do this by modeling what deep thinking looks like. She was confident she could help any student become a strong writer. But the integrative thinking training forced her to ask some hard questions about her instruction and prompted her realization that her students were recreating her example, not creating in on their own.

“It completely flipped what mattered to me in an English classroom,” Warren said. She used to be mostly concerned with the product. Now, “instead of defending a stance, I’m so much more interested in having students reflect on their stance and shift and explain why they shifted. That metacognitive piece is more interesting to me now.”

CAUSAL MODELS

Warren starts the first semester by asking students to do a causal model — another core integrative thinking tool — of their values. She asks them to pick three to five things they value, anything from profound qualities like independence or kindness, to passions like music or hockey. They then having to dive deeply into why they value those qualities, what caused that? Often this requires them to have conversations with family about values taught to them from a young age.

She then asks them to make visual representations of their causal models and present them to one another. “I like that because they realize people don’t value the same things that they do,” Warren said. Those causal models go up on the wall as a reminder that everyone in the class is different and that the diversity of values, perspectives and opinions makes them better problem solvers.

Warren teaches a course for students who failed the Ontario literacy exam, a graduation requirement. The kids in this class often don’t have a lot of self confidence and are often missing some key literacy skills, like the ability to elaborate on a topic in writing. The ladder of inference has been an incredible tool to help Warren walk students through their thinking, modeling the tool step by step, climbing up or down the ladder as students offer insights from the text.

“It was such a simple and elegant way to allow someone who couldn’t wrap their head around inferring to do it well,” Warren said. She thinks the visual of a ladder helped these struggling students pin their thoughts to different steps and make connections.

She’s also found the tool to be helpful when she has disagreements with students. She’ll use the language of the tools to describe to students what data she’s using to make conclusions about their work ethic, their attendance, their behavior. But she always asks, “What am I missing.”

“It changes the conversation,” Warren said. It gives her a voice to express her disappointment to students in a way that is transparent and uses the shared language of their critical thinking tools. And because integrative thinking is based on the fact that one’s understanding of something is always incomplete, constantly shifting, there is room for students to be participants in the conversation.

TRUE COLLABORATION

“I’m completely and utterly blown away whenever I use one of these tools with my kids,” said Kristen Slinger, a grade two teacher at Norseman Junior Middle School. Before learning about integrative thinking, Slinger would have said she has been doing collaboration in the classroom for the past ten years. But she’s shifted her definition of collaboration and now sees what she was doing before as merely asking kids to write on the same piece of paper.

“When you use these tools [students] realize that they hit a roadblock when not everyone is participating,” Slinger said. The natural need for every students’ voice in order to solve the problem creates genuine collaboration.

Slinger remembers one boy who came from a Montessori background. He was used to a small school and small classes and was overwhelmed when he joined her class of 20 and the broader school of close to 700 students. Slinger said he was selectively mute until Christmas, an issue she raised with his mother. The news came as a surprise to his mom who said he was very chatty at home. Slinger kept the boy in a consistent group so he could develop trust with a few peers and slowly he realized that they really wanted to hear his opinion.

“It would have taken me probably months longer to get him to that point, but it was that idea that his peers valued what he had to say,” Slinger said. He went from never talking in class to volunteering to be the student who went around to other classes polling students on their favorite lemonade for a project.

Slinger said before she learned about integrative thinking she would get interesting responses from students, but she wouldn’t know how they got to their conclusions. The integrative thinking tools help make student thinking visible. “It’s the thinking that’s been put into the responses and the way it’s been broken down,” Slinger said. When she can see the steps of their thinking she has more ways to push them to go even further.

“I haven’t take a course in a very long time that has reshaped my entire program,” she said.

GETTING STARTED

“The safest way in was by using fiction stories,” Slinger said of her own attempts to use integrative thinking. “Find that story that maybe has that emotional clincher that may have different endings and then stop there and use the ladder of inference to come up with what they think might happen at the end.”

Jason Watt suggests starting with an activity that’s part of the curriculum every year. That way a teacher new to the practice can compare the kind of thinking students demonstrate when using an integrative thinking tool with their previous lesson plan.

One important element of success is choosing a topic that’s engaging to kids, that has multiple entry points and solutions, and that has a real stakeholder. “One of the biggest mistakes is when you give the tension without the problem to be solved from a particular perspective,” said Nogah Kornberg, Associate Director of the I-Think Initiative at the Rotman School of Management.

For example, a grade one teacher offered her students a challenge from the school’s janitor. In the summer the trash is stored outside and becomes infested with bees. In the winter the trash is stored inside and smells bad. What might be a better solution? Giving students the challenge from the perspective of the stakeholder helps them solve the problem for him. If it is just presented as an A or a B solution, they don’t know who to solve for.

Kornberg was a high school teacher herself before becoming part of the I-Think Initiative. She sees the program as offering two things: critical thinking skills and building better citizens.

“We’re seeing quite young students learning how to play the game of school and this is about how to become good thinkers and good questioners of our thinking,” she said. Getting started on this metacognition piece can’t start too young in her opinion. She also sees the tool as a way to empower young people. “Because it’s rooted in problem solving it’s about saying things are the way they are, but we can make them better and I have a responsibility to make them better.”

Rahim Essabhai wholeheartedly agrees with Kornberg; he’s seen the shift in his students. He teaches a class called Business and Cooperative Education for seniors at John Polanyi Collegiate Institute that asks students to work on what big problem for an outside organization over the course of the school year.

“When I have my kids coming back to visit me and they say that this course has gotten them ready for the next stage more than any course they took in high school, I don’t take that lightly,” Essabhai said. And since students are coming up with interesting solutions to problems real businesses and organizations have, they see that their thinking has value.

And he knows students are using the tools beyond his course as well. In a final reflection for his class, one student described how she constantly found herself having to choose between hanging out with her friends and spending time with her little sister. When she did either she felt bad, so she came up with a third option. Once a month she hosted a gathering for all her friends and their little sisters to spend time together.

“They’re not being a passenger in their own life,” Essabhai said. “Nothing is too messy or too tough.” Growing students who feel that way about tough challenges should be an essential function of education.

Here’s a challenge for your students to tackle:

[charliecraw]

an offer;; a self-para

WHO?: Charlie Crawford, Lowell Tegus. WHEN?: Saturday, 8th of April. Lunchtime, about 12:30, 12:40ish. WHERE?: Great Hall + Chamber off the Great Hall. WHAT?: While he’s just trying to enjoy his lunch, Charlie is pulled aside and forced into making a choice he didn’t want to make.

An evening Quidditch practice and a last-minute assignment due Monday morning had kept Charlie up late on Friday night -- waking up still exhausted the next day, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he summoned the courage to drag himself out of bed. His desk was strewn with the books and notes he’d been using, groaning at the thought of going back to them later. Pulling on a shirt (not that his roommates weren’t used to seeing him without), he fumbled around for his watch, blinking blearily until he could see the face properly. Eleven o’clock. He’d missed breakfast, and was too early for lunch -- his stomach rumbling to let him know its displeasure at that situation. He was far too lazy to head over to the kitchens -- electing instead to lie back down and wait. Spring sunlight was streaming through his window, a rare moment of peace in an otherwise chaotic school year.

When the seconds had finally ticked past to twelve, Charlie hauled himself out of bed with a spurt of energy. Dressing quickly and pausing to check his hair in the mirror, he left the Slytherin common room as others were beginning to get ready to go. The growling in his stomach was stronger now -- and he was one of the first to enter the Great Hall, sliding onto the Slytherin bench and immediately piling up his plate. It was only when he glanced up at the teachers’ table -- spotting a crowd gathered around a very recognisable figure -- that Charlie remembered that today was the day of Lowell Tegus’ visit. Instantly, Charlie felt more alert – suddenly feeling the tension in the room.

As he ate -- shovelling food into his mouth in a very undignified manner -- he glanced around the hall, noticing witches and wizards standing, alert, hands on their wands. Aurors. He was used to seeing people pulling their wands out at any given moment, but the way the aurors were stood reminded Charlie that to them, they were weapons in a way he’d never experienced before.

Still hungry from skipping breakfast, Charlie ate quickly, trying not to let the Minister’s visit distract him. The Minister was moving about the room, talking to students, chatting to staff -- the vision of charm and assurance. There was an air around him that was hard to deny, total security. Charlie wondered whether Tegus knew what a divisive topic his premiership had become at Hogwarts, seeming so at ease talking to the students. While Charlie had been reluctant to declare for any side, he knew deep down that the inequalities in their society were wrong. Tegus was a figure that represented everything wrong with the wizarding world – but Charlie feared the consequences of going against him, and the confidence Lowell Tegus exuded only made him more nervous.

He’d finished his main and was almost done with dessert when the Minister made his way over to him, a charming smile on his face.

“Mr. Crawford?” he asked – leaning in to speak in a way that made Charlie feel as though only they could hear their conversation. “Charlie Crawford. Would you mind if we had a word? I’ve kindly been offered the Chamber off the Great Hall in which to speak to you.”

Surprise was all that Charlie felt. Lowell Tegus -- the Minister for Magic -- wanted to speak to him. Panic flooded through him briefly, wondering if he’d done something wrong -- but he forced a smile, standing up a little shakily.

“O-of course, sir,” he replied. That was all the encouragement Tegus needed -- guiding him up towards the teachers’ table. Lunch was fully underway now, at its peak -- and he could feel eyes on him as he followed the Minister across the room, exchanging glances with a few of his friends as he did so.

Lowell held the door open for him when they reached it, before closing it behind them. In the room were two chairs sat facing opposite each other, and Lowell gestured to them with a friendly smile.

“Please take a seat, Mr. Crawford. No need to feel nervous – on the contrary, I have an exciting opportunity for you.”

Sitting down numbly, Charlie watched as the Minister of Magic took the seat opposite him – wondering if he were in some surreal dream.

“You’re probably wondering how I know your name, Mr. Crawford.” The Minister paused, a slow nod from Charlie prompting him to continue. “I take great interest in the business occurring here at Hogwarts. After all, the next generation of wizards is educated here, and the next generation of wizards will be the ones in charge soon enough. They are our future. I like to have an idea of who the best students are, and I believe you are one of those, Mr. Crawford. And so – I would like to offer you a job.”

There was something in Tegus that Charlie found intriguing – perhaps it was the way the man leant forward to speak to him, eye-contact maintained and a pleasant, friendly tone to his voice. He’d heard Tegus called evil more often than not – and yet here was a man Charlie felt was trying to make himself his equal, trying to suggest openness and a connection between them.

“A job?” His reply was cautious -- confused. The Minister had pulled him aside to offer him a job?

“Yes. You see, Mr. Crawford, the Ministry is always interested in talented young people, and I have heard that you have quite the talent for inventing. I have no doubt that this skill can transfer to many areas of our work, and we would be thrilled to have somebody like you on board. Of course, you could come and work for us this summer – think of it as a sort of internship. And if you like us, and we like you – well, clever people do very well at the Ministry.”

It was a few moments before Charlie responded.

“You want me to work for the Ministry?”

“Yes,” the Minister replied plainly.

This whole situation was -- bizarre to Charlie, the cogs in his mind whirring as he thought through the implications of this conversation. The Minister knew who he was -- the Minister, and by extension, and Ministry, knew what he did. Whether they knew the specifics of his work, or just that he did it -- Charlie couldn’t be sure. He felt unease at the idea that the Ministry had been watching him -- and taken enough interest to send the Minister himself simply to offer Charlie a summer job. Suddenly, he was wondering whether there was something hidden behind the pleasant sincerity in Tegus’ tone.

Information. He needed more information.

“Can I ask doing what, exactly? Day to day?”

Not particularly relevant, but able to shed light on what the Ministry thought he was up to.

Charlie scoffed internally. Hogwarts was making him suspicious.

“Oh, we’d find something for you to do. We have lots of departments you could try – of course, there are people who invent things for the Ministry, and managerial and problem-solving roles, too. A logical brain will go a long way. And we’d be able to look at some of your creations, and perhaps roll them out across the nation. Can you imagine that, Mr. Crawford? Your inventions, in every home in the country.”

His inventions. They wanted something to do with his inventions. Get him to sign a contract to them - no doubt with a hidden intellectual property clause - and then get their hands on everything he’d designed. His mind immediately went to his tracking map -- wondering what uses it could have in what many thought were the wrong hands. But either way, Charlie knew he had to tread carefully. And not forget that he was being offered an incredible opportunity.

“It sounds like a wonderful opportunity, sir. But I don’t invent for any kind of – glory. It’s just a hobby.”

“Of course you’re not seeking the glory, Mr. Crawford. What is it you want to do? Do you want to change things? I know many students seek a way to influence the world around them, to better it, whether for themselves or others, and this would be your chance to do it. I think you’re somebody who cares very much about doing good. Am I right, Mr. Crawford? Think of how many lives you could help save – how many people you can help keep safe with your brains and the Ministry’s backing. The Ministry is here to keep order and help people, and you could be a part of that. And we’d support you, of course – you’d never be without any spare part or resource you could ask for. The Ministry’s budget is generous, and you could do vital work, really make a difference to people’s lives.”

Limitless supplies and the chance to make a difference. Charlie’s head swam – they were offering him an opportunity to -- either make a difference or to sell himself out, and he knew he had to be careful whether or not he took it.

“Thank you – very much, sir. It sounds like an incredible opportunity. I’ll have to speak to my mother, of course – I can’t do anything without her permission – and this is all very unexpected, but… I can send an owl when I’m able to give an answer?”

Something twitched in the Minister’s face – fast enough to make Charlie question whether he’d really seen it, a slight panic spreading through him. But the man leant back in his chair, a friendly smile tugging at his lips. When he spoke, that assurance was back -- Charlie had no doubt that he was expected to accept.

“Oh, no need to send an owl! Pop by the Ministry when you decide – tell them your name and that I’ve asked personally for you to come see me, and I’m sure I can find the time to meet with you. After all, people should get used to seeing you around there, and you should be able to see the opportunity you’re accepting. You’ve really got the potential to do very well at the Ministry, Mr. Crawford.”

“Thank you, sir. I hope I won’t disappoint.”

Charlie wasn’t sure if it was paranoia, but the smile on Lowell’s face felt a little more sinister as he replied.

“No, Mr. Crawford. I hope you don’t, either.”

The expression cleared – Lowell standing up, reaching across the space between them to shake Charlie’s hand, clasping it with both of his own. His grip was firm -- the warmth not quite meeting his eyes.

“It’s been wonderful to meet you, Charlie. I’ve looked forward to this meeting. Bright sparks like you don’t come along often, and the Ministry likes to show how accommodating it can be. And I look forward to seeing you again. Perhaps you can bring along some of your creations when you do – I’d love a sneak peak of what’s going on in your workshop!”

“Yes, sir. Thank you very much. It’s been wonderful to meet you, too.”

Tegus was the one to open the door – leaving Charlie where he was, disappearing as suddenly as he’d appeared. Charlie couldn’t shake the feeling off that he’d been released from a dangerous situation, clenching his fist to stop it quivering as he took a few breaths, eventually following Tegus out. With the Minister once again back in the room, less eyes were on him this time -- but as he made his way back to his abandoned dessert, Charlie felt more watched than ever.

He sat back down on the bench, picking up his fork -- but as Tegus caught his eye from across the room, a shiver ran down Charlie’s spine -- letting his fork clatter down onto his plate.

A dangerous situation indeed. Once again ignoring the eyes of the class on him, Charlie swung his legs over the bench to leave -- no longer as hungry as he had been before.