#to finally experience some sense of freedom and self expression at an advanced age and despite the interference of her adult (and indeed

[mariocki]

All Passion Spent: Episode 1 (1.1, BBC, 1986)

"She's not one of those clever women, thank God. Mother has always allowed others to make decisions for her. And now that Father has gone..."

"I suppose, since I have always lived at home, that I should really bear the brunt."

"Brunt, Edith? I'm sure we shall all regard it as a privilege to look after Mother. Brunt is an entirely unsuitable expression."

"Oh dear, when you say it like that, Carrie, I'm not even sure what it means."

[emsartwork]

Sorry if you’ve already answered this but J was wondering if you could talk more the girls childhood/growing up? Love what you’re doing btw, absolutely adore how you’ve basically recreated the Winx world! 💗

Thank you!!! and sure thing! long post ahead

BLOOM: she never really had any problems family wise, Vanessa and Mike told her she was adopted at like…. Age 7 or so (in a positive affirming way obvi) and even if any kids teased her about it she never doubted her parent’s love for her. Even with Daphne’s spell helping her blend in with earth life, Bloom still had a nagging sense she didn’t “fit”, and got lost in fantasy books and art whenever possible. Growing up she deals with some body image issues that probably stem from the whole wrong fit feeling. Bloom grew up an artistic and quiet kid, Mitzi and Selina were her best friends from childhood, and because they both had really strong personalities, Bloom often repressed her own feelings in order to play peace maker. Up until high school, where Mitzi, who was always the leader, slowly started to turn into a bully in order to gain the approval/fear of her peers, targeting Selina specifically. Bloom was more of a follower at the time and just didn’t want to loose her friends so she didn’t stand up to Mitzi but tried to treat Selina as if nothing had changed, which was not cool with Selina and she not-so-subtly started to reject Bloom as a friend. Bloom, for her part, did get her shit together and stand up to Mitzi, loosing her only other friend right before her senior year of highschool (she was still technically friends with Andy but they had also just broken up and everything was awkward lmao). Bloom regrets not standing up to Mitzi sooner, and wants to rekindle her friendship with Selina (and Mitzi if she’s willing to tone down the bitchiness).  

STELLA: So Stella’s childhood is a little more complicated. Stella is the first SoLuna heir in Solarian history, and a very loud minority protested her very existence. Stella also had to stay close to the Second Sun of Solaria as a child, so she had a very solitary and confined early childhood in a wing of the Solarian castle. When she did figure out how to sneak out she was only 10 or so, and spent most of the time just wandering around the capital city. She didn’t have any problems in the city, but an off duty guard recognized her and took her back to the palace. Stella was then sent to an elite boarding school under a false name (Sasha), she formed close friends with Nova and Varanda, but the trio was the target of the rest of the school’s bullies (for various reasons). Junior high was peak nerd Stella, but she “princess Diary-ed” herself when starting high school and started placing all of her value in her appearance and status as a sex object. Her parents’ marriage was also starting to crumble and Stella felt like she had lost their love. Because Stella craves validation and affection, this lead to a couple bad relationships because the only way she could get people to “love her” in her brain was through physical intimacy, even if it didn’t really fill the void she felt. Nova and Varanda were her rocks during this period and Stella was able to learn to love herself first with their help. Stella was insanely nervous to leave her friends and go to Alfea, and tried to force friendships with other people originally, (this mostly lead to people thinking she was annoying and getting multiple censures from Griselda), and her first genuine connection on Magix was with “Prince Sky” (Brandon). Nova and Varanda were VERY worried when Stella first told them about “Prince Sky”(Brandon) and how fast they had gotten into a relationship and they may have stalked/threatened him on a visit to Stella but they eventually came around and started to like him. Stella being expelled was only kind of an accident, Varanda texted Stella in the middle of a Chemancy class her application to Alfea for the next year had been accepted and Stella got SUPER excited and blew up the classroom. She probably could have stayed in school but her response to Fraragona and Griselda’s “now what do you have to say for yourself young lady” was *giddy laughter* and “ i only wish the explosion had been big enough to send me forward to next year!!!!!” and griselda was like “either she goes or I go” and Stella was like “ya gurl i gone” of course her time back on Solaria didn’t go exactly as planned as her parents were just fighting every time they tried to do something together making her people pleasing/self blaming tendencies worse. 

FLORA: ahhh my baby So Flora does remember her father, not a lot and she feel guilty she doesn’t remember more, but she was only 7 when he died. Alyssa remarried when Flora was 13, and eventually she adjusted to having a younger sister who she loves very much now. Due to Rhodos’s nature preservation needing a lot of room for study Flora and Miele grew up pretty far away from any town and didn’t have a lot of friends. This is primarily why Flora and Miele are so close despite their age difference, and why Flora took her role as protector so intensely; she was the only one there (I mean besides the parents obviously). Flora did well in school though she was quiet and reserved, which made making friends even harder than living in the middle of nowhere. She figured out the best way to make people like her was to give them what they wanted, and this snowballed into Flora becoming kind of doormat not comfortable with voicing her true feelings and faking a lot what people expected from her. Flora has a lot of repressed…… everything (Bloom mostly just has a lot of repressed anger she’s good with other emotions lmao) she has trouble identifying what she’s feeling and for the most part is content to leave her feelings buried as long as the surface remains calm. The Winx do help her start to access her feeling more, and encourage her whenever she does voice an opinion. Helia is a perfect match for her in the sense that his quiet nature leaves Flora to express herself without trying to mold herself into whatever she thinks he wants (of course on the flip side this also means Flora and Helia have issues with communication and repression but that’s another topic). 

AISHA: hoo boy another complicated one. Aisha was raised in a strict environment, this mostly stems from her parents and their more…. anxious natures, but royalty on Andros is not as free as some of the other planets. Aisha’s world consisted of lessons and adults and rules and she had very little control over her own life. Aisha met Anne in a rare moment of freedom in the tidal gardens where Anne’s father worked. Anne was biding her time waiting for her dad to get off work so they could grab some dinner and was dancing. Aisha just watched her for a while before Anne noticed her and asked her if she wanted to play. The two formed a fast friendship, and Aisha finally started to feel like she had some sort of influence in her own life as she snuck out of lessons to play with Anne every evening she could(obviously their favorite thing to do was dance lol) Unfortunately Anne and her father disappeared one night. Aisha lost her only friend, the only social outlet she had, her one source of freedom, and couldn’t even figure out what had happened. Feeling so out of control lead to a pretty bad anxiety disorder for most of her teens, primarily triggered by the dark or being trapped in some way. She also has issues trusting others and letting people help her. Aisha started to act out, trying to exert any kind of control and relieve some of her anxiety. Her risk taking behavior got pretty bad, but she had started to tone it down after she met and bonded with Piff(royal business trip to Magix she skipped out on). Of course when the pixies went missing she wasn’t going to let her friendship vanish again and tracked them down with a not so healthy single minded determination.

TECNA: born to higher class parents, Tecna had greatness thrust upon her from an early age. She received extra training and education basically from birth, which she was fine with for the most part. Tecna grew up being able to handle academic pressure very well and met all of her teacher’s and parent’s expectations.  She and Riven had a brief collision as preteens in a school before Riven got expelled. Tecna’s one issue was that of her emotional intelligence, Zenith doesn’t really place an emphasis on that, so she was able to advance through high school very predictably until she attended a non-Zenith based workshop for magic. She found herself socially ostracized and very very confused. Of course Tecna had never met a subject she couldn’t master and emotions wouldn’t be an exception right??? Wrong. Zenith’s information about the brain and the chemicals produced was of no help, her teachers and parents didn’t understand why Tecna suddenly had this new interest in such an illogical subject, and worst of all, Tecna realized she didn’t understand her own brain chemicals. Tecna had a mini existential crisis, realized she had no idea what she even wanted to do with her life or why it mattered and applied to the Alfea Fairy program because “FAIRY MAGIC EMOTION MAGIC HELP” also it would offer her strong emotional experiences(transformations basically require it), the opportunity to work closely in groups, and personally obverse her dorm-mates emotional states. She got way more than she bargained for but doesn’t regret it a bit.

MUSA: my angst child T-T so basically, the first half of her childhood is p good, her parents work really hard and don’t always have enough money but the family unit is pretty stable. At around 12, Musa’s mom gets sick. Nobody is too worried at first, but she never seems to get better and she takes a big turn for the worse when Musa is about 16, Matlin is finally diagnosed with Core Failure Syndrome. CFS is similar to Core Fatigue, but while Core Fatigue can be remedied fairly easily with rest and magic, CFS is virtually incurable unless it’s caught really early. The causes are still unknown, and the symptoms (fatigue, nausea, cognition issues, and muscle weakness) can be prolonged but mild until it’s too late. In the later stages (extreme fatigue, numbness in the extremities, chest pain, joint pain, memory/focus issues, inability to keep food down)  all you can do is try to make the afflicted comfortable. Ho-boe is understandably distraught, and tries to freelance write for music but goes into a pretty bad depressive state. Musa has a few odd jobs here and there, and thats mostly what’s keeping them afloat among heavy medical debt. Musa latches on to her mother for emotional support as Ho-boe is super dissociated. When Matlin does pass as Musa turns 18, Ho-boe finally breaks, and violently destroys every last reminder of Matlin because he can’t deal with the pain. Musa, who has suddenly had her one emotional anchor cut off, is super freaked out and scared by this and it really damages their relationship going forward. Musa becomes incredibly anxious, and can’t really process her mother's death because her father won’t talk about it with her and is still shut off emotionally. Moving to Magix only worsened it as Musa rebelled and went after music with a desperate passion. Applying to Alfea was a way for Musa to get out of the house, and she and her father weren’t on speaking terms when she did leave for the college. Musa had planned on learning more magic to further her career as a musician, special effects infusing magic into a song rubbing shoulders with rich and well connected people who could possibly get her connected to the big shots in music….. The winx situations had her change some of her long term plans a little, but her connection with the group + her separation anxiety and fierce loyalty didn’t really leave any other choice lol 

[chiseler]

The Crowd Doesn’t Just Roar, It Thinks: Warner Bros.’ All-Talking Revolution

“Iconic” is a gassy word for a masterwork of unquestioned approval. But it also describes compositions that actually resemble icons in their form and function, “stiff” by inviolate standards embodied in, say, Howard Hawks characters moving fluidly in and out of the frame. Whenever I watch William A. Wellman’s 1933 talkie Wild Boys of the Road, these standards—themselves rigid and unhelpful to understanding—fall away. An entire canonical order based on naturalism withers. 

To summon reality vivid enough for the 1930s—during which 250,000 minors left home in hopeless pursuit of the job that wasn’t—Wellman inserts whispering quietude between explosions, cesuras that seem to last aeons. The film’s gestating silences dominate the rather intrusive New Deal evangelism imposed by executive order from the studio. Amid Warner Bros.’ ballyhooing of a freshly-minted American president, they were unconsciously embracing the wrecking-ball approach to a failed capitalist system. That is, when talkies dream, FDR don’t rate. However, Marxist revolution finds its American icon in Wild Boys’ sixteen-year-old actor Frankie Darro, whose cap becomes a rude little halo, a diminutive lad goaded into class war by a chance encounter with a homeless man. 

“You got an army, ain’t ya?” In the split second before Darro’s “Tommy” realizes the import of these words, the Great Depression flashes before his eyes, and ours. No conspicuous montage—just a fixed image of pain. Until suddenly a collective lurch transmutes job-seeking kids into a polity that knows the enemy’s various guises: railroad detectives, police, galled citizens nosing out scapegoats. Wellman’s crowd scenes are, in effect, tableaux congealing into lucent versions of the real thing. The miracle he performs is a painterly one: he abstracts and pares down in order to create realism.  

Wellman has a way of organizing people into palpable units, expressing one big emotional truth, then detonating all that potential energy. In his assured directorial hands, Wild Boys of the Road sustains powerful rhythmic flux. And yet, other abstractions, the kind life throws at us willy-nilly, only make sense if we trust our instinctive hunches (David Lynch says typically brilliant, and typically cryptic, things on this subject). 

I’m thinking of iconography that invites associations beyond familiar theories, which, in one way or another, try to give movies syntax and rely too heavily on literary ideas like “authorship.” Nobody can corner the market on semantic icons and run up the price. My favorite hot second in Wild Boys of the Road is when young Sidney Miller spits “Chazzer!” (“Pig!”) at a cop. Even the industrial majesty of Warner Bros. will never monopolize chutzpah. The studio does, however, vaunt its own version of socialism, whether consciously or not, in concrete cinematic terms: here, the crowd becomes dramaturgy, a conscious and ethical mass pushing itself into the foreground of working-class poetics. The crowd doesn’t just roar, it thinks. Miller’s volcanic cri de coeur erupts from the collective understanding that capitalism’s gendarmes are out to get us.

Wellman’s Heroes for Sale, hitting screens the same year as Wild Boys, 1933, further advances an endless catalogue of meaning for which no words yet exist. We’re left (fumblingly and woefully after the fact) to describe a rupture. Has the studio system gone stark raving bananas?! Once again, the film’s ostensible agenda is to promote Roosevelt’s economic plan; and, once again, a radical alternative rears its head.

Wellman’s aesthetic constitutes a Dramaturgy of the Crowd. His compositions couldn’t be simpler. I’m reminded of the “grape cluster” method used by anonymous Medieval artists, in which the heads of individual figures seem to emerge from a single shared body, a highly simplified and spiritual mode of constructing space that Arnold Hauser attributes to less bourgeoise societies. 

If the mythos of FDR, the man who transformed capitalism, is just that, a story we Americans tell ourselves, then Heroes for Sale represents another kind of storytelling: one firmly rooted to the soiled experience of the period. Amid portrayals of a nation on the skids—thuggish cops, corrupt bankers, and bone-weary war vets (slogging through more rain and mud than they’d ever encountered on the battlefield)—one rather pointed reference to America’s New Deal drags itself from out of the grime. “It’s just common horse sense,” claims a small voice. Will national leadership ever find another spokesman as convincing as the great Richard Barthelmess, that half-whispered deadpan amplified by a fledgling technology, the Vitaphone? After enduring shrapnel to the spine, dependency on morphine, plus a prison stretch, his character Tom Holmes channels the country’s pain; and his catalog of personal miseries—including the sudden death of his young wife—qualifies him as the voice of wisdom when he explains, “It takes more than one sock in the jaw to lick 120 million people.” How did Barthelmess—owner of the flattest murmur in Talking Pictures, a far distance from the gilded oratory of Franklin Roosevelt, manage to sell this shiny chunk of New Deal propaganda? 

How did he take the film’s almost-crass reduction of America’s economic cataclysm, that metaphorical sock on the jaw, and make it sound reasonable? Barthelmess was 37 when he made Heroes for Sale; an aging juvenile who less than a decade earlier had been one of Hollywood’s biggest box-office titans. But no matter how smoothly he seemed to have survived the transition, his would always be a screen presence more redolent of the just-passed Silent-era than the strange new world of synchronized sound. And yet, through a delivery rich with nuance for generous listeners and a glum piquancy for everyone else, deeply informed by an awareness of his own fading stardom, his slightly unsettling air of a man jousting with ghosts lends tremendous force to the New Deal line. It echoes and resolves itself in the viewer’s consciousness precisely because it is so eerily plainspoken, as if by some half-grinning somnambulist ordering a ham on rye. Through it we are in the presence of a living compound myth, a crisp monotone that brims with vacillating waves of hope and despair.

Tom is “The Dirty Thirties.” A symbolic figure looming bigger than government promises, towering over Capitalism itself, he’s reduced to just another soldier-cum-hobo by the film’s final reel, having relinquished a small fortune to feed thousands before inevitably going “on the bum.” If he emits wretchedness and self-abnegation, it’s because Tom was originally intended to be an overt stand-in for Jesus Christ—a not-so-gentle savior who attends I.W.W. meetings and participates in the Bonus March, even hurling a riotous brick at the police. These strident scenes, along with “heretical” references to the Nazarene, were ultimately dropped; and yet the explosive political messages remain.

More than anything, these key works in the filmography of William A. Wellman present their viewers with competing visions of freedom; a choice, if you will. One can best be described as a fanciful, yet highly addictive dream of personal comfort — the American Century's corrupted fantasy of escape from toil, tranquility, and a material luxury handed down from the then-dying principalities of Western Europe — on gaudy, if still wondrous, display within the vast corpus of Hollywood's Great Depression wish-list movies. The other is rarely acknowledged, let alone essayed, in American Cinema. There are, as always, reasons for this. It is elusive and ever-inspiring; too primal to be called revolutionary. It is a vision of existential freedom made flesh; being unmoored without being alienated; the idea of personal liberation, not as license to indulge, but as a passport to enter the unending, collective struggle to remake human society into a society fit for human beings. 

In one of the boldest examples of this period in American film, the latter vision would manifest itself as a morality play populated by kings and queens of the Commonweal— a creature of the Tammany wilderness, an anarchist nurse, and a gaggle of feral street punks (Dead End Kids before there was a 'Dead End'). Released on June 24, 1933, Archie L. Mayo's The Mayor of Hell stood, not as a standard entry in Warner Bros.’ Social Consciousness ledger, but as an untamed rejoinder to cratering national grief.

by Daniel Riccuito

Special thanks to R.J. Lambert

[santmat]

Biography of Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj, the Great Scholar Sant (on the Occasion of His Jayanti — Birthday Commemoration)

Today We Remember Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj (12–20–1920 — 6–4–2007)

Maharishi Santsevi Ji Maharaj is a renowned saint, an exceptional Spiritual Guide, and a unique social reformer of the 21st Century. Shri Santsevi Ji is the fourth Guru in the Santmat lineage of great spiritual masters: Sant Tulsi Sahab, Baba Devi Sahab, and Maharishi Mehi Paramhans Ji Maharaj. Shri Santsevi Ji was born on December 20th, 1920 in a small village of Bihar State, the most impoverished state of India. His family name was Mahavira. From his early childhood Mahavira was greatly interested in religious and spiritual matters. He enjoyed reading the scriptures and the poetry of saints. He was particularly fond of the Ramayana, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Ramacharitmanas, and the Shri Guru Granth Sahib.

After attending middle school he began home schooling. His intellect was keen and his heart tender. He found joy in teaching and tutoring younger students and in nursing the sick. He always felt great compassion for the sick and oppressed. This led him to study homeopathic medicine in order to help the poor and to nurse the ailing. Through his experience with sickness and death, Mahavira witnessed the impermanence and suffering that pervades human life. As a result, the seeds of detachment became firmly rooted in his heart. He became detached from the worldly life. After considerable reflection, he chose a life of renunciation, even though his family members exerted great pressure to persuade him otherwise.

In 1939, Mahavira came in contact with the great sage of the Santmat tradition, Maharishi Mehi, who had a hermitage in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Upon seeing Maharishi Mehi, Mahavira felt drawn to him, as though he had known him for many lifetimes. Mahavira was also greatly intrigued by the principles and practices of Santmat. He approached Shri Maharishi Mehi for initiation in Santmat. Maharishi Mehi soon became very impressed by the sincerity and devotion of this young man and agreed to initiate him. Mahavira began his meditation and service of Guru, and also continued his work as a tutor.

In the heart of Mahavira a keen desire arose to remain permanently in the service of his Guru. His desire was fulfilled in 1949 when Maharishi Mehi gave him permission to stay in the Ashram in his service. Mahavira devoted his days and nights to taking care of the needs of his Guru, thereby following the ancient Vedic model of the Guru-disciple relationship. He never cared for his personal comfort when he was serving his Guru’s needs: cooking food, doing laundry, keeping track of expenses, editing his writings, and traveling to villages with him to teach the principles of Santmat to the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. Maharishi Mehi, pleased with this selfless service, gave him the name Santsevi, meaning “he who serves saints.” From that day Mahavira came to be known as Santsevi.

As Maharishi Mehi advanced in age, he began to transfer his responsibilities to Shri Santsevi Ji. He authorized Shri Santsevi Ji to give initiation to spiritual seekers, to respond to their inquiries, and to guide them through the inner experiences of their spiritual journeys. He came to be seen as the prominent disciple among Maharishi Mehi’s chief devotees. Maharishi Mehi often said, “As the English letters Q and U cannot be separated, so too Santsevi and I are connected. Wherever I may live Santsevi will also reside.” Shri Santsevi Ji remained in the service of his Guru until Maharishi Mehi’s passing at the age of 101 in July of 1986. After the passing of Shri Maharishi Mehi, Shri Santsevi Ji was immediately recognized as the torchbearer of Santmat. Since then, he has ceaselessly and selflessly been continuing the service of Santmat.

Shri Santsevi Maharaj Ji’s personality is charismatic as a result of his accomplishments on the path to the realization of Truth. Even though he is a learned man, his knowledge goes beyond the confines of the human intellect. Despite the fact that he never attended a class in a university or a college, a number of Ph.D. students are pursuing research on his writings. He has no formal education in any Divinity or Religious school, yet scholars from various disciplines come to him to understand the subtle interpretations found in sacred texts and literature: the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Bible, the Koran and the Shri Guru Granth Sahib, as well as various writings of the saints. He is well versed in several languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Bangala, Gurumukhi, Nepali, Maithali and other dialects of India. He has written and translated about twenty books elucidating the subject of yoga, philosophy, and the teachings of Santmat. His exposition of sacred texts is prolific, arising from his profound personal experience of the Truth.

Santmat and Maharishi Santsevi Ji

Maharishi Santsevi Ji is the present exponent (acharya) of Santmat, the branch which is directly linked to the lineage of Sant Tulsi Sahab. The word Santmat, usually written as Sant Mat, literally means the “point of view” or the “conviction of the sants and sages.” Historically, the Sant Mat movement was not a homogenous movement; but the term is a generic label for the Sant movement in the northern part of India, beginning around the 12th century. The early sants, such as Kabir, Ravidas, Namdev and Mirabai, represented a shift in religious and social attitudes — on the one hand, freedom from sectarian boundaries and ritualistic confinements; on the other hand, direct communion with the Divine without mediation of any authority or liturgy.

The word sant is derived from the Sanskrit word sat (Eternal Truth, Reality). The root meaning is ‘one who knows the truth’ or ‘who has experienced Ultimate Reality.’ Thus, a sant is a person who has achieved Shanti (inner tranquility) as a result of union with the Divine, as in mystical enlightenment.

The word sant is translated “saint” in English. However, both in etymology and definition, there are significant differences that get lost in translation. The English word saint is derived from the Latin word sanctus, which has come to mean a “good person whose life is moral,” or a “holy being.” Thus, in English a saint is thought of as a “spiritual exemplar,” and the word has been attached to a wide variety of gurus and holy men and women. But, in Sanskrit, the dimension of inner unity with the Truth is inherent in the word sant. Some of the sants come from the lower castes, and some of them are even from the untouchable class, but they have enjoyed an honorable status in the tradition. (Although we use sant and saint interchangeably in this book, we imply the original meaning of the word sant for both.)

Santmat, the Way of Sages and Sants, as we prefer to refer to it, not only emphasizes a life of moral rectitude, but underlines the inner journey for God realization, or Liberation. Therefore, Sant Mat is not confined to the beliefs, rituals, and dogmas of any specific religion. It is universal in nature and embraces the truths found in most of the world’s sacred texts and religious traditions, even while not advocating any particular religion. Sant Mat encompasses a set of ageless moral values, a belief in a Higher Power, and even more important, a methodology for realization of the Highest Reality. This method elaborates the path of Divine Light and Sound through which one attains the state of absolute Peace within one’s own self. The unifying philosophy of Santmat leads the way beyond the boundaries of sectarianism, religious fanaticism, and communal distrust which plague our world today. Maharishi Santsevi Ji has taught the teachings of Sant Mat to more than a million people from multiple religions and from many countries.

— Maharishi Santsevi Ji Maharaj: A Biography, in, Sarvadharma Samanvy (Harmony Of All Religions), published by Maharshi Mehi Ashram, and the Sant Mat Society of North America

The Goal of Sant Mat Spirituality and Meditation: Our Path Back to the Source — The Inward Journey Back to God

“Sant Mat (the path and teachings as taught and practiced by Saints [Sant Satgurus]) delineates the path of union of soul with God. The teachings of the saints explain the re-uniting as follows:

“The individual soul has descended from the higher worlds [the Realm of the Divine] to this city of illusion, bodily existence. It has descended from the Soundless State to the essence of Sound, from that Sound to Light, and finally from the realm of Light to the realm of Darkness. The qualities (dharmas, natural tendencies) of the sense organs draw us downward and away from our true nature.

“The nature of the soul (atman) draws us upwards and inwards and establishes us in our own true nature. Returning to our origins involves turning inward: withdrawal of consciousness from the senses and the sense objects in order to go upward from the darkness to the realms of Light and Sound. [We experience this phenomenon of withdrawal as we pass from waking consciousness to deep sleep.] Another way to express this is to go inward from the external sense organs to the depth of the inner self. (Both of these expressions are the metaphors that signify the same movement). The natural tendencies of the soul (atman) are to move from outward to inward. The current of consciousness which is dispersed in the nine gates of the body and the senses, must be collected at the tenth gate.

“The tenth gate is the gathering point of consciousness. Therein lies the path for our return. The tenth gate is also known as the sixth chakra, the third eye, bindu, the center located between the two eyebrows. This is the gateway through which we leave the gates of the sense organs and enter in the divine realms and finally become established in the soul. We travel back from the Realm of Darkness to the Realm of Light, from the Light to the Divine Sound, and from the Realm of Sound to the Soundless State. This is called turning back to the Source.

“This is what dharma or religion really intends to teach us. This is the essence of dharma.” (Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj, “Harmony Of All Religions”).

Know Yourself and Know God: “Practice ‘Drishti Yoga’ (Yoga of Inner Light) and ‘Nadaanusandhana’ (Yoga of Inner Sound, Surat Shabd Yoga). This will remove the layers of Darkness, Light and Sound (that conceal your Soul from the Supreme Sovereign Soul, i.e. God). You will, thus, get to know ‘Who You Are’. And, when you know yourself, you will also know God.” (Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj)

“Bienaventurados son las almas que en el mundo materialista de hoy en día tienen una inclinación hacia la espiritualidad.” (Swami Ji Maharaj SantSevi Ji)

https://medium.com/sant-mat-meditation-and-spirituality/biography-of-swami-santsevi-ji-maharaj-the-great-scholar-sant-on-the-occasion-of-his-96th-jayanti-d47efe871de0

[livingwithkami]

Shinto and Sexuality: A gift of life

With the recent ban on adult content on Tumblr, it has given way to a lot of discussion about adult content online and what is or isn't acceptable. Legitimate issues were brought up in how violence is more normalized than intimacy and sexuality, and how the bans would affect sex workers and nsfw artists greatly – Tumblr, one of the last safe mainstream social media platforms that could ensure an income and audience base is now also being ripped out from under them. I feel this is not right and even a dangerous and irresponsible decision to make. Instead of relying on bots and algorithms to moderate between adult content and all-ages content, they should hire a dedicated moderation team, and proper safety features into the site to protect minors, but also while not censoring adult content creators and their adult consumers. There were ways that worked before that do not require a site-wide ban.

Unfortunately, this issue branches from a much larger issue of bans across the internet based on how society views these topics. In many modern societies today, and even in the past, sexuality is often viewed as something very taboo or forbidden. It is something only for the minds of adults, and even then, only married adults in a strict setting with only certain positions being “acceptable”. In this, there is a high sense of rigidity, shame, and hiding in sexuality.

I do not agree with this and feel this viewpoint is very wrong. Nudity and sexuality itself should not be viewed as shameful or wrong, because there is nothing inherently wrong about them. We are all born naked, and the action of sex itself is what creates life. Why can we show and talk about gory murders in detail with a degree of normalcy, but when there is a non-explicit sex scene, it is somehow more scandalous, forbidden, and dirty? I feel strongly instead it should be something understood as beautiful, and definitely should not be seen as a taboo action, especially comparing to a gruesome murder. Learning about sexuality, and being comfortable about nudity is something I feel should be more open to explore for people of all ages, and work to remove the stigma surrounding sex and nudity.

That being said, I do strongly feel minors should be protected from eroticism, that is, something inherently intended to be erotic and presented in an erotic nature. I feel that eroticism is a more advanced area of sexuality that should be kept in adult spheres only and explored by adults only. It's important to let kids be kids and understand about their sexuality in a healthy and educational way, but leave erotic content for 18 and older. That isn't to say eroticism is what is taboo, wrong, dirty and should be hidden, but should be explored in an open, healthy, and safe way only once someone matures into an adult.

In relation to that, on the topic of showing a “female-presenting nipple” as Tumblr called it in their guidelines, such as a topless woman just lounging as a topless man would in a non-erotic way, or a breastfeeding woman, is not erotic nor should be seen as such. I personally feel non-erotic nudity and sexual educational content should not be censored at all, and erotic content can be accessed by adults-only without banning it entirely. The fact there is no understanding between these differences in content, nor any care to understand between them, and just labeling anything relating to sexuality as wrong, dirty, taboo, and forbidden to be banned - leads to many issues and shame surrounding our bodies and our understanding of sex, sexual attraction, and sexual desire.

This is such a harmful and unhealthy view in our society that is being enforced by this censorship online, and in addition has very real detriments to people's livelihood. It affects sex workers, and erotic nsfw (not safe for work) artists livelihood and ability to survive; and removes access to a safe community. In extreme cases, it is pushing sex workers into dangerous communities where their lives can be at danger either by trafficking or murder. Censorship, banning, lack of education, and hiding these topics away also leads to other broader issues that harm people greatly. Such as sexual abuse, transmission of STI's (Sexually Transmitted Infections), unexpected pregnancies, body image issues, self-esteem issues, and more. I feel strongly we must work toward being more open to educate about sex, sexuality, and our nude bodies with no shame. And for the adult sphere, adults also need to understand exploring eroticism, and erotic content in itself, is not taboo, shameful, or wrong. Understanding that those who are sex workers or nsfw artists are not inherently deviant perverts or bad people - after all, there are plenty of clients who request their services. This isn't something wrong or dirty. It's a part of the human experience, and again, nothing is inherently wrong, bad, or evil about it.

This is a large part of why I practice and why I love Konkokyo Shinto – sex and our bodies is not seen as something wrong, bad, or shameful. It's a part of nature, it is an action that is one way to bring pleasure, to express love deeply, as well as the action that creates life itself. It is something that brings love, pleasure, joy, and life. Exploring our own bodies and sexuality consensually with others helps us to understand ourselves better and helps us to learn to love and treat ourselves and each other well. Within Shinto as a whole, this is expressed in various myths and other shrine traditions too.

I'll start from one of the oldest myths, the first and most direct example of this belief and view – the creation of the islands of Japan, and the myriads of kami which populate the world. The traditional myth goes that after the first generations of kami were born from the divine universe's energy, the last generation born this way was Izanagi Okami and Izanami Okami, who were also the very first kami who got married. A famous line in this myth is when Izanagi Okami points out he has something “extra” but Izanami Okami has something “less”, so he suggests something good may happen if the extra part he had would compliment the part she did not have. And thus, the two kami are said to have discovered sex. Because of this discovery, the two kami were able to create many children, which were both the islands of Japan, and the millions of kami that inhabit the islands. In this sense, sex is viewed in an extremely respected and positive light. Without that action, nothing would exist. And indeed, even for us as humans, without the action of sex, we could never continue on in our survival as a species. It is viewed as a highly sacred, but also very natural and beautiful action. There are even sacred Kagura dances that recreate this event via an implied (not erotic or explicit, as it is a public dance where minors also attend) way between Izanagi Okami and Izanami Okami, and it is not seen as wrong or perverted.

Izanagi Okami and Izanami Okami Source: http://mesosyn.com/myth2j-13b.jpg

Next, the following myths are famous ones, wherein a “female-presenting nipple” (a pair of them) in fact saved the world, twice.

In the first myth, in summary, the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami had hidden in the cave Ama no Iwato due to immense grief. Because of her isolation and neglect of her responsibilities - providing sunlight and management of Earth's cycles - the world began to spiral into decay and chaos. The other kami came together to come up with a plan to entice her out. Prayers were chanted, divinations were done, beautiful treasures were offered, but nothing worked until Ame no Uzume no Mikoto, a goddess of the dawn, dance, femininity, womanhood, and more, danced and danced.

The atmosphere remained gloomy, but Ame no Uzume no Mikoto remained cheerful, and eventually, exposed her breasts freely. Because she unashamedly, happily exposed her breasts for all of the kami to see, they burst out in joy and even laughter at seeing Ame no Uzume no Mikoto's ecstasy and freedom amidst the gloomy atmosphere. It was because of the joy, happiness, and pleasure the exposure of her breasts brought, that Amaterasu Omikami finally peeked out of the cave, which led to her being pulled out and restoring light to the world. All thanks to Ame no Uzume no Mikoto's breasts, and, “female-presenting nipples” Hardly something to consider shameful, bad, or wrong. In fact, if she had kept them hidden, according to the myth, we may not have the Earth as we know it today, or even survived at all. The second myth is when, in summary, the Heavenly kami (Amatsukami) were going down to the Earthly realm to rule. In some myths, Sarutahiko Okami came out to greet them, and then married Ame no Uzume no Mikoto upon seeing her beauty, thus joining the Heavenly kami and Earhtly kami (Kunitsukami) as one clan of kami. However, there is another, more critical version of the myth. Where Sarutahiko Okami came to stop the Amatsukami from coming to Earth. No other Amatsukami could defeat him, and they were stuck on what to do in their desire to come toward the Earth. So, they began to consider a war against the Kunitsukami. That is, until Ame no Uzume no Mikoto again took the stage, and approached Sarutahiko Okami by herself, and bravely, unashamedly...exposed her breasts to him.

Needless to say, all thoughts of war dropped from anyone's head, and the only thought left for Sarutahiko Okami was to ask Ame no Uzume no Mikoto to be his wife, to which she happily accepted, and united the Amatsukami and Kunitsukami kami. In this sense, she saved the world once again, from a world-breaking war between the Amatsukami and Kunitsukami, instead, uniting them.

In this sense, the form of breasts are what once again, restored balance, and protected all life. Ame no Uzume no Mikoto freely showing the beautiful natural form of her naked body is what brought these blessings of joy, life, protection, restoration, happiness, and peace. I feel like we should learn from her and these myths, that when we feel comfortable and confident, and not ashamed of our natural selves, there can be much more happiness spread.

In relation to Ame no Uzume no Mikoto, in the ancient era, miko (female shamans), who Ame no Uzume no Mikoto is the protective goddess of, used to practice sacred sex work in the ancient era. There were even intimate rituals between a miko and her kami. Miko never needed to be virgins, and while even in the modern era the sexual practices of miko are no longer, and the role is only one of a shrine attendant and offering sacred dance to kami, they still do not need to be virgins. The concept of virginity has no real significance or even importance in Shinto.

Ame no Uzume no Mikoto and Sarutahiko Okami img source: https://www.univie.ac.at/rel_jap/an/Bild:Uzume_Sarutahiko_ningyo_kuniyoshi.jpeg

Of course, not ignoring the modern sensibilities, I understand the importance of modesty in the general sense of being in public – however when there is the double standard of shirtless “male-presenting nipples” being fine, but shirtless (non-erotic) images of “female-presenting nipples” are somehow seen as taboo or inherently wrong to be banned or even illegal in some cases, this should be re-examined.

Especially when one considers breastfeeding, and a non-erotic context as a general whole. Tumblr's rule of “no female-presenting nipples” was one of the most ridiculous sentences I've ever read in my life. What makes a “female-presenting” nipple wrong and banned, but a “male-presenting” nipple alright? Why is a natural feature of a nude body with extra fat tissue to be banned, but one without isn't? I know the reason, of course, I know society's general viewpoint. However what I am saying is – we should sincerely reconsider this, and re-examine our values and beliefs on this particular matter strongly, as this sense of shame and restriction can be very harmful and feed into a larger problem of an unhealthy and skewed view toward sexuality, nudity, and eroticism.

The next example that is quite famous in Shinto is Kanamara Matsuri. The matsuri (festival) has a big reputation overseas for it's images of large penises, penis shaped candy, and imagery everywhere. Many foreigners believe this to be a part of the “weird, perverted, wacky” side of Japan - but it's not. All matsuri are inherently fun and joyful – it's a festival after all! But there is a very real sincerity behind it. This festival is to pray and celebrate fertility, life, sexual health, and the prevention and curing of STI's. It's not just a “wacky penis festival” but something very important for both sexual health and reproduction for couples, as well as general sex between consenting adults and safe practices. In addition, the shrine that hosts the festival, Kanayama Shrine, was famous in the past as frequented by sex workers to protect against STI's in their field of work, and that carries on into the modern day too. Kanamara Matsuri isn't the only festival to feature penis imagery, and usually the ones that do always have the same themes: fertility, sexual health, sexual virility, safety, curing and protection of STI's and so forth. There are other shrines with similar themes too, for example, some Inari shrines in Kyoto with similar imagery, and are also prayed to by sex workers for their protection and healing of STI's.

Kanamara Matsuri parade Img source: https://imgur.com/gallery/fPmmH

In the same manner as the above, in my tradition, Konkokyo Shinto, sex workers pray to Tenchi Kane no Kami-sama for protection and healing, and sex is not viewed negatively. There are many sex-positive teachings, and how nature and even faith itself reflects it. For example, how the sky is viewed like a father kami and the earth is like a mother kami, where the rain that falls from the sky fertilizes the earth to create life – implying in the same imagery as with humans. And that to practice faith single-heartedly evokes the same feeling as when one has sex with their partner, especially if they want to conceive. They are totally focused in the moment, and don't think of anything else but single-heartedness and love to their partner. I also know of priests who used to be sex workers, and of course many if not the majority of priests and priestesses are sex-positive, and are married with children of their own.

the sky and the earth img source: https://wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i=426773

Unfortunately, this beauty of Shinto and it's healthy relationship with nudity, sexuality and sex positivity as a natural and beautiful thing is covered with a dark cloud from modern Japanese society, beginning with the Meiji reformations in 1868 and getting worse over time. Sex as a shameful, hidden, taboo thing has trickled and spread deep into the mainstream society here.

In pre-Meiji era, nudity, sexuality, and eroticism were much more open. Shunga art is the most popular example of this pre-Meiji era openness, and some of this is still seen today in the cases of onsen, or hot springs, where one bathes naked in a public sphere with strangers. However, the positive and healthy views were unfortunately lost. In particular, a whole esteemed and open culture of sex workers was completely destroyed by the Meiji reformation. What was once a highly respected, legal, safe line of work, with a whole esteemed culture surrounding it, was completely decimated. Oiran, who were entertainers of the arts and sex workers, and yuujo, who focused on sex work, were held in high regard. An especially respected and professional oiran or yuujo were named as “tayuu”, a rank which means “best in their art” and were treated very well.

Unfortunately, all that had gone away, and it is now very dangerous for sex workers in Japan, with a lot of challenges. Especially for Japanese professionals in community-based fields, such as being a priestess like myself, society as a whole views any mention of openness about sex or sexual relations, especially in the context of work, as extremely negative and even something to be publicly shamed about.

One doesn't need to look any further than common news of celebrities or public figures sex life being exposed as a scandal, as if it's something they should never be let known. It is even more dangerous for sex workers, especially since the anti-prostitution law from 1956. Horrifically, the law states that being a sex worker is a crime, but those who seek their services are not committing a crime. There are loopholes and ways for sex workers to work relatively safely, such as working in an intimacy job that does not promise intercourse, but eventually can lead to it.Thereby being legal by receiving payment for intimacy; whereas receiving payment for intercourse itself would be illegal.

However, while there are ways around it, it’s still a hostile environment, with workers having to not stay at once place for too long. In addition, much more so as Japanese society is very much about saving face and having an external image, knowledge one is a sex worker can make them the target of extreme bullying, harassment, violence, and losing their non sex work source of livelihood /line of work, despite there being many consumers of erotic content and even gravure books openly on shelves in convenience stores. It is quite cruel and hypocritical.

If, for example, I chose to be a sex worker and a priestess at the same time, I would have to keep it completely hidden and private due to the stigma in Japanese society. While there would be absolutely no issue in Konkokyo Shinto as a shrine tradition if I was open about being a sex worker at the same time as being a priestess; there would be a massive issue from the viewpoint of society as a whole, with hostility, mistrust, harassment, and even threats against me and even the shrine itself – in some cases even on grounds of being threatening or dangerous to children, minors, and families who visit the shrine. It is really a difficult and upsetting situation. Not even only for my line of work, but often the same with teachers and educators and any line of work that would involve interaction with families and minors.

I can only wish that Japan returns to it's roots and view of nudity, sexuality, and eroticism in alignment with Shinto. That it is not seen as something wrong, bad, or dirty - but something to be celebrated, to be honored, to be prayed to the kami for assistance with – and most of all, something normal. Something a part of life. Acknowledgment that without it, we would not be here.

And, most of all, I hope Shinto can teach this around the world. That we don't need to view these topics in such a negative light. That it can be open, it can be healthy and moderated, and explored in a positive way. This recent decision of social media sites sets us back that much further. And feeds into that negative stigma which harms so many. But I think it's important to keep pushing back, to educate, and to remove stigma.

[observenature]

Acceptance

“Is everything ok?” said the young grasshopper.

The lily turned its petals down and said “Can I share something real with you?”

“Yes.” said the young grasshopper.

I believe that words have the power to resonate in a mind, and that when a mind senses that resonance in another, a community is born.  These thoughts are my tuning fork; trio tones of joy, fear, and excitement, jointly holding the baton that conducts the cacophony. All of what follows are my anecdotal impressions, nothing more – I’m sorry that this is the truth (an indictment as I see it).  

The world is full of so much possibility and beauty, and so much ugliness and petty squabbling. It’s sad to think that with our collective resources, intellect, and technology there is so much we might have accomplished – cured most of the major diseases, understood the brain, reinvented ourselves physically and mentally, left our home rock and explored the wild and humbling beauty of the Cosmos.  I suppose that those things might still happen, but it also seems that we are peaking too early, using up too much of our resources, and we have a will to destroy ourselves and irreparably alter our planet long before we grasp our uniqueness, all because we are fundamentally enslaved to our amygdala. I dream of a world where we put aside our very minor differences and realize that not so deep down, we are all very similar. We all feel the pain of living, the emptiness of loss, the longing for love and connection, the joy of friendship, the satisfaction of accomplishment, and the power of Nature. Our evolutionary legacy leaves us beholden to a set of brain chemistries and circuitries that reinforce selfish behavior, that bias our perception toward continual scarcity, amplify apophenia until we see diety and monster in the mist, and intoxicate us with power and greed – we have all those things in common too. We posture, pivot and pontificate to project an image of certitude, because to stare directly at the random and uncertain complexity of it all would crush anyone. Hunter S. Thompson said:  Life is beautiful, and living is pain.  

It amazes me that we are all here on this small planet, burning the most abundant energy source any life form on it has ever known, to go about our daily lives, to build large screen TVs that suck up our precious time and sell us a lie of happiness we don’t need. Consider for a moment that we can now instantly know where we are on Earth and we can instantly communicate with a single person or group. On a whim we have access to nearly the entire sum of all human knowledge. We know the age of the Sun and when it will die. We have seen the edges of the Universe and clocked its growth by the afterglow. We created machines to whisk us from one end of the planet to another, we harness the power of the atom, and we are in labor to give birth to powerful and unmoored digital intelligences, that will, in their own right, soon see us as the tools, rather than vice versa.  All of this in the name of technological, economic, and geopolitical ‘progress.’

“But to what end?” said the young grasshopper.

So that we can surf the world addicted to data and dogma that we believe will finally answer the questions that nothing and no one can -- the intangible and ineffable “why’s” of existence. We spend our communal energy – our most valuable asset – believing that other people we call gods have wisdom that we don’t, that paradise is earned by obedience and unlocked by death rather than by expressing gratitude for the only and greatest paradise we will ever inhabit -- our home, this world, the Cosmos expressing itself. The nebulous notion that technology, whose mindless implementation and adoption accelerated these trends, will save us is tantamount to thinking that the best way to put out a fire is to make sure that there is nothing left to burn. We have opened Pandora’s box and confused raw technical capabilities with informed stewardship. And the belief that supernatural forces will guide us through these, the most challenging of times, is a fairytale born of justifiable ignorance and confusion, it warps our objectives and dangerously disconnects us from the here, the now, and the other. It attempts to define virtue by what we should not be, and gives lip service to the formative actions of compassion, patience, and thoughtfulness. Both worldviews wrestle to make sense of, and find security within, the master dynamical system whose chaotic trajectory is, fundamentally, unpredictable. Both believe that it can be understood and guided to a place of certain security, rather than accepting and reveling in the undeniable links that chain freedom to security, and suffering to autonomy.

“But to what end?” said the young grasshopper.

So that 100 or 1000 or 1,000,000 years from now we will have selected against the curiosity that leads to real progress and spent the resources that could have enabled the transformation in our species and our quality of life that we imagine lies just outside our reach. This is the greatest and saddest generation of which to be a part, and I can’t help but look at the long arc of history and see that we have been struggling, time and again, with the same problems.  We still have not figured out how to equitably steward our resources with collective action, we still have not figured out how to live in a degree of harmony with the Natural world on which every aspect of our survival depends. We still have not learned to cherish and protect the diversity that defines and stabilizes all living systems. We still have not learned that whatever our circumstance, our forms have needs that require care and balance. We still have not learned that the magic of Life stands on feet of mystery and knowledge – we were not intended to, nor are capable of, dealing with the full sensory and information experience of existence. And yet there are those that vigorously call for us to fight the other, to amplify our differences so that we no longer see other humans as humans, to pass observable truth through a lens of distortion, to disfigure and sharpen our discourse until the barb can pierce dignity, and they rape our world at any expense with no consideration for our own future nor the future of those that come after us.  We place too much value on pleasure to risk progress. And much as I would like to say that I am part of the solution, which I suppose in some areas I am, I know well that I, we are all the problem. In little choices every day we waste and use and think only of our pleasures and progress now – almost no one is playing the long game. We are essentially never willing to sacrifice a momentary and clearly visible personal gain for a potential but uncertain greater good -- that is the fundamental issue.

What will be left when we have used all the fossil fuels, and there is no energy source abundant enough to propel us into the next “greener” technological era of our existence? What will happen when we have devalued and destroyed objective physical truth and hard-earned expertise to the point when no one has the knowledge or will to tackle the problems of governance and environment that loom supremely large on the stage of civilization? What will happen when our specters convince us that creativity, non-conformity, and any observable difference are threats?

I don’t know, but I do know that things will look very different, that the world population as such will not be able to continue at its current size and state.  I know that Nature will eventually force us to pay Her heed, when the forests burn, the farm land is depleted, and the medical advancements of the last 200 years are for not because we misused our discoveries and forgot our methods.  It’s tempting to think that we’ll just start over, but that surely cannot be.  We will have spent all the abundant energy, the solar panels will be long cracked and inefficient, the cars will be planters, the nuclear power plants dark forests, and this thing we call civilization will have died back to a scraggly weed of its former self.  It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s a question of ‘when’.

I want to find the silver lining in all of this.  Will our descendants look back and marvel at what we accomplished?  Yes.  Will they ponder incessantly as to why we didn’t or couldn’t take the steps to avoid decline? Yes.  Will they learn from our mistakes and embrace a wider view of humanity and commitment to each other? Maybe.  Will they build a new civilization that respects natural limitations and recognizes that dogma has no place in a free society?  I don’t know.

The system has made us weak and we are knowingly cultivating a culture that values only the most vapid pursuits of momentary validation and material wealth, while discouraging the introspection that asks – If more people behaved as I do, would that move us toward a more tolerant and sustainable world?  I no longer seek to blame any one person, organization, or government -- we were all bestowed these brains with systematic faults that we sum to “human nature”.  I think the point might be that we are here together, and like every thinker and leader of thought on the right side of history has tried to tell us – we need to look out for each other, we are all we have in the vast pointless emptiness.  I look around and see unavoidable failures in our system – choice structures like the Tragedy of the Commons – that have no solution because we are incapable of shifting our view from short to long, from me to us. The world is falling apart because we all see it happening, and we all feel like we’re on this sinking ship, most of us can’t figure out where the water is coming from, but there are gushing leaks all around us.  I believe we are living at the peak of civilization on Earth.  The juggernaut of civilization, really, the billions of choices made by the masses and the few pivotal decisions made by the powerful for their own benefit, all sadly make sense.  We have created a system that constantly shows us the material wealth we should strive for, while empowering no one to act beyond their own needs and desires.  Sometimes, I wish there was a God or a galactic super race that would come to save us from ourselves, but I have no faith in either.  

So here we are, the third wet rock from an average star, on the out skirts of a typical galaxy, and no one will hear our laughing or screaming or pleading or self-expressions through music, no will see our art, or take satisfaction in our discoveries, no one will sit on our mountains and in our forests to find peace and wholeness among the spontaneous and awesome self-organization of this world, no one will come to say ‘hey, here’s a better way.’  It’s all on us and if that reality cannot motivate us to be better people and a better civilization, if that does not thrust us into a period of deep self-examination, then nothing will.  So maybe it’s ok, given those realities, that we continue with business as usual, that we recognize that inequity is as natural as gravity, that we chant the mantra of maximization, and everyone suffers in a life punctuated by moments of love and joy and we whiz through space and search for meaning as strange and animate assemblies of the same atoms that are found throughout the Universe.

The only actions to take are to marvel at the continually unfolding beauty and dance when we can to the harmony and natural structure that permeates everything. And our greatest ideal – altruism – manifests as our desire to enable others to take those actions. The same struggle for existence, the master algorithm of Evolution that shaped us from molecules into ephemeral sentient forms will disintegrate us back into molecules. And one day, when time has lost its meaning and space has grown inanimate and cold, there will be peace. I don’t know how many times the Universe has tried or will try this experiment, but I do know that it will keep trying.  And maybe this is the best yet, in the incomprehensible complexity of it all, this is the truest expression of the natural order, this is the Cosmos in all its uncoordinated omniscience and omnipotence learning, flowing, evolving, making mistakes, this is the only way it can be.

I articulate this all in the hope that I can move on and live my life blissfully aware of what almost surely lies ahead, that this too shall pass.

They sat in silence for a time, swaying with the breeze, sunlight moving in dappled patterns over their forms.

“I hope that in other labs of the Cosmos, the experiments are yielding different results.” said the young grasshopper.

“Me too,” said the lily. “Me too.”

[eugenialapteva]

Young Love

The scene:

A young woman, I shall call her Eliza, is sitting next to a young man, whom I shall refer to as Ethan. They seem to be of a similar age, perhaps 16 or 17 years old, and it is clear from the way in which they are seated, close to each other and holding hands, that they are a romantic couple. They are travelling by coach to the airport furthest away from central Stockholm. Eliza is wearing blue jeans and a cream coloured woollen jumper, her boots are sturdy but smart looking and her brown hair is neatly tied up in a bun. She looks confident and self-assured. Ethan is wearing a generic dark coloured jumper and black jeans. The observed interaction begins just after Eliza has come off the phone with her mother.

Ethan: I still can’t understand anything [he chuckles]. No, actually, I think I understood a little – “dobzhe”, that means “good” right?

Eliza: Yeah, “dobry”, it can mean a lot of things. Like “ladny”, which also means nice. But it’s pronounced differently depending on if it’s a person or a thing. For example, if I say “it tastes good”, or “she’s nice”… [She continues to explain the various uses of the word in detail]

Ethan: Oh so it’s like for an item or object?

Eliza: Exactly.

There is a short silence.

Ethan: Good chat with your mum?

Eliza: Yeah, always good chat with her. We always have good talks.

Ethan: Ah good. That’s what I like to hear [He is stroking her hand gently, silently]

Do you think it’s good business this – going back and forth to the airport?

Eliza: Yeah I think it’s good, not only for the shuttle bus to this airport – all capitals have the same system. But this company benefits from it being the only mode of transport to the airport. No trains go there. So they have a monopoly […]

Eliza takes out her phone and is looking at a ‘story’ on Instagram. Ethan leans over to have a look, still caressing her hand.

Ethan: Where is that?

Eliza: Canada.

Ethan: Where in Canada?

Eliza: I don’t know.

Ethan: Cos there’s the English speaking part and the French speaking part.

Eliza: Eh, yeah.. of course, I know that. I went to school you know, I know about the world. We go to school in Poland too!

Ethan: Oh really? I didn’t think so. So you know how the world works then?

Eliza: Yeah.

He smiles and humours her cheerfully, still caressing her hand, his body snuggled up beside her. They start planning their week and Eliza checks the calendar on her phone.

Ethan: Sure, you can see your friends on Friday, that’s absolutely fine with me. I can see you on the weekend. I’m around.

Eliza: I’m working Monday and Tuesday 9-5, Thursday 2-8. You’re off Sunday right?

Ethan: Monday.

Eliza: Oh right.

Ethan: So Saturday? When do you find out your schedule? […] Yeah, yeah that’s cool.

Eliza: Do you have plans Monday?

Ethan: No, just going to be off. If you’re free…and if the trains are running…

Eliza: You do what you need to.

Ethan: Yeah, I'll wait to see what you say.

Both on their phones, but Eliza looks more engrossed in the activity. Ethan is staring at his phone rather purposelessly. As they are approaching the airport, Eliza gathers her things and puts on her coat in preparation.

Ethan: You checked in?

Eliza: Yeah [her voice sounds impatient]

Ethan: So we just go straight in. Easy.

As if noticing her sharp tone of voice, retrospectively, she gives him a little cuddle. They speak inaudibly and suddenly Eliza exclaims:

Yes! 2-1. Winner, that’s me [pointing at herself triumphantly].

Ethan smiles, but does not say anything.

Outside the bus Eliza heads straight for the luggage compartment. She locates their bags within seconds and points to them.

Eliza: They’re there. One over there and the other one is behind.

She takes a step back, to allow him to go ahead and collect them.

Analysis:

As I conjure up the scene of these two adolescents in love and in conversation, I am struck afresh by the same sense of nostalgia which I felt at the time of the observation. The image of this outwardly self-possessed and poised Eastern European princess on a journey with her doting and starry-eyed young prince, taps into my personal narrative of adolescent love, evoking within me a sense of poignancy and pain; a curious fantasy of familiarity and kindred minds.

Within a minute or two of observing the contact between Eliza and Ethan and listening to their dialogue, I was overcome by a powerful feeling that I already knew the power dynamics of their relationship; I could foresee the inevitable calamity and heartbreak that is built into the choreography of their complementary dance. Of course, I soon became aware of how intensely coloured these presumptions were by my own psychical templates and interpersonal experiences from infancy onward. That said, by the same token, this spontaneous reaction of mine – bearing in mind with vigilance its subjective and affective quality – seemed to provide a useful instrument for the observation; a way in, as it were, to the internal worlds of Eliza and Ethan and their romantic relationship.  

The journey of human development is by no means simple. The path toward psychosexual maturity, as Freud astutely proposed, is a long and precarious undertaking for all human beings. Twisting through the plethora of infantile desires, wishes, impulses, obstacles, deprivations, identifications, satisfactions and loss, its course depends on the negotiation of a highly complicated set of developmental stages and processes in early childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The successful transition from one phase to the next is determined by a unique combination of fortuitous and constitutional factors – a mixture, if you like, of our innate genetic makeup and the dynamics of our lived experiences and relations with others and within the self.

According to Freud, then, even the most seemingly unobtrusive symptoms and pointless actions (much like parapraxes, jokes, gestures and dreams) have an intention and bear a connection to the person’s past experiences. In other words, the secret of neurosis in general is that the symptoms, however vicariously, are closely connected to the person’s innermost phantasies and early experiences of sexual life.[1] ‘Sucking at the mother’s breast’, Freud explained, ‘is the starting-point of the whole sexual life […] This sucking involves making the mother’s breast the first object of the sexual instinct.’[2] By discovering what he believed to be the sexual causation of neuroses Freud radically extended the concept of sexuality.

Central to this Freudian thesis was the fact that we must relinquish our first and primary love-object (typically this is the mother) in order to be able to advance to a sexually fulfilling and affectionate non-incestuous love relationship as an adult. In effect of this renunciation, however, ‘the final object of the sexual instinct is never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it’[3] [emphasis mine]. Following up Freud’s formulations, perhaps a closer glance at the body language of Ethan and Eliza might offer a good point of entry to start understanding their ways of relating to each other psychoanalytically.

From the outset, Ethan’s body is somewhat bent and twisted toward Eliza – he strokes her hand fondly and remains seated in the same position of proximity throughout the journey. Meanwhile Eliza, adopting a more assertive stance, has a straight back and is faced at an angle away from Ethan in the direction of the bus. It is interesting to notice how the nature of their respective body languages mimic the different levels of engagement in their spoken conversation too. From what we observe, a structural imbalance of kind seems to permeate the relationship in multiple ways. While Ethan displays a keen interest in Eliza’s family and culture – he inquires about the Polish language and wants to know more about her conversation with mum – Eliza, on the other hand, seems to make minimal effort to reciprocate these gestures. Furthermore, it is Ethan who initiates conversation when they fall silent, he who suggests they meet up the following week, and he who listens attentively and responds to Eliza’s remarks and deliberations about the Polish word for nice and airport shuttle bus service.

On the surface, then, Ethan appears to be active and outspoken. His gratuitous engagement could be seen as a demonstration of the positive excitement and enthusiasm of being in love with someone whom he greatly admires – a harmless feature of the loving experience. Having said that, I wonder if Ethan’s propensity for ‘activity’ also signals a protective measure of the ego aimed at the avoidance of painful affects of passivation. His eagerness to adapt to Eliza’s schedule and to comply with her needs and demands (accepting her triumph, collecting their bags), parallels his accommodating body language and is suggestive of a denial of self – an unconscious subservient mode of defence against fear and anxiety about abandonment, the origins of which would date back to his childhood.

One could propose, in Freudian terms, that Ethan’s readiness to submit to Eliza’s mental organisation, through idealisation and his compliant attitude, provides him with a familiar way of sustaining psychic equilibrium, which must have taken precedence over the satisfaction of his individual desires and needs at some point in infancy. For one reason or another, something in early childhood might have prohibited Ethan from being able to freely express his wants and wishes to his primary carer – without fear of persecution – causing these incestuous wishful impulses to be forced into repression prematurely. This means that some psychical processes were denied satisfaction through discharge and cast out of consciousness; however, as we learn from reading Freud, in the dark and delirious unconscious they continue to grow and flourish, acting as a constant impediment to the adult’s libido and freedom.[4]

The patterns of behaviour we notice in Ethan might well be manifestations of benign defenses that help us to adapt to reality. My own experience of love – and retrospective exploration of my own role in that dynamic: as the idealised object – has made me deeply conscious of the subtle line between healthy admiration and violent idealisation, while also being cautious about how easily exploited that position of idealised object can be, albeit unconsciously. What is more, as I witnessed the interaction between these two lovers, the irritation and impatience in Eliza’s voice seemed agonizingly tangible. Clearly – or at least that was my impression – she is an educated, intelligent and competent young woman, but equally evident was that she seemed unaware of the impact of her words and actions on her loved one (with the exception of that one significant moment in the interaction, after her abrupt sounding ‘yeah’, when she gave Ethan a little hug).

Speculatively, one might draw from this relative lack of sensibility and tendency toward omnipotence – revealed in the way she asserts, and indeed prioritizes, her needs and wishes over Ethan’s – that circumstances were ‘good enough’ (to borrow Winnicott’s term) during her childhood. Perhaps, unlike Ethan, as a child she was freer to act and exist without taking into careful consideration the other’s separate existence and personal interests. Her phone call to her mum (the close attachment they seem to have) suggests possibly that family members for Eliza can be taken for granted, approached more or less as things that exist in service of her own needs – as blank screens onto which we are allowed to project and express all our anger, wants and needs without undue punishment.

In a different but related vein, psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin writes that: ‘The ability to enter into exchange with the outside object implies a successful shift from the pleasure principle, self-containment in phantasy, toward the reality principle. That is, the individual’s entrance into a shared reality of creative inter-relationships built on mutual recognition and exchange.[5]

Having recognised this curious conjunction between the mother’s care and her baby’s sexual activity, we are arguably in a better position to appreciate how Freud’s remark on incest helps us understand how in various ways both Eliza and Ethan remain under the sway of the pleasure principle, lodged within the incestuous family matrix: a milieu, which as Luce Irigaray so pertinently puts it, ultimately favours cohesion and unity over difference and desire.[6] Together, Eliza’s competitive and perhaps somewhat inflated self-perception, and Ethan’s compliant approach and underlying sense of inadequacy, seem to complement each other in a dyadic structure which is both fragile and romantic.

[1] Sigmund Freud, (1917) Introductory Lecture on Psychoanalysis: XVII, p. 257

[2] Freud, (1917) Introductory Lecture on Psychoanalysis: XX, p. 314

[3] Freud, ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love’, S.E. 11, p. 189

[4] Freud, ‘A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men’, pp. 169-171

[5] Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, pp. 37-38  

[6] Luce Irigaray, (2017) To be Born, p. 47

[spiritualesoterichighlevel]

Enlightenment Issues

In 1974 Hans Burgschmidt was sixteen years old, living in the Canadian Prairies, working in a photography studio darkroom, elbow-deep in chemicals all day long. "Is this what life is about?" he asked a high school friend. "You need to meditate," was the reply.

Not long after, Hans attended a lecture at the local library, where a man in a suit spoke about the scientific benefits of relaxation. He pressed Play on the industrial-sized U-Matic video player and there was Maharishi Mahesh, the Indian yogi who initiated the Beatles into the mysteries of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and launched the meditation careers of thousands of Western devotees.

"An infinite ocean of peace and love and happiness awaits you," said the radiant Maharishi, with his flowing hair and his garland of flowers. "What's not to like?" Hans thought, and got in touch with a local TM chapter.

Soon after he began his meditation practice, exactly as advertised, he found himself transported from his parent's basement into a shimmering inner space of light and colour and bliss. "Eventually you get so expanded and the mantra becomes so refined that you are taken to the silent source of thought – it was wonderful."

Hans was hooked. Next, he enrolled himself in advanced courses and in the late 70s he left for Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, hoping to become a teacher.

But somewhere along the line Hans became disenchanted. Maybe it was the dubious "levitation" training, or the dogmatism of his fellow teachers, or the "almost abusive" way the school administrator overworked their staff. "The discrepancies between what was promised and what was really happening kept growing," Hans told me. "Eventually I had to move on."

Thus began Hans' long career as an itinerant spiritual seeker. He hit all the New Age mainstays: Osho and then Da Free John in the 80's, trance channeling and primal scream therapy and past life regression in the 90's.

  But the same pattern of finding the limits of the guru or the practices kept repeating itself. Finally in 2006 he met a teacher he could trust – one of my own teachers, in fact – the Buddhist scholar and future neuroscience-consultant Shinzen Young. "No BS, real down to earth, just an ordinary guy teaching a well-crafted version of techniques that have been tested by Buddhists for thousands of years."

The technique was vipassana, one important – and increasingly popular – aspect of which is known as "mindfulness."

"I found it invigorating," says Hans. "It was much more active than other techniques I had learned, I could feel the power of it."

The Shadow Side of Meditation

Everything was fine, until three weeks after his first retreat, when, in Hans' words, "something changed." My sense," says Hans, "is the technique precipitated something that was already there. I mean I had done a lot of meditating in other traditions by then. They softened me up. Whatever the case, I don't think it could have turned out any other way."

Hans was at home making his bed, when the room suddenly appeared "very far away." But the room hadn't changed; he had. The part of Hans that had once looked out at the world, the core we take for granted as the "self", had without any warning disappeared.

To understand what happened to Hans, you need to understand something about how meditation works in general, and vipassana in particular. Most meditation techniques are designed to shift a person's orientation from a limited personal identity to the broader ground of their experience.

Vipassana does this by deliberately and systematically untangling the different strands that make up our sense of self and world; in the Pali language (the ancient Indian scriptural dialect of Buddhism) the word "vipassana" means "seeing into" or "seeing through."

Practicing vipassana, you have more space to make appropriate responses, and more space, too, around your looping thought-track, which can dramatically reduce stress and anxiety as well as raise a person's baseline levels of happiness and fulfillment.

This is one reason why mindfulness has become the technique of choice for thousands of clinicians and psychotherapists, and there is now a considerable body of scientific research demonstrating these and other benefits.

Yet most of the clinicians who so enthusiastically endorse mindfulness do not have a proper understanding of where it can lead. The fact is that mindfulness in large doses can penetrate more than just your thoughts and sensations; it can see right through to the very pith of who you are – or rather, of who you are not.

Because, as Buddhist teachers and teachers from many other contemplative traditions have long argued, on close investigation there doesn't appear to be any deeper "you" in there running the show. "You" are just a flimsy identification process, built on the fly by your grasping mind — a common revelation in meditation that happens to be compatible with the views of many contemporary neuroscientists.

In fact, the classic result of a successful vipassana practice is to permanently recognize the impermanence (anicca), the selflessness (anatta), and the dualistic tension or suffering (dukkha) of all experience, which may sound like an Ibsen play, but this is the clear empirical understanding that many otherwise sensible practitioners report.

For most people this shift is the most profoundly positive experience of their lives. In the words of Shinzen Young, "it allows a person to live ten times the size they would have lived otherwise, it frees them from most worries and concerns, it gives them a quality of absolute freedom and repose."

But once in a while, something goes wrong. In Buddhism this is known as falling into "the pit of the void." Young is more modern: "Psychiatrists call it Depersonalization and De-realization Disorder, or DP/DR. I call it 'Enlightenment's evil twin'."

For Hans, what began as confusion and disorientation led within a few hours to extreme panic. The emptiness was ominous – in his words, a "deficient void." One moment the world seemed far away, the next it was too present, a "barrage" of overwhelming sensations. "It was like I had no protective filter or skin – sounds and sights became incredibly abrasive.

Hearing the phone ring was like someone running a thousand volts of electricity through me. I also had feelings of being stretched and twisted inside out, like I was morphing into some kind of animal. I had no idea what was happening – I thought maybe I was getting premature Alzheimer's."

Over the next few months Hans spent hours with Young on the phone, but despite the counseling, none of his symptoms went away – if anything, he says, the selflessness, the rawness of sensations and the associated fears became even more disconcerting. One by one, all the meaningful parts of Hans' life dropped away: his love of photography, of art, even his sex drive.

"I lost my will to do anything – none if it had any meaning. You could say that I no longer understood existence. I would wake up in the morning and go 'OK, this is my body, this is me, and I guess I'm doing this but I no longer understood it. I no longer understood agency, what makes other bodies move, what animates life.

Sometimes there was a wondrous quality to this bafflement – I felt the awe and the mystery – but most of the time it was aimless and tormenting."

Was Hans experiencing a slow-motion nervous breakdown unrelated to his meditation practice?  Or was the experience of depersonalization triggered by meditation?

He was able, just barely, to keep working, although he says he has no idea how he was able to do this since, in his words,   "I often couldn't understand what people were saying – all I would hear is the weird texture of their speech patterns, there was no meaning to any of it."

His own responses, too, came as a surprise. "At times I would hear myself speaking and I had no idea where the words were coming from or what they meant. I felt like an imposter."

The Dark Night of the Soul

Hans is not alone. If the very real benefits of mindfulness add up to the good-news mental health story of our time, then, like so many good things, there is also a shadowy seam, an experience known popularly as the Dark Night, after the writings of the famous Carmelite mystic St. John of the Cross.

More meditators and practitioners are beginning to speak openly about the challenges associated with practice. The importance of this cannot be overstated, for there are those in the scientific community who believe that taking these reports seriously may one day provide key insights into both mental illness, and the mystery of contemplative transformation. They may in fact be very different expressions of a single underlying dynamic.

Some researchers are already studying this. Willoughby Britton is a meditator and a clinical psychologist at Brown University. After encountering some of this difficult territory herself, she began an ambitious research project to document the full range of phenomena that can happen as a result of practice. The initiative is called "The Varieties of Contemplative Experience".

Over the past three years, Britton and her colleagues have conducted detailed interviews with over forty senior Buddhist (and some non-Buddhist) teachers and another forty or so practitioners about challenges they've either experienced themselves, or, in the case of teachers, seen in their students.

The study's current research design cannot answer the question of what percentage of practitioners run into problems, although Britton did tell me that serious complications that require inpatient psychiatric hospitalization probably affect less than one percent of meditators. "Milder, more chronic symptoms," she says, "will be higher – but no one knows how high."

The full range of symptoms, from mild to intense, include headaches, panic, mania, confusion, hallucinations, body pain and pressure, involuntary movements, the de-repression of emotionally-charged psychological material, extreme fear and – perhaps the central feature – the dissolution of the sense of self.

But, as she reports in a recent interview, the most surprising finding for Britton has been the duration of impairment, which she defines as the inability of an adult to work or take care of children.

"We've been deliberately looking for worst-case scenarios, so I expect this number will go down as we get more data, but right now we are finding that people in these experiences are affected for an average of three years, with a range of six months to twelve years."

Britton has found that two demographics seem to be affected more than other: young men aged eighteen to thirty, who, in the way of young men, go for months-long retreats in Asia and pursue hardcore practice and log ten to twenty hours of meditation a day. "We had to create a "Zealotry Scale" says Britton, dryly, "it was such a major predictor."

The other large group, she says, is middle-aged women. "These ladies have been going to, say, Spirit Rock Meditation Centre for last ten to twenty years, have a nice hour-a-day practice, and then seven or ten years into it something happens."

The situation is complicated by the fact that a period of difficulty is actually a perfectly normal part of many meditation practices. A well-meaning therapist might label this pathological, when what might be more helpful to the "patient" is guidance from an experienced meditation teacher.

Within vipassana traditions, some classic texts talk about the "dukkha ñanas" – challenging stages that are actually a sign of progress. These are a natural response to the layer of mind being exposed; with a teacher's help, the student can move through their Dark Night in a matter of days or hours. Indeed, some teachers argue that the skills practitioners acquire in coping with these passages are often the very ones that allow them to progress to more liberating stages of the path.

Shinzen Young writes, "It is certainly the case that almost everyone who gets anywhere with meditation will pass through periods of negative emotion, confusion, disorientation, and heightened sensitivity to internal and external arisings. The same thing can happen in psychotherapy and other growth modalities. For the great majority of people, the nature, intensity, and duration of these kinds of challenges is quite manageable."

According to Young, the real Dark Night occurs when, as in Hans' case, a practitioner has difficulty integrating insight into selflessness. This is something he says he has only ever seen a few times in his four decades of teaching.

Perhaps surprisingly, Britton's research has so far not revealed any clear associations between meditation-related difficulties and prior psychiatric or trauma history. Problems can occur in individuals with no identifiable red flags; conversely, individuals with multiple red flags (bipolar disorder, trauma history, and so on) can do intensive retreats without any difficulties whatsoever.

"We have to be careful," Britton told me, "about jumping to conclusions and excluding people prematurely from meditation's possible benefits. My personal opinion is that the place where we need most help is not in identifying at-risk people so much as improving support systems."

Britton gets two to three emails a week from people looking for help, so this is something she thinks a lot about. "Just talking about the experience with someone and hearing that none of it is new … this has a hugely positive effect on people.

That's eighty percent of what needs to happen. Just normalizing the experience." To that end, she has already founded both a space and a website to provide resources for practitioners in need, and also to educate teachers and clinician about the full range of meditation' effects.

"Length of impairment is directly related to how much access the student has to a good teacher. Many of the people I've spoken to have been through dozens of therapists and meditation instructors and most have no idea what to do."

Young has his own techniques for helping meditators work with Dark Night phenomena. Hans adds one more: serious fitness. "Pilates, weight-training, yoga – I now do it all. For me, I finally figured out that I needed to integrate these changes into my physical body. Ultimately this is what turned the corner for me."

Seven years after his drop into the pit of the void, Hans is arriving at a better place. Not a normal place, mind you – and here his laugh is a bit hysterical: "What's normal? I still live in emptiness and wake up every morning with no idea who I am."

But he no longer gets panic attacks, or feels ten thousand volts of electricity irradiate his senses every time the phone rings. His sex drive has returned, and with it a new longing for a relationship. He also has a strong interest in helping others manage similar problems.

"So much of it is about patience," he says. Over the past seven years, the words of one teacher kept circling around in his head: "If life gives you nothing you want and is not on your own terms, would you still have the generosity to show up for it?"  There's no easy "yes" to that question.

[garywonghc]

Buddhism and Ageing: In Praise of Ageing

by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

The Lord Buddha described birth, sickness, old age, and death as dukkha, or suffering. If we do not die young, we are all going to experience old age and death. Therefore, ageing is a topic that concerns everyone.

In contemporary society, we find a cult of youth and a denial of the natural course of life towards decay and death. Most people hope to keep looking young and beautiful forever. Indeed, beauty is usually associated with youthfulness. So we find countless books and articles on how to keep old age at a distance and stay young forever. But no matter how many facelifts we undergo or how many exercise and diet regimes we submit to, eventually the body will deteriorate and the likelihood of illness will increase. Deterioration is the nature of all conditioned things. Buddhism faces up to the unpalatable facts of life and death. Buddhism even uses these facts as the path itself, as a means to transcend birth and death.

In more traditional societies, the advent of ageing is seen as natural and is not regarded as something to be avoided or denied for as long as possible. Rather, there is an appreciation that having lived for so long there should likewise be a growth of knowledge and understanding. Old age is often equated with wisdom and experience. The older members of the family are accorded respect and often assume roles as councillors and guides. They have an important role to play in society.

Even in the West, there is the archetypal character of the wise old woman (as well as the witch) and most storybook wizards are elderly. In fact, old wrinkled faces with shining eyes full of love and intelligence often display real beauty.

Unfortunately, even though nowadays women over the age of 50 make up the majority of the population, in the modern social order the elderly are increasingly shunted aside, isolated among their senior contemporaries, and ignored by the world around them. Many feel that their useful days are finished and they have no further contribution to make to society. As a result, old age is something to be dreaded and evaded for as long as possible.

So the question is, how do we deal with our inevitable ageing in a way that makes sense of our life? In traditional Buddhist countries, it is the custom that as our children grow up and leave home, as our professional lives wind down, and as our daily activities become more inwardly directed, we can direct more attention to the Dharma and to setting our lives in order so as to be ready for death and future rebirths.

In traditional Buddhist societies, many older people take the eight precepts and pass their time in meditation or other meritorious activities, such as circumambulating holy objects, making prostrations, chanting, visiting temples, and so on. The Dharma becomes the focus of their lives and they cultivate devotion. In this way, their lives remain meaningful and important, even as the axis of focus shifts.

For women in particular, it often happens that our youth is taken up with acting out the roles that society has determined for us. First, as physical objects of desire we strive to be as attractive and alluring as possible to fulfill male fantasies. Then as wives and mothers, we devote ourselves to nurturing our homes and families. Nowadays, most women also have full-time careers in which they must work hard to keep ahead. Even while enjoying many advantages, women live stress-filled lifestyles designed to meet the expectations of others.

Even in the modern world, however, we are seeing an interesting phenomenon occurring. Many people, especially women, having fulfilled their life’s tasks as wives, mothers, and professionals, are now ready to give their attention to more introspective callings such as the arts, the alternative healing professions, psychology, and the study and practice of spiritual paths. Since these women are often highly educated and motivated, they are able to acquire new skills and extend a positive outreach to the society around them. Rather than spending their declining years merely playing golf or watching TV, their inner spiritual world is now given greater prominence.

Awhile back, I met a group of women living in an affluent small town in Florida who were devoting their later years to sincere spiritual practices and philanthropic activities. These women were benefitting not only their own neighbourhoods, but also reaching out to people in other cultures and lands. They felt very happy and fulfilled to be using their time for the benefit of others as well as themselves.

It seems that the foremost regret expressed by the dying is, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” By contrast, many people I know have remarked that the latter part of their lives has become even more satisfying and meaningful than their earlier years. Now they can discover their own genuine interests rather than merely conforming to societal expectations. Although they accept that their earlier life experience was necessary for what has developed later, like a tree that grows slowly and only in time can reveal its true characteristics, yet they feel that they have finally found their reason for living.

Of course, most of us would prefer a 25-year-old body, but few would choose to return to our 25-year-old mind! So instead of dreading the approach of old age, despite the unavoidable loss of physical and mental flexibility, we can welcome this new stage of life and explore its potential. We have a choice either to view our ageing as the gradual fading of all our dreams or to regard retirement as the start of a new and exciting era.

As we grow older, we see our contemporaries – our friends and family members – succumbing to illnesses and death, so we are forced to recognise these states as natural and inevitable. As Buddhist women, we have an important part to play in demonstrating an alternative lifestyle that is not so dependent on the usual societal roles and can show the way forward to greater freedom and a more meaningful way of living. Even if our old knees ache too much for sitting cross-legged and health issues slow us down physically, our minds can still be bright and clear. Our meditation can deepen and mature.

Now that we have more time for ourselves, we can select a lifestyle that is meaningful and engaging, exploring spiritual pathways and reaching out in social engagement, thus benefitting ourselves and likewise benefitting others. This is a great opportunity to put the skills acquired over our lifetime to good use. We are reborn to a new life without having to discard the old one!

Many people chose to travel or learn new skills, sports, or crafts once their “official” work and responsibilities come to an end. As Buddhists, the question we can ask ourselves is, “Now that my worldly responsibilities are fulfilled, how can I use this life most practically to be of help to myself and others? What needs to be done to make some more advances on the Dharma path?” Our path need not include long retreats or total immersion in Buddhist community work. There are many ways to develop ourselves and tame our mind. Usually as we grow older, the storms of emotional upheavals have quieted, we have some basic self-understanding, and hopefully our formal practice has also deepened over the years. Now we have the time and space to nurture the bodhi saplings of our practice toward fruition and to encourage the bodhi tree of realisation to reach its full potential.

For many ageing Buddhists, there is also the issue of where to live as our faculties decline. As the family nucleus shrinks and no longer offers home facilities, many older people, especially in the West but also increasingly in Asian countries, must face the probability of living their later years in a nursing home. To end up surrounded by people and caregivers who have no interest in spiritual matters can be a very gloomy prospect. Therefore, it is time to start talk about starting retirement homes for senior Buddhists – communities not limited to any particular tradition. The main problem is probably financial, since acquiring suitable land and buildings, plus the subsequent upkeep would require considerable investment. However, it would be a very worthwhile endeavour and surely requires more thought and attention. It is important to make good use of our later years, while our faculties are still functioning, even as our physical vigour declines.

Finally, it is up to us to take the life we have been given and make the most of the opportunity to develop our potential. This precious human body is precious because we can use it to cultivate our mind and advance along the path. We can use our remaining days to create the circumstances to die without regrets.

Sometimes as we age, we can become very ill with life threatening diseases such as cancer or heart problems. This is common. Many people look on the onset of such sicknesses with dread and horror and hope to die quietly in their sleep with no prior warning. However, it is not always an advantage to pass away without any preparation.

When we recognise in advance that our allotted time here is limited, we have the opportunity to make arrangements for leaving this life in an orderly and satisfactory manner. Knowing that we are truly going to die and that time is running out can help us focus the mind wonderfully on what is important and what is not important. People are often transformed as they begin to finally let go of attachments and long-held resentments in readiness to pass on.

Facing death gives us a chance to reconcile our differences, repair broken relationships, and allow those whom we hold dear to know that they are loved and appreciated. In the face of our imminent mortality, we have nothing to lose but our hang-ups.

At the point of death, it is best to focus the mind on our personal practice or object of devotion. At least we can try to concentrate on light and absorb our minds in that. Friends and loved ones surrounding a dying person should remain calm and supportive, not giving way to grief, but perhaps gently chanting something appropriate.

On the whole, if one has led a fairly decent life, and especially if one has made some effort to merge the Dharma with one’s mind, then death holds no fears. The consciousness will follow along its accustomed path. So it is vital to make sure, while we still have some control over our thoughts and emotions, that this will be a pathway we would wish to travel.

As Professor Dumbledore advised young Harry Potter, “For one with a well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

[portfoliow]

Costume Design in Early Films: History, Icons, Transformation, and Magic (Part 2) by Paola C. Quintero

The 1920’s period, right after the end of World War II, brought a sense of greater freedom, optimism, and prosperity in the United States. American women finally gained their right to vote in 1920, but even if “the great expectations for it were not realized, since few female candidates ran for political office and no separate women’s vote developed”, societal norms towards women were changing.

During this decade, some women started to dress more comfortably by wearing pants and less constrictive fabrics. Jersey was introduced, a “soft, stretchable knitted fabric first used in the late 19th century for sportswear and outerwear. In the 1920’s, pioneered by Chanel, it was made into dresses and two-piece suits and became the most fashionable fabric of the period. It can be made of cotton, nylon, rayon, wool or synthetic fabrics”.

In Buster Keaton’s silent comedies of the 1920’s the female characters have very simple construction. In the short silent film titled One Week, Keaton’s wife’s dresses have a slender, casual silhouette while the skirt usually goes down to mid-calf, a length of dress that would not have been seen in the early 1900’s.

Another one of Keaton’s early Films, Neighbors, actress Virginia Fox also wears modest and conservative costume designs, which seem very modern for those days. The dress that she wears in court in front of the judge could easily be worn today (with a minor adjustment of length). Other women in the house party wear long flow-y dresses, and it is obvious by looking at these styles that the crinoline, corset, and bustle are long gone. Another sign of modernity is Ms. Fox’s haircut, the modern and trendy short bob; very popular style in the 1920’s. The women in Keaton’s seem used to wearing these clothes, as they move freely and look comfortable in them.

At the end of 20’s decade, in Flesh and the Devil, Greta Garbo, wears a wardrobe by Andre-Ani, a costume designer who worked at MGM from 1925 to 1928. In this film, Ms. Garbo plays Felicitas, an elegant upper class countess. Felicitas is a young, beautiful seductress and an unfaithful wife. She becomes the object of desire that finds herself in the middle of a love triangle.

Andre-Ani mirroring her character, dresses Garbo in luxurious and shiny fabrics that at times frame her beautiful face. She wears short fitted jackets, a modern V-neck blouse showing cleavage, hats with veils, and loose skirts below the knee, finishing off the look with low-heeled black pumps. In another sexy look in the film Ms. Garbo wears an ultra- fitted sleeveless dress that shows off her body. The fabric is soft, lightweight, and sheer. This sensual dress perfectly enhances her vamp character.

In 1930 Marlene Dietrich appeared as Lola Lola in the The Blue Angel, stealing the show in her role of cabaret showgirl. The Marlene Dietrich from the early movies of her career is very different from the Marlene of her later movies. She was one of those actresses that kept reinventing herself, but even as she turned into a fashion icon, her style remained constant throughout her film career.

Wearing playful cabaret dances costumes in The Blue Angel, Dietrich steals a philistine professor’s heart with her coquettish singing and dancing, ultimately destroying him. Early on Marlene displayed the star quality and glamour that she would later become famous for. Her costumes were spectacular and served their proper purpose, since she was not a breathtaking knockout in this movie, prior to her transformation into Hollywood star.

The character was even a bit overweight and wore simple dresses with rolled-up sleeves when not working at the cabaret. Yet Lola Lola in her charming ensembles enchants the audience with her sense of humor, eroticism, but most of all the confidence in herself. It is later, when she moves to Hollywood that her transformation takes place.

Edith Head was an important accomplice in the glamorous Hollywood transformation of Marlene Dietrich. “Fashion is a language. Some know it, some learn it, some never will- like an instinct...but Dietrich was born knowing,” said Edith Head of Dietrich in her autobiography. Dietrich’s values reflected her professional attitude towards acting, “the prerequisites for her career were: discipline, loyalty, self-control, duty and work. ‘And a love of duty. A love of work while doing it. And a love of the constant responsibility’.”

It takes a lot of work to become a legend, it seems. Dietrich was a collaborator with Ms. Head in the creation of the characters’ costumes and came to the fittings prepared to work. Edith writes, “Symbol of glamour? You should see her at 6:30am, without make- up, freshly scrubbed and crackling with energy.”

In “The Blue Angel” we get to see the very beginning of Dietrich’s acting career. Towards the end of the movie the roles reversed: the professor’s downfall is represented by the clown costume he wears on stage. In contrast, we witness Lola Lola’s rise, perfectly symbolized by her clothes, foreshadowing her rise as a Hollywood star.

She is no longer a “cheap chorus girl in a tacky outfit who displays her charms to everyone who dares to puff at her ever-so-naughty skirt feathers,” instead she wears a costume and hat that was put together by Dietrich herself, representing the freedom and of the tradition of the road.

Edith Head was one such designer that used the magic of clothes to transform and transport audiences and actors alike. She is the creator of hundreds of looks during her long career in a male-dominated Hollywood. In the early days of her career as costume designer at Paramount, Edith was unsure on whether she could or should continue working in that field. She had started without any formal experience in fashion design or art. Her background was as a schoolteacher teaching French to girls, after receiving a master’s in French Literature from Stanford University.

Looking for a summer job she replied to a want ad posted by Howard Greer, who was looking for a sketch artist. She showed up at the interview with a portfolio of sketches made by artist school mates- not by her- and was hired on the spot. On the first day of work the truth about her drawing skills was revealed but instead of firing her, Howard Greer thought the incident was amusing and started teaching her how to draw. Edith Head designed costumes for many years at Paramount using the language of fashion to express her creativity, to develop personalities, and to enchant movie audiences.

The fascination with fashion, costume and transformation will continue to go on. Designers for film such as Colleen Atwood, Milena Canonero, and Jean Paul Gaultier will hopefully keep designing costumes that will magically advance film narrative and enhance character development. Today, audiences will continue to be entranced by the on-screen and off-screen transformation of entertainers like Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Kidman, Victoria Beckham, Cate Blanchet, Drew Barrymore, Meryl Streep, and the starlet of the moment: Megan Fox.

What will they do next? Where will the inspiration come from? Which well known or obscure designer will collaborate? Which fashion trend will be spread next thanks to this movie star? How much work and discipline will it take to control and create an image? It will be interesting to see the contribution of costume design to the world of fashion, and how women’s dress and the standards of beauty keep evolving.

Schneir, xi

O’Hara Callan, 140

One Week. Dir. Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton, DVD, Passport International

Productions of California, Inc., 1920.

Neighbors. Dir. Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton, DVD, Passport International Productions of California, Inc., 1920.

Flesh and the Devil. dir. Clarence Brown, VHS, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1927. Leese, 23

The Blue Angel. dir. Joseph Von Sternberg. Universum Film, 1931. Head, 6

Sudendorf, 132 Sudendorf, 142

Costume Designer of Paramount Studios during Golden Age of American Cinema. He was replaced by Travis Banton.

[staymotivatedbyself]

Tips to Always Stay Motivated By Yourself

I used to think I was unstoppable. Only six months ago, I had been Juggling a demanding full-time occupation, graduate faculty, and a site while maintaining a decent social life and a joyful marriage. I then made my job and began working for myself.

I opened an Etsy store, recommitted to blogging, and envisioned a hectic career in the not-so-distant future with many different creative freelance opportunities involving writing, making, teaching, and consulting. With my additional 40+ hours per week, I really could do EVERYTHING.

Subsequently I obtained re-acquainted with reality. Where once I was a steam engine, composing blog posts in my morning commute, completing papers on my lunch break, squeezing brunch, Orange Is The New Dark , and laundry into a weekend filled with readings and research, I was now only a sedentary homebody--getting plenty of sleep, thinking about food a good deal, and appreciating easy moments of silent nothingness.

Like a balloon from the previous weekend's birthday celebration, I had been gradually deflating, losing all motivation to do whatever , let alone everything.

What Occurred? Unexpectedly, I had to deal with the absence of pressure. I was forced to determine the way to do things in my own, for myself, at my own pace. Sounds great, however, ideal?! Wrong.

When you've spent years relying on outside deadlines to keep you busy, you are left feeling pretty lazy and uninspired when these pressures vanish. Fortunately, there's a wealth of research on the best way best to stay motivated and stimulate imagination, which is particularly useful for artists, designers, manufacturers, and anybody self employed in a creative field.

Here Is What I've discovered:

Watch Motivational Movies

as per experts stud shows that if you watch motivational movies your motivational is also high. so, if you feel demotivated watch motivational movies which helps you to stay motivated.

 Use Your Strengths

Positive psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman. Have found that comprehension and actively practicing your best character strengths enhances your general well-being and enjoyment. Capitalizing on your unique character strengths during work may also energize you and lead to a more satisfying career.

All these Character strengths, or"values in action," incorporate a listing of twenty five positive traits, from prudence to gratitude to bravery, we strongly identify and exercise regularly. Discover your top personality advantages through the free VIA Survey of Character Strengths [http://www.viacharacter.org/Survey/Account/Register], then correct your job to best use them in your everyday targets and tasks.

For Example, I know that one of my top character strengths is standpoint -- discovering ways of making sense of the world and sharing shrewd counsel with others. Just how can I use that in my creative work? Maybe by collecting the information I know about imagination and inspiration and sharing that with other girls...

Seek Intrinsic Motivators

Why Did She Makes Things card [https://www.etsy.com/listing/62380611/why-did-she-make-things-card] from Pinwheel Designs

Extrinsic motivation is so last century. According to best-selling writer Daniel H. Pink, External rewards and punishments, or"carrots and sticks," are not only unsuccessful at inspiring quality work but also detrimental. "Science is showing," Pink says,"that carrots and sticks can promote bad behaviour, create addiction, and promote short term thinking at the cost of this long-view."

So what is the solution? Harnessing your inner drivers of success, your inborn motivation. To try it, suspend the thought for a moment that you are engaged in a creative quest to finally earn gobs of cash, fame, praise, and appreciation. Sure, it is great to try for them, and you clearly will need to exude sufficient success to encourage yourself, however, the best way to create truly great work is to locate intrinsic motivators. Here's how:

1. Infuse your creative job with more significance, a larger purpose, which will help direct you through the difficult times. 2. If appropriate, battle for freedom (by which I mean alternative, not necessarily independence) in everything you can do, when    you perform it, how you can do this, and that you do it with. 3. Create command a main focus. What is more rewarding seeing yourself improve on your craft? Set"Big Hairy Audacious Goals"We

   All know the value of establishing goals for ourselves, but the majority of the advice I have read sings the praises, almost exclusively, of little, realistic, short-term goals. Do not get me wrong, these are crucial to advancement. Reachingn incremental goals gives you the confidence to keep going.

Equally significant, but are such giant, pie-in-the-sky objectives. I do not only mean dreams and aspirations but those big, hairy, audacious goals--painfully challenging but also concrete and quantifiable.

The expression"BHAG" (declared BEE-hag, short for Big Hairy Audacious Goal) was coined by industry advisor and writer Jim Twenty years back, and the phenomenon has been a important part of company leadership ever since. A BHAG, which is meant to be quite difficult but not impossible to achieve and require ten or more years of commitment, is meant to be so exciting the vision of achieving it kicks into gear, and working toward it will necessarily change you, even if you never reach the finish line.

Put the Mood

   Write Drunk Edit Sober print    [https://www.etsy.com/listing/120924719/write-drunk-edit-sober-ernest-hemingway?ref=sr_gallery_3&ga_search_query=write+drunk+edit+sober&ga_ship_to=US&ga_page=1&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery]    available at Harvey Grey

   The best time to be creative may not be when you believe. If you're a morning person, it is likely late at night, once you're unfocused, calm, and at a positive disposition.

For night owls, the exact same is true in the first morning. So once you have to get the creative juices flowing, avoid waiting till you're in a rush on a project then downing some coffee to jolt you into equipment. In reality, the stud demonstrates that a beer may be more useful in sparking creative thinking, while the coffee is more helpful in executing your thoughts.

   Also consider painting your workspace a Cool, calming color, like blue or green. Research conducted by the University of   British Columbia showed that"blue enhances performance on a creative task."

   And, Of course, make certain that you're getting enough exercise, which will not only enhance your physical health but also    boost your sleep, reduce stress, enhance your mood and overall well being, also lead to growth in the other areas of your life    [http://blog.bufferapp.com/why-exercising-makes-us-happier], such as your creative practice.

Set Your Schedule

   Which defines the daily programs of the planet's most famous creative folks, it is that there is not any one-size-fits-all    program. If you are starting a brand new creative venture or attempting to reinvigorate your current artistic practice,    consider experimenting with different routines.

   The very first place to begin is in bed. Make sure you're getting the Right amount of sleep for your particular age, health,    and way of life. The 8-hour recommendation which most of us know is actually just an average    [http://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need] -- a few adults need fewer hours though some    need much more.

   Next, when starting a creative job, make sure to give yourself enough time to find stream    (psychology), The psychological state related to being"fully immersed in a feeling of    energized attention, full participation, and enjoyment in the process" of an action that is perfectly suited to your current    skill level (i.e. not overly simple in order to be dull, not so challenging so as to be bothersome ).

   And finally, do not forget that your focus has a natural rhythm, just as your body understands when you will need sleep    (notice: circadian rhythm [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm]) and when to menstruate. Attempt to schedule routine breaks    [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110208131529.htm]Throughout your workout to deactivate and refresh your mental    attention. My favourite method for doing this, especially during more emotionally taxing tasks, is the Pomodoro technique    [http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/the-pomodoro-technique-is-it-right-for-you.html]. Stay Creatively Fuele

   This May be a difficult one to swallow, however, the very best fuel for imagination is distress. The easiest way to churn out    the exact same work over and above is to get familiar with your skills and techniques, but seeking new problems will challenge    your abilities. Conflict can be a hidden    resource for inciting innovation [http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/turn-conflict-into-creativity-5-tips.html]. Bettering your    worldview through authentic multicultural adventures will improve your creative thinking  

   Never Underestimate the ability of this buddy-system, from crossing the street to crossing things off your list. Commit to a    group of similar creatives or identify a person in your field who may appreciate some mutual responsibility, a close friend or    relative who isn't afraid to call out you for slacking, or, ideally, someone who is both.

   Create urgency by regularly setting hard deadlines and sticking to them. Research shows    [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12009041]That imposing strict deadlines on your own results in far better and more    consistent performance. It is a no brainer. Consider creating a simple accountability chart    [http://www.sparringmind.com/productivity-science/] to maintain progress.

Procrastination? Just Say No.

   Easier said than done, right? Well, understanding the science of Procrastination might help you overcome it. Psychologists    think that procrastination has all to do with disposition    [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303933104579306664120892036]--we delay beginning a job to prevent the    negative feelings of anxiety or worry connected to the challenge. The remedy is to concentrate on repairing your mood in much    more productive ways:

    * Time Travel: Visualize how good you will feel when you finish your task.     * Just Get Started: Inform yourself you only have to do the first one or two steps. Everyone's done it, at least one time...     * Easy Things First: Build momentum by beginning with the steps which you feel like doing.

   Persevere

   YouTubeRecognize that disappointments and frustration are inevitable. Hopefully, you've already been inspired by this quote from Ira    Glass to keep trying despite feeling as if you're falling short.

   Also, Know the key to your success will not really depend on your own skills, abilities, talents, or even your intellect. What    you want to triumph is grit. Psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth discovered that the greatest predictor of a person's    achievement is self explanatory, the tenacity    to perpetrate long-term goals despite hardship.

[maxwellyjordan]

Ask the authors: “Plain words, easily understood”

The following is a series of questions prompted by the publication of Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone’s “The Free Speech Century” (Oxford University Press, 2019). As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously suggested in 1919 in Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court’s first attempt to interpret the First Amendment’s free speech clause, the “most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” But what does free speech protect? And what constitutes a free press? In this volume, Bollinger and Stone bring together 16 First Amendment experts to address these questions, looking back at history and ahead into the future.

Bollinger is the president of Columbia University. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.

Welcome, Lee and Geoffrey, and thank you for participating in this question-and-answer exchange.

* * *

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. — First Amendment to the Constitution

“The phrase ‘Congress shall make no law’ is composed of plain words, easily understood.” — Justice Hugo Black, “The Bill of Rights,” N.Y.U. Law Review (1960)

QUESTION: This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first Supreme Court decisions interpreting the freedoms of speech and the press. From the perspective of 2019, it is hard to understand how the entire 19th century passed without any free speech cases at the court. How is it that these clauses from the First Amendment went unaddressed for so long? And what changed in 1919 to bring them to the court?

BOLLINGER & STONE: As originally enacted, the First Amendment, like the other guarantees of the Bill of Rights, applied only to the federal government. Unlike the state and local governments, the federal government has limited authority to regulate speech and press.

The two situations in which disputes over federal restrictions on these rights might most likely have reached the Supreme Court before 1919 involved the Sedition Act of 1798 and some of the actions of the Lincoln administration during the Civil War. In neither instance, though, did those cases make it to the Supreme Court. In part, this was no doubt due to the recognition that the makeup of the court at those times was such that the justices would almost surely have ruled in favor of the government.

What changed later was the federal government’s enactment of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 during World War I. Some 2,000 individuals were prosecuted under these laws, so it was no surprise that the Supreme Court wound up deciding several cases dealing with the First Amendment at this time.

In 1925, in its decision in Gitlow v. New York, the court for the first time suggested that the First Amendment applied to the states through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. That opened the door for a much greater range of First Amendment issues to reach the court involving laws enacted by state and local governments.

QUESTION: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested that we approach free speech as an “experiment.” What does this mean for doctrine? Does the court treat other parts of the Constitution as experiments?

BOLLINGER & STONE: In his dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States, which was decided in 1919, Holmes wrote as follows:

[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas — that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.

This was one of the most powerful statements ever written by a justice of the Supreme Court about the meaning of the First Amendment. When Holmes said that this was an “experiment,” he meant that we have (in his view) committed ourselves to this position, but we do not know how it will play out over time. No nation had ever before embraced such a bold approach to free speech, and Holmes understood that it could turn out badly. In the end, we might come to embrace bad ideas that were destructive of our highest aspirations as a nation. A “safer” approach might have been to give the government the authority to rule out of bounds those ideas that seemed to government officials to be unwise. The key to the “experiment,” in Holmes’ view, was that we did not give government officials that power. Instead, we entrusted the American people with the freedom to espouse any ideas they wished, and we counted on them to make sound judgments about which ideas to embrace and which to reject. This was, indeed, a bold and risky “experiment.” The fundamental notion was that it was better to trust the American people to sort things out through the “marketplace of ideas” than to permit elected officials to decide what ideas can and cannot be advanced.

In some sense, of course, the creation of the American government and the crafting of our Constitution was an “experiment.” The Framers hoped it would all work out well over time, but there were no guarantees. The specific structure of the national government, the powers assigned to the executive, the Congress and the judiciary, and the relationship between the states and the federal government were all “experiments.” We did, after all, have a Civil War. But the Constitution’s robust protection of free speech, as understood and advocated for by Holmes, was certainly one of the riskier components of that experiment.

QUESTION: As you write, “Freedom of speech has become so much more than just a legal principle. It has become a part of the national identity, and in so many ways we have learned to define ourselves as a people through the process of creating the principle itself.” Can you elaborate? In the age of social media, it can sometimes seem that the freedom of speech produces more fragmentation than unity.

BOLLINGER & STONE: As much as the First Amendment is about “rights” —  the right of dissent, of sovereignty residing in the citizenry and not in the government, and so on — it is also about the character of society. If you were to ask the average citizen what values define the United States, the answer would likely include the right to speak freely without fear of government censorship and a general commitment to a free press. And when people discuss freedom of speech and press, you frequently hear about the capacity to reason and respond, the recognition of the importance of compromise, and, sometimes, even about bravery, magnanimity and self-doubt. This basic principle is for most people a source of pride and, certainly, of differentiation from authoritarian regimes. There has also been a notable coalescence across the political spectrum in favor of free speech and press, even though on some issues (e.g., campaign finance) there can be sharp divides between conservatives and liberals concerning how best to apply these principles. Finally, it is worth noting that there is an interesting, if underexplored, phenomenon of the constitutional jurisprudence affecting public attitudes about free speech beyond the realm of state action, in the private sphere.

To the point that free speech in the context of the newest technologies of communication — and social media, in particular — may be working to “fragment” rather than to “unify” American public thought and discussion, one must be very careful. It is possible that the doctrines and jurisprudence governing freedom of expression that we have built up over the past century will now have to be modified in light of the adverse effects on the public mind as a result of the influence of the internet. Self-isolation from contrary viewpoints, excess attention to the trivial, rising anger and polarization, manipulation of public opinion through the spread of propaganda and misinformation, these and other oft-cited problems of the internet must be taken seriously. But, in this moment of despair about the internet and free speech, it is useful to remember that only a decade ago the internet and social media were being credited with democratizing opportunities for speech and with offering meaningful advances in the spread of knowledge. It may take some time to reach an accurate and balanced assessment regarding the issues of free speech and the internet, while the many players involved also adjust their behavior in light of the realities of this new medium. We should allow for that opportunity before we take stock of the jurisprudence of free speech and start to overhaul it.

QUESTION: You write that “in many of our major First Amendment cases the Justices who were most sensitive to the need to devise a strong principle of free speech were appalled by the state of mind prevalent in the society that produced the frenzy of censorship.” Could one say that the freedoms of speech and press are in fact more counter-democratic values than truly democratic ones?

BOLLINGER & STONE: It is common to hear people say, when talking about the purpose of the First Amendment, that it is to protect the rights of citizens against “government” censorship, implying that the government is acting somehow independently of the citizenry. That may on occasion be true, but much more common, particularly during cycles of the most severe intolerance, is that the government has abridged the First Amendment rights of dissenters with the full support of the majority of citizens. In those instances, the court is called on to counter a democratically arrived-at law and uphold First Amendment rights. The independence of the judiciary is, in this way, central to the form of self-governing democracy we have chosen through our Constitution. But this construct raises several questions: First, is this the best system? Other democracies, such as the United Kingdom, do not rely on the judiciary to secure freedom of speech over time. Second, has our particular system worked, in fact? It is a striking reality that in the periods of greatest national stress — namely that of World War I and the era following the end of World War II — the Supreme Court failed to muster the courage to resist extreme intolerance towards dissent, at least measured by current standards of freedom of speech and press. Have the lessons of those failures registered in our minds since then, such that we can now count on the judiciary to protect our rights in times of national panic and insecurity? That remains to be seen.

QUESTION: Former Justice Albie Sachs of the South African Constitutional Court suggests in his chapter that the U.S. Constitution is centered on free speech, whereas the South African Constitution is centered on equality. Do you agree? And what might the Supreme Court learn from South African approaches?

BOLLINGER & STONE: Sachs is trying to explain why under our First Amendment jurisprudence racist speech is protected, as the Supreme Court held in 1968 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, a case involving hateful and inflammatory speeches by participants in a Ku Klux Klan rally. Noting that the South African Constitution mandates a different outcome, he postulates that South Africa is more concerned than the United States about eliminating the vestiges of racism and apartheid than in securing a robust right of freedom of speech. We acknowledge the essence of Sachs’ insight, with the contrast partly attributable to our respective countries’ different, if similarly inexcusable, histories in this regard.

But there is also this to consider when assessing the modern First Amendment and its relationship to racism in America. Several of the most remarkable First Amendment cases were interlinked with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. This is especially notable in the most famous First Amendment decision of the court in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). While that case, in a narrow sense, was about state defamation laws and the rights of citizens to criticize government officials, the facts of the case involved claims made (some false) by civil rights groups about Alabama officials’ improper treatment of blacks and their persecution of Martin Luther King Jr. It was patently clear that the libel judgment against The New York Times in the state trial court was concerned with punishing the expression of pro-civil rights views, not with protecting the reputation of the plaintiff (a member of the Montgomery City Council). And the Supreme Court was no doubt moved to reach its decision, at least in part, by a felt need to protect that expression and to support an emerging national consensus that the question of race in America must be addressed. In other words, you can look at the modern jurisprudence of the First Amendment and see its development inextricably linked to the struggle for equality in the United States.

QUESTION: Last June, Justice Elena Kagan in dissent in Janus v. AFSCME accused Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion of “weaponizing the First Amendment.” What do you think she meant by that?

BOLLINGER & STONE: Traditionally, the Supreme Court has most often protected speakers advocating “liberal” views in its application of the First Amendment. This is so because historically government has most often sought to silence “liberal” speakers, whether they be political dissenters, civil rights marchers, proponents of sexual expression or critics of public officials. Even the conservative Burger Court, for example, protected speakers who advanced “liberal” views in more than twice as many cases as it protected speakers who advanced more “conservative” views. This was due less to the makeup of the court or the biases of the justices than to the ways in which government tends to restrict free speech and in the traditional understanding of the scope and purpose of the First Amendment. Under the Roberts Court, though, this has changed dramatically. The Roberts Court has protected “conservative” speakers in six times as many decisions as it has protected “liberal” speakers. (For the source of these data, see Adam Liptak’s report in The New York Times.)

This dramatic shift is due largely to the ways in which the Roberts Court has redefined the scope and focus of the First Amendment. In particular, it has given much greater protection than ever before to corporate and commercial speech and to the unlimited expenditure of money in the political process. This shift in the focus of the court’s protection and understanding of free speech was evident in two decisions at the end of last term. In National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, with all of the conservative justices in the majority, held that a pregnancy-counseling service that strongly opposes abortion could not constitutionally be required to notify patients of the availability of state-financed abortions. The next day, in Janus, the same five-justice majority overruled a 40-year-old precedent and held that members of public sector unions cannot constitutionally be compelled to pay union dues even to cover the costs of collective bargaining, a decision that did serious damage to the effectiveness of public-sector unions. It was this shift in the court’s understanding of the First Amendment that led to Kagan’s charge in Janus that the justices in the majority in these cases were “weaponizing” the First Amendment to further their own political and ideological ends.

QUESTION: In February, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested in remarks at Belmont University that he’s “probably the most aggressive defender of the First Amendment.” Would you agree?

BOLLINGER & STONE: It is probably true that Roberts has voted to hold more laws unconstitutional under the First Amendment than any other justice since he arrived at the court. This is so because he not only joins his conservative colleagues when they vote to hold laws unconstitutional when they restrict corporate speech, commercial speech, campaign expenditures and other forms of “conservative” speech, but also because he sometimes joins his more liberal colleagues in cases in which at least some of his conservative colleagues dissent. Examples of the latter would be United States v. Stevens (2010); Snyder v. Phelps (2011); and United States v. Alvarez (2012). In some other cases, Roberts, along with some or all of his conservative colleagues, dissents from decisions in which the more liberal justices reject free speech claims. See, for example, Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans (2015) and Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010). But there are other cases in which Roberts and his conservative colleagues reject free speech claims over the dissents of his more liberal colleagues. See, for example, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010) and Morse v. Frederick (2007). The bottom line is that if one defines “the most aggressive defender of the First Amendment,” as the justice who most often votes to hold laws unconstitutional under the First Amendment, then Roberts’ claim might well be accurate. That does not mean, however, that Roberts has the most sensible understanding of the First Amendment.

QUESTION: Also in February, Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring in the denial of review for McKee v. Cosby, suggested that the justices reconsider New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. What was this case, and what might Thomas’ proposal portend for future jurisprudence in this area?

BOLLINGER & STONE: In McKee v. Cosby, Kathrine Mae Mckee was one of the women who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. Cosby’s lawyer responded by calling her a “liar.” McKee sued for defamation. The lower courts ruled that McKee was a limited-purpose public figure and that under the First Amendment she therefore could not recover for defamation unless she could prove that the lawyer had made his statement either with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth. The lower courts concluded that McKee could not meet that burden and therefore dismissed the case.

The Supreme Court unanimously denied McKee’s petition for a writ of certiorari. Thomas wrote an opinion, joined by no other justice, in which he called for the court to cast aside the its monumental 1964 decision in Sullivan and revert to the “original meaning” of the First Amendment. In short, Thomas correctly observed that at the time the First Amendment was adopted individuals who made statements that defamed the reputations of public officials and public figures were liable for defamation unless they could prove the truth of their statements. In Sullivan, the court, in a unanimous decision, rejected what was presumably the “original understanding” of the First Amendment and held that public officials could not recover for defamation unless they could prove both that the statement was false and that it was made by the defendant either with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth. A decade later, in Gertz v. Robert Welch (1974), the court extended this to defamation actions brought by public figures.

The Supreme Court reasoned in Sullivan that experience had proved that the traditional common-law rule led to dangerous abuse and “self-censorship” and that it was therefore inconsistent with our nation’s “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” The court’s opinion in Sullivan has been lauded by the renowned First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven as perhaps “the best and most important” opinion the Supreme Court “has ever produced in the realm of freedom of speech” and by the eminent legal philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn as “an occasion for dancing in the streets.” Indeed, the continuing legacy of Sullivan is evident every day in a world in which we confront presidential charges of “fake news” and accusations that the press is “the enemy of the people.” More than any other decision in American constitutional history, Sullivan is essential to our nation’s dependence on a free, open and courageous press. It is, frankly, bizarre that Thomas should choose this moment in American history for calling for a return to the world of the Framers. We can take comfort, at least for the moment, that none of his colleagues joined his opinion.

QUESTION: “Now with the powerful globalizing forces of open trade and investment, communications, and the movements of peoples,” you write, “we are increasingly facing a set of issues that can only be addressed through collective action of citizens around the world. How we will develop the international norms of free speech and press needed to protect that process of discussion and decision is a profound problem.” What role do you foresee for the U.S. Supreme Court in facing these international issues?

BOLLINGER & STONE: For the past 100 years, we have built a complex jurisprudence of decisions and doctrines explaining the purpose and guiding the application of the principles of freedom of speech and press. The underlying premise of this effort has been that the citizens and residents of the United States have a deep interest in advancing knowledge and in exercising their sovereign responsibilities to govern the society. The focus has been internal to the country. In the realm beyond the borders of the United States, the government’s interests in advancing foreign policies and in protecting national security were recognized as paramount, and these interests received special deference when they came into conflict with free speech and press.

As the world becomes more and more integrated and interdependent, and the issues confronting nations and individuals become increasingly global in scope, and with the corresponding establishment of the first truly world-wide communications technology (i.e., the internet), the perspective from which we think about the application of the First Amendment must also shift. The balance of interests at stake has changed. American citizens now have a much greater need to participate in public discussions around the world, both by speaking and by hearing. And those outside the country have an elevated desire to participate in the American public forum. At the same time, the government’s responsibility to protect the nation domestically and in the foreign realm now requires far more expansive engagement. We already see the elevated tensions arising around matters such as foreign “meddling” in U.S political debates and elections, or foreign nationals releasing classified government information, or U.S. citizens participating in foreign political activities, or foreign governments imposing penalties on speech emanating from the United States and protected by the First Amendment. The list of new issues and new interests is endless, and ultimately the Supreme Court will have to chart a course through this rapidly and irreversibly changing landscape.

QUESTION: In your epilogue, you write that “our most memorable and consequential decisions under the First Amendment have emerged in times of national crises, when passions are at their peak and when human behavior is on full display at its worst and at its best, in times of war and when momentous social movements are on the rise.” Are we in such a moment? What cases might stand the test of time?

BOLLINGER & STONE: We do appear to be in a moment of national crisis, one with direct consequences for freedom of speech and press. There is an array of critical issues surrounding digital communications technology and its various speech-related platforms. The effects of these technologies on public thought and discussion and their vulnerability to manipulation by actors (foreign as well as domestic) with evil intent are a source of deep concern. Then there are major reasons to fear the rise of authoritarian behavior in the government. Repeated declarations by the U.S. president that journalists are the “enemies of the people” and the purveyors of “Fake News,” along with mounting reckless statements stoking intolerance towards opponents and minorities, are reminiscent of, even if still not in the same league as, those earlier periods of great insecurity and repression, when we confronted the depths to which the nation could descend in abandoning First Amendment principles.

Now, whether the courts would today bring courage and creativity to interpreting and applying the First Amendment is very much an open question. We remain optimistic, for several reasons. Though recent in terms of the total life span of the nation, we have now had a solid half century of strengthening protections for freedom of speech and press. As noted earlier, that core commitment appears to be sustained across partisan political lines, at least in the judiciary. Cases such as Sullivan are revered and provide a source of stability that simply did not exist in the former periods of crisis. But, most of all, there are now several generations of people who have been educated in the values and the nuanced application of the First Amendment (especially in law) and stand ready to defend it against assault and to bring reason and wisdom to inventing new doctrines as needed. But only time will tell, and the history of the last century gives good cause for concern.

QUESTION: What do you foresee for the next century of free speech and free press at the court?

BOLLINGER & STONE: One fundamental question for the future is whether the Supreme Court has given too much scope to the freedom of speech. One obvious area of controversy concerns the realm of campaign finance. At present, the court, led in this respect by conservative justices, has aggressively limited the authority of the government to regulate money in the political arena. In the eyes of many, this poses a serious threat to the functioning of our democracy. In the eyes of others, though, it is dangerous to permit elected officials to regulate the electoral process in this manner because of the risk that, if given free rein, they will craft regulations that manipulate and distort our democracy in order to perpetuate their own electoral success.

Another fundamental question for the future concerns social media. The advent of social media was once thought to be a boon to democracy. Suddenly, it would be possible for individuals to reach hundreds, perhaps thousands, perhaps millions of fellow citizens with their thoughts, their concerns and their arguments about public policy. But the current state of social media poses a threat to the very functioning of our democracy. With the dissemination of “fake news” by interest groups and even foreign interventionists, American citizens are increasingly polarized and subject to serious manipulation. The obvious “solution” is for government to intervene and to police social media to ensure that intentionally false statements and other efforts to distort and manipulate public opinion do not gain traction. But, of course, this poses a serious threat to the First Amendment. As we have learned over the past century, it is dangerous to give government the authority to regulate what can and cannot be said in public discourse. The risk of abuse and manipulation in itself threatens the very notion of our democracy. But to do nothing is dangerous, as well.

These are two of the most profoundly important challenges for the future.

The post Ask the authors: “Plain words, easily understood” appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/05/ask-the-authors-plain-words-easily-understood/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[stormyrecords-blog]

live music on saturday evening!

stormy records13306 michigan avedearborn, mi 48126 313-581-9322 INSTORE PERFORMANCE!!saturday jan 27th the city of dearborn is hosting a whole slew of live music, and the Stormy Records performance is going to be ERIK MALUCHNIK 6pm free, all ages beautiful soundscape ambient music made with guitars and synthesizers erik has been working on a large body of new pieces lately, and has agreed to grace us with some advance listens into those compositions - we're really excited!! in on thursday and friday since the 2 copies we had were put on hold in late 2017 and no one ever came to buy them, we have 2 copies of the CHILD BITE STNNNG split lp on clear vinyl with hand silk screening. no holds this time - if you want one - come in and buy it. TY SEGALL Freedom's Goblin cd  $15.99lp  $24.99Freedom's Goblin flies us around the soundworld of Ty Segall in nineteen tracks, allowing him to do a bit everything for the free and the goblins of Freedom alike! Deep impact rock of all shapes and sizes and some of the most violent, passionate, funny and free pop songs of 2018. NO AGE Snares Like A Haircutcd  $15.99lp  $20.99Rock and roll for the black hole - reimagined rippers, for the misfits that 2017 couldn't kill to blast under the shadow of the big boot and beyond the glow of the chemical horizon. This is driving music, and you're the designated shotgun rider - get in! BONNIE PRINCE BILLY Wolf of the Cosmoscd  $15.99lp  $21.99Bonny sings Susanna, to simply try and save the world. Sonata Dwarf Mix Cosmos is an old companion of his, and with the Chijimi house band + 1, they bring it all back home again, this time to the space in Bonny's place. “As other practitioners are leaving the room in favor of novel forms of recording and distro and consumption, we are left with a virtual PALACE, fantastical and real structures and practices. Like we are allowed into the museum at night. We can make a great essentially live record with great songs and great players because nobody else is? Wolf of the Cosmos...is about, as much as anything, direct engagement with recorded music. So step right up to the replicant.” — Bonnie Prince Billy DIAMANDA GALAS lp All The Way $26.99All The Way features remarkable, radical takes on familiar tunes, including the seminal “The Thrill Is Gone” and a solo piano interpretation of Thelonious Monk’s “’Round Midnight.” The album’s centerpiece is the American traditional “O Death,” which has become a staple in live performances, and concludes with “Pardon Me I’ve got Someone To Kill” by country singer Johnny Paycheck. All The Way includes both electric live recordings (recorded in Paris, Copenhagen, and East Sussex) and studio recordings made in San Diego, CA. DIAMANDA GALAS double lp At St Thomas the Apostle Harlem $33.99Live at St. Thomas the Apostle documents Galás’ volcanic May 2016 performance at St. Thomas the Apostle church in Harlem NY. Cd released in winter 2017, first time on vinyl. CHUCK JOHNSON lp Balsams $18.99released in 2017, chuck's spectacular slide guitar will make you think of lanios and eno, and transport you to some other imaginary land. garnered an 8.1 on pitchfork. On this expressive and singular new album, Chuck Johnson gives his steel pedal guitar the starring role, and creates a kind of country post-rock. It feels like a universe unto itself. MICHEL BANABILA double lp Trespassing / Marilli $29.99Trespassing is a double LP compilation focussing on Dutch electronic artist Michel Banabila's incursions into otherworldly and imagined realms. LP1 is a compilation of works spanning over 20 years that acts as a bridge between his earliest work and his contemporary practice. LP2 is a reissue of his early masterpiece  Marilli, a highly sought-after album that acts as both an LSD inspired DIY tribute to Byrne and Eno's Ghosts and a youthful exploration of Banabila's personal background and his experience as a squatter in Amsterdam in the early 80s. SERGE BULOT lp Les Legendes De Broceliande $27.99Serge Bulot's multi-tracked masterpiece  Les Légendes de Brocélainde (1981), is composed equally with synthesizers, organic instruments and percussion, all played by Bulot himself. The inimitable album softly navigates between ambient, folk and electronic jazz.From the mesmerizing ''Euryale'' to the contemplative ''Échos'' each pieces of this album evokes different stories and legends of Britany. The result is a collection of captivating and ethereal tracks, the perfect soundscape for the mythical french forest of Brocéliande. KONONO #1 MEETS BATIDA lp $24.99kalimba fever - have you got it? then you need this lp by konono #1The Congolese ensemble pairs with the Angolan-born producer Batida, and their best moments resemble a Ferris wheel spinning off its moorings, letting grooves careen and rumble as they might. GODFLESH lp Post Self $21.99finally brought in the new godflesh lp. some of the vocals are too heavy and growly for me, but i really liked all the music. not sure why the cookie monster had to show up, but it's not overwhelming for the most part. 8.1 on pitchfork. Three decades, six albums, and one 13-year hiatus later, Godflesh remain revered—and what’s more, they keep getting better. Post Self, the duo’s eighth LP and third release since reconvening in 2014, is easily the group’s best effort in over 20 years, not to mention 2017’s best industrial-metal album. Whereas the preceding A World Lit Only By Fire functioned primarily as a reintroduction to Godflesh’s primordial rage, Post Self represents a sinister amalgam of its creators’ greater body of work, especially Broadrick’s ambient project Jesu. Mills, Jeff: And Then There Was Light  CD $15.99Poignant, aggressive, but serene sound track created by Jeff Mills for And Then There Was Light, a Japanese film directed by Tatsushi Omori based on the novel Hikari by Shion Miura. The music is an additional character in the scenes, showing the determination of the people and a great sense of loss, agony, and love. A synopsis of the film: On Mihama, an island off the coast of Tokyo, a middle school student, Nobuyuki, will do anything for his beautiful girlfriend and classmate, Mika. One night, he catches her in the arms of another man. Thinking quickly, Mika responds by pretending that she is being molested and calls for Nobuyuki's help. Nobuyuki naturally obliges and ends up killing the man. But someone witnessed the incident: a young neighbor named Tasuku, who looks up to Nobuyuki. That night, a devastating tsunami hits the island, wiping out most of its residents. All is quiet. Fast forward 25 years later, and Mika has become an actress leading a glamorous life. Nobuyuki, meanwhile, is married to another woman and has a five-year-old daughter. The past appears to have been buried for good, until one day the only witness to the crime, Tasuku, reappears with a vendetta on his mind. First, he seduces Nobuyuki's wife and begins an illicit affair with her. He then sends incriminating evidence of the long-lost crime to Mika. Once again, Nobuyuki finds himself needing to protect Mika. High Rise: ll LP $25.99Black Editions present a reissue of High Rise's II, originally released in 1986. High Rise exploded onto Tokyo's underground music scene with the roar and reckless abandon of a motorcycle accelerating headlong into a dead man's curve. Born from the explosive chemistry of bassist/vocalist Asahito Nanjo and frenetic guitarist Munehiro Narita, the band blazed a wild new stream of psychedelic guitar music. Their second album is a defining document of the band and unquestionably one of the greatest albums to emerge from 20th century underground Japan and beyond. With Nanjo's distorted thunder bass and Narita's wildly narrative lead guitar playing, II is a non-stop tour de force of improvised rock music. Combining elements of garage rock, punk, and no wave, the band pushed all levels fully in-the-red and transcended the limits of rock and psychedelia to create a raw, unique expansion of the music. Black Editions present High Rise's II, newly mixed and mastered by Asahito Nanjo in what the band states is the definitive version of their most quintessential recording. This new edition restores the original vinyl version's textured black and silver artwork. Housed in heavy Stoughton tip-on jacket. Pressed onto high quality vinyl by RTI. Mclean, Jackie: Capuchin Swing LP $17.992015 reissue from Blue Note Records' 75th Anniversary Vinyl Initiative series. "One of Jackie McLean's more underrated albums from a plethora of Blue Note releases, 1960's Capuchin Swing finds the bebop alto saxophonist in fine form on a mix of covers and originals. While his future fascination with Ornette Coleman's free-form innovations can be sensed in some of the solos here, the majority of the album is in a classic hard bop vein. Like contemporaries Hank Mobley, Sonny Clark, and Lee Morgan, though, McLean doesn't just churn out pat jam-session fare, but comes up with consistently provocative charts and solos. Eschewing ballads, McLean focuses on mid- to fast-tempo swingers and blues. Standouts include originals like 'Francisco' and 'Condition Blue' and choice renditions of 'Just for Now' and 'Don't Blame Me.' McLean enlists a sparkling lineup of hard bop stars, including trumpeter Blue Mitchell, pianist Walter Bishop, Jr., bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Art Taylor. Mitchell particularly impresses, matching many of McLean's own inspired flights with his supple and progressive playing. Along with other fine Blue Note titles like Jackie's Bag and Bluesnik, Capuchin Swing makes for a great introduction to McLean's extensive catalog." -- Stephen Cook, All Music Basho, Robbie: Live Italy '82 CD $13.99Robbie Basho (1940-86), who died young after a stroke, never got his due in the culture at large, but steel-string guitar enthusiasts have known for decades that he was one of the greats of "American Primitivism". Technically adept and compositionally imaginative, fusing the music of many cultures into a mesmerizing solo style, he has been an inspiration for many; his music has generated a surge of interest in recent years. This 1982 concert was part of a four-show Italian tour. It took place at the 18th-century Palazzo Gaddi that housed the local music high school and was mostly used for classical concerts, in an intimate space co-organizer Mario Calvitti (whose memories of the events surrounding this concert make up the bulk of the liner notes) says Basho called it "one lovely little room where I could play all night." Only previously released incompletely as a download, this show can now be heard in its full glory. This release is in cooperation with the Official Robbie Basho Archives. No. 2 in the RB-Archives-Live series. Produced by Buck Curran; Co-released with Obsolete Recordings. VA: B Music Of Jean Rollin LP $27.99Rising out of the smoky Parisian Mai 68 shrapnel and claiming his stake as the first French vampire movie director, the inimitable father of European horrortica, Jean Rollin (1938-2010) has smudged the painted face of surrealist cinema for over five decades. Dragging his roots from beneath the Letterist/Situationist movements, avant-garde theater, and Belgian fine art groups and entwining them around the minds of sexual revolutionaries, the European comic book cognoscenti and the Parisian free jazz and rock scenes, Rollin stopped at nothing to bring his macabre fantasies of zygotic vampyrism and backwoods blood cults to Gallic cinémathèques and beyond. Celebrating the immortal legacy of the late director, Finders Keepers compile a detailed and comprehensive music cabinet of some of the finest musical moments from his initial directorial decade between 1968-1979, which provided a much needed platform for the freak rock and free jazz that mirrored the distorted erotic visions in his own mind's eye. Imagine Gong-gone-wrong meeting the art ensembles of Châteauroux... Fantasy pop groups mutate and thrive within... Features tracks from Yvon Gerault, Acanthus, Pierre Raph, and François Tusques. Indian Ocean: School Bell 12" $16.99"Chances are if you are reading this, you are probably already familiar with Dinosaur L's 'Go Bang' and danced countless times to Loose Joints' 'It's All Over My Face'. A prolific musician, Arthur Russell produced an abundant amount of recordings over the course of his career. Although a classically trained cellist, he released a number of successful underground dance hits under various monikers and collaborations. As a solo artist however, his inability to complete projects resulted in a limited amount of official releases; World of Echo (1986) being his only full-length solo effort to see release in his lifetime. After releasing a number of Club singles on labels like West End & Sire, Russell went on to form Sleeping Bag Records with Will Socolov as an outlet for a sound not as restrictive as his 'disco' material. The initial concept was that Russell would provide the musical direction while Socolov handled the business side. The label had huge success early on with Class Action's 'Weekend' remixed by Larry Levan, and Russell's seminal 'Go Bang,' credited to Dinosaur L and remixed by Francois Kevorkian. Although Russell and Socolov shared a lot of musical common ground, the difference in vision began to show. Russell's avant-garde sensibilities and perfectionism were not compatible with an industry standard to release singles in quick succession, and his 'work in progress' approach began to be financially draining, ultimately resulting in the dissolution of their partnership around 1983. With Arthur's departure, Sleeping Bag moved away from the experimental and towards a successful hip-hop route with the growing involvement of Kurtis Mantronik and leading to propel the careers of artists like Todd Terry, Just-Ice and EPMD. By the mid-80s, Russell's health began to deteriorate after contracting HIV. Although the business partnership did not work out, Socolov and Russell maintained their friendship. Aware of the time he had left, Russell reached out to Socolov to record what was to become Indian Ocean, his last release on Sleeping Bag and the last great collaboration between Arthur and his old friend Walter Gibbons. Unlike the rest of Russell's Dance collaborations, 'School Bell/Treehouse' is very intimate composition, putting to the forefront all the elements that defined him musically; with his own voice and cello as the anchors to a piece that keeps growing in intensity, melding the tribal rhythms of Mustafa Ahmed's conga with percussions that sound like distorted drum machines. There is a lot of beauty in this piece, with Peter Zummo's melancholic trombone lines and Arthur's keyboard playing. Adequately 'mixed with love' by Walter Gibbons, 'School Bell/Treehouse' really synthesizes the energy and soundscapes of Arthur's dancefloor." Leimer, K: Imposed Order / Imposed Absence (Remastered + Expanded)  2CD $20.99"The first phase of K. Leimer's recorded work began in 1972 with the production of the Grey Cows cassette and culminated in 1983 with the release of Imposed Order. Though work seemingly stopped following the release of I/O, Leimer continued to record and experiment with sound during what proved to be a 15-year interregnum for his Palace of Lights label. That work, never before issued, is included in this expanded remaster. Imposed Absence features ten tracks recorded in the years between Imposed Order and his return to releasing music with The Listening Room. Imposed Absence features the addition of Mellotron and early digital synths, some excursions into lo-fi and, unusual in his catalog, a few improvised tracks. Combined with the VOD double album of his earliest tape recordings and RVNG's A Period Of Review double album, the release of Imposed Order / Imposed Absence brings the entirety of Leimer's early work into view. Remastered by Taylor Deupree at 12K Mastering. K. Leimer founded Palace of Lights in 1979. Leimer has been actively producing music since the mid-1970s -- his current catalog includes eighteen solo albums plus collaborative albums with Savant and Marc Barreca. His work is included in the collection of The British Library." Leimer, K: Imposed Order / Imposed Absence (Remastered + Expanded)   LP $20.99LP version. "The first phase of K. Leimer's recorded work began in 1972 with the production of the Grey Cows cassette and culminated in 1983 with the release of Imposed Order. Though work seemingly stopped following the release of I/O, Leimer continued to record and experiment with sound during what proved to be a 15-year interregnum for his Palace of Lights label. That work, never before issued, is included in this expanded remaster. Imposed Absence features ten tracks recorded in the years between Imposed Order and his return to releasing music with The Listening Room. Imposed Absence features the addition of Mellotron and early digital synths, some excursions into lo-fi and, unusual in his catalog, a few improvised tracks. Combined with the VOD double album of his earliest tape recordings and RVNG's A Period Of Review double album, the release of Imposed Order / Imposed Absence brings the entirety of Leimer's early work into view. Remastered by Taylor Deupree at 12K Mastering, the vinyl includes a four-page booklet and download card for all nineteen tracks. K. Leimer founded Palace of Lights in 1979. Leimer has been actively producing music since the mid-1970s -- his current catalog includes eighteen solo albums plus collaborative albums with Savant and Marc Barreca. His work is included in the collection of The British Library." TRINOSOPHES UPCOMING EVENTS AT TRINOSOPHES COMING SOON 2/25   Adam O' Farrill  and Marcus Elliot 3/4: Ethnic Heritage Ensemble 3/15 Desertion Trio,  Mars Williams (US), Tollef Østvang  (NO) 3/29: Ben Bennet/Michael Foster Duo, GRID 4/18: Rempis/Ochs RELATED Spectrum 2 (Shelton/Peterson) Winter Jaunt Skeeter Shelton- saxophone, winds+ Joel Peterson- double-bass, strings Tour Dates 1/23: Nashville, TN 1/24: Barking Legs Theater- Chattanooga TN 1/27: Vanderelli Room- Columbus, OH 1/28: Robinwood Concerthouse, Toledo, OH

[sherristockman]

What You Can Learn From Other People’s Regrets Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Regrets. We all have them — things said or done; things left unsaid or undone. Paths that weren’t followed; opportunities missed due to fear or insecurity. The list is long, but one of the biggest regrets in life reported by a large number of people is not being there for someone at the end of life.1 In other words, being too busy with “life” to tend to those near death. Interestingly, while a regret can be phrased either as an action or as an inaction (“I wish I had not quit high school,” versus “I wish I had stayed in high school”), regrets framed as actions tend to be more emotionally intense than regrets about inactions, but inactions tend to be longer lasting.2 Emma Freud, a columnist for The Guardian, recently explored themes of regret on social media, covering everything from relationships, work-life balance and personal passions, to addiction, illness and death. If you’re so inclined, you can take a look at some of the thousands of responses she received.3 Chances are, you’ll recognize yourself in some of them. Top Five Regrets of the Dying According to Bronnie Ware, a former palliative care nurse who ended up writing a book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,” based on her conversations with the dying, the biggest, most commonly cited regrets at the end of life are — beginning with the most common regret of all:4 Not having the courage to live a life true to oneself but rather doing what was expected Working too much, thereby missing children’s youth and their partner’s companionship Not having the courage to express one’s feelings Not staying in touch with friends Taking life too seriously and allowing worries to diminish happiness Ware goes a step further, however, in that she also delves into solutions for these regrets — ways for you to avoid falling into the same traps. The No. 1 regret is a valuable reminder to not give up too many of your dreams to please others (or conform to conventional standards). “It is very important to try and honor at least some of your dreams along the way,” Ware says. “From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.” Living Life on Your Own Terms Is Key to Dying Without (Too Many) Regrets Virtually every man in Ware’s care listed No. 2: Missing out on family time because of excessive work. “All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence,” she writes, adding: “By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.” No. 4 is a closely related topic. Oftentimes we get so busy we forget to keep in touch with old friends, and over time the relationship fizzles out. Then, in old age, loneliness creeps in. It can be difficult to build a friendship at any age, but it certainly does not get easier with advancing age, when poor health starts limiting your ability to get out and about to socialize. As noted by Ware, love and relationships are usually the only things of true, remaining importance when the end of life draws near. As for No. 3, Ware notes that many “developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried” as a result of holding their feelings in and opting to keep quiet just to keep the peace. If you’re in this category, consider Ware’s commonsense advice: “We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.” Last but not least, at the end of life, many finally realize that happiness is an inside job. It’s a choice, not a side effect of living any particular kind of life. “[D]eep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again,” Ware writes, wisely noting that once you’re on your deathbed, you will not be worrying about what others think of you, so why not choose happiness now, while you still have a lot of life left? The Importance of Relationships and Self-Care Longevity research strongly supports Ware’s overall findings. The same things that people report regretting are also the things centenarians “get right.” In interviews and surveys with centenarians,5 including the ones interviewed in “How to Live to 100,” two of the most important factors contributing to longevity are having a strong social network of family and friends, and keeping a sense of humor. The importance of social support has also been scientifically verified. An American meta-analysis6 of published studies found strong social support is actually the No. 1 factor that determines longevity and survival. The influence of social support on mortality is so great, it surpasses the influence of weight and even eclipses the influence of smoking. A 2012 article7 in Forbes Magazine listed 25 top regrets reported by people. Here — in addition to all of the regrets already listed — one of the biggest regrets was not standing up to bullies, be it in school or at work. In hindsight, many feel they should have spoken out and taken a firm stand, even at the risk of losing their job. Another regret that is bound to be pertinent for a vast majority of people these days is allowing the smartphone to take up too much of our time and attention. Related to that one is the regret of “not teaching my kids to do more stuff,” be it raking leaves, learning to throw a ball, cleaning their room, camping or any number of other activities. On this list of regrets you also have “not taking care of my health when I had the chance.” Indeed, many pay no attention to their health at all unless or until there’s a problem. Unfortunately, by that time, you have a struggle ahead of you, as most health problems are far easier to prevent than they are to treat. Not to mention the emotional and financial strain and stress a chronic health problem can cause. At the end of life, many wish they’d made self-care a priority. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you’ve not let self-care slide off your radar. Remember, some of the simplest lifestyle strategies can have tremendous impact, such as: Getting sufficient amounts of sleep every night Walking daily (preferably outdoors, in nature) and getting plenty of physical movement throughout the day Meditating or regularly engaging in some form of stress relief Limiting exposure to electromagnetic fields Eating real food At the End of Life, Most Wish They’d Lived More in the Moment Another common regret is regretting not living more in the moment. As constant connectivity via smartphones and other technologies increases, more and more people are bound to experience this regret at the end of their life as the years wear on. “Living in the now” is a major component of happiness, and a significant way to grow in gratitude, both of which also have an impact on health and longevity. It’s really difficult to cultivate gratitude if you’re constantly running; always looking ahead, or, alternatively, looking to the past. Gratitude requires you to be in the moment, and appreciate what’s in front of you right now. A commonly recommended practice that can be very helpful is to keep a daily gratitude journal. This can be done in a paper journal, or you can download a Gratitude Journal app from iTunes.8 In one 2015 study,9 participants who kept a gratitude diary and reflected on what they were grateful for four times a week for three weeks reported improvements in depression, stress and happiness. A mindfulness intervention, consisting of a mindfulness diary and mindfulness meditation, led to similar improvements. Remember, you tend to get more of what you focus on, so be mindful of the kinds of thoughts you entertain. Your brain can actually become “hardwired” to feel anxiety, depression, irritability or anger the longer and the more frequent such thoughts are allowed to persist. As noted by Robert Emmons in “The Little Book of Gratitude:” “Everything we do creates connections within networks of the brain, and the more you repeat something, the stronger those connections get. The mind can change the brain in lasting ways. In other words, what flows through the mind sculpts the brain.” If you struggle with pessimism, give the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) a try. EFT is a form of psychological acupressure based on the energy meridians used in acupuncture. It’s an effective way to quickly restore your inner balance and healing and helps rid your mind of negative thoughts and emotions. In the video below, EFT practitioner Julie Schiffman demonstrates how to tap for gratitude. Your Life Is Your Own, Live It the Way You Want To The take-home message here is this: If you’re currently doing, or avoiding doing, something you know you’d regret if you only had weeks left to live, change course now. Don’t wait years or decades. Eventually, you’ll run out of time and be left holding a bag of regrets. Your life is your own — you’re the only one who can live it successfully, so follow your dreams and passions, and let go of unnecessary baggage and false limitations. At the end of your life, you’ll realize you don’t care about what other people think of you nearly as much as you believe today, and — if you’re like most — you’ll come to the realization that happiness is in fact an ever-present choice.

[sofiatopchishvili-blog]

Essay 1 version, final

BA Photography: Advanced Research Methods (5IMAG016W)

Is it ethical to photograph suffering? Analyse between one and three case studies.

Photographing suffering, and strong emotional scenes creates otherworldly sense of the reality. Photography as the medium is seen first of all as the subjective medium, even though it has greater, higher realms of representing and mimicking life, which sometimes can be mixed with truth. Actually photography is more ambiguous as the medium, in comparison to film of fine art for example. As the still sits in between those mediums, it is still as the painting, but sharp and accurate as film. Photojournalism as a genre confuses the viewer because of its actual purposes. It is the reportage genre that later would be embedded along side with the contextual meanings, that could and will change the message carried out. We all fragment our identity, by our experience, surroundings and nurture, even though when you act as an observer, during the visit to the exhibition you are guided and shown what you were designed to see. Capitalist structuralism, engages human psychology to send the message to the society that later would be used for the profit. So in the end of the day the question is can we really control our identity, and individualism, do we have free will?

Photography is a medium that became our eyes, the ‘god eye – the big brother’ that seizes to see and control our free will and our identity. The nature of this tool follows its mechanical reproduction that is controlled by certain individual groups for the sake of the profit. And photographing suffering became the genre that started elevate widely, because of it brutality, blunt reality. Suffering - that viewer sees on social media, or on the cover of the LIFE magazine is creating a nation of the non-empathetic robots. Is there a limit of photographing, suffering? The answer does not merely matter; social norms already have been twisted and moved around in different directions, the main importunacy is for what, and for whom. With photography, there’s always the temptation to strive for perfection and disregard – or worse, delete- anything that falls out. But this for perfection can choke you inner creativity. Photographers bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that is worth recording, simplest message decode that - I have decide that seeing this is worth recording.  ”We think of photographs as works of art, as evidence of a particular truth, as likeness, as news items. Every photograph is in fact a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality. Hence the crucial role of photography in ideological struggle. Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon which we can use and which can be used against us’’ John Berger, October 1986. Extensesionalism thoughts include the ideas, of individuality, moral beliefs, ideology, freedom of speech, how this idea may fade into the world of photography? .  Family of Man exhibition at MOMA museum in New York in 1955 changed the interpretation of photography. The propaganda becomes very important element after the Berlin division 1945-1990, the informative war between the communist and capitalist that still cares on, only under different slogans. Cold War atmosphere was raising, the propaganda war shifted photographic approach. The exhibitions itself were staged quite theatrically, the text almost guides the observer through the different stages, the juxtaposition between the scales of the image evokes higher influence of trauma, foreshadowing the terror, creating some sort of the patronising reminder for civilians. The Nuclear threat that was made in 50s was used as the fear factor as nowadays the threat of the terrorism is used to remind us of drastic events of Twin Towers which was ironically created for political benefit (could be argued) as what we see on the surface controls the population, the hidden commands/emotions waiting to be obeyed such as islamophobia. As Hilton, Kramer stated: “self - congraturaly means for obscuring the urgency of real problems under a blanket of the ideology which takes for granted the essential goodness, innocence and moral superiority of the international ‘little man’ and which regards itself as superior to mere politics”.  As well as Roland Barthes, wrote in his book  Mythologies (then ironically after publishing was used by advertising companies): “The ambiguous myth of the human ‘community’, which serves an a alibi to a large part of humanism, the form this pluralism, a type of unity, is magically produced, a man is born, laughs and dies everywhere in the same way, god is re –introduced intro our Exhibition” The Great Family of Man 1957.  Furthermore, William Klein’s photographs were the start of the photojournalistic era, The Family of Man was the exhibition that was obviously influenced by Klein’s rural, realistic moments of crushing American Dream. The Family of Man exhibition created non-empathetic nation, the post – fascist family of man that is used to benefit the terror. As in  1750 Duhamel du Monceau once said: “ a pastime of helots, a distraction for uneducated, wretched, overworked creatures who are consumed by their worries, a spectacle that requires no concentration of any kind, that presupposes no ability no concentration of any kind, that presupposes no ability to think, lights no flame in people’s heart, and kindles no other sort of hope than the ludicrous one of becoming at some time, a ‘star’ in Los Angles”. However, Fred Turner, the defender of the exhibition, argued that the show was driven by a ‘deeply’ democratic, even utopian impulse (The Family of Man and the politics of attention in cold war America public culture 2012) as well as that Eric Sandeen claimed that: “the viewers would ‘reassemble’ the images in the exhibition and the ‘architecture of the exhibition’ encourages such a freedom on the part of the viewer’. Yes, the exhibition did depict the entire new spectacle for American people, however it did not promote freedom on the other hand it restricted it. The exhibition was promoted by the United States agency, commercial promotion sponsorship by big corporations like coca cola. Why there was the shift in post war photography to more objective rather than subjective ideas, do appearances only reveal the truth very occasionally?

The expression that lies in the objectivity of the stranger is committed to the specific tendencies of the crowd; therefore a photographer approaches them with the unique attitude of “objectivity”. In The Stranger,  Simmel stated that: “objectivity does not simply involve passivity and detachment; it is a particular structure composed of distance and nearness, indifference and involvement.” As well as that objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual in this case the photographer is bound by no pledges which could mark his perception, understanding and assessment of the given scene. The freedom of photographing the given however allows the stranger to experience and treat even close relationships though from an aisle view, might contain multiple of dangerous possibilities. In  George Orwell novel 1984 which is a political novel written with the purpose of warning readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government. Having witnessed first-hand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian governments in Spain and Russia would go in order to sustain and increase their power, Orwell designed 1984 to sound the alarm in Western nations still unsure about how to approach the rise communism. This book shows the dystopian futuristic landscape that we live in now. In 1949, the Cold War had not yet escalated, many American intellectuals supported communism, and the state of diplomacy between democratic and communist nations was highly ambiguous. In the American press, the Soviet Union was often portrayed as a great moral experiment. Furthermore, photographer plays freer role in more practically and theoretically, he is less to judge but rather to select and assess. Photography constitutes an anti-intellectual weapon and tends to spirit away ‘politics’ to the advantage of a ‘manner of being’, a socio-moral status. It is well known that this antithesis is one of the major myths of Pujadism. The mass media in the age of its rise, and reclaimed the subject as a matter of quasi-philosophical thought, all the while repudiating its actual productions. There’s no dynamism in his analyses - he turns their ‘’signifiers’’ and their ‘’signified’’ into fixed objects- and there’s no psychology either-no agency and no motives, other than the eternal one of ‘’bourgeois’’ society’s self-perpetuation.

Albino Boy, Biafra (1969) Don McCullin

Choosing an example of Don McCullins work your observe that there is no limit, in shooting the subject. Photographer itself acts as the passing individual the stranger that does not subjective matter to the object he is photographing, and when it comes to photographing suffering pain and war, photographer is seen as an intruder and the camera as a reminder of terror that happened to the people. John Le Carre wrote in the introduction to Don McCullin’s Hearts of Darkness: “ McCullin is talking of the elusive moment of connection with his subject – the ‘yes’. The moment of naked affinity, when he or she sees him, and forgives him, at death’s edge, starving, inconsolably bereaved, when their own child lies dead on the hall florr, bombed in the attack: still ‘yes’. Yes, take me. Yes, show the world my pain. And I remember reading or hearing somewhere that an ailing buck has been to hang from the herd, and to turn and face his predator with acceptance: ‘yes’.”  The book itself alludes to the  Heart of Darkness novel by Joseph Conrad, where white people (the British) are invading Congo, traveling alongside the Congo River. As John Le Carre stated that Don McCullin stated that he had felt acceptance and felt forgiven, he still remained a stranger who wouldn’t feel the the same pain, the same terror. As shown in this visual example, the Biafra’s albino boy is seen as a victim, he is only seen as a starved child that needs urgent help and support. Yes, he does but that’s the dilemma, after photojournalistic revelations, guilt is used against humanity; the factor of fear is turned against our consciousness. These photographs would be raising and helping charities that merely half of them really give that help and support boys such as in this picture. Photography is the medium that would never be expressive, as the tool that is used to photograph already kills the aura of it, and the whole humanity with it.

The concept of photo-manipulation roots itself into photography that shifts and manipulates the points of view, that only the photographer captured but it shifts the interpretation, the whole meaning that would be carried out through the medium of photography. As Guy Debord – the society of the spectacle (1967) stated: ‘‘Images detached form life, separated from original context and re-united as an autonomous world- apart from lived experience’’ – how much advertising, the images of food, fashion, medicine and news builds your ideology and self- awareness? The way we are mediated my images, because in western world society is placed in the comfort zone with privileged life’s advertising and consumption takes over society’s values. Advertising creates this spectacle, the entertainment of commercial photography. The agrarian aspect, being banned in America to grow your own food, being forced to buy and consume the food, that America wants people to consume for the profit. When you gaze at the photograph you see what you are desired to see. Taking philosophies of Roland Barthes and his text  Camera Lucida he stated ’Certain details may ‘prick’ me. If they do not, it is doubtless because the photographer has put them there intentionally’’. Roland Barthes, helps the reader to decode the language of propaganda. Higher class of capitalism structuralism controls photographer’s archives history in prints and usually photographer’s ideology, such as domestic iconography of the 60s and its patriarchal empowering of the image of the domestic wife.

The expansion of the punctum in this print fills the whole image with its contextual meaning. The image itself paradoxically satires camera as a tool to manipulate masses and it breaks rules of tuché photography. The ghost of painting in this image torments photograph. Benjamin Walter states in his essay  The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction:’’ The photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes, such as enlargement or slow motion, can capture images which escape natural vision…Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’’ Photography hand gives way to the eye, following that acceleration of production of images; marketing brings these into the home like utilities. Authenticity is destroyed in mechanical reproduction, firstly through the unique temporal spatial existence of the work gives it historical and physical properties which reproductions don’t have and secondly process of reproduction are more independent of the original. Roland Barthes, talks about the performance of ‘the pose’ which occurs subconsciously while the object is being photographed: ’’ for the photograph’s immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive’’. The person becomes the object for the photographer, ‘’private space’’ eliminates when the shutter goes off. Camera Lucida suggests the oxymoron of the duality in photography, at the same time making an object immortal and mirroring history of the past. Additionally, Roland Barthes talks about the sound that camera makes- when sound frizzes the essence of time, he describes the sound as the positive means of flashback that makes the whole process of taking an image less frightening, suggesting his personalised phenomenology in this text. Transcendental phenomenology, according to Husserl, is the study of the basic components of the meanings that make intentionality possible. Camera Lucida is in homage to ( Sartre) was the key in the introduction of phenomenology to France during Barthes’s youth. Influenced by Husserl philosophies, Barther’s established further concepts of phenomenology, by introducing concepts of studium and punctum. Barthes described stadium - as the ordinary, the recognisable pattern that has no punctum in it, eidos that either pleases or displease spectator. He described it, as the order of liking, not of loving. Barth established that:’’ the studium is a kind of education (knowledge and civility, ‘’politeness’’) which allows me to discover the Operator, to experience the intentions which establish and animate his practices, but to experience ’in reverse’, according to my will as a Spectator’’.  Photographs, work as alibis, to inform, to represent, or to shock the observer, on the other hand punctum – contained in those far rarer images that Barthers says moves or ‘wound’ him, something which is seen differently, depending on a observer, and his experience and knowledge.

Photography captures a moment in time, but what it captures exceeds the intention of the photographer. Therefore, photography accesses a differently constituted reality, with layers useable by the naked eye and made perceptible only by technological means. A spark of contingency finds its way onto the photographic image. In Benjamin Walter’s earliest wirings  The Life of Students, published in 1915, he wrote of how ‘history rests concentrated, as in a focal point, something seen from time immemorial in the utopian images of thinkers’’. The focal point is the matter for cameras and photographs, the point where the endless forms are seen. Photographing suffering is an inevitable subject matter that is already is rooted to deep inside our social, economical and political system.

Bibliography

• Allan Sekula, coming from the left wing perspective, ‘’The Traffic in Photographs’ art journal, vol. 41. 1981. • Barthes, Roland and Annette Lavers. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. Print. • Berger, John et al. Ways Of Seeing. Print. • Campany, David. Photography And Cinema. London: Reaktion, 2008. Print. • Duhamel du Monceau,. The Elements Of Naval Architecture. London: Printed by D. Henry and R. Cave, at St John’s Gate, for the author, and sold by the Booksellers in town and country, 1754. Print. • Klein, William. Life Is Good & Good For You In New York!. Manchester, England: • Klein, William and David Campany. William Klein. Print. • Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977. Print. • Steichen, Edward et al. The Family Of Man. 1955. Print. • Szarkowski, John. The Photographer’s Eye. New York: Museum of Modern Art; distributed by Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1966. Print. • The Sweet Smell Of Success. USA: Alexander Mackendrick, 1957. DVD. • They Live. USA: John Carpenter, 1988. DVD. • The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Translated by J.A Underwood (author) and Walter Benjamin (author), Penguin Books Ltd 2008 • Barthes,R. Camera Lucida. Vintage,1993. • Charbonneau, M. (1999). Symposium: Sartre and Postmodernism: An Encounter Between Sartre and Lacan. Sartre Studies International, 5(2). • The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. (2012). [DVD] United Kingdom: Slavoj Zizek. • Zeitgeist: The Movie. (2007). [DVD] United States: Peter Joseph. • Karakayali, Mehmet Nedim. Simmel’s Stranger. 1st ed. Print. • McCullin, Don and Lewis Chester. Unreasonable Behaviour. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print. • Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. 1st ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949. Print. • Simmel, Georg and Kurt H Wolff. The Sociology Of Georg Simmel. 1st ed. Print. • Conrad, Joseph. Heart Of Darkness. 1st ed. Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Library, 1996. Print. • Benjamin, Walter and Howard Eiland. Early Writings, 1910-1917. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Print.

[twinkle-littlestar24]

Time Flies

On Friday, I was very happy because my old manager from my internship had a look at my linkedin. Today, I came to realize that it was the two-year ‘anniversary’ of the start of my internship.

I wonder what he thought what I’ve been doing over the last two years and if he sees “enough” and remarkable development in this time span.

Basically, it has just been around 1.5 years (17 months do be exact) because my internship lasted for 7 months. So, what did I do ?

6   m o n t h s

I’m about to finish the first semester of the master programme I started. So this accounts for about 6 months from October 2016 to March 2017 (actually April). I hope my manager realized that he was one of the central influencers who put me on this road. I remember him saying in my first days of the internship that they try to make more data-based decisions instead of pursuing what they guess customers want from a subjective point of view, which just makes so much sense. But I felt this lack in my abilities to collect and analyze data. In order to gain this so important skill in this digital age and in my job field of interest, I chose this master programme. I hope he thinks that it is outstanding that I thought about this master programme at a technical university at all and decided against the classic path of going to one of Europe’s top business schools and that I surprised him in a positive way but also found it not too surprising and maybe that he smiled because he knew I’m extraordinary and visionary.

This master programme is perfect for me and I can make it. ! At the beginning, I had some troubles and insecurities because it was not a very welcoming atmosphere there - my co-students would ask me why I chose that master programme with big or uninterested eyes, I felt like an informatics student of minor value who missed out on studying it in the bachelor and now desparately trying to catch on, nobody told me or tells me that it’s the right thing and I didn’t know if I can make it at all starting at the same level as other students with a background and bachelor in informatics or business informatics. (1) I finally got some confirmation when I asked this one business professor I didn’t like at first in the last lecture whether other business schools (because he came from the top one actually) are also that advanced and offer all these cool courses in doing digital business. He said no, they have quite a lot of trouble coping with everything and offer superficial classes such as design thinking or innovation management at most. (2) And about the part whether I can manage it - I think I had the worst mandatory class behind me (in stochastics) and I got a good first grade so I can make it, as long as the class conditions and the professors are great in teaching. I finally got some confirmation for the issues that made me feel uncomfortable all the months before since starting the master about whether it’s the right thing to study and whether I can handle it. By the way, I like that I can train my ability to learn completely new thins with some given input and I have to connect. Still, everytime I have to start studying for a new class, I feel very overwhelmed at first and demotivated because I don’t even know where to start. (Like right now, when I’m writing this instead of studying.)

1  m o n t h

Before that, I had 1 month in which I had doctor appointments and moved between my home town where my dad lives, my bf’s home and thesis place and I also went to see my best friend in Rotterdam.

1  m o n t h

... of traveling with my bf in Thailand and Vietnam, visiting my family and seeing my sister. I wish I could have enjoyed it more like the 4-week travel with my best friend in the south of Mexico where I was free of worries and just enjoyed the beautiful nature and weather. Instead, I had family time and tried to make the most of all the opportunities such as taking pictures or going shopping, having clothes tailored, having lash extensions, having a photoshoot for the CV, not missing out on any touristic spot and so on. It was quite stressful because of my expectations and because it was in my hand to organize and plan everything.

4  m o n t h s

Three days before my travel started, I just ended my four-month internship at a well-known consumer company. I tried to give it a chance although I don’t like inefficieny. But I really hoped to find a great company with great people and with a great company culture like my previous internship with the one big difference that I didn’t support consumerism, materialism and consumer-throw-away living. But I got disappointed. It’s a good thing because know I can describe what I do not want at all in my future job. In this time, I also had my thesis and oral examination, holiday preparation and most important, master application. (I also had a little “Sinneskrise” because I failed to hand in my application for my favorite and planned master programme in time because I had all these extra-things going on like extra-classes, extra-internship, extra-voluntary activities and I didn’t got rewarded for it, quite on the opposite and I also didn’t feel any achievement and closure when I finally gained my Bachelor’s degree.Thus, I wondered whether all these things that I was doing were right in the world, although I wanted them to be right.)

6  m o n t h s

In the night of my very last day of my internship, I went back to my university town (Bachelor). I took four extra courses (I regret not having taken one more in quantitative market research), enjoyed the freedom of moving around (to my aunties, going out with my friends, traveling to Munich, Würzburg and so on) and engaging in voluntary activitivities for a good cause,  especially towards the end with the donut and scholarship presentation fail. I also had two obligatory classes, so basically I just had 22 ECTS (I really should having taken that one more!), now that I’m thinking about it. I loved my appartment, the location, the newness, the big space and all. I also made my driver’s licence and had to apply for my planned internship. Okay now that I’m thinking about it, I had about 37 ECTS over a little more than 7 months due to my bachelor thesis and the oral examination in the second week of May. But, I also started my internship already in the middle of April.

All in all, 17 months sound like a lot of time and compared to my two exchange semesters I didn’t feel like I achieved a lot. On the other hand, I think I couldn’t have done any more. I didn’t do much but the things I did were very decisive for my path.

I think after my first internship I suddenly saw the world completely different. It was a tipping point (too bad it wasn’t during it). I saw what I wanted to work, where I wanted to be and how digital technologies can change the world to make it a better and more efficient place. Time after time, I crystallized this view taking my voluntary classes, writing my thesis and making all the bad experiences in my second internship, connecting all the dots that now form my view on the world. In sum, I matured on an “”intellectual”“ level.

I think in Mexico I matured on a personal level. I made experiences with guys, friendships, lived and traveled in a foreign country and I enjoyed a carefree and exciting time, actually a little hedonistic. I think Mexico coined me with regard to my relation with guys and also that people come and go so that I came to appreciate few, valuable friendships even more, making me that radical such that I came to a point when I deactivated my Facebook. I think I got a lot lot more self-confident about myself and my worth, not during my stay there but looking back. I became more confident being uncertain, more comfortable being uncomfortable. I knew I will be okay if people don’t like me and so on.

In total, I think I didn’t waste a lot of time. I mean two days after my second internship I went on travel, even during my internship I wrote my thesis and took my oral examination, and in the night of the very last internship day, I went back to my university town to finish my Bachelor.

I think I also finally got what this intuition part of my personality type (INTJ) means. I think it describes people who hold on to valuable moments and people. There are not many of them and I think maybe it’s also more common among South-East-Asians. It’s like my ex-manager who remembered the two-year anniversary and due to that meaning he dropped by my linkedin. It’s about meanings that we allocate to certain moments, situations, days, persons, places and so on. And because there are not so many of us and most others in the world are very ignorant and inconsiderate we feel more connected to those we meet who are. Sometimes I feel like I’m building a little “army” (network) of people that I hold on to because I appreciate and value them and they are very very smart. And it’s just very nice of my ex-manager to let me know that he didn’t forget me because he knows that in linkedin you see who viewed your profile. :-) That’s the reason I value my ex-manager’s opinion so much. I also liked how he can be quite introvert and antisocial and still be a top manager. I appreciate all the little details like him waiting to be the last to exit the room after a team meeting or waiting for me when we left off to lunch break. And that he appreciated me despite or maybe even a little because of my weirdness and social awkwardness like when he congratulated me on my project and I had troubles accepting it and expressed myself too harsh when I criticized things. Sometimes I wish I could tell people like him about the INTJ-personality type and ask them if they feel the same or this stranger passage of Everett Rogers. Please don’t think I hit on him or anything or am crazy.