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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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I know the usual go-to boy names for Dick having a son tend to be some variation of Tommy, John or Jake, after either Dick’s father, Bruce’s or Jake from that future timeline he had a son in after Ma’ri.

I’m however reeeeeally attached to the idea of Dick naming a son after his paternal grandfather, whatever name you go with for him. For me, its Daniel, though I have NO idea where that came from and I could have sworn it was canon but apparently its something I made up which is weird because usually I have a reason for names I make up and I can’t for the life of me figure out why I would have deliberately picked Daniel specifically, if I didn’t already think for sure that was his name? But whatever, that’s just a weird me thing that’s been bugging me forever.

ANYWAY.

Yeah, I could see Dick naming a child after his grandfather, Cobb’s son that he gave to Haly’s Circus to be raised....the direct ancestor of Dick’s who in his perception was the true patriarch of Dick’s first family....the Grayson trapeze artist lineage.

I actually have a lot of headcanons about Cobb’s son as part of the completely gratuitous expansive backstory I have for Dick’s first family and their history in the circus over the past century, that hopefully will make it into some fic or another one of these days, lol....but in a nutshell, I’ve always been drawn to the fact that Cobb handed his son over to Haly’s ancestor while describing him as the Gray Son, someone destined to live between the opposite extremes of Gotham’s starkly differentiated classes or whatever he was babbling on about, I fell asleep, shut up, Cobb, nobody cares....

But point being, he didn’t actually ever claim that the baby’s last name was Grayson. So I like to headcanon that everybody in the circus as that boy grew up there just called him Gray Son or the Gray Son, and he embraced that and willfully made it his last name....and that this directly ties into him becoming a trapeze artist and the bright colors that became the Grayson family legacy.

Because imagine an unclaimed orphan boy being raised in a circus a hundred years ago with nothing but mysterious rumors about where he came from, who his parents were, and maybe some quietly muttered rumors here and there about some mysterious destiny he had that tied into the title Gray Son.

Imagine being a boy who likely spent most of his childhood invisible....an eagerly helpful pair of hands trying to make himself useful, trying to make himself seen, as eyes continually skittered away from him because the tidbits about his past and origins made people nervous and wary.

Imagine that boy, who had no parents inducting him into a legacy of acrobatics himself, who had to willfully and with purpose decide himself to learn how to fly, maybe even largely to teach himself how to fly....practicing in secret and with every acrobat or passing troupe willing to teach him little tricks of the trade...

And then imagine when that boy becomes a man and finally makes his debut as a talented trapeze artist himself, takes center stage, all eyes on him....because he ensures that. He works to draw all eyes to him, to keep all eyes on him....

To never be lost in shades of black and white or fade away into some lackluster gray.

Because this man rejects any destiny he’s supposed to have, any destiny that required he grow up alone and unloved. If no one wanted to claim him as theirs before now, then no one gets to lay any sort of claim to him ever.

And he broadcasts that to the world, via his stage, in every way imaginable...

With even his clothes, his costumes always being brilliant colors, the brightest hues of red, yellow and green...eye catching, eye searing, forever popping against the background, whatever that may be....

The complete antithesis of everything gray.

Because that may be the only name he has any tie to, the only piece of his mysterious past he has to carry with him, like it or not...

But he will not be defined by it. He defies the very idea.

And he makes sure everyone knows that as he soars above crowds, drawing all eyes to him, the highest point in everyone’s vision, making them look up, forcing them to see him, to acknowledge him, a master of the sky no matter that he and his descendants’ ‘true destiny’ was to be as servants hidden away in secret labyrinths beneath the earth....

And always, always, always the brightest thing in sight.

Never to be lost and muted in shades of gray.

I think this headcanon of Dick’s grandfather, who I view as the one Dick would truly see as the true originator of the Grayson family line, not Cobb himself, never Cobb...

I think someone like this, Dick would view himself as having a lot in common with.

Because after all, wasn’t that as much Dick’s motivation when he became Robin?

Not just to fight crime by Batman’s side....but to be seen while doing it. To stand out, even as Batman sticks to the shadows. To never be dismissed or banished and locked away in some juvie center or orphanage like the people who looked down on him and his circus family tried to do. Never to be erased or forgotten or overlooked.

Soaring above Gotham in colors that drew attention, demanded attention. Recognition. Acknowledgment.

Forever declaring:

I am still here. My family is still here. Our legacy still matters....no matter how many people tried how many times to stamp it out or make it otherwise.

They said Dick wasn’t allowed to leave Gotham, that the circus was no place for him, inferring that how he’d been raised, how he’d been HAPPY was wrong and somehow more objectionable than the way Gotham treated him. They tried to clip his wings and force him to remain on the ground, take away what made him special, what made him not the Gray Son, but a Flying Grayson.

And Robin was Dick’s way of saying: “Well here I am! Still flying, still free, still making everyone crane their necks and look UP to see me, unable to miss me cuz I’m the brightest speck of light in Gotham’s night sky.”

Its always been significant to me that Dick so often insists that he’s Batman’s PARTNER as Robin, rather than sidekick. And yeah, that’s easy to look at and think oh that’s so cute, in the sense of kids trying to put themselves on the same level as an adult counterpart....

But I think it takes on an entirely different connotation when you consider that Bruce and Dick’s approaches to vigilantism, the specific mantles and methodologies they created for THEMSELVES....were deliberately distinct and never aiming to be interchangeable or cut from the same cloth.

Dick always considered himself Bruce’s partner, because he didn’t see himself as being Robin to assist Bruce with Batman’s mission....because Dick had his own mission. Batman and Robin were each their distinct ways of honoring their parents and fighting on in their name....its just those took different forms for them. Bruce ultimately saw his mission as honoring his parents by fighting to ensure what happened to them didn’t happen to any other family so long as he stood a chance of preventing it. Dick, on the other hand, I think ultimately saw HIS mission as honoring his parents by fighting to keep their memory alive, their spirit, in a city that seemed to have no place for that. By bringing light and laughter to the shadows of Gotham, and hope for the future.

With Robin more naturally suited to stopping to lend a helping hand to the Gothammite they just rescued while Batman fought off the last of their attackers. The younger hero practically carrying his own spotlight with him as he shone it on everyone they helped, as a promise that nobody was going to be forgotten or overlooked or left to slip through the cracks on his watch, even as Batman used the shadows to overwhelm and intimidate and drive off the dangers threatening those they saved.

Two distinctly different, but extremely complementary pursuits, personal missions. Neither mission actually in service to the other, but both enabling both at the same time.

And bringing it back around to Dick’s grandfather, the baby Cobb handed off to be raised in the circus and pave the way for future generations of Gray Sons to be mined as future Talons whenever the Court decided they needed them......

Think of the poignancy inherent in the fact that his entire EXISTENCE was intended to be nothing more than a bloodline of talented athletes for the Court to use.....and he basically said well fuck THAT nonsense, and without even knowing what his supposed ‘destiny’ and that of his descendants’ was supposed to be.....he took his existence and accidentally sculpted it into the very antithesis of everything they meant the Gray Son to be. Because all he needed to know is nobody but him was going to get to define him, decide what his future was, and his past was only as relevant as he decided to let it be.

(Remind you of anyone?)

And then think of how completely and firmly OPPOSITE the Court’s intentions for Dick were....to his personal crusade as Robin.

And the dramatic irony in how Dick has so often been instrumental to thwarting the Court’s plans and bringing them down....by doing nothing more than adhering to the same path he’s walked ever since his first days as Robin.

The path he chose to honor and keep with him what he could of his family....his parents before him....and theirs before them.

I maintain that Cobb never actually had a prayer of getting his great-grandson to follow in his footsteps.....

Because Dick had already set out to emulate his grandfather’s path instead, before he was even ten.

*Shrugs* Anyway, just random headcanons I have about Dick’s family, but yeah, I really like the idea of Dick naming one of his kids after his paternal grandfather at some point, because I think for Dick that would be an extremely auspicious and symbolic name....a tie to the family history Dick welcomes and claims as his own.....and an homage to the ancestor who first willfully forged a path for himself that turned out to be the complete opposite of what the Gray Son’s destiny supposedly was always meant to be....and exactly what Dick, his descendant, needed to fight off his ‘fate’ when it came calling for him, and to stay in the spotlight of his parents and grandparents no matter how much his great-grandfather tried to drag him into the dark.

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lessonsfrommadamexmas · 5 years ago

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30 from the prompt list with Riza and Roy

Thank you! For prompt 30 - just remember, if we get in trouble, you’re deaf and I don’t speak English.

Jesus Christ, this turned out huge! 2k words alert. I hope it’s not boring. I changed English to Amestrian, ‘cause, you know, not sure what language Amestrian people speak but probably not English. ;)

- - - -

As a state located next to the desert, the East had the hottest summer in Amestris. The days could often be uncomfortable while the nights were pleasant, with cooler temperatures and occasional rain. Riza didn’t like summer because she had to face a long walk to school in the morning and return when the sun was up high. Today, however, the weather was not unbearable, and the girl was surprised by her father’s apprentice waiting for her after class.

Mr. Mustang had started his alchemy lessons a couple of months ago, and so far he’s only spent the weekends in her house. It was an initial test her father required to see how a student would adapt. However, it seemed that her father’s interest in the boy was growing, for this time Mr. Mustang came to spend the week. Considering that the sixteen-year-old was always in the house and constantly studying, and considering that he had only been outside when he followed her to the lake nearby and the grocery store, she didn’t expect him to pick her up in school by himself. Even if the path leading there was a straight line.

When asked, the boy said his master suggested he went out to enjoy the day and taught him the way. Riza concluded her father had also noticed how energetic the boy was, and how a place dull and quiet like theirs didn’t offer a city boy enough stimulus.

— Hey, have you been to that cascade somewhere close to your home? Maybe a mile away — he asked when they deviated from a dense tree standing in the way.

She tried unsuccessfully to decipher what he was talking about.

— There’s nothing like that on our way home. Besides, we’re already about a mile away.

— Then we must be close! — he replied, scanning his surroundings. — It may not be an exact mile, and it’s not literally on our way, it’s in the forest. But I saw it, I’ll show you.

— Okay, but what about it?

— I’ve never been to one.

— Neither have I — she realized.

— You haven’t? But it’s right there! — His frown showed disbelief.

— I’ve been to the stream, it’s close to school, so I think the cascade you’re talking about may come from it. However, that would be in Mr. Swanson’s area... — she concluded.

— Mr. Swanson? Does everybody in this town have an animal in their names?

Riza stared in deep thought into nothingness for a second.

— The Franklins don’t.

— We should go take a look, what do you say? — he suggested excitedly.

— Don’t you get it? We’re not allowed to trespass.

— Why?

— It’s a private property. Mr. Swanson is an evil man. He will surely call the police on us.

— An evil man? — he smirked, clearly mocking her.

— I swear he is! I heard he controls two dogs that could tear a person apart. — she insisted nervously.

— He wouldn’t kill two kids, would him? I thought water bodies were nature’s property. — Mr. Mustang sighed. — C’mmon, I’m sure he won’t coincidentally find us if we just stay for a while. He won’t even know. But if we get in trouble, just remember, you’re deaf, and I don’t speak Amestrian.

She giggled.

— You kind of look like you could be a foreigner.

— My mother was a Xingese princess.

— Really?

— No! — he laughed. — Not quite. Come on!

There were still several things she didn’t know about the alchemy student. This was the first time they were spending actual time together, instead of the brief exchanges of word they often had and a few attempts to talk coming from the boy. Riza wasn’t good at conversation, so she always ruined it with her short replies. On the other hand, Mr. Mustang seemed to have a natural ability to draw people in, like someone who was willing to befriend everyone he met, even an aloof kid like her.

She wasn’t supposed to trust him so fast, but she already did. Her father trusted him enough to leave them alone, and even if there was any doubt left in her, she knew she had the upper hand. That was her town and he had proven to be a dumb city boy. Dumb and curious enough to reach places she had never considered before. Riza wanted to try that, too. And to be his friend.

Riza knew her town very well. Like the palm of her hand, she would say. She walked a few miles everyday to school and back ever since she was a little kid. Her mother and father homeschooled her until six, but her mother always said that it was important for her to get out there and make friends. Once the woman passed, her father no longer had the energy to teach her, so he sent her to school.

Thus, the girl knew every path and most properties located on her surroundings. It was often that she strained from her path to explore, aware that it didn’t make a difference to her dad whether she arrived half or a full hour later than usual. Yet, she had never crossed a private property. She had never tried to see up close the ducklings following their mothers across the lakes or the tree houses behind the fences. Nor Mr. Swanson’s cascade.

Roy crossed the fence but waited for her to lead the way. It seemed he recognized he could learn something from her. They walked for a few minutes, keeping the cascade in sight until it was fully visible.

— It surprises me that you’re worried about coming here. I mean, you’re twelve and you walk miles by yourself to go to school. Isn’t that dangerous? — he asked, as if reading her mind.

— That’s different from doing prohibited stuff. Besides, I have my slingshot to protect myself. — she said confidently.

The cascade was only about 25 feet tall, but gorgeous. Several rocks created a stairway, challenging the water to flow down aggressively before it found peace once more in shallow ground and continued its journey. On the margins, the trees all branched towards the translucent surface, like they bowed humbly to their provider. The sultry scent was amplified in that spot, but the streams added freshness to the mix. That might be Riza’s favorite smell.

— I thought this remote place would be so boring, but I guess I was wrong.

He seemed amazed.

— Nature can never be boring, Mr. Mustang. Not when you see it from an insider’s point-of-view.

— Right… One is all…

The girl could barely hear his whisper or see the realization on his face, as she took advantage of his distraction to kneel down and splash water on him.

— What are you doing? — he shouted annoyed before a grin appeared in his mouth. — I’ll get you!

— I’m not afraid of water! — she shouted, crossing the stream to the other side, feeling the water on her ankles.

To her surprise, he followed behind without a blink, so she continued to follow a trail in the woods.

Nevertheless, she didn’t go far. Old man Swanson was at a distance, with both his dogs by his side. The man’s eyebrows dug their way down his long nose and his sharp mouth curved in contempt.

— What are you two troublemakers doing here? — he shouted as soon as he spotted them. — I’ll call the police on you and don’t think you’re gonna get off easy just because you’re kids!

Riza waved her arms fearfully and started to move her hands in very specific ways, mixing her poor knowledge of sign language with random shapes. She wondered if the boy was willing to play the game he had proposed, because she was about to put up with the best act of her life.

Her answer came the next second, as he started to speak in a language that might be Xingese after all:

— I… love you? — She had no idea what meaning his words carried, but he made them sound confused and desperate. — I love you so much!

— What the hell kinda language is that?! GET OUT OF HERE! OUT!

They were counting on that to disarm the man and buy some time, but it didn’t last long. Mr. Swanson was taking none of it. Instead, he sent both his dogs in their direction. Was he truly willing to attack, or only to scary them? Riza had no time to wait and see. She ran without looking back. Swiftly, the girl tried to put as much distance between herself and that furious dog, she kept running with a grin from ear to ear, feeling more rebellious than she had ever been.

Until the only stomps against the dirt came from her own feet.

Caught up in the moment and feeling the adrenaline in her veins, it took her too long to realize Mr. Mustang wasn’t following her anymore.

— Mr. Mustang? — she called, looking around in all directions, all of them, even up in the trees, for a sign of him. — Not funny.

The whistle of leaves caressed by the afternoon breeze was the only response she got. She could spot the fence a few feet ahead of her. The boy had long legs. He was probably there already, awaiting and playing a prank on her.

— Mr. Mustang! — she shouted as loud as she could, running back to the road and hoping he could still hear her bustle. — Mr. Mustang, I’m here!

Not a sight of him.

Riza wondered if he had run in the opposite direction, or if the old man had caught him. The second option was starting to feel inviting. Roy knew nothing about the country, he wouldn’t be fine by himself in a forest.

She stopped on the road and waited for several minutes, attentive to every move, shouting his name every other time.

The girl heard the hiss of boots against grass coming from the curve on the road. She turned her head to the right and called for her father’s apprentice once again, unable to wait.

— Mr. Mustang! Finally, you…

It wasn’t him, however. A man appeared with a curious look on his face, apparently searching for the source of the unexpected call. He was tall and ginger, and his sharp eyebrows gave him a menacing look. The only family of gingers she knew around were the Haddocks, and he wasn’t one of them. Although that path would lead to their house.

— What is a little girl doing all by herself in the middle of the road? Are you lost?

He didn’t seem malicious, the girl thought, but she wasn’t allowed to trust strangers in any scenario. Thus, Riza grabbed her slingshot and slipped one hand into her pocket in search for the pebbles she kept there.

— Just waiting for my friend. We’re going to hunt some birds, you know? — she said, nonchalantly pointing her weapon at the man’s lower body.

— Hey, careful where you point that — he replied through a nervous laughter. — I plan to have more kids one day. But I wouldn’t want my girls alone in a desert place like this, so watch out.

— I am, sir — she said, still with her weapon in hand.

He waved and walked away. He seemed like a nice guy, after all, and she urged to ask him for help. On the other hand, she had already found herself enough problems for a day and didn’t plan to disobey her father any further. Besides, if the man was a visitor, he would be as helpful as going back home and telling her father everything.

Roy Mustang, if you’re making a fool of me, I’ll kill you.

It was decided, she would return. There wasn’t much she could do in the moment, but more importantly, there was absolutely no way he wouldn’t find his way back to the cascade. Even if he was dumb enough to run the opposite direction, it couldn’t be so hard to come across the stream again. And her house was only half a mile away.

There was also a chance Mr. Swanson caught him but what was the worst that could happen? His dogs eat him alive? For now, she would ignore that possibility. The old man would also be in trouble if he killed a kid. Instead, he would likely call the police, which was probably deserved, since Mr. Mustang coerced her to invade a private property.

Yes, no mercy for him. As Riza’s footsteps hurried, raising dust on the midday hot air, she thought of the smug look of someone who shouldn’t be underestimated the boy would be wearing when she opened the door. She plotted her revenge. She could slap the smirk out of his face, or she could take him to the lake someday and throw him in there, considering he couldn’t swim.

Her mind didn’t have time to reach grimmer depths before she reached the old place she called home.

— Dad, is Mr. Mustang with you? — the daughter shouted eagerly before she looked into the room.

- - - -

Humm, what about I just leave it hanging like that? I never write cliffhangers, so this time I decided to give it a try, leave it to the reader’s imagination to decide if this would have a humorous or angsty outcome. Do I know what happens next? Yes. Am I gonna write it? I won’t make promises.

#young royai fanfic #fullmetal fanfic #Roy Mustang #riza hawkeye

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claire-alex-fan · 6 years ago

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Very Special People: Joseph Merrick – Elephant man, Chang and Eng – Siamese twins, Francesco “Frank” Lentini – Three-legged boy, Carl Unthan – Limbless violinist

Special people always fascinated me, not because of their visage (even it’s make an important role), but mainly because of their stories. Even when those people were different, anybody can’t deny their will to live. Their will to live as others, will to shout: “Who cares I am different? I am human just like you! Behave to me as to human!”

Those special people always gave me brave to live and go for my dreams. They gave me hope.

As a little honour to those special people I wanted to draw some of them and add their story. I hope it will be inspiring for you.

And please, be forgiving for my English. I am not national speaker.

And it will be little bit longer…

(I made this pictures year ago and I did't submit it because of this long english description. Description I came out of most beautifull book Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer, what I have thank's to closest friend)

Joseph Merrick – Elephant man

Joseph Merrick was first special person, whom I ever know. Thanks to him started mine fascination with stories of special people. Although his story didn’t start happily, but mainly because of compassion of Sir Frederick Treves he could live how he always wanted – live in seclusion with something as small as acceptance.

Joseph Carey Merrick (August 5, 1862, Leicester - April 11, 1890, London). He suffered from two very rare diseases, namely neurofibromatosis and Proteus syndrome and because of that he suffered severe deformations of face due to which he was difficult to talk, could not laugh or sing. He also had deformed right arm and both legs. Because of his fall in childhood he had a severely damaged hip, so he could barely walk.

In his early childhood he must run from home. During these years, when he lived as he could, he decided to perform in a panoptic, where people first saw him as an Elephant Man. Here he was noticed by Tom Norman, who travelled with him to London. Here he performed in a small shop opposite the medical academy, where Frederick Treves first noticed him. Treves convinced Norman to allow Joseph Merrick to undergo a medical examination. Treves investigated him, and because Merrick was unable to talk, doctor thought he was imbecile.

However, Victorian England changed its attitude towards panoptics, and so Tom Norman, along with Joseph, had to go to Europe, where they did not do well. The manager eventually picked up Merrick's almost all of the property and send him back to England.

Exhausted, without anything and with severe bronchitis, he got back to London. He did not know what to do or where to go. Because of his appearance, people have been avoiding or trying to persecute him. From the hands of the crowd he was saved by the police who found the last thing Merrick had owned - a card from Doctor Frederick Treves.

He was admitted to isolation at the London hospital, even though Treves had broken the hospital rules. Here the doctor began to recognize a person who, despite all expectations, was intelligent, full of emotion, and with a soul of romance.

Here in the hospital began times that were radically different from those that Merrick had lived through.

However, although the nurses were not hostile to him, Treves knew that theirs professional conduct only confirmed Merrick's thought that he is a mere monster. Treves decided to bring him to his girlfriend. He briefly warned her about his appearance and asked her if she could greet him and give him a hand. And she also did that. The meeting lasted only a moment, and Merrick started to cry. Then he told Treves that she was the first woman to smile at him and gave him a hand.

Because Merrick could not stay forever in the hospital, Treves decided to put his story in the Times. With the help of the newspapers, he organized a collection to buy two rooms in the hospital. Thanks to his story, he was able to collect so much money that he could not only buy the room, but he also had enough finances for the end of his life. At the same time, the aristocrats became interested in him, and Merrick got into the society of higher people and he kept regularly correspondence with many of them.

Merrick was a soul of romance, and he was very happy to read stories of love. He also confided to Treves that he sometimes wished to be in the institution for the blind. He claimed that he could find there a woman who would not see him and so could fall in love with him.

The happiest moment in his life happened when he wanted to go somewhere out into the countryside where he could walk without people's view. Treves had arranged for this, so Merrick could travel to a small villa that belonged to Lady Knightley's estate.

And so Merrick got into the forest silence, watching animals, exploring the countryside and collecting flowers.

Merrick died six months after returning from the countryside. He was found in bed on his back. Treves, who led his autopsy, said he broke his neck because his head was too heavy. (Merrick normally slept with his knees at his chin). Apparently Merrick wanted to fulfil his last wish and sleep as normal people... and it became fatal to him.

Chang and Eng – Siamese twins

Siam (today’s Thailand) always fascinated me because of cats, kitchen, but mainly because of Chang and Eng.

They showed me that even when you are reliant on somebody you whole life, you can love each other. And solidary, knowing that someone can be with the other not only for own benefit, that was something what I needed when I read their story for first time.

Chang and Eng Bunker (May 11, 1811 - January 17, 1874), sometimes called the first Siamese twins.

Brothers were born in Thailand (formerly called Siam).

Conjoined twins have been known earlier in history, but Chang and Eng have become one of the most famous. So thanks to them that every twin born conjoined are called Siamese twins.

Both brothers were born healthy and beautiful. The only thing that distinguished them from the other children was that they were a connection from the breast bone to the belly button. After their birth, local doctors advised their parents to let brothers cut off. But their mother refused to do so, preferring to have two children, though conjoined, than two separate dead bodies.

Their mother cared for them with love and regularly practiced with the twins, so that the muscular band that connected them was longer and the brothers gained at least a little more freedom. Through her diligent work, the boys could eventually stand side by side, walk and live as if they were normal children.

The most interesting were their connections. Both brothers, though twins, had a distinctly different personality. Chang was dominant and often decided where the brothers would go, and when he and his brother argued, it was the Eng, who retreated.

Nonetheless, although they were different, they held brotherly love and devotion.

When the twins were ten years old, they had to start assisting in livelihood because they lost their fathers and their mother had to take care of the whole family. So they began with a street shop, which was very good for them because they had a natural charm and a sweet smile.

In this time businessman Robert Hunter came to meet them and offered them to show them to world. He knew that twins which was never seen before would be able to sell well in panoptics. So he began negotiating with the authorities to bring the twins into the world. Five years later, he got the franchise, and with the then twelve-year-old twins he went to Boston, where he immediately began to perform and immediately pulled crowds.

They also travelled to England and visited the most important doctors of that time and they confirming their authenticity.

And they did not lose sympathy with others (several times when they noticed that they had a handicapped child in the audience, they gave him a gift) or a sense of humour.

When the twins were twenty-one, they quarrelled with their manager, Captain Coffin, (who had taken them over from Robert Hunter, who had to leave for his business matters) and decided to travel alone. However, although they wanted to travel back to Thailand, they never returned to their homeland.

When they were on their travels through America, they met P. T. Barnum, about who has been told that every weird man in the 19th century has ever met him. But they only cooperated with him briefly.

When twins were twenty-eight, they decided to settle down and buy a small farm. They began to grow corn, to keep pigs and to long for the family. They gained American citizenship, and because they had no surnames, they decided to accept the surname Bunker. It is still unclear why they decided to name their self like this.

Twins started to propose two girls, but their neighbours did not agree. But even this did not forced twins to make any retreat. Both of them wanted to love and they were not afraid to fight for it. They therefore decided to undergo surgery which had to divide them. When their mistresses learned about it, they immediately talked to them because they did not want to risk that something happened to the brothers in the operation.

And not long after that, a two-fold wedding took place.

Coexistence with twins, though, required a special regime, but in essence it did not restrict anyone. The two brothers became the fathers of more than twenty children (Eng was father of six boys and five girls, and Chang had seven girls and three boys).

Because of the war they lost almost all of their property and were forced to go back to the show business and they returned to P. T. Barnum. After a journey in Europe, when the brothers returned to America, Chang had a stroke and because of that he was paralyzed to part of his body. He realized that it made life harder for his brother, and he began to fall into depressions, which often drowned in alcohol.

In January 1874, Chang had a bronchitis disorder. Even though his condition improved, one night, Chang woke up in the middle of the night and awakened his brother because he badly breathing. Both of them fell asleep again, and a few hours later Eng awoke knowing that there was something wrong. Chang was dead. Eng knew very well that his end would come soon. They called on the doctor to try to divide the twins, but before he arrived, it was obvious that it was too late. Eng had severe cramps and died shortly after the doctor arrived. It was on Friday, January 17, 1874.

And this is how died the most famous Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng, who, even though they had not spent simple years, astonished surgeons and viewers all over the world, they never lost their sense of humour, and their devotion and mutual love. They lived and died and also pass their message - forever together.

(With this one picture I had a lot's of fun, and there is early sketch af Chang's face: sta.sh/01a32mmc8afk)

Francesco “Frank” Lentini – Three-legged boy

This man captivated me because he took his condition with humour. He taught me self-acceptance and mainly that, whatever we are, we can always take it with humour and don’t care what thinks people around, because they don’t know what we feel, or what we had to go through. And because of that it’s more important how we accept ourselves and not how accept us others. And with bit of humour we can bring some hope to people who need it.

Francesco "Frank" Lentini (April 18, 1881 - September 22, 1966), sometimes called Three-Legged Football Player, was born in the small town Rosolini in Italy. Because of the part of the body of his incomplete twin, he had a scrubby pan attached to the skeleton, from which another leg had grown. It was shorter than the other legs, but, he had full control over it and managed to kick into a ball, which he later used in his performances.

When he was young, his family had to immigrate to the United States. Here he first appeared in the circus.

Even though his third leg had never bothered him in his life, he was often ashamed of it and advised the doctors to remove her. When doctors refused surgery, he gradually fell into depression. He noticed that everyone around him was sorry for him, and he began to hate himself. His family did everything to cheer him up. Once they took him to the Disability Institute. Little Lentini here saw the children who had to suffer because of their disability. Lentini himself says that experience was not pleasant to him, but when he saw the other children who had far worse deformities than he, and how they wanted to live and did what they could, it's gave him hope and desire to experience his life. He reconciles with himself and learned with his third leg to do a lot of bits, but also ordinary activities such as jump, swim or drive a car.

Several people asked him how he bought boots, and he simply said, "I buy two pairs of boots and I give my left boot to my one-legged friend who lost his leg during an unfortunate accident."

He had performed for many years, married and had four children. He spent a long and happy life, and finally he did not mind was different. He was able to accept himself and motivate others.

He died because of lung failure in Jacksonville, Florida, on September 22, 1966.

Carl Unthan – Limbless violinist

Carl Unthan is close to me mainly because of his violin plays. He all his life wanted to live like if he had no handicap. He tries to be like others and it strengthened him.

But always when I touch my violin I recall two men. My grandfather, who bequeath me that violin, and at Carl Unthan, who thought me that every person, if he/she want, can make every dream come true.

Carl Unthan (April 5, 1848 - 1929), sometimes called the Limbless violinist.

He was born in Germany, and when the midwife saw he had no arms, she suggested she would suffocate him, but his father strongly rejected it. He gently took his baby and carried him to his wife.

Carl grew rapidly, and his relatives and neighbours often regretted him. As soon as his father noticed it, he immediately realized that regret in a boy wakes up only self-pity, and it destroys him. He forbade everyone to regret it. He set three principles. The first one was that no one should regret the boy. When the boy was a year, he began to try to put things on his feet, and so a second principle emerged. No one was allowed to put on him shoes or socks. Carl began to use his legs instead of his hands and he became extremely skilful. Once at dinner, he started feeding by his feet. His father said at that moment that Carl could do what he wanted and nobody could help him.

Carl grew up and became very skilled. Gradually he managed a great deal of activities that no one thought he could do without hands. He was tenacious and patient (and stubborn), and what he did not do for the first time, he still tried to do it until he succeed.

The house he lived in was attached to the school building, and little Carl had often secretly sneak there and learned to write and count. When his father enrolled him at school at the age of six, he could read and write.

And he has also tenaciously learned many other activities we consider as commonplace. He learned to dress himself, swim, even go shopping, or help his parents farm fields.

However, he was still very sensitive in the core, and other people often unconsciously hurt him. When his younger brother died, several people drop a hint that God had called to himself the wrong man. Every note about his physical condition was like a burning blow to his face. However, over the years, he has learned to accept all of the notes.

Carl loved music very much, and he was eager to begin playing the violin. No one ever thought Carl could learn such a thing, but Carl did not agree with them. Once he secretly lent the violin, tied it to the chair and began to play on them. He ignored the fact that his family was covering his ears. He trained long hours with the tenacity of his own. When he was sixteen and he mastered the violin play, his parents sent him to the Conservatory. After his first concert, he began to travel and play. People watched him watch not only because of music but also because of how he can play without hands.

When he was in Prague (today's capital of the Czech Republic (my homeland, yay!)), he met a young singer named Antonie Beštová and immediately fell in love with her. He persuaded her to go with him to a concert tour, and when he finished, he asked for her hand. Antonia accepted his offer.

When the First World War broke out, he was over sixty years old, but still he wanted to serve his homeland. So he began showing wounded soldiers who had lost their limbs how they could live without them. None of the soldiers couldn't be as skilled as Carl, but his optimism and tenacity gave them hope and a taste for life.

Before his death, he wrote his autobiography and instead of manuscript he called it "pediscript" because he wrote it with his legs. At the beginning of the book, he wrote the motto that had led him all his life: "Where there is a will there is a way."

#Very Special People #Joseph Merrick #Elephant man #Chang and Eng #Siamese twins #Francesco “Frank” Lentini #Three-legged boy #Carl Unthan #Limbless violinist #misfits #my art

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shilohjogi · 3 years ago

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DREAMED OF BIBLE VERSES :

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose

no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the CREATOR and their vindication from Me, declares GOD.”

One scripture randomly came to mind:

For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it; lest haply you be found even to fight against God.

SYMBOLISM

CIRCLE

The circle is a universal symbol with extensive meaning. It represents the notions of totality, wholeness, original perfection, the Self, the infinite, eternity, timelessness, all cyclic movement, God ('God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere' (Hermes Trismegistus)). As the sun, it is masculine power; as the soul and as encircling waters, it is the feminine maternal principle. "It implies an idea of movement, and symbolizes the cycle of time, the per petual motion of everything that moves, the planets' journey around the sun (the circle of the zodiac), the great rhythm of the universe. The circle is also zero in our system of numbering, and symbolizes potential, or the embryo. It has a magical value as a protective agent, ... and indicates the end of the process of individuation, of striving towards a psychic wholeness and self-realization" (Julien, 71).

With the number ten, symbolizes heaven and perfection as well as eternity. In Jung, the antithesis of the square (lowest state of man who has not achieved inner perfection), standing for the ultimate state of Oneness, with octagon in between. Circle of Necessity: birth, growth, decline, death. Defense against chaos, formlessness. Related to YIN YANG

MIRROR

In times both modern and ancient, the mirror is implicitly connected to beauty and the imagination. Further symbolism of the mirror shows a connection to secrets—both the hiding and revealing of them. The mirror also, in turn, symbolises revelation and truth: the mirror often shows the face, and the eyes. The eyes, are the paths to truth: they are the “window to the soul”, or, ever-more interestingly, the “mirror of the soul.” in gazing into the mirror, is therefore not merely enjoying the sight of one’s own beauty, but is acknowledging the truth of all that resides within one, one at least hopes they see more than flesh. not merely a symbol of pride or vanity, but rather of the truth of survival – sometimes harsh, sometimes gentle. It symbolises the truth of the human body, the imagination of humans and gods, and the nature and prolonged existence of all that there is and ever was.

The Mirror of Aphrodite symbol can be viewed as a wand and represents an ability to cast one's designs onto the world, urging others to look at and deeply examine their own principles.

In Roman Mythology, Veritas ( Classical Latin), meaning Truth, is the goddess of truth. The elusive goddess is said to have hidden in the bottom of a holy well. She is depicted both as a virgin dressed in white and as the “naked truth” (nuda veritas) holding a hand mirror.

The oracle of Apollo at Delphi demanded of the ancient Greek ‘know thyself,’ and mirrors have often been used as symbols of wisdom and self-knowledge. But Apollo also required ‘nothing in excess,’ and the mirror can just as easily imply vanity, an unhealthy amount of self-regard. The peril of over admiring one’s mirror image is encapsulated in the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, the beautiful boy who having fallen in love with his reflection in a pool, pined away and was turned into a flower.

In ancient art the mirror is often associated with the world of women and does not necessarily carry any symbolic value, although it was an attribute of the Roman goddess Venus (Greek Aphrodite).

In Christian art the mirror came to represent the eternal purity of the Virgin Mary. As the medieval writer Jacobus de Voragine wrote:

“As the sun permeates glass without violating it, so Mary became a mother without losing her virginity… She is called a mirror because of her representation of things, for as all things are reflected from a mirror, so in the blessed Virgin, as in the mirror of God, ought all to see their impurities and spots, and purify them and correct them: for the proud, beholding her humility see their blemishes, the avaricious see theirs in her poverty, the lovers of pleasures, theirs in her virginity.”

The mirror in art can have other positive meanings. The allegorical figures of Prudence and Truth were often imagined carrying mirrors. Above is An Allegory of Sight [PD.355-1963] from c.1598 by the Dutch artist Hendrik Goltzius, one of a series of drawings about the five senses. A naked woman, perhaps intended to be the goddess Venus or maybe Juno, regards her reflection in a convex hand mirror. Beside her is an eagle, the bird of the Roman god Jupiter, and the symbol most often used to represent sight in Renaissance art.

Gradually however the mirror came to be associated with the negative values suggested by the myth of Narcissus. Vanity and Deception rather than Truth and Prudence were the connotations the mirror carried most often from the Renaissance on. Paulus Moreelse’s painting has been interpreted variously as an allegory of Lasciviousness or Vanity: just as the mirror is dishonest, a carrier of pure illusion, so this girl’s beauty is an illusion, as transitory and shallow as her reflection in the glass.

One way in which an artist can make use of the mirror is to show us something that we would not otherwise be able to see; the reflection of an object or person outside the scope of the painting perhaps. In Moreelse’s painting the mirror provides an alternative view of what we can already see: the girl’s face, this time in profile. Her physical appearance is so important to the painting, that we get two views of the same face.

In Alfred Elmore’s Victorian melodrama, On the Brink, left [PD.108-1975], the back wall of the gambling house into which we look is dominated by a tall narrow gilt mirror. Given its central position opposite the viewer, one might expect it to reflect the window through which we look. It in fact reflects nothing other than the room’s hellish red wallpaper, emphasizing the ghastly trap of debt and immoral obligation that the woman in the foreground has stumbled into.

GLASS

Glass is eternal; you can break it into the tiniest particles, melt it down, turn it into magnificent forms, but it would always stay what it is, glass.

Glass is made out of all four essential elements. It symbolizes transformation, change, eternity and rebirth.

Glass is an impressive material, although, symbolically, it is commonly associated with ideas exactly the opposite of longevity and eternity. Glass is commonly seen as a symbol of fragility, vulnerability and brittleness.

Glass symbolism is dual. It represents things that are fragile, but also things that are protective and strong.

Glass could symbolize invisible protection, but also brittle, unsteady one. Glass stands for clairvoyance and ability to see through things. It stands for things you are aware and those of which you are not.

glass is, in general, something that can always be ‘revived’.

POEM —SHILOH JOGI

“the day’s dirt hangs tight on my skin. I discard the clothes into the dirty bin. I keep my mouth closed, but my mind is wide open. Stepping into the shower, I turn the handles, reminds me of a bare life. The water runs wild all over, and I close my eyes, and I see the All Seeing/Knowing Eye.

I have this hand held mirror –never looking in it, on the highest shelf, hidden from light. On my knees I fought monsters inside me, & I crawled to that shelf and stood on my tip-toes. Finally, I put the handheld mirror in my hand and looked into the abyss! Change, change —echoed.

Pardon me.

Describe things as illuminating when they clarify the situation or explain the facts. A long conversation with someone you don't know well can be illuminating, helping you understand them much better. Likewise, studying the details of any subject, whether it's Humanitarianism, Social Justice, Psychology, or Ethical Practices, is also illuminating.

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paganchristian · 3 years ago

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Here is the pink and yellow thistle we saw at a park recently. We also saw at another place, purple thistles that are some different kind, I think, very round seedheads and smaller flowers than the giant purple thistles I’ve seen more often. Anyway, we gathered some of the seeds to try planting it in our garden because we have many painted lady butterflies and that is a host plant of theirs apparently, but there are plenty of thistles nearby and mallows, and other things they apparently eat. I’m no expert, but that is what the website for the butterfly kits said they eat, and a few other things. I just wanted to grow some in our own yard so maybe we can have local caterpillars we see every day. My daughter has also found numerous four leaf clovers, now, and apparently they are abundant in our yard and she’s found a couple here and there at parks. I guess they’re more common than they say or maybe most don’t look for them that often or both. And she’s found a two leaf and a one-leaf clover. The clovers end up put in different books to dry and it’s interesting seeing which books they are put in. The one-leaf clover, found at a park, was put in a book about Waldorf education, The Heart of Teaching, it was called. I always carry at least one book with me in nature, in case I feel able to read while we walk or sit and rest. I really do think they are real one and two leaf clovers, as far as I can tell, that is, not eaten by bugs till there is only one or two leaves but that way inherently. Because there are no leaf bud spots where the leaf would grow out of the bottom of the stem, as it looks when you pick off a leaf (we investigated to see). Anyway, one leaf clover, maybe could represent oneness. It could represent unity with God. It could represent the Father? It could represent faith? If two leaves can represent hope (as in faith, hope and love, the second one usually named), then it got me thinking. Because lately when she found that clover, I’d been thinking and experiencing different things that made me think of stuff that seemed fitting for that and then the book, too, seems, about teaching her about these topics, which was related to something I’d been thinking about at the time. It seems random and perhaps. But if it helps me then it works.

Anyway, growing thistles, it makes me think, I’m on the path to gaining gifts no one wants or they think they want but they don’t really. Because the real expression and action of those gifts is too taboo. Too outside the norms, too rejected. At least, often it is. But it feels like my life is growing thick with thistles and I don’t mind. I finally find that my answers are being found. I meant to say that yesterday, but kept getting derailed where I would just say things that sounded a lot more vague and undefined, a lot more like I was probably more on the path to failure than any real answers. Which is weird that it kept coming out that way. And I think the reason it did was because there is part of me that just shies away from speaking about the answers I’m finding, even when I feel like I’m m mostly talking to my own mind, my own memory’s sake, to write in a blog that is mostly meant to be for me, so that I can remember and reflect on the journey that’s been before for me. Anyway, in some way too it’s just that it really is just so very hard to call it answers, to call it solutions. Maybe it really will end in defeat. How long will the full unfolding be even if successes are met? And if some successes are met, will it be far outweighed by the failures in most people’s eyes? So much so that is’ hard for me to speak about successes, even in my own blog meant for me? Yet even if it looks like failures overshadow successes to such a great degree I might feel that it’s not as it looks, not as my words and worlds can convey. But still language is usually used to communicate with others and so much so it is that way, that even when i try to talk jut to myself I find my words and thoughts getting swept into the swirl of trying to be understandable to other people, and my thoughts get clipped away and quelled down and then they are gone, so when I really need to remember something important I have to be careful when I am trying to write it down because my mind has a way of shuffling hard to understand thoughts out of expression, thought, or memory. If I want to stay conscious of what is going on for me for real, then I have to be careful about communicating and writing, even when I do it for my own sake nd I need to do it for my own sake, and even when others also need to hear the things I’ want to say, and I think they need to hear what I have to say. These truths are often not appreciated, spoken or only half spoken and then contradicted, quickly, given la brief mention, praise and importance, but hypocritically denied and argued against more or overpowered by opposite attitudes, by the very same people. I want to be one voice in the many, even knowing that my own voice might become just a background indiscernible and unimportant voice, yet some things require one to speak even if you might not be heard, just in case you are. So it’s all these things that make me speak but often I prefer silence, just like I was saying.

And that silence in God and my own heart, my own mind, my inuitions, and subconscious, my heart and meditativeness, all that, in nature, in resting in being, in nonresistance and patience to wait for God’s answers, the taboo God, to trust, to hope, to believe that he might eventually answer me, t seek answers in new places than before,.. that’s the kind of silence I’ve been sinking in.

God is giving me answers, he is helping me piece together the view of my reality, my problems, the problems with myself, my family, my friends, the world, my child, my homeschooling and ways that I raise and teach my child, and my health, and religion, and spirituality and other belief systems, alternative medicine (and mainstream conventional medicine as well), parenting theories and approaches, and the views of God that people generally have, and the approaches to God, and problems with the ideas and approaches and biases in the field of psychology, and problems then also with my own psychological problems that are blocking things from moving forward and falling into place, ... and problems with my history, that of my family, my closest loved ones, society, so many people in the world, and throughout time, and religion, and ideas everywhere.

And yet also, the taboo God is helping me to see the undiscerned, unrecognized, denied, or minimized good things... the strengths and truths of myself, others, religions, other belief systems and spirituality and new age, complementary and alternative healing, energy healing, spiritual healing, and secular or mainstream societal or subcultural values systems too,, and societies, psychology and individuals, and my family, and my husband, and my child, and my life and ways of raising my daughter and books and new ideas I’m finding in the online library I have oodles of books that are like a whole nother world of possibilities excessive and unbelievable (and way more books and ideas than I could eve really read so it’s hard to see where to start and I know that many of the books there would sound much better than they really would be once I read them, because so it seems often in my experience, thinking something will change my life but no, it’s much fluff or just the wrong angle for me or whatever. Anyway, all the while it feels like I’m having to come to terms with the reality that everything and everything altogether is way more fragile and flawed than I ever wanted to realize it is. Though if it’s that fragile the only grace in that is that once I see things for their true reality then I can do what has to be or can be done and let go of what can’t be done and it’s an ever changing possibility, day by day and moment by moment and in that space of knowing how flawed everyone and everything really seems to be, and all the held up ideals are flawed too, religions, and philosophies and psychology and all these different things are so very flawed I am seeing, but in that knowing, knowing that the cultural norms and moral ideals held up by the average person too are full of holes and wrongness and denial and distortion, but through all that there is a strength in seeing that we don’t need to be what we cannot be and we cannot be it, of course. And what slim sliver of possibility of what we can be or the road less taken that lets us transform things with possibilities that are far outside the ideal, that is slowly being found. The field of thistles is a field of wishes and possibilities. But it might fall through. Living on the outskirts of society, a cast off being, between the seams of life, unwanted, taboo and transient, that is how I feel. Such a life is insecure by nature and might fail ant any time. Fail irreparably and yet, maybe, hopefully not, so that is where I am. If one gets strong enough and gather the resources needed you can live on the outskirts of normalcy yet still be very safe, healthy, and well and stable, in some cases so it’s my hope for my future, just so that I can keep my heart and the hearts of my loved ones from bein destroyed. It’s all I want, just to not have our hearts and souls destroyed, no trace of pride or arrogance here, but in my desire to stand alone, to succeed and be so strong it’s taking a stance against overpowering odds to try to just keep our hearts and souls from being permanently decimated. The security and certainty that we won’t be lost causes forever.

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theadmiringbog · 5 years ago

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*wakes up and looks at phone* ah let’s see what fresh horrors await me on the fresh horrors device

–@MISSOKISTIC IN A TWEET ON NOVEMBER 10, 2016

A more recent project that acts in a similar spirit is Scott Polach’s Applause Encouraged, which happened at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego in 2015. On a cliff overlooking the sea, forty-five minutes before the sunset, a greeter checked guests in to an area of foldout seats formally cordoned off with red rope. They were ushered to their seats and reminded not to take photos. They watched the sunset, and when it finished, they applauded. Refreshments were served afterward.

—

Bird-watching is the opposite of looking something up online.

They write: If you can have your time and work and live and be a person, then the question you’re faced with every day isn’t, Do I really have to go to work today? but, How do I contribute to this thing called life? What can I do today to benefit my family, my company, myself?

To me, “company” doesn’t belong in that sentence. Even if you love your job! Unless there’s something specifically about you or your job that requires it, there is nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly potentially productive the second you open your eyes in the morning—and in my opinion, no one should accept this, not now, not ever.

Audre Lorde meant it in the 1980s, when she said that “[c]aring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

As Gabrielle Moss, author of Glop: Nontoxic, Expensive Ideas That Will Make You Look Ridiculous and Feel Pretentious (a book parodying goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-priced wellness empire), put it: self-care “is poised to be wrenched away from activists and turned into an excuse to buy an expensive bath oil.”

Thinking about sensitivity reminds me of a monthlong artist residency I once attended with two other artists in an extremely remote location in the Sierra Nevada. There wasn’t much to do at night, so one of the artists and I would sometimes sit on the roof and watch the sunset. She was Catholic and from the Midwest; I’m sort of the quintessential California atheist. I have really fond memories of the languid, meandering conversations we had up there about science and religion. And what strikes me is that neither of us ever convinced the other—that wasn’t the point—but we listened to each other, and we did each come away different, with a more nuanced understanding of the other person’s position.

The life force is concerned with cyclicality, care, and regeneration; the death force sounds to me a lot like “disrupt.” Obviously, some amount of both is necessary, but one is routinely valorized, not to mention masculinized, while the other goes unrecognized because it has no part in “progress.”

Certain people would like to use technology to live longer, or forever. Ironically, this desire perfectly illustrates the death drive at play in the “Manifesto of Maintenance Art” (“separation, individuality, Avant-Garde par excellence; to follow one’s own path—do your own thing; dynamic change”)30. To such people I humbly propose a far more parsimonious way to live forever: to exit the trajectory of productive time, so that a single moment might open almost to infinity. As John Muir once said, “Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time-effacing enjoyment.”

Poswolsky writes of their initial discovery: “I think we also found the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply: just spend more time with your friends.”

... he said, with an epiphany he had while accompanying a fellow clergyman on a trip to Louisville:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

My most-liked Facebook post of all time was an anti-Trump screed. In my opinion, this kind of hyper-accelerated expression on social media is not exactly helpful (not to mention the huge amount of value it produces for Facebook). It’s not a form of communication driven by reflection and reason, but rather a reaction driven by fear and anger.

Obviously these feelings are warranted, but their expression on social media so often feels like firecrackers setting off other firecrackers in a very small room that soon gets filled with smoke.

Our aimless and desperate expressions on these platforms don’t do much for us, but they are hugely lucrative for advertisers and social media companies, since what drives the machine is not the content of information but the rate of engagement. Meanwhile, media companies continue churning out deliberately incendiary takes, and we’re so quickly outraged by their headlines that we can’t even consider the option of not reading and sharing them.

To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world—contemptus mundi—but the channels through which you encounter it day to day. It also means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one.

Standing apart represents the moment in which the desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal. This kind of resistance still manifests as participating, but participating in the “wrong way”: a way that undermines the authority of the hegemonic game and creates possibilities outside of it.

A crowded sidewalk is a good example: everyone is expected to continue moving forward. Tom Green poked at this convention when he performed “the Dead Guy,” on his Canadian public access TV show in the 1990s. Slowing his walk to a halt, he carefully lowered himself to the ground and lay facedown and stick-straight for an uncomfortable period of time. After quite a crowd had amassed, he got up, looked around, and nonchalantly walked away.

So to a question like “Will you or will you not participate as asked?” Diogenes would have answered something else entirely: “I will participate, but not as asked,” or, “I will stay, but I will be your gadfly.” This answer (or non-answer) is something I think of as producing what I’ll call a “third space”—an almost magical exit to another frame of reference. For someone who cannot otherwise live with the terms of her society, the third space can provide an important if unexpected harbor.

Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Bartleby, the clerk famous for repeating the phrase, “I would prefer not to,” uses a linguistic strategy to invalidate the requests of his boss. Not only does he not comply; he refuses the terms of the question itself.

Facebook abstention, like telling someone you grew up in a house with no TV, can all too easily appear to be taste or class related.

We need to be able to think across different time scales when the mediascape would have us think in twenty-four-hour (or shorter) cycles, to pause for consideration when clickbait would have us click, to risk unpopularity by searching for context when our Facebook feed is an outpouring of unchecked outrage and scapegoating, to closely study the ways that media and advertising play upon our emotions, to understand the algorithmic versions of ourselves that such forces have learned to manipulate, and to know when we are being guilted, threatened, and gaslighted into reactions that come not from will and reflection but from fear and anxiety.

“In short, when the inattention stimulus falls outside the area to which attention is paid, it is much less likely to capture attention and be seen,” the researchers write. That’s intuitive enough, but it gets more complicated. If the briefly flashing stimulus was outside the area of visual attention, but was something distinct like a smiley face or the person’s name, the subject would notice it after all.

As an artist interested in using art to influence and widen attention, I couldn’t help extrapolating the implications from visual attention to attention at large.

In a post about ad blockers on the University of Oxford’s “Practical Ethics” blog, the technology ethicist James Williams (of Time Well Spent) lays out the stakes: We experience the externalities of the attention economy in little drips, so we tend to describe them with words of mild bemusement like “annoying” or “distracting.” But this is a grave misreading of their nature. In the short term, distractions can keep us from doing the things we want to do. In the longer term, however, they can accumulate and keep us from living the lives we want to live, or, even worse, undermine our capacities for reflection and self-regulation, making it harder, in the words of Harry Frankfurt, to “want what we want to want.” Thus there are deep ethical implications lurking here for freedom, wellbeing, and even the integrity of the self.

In an effort to make the user aware of persuasive design, Nudget used overlays to call out and describe several of the persuasive design elements in the Facebook interface as the user encountered them. But the thesis is also useful simply as a catalog of the many forms of persuasive design—the kinds that behavioral scientists have been studying in advertising since the mid-twentieth century.

Vivrekar lists the strategies identified by researchers Marwell and Schmitt in 1967: “reward, punishment, positive expertise, negative expertise, liking/ingratiation, gifting/pre-giving, debt, aversive stimulation, moral appeal, positive self-feeling, negative self-feeling, positive altercasting, negative altercasting, positive esteem of others, and negative esteem of others.”

Vivrekar herself has study participants identify instances of persuasive design on the LinkedIn site and compiles a staggering list of 171 persuasive design techniques.

“knowing your enemy” when it comes to the attention economy. For example, one could draw parallels between the Nudget system, which teaches users to see the ways in which they are being persuaded, and the Prejudice Lab, which shows participants how bias guides their behavior.

Or that the woman in front of you in line who just screamed at you is maybe not usually like this; maybe she’s going through a rough time. Whether this is actually true isn’t the point. Just considering the possibility makes room for the lived realities of other people, whose depths are the same as your own. This is a marked departure from the self-centered “default setting,”

Last week, after a meeting, I took the F streetcar from Civic Center to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It’s a notoriously slow, crowded, and halting route, especially in the middle of the day. This pace, added to my window seat, gave me a chance to look at the many faces of the people on Market Street with the same alienation as the slow scroll of Hockney’s Yorkshire Landscapes. Once I accepted the fact that each face I looked at (and I tried to look at each of them) was associated with an entire life—of birth, of childhood, of dreams and disappointments, of a universe of anxieties, hopes, grudges, and regrets totally distinct from mine—this slow scene became almost impossibly absorbing. As Hockney said: “There’s a lot to look at.” Even though I’ve lived in a city most of my adult life, in that moment I was floored by the density of life experience folded into a single city street.

When the language of advertising and personal branding enjoins you to “be yourself,” what it really means is “be more yourself,” where “yourself” is a consistent and recognizable pattern of habits, desires, and drives that can be more easily advertised to and appropriated, like units of capital.

In fact, I don’t know what a personal brand is other than a reliable, unchanging pattern of snap judgments: “I like this” and “I don’t like this,” with little room for ambiguity or contradiction.

The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.

(“bland enough to offend no one”)

The professional social media star, a person reverse-engineered from a formula of what is most palatable to everyone all the time.

Everybody says that there is no censorship on the internet, or at least only in part. But that is not true. Online censorship is applied through the excess of banal content that distracts people from serious or collective issues.

Our interactions become data collected by a company, and engagement goals are driven by advertising.

Mastodon... They allow more granular control of one’s intended audience; when you post to Mastodon, you can have the content’s visibility restricted to a single person, your followers, or your instance—or it can be public.

... forming any idea requires a combination of privacy and sharing. But this restraint is difficult when it comes to commercial social media, whose persuasive design collapses context within our very thought processes themselves by assuming we should share our thoughts right now—indeed, that we have an obligation to form our thoughts in public!

A counterexample would be the sparse UX of Patchwork, a social networking platform that runs on Scuttlebutt. Scuttlebutt is a sort of global mesh network that can go without servers, ISPs, or even Internet connection (if you have a USB stick handy). It can do that because it relies on individual users’ computers as the servers, similar to local mesh networks, and because your “account” on a Scuttlebutt-powered social media platform is simply an encrypted block of data that you keep on your computer.

In #NeverAgain, David Hogg writes that “[a]nger will get you started but it won’t keep you going.”

Before long, the conference would be over, and I would have missed most of it. A lot of things would have happened there that are important and useful. For my part, I wouldn’t have much to show for my “time well spent”—no pithy lines to tweet, no new connections, no new followers. I might only tell one or two other people about my observations and the things I learned. Otherwise, I’d simply store them away, like seeds that might grow some other day if I’m lucky.

Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I’d look like a dropout. But from the point of view of the place, I’d look like someone who was finally paying it attention. And from the point of view of myself, the person actually experiencing my life, and to whom I will ultimately answer when I die—I would know that I spent that day on Earth.

“I would prefer not to.”

#How to Do Nothing #books

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gabriellaangela100-blog · 6 years ago

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Blog Post #1

Hello everyone, welcome to my COMM 3P18 blog! Here I will be sharing my personal experiences and how this relates to the content we learn throughout the course. My first blog post will be focusing on the fear people have with expressing their opinions online and offline. I will be discussing article, textbook, and lecture material that correlates to my audience experience of social media feuds and personal debates. Hope you enjoy reading!

Throughout our day-to-day lives, it is incredibly easy to become a part of an audience experience whether it is intentional or unintentional. Being a part of an audience experience means that you are participating in any interaction or event. Every day we engage in audience experiences without even really realizing. Audiences can be something evident, such as a comedy show, movie, or concert, but it can also be something you are witnessing by yourself. These audience experiences can be reading a news article or viewing social media networks because these still connect you to an individual’s personal life events. COMM 3P18 has taught me the various things that can be considered an audience experience and outlines the large part we take in as audience members.

With the mass growth of social media in our society partaking in an audience experience is that much easier now. Social media has become the number one outlet for expressing thoughts and opinions, sharing your daily events, or updating your network on certain information. However, social media being a mass source of communication can cause an individual to easily be attacked for what they share to their social media profile. This causes a lot of people the fear to express their opinion publicly, especially if they are aware their opinion is not the same as the majority. Authors German Neubaum and Nicole Kramer focus on the hesitation people have when expressing their opinion if it is the minority, in their paper, What Do We Fear? Expected Sanctions for Expressing Minority Opinions in Offline and Online Communication. Neubaum and Kramer (2018) discuss the Silence Theory, this theory argues that people have more confidence in expressing their argument if it corresponds with the majority and those whose opinion is considered the minority tend to fall into silence (Neubaum & Kramer, 2018, p. 140).

This is seen a lot on social media. It is obvious that people have more confidence when they can hide behind a phone or computer screen, many people will use their social media platforms to aggressively attack someone who expresses an opinion opposite to theirs. Twitter or Facebook are the media networks that majority of feuds take place on. The increase of social media feuds has caused a decrease in the power of audiences. Human’s naturally have the need to fit in, we do not want to be on the opposite side of the majority even if we do not agree with them. This desire to be accepted into society causes us to hold back on speaking out if we know there is a chance we could be shamed for our beliefs (Personal Communication, Professor Good, September 27, 2018). Although we all stand for the rights of freedom of our speech, it is common for people to have a strong fear of being judged or attacked. I have personally witnessed mass Twitter feuds that I thought everyone involved was being ridiculously immature, but I did not join the feud to express my opinion because I am someone who is terrified of confrontation or arguments, even online. I think the majority of us can say we have been in this situation, we want to be able to say that we have the confidence to always speak our mind but it is not always that easy!

Neubaum and Kramer (2018) share a study that suggests individuals have become less inclined to speak their thoughts on social media than in face-to-face situations (Neubaum & Kramer, 2018, p. 140). I find this extremely interesting because I feel it is more common that people would rather discuss an awkward topic via technology than in person to avoid the uncomfortable confrontation. Breaking up with someone or fighting with someone over text is usually seen as the cowardly move because it suggests you do not have the maturity or confidence to talk to them face-to-face. Though this study is now claiming that people would rather communicate in person than on social media, and this could easily be stemmed from how more aggressive an individual can be behind a screen than they would be in person. I think we can all say we have been in a situation when you are arguing with a boyfriend or girlfriend or a friend and you say to yourself “they would not be saying any of this if we were talking in person”. It is intriguing to acknowledge how people have developed a fear of communicating online when it used to be the preference, because of the common occurrence of either being attacked on social media or it causing a larger altercation between yourself and an individual. Individuals tend to have more confidence on social media and that has actually created a decrease of power and increase of silence through audiences, due to the fear of being rejected by the majority.

The same behavior exists in face-to-face communication as well. Neubaum and Kramer (2018) share it is also frequent that an individual will only choose to share their personal experience in face-to-face settings if their opinion is not controversial to the majority, though they will show types of behavior described in the Silence Theory if they are involved in an intimidating environment (Neubaum & Kramer, 2018, p. 142.) A personal audience experience I was a part of that shows when people are either confident or hesitant with expressing their opinion are in class debates. I don’t know about the rest of you but I have witnessed some intense debates throughout my educational career, however it is always the topic that affects the outcome or intensity of the debate. A lot of students chose to pick topics that could easily be debated but could not easily offend someone. Often times when the topic was something that would require someone to be careful with the wording of their arguments, such as abortion rights, mistreatment of women in the workplace, or any topic that usually creates a firm divide, people would hesitate to speak their opinion.

A debate is supposed to be a constant back and forth rebuttal between individuals that gives people the chance to understand the other’s viewpoints. I have personally witnessed debates fail and no one is willing to express what they truly believe if it could lead to possibly angering an individual and that individual verbally attacking them. For instance, the abortion topic and whether it should be accepted or not. There is such a large divide between the two arguments and both sides can come up with firm arguments to support their beliefs. I think this is why many will avoid saying anything towards these types of topics because since there is such an equal amount of people who support both sides, it can only result in groups of people verbally attacking each other, therefore social isolation occurs.

In our textbook Media Audiences: Effects, Users, Institutions, and Power, you can see how although in today’s society there are various amounts of outlets to express your opinion and connect with others, there has been a decrease in communication. John Sullivan (2013) in this chapter discusses debates during the Greek and Roman times and how they would organize debates allowing people to discuss issues of the day and share their arguments. He then moves on to Bourgeois Public Sphere and talks about how simple it is to engage in social interaction because of the public sphere. Speaking out on your beliefs and opinions no longer has to be a scheduled debate, you are engaging in the public sphere as soon as you participate in a conversation between citizens (Sullivan, 2013, p. 57-59). Our open acceptance of communication as audiences has begun to decline. Although we still have easy accessibility to express our opinion online or offline, there has been a huge increase in social isolation due to the fear of not fitting in with the majority. Over the centuries we have built numerous methods to express our arguments and feelings, but the power we were given as audience members has caused our communication to shift and an increase of fear of expressing our opinions.

Anyways, after writing this blog I feel as if I should go use some social media network to express my opinion on something to help end the social isolation we have created. I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog and feel free to speak your opinion on it, I won’t verbally attack you! Thanks for reading.

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itbeatsbookmarks · 6 years ago

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(Via: Hacker News)

Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images

Leave.EU backer Arron Banks arriving with fellow Brexit campaigner Andy Wigmore to give evidence to a parliamentary committee after British newspapers reported that Banks had held a series of meetings with the Russian ambassador before the 2016 Brexit referendum, London, June 12, 2018

Late last year, BBC executives had the nerve to erect a bronze statue of George Orwell outside its headquarters in central London. The sculptor caught Orwell’s spikiness. He stands one hand on hip, the other pointing forward with a cigarette between his fingers, as if caught in mid-argument. Carved into the wall behind him is the journalistic motto that Orwell and the BBC wanted us to learn: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

The BBC lifted the line from Orwell’s proposed preface to Animal Farm. Despite its being one of the greatest satires in the English language, four publishers turned the manuscript down in 1944. Orwell was attacking Stalin’s Soviet Union, then Britain and America’s wartime ally, at the most politically inconvenient time imaginable. T.S. Eliot, by then the head of Faber & Faber for almost twenty years, wrote like a minor functionary in a propaganda ministry when he rejected the manuscript. Faber & Faber was not staffed by cowards, Eliot insisted. In theory, he was prepared to publish books that “go against the current moment.” But when presented with a real work the authorities hated, he raced to find reasons to reject it. “We have no conviction,” Eliot opined, “that this is the right point of view from which to criticize the political situation at this present time.”

If the BBC had a human personality, it would be more Eliot than Orwell. If you only know the BBC from its slots on NPR, I doubt you will have grasped the extent of its journalistic cowardice in covering the 2016 referendum that decided to take Britain out of the European Union, and its aftermath.

Here is an incomplete list of uncomfortable truths that the British government, its supposedly left-wing opposition in the Labour party, and the 17.4 million people who voted for Britain to leave the EU do not want to hear. There is no plan, and there never was a plan. The “Leave” campaign never had the integrity to present the public with a program for withdrawal. If it had, voters might have realized that Brexit would either bring a huge dislocation as Britain tore itself out of an integrated European economy, or would turn Britain into an EU satellite state, obeying its rules but without a voice in their formulation. The head of Vote Leave, one of the two umbrella groups leading the 2016 campaign, explained in June 2015 that constructing workable proposals for Britain’s future was “an almost insuperable task… There is much to be gained by swerving the whole issue.” Instead of honestly confronting Britain’s place in the world, the campaign offered brazen lies: Brexit would deliver £350 million ($462 million) a week to our health service; Turkey was about to join the EU and flood Britain with millions of Muslim migrants.

The chaos that has rendered Britain all but powerless as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump tear up the international order stems from the original sin of not leveling with the public. Both the Conservative and Labour parties are being torn apart by a pressure to do the impossible: to square the promises of charlatans with the realities of Britain’s economic and strategic position. Both left and right, or at least their leaders, talk as if the European Union will allow us to retain the benefits of membership when we have left.

The naive might expect journalists to expose the delusions of the powerful. After the misleading buildup to the Iraq War in 2003, the BBC confronted the then Labour government of Tony Blair with the false predictions it had made about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The BBC falsely claimed that Blair’s manipulative staff had “sexed up” its dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and the dispute ended with public inquiries and the resignation of its director general. Nevertheless, the BBC asked the right questions. To this day, its presenters boast of their ferocity. Asked in what circumstances he would resign, John Humphrys, veteran host of BBC Radio 4’s Today, Britain’s most influential news program, played the tough guy: “If they told me to go easy on a politician.”

His brave words have vanished like dust on the wind. Neither Humphrys nor any one of the scores of celebrity presenters the BBC hires has asked hard questions about the “false prospectus”—to use a favorite BBC phrase after the Iraq War—the Leave campaigns presented to the British people.

“The referendum is over,” declared another Today presenter, Nick Robinson. “The day we broadcasters have to ‘broadly balance’ the views of the two sides is at an end. Why? Because there are no longer two sides.” Real journalists should be able to see that everything is wrong with his statement. If Brexit were over, Britain would not be in a rolling crisis with no end in sight. As pertinently, journalists should never assume a subject has become off-limits, because that is what the enemies of free expression demand.

Much of contemporary politics resembles the brainwashing techniques of religious sects, which discredit sources of information that might contradict the cult’s teachings. Political leaders cannot order their followers to cut off communications with their families and leave their partners if they are not fellow members of the sect, but they have found other ways to imitate L. Ron Hubbard. Their most effective technique is to take a half-truth—that all journalistic choices are ideological to some extent—and use it as a weapon to suppress the full truth.

It ought to be obvious that a left-wing reporter will have an urge to expose corporate misconduct, just as a right-wing reporter will be on the watch for the hypocrisies of the left. But since deeds, not motives, make the world go round, the intention of the reporter ought to be irrelevant. What matters is whether what they have found is true or important. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are masters of the tactic of saying that, regardless of the truth of the research or the importance of the story, the very fact of the story’s existence proves its illegitimacy. The term “whataboutism” does not begin to cover the new official campaigns to discredit journalism. The political cult leader does not merely claim his opponents are as bad as he is or that reporters are motivated by their opposition to him (which is true more often than not). He tells his followers that no honest person would have covered the story in the first place. Its truth and relevance are immaterial; it has no right to exist.

A reporter who accepts that argument has given up on journalism. The BBC has accepted it because of its unique position in British and, indeed, world journalism. The corporation is funded by a tax that requires every household to pay it about £150 ($200) a year. Unlike news organizations whose business models have been wrecked by the Web, this arrangement has guaranteed the BBC an income that allows it to dominate the British media. I am only exaggerating slightly when I say that news isn’t news here until it is covered by the BBC.

Trump’s victory in the US has emboldened the worst people in Britain, and the BBC faces constant attacks from his imitators. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, have formed a suitably Marxist cult of personality around their leader. Their propagandists have convinced them that bad news about Labour is fake news concocted by corrupt journalists. So aggressive did their anger become that the BBC had to hire bodyguards to protect its political editor at Labour’s last national conference.

For decades, the right-wing press has attacked the BBC with a ferocity and contempt for truth that would make even American conservatives blush. The easy thing to say after Brexit is that the BBC has capitulated to right-wing pressure. But a deeper pressure is operating on the corporation that carries with it a warning, not only to journalists, but to all who think of themselves as men and women of political integrity.

To the bemusement of Americans brought up with the separation of church and state, here in England, we have a state church: the Anglican Church of England. On the one hand, the church is a religious institution that spreads Christ’s gospel. On the other, it is a national institution that has diluted its religious teachings as it tries to hold the state together. The church could never adopt Christian pacifism, for example, because it is duty-bound to provide chaplains for the armed forces. If you want a church wedding, your local parish must marry you whatever your religious beliefs. You may worship the Jedi knights and your beloved may be a Satanist. No matter: as long as you are heterosexual English citizens, the national church must marry you.

The BBC is an Anglican broadcaster, which faces the same conflict of purpose. It follows the highest journalistic standards, yet it feels it must also reflect the national mood. Britain voted to leave the EU. The nation spoke, and in respecting “the people’s verdict,” the BBC has done what every enemy of free inquiry wants reporters to do. Like Eliot, it frets about whether “this is the right point of view from which to criticize the political situation at this present time.”

The BBC’s reporting of the scandals around the Brexit referendum is not biased or unbalanced: it barely exists. It is as though the US networks had decided the Mueller investigation was no concern of theirs. There have been three huge stories the BBC has covered with only the most perfunctory reports: the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data leak, the Brexit campaign funding scandal, and the exposure of Russian interference in British politics.

That 2018 has been the year that Western publics realized how much Facebook knew about them, and how that information could be used by hostile foreign powers and malicious plutocrats, is thanks in large part to the efforts of Carole Cadwalladr, my colleague at the London Guardian and Observer. In 2016, she was a jobbing feature writer tackling any subject the desk pushed at her—a fact that has caused established journalists, who ought to know better, to sneer at and diminish her work with mutters that she is a conspiracy theorist. Two years on, Cadwalladr has inspired investigations of global interest in the Brexit referendum. She did it the old-fashioned way, by banging away at the story week in, week out. The more often she appeared in the paper, the more potential whistleblowers realized they could trust and talk to her.

Cadwalladr makes no claim to neutrality (and no one would believe her if she did). A few weeks ago, I urged her to take time off from exposing the corruptions of the Brexit campaign to write a book about her investigation. It would be a bestseller at home and abroad, I assured her. Think of the translation rights. Think of Cadwalladr: The Movie, with Reese Witherspoon learning to speak in a Welsh accent as she prepared to play the lead. Far from being grateful for my unsolicited career advice, Cadwalladr looked appalled: “But I can’t stop the journalism, Nick. I can’t let them get away with it.” No one has done more to expose how the axis of technology, demagoguery, and oligarchy operates in Britain. She is everything BBC journalists are not.

When the whistleblower Christopher Wylie brought The Observer and The New York Times details of how data Cambridge Analytica, a British company partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer (who funds numerous conservative causes), Cadwalladr and Wylie offered the BBC a share of the story. The firm was at the center of the Anglo-American alt-right. Steve Bannon was on its board. It worked for Donald Trump and, at the very least, had dealings with Leave.EU, a pro-Brexit campaign group fronted by Trump’s British ally Nigel Farage and funded with what is thought to be the largest campaign donation in British political history from one of our local oligarchs, a loudmouthed insurance tycoon named Arron Banks. When news broke that Cambridge Analytica had collected identifying personal information for some 87 million Facebook users, Facebook stock fell by $134 billion.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Whistleblowers Shahmir Sanni, a former Vote Leave volunteer, and Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica research director, speaking at a press conference, London, March 26, 2018

The BBC was given the opportunity to interview the whistleblower and have a documentary ready to go once the news was out. But like Eliot rejecting Orwell, the BBC’s investigative program Panorama backed away. There was no “smoking gun,” it said. Within days, the smoke from Facebook’s burning reputation was billowing from its Palo Alto headquarters.

The pattern repeated itself with Shahmir Sanni from the Vote Leave campaign (whose deliberate refusal to present the British public with a workable plan for Brexit I mentioned earlier). Vote Leave was the supposedly respectable face of British nationalism. It counted Boris Johnson and several other Conservative ministers among its supporters. Sanni turned whistleblower and showed how the group had bypassed electoral law and allegedly breached the official spending limit of £7 million ($9.3 million) during the run-up to the EU referendum. One leading London lawyer said the breach was of a scale and seriousness beyond anything Britain had seen in modern times. Once again, the BBC did not want the scoop. “We don’t have enough evidence to turn this around in three weeks,” a Panorama bureaucrat wrote to Cadwalladr.

And then, inevitably, there was Russia. Along with others, I had speculated that it was scarcely conceivable that Russia had not tried to influence the Brexit referendum given its strategy is to break up the institutions of Western unity: NATO and the European Union. Brexit was as great a triumph for Russian foreign policy as the Trump victory. We knew Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, and that post-fascist and post-communist parties across Europe looked to Putin for support. Speculation is one thing; evidence is another. Cadwalladr received copies of Arron Banks’s emails showing that he had had multiple meetings with the Russian ambassador during the referendum campaign and was offered a business deal involving six Russian goldmines.

All the Today program would do was try to set up a staged confrontation between Cadwalladr and a propagandist for Brexit. It would not report on the emails as news; nor did it use its vast resources, hundreds of times larger than those of The Observer, to investigate. Until that point, I had been defending the BBC against its enemies, including critics who were my political allies. I gave up. What is the point of the BBC if it cannot tackle issues of national importance? What is the point of a news organization that is frightened of journalism?

In the preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell provided a line that today would be apt for the walls of the BBC headquarters: “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” No doubt, if the shift of public opinion against Brexit continues, the BBC’s silence will end and, like a weather vane, it will swing with the prevailing wind. It will receive no plaudits from me. No one should praise journalists who speak out when, and only when, they are certain that public opinion is with them. Not just journalists, but anyone engaged in political life should learn from the BBC’s abject performance. Whether you are on the left or the right, there will be times when you will be frightened of saying what you believe for fear of offending your friends, breaking a taboo or going against the ephemeral consensus of the day. Allow that fear to dominate you and you will end up like the BBC: platitudinous, frightened, and irrelevant.

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George Orwell broadcasting at the BBC, 1940

#IFTTT #Feedly

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