#which makes sense! like nuance is: this moral question in the abstract really has more shades of gray than you give it credit for

[utilitycaster]

*person projecting their own pre-existing beliefs and desires on the narrative so hard they can barely distinguish what's actually happening in canon voice* this fandom needs more nuance

[max1461]

Let me start a new post, regarding some discourse, so that we can avoid bothering OP and furthermore so that we can properly abstract away from (whatever turn out to be) the irrelevant points of the initial seed of discussion.

A woman flashed her boobs to some strangers in New York. Someone on twitter said this was sexual assault. I and other commenters contended it was no big deal. However, I added:

I do think there's a relevant distinction between simply being nude/topless/whatever in public, which I think should be regarded as perfectly socially acceptable, and flashing someone, which is kind of an inherently somewhat sexual performative act. I don't think that flashing in a context like this should probably be regarded as sexual assault, that seems a bit much. In general I think that people are (for the most part) sexual creatures, and so any free society is going to feature some amount of public display of sexuality, whatever form that takes, and there's nothing really wrong with that. It doesn't seem like any big deal to me that this girl flashed these people. But there definitely exist contexts where I think it's reasonable to consider flashing alone to be sexual assault or sexual harassment, and I don't think that should be elided. And I don't think it should be determined on crude grounds of gender or sex either; it's important to have some thoughtful and conceptually robust sense of when sexual acts, e.g. flashing people, are playful and harmless, and when they are in fact potentially threatening or boundary-violating.

Here the discussion split. In one thread, @sivavakkiyar said:

I agree with the nuance of total determination, but the applicability only makes sense now. There’s very good reason to suppose a man who took off his shirt on camera would not be considered ‘flashing’, even if he was flexing his pecs or whatever: the assumed sexual component, regardless of the intent of the woman involved, has to do with the inherent sexualization of…uh…female…presenting…nipples. We’re on the same page of ‘assault’ being ridiculous in this context, but even if you were to ask this woman ‘when you took off your shirt, you knew it was sexually suggestive, yes?’ and she said ‘yeah’, it wouldn’t really change the fundamental question—-I mean that’s obvious as a part of her joke, but—-the guy with pecs might equally be ‘yeah, I’m hot.’ You know?

And I replied:

Well yeah that's part of my point. There is totally a context in which a guy flexing his pecs at you, in some sufficiently aggressive or unwanted way, could be sexual harassment. But that doesn't mean that all men flexing in public is bad, or even all men flexing at someone in public is bad. The standards one takes up for this, whatever they are, should be gender neutral—which would unambiguously mean that women showing their bare chest in public would get vastly more accepted, not less.

In another thread, @wildgifthorses said:

It seems like this is just an area where it makes sense to have sex-asymmetric norms. Trying to make a workable sex-symmetric norm about this just leads to absurdity no matter what you do.

And added the following in the tags:

Here I would like to make my reply to wildgifthorses.

I think you have implicitly invoked, here, precisely the gender-neutral distinction which is relevant: reasonable knowledge that you are violating someone's boundaries and disregard for those boundaries in spite of the knowledge. Most men can be said to have a reasonable expectation that the average woman will be bothered by him flashing her his junk, and consider it a boundary violation. Most young women can reasonably expect that a crowd of passers-by will not feel violated by her flashing them her boobs. While there are sex- or gender-asymmetric facts about society being invoked in this sort of moral calculation, the underlying principle is fundamentally sex- and gender-symmetric. And why should it not be? I can think of plenty of contexts in which a man might be made very uncomfortable by a woman aggressively showing him her boobs, however common or not that happens to be, and in those scenarios I think it is very reasonable to say the woman is in the wrong.

We get absolutely nowhere good by making needlessly gendered distinctions in our abstract principles, as (in different ways) the last 10 years and the previous 5000 before that should make evident. I think until certain follies heretofore characteristic of human society are well behind us, we should probably err very far in the direction of absolute sex- and gender-insensitivity in our most abstract ethical principles, even if it runs us into trouble sometimes.

[reflectionsofneptune]

little thoughts about sagittarius placements

Sagittarius Sun

― a desire to be noticed for their wisdom and ability to bounce back from anything life throws at them. feels like they have a right to voice their opinion about other people’s moral and ethical values. levels of vitality are connected to their inspiration in life. open-minded by nature. the ego here can get very much caught up in being seen as someone all-knowing and all-powerful, so much so that they create fantasies and projections around their true self. can get annoyed when people question the way they live their life. can hold themselves back when they don’t see the silver lining in things. can help another shine light on the power of self-belief. 

Sagittarius Moon

― temperament is usually slanted towards an optimistic, jovial nature. less likely to hold grudges. doesn’t take much personal, unless what they believe in is being attacked. needs to be careful of falling into toxic positivity. prefers not to dwell too much in emotionally suffocating situations. can be seen as insensitive or someone who perceives things bigger than they really are. emotions can manifest egotistically, brashly, expansively, acceptingly and jokingly. sensitive to people who try to rewrite how they feel about a given situation. in connecting with others, they appreciate people who don’t things too seriously. reactions can be explosive, but humour interjected in it tempers it slightly.

Sagittarius Mercury

― a philosophical mind, who isn’t afraid to question someone or bring ethics into the question. someone who likes to be regarded well for their opinion. a fan of debates. honesty is the best policy. likely to say how it is. tends to speak about justices/injustices in the collective society. can be tolerable of other people’s thoughts if it doesn’t align with them. needs to be careful of separatist thoughts. can spin their truth to make them look good. Great at lifting other people’s spirits. needs to be careful of not shoving the truth down other people’s throats. tends to like learning things that will help them personally grow and get further in life. takes you on a journey with their stories. 

Sagittarius Venus

― tends to be attracted to people who are different to them in some way; background, skin colour, etc. love matters are pursued with confidence but a relaxed attitude. can have an ‘appetite’ for dating and prefer a friends with benefits situation. if they do get into a relationship, it may not look super serious on the outside but inside, they hold it in the highest regard. needs someone who is willing to experience things together. love is all about the experience. the ‘up for anything friend. people look to them to get the party started. attracted to people who embody their personal truth, and have fun whilst doing that. May resonate with the term sapiosexuals. 

Sagittarius Mars

― life experiences test their inner faith in themselves with each redirection rejuvenating their belief system. can be motivated to achieve things so they can be a role model for others. starts things with gusto and lofty ideals. if it doesn’t align with what they believe in, they will have little drive to pursue it. one to talk up for the people who society disregard. can get distracted by the next best thing. in the bedroom, they may like a little bit of risk involve somehow like public sex. not a lot can faze them sexually as they’re pretty chill with whatever.  morals and sex can intermingle; either dismissing them or being acutely aware of them. in an argument, they may possibly wave off the nuances of something and instead talk about the bigger picture of something; the end goal. up-tight or hypocritical people can irritate them.

Sagittarius Jupiter

― seeks to grow and improve themselves by living what they preach. opportunities for expansion come whey they don’t get hung up on trying to convert people into believers but holding space for others. needs to be careful of being too complacent in life. usually cultured in some way. an interest in foreign cultures, religions, races and social systems, often expressed through study and long trips to foreign places. manifesting can come easy to them when their intentions are grounded. escapism can occur when they struggle to find meaning in life as it’s what drives them forward. their sense of self is very much connected to their moral/ethical standpoint in life. having no one to talk about things on a more philosophical, far reaching level can make them feel isolated. 

Sagittarius Saturn

― can feel blocked in their ability to muster up the courage to take risks in life. can feel looked down by society for not being as travelled, cultured or intelligent as they’d like to be. they could have a fear in relation to their ability to see things from an abstract perspective and relay this information to others. could feel unlucky in life. they need to cultivate their inner fire in themselves. has a deep need for some intellectual, philosophical or spiritual achievement which will bring distinction. can motivate others to align themselves to what inspires in life and just funnel their energy into that. guides people how to take calculated risks in life. in this lifetime, they need to view structures in life as guidelines, not blocks. 

― more about sagittarius  

[ourladylennon]

Hi, how are you our beloved lady? I hope ur doing good. I want to know your opinion to mbti stuff. What do you think about that? And what do you think about Beatles mbti stuff?

Tulip!!! How are you? I am so sorry it took me this long to answer- I could not figure out the best way to present the information for this ask or what would be the best information *to* share. I actually *love* MBTI, I think it’s fascinating. It really helps you understand yourself and others better. As far as the Beatles, there is a lot of debate about their types, but I have compiled a list of the most commonly accepted type for each Beatle with a break down below the cut!

John: INFP, “the Healer” (function stack: Fi-Ne-Si-Te) or ENFP “the Champion” (function stack: Ne-Fi-Te-Si)

A concise picture: generous, kind, charming, empathetic, sensitive, perceptive, strong personal values, introspective, imaginative, idealistic, individualistic, lively, spontaneous, adaptable, big picture, forward looking, long term oriented  // can be impractical, disorganized, tendency to overthink, easily offended, disregard for rules/traditions/norms

Paul: ISFP, “the Composer” (function stack: Fi-Se-Ni-Te) or ESFJ “the Provider” (function stack: Fe-Si-Ne-Ti)

A concise picture: kind, charming, warm, caretaker, sympathetic, sensitive, observant, reserved, practical, level-headed, “live in the moment”, sensory based, detail oriented, action oriented, strong sense of “right & wrong”, curious, competitive, literal // easily bored, thrill-seeking, unpredictable, “black & white”, short term oriented, intensely private, detached, aloof, fiercely independent, can be inflexible, worried with social-status

George: INFJ, “the Counselor” (function stack: Ni-Fe-Ti-Se)

A concise picture: altruistic, affirming, nurturing, compassionate, empathetic, sensitive, perceptive, strong personal values, introspective, visionary, idealistic, individualistic, seeking meaning, insightful, big picture, forward looking, long term oriented, value organization, decisive, reserved, firm // intensely private, deeply sensitive, perfectionists- prone to burn out, overthinking, need for a cause, uncompromising

Ringo: ESFP, “the Performer” (function stack: Se-Fi-Te-Ni)

A concise picture: generous, kind, charming, warm, sympathetic, friendly, easy-going, observant, practical, tolerant, accepting, spontaneous, playful, enthusiastic, resourceful, adaptable, “live in the moment”, sensory based, action oriented, strong sense of “right & wrong”, literal // easily bored, thrill-seeking, unpredictable, “black & white”, short term oriented, frivolous, materialistic, deeply sensitive, conflict averse

Note: MBTI code is comprised of four functions: iNtuition or Sensing, Feeling or Thinking. Intuition and sensing are perceiving functions: how you gather and assimilate data. Feeling and thinking are judging functions: how you use that information to make decisions. Each of these functions can either be Introverted (introspective, self-reflective, subjective) or Extraverted (objective, facing the outer world, expressed outwardly); for example, Introverted Feeling= Fi, Extraverted iNtuition= Ne, etc.

John: INFP, “the Healer” (function stack: Fi-Ne-Si-Te) or ENFP “the Champion” (function stack: Ne-Fi-Te-Si)

Both are very convincing. As you can imagine, these two types are very similar and their differences are more like nuances. It probably comes as no surprise that XNFP are known to be “dreamers” who act as mediators amongst people, desire harmony and look toward the future and see endless possibilities. This combination of being iNtuitive + Feeling dominant makes for a very empathetic subject who has a knack for reading between the lines; they both understand human emotion and relate to others well, but on the flip side, they can be hotheaded and quick to take offense: both for themselves and others. At the core of both, these types have strong moral values and use value judgements to make decisions, i.e. "this is good this is bad". They use their Ne/Ni absorb information from the meanings and impressions they gather and search for patterns in data to quickly see the bigger picture, and then use emotions to make decisions based around that. Though they are XNFP are generally open minded and adaptable, when their personal values are called into question, they sense injustice, they sense inauthenticity, or if someone tries to control them is when they can become upset. They do not like to be limited because they desire freedom, options, and don’t like redundancy. Communication style is likely to be abstract, metaphorical. Though they crave close connections, they become drained from social interaction. Depending on whether INFP or ENFP, there are subtle differences. For example, ENFP leads with Ne, meaning, they may be quicker to materialize their ideas (the more spontaneous of the two), whereas the INFP will spend more time reflecting "what if" before doing. This bleeds into other aspects; ENFP may be more lively, spouting things off the top of their heads without reflecting, they're a people's person. INFP is a little more introspective before diving head first and spilling everything. XNFP tend to constantly assess their value and desire validation. 

(I did see people throw John around as an INTP/ENTP. They’re mildly convincing, but much less likely. His Fe/Fi seems too present to be a Te/Ti)

Paul: ISFP, “the Composer” (function stack: Fi-Se-Ni-Te) or ESFJ “the Provider” (function stack: Fe-Si-Ne-Ti)

Both are very convincing. These literally have the *exact same* function stack order, but the energy of each function points in different directions (which ultimately does make a difference even though it may not seem like it). With both of these types, we typically see someone who is observant, practical, and very rooted in the present. This combination of Sensing + Feeling dominant makes for a very caring individual who both enjoys and is good at nurturing others, but on the flip side, they can be quick to take offense and may shut down/withdraw. XSFX types are known for being reserved with their emotions/needs and likewise reserved in showing emotion and tend to do so through their actions, rather than words. At the core of both, just as with other feeler-types, they have strong moral values and use value judgements to make decisions, i.e. "this is good this is bad". However, they use their Se/Si to observe and absorb information through their physical reality, often referencing from past experiences to fill in the details in order to build the bigger picture, and then use emotions to make decisions based around that. Though both types are generally seen as level-headed and adaptable, when their personal values or character are called into question (because they have a very clear picture of their values; they know who they are) or their good-nature is taken advantage of is when they can become upset. They do not like to be limited because they prefer to be in control and do not like uncertainty. Communication style is likely to be direct, literal. While ESFJ love bringing people together and ISFP may enjoy small groups & close connections, they both become drained from social interaction. Depending on whether ISFP or ESFJ there are subtle differences, the most apparent being that ESFJ prefer more structure than ISFP, and likewise, the ISFP may be a little more spontaneous as they seek to stimulate their Se. ESFJ will also likely be a bit more outgoing with Fe being in play as their dominant trait, whereas the ISFP may be more socially reserved (Fi), though no less charming or socially aware. They both have a knack for understanding what is expected of them but ISFP is less likely to bend for others whereas the ESFJ seeks group harmony. Both types tend to put others first and are reluctant to ask for their needs, and in combination with simultaneously being sure of their values and sure others understand those without question, they may have a heightened desire for praise to validate their actions & themselves. Both types often don't feel seen for the amount of care they put in for others and desire to be appreciated. 

(Fun thing I saw mentioned a lot and felt relative to Paul: ISFP are said to enjoy aesthetic beauty of things- clothing, art, etc. without needing the abstract meaning to make it so; they just simply like it for what it is. This is likely because their Se is grabbing for anything stimulating and then introverted Feeling (Fi) says “oh yes, this makes me feel good!” Can we say hello MMT sweater vest?)

George: INFJ, “the Counselor” (function stack: Ni-Fe-Ti-Se)

As you can imagine, INFJ is going to be similar to XNFP on the surface: dreamy, idealistic, empathetic. What sets them apart is that INFJ tend to have a bit more structure and a little bit more of an analytical mind. The combination of being iNtuitive + Feeling dominant is going to still give that very empathetic subject who has a knack for reading between the line, but there is a subtle difference with INFP's mirroring others emotions (Fi) and INFJ's absorbing others emotions (Fe). INFJ understand human emotion and relate to others well, but on the flip side, they can become angry when someone upsets group harmony or overwhelmed from constantly assessing emotions. At the core of INFJ, just as with the other feeler-types, they have strong moral values and use value judgements to make decisions, i.e. "this is good this is bad". They absorb information from the meanings and impressions they gather and search for patterns in data to see the bigger picture and use emotions to make decisions based around that. Though they are generally open minded and adaptable, when their personal values are called into question, they sense injustice, or if someone dismisses their ideas they can become upset. While they enjoy freedom to explore many possibilities, they do well with a bit of routine and organization to help see their ideas through. Communication style is likely to be abstract, metaphorical. Though they crave close connections, they become drained from social interaction. INFJ's often feel like people don't get them and desire to be understood.

Ringo: ESFP, “the Performer” (function stack: Se-Fi-Te-Ni)

ESFP is a beautiful blend of all the cognitive functions and that's why it's often labeled at the "entertainer" type. They're practical, but not rigid; they’re bubbly, but they’re deep; they’re spontaneous, but they’re down to earth; they’re honest, but not too blunt; they’re just all around the kind of people who can bring people together. The combination of Sensing + Feeling dominant makes for a very caring individual who is warm towards others and overall inviting, but on the flip side, they can be quick to take offense and may erupt or shut down. At the core of ESFP, just as with the other feeler-types, they have strong moral values and use value judgements to make decisions, i.e. "this is good this is bad". They use their Se/Si to observe and absorb information through their physical reality, often referencing from past experiences to fill in the details in order to build the bigger picture, and then use emotions to make decisions based around that. Though generally seen as one of the most easy-going types, when their feelings are dismissed or their general exuberance is mistaken for shallowness, they're forced to make decisions, or they find themselves stuck amongst negativity is when they might become upset. They do not like to be limited because they desire freedom and dislike rigorous routine. Communication style is likely to be direct, literal- to be clear, too much abstract information might drive an ESFP crazy, and unlike some of the other Sensor types- do not like too many details. ESFP are social by nature and find socializing fulfilling. 

How this applies to their relationship dynamic:

This is my favorite part and if you’ve read this far- please like go treat yourself for your good work. Not only do the general stereotypes of their personalities fit them so well, but it literally shows just how real the contrast of John & Paul and Paul & George is and how similar John & George are. 

But mainly, I just want to focus on J/P because I. fucking. love. it. Just think about it. John: Strawberry Fields. Paul: Penny Lane. SAME concept- ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STYLE. Intuition vs sensing at its finest. It’s clear as day. (wonderful video by one of my favorite MBTI youtubers, appropriately titled: Intuition vs Sensing, Explained with The Beatles)

Not only that, but I always think back to Geoff Emerick’s biography when I was reading about their work in the studio:

“John always had plenty of ideas about how he wanted his songs to sound’ he knew in his mind what he wanted to hear. The problem was that, unlike Paul, he had a great difficulty expressing those thoughts in anything but the most abstract terms. Whereas Paul might say, ‘This song needs brass and timpani,’ John’s direction might be more like ‘Give me the feel of James Dean gunning his motorcycle down a highway.’ ”

“In the midst of all this, John had been listening repeatedly to his acetate of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever,’ and he decided he didn’t like it. For someone who was normally so articulate, it always amaze me how he would struggle for words whenever he tried to Tell George Martin how he wanted a song arrange. This time around, he just kept mumbling, ‘I don’t know. I just think it should somehow be heavier.’ ‘Heavier how, John?’ George asked. ‘I dunno, just kind of, y’know…heavy.’ Paul did his best to translate John’s abstract notion into concrete musical form. Pointing out how well the flue sound on the Mellotron had worked, he suggested that perhaps some outside musicians be brought in, that the song be scored for some orchestral instrumentation. John loved the idea, specifically requesting cellos and trumpets.”

Furthermore, this entire paragraph that I don’t feel like typing out:

God, I could seriously just go ON about those two. Honestly, Geoff’s book has been incredibly insightful to their nature (pretty sure this book is responsible for when I started falling *in love* with Paul). There are tons of examples to go with the MBTI typing, but I realize this is already at great length so I’ll refrain. 

Now that I’ve nearly written a whole book, I’d like to say some words: this is by no means an all inclusive or exhaustive review of MBTI & I am no expert. There are so many other facets of MBTI that go much deeper than this, but I felt for the purpose of general explaining, it made most sense to stay at surface level (which incidentally made me feel like i’m providing a useless analysis). Hope you learned even a little bit or got some sort of fun out of it!

If you have specific questions, feel free to ask and I’ll try and make sense of the MBTI madness!

[aspoonofsugar]

Hello! ^^ So I was just scrolling through a couple of analysis post on the difference between Pieck and the SC's mindsets on how to deal with the world and bringing them into realizing the fact that Eldians deserve human rights too. Some say Pieck's morality is better since she's loyal to her friends while the SC wants to bring force and fear among the rest of the world. Honestly, I think had the SC never had to deal with saving Eren's ass through the Liberio attack, they might have had

(Same anon) a chance to have diplomatic relationships with others, but that invasion has left them with no other choice than getting aggressive. What do you think about it? Do you think there’s any way left for them to deal with the rest of the world in a not forceful way (which is using the rumbling)? Sorry for the long ask and thanks in advance! 

Hello anon!

Tbh it really depends on who you mean when you talk aboutthe SC since it is clear that the corps are basically in pieces right now.

As a matter of fact a part of them betrayed the others andjoined hands with people from other corps to form the Jeagersists. They haveshown to be ready to kill former comrades since they are the ones who gaveLevi’s group the wine and they knew about the whole plot to begin with. Theirobjective seems to be to use the rumbling in order to protect Paradis andprobably some of them, like Floche, would be happy to create a new EldianEmpire. Because ot this, I am not sure they know about Zeke’s euthanasia plansince it seems to go against their wish of conquer and of power.

Then there is the old guard composed by Hange, Levi, the104th and generally speaking the older generation since it is emphasizedseveral times how the Jeagersists are mostly made of young people like the newSC recruits. These “old guard” of which several of our protagonists are a partof had no intention to start a war with the world as it has been underlinedseveral times. However, the problem is that they could not come up with analternative and ended up being caught up in Zeke, Yelena and Eren’s plans.

Finally, when it comes to the Warriors, I wouldn’t say thattheir morality is better or worse than the one of our protagonists at leastwhen it comes to the point you underlined aka the idea of imposing on the restof the world since that is what Marley has been doing for the whole time.Moreover, the chapter doesn’t really add anything new about how each side wantsto deal with the problem of having the world accept Eldians. As far as we knowPieck has been doing nothing really different than Reiner i.e. she has beenworking for Marley in an attempt to protect the people she cares about. Thischapter simply underlines how Pieck, differently from Gabi who honestlybelieved in Marley, has a more realistic prospective and doesn’t believe thepropaganda. That said, she has grown to care for the people she has beenworking with being them Eldians or Marleyans (as her reaction to her squaddying clearly shows). This might suggest that in the long run a way out will befound in people’s ties, but as for now, nothing has really changed. Even ifMarley, under Magath’s leadership, will be revealed to have started workingtowards a more fair treatment of Eldians (and even then it is going to be avery long and difficult road ahead), this won’t change that they will be ableto do so only by painting Paradis as the land of devils and this is false.

In short, Pieck showing to care about her comrades isbeautiful, but doesn’t really change anything when it comes to the greaterconflict. This doesn’t mean it is not important for several reasons.

1)    Gabi’s development. As a matter of fact Pieckplays the part of a role model in this chapter. She shows Gabi that, simplybecause the world they are living in is complicated and not as black and whiteas Gabi thought it doesn’t mean that there are no bonds or people Gabi cangenuinely trust.

 Gabi’s change is underlined by the whole scene being aparallel to the fight at Fort Slava with which the Marley arc started.

As a matter of fact Gabi is once again in shackles becauseof a strategy and, just like then, she is being protected by Galliard.Moreover, Reiner is ready to launch himself from an airship just like he did inthat battle.

Generally speaking it is probable that this parallelism willbe used in order to highlight the growth or lack of growth of the Warriors.

When it comes to Gabi specifically, the beginning of theMarley arc has her as an idealistic child who strongly believes that her peopleare good and the people of Paradis are bad and that she can be recognized byMarley if she tries hard enough.

Since then, she has been challenged non-stop. Now Pieckseems to offer a point of view which partially solves Gabi’s conflict and hercontradictive feelings.

As a matter of fact let’s remember that Gabi starts the arcthis way:

However, she keeps finding people who are willing to helpher.

-Kaya helps her despite knowing that she came from Marley.This is something which goes against the fact that Gabi has been discriminatedall her life for her Eldian heritage.

-The Braus, Armin and Mikasa protect her despite Gabikilling Sasha. This goes against the fact that Gabi has been held accountablefor a sin made by her ancestors.

Finally she is being protected by Pieck despite the womanmaking clear that she doesn’t believe in Marley.

This journey for now ends the way it began, but Gabi’schildish white and black vision is substituted by Pieck’s more nuanced andadult one. Who knows? Maybe Gabi will adopt a vision which is similar toPieck’s. It is a point of view which gives a lot of importance to personalrelationships and this has always been a defining trait of Gabi and a redeemingone since it has always contrasted with her fanatism:

In this panel you can clearly see how her expression softensand appears less chilling and less fanatic when she talks of her comrades.

These two sides of Gabi are underlined also through thesymbolic use of the shackles.

At Fort Slava Gabi tricked her enemies by acting as aprisoner and when she attacked she took her (fake) shackles away. That scenewas perfect to introduce us to Gabi, her love for freedom and the belief thatfreedom could be obtained through violence (the explosives).

Here, her shackles connect her to Pieck who uses them toprotect Gabi. If in Fort Slava Gabi was concentrated on her idealistic pursueto the point that she did not even realize that Falco had run towards her tosave her, here she is smiled at and physically reassured by Pieck before theattack commences. This contrast might underline how Gabi’s arc is not aboutpursuing an abstract ideal, but about realizing that there are people aroundher who might think differently, but still care about her.

Gabi is a child and has still to develop into an adultwoman. The chapter gives us two possible future versions of herself:

Will she treasure the people she meets or will she keepembracing an extremist prospective?

2)    Pieck’s prospective offers a contrast to thebehaviours of Yelena and the Jeagersists.

Pieck doesn’t want to give up the people she loves for agreater cause and her words suggest she believes she can do something bystaying by their side. On the other hand the Jeagersists did not hesitate tokill and poison people who trusted them and Yelena kills comrades whenever theybecome a problem. They also justify their actions by saying that they are inorder to reach a great objective.

This different prospectives are interesting especially whenone tries to understand where Eren currently stands:

It is probable that both Connie and Jean are right here inthe sense that Eren might have his reasons to hurt Mikasa and Armin, but thatsaid reasons don’t justify his actions.

This is why the fact that the whole situation is presentedas an inversion and a parallel to the Liberio attack is interesting.

After all, the attack on Liberio starts with an adultbetraying a child, whereas this attack starts with an adult reassuring a childscared of having been betrayed.

Moreover, in Liberio the Warriors were betrayed by Zeke,acted separatedly and lost. Rigth now, they seem ready to act in an unitedfront, whereas Eren who in Liberio was helped by the SC has now closed in ajail the people who used to always come to his rescue.

Of course Eren can’t lose or at least he can’t be eaten here,so I am sure his side and current allies will manage to help him. Who knows?Maybe Zeke will come and they will trigger the rumbling or some similarphenomenon, but I doubt Eren’s treatment of his comrades won’t catch up to himin the end.

So, in order to answer your original question, thedifference underlined by the chapter is not one between Pieck and the SC, butone between Pieck and the Jeagersists. Moreover, it is not one about twodifferent ways to make so that Eldians gain rights, but rather it is aboutchoosing between a greater cause and one’s loved ones. This is a recurringtheme within the series (think about the serum bowl, but also about Erentelling Mikasa to go help the Garrison at Trost). Sometimes it is right tochoose the greater good, other times it is right to choose one’s loved ones. Here,I think Pieck’s pov is more sympathetic especially given the fact that theJeagersists’ greater cause is framed as wrong and Yelena’s attitude to killcomrades is just chilling and extreme.

As far as the last part of your ask goes, I think Eren’s side by this point can’t hope to deal with the rest of the world peacefully (and they don’t seem willing to), but if some Eldians of Paradis were to leave his side and to create a third party in this conflict, then maybe.

Thank you for the ask!

[romancatholicreflections]

13th September >> Daily Reflection/Commentary on Today’s First Reading for Roman Catholics on Thursday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time (1 Corinthians 8:1-7, 11-13).

Paul now moves on to another local problem for the Christians of Corinth – the question of eating food offered to idols.

The New American Bible has a useful note on the issues which are at stake:

The Corinthians’ second question concerns meat that has been sacrificed to idols; in this area they were exhibiting a disordered sense of liberation that Paul here tries to rectify. These chapters contain a sustained and unified argument that illustrates Paul’s method of theological reflection on a moral dilemma. Although the problem with which he is dealing is dated [namely, eating food offered to idols], the guidelines for moral decisions that he offers are of lasting validity.

Essentially Paul urges them to take a communitarian rather than an individualistic view of their Christian freedom. Many decisions that they consider pertinent only to their private relationship with God have, in fact, social consequences. Nor can moral decisions be determined by merely theoretical considerations; they must be based on concrete circumstances, specifically on the value and needs of other individuals and on mutual responsibility within the community. Paul here introduces the theme of “building up” (oikodome, ‘oikodomh), i.e., of contributing by individual action to the welfare and growth of the community. (See also 1 Cor 14; Rom 14:1-15)

The topic – meat sacrificed to idols – is immediately introduced. This refers to meat which had been offered in pagan temples to idols. Meat left over from a sacrifice might be eaten by the priests, as well as by the offerer and his friends at a feast in the temple or sold in the public meat market. (At the site of ancient Corinth, archaeologists have discovered two temples containing rooms apparently used for pagan feasts where meat offered to idols was eaten. To such feasts Christians may have been invited by pagan friends.) Some Christians felt that if they ate such meat, they participated in pagan worship and thus compromised their testimony for Christ. Other Christians did not feel this way.

Today’s passage begins with a rather abstract and vague statement which makes one wonder where Paul is leading us. In fact, he is enunciating a principle of the very greatest importance for our living together as Christians and one that we neglect at our peril.

Paul opens with an apparently well-known slogan: “All of us have knowledge.” In Greece, knowledge was felt to be everything but Paul says that it can make people arrogant. What really builds people up, he says, is love (a central theme of this letter). Knowledge without love is barren. People equipped with much knowledge may not have a real understanding of what life is about.

The truly wise person – like Socrates – above all knows what he does not know. One is reminded of those people on the TV programme “Mastermind” who had encyclopaedic knowledge about all kinds of things but as persons may have been quite inadequate in coping with life.

Pure knowledge can lead to arrogance and a feeling of superiority; love, on the other hand, builds up. Better a person filled with genuine love and theologically ignorant than a topnotch theologian without a trace of love.

The person who loves and, in particular, the person who loves God “is known by God”, that is, has a direct experiences God’s love and thus knows how to relate with others. This is the only knowledge really worth having.

It serves as an introduction to a question which was very relevant to the Christians of Corinth, namely, the eating of food which may have been offered to idols. In itself, this is clearly not a problem for people in most of the Western world but it can still be a matter of conscience in Asia and Africa. (One thinks, for instance, of the food involved in ‘ancestor worship’ in China which was at the heart of the ‘Rites Controversy’. The custom still survives and Christians can now be involved.)

The question for the Corinthians then was: Should Christians eat such food or not? Would they be compromising their Christian faith by taking this food? Could they accept invitations to eat such food in a pagan house or temple?

Some Christians, especially converts from a former pagan life, felt that by eating this meat they were taking part in idol worship and were compromising their Christian faith. Others, however, including Paul and perhaps others with a Jewish background, did not feel that way at all.

Paul gives a very nuanced answer but one which we should read carefully: In principle, enlightened Christians are completely free to decide for themselves, but they must avoid leading astray other Christians who are not yet liberated from their pre-conversion ideas. In other words, as he has already said, knowledge alone is not enough for a good decision; love of neighbour must also be taken into account.

Paul first enunciates some of his own convictions about the issue.

There is really no need to worry about food offered to idols because idols do not represent anything. There is only one God. The rest are pure fakes. Indeed there seem to have been many so-called gods in the Greek and Roman pantheons which were worshipped by thousands of people but the Christian knew that they had no real existence whatever.

For Paul, as for us, there is only “one God, the Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist”. And “there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things come and through whom we exist”. These statements are found in different formulations throughout Paul’s letters.

Nevertheless, continues Paul, the Corinthian Christians have to acknowledge that among them there are many converts who have not completely shaken off their old superstitions. While they have abjured the worship of idols, they still have a feeling that they are somehow real. And they are inclined to think that the food they see offered to idols is being offered to something real. If, during a feast following worship in a temple, they are invited to share in the food, they feel they are taking part in idol worship and have sinned.

Others, like Paul himself, do not feel this way at all. They know that the idol has no existence and that for them there is no real worship involved with a statue in a temple. The meat, whether it is at a temple feast or on sale in the market place, can be eaten with impunity by Christians.

However, Paul warns that those who, like Paul himself, feel ‘liberated’ in this matter must be careful not to become a stumbling block, a source of scandal to their more sensitive brothers and sisters. If the latter see a brother or sister dining together with people in a temple and eating food that has just been offered to an idol, may they not be tempted to think that it is alright to eat this meat when, in their weakness, they still attribute some reality to these idols? In which case, they may further be led to believe that worshipping idols is acceptable.

In this way one could bring about the spiritual destruction of a weaker brother or sister. The weak Christian could be influenced by the example of the stronger Christian and, even though he felt it to be wrong, would eat the meat offered to an idol.

The weaker brother may be persuaded to eat but afterwards would be filled with guilt for doing something he believed was quite wrong and against his Christian faith. What is worse, if they did this often enough, they might blunt their consciences and continue to do something they still felt in their heart of hearts was not right.

In such a situation, it is the “stronger” brother who has sinned. A weak conscience is wounded by eating meat offered to idols. The result may be moral tragedy. There is a sin against Christ, who is present in the weaker brother, and it could break the unity of the members of the body (the church).

So Paul has made his own decision in this matter. Even though he himself has no problems about eating such meat, he has resolved never to eat meat ever again rather than be a source of scandal to a weaker member of the community. Paul says he will not hurt the brother’s feelings and he will abstain from something which in itself has nothing to do with his loving and serving his Lord.

There is a very important lesson for all of us here. Certainly principles, laws and rules are very important and in general they should be observed. But there is one over-riding principle – and Paul mentions it – and that principle is love, that is, a sensitive and empathic caring for the well-being of the brother or sister. The not-eating of meat on such occasions was a small price to pay for a brother’s or sister’s peace of mind.

In our Church today, for instance, there are people who still have not fully come to terms with changes, new ways of seeing things, which were introduced by the Second Vatican Council. To take one small example, there are people who still insist on eating fish on Fridays, even though they know it is not now compulsory to abstain from meat. There are also those who want to receive Communion on the tongue and kneeling down. For many others, receiving in the hand and standing makes much more sense and is closer to the ancient customs of the Church.

In the long run, though, it is not an issue to be fought over (though it may be discussed). By being adamant over not eating fish on Friday or taking Communion in the hand we may drive a brother or sister away who still feels scruples about touching the Eucharistic bread, something they were sternly warned about in the past.

This does not mean that we should be adopt an attitude of indifference that one way is as good as another. People do need to be formed to help them understand the mind of the Church in such matters.

In the meantime, we must carefully distinguish between matters where we can in no way compromise. On marginal issues, however, we need to follow Paul’s example of being flexible. The ultimate aim is to bring all together in union with Christ present in each one. (The issue is dealt with at greater length in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chap. 14, a passage, for some reason, not read in our Weekday liturgy.)

[chaaliapinz]

Webseries MBTI: 12gw quick types part one

Someday I will write longer versions of these typings, but here’s a big post of most of the characters. I do love almost all of these kids, but I’m having a bit more trouble with Curt, Foster and Anthony’s types so expect to see them later

shoutout to @is-there-gay-in-it​ from whose blog I got most of the screenshots

Liv: ISTJ

function order:  Si - Te - Fi - Ne

She sticks to the routine that she knows and fears going outside it, (introverted sensing - Si) because there are possibilities she cannot control. That being said, if someone she cares about is in danger, she goes quickly and efficiently without much hesitation and can take executive leadership if deemed necessary (extraverted thinking - Te). The downside of this function, however, is that she is also desperately searching for control & order of her life she cannot really find or maintain and comes off as a bit cold in some of her interactions. She likes to hide them, but not too far under the surface, she acts a lot on inner emotions, despite what other people may say about her (introverted feeling - Fi) and sees many possibilities for the future, although these are often not positive hypotheticals - or neutral ones at least, like imagining herself as a frog (extraverted intuition - Ne), 

edit: what made me realize she was more of an ISTJ despite is that she seems to value routine (Si) more than curiosity (Ne)

 Compare & contrast to: The Olivia from the original Twelfth Night has been typed ENTJ, though I would argue INTJ or ISFP

Viola: ENTP

function order: Ne - Ti - Fe - Si 

She sees many possibilities for the future, both good and bad and tends to ruminate if given the freedom rather than act immediately. Her vlogs frequently go on tangents, switching from one idea to the next. That being said, she also acts as Oren’s logical anchor, reminding him there are multiple ways the whole Liv situation could go. She also capably handles Foster’s verbal twists and turns, adding some of her own. (dominant Ne/auxiliary introverted thinking - Ti)

She really wants relationships with others and is generally a pretty empathetic person, albeit one who uses her logic to save herself from overwhelming amounts of emotion and anxieties. Even though she didn’t have much reason to get invested with Liv, she does, quite genuinely. She doesn’t rely that much on the past and even less on social convention but has a fondness for the movies of her childhood and is devoted to the values and traditions of her family (tertiary extraverted feeling - Fe/inferior Si)

Compare & contrast to: The Viola from the original Twelfth Night has been typed ESTP but I would personally argue ISTP, though I can see both.

Oren - ENFJ

function order: Fe - Ni - Se - Ti He is very driven by emotions & relationships rather than logic, and really wants to be trusted & trust others (dominant extraverted feeling - Fe). He tends to make not terribly reasonable but stubborn plans for the future (re: Liv) and has trouble seeing past his personal judgements of people (auxiliary introverted intuition - Ni) while keeping his head in the clouds a bit. At times, he can make decisions in the moment, such as when he goes up to Liv to find Viola/Sam in the park. On the other hand, he can lack judgement at times about what comes out of his mouth and takes a lot of things at face value (auxiliary extraverted sensing - Se) He’s not terribly logical but can sometimes analyze situations, largely after the events have occurred, as in If, Then, but generally relies on a higher- Ti type such as Drew to do the fine bits of rationalizing for him when he is unable to. (inferior introverted thinking - Ti)

Tammi: ENFJ (some unhealthy cognitive function use applies)

function order: Fe - Ni - Se - Ti Depends a lot on her relationships with others and uses emotional appeal more than logic (”Drew, I thought we were friends!”) She likes to think she knows what’s best for Liv but she doesn’t really. That being said, she really does want the best for Liv in the end. Also a goal-oriented person who makes very stubborn plans and tends to assume a bit much about people (dominant Fe/auxiliary Ni). She also tends to be a bit impulsive and enjoys living in the moment - too much if you asked Maria - and can but has a bit of trouble with analyzing situations, largely after they have occurred (tertiary Se/inferior Ti)

Compare & contrast to: Toby from the original Twelfth Night is probably an ESTP, which is the same cognitive functions in a slightly different order

Sebastian: ENTJ

function order: Te-Ni-Se-Fi He’s generally a pretty no-nonsense guy who tells and observes the story in a very objective manner. This can make him stubborn and have difficulty with emotional, impractical matters, but his explicit in both senses of the word manner of communication can also come out as a bit affectionate when he refers people back to the facts of a situation. (”You gave me fucking CPR! That’s pretty damn romantic!”) (dominant Te) He is also a future oriented person who has a lil bit of an idealist in him considering that he expects his sis’s cross-dressing plan to work. And, of course, as with all high introverted intuition types, he makes a couple errors in judgement here and there, such as posting his entire plan on the internet and on a lesser level, assuming Oren was a straight guy. (auxiliary Ni) 

He’s not all that impulsive, but does pay some attention to the details of his sis’s videos, enough to tell her that lil crush on Oren is obvious by the way she looks at him. (tertiary Se)  In the end, though he may be a bit too blunt about the nature of things, it’s his way of saying he cares about his sister. (inferior Fi)

Compare & contrast to: Sebastian from the original Twelfth Night strikes me as either INTP or ISFJ

Drew: INTP

function order: Ti - Ne - Si - Fe Drew is big on theoretical stuff and is good at describing abstract concepts and has a lot of ideas. He is unafraid to take slightly unconventional paths to answer his pressing questions, and Oren’s deeming him “very, very smart” or something of the like probably comes from his ability to perceive and consider concepts in ways a lot of others around him don’t. (dominant ti/ auxiliary Ne) Though not too dependent on the past, he does have a bit of sentimental attachment to his home and his dog. He can seem a little detached from the rest of the world and at times a bit awkward, but he does value his relationships and wants the best for his friends (tertiary Si/inferior Fe)

Compare & contrast to: Andrew Aguecheek the original Twelfth Night is probably an ISTP

Vic: ISTP

function order: Ti - Se - Ni - Fe

Operates based on what makes sense to him, which is not love, apparently. We see that he is part of the friend group, but there are also seem to be a lot of thoughts going on in his head that we don’t know about.(dominant Ti) He can be detail-oriented and has good reflexes in video games, but is also a too bit impulsive at times, as seen when he fights Anthony(auxiliary Se). He has certain expectations for the future and of people around him (re: Curt going, which leave him a bit shaken), but does not plan extensively or rely on those expecations as much as someone like Oren or Tammi. (tertiary Ni) He clearly wants to have relationships with other people but can be a bit awkward acting on his emotions and would rather not talk about them(inferior Fe)

Maria: ISFP

function order: Fi - Se - Ni - Te She is motivated largely by loyalty to Tammi and personal morals, which motivates her to take on the responsible adult role where no one else will. (Dominant Fi) She is very grounded in the world around her and notices small details, such as Liv looking up movie showtimes, and perceives possible importance from it. (auxiliary Se) She is also skilled at making plans in the moment, and, though she doesn’t seem to rely on planning as much as Tammi does, she easily comes up with what she needs to do to get back at Malcolm over what he said to Tammi (tertiary Ni) Unlike some of the other Fi-dominant types in 12gw, she can also take on an INTJ-like objective voice of reason role in some situations and generally tells it like it is without a lot of nuance if she thinks the situation is dire (inferior Te)

Compare & contrast to: Maria from the original Twelfth Night strikes me as ESFP or ENTJ but I could be wrong

Malcolm: ISFP (unhealthy cognitive function use applies)

function order: Fi - Se - Ni - Te Virtually all the worst things about an ISFP. He relies on inner feelings about who should do what and where et. al, gives no fucks about most other people’s thoughts/feelings, and gets butthurt easily. (dominant Fi) He is impulsive and reactive with his responses and speech (auxiliary Se), and can have trouble seeing the possible consequences of his actions, but once he latches onto an idea, he immediately begins to see his entire future play out, such as with Liv. (tertiary Ni) He’s not a super logical person, but very blunt and objective in social situations (inferior Te). 

Compare & contrast to: Malvolio from the original Twelfth Night is probably an ESFP, since he has a bit more of a dramatic and reactive tendency

[logh-icebergs]

Episode 26: Farewell, Distant Days

Dear Icebergs readers—as we’ve reached the first season finale of LoGH, we’ve inevitably arrived at some pretty serious spoilers, so if you haven’t already seen all of LoGH season one, I would advise against reading any further. Instead, you can find our FAQs here and our very first post here, and we hope to see you back here soon!

Everyone else: When you're ready, please proceed to our episode 26 post, below. —the editors

September-October 797/488. Ansbach’s assassination attempt on Reinhard is thwarted by Kircheis—first by knocking his gun out of the way, and then by taking fire himself from yet another concealed weapon, this time in Ansbach’s ring. Ansbach shoots through Kircheis’s chest and neck, then bites a poison pill to commit suicide. Reinhard’s admirals scramble, but it’s too late to save Kircheis, who dies while Reinhard holds his hand and looks on in bewilderment. Beyond devastated, Reinhard shuts himself away with Kircheis’s body for days on end. Oberstein convinces the admirals to cast former ally Lichtenlade as a scapegoat for Ansbach’s crime, and, grateful for something to do, the entire fleet storms Odin. Meanwhile, Oberstein informs Annerose of Kircheis’s death, Reuental receives an unexpected invitation, and Reinhard hardens his heart.

Reinhard and Kircheis

The first time I watched episode 26 of Legend of Galactic Heroes, there was a moment when, literally sitting on the edge of my seat, I wondered if this show was about to disappoint me horribly. Kircheis was, clearly, dying. The admirals were fluttering around him trying and failing to stop the bleeding, giving up on leaving to go get a doctor—too quickly, it seemed. And where was Reinhard? Why wasn’t he there?

As a queer consumer of media, I’m used to this kind of disappointment. Seeing my experiences reflected onscreen at all remains rare, and when a piece of media does deign to include a queer character or two, more often than not they’re killed off unceremoniously in as homophobically moralizing a way as possible. The death scenes of queer characters tend to leave me with a sick feeling not because I’m grieving the character but because I hate that I’ve had to give up on expecting queer characters and their relationships to be given a fraction of the respect afforded their straight counterparts.

The first 25 episodes of LoGH had surprised me with their nuanced and respectful depiction of queerness, in particular of Reinhard and Kircheis’s relationship. But as a seasoned veteran of queer media consumption, as Kircheis bled out on the floor while Reinhard did who knows what across the room, I didn’t know how else to interpret what I was seeing other than “Kircheis is about to die alone.” My stomach hurt. And then, this happened:

Given that it’s animated, LoGH has so far been remarkable in its commitment to realism. Without exception, what has been shown to us onscreen has been presented as an accurate depiction of events; the closest to a diversion from that has been the show’s frequent use of flashbacks, but even those are always anchored to a specific character’s experience of remembering the past.

As Reinhard steps painstakingly down the stairs toward where Kircheis lays in a pool of his own blood, the creators of LoGH throw away their own established set of rules. What we are seeing is no longer what is literally happening; instead, we are with Reinhard—and for him, nothing in the world exists at that moment except Kircheis and himself. With this scene, the LoGH creative team show us that they will do whatever they have to in order to respect their characters: If there are too many people around for Reinhard and Kircheis to get the intimate last goodbyes they and their relationship deserve, well, everyone else will simply have to be removed.

Even the lack of voiceover accompanying Reinhard’s quick series of flashbacks here reinforces the extent to which reality has been skewed for the duration of this scene.

For me, this was when LoGH went from being a great show to being (as you may have noticed) my favorite show—and not just because of how kindly it treats its characters, even while they experience gut-wrenching tragedy. Kircheis’s death changes Reinhard and, as I’ll obviously be exploring at length as we move into season 2, that changes the entire landscape of the show. Though from the beginning it has always been deeply personal and human, especially for a war epic of such massive scale, the question of what Reinhard will do now, without Kircheis, turns LoGH psychologically dark in ways that have only been hinted at so far.

Back in episode 4, we were first introduced to Reinhard’s plan to gain enough power to rescue Annerose from the clutches of Kaiser Friedrich IV. Friedrich IV has since died of natural causes, freeing Annerose without Reinhard’s help. In episode 8, we learn that Reinhard’s ambitions extend to overthrowing the Goldenbaum empire, and then achieving supremacy over the entire universe—very specifically with Kircheis at his side. By the end of episode 26, Reinhard rules the empire in everything but name (the six-year-old Erwin Josef II still sits on the throne as Kaiser), but Kircheis is dead, rendering Reinhard’s longtime goal of joint conquest impossible.

For practical purposes, this barely matters: Above, Kircheis uses some of his last remaining energy to beg Reinhard to follow through with the plan they made together, in effect guaranteeing that he will continue on the same path after Kircheis dies. But in more abstract terms, both of Reinhard’s main reasons for seeking political power are now gone. And with a promise to the dead Kircheis as Reinhard’s driving force, Empire-side LoGH has suddenly become a very different show—one that is no longer about a man trying to conquer the universe, but is rather about a man searching for something to hold onto in a universe that, without Kircheis in it, seems to have very little to offer.

Annerose

But Reinhard shouldn’t feel entirely alone in the universe. After all, he has his sister, right? Well, not exactly. As Reinhard learns after Oberstein breaks the news of Kircheis’s death to Annerose (against Reinhard’s wishes), Annerose has decided now is the perfect time to do something really, really cruel: cut off contact with her grieving brother.

Reinhard’s Family

That the season 1 arc of Reinhard and Annerose’s relationship ends on a bad note is frankly an understatement, but to really dig into how things stand between them in episode 26, we must first get a handle on all the moving parts that brought them to this point.

Over the course of my season 1 posts, I’ve mapped out much of the dynamic between Reinhard and Annerose: Reinhard, who both idealizes and idolizes his sister, does so (unwittingly) at the expense of her personhood; Annerose, whose agency has been violently denied her since an early age, projects a portion of her (natural) resentment onto her brother, who moves freely about the universe steadily gaining power while her life remains stagnant. One aspect of their relationship that I haven’t examined, however, is the extent to which Annerose has played a parental role in Reinhard’s life.

In this scene from the episode 4 flashback, Reinhard assigns to Annerose the kind of responsibility for his behavior that would ordinarily be reserved for a parent or guardian.

And then, after Reinhard and Kircheis have conspired to keep Reinhard’s misdeeds from his sister, Annerose puts their wet clothes in the laundry and dotes on them with hot chocolate and freshly baked pie. This is maybe the most archetypal depiction of motherhood I’ve ever seen, despite the fact that Annerose is both 1. actually Reinhard’s sister and 2. only five years his senior.

Reinhard’s father, who sold Annerose into sexual slavery at the age of fifteen, is obviously awful. And Reinhard’s mother, who hasn’t even ever been mentioned, clearly never had much of a presence in Reinhard’s life. Annerose is the only person (besides, eventually, Kircheis) we ever see taking responsibility and caring for Reinhard.

Reinhard’s family, as it is presented to us, is comprised of three people: himself, Annerose, and Kircheis. Though Kircheis is literally never (not once in all of LoGH!) referred to as being “like a brother” to Reinhard, their constant companionship since a young age means that their interactions often blur the line between surrogate-familial and romantic. The fact that Reinhard always brings Kircheis with him on visits to Annerose, for example, indicates that he at least views the three of them as a tight-knit unit.

But in Reinhard’s chosen family, there is a clear delineation of roles between Annerose and himself/Kircheis. In the gif above, Reinhard and Kircheis sit across the table from Annerose, who acts like a parent not just to Reinhard but to Kircheis as well; the difference in age and maturity between them is underlined by both Annerose’s matter-of-fact competence and Reinhard and Kircheis’s unashamed (and matching) nudity.

The photo that Kircheis gazes at in episode 25 (which eventually shows up in Reinhard’s locket, discussed later in this post) also draws a solid line between Annerose—who is more than a full head taller than the boys—and Reinhard/Kircheis. Kircheis’s sideways gaze at Reinhard serves to emphasize even further that they are a discrete pair.

Reinhard’s behavior towards Annerose starts to make more sense once you realize that he basically considers her his mother. Just as children tend not to understand—sometimes well into adulthood—that their parents are fully formed, flawed human beings with rich inner lives, so Reinhard has kept Annerose on a pedestal, treating her more like a symbol than a complex person. This also explains how Reinhard can, for example, be so blasé about teasing Kircheis in front of Annerose for his love of her cooking: Naïve as he is, the idea that Annerose might have feelings for Kircheis that go beyond platonic and motherly would never occur to Reinhard in a million years—unless something were to happen that brought Annerose’s feelings into stark relief.

Annerose Makes Up Her Mind

Which brings us back to the scene at hand, Kircheis’s death being the exact sort of cataclysmic event that might throw a wrench into Reinhard’s precarious relationship with his sister. And the second Annerose opens her mouth to speak, Reinhard knows something is wrong:

Annerose’s tone of voice here is as cold and distant as what she’s actually saying; rather than sharing in or sympathizing with Reinhard’s grief, she isolates him in it, trivializing his feelings of loss while also—by implying Kircheis was the only person Reinhard could ever care about losing—calling into question the authenticity of his devotion to her.

If Reinhard had been aware of all the little signs of Annerose’s resentment towards him that have been building up over the course of the last 25 episodes, this conversation might have gone differently—not because Annerose would have done a better job playing the part of the soothing sister/mother, but because Reinhard might not have been expecting her to. But Reinhard is naïve, especially about Annerose, so her abrupt switch from passive aggression (which Reinhard of course never picked up on) to overt hostility shocks Reinhard into a realization.

Above, Reinhard first protests Annerose’s disingenuous declaration that he has nothing left to lose, and then looks on in horror as it becomes clear that she intends to make it a true statement. But even while Reinhard listens, and responds, the gears are (visibly!) turning in his head, trying desperately to figure out what the fuck is going on. So let’s join him: What the fuck is going on?

First and foremost, I think, is Annerose’s desire for freedom. With Kircheis gone, she must realize that Reinhard’s need for her emotional support will increase astronomically. It’s one thing for her to live quietly in Reinhard’s mansion when he’s usually off gallivanting around space with his boyfriend; it’s quite another thing to share a home with someone who is grieving the loss of, as Mittermeyer so eloquently put it, half of his own self.

Because Reinhard may view Annerose as a mother, but that isn’t how Annerose views Annerose. We don’t actually know how she views herself—as I said back in episode 1, our entire characterization of Annerose is a reflection of how the world sees her—but we do know how she came to be Reinhard’s mother figure and, like her sale to Kaiser Friedrich IV, it wasn’t through any choice of her own.

In fact, this choice, the one to tell her grieving brother to fuck off so that she can finally get some time and space to herself, is the first choice we’ve ever seen Annerose make. So despite episode 26 ending on a catastrophic note for Reinhard’s relationship with Annerose, it ends on something of a triumphant note for Annerose herself: In choosing not to allow her well-meaning brother to use her as his personal grief counselor, she has finally, if perversely, reclaimed her agency.

Meanwhile, Reinhard has come to a completely different realization about Annerose’s motives:

My much earlier promise of a love triangle between Reinhard, Kircheis, and Annerose has finally come to fruition in true LoGH fashion, i.e. as morbidly as possible.

Make no mistake: The reason Reinhard asks this question of Annerose now is because it has never occurred to him before, and the reason it has occurred to him now is because Annerose is behaving in a way that he interprets as some mixture of jealous, vindictive, and heartbroken—none of which align with his image of his sister. Faced with her unambiguous and uncharacteristic cruelty, Reinhard searches around for an explanation and comes up with what would have sounded outlandish to him until this moment: romantic love.

But was Annerose in love with Kircheis? I don’t know. Frankly, I doubt Annerose knows (and we never get to see her answer, if she even gives one). Remember, Kircheis was ten years old to Annerose’s fifteen when she became the Kaiser’s concubine, meaning for most of the time they actually spent together, Annerose was basically Kircheis’s babysitter. It’s certainly possible that she developed romantic feelings for him over the years, or at least projected some romantic ideal onto him that she experienced as love. Given that he was probably the only male figure in her life besides her brother who was ever kind to her, it wouldn’t be surprising.

As a rival to Reinhard, though, my guess is that Annerose never considered herself in the running—and if anything, that would have made Kircheis an even safer object of affection for someone whose real-life experience with men was limited to a decade of blatant sexual exploitation. But that certainly doesn’t preclude jealousy or heartbreak; in that sense, Reinhard might be partially right about why Annerose chooses to act the way she does.

The accuracy of Reinhard’s suspicions, however, isn’t particularly important. What matters is that Reinhard has had this realization at all: In yet another twisted triumph for Annerose, and at immense cost, her brother has finally realized that she’s human.

Queerness

Given the reasons for the existence of this blog, it’s only fitting that we end our first season with a discussion of how LoGH treats queerness. Conveniently, this coincides with the creative team’s decision to convert a substantial portion of the show’s queer subtext into explicit text, done via multiple perspectives and narrative techniques throughout the season finale.

Our first open acknowledgement of the romantic nature of Reinhard and Kircheis’s relationship comes, unfortunately, from Kircheis’s murderer, Ansbach. The phrase “other half,” unlike much of the language used thus far to describe Reinhard and Kircheis, doesn’t have a heteronormative surface reading.

Incidentally, Ansbach’s easy familiarity with the concept of a romantic partnership between two men has always been one of the things that made me wonder about his feelings for Braunschweig—along with the fact that immediately after this, Ansbach tells Braunschweig to “wait for him in Valhalla” before killing himself.

Kircheis’s last words, too, work to remove a layer of heteronormativity from LoGH’s surface reading, albeit more subtly:

In this final, stunning example of a Reinhard-Bechdel Test failure, Kircheis uses his last breath to ask Reinhard to tell Annerose... that he kept his promise to be a good friend to Reinhard.

In a heteronormative piece of media, when a male character brings up a female character’s name in his dying breath, one would probably expect him to declare his undying love for her. That Kircheis starts his last sentence with “Please tell Lady Annerose...” and finishes it with a positive allusion to his relationship with Reinhard is an incredible subversion of heteroromantic tropes. It even goes so far as to “straight-bait,” dangling the possibility of Kircheis’s romantic feelings for Annerose in front of the viewer before categorically dismissing it.

Later, while Reinhard mourns, Mittermeyer uses similar language to Ansbach’s, above, to explain to Müller why Reinhard is in such an inconsolable state:

Like Ansbach’s usage of “other half,” Mittermeyer’s “half of his own self” doesn’t have a non-romantic interpretation to bolster LoGH’s increasingly shaky heteronormative surface reading. Also like (maybe) Ansbach, Mittermeyer is a character who (as we’ll see much more of soon) can speak from his personal experiences with queer romance, making him perfect for delivering this unambiguous message not just to other characters, but also to the viewer.

The last scene of the episode and the season finds Reinhard at Kircheis’s grave which, yet again, emphasizes his romantic relationship with Reinhard, and not just because of the inscription’s use of the singular possessive “my”:

Though the German “Mein Freund” directly translates to “my friend,” that isn’t actually how the phrase is used in Germany, where “Mein Freund” most frequently refers to a male romantic partner. The only ambiguity about Kircheis’s inscription is in how it’s translated: as わが友 in Japanese or, literally, “my friend,” obscuring the German usage and allowing it to continue to pass as heteronormative.

After placing flowers on Kircheis’s grave, Reinhard sits back, revealing that he has started wearing a locket. Opening it, he shows us that it contains a photo we’ve seen before of Reinhard with his chosen family, and a lock of Kircheis’s hair:

Season one of Legend of Galactic Heroes ends on a deeply personal note, and it also ends on a series of questions: What, or who, will Reinhard find to fill the gaping hole in his life left by Kircheis’s death? Will it be his rivalry with Yang? Other, darker questions are left unspoken, but their presence is felt nonetheless: Will Reinhard find something to “quench the thirst in his heart”? And, if not, what then?

Stray Tidbits

During this post, as usual, I’ve used gifs from the LD (original) versions of LoGH instead of their redrawn versions. Episode 26 was almost entirely redrawn, and many of the “remastered” scenes are dramatically different from their original versions, so I’m gonna give a few sample comparisons here. Kircheis’s death scene, for example, was changed to make his physical process of dying appear significantly less grisly. Below, on the left, the redrawn Kircheis’s body is still and his eyes are focused on Reinhard; on the right, the original Kircheis’s breaths are visibly laborious and painful, and his eyes are unfocused:

Below, Reinhard’s facial expressions and reactions during his conversation with Annerose were changed so drastically that he might as well be a different character. In the redraw (left), Reinhard is practically throwing a tantrum; in the original (right), Reinhard is still shocked, but keeps his composure as he struggles to process his sister’s unexpected cruelty, placing the emphasis squarely on his thoughts rather than on his feelings:

On a lighter note, the redraw team seems to have been confused (or, less charitably, offended) by this public display of intimacy between Reuental and Mittermeyer—in the redraw (left), Reuental stops Mittermeyer from standing by either touching his hand or just making a motion as if to touch his hand, keeping a respectful distance; in the original (right), Reuental physically impedes Mittermeyer from standing up by placing his hand on *draws a diagram* his very inner thigh, and leaving it there:

A small worldbuilding note: The dates on Kircheis’s grave are wrong! He was actually born in 467, not 468, according to every other marker of time in the LoGH universe.

And now for something extremely disturbing: An official LoGH-branded Kircheis roomba exists. When it’s low on batteries, it says, “I won’t be able to serve you anymore, Reinhard-sama.” Sadly, this is real and I’m not making it up.

[funkymbtifiction]

Can you give me some concrete differences between ENFP and ENTP?

(Gif: not related and you don’t care anyway.)

Concrete? Well, if you have read all the other times I have answered this question and not found the answer yet, probably no. ;)

Go watch Serendipity. He’s ENTP. She’s ENFP. Notice their focus.

TiFe: seeks to build a system of abstract understanding (Ti). This means the Ti user is trying to constantly categorize everything it encounters, in an effort to build an internal framework of knowledge. In an NTP, this means often bypassing reality for abstract theory.

Often, what I hear from my ENTP friend is: “PEOPLE ARE SO NONSENSICAL, WHY DO THEY HAVE TO BE SO NONSENSICAL?” He’s having trouble with their irrational emotional outbursts not correlating with his own Ti processing, which prefers logic, and finds human beings difficult to separate from the rest of reality, which operates on a sense of primal… logic. Animals kill to eat. Humans kill because they can. How is that logical? A girl likes you, but ignores you, so you will like her more, but instead you think she’s not interested and move on and she’s upset. HOW IS THAT LOGICAL?!?!? 

I suspect deep down ENTPs are searching for the magic bullet, one thing to help them explain the entirety of humanity in a way that satisfies themselves and ensures they can deal with human beings as an entire race and as individuals without going insane from their irrational collective thinking. My ENTP brother always has a hopeful look on his face when he comes up to ask me a question that basically “categorizes” a lot of people into a slot. This is his Ti “trying to figure people out.” I hate to bust his bubble but: you can’t.

This is why Stephen Hawking searched for “the theory of everything.” He wanted to find one theory to explain the vast nuances of the universe; he wanted to strip everything down to its basic logical central truth and expand from that… which is, in a nutshell, Ti.

Also being Fe they usually share their feelings, talk about what they are feeling as it is happening, seek others when they feel uncertain about themselves and feel uplifted when offered encouragement from others, because generally Fe goes “whew, okay, I’m fine,” when people go, “You did a great job!”

(Gif: if you do not recognize it, we can’t be friends)

FiTe: literally does not give a damn about a magic bullet. It does not really want to categorize, because that’s shoving people into boxes and high Fi (unless the person using it has not developed it very well) instinctively understands emotions, what drives people, what will resonate with them, and what things mean to them on an emotional level. They operate on terms of: fairness, right and wrong, what they believe is ethical or immoral, their strong feelings for or against people / places / events / theories / principles / everything. They make decisions based on emotions. Theirs. Other people’s. Cat’s feelings, even.

I pronounce immediate moral judgment, whereas ENTP pronounces immediate rational judgment. Take the new show Genius. It opens on an adulterous sex scene where the scientist goes on to justify his adultery by explaining to his secretary in detached Ti terms it’s illogical to be faithful. (He’s an INTP, btw.) I have not watched another episode. That opening scene triggered my Fi disgust, not only that he would cheat on his wife (my Fi says: NOPE, asshole) but then justify it with some BS theory.

Meanwhile, ENTP friend laughed and said, “Look how this Ti is rationalizing his adultery WITH Ti!”

“Yeah,” I said. “I noticed.”

ENTP shot back: “I can smell the judgment from here.”

Yeah, you can.

Does that mean I’ll never finish Genius? Maybe, maybe not. My immediate judgments tend to get less harsh when I get to know people better, and then I find more compassion for them or understand them better, even though I never agree with their behaviors that I believe are wrong.

Also, I have Te. I don’t care HOW that damn thing works, or the process that went into creating it, or what the dude thought about when he invented it, I just want it to do its job. If it doesn’t do its job, it’s junk and I have no time for it. I am here to GET THINGS DONE, all right?

Te is also real good at “state the obvious” and “WELL, NO SH!T, SHERLOCK.”

Like the other day, when I said, “The Weasley twins will be at Comic Con.”

Other person: “Are they still tall and thin?”

Me: “Well, it’s not like they’re gonna get shorter.” *

Sorry. That sort of tert-Te BLUNT comes out of my mouth all the time IRL. :P

- ENFP Mod

[kendrixtermina]

Typing Misadventures - IN edition

So, typing and the difficulties therein.

Aside from person-specific ad-hominems, some that have been elaborated upon in attempts to explain them on this very website.

Sensors: Bad Sensor descriptions written by NPs, combining with the fact that Sensors rely a lot on developing a practical experential “feel” for things. A bad, vague and overly abstract description that doesn’t relate to their life is gonna be not very useful. (especially for SFPs for whom what they relate to is srz bzness) - Interestingly I’ve seen a lot of Sensors saying that they easily indentify particular types once they have encountered them IRL. (Speculation: With intuitives it probably depends more on wether they have their definitrions straight.)

Ne-Doms: Type-hop and doubt their type alot because they know they always could be mistyped and possibilities are the primary facet of reality for them. The “creative” nature of the auxillary, and their auxillary being a function that generates and handles belief systems,  means they can always reinterpret the evidence by redoing their reasoning or reassigning meaning, also the lack of Si leads to less constancy in their thinking, they change opinion easily, which is normally an asset, but not so much for self-typing as every input generates new ideas. (The auxillaries also have this but to a much lesser degree - b/c)

—

But today, I want to talk about INs (I know, boring - but those are what I know the most about since I am one.)

You may have seen me caveat my posts with “Unless I am actually an xNFP or something” as of late Yeah. It went about like this:

Troll: Haha you’re mistyped!

Me: Why?

Troll: because X.

Me: I have an alternate, more fitting explanation for X and a lot of things which my current typing explains betters especially when you get into the nuance of mbti theory.

Troll: (*hamfistedly applies overreductionistic function definition*) “Anyone who ever quotes a source ever is a Te user”. Just like anyone who ever mentions memory is a SJ amirite?

Troll: *shifts the topic to my person and then accuses me of talking about myself*

Me: *blocks troll largely to curttail own tendency to waste time & energy with internet arguments*

So at my best,  I believe in not dismissing inconvenient PoVs and double-checking, and the main point of replying them was to leave an alternate opinion for future readers hence no point in continuing after that had been done.  

At my worst damn inf Fe makes it hard to ignore input even if I don’t believe it’s justified (except when it fails to pick them up - as inferior functions are wont to be its either sluggish or AHH with little inbetween. ) and that lil 8 fix of mine doesn’t want to “stand down quietly”.  

So I ask a few reasonable, knowledgeable, non-troll person, one of which said “Hm, could be, you anecdote alot which X type also does”

I believed this was better accounted for by simple ol’ Si and w4-self revealing tendencies, but, how could I know for sure? I never denied having a pronounced 4wing and fix, but I thought that sufficiently explaining their perceived discrepancies insofar as I found them consistent with reality and indeed all data collected so far. Too much would just be filed away as “inf Te” as a blanket term, the way any sign that [fan favorite character] is ST rather than INFJ is “inferior Se” though that supposed “inferior” is 80% of what she does and all moments claimed for F or N are the sort of situations where anyone would display emotion or philosophizing and what intuition they display is distinctly Ne instead. 

Like the proverbial man who dreamt of being a frog I couldn’t cast the doubt from my mind and went over reinterpreting my thought patterns throughout the day. How do I know I’m NOT X type? After all my idea of and criteria for type are based on the definitions I extracted from various mbti sources when first familiarzing myself with the topic… how do I know I understood it correctly? How can ANY human correctly understand a definition if they have to deduce/reconstruct/guess what the other meant with their own flawed mind?

(At this point the non-INs in the audience might be rolling their eyes)

I still thought my type made the most sense but the person, through trolling in that particular instance, was not alltogether clueless and had some good insights, and also, some ppl agreed with them (theres that Fe again) - I was pretty sure I was in the holographic-panomramic thinking style but I could be wrong,  thats a fairly rarely used concept which I simply started using cause I thought it made sense. ENFPs can mistake themselves for introverts. I have been mistaken for extrovert b/c of my lack of filter… but I was pretty sure I was a very pronouncedintrovert and had Fe, and so I went over it over and over again.

They said I didn’t comprehend _ i had some theory as to why they thought the way they did (not just bias against xNFPs but assuming all Ti is like aux Ti. After all, an introverted function as a dominant builds a framework and may be reluctant to accept or need time to withdraw when said framework clashes with reality to the point of needing a full revamping, purportedly resulting in a certain stubbornness particularly if it’s a Ji function.  )

but what if I really Didn’t comprehend? Then all my reasoning would be worthless! I dont think I have the skills of an INFP, but what if i misunderstood those? Was a lot of what I’d attributed to Ti just Ne? i thought I had rather typical Ti speech patterns (it was hard to unsee, like my brain used a highly predictable parsing alghorithm to make thoughts into words) but they disagreed and pointed to what they thought was Fi. 

I thought that despite all the differences introduced by  shared preferences and  there were differences between I and the Fi doms I knew. The 9 and the 6 were much more lowkey, non-confrontational than I and way more perceptive in line with how socionics describes Fi as the “Ethics of Relations” and how Nardi calls it an “Inner state of listening/reacting”; I mostly listen to the contents of someone’s words; I’d spot a liar by contradiction or unbeliavable statements, or by deducing what beliefs they are operating from. Feelers supposedly use primarily tone of voice... but I have sure noticed tone of voice a few times, and this is a qualia. I can’t compare what “Fi” or “Ti” feel like without making assumptions of which one I am using. 

Supposedly

The 4! INFPs should be the most similar to me, on the other hand, they tend to have a certain...absoluteness in their beliefs and statements in a way I wouldn’t be comfortable with. I’m more hesitant, more relativizing, adding qualifiers etc so bI don’t say anything incorrect. 

I don’t mean to bash the INFPs here, they are usually just processing their specific feels and do not mean to imply things about others. (Tumblr INFP: “I, an INFP, experience X.”. Tumblr xxFJ: “Are you saying that other types don’t????? You can’t say that! How self absorbed are you?” Immature  Tert Fe User:*distantly feels the same urge toward ,moral condemnation as FJ,but couldn’t care less if INFP offends anyone -  settles for calling them a snowflake instead. * TJs and Ti doms: *roll their eyes, half-assedly consider correcting whoever they disagree with but ultimately just keep scrolling*) Of course Team Fe sometimes has a point if the INFP in question is young and/or irresponsible. 

Example: 

One INFP 4w5: “I be those shallow fake bitches look down on you just because you don’t wear as much makeup. I don’t think anyone who wears makeup can be trusted, unless it’s like,halloween makeup or something like that, they’re just putting up fake faces to be popular.”

Me (let’s say, presumed INTP 5w4): “I dunno... Like I agree that those girls are shallow bitches,if they had spines, they wouldn’ perform arbitrary fake behavior just to be popular.* But not everyone is the same - maybe some people might just wear makeup because they like how it looks. The real problem is people being judged by arbitrary conventions on principle. What does is matter whether someone wears makeup or not? Its a made-up convention with no real reason.  It’s none of anyone’s business.”

* for the record I have since realized that there’s nothing bad about wanting to be popular as long as yopu dont harm anyone, and that for some people its genuinely what they want. I was, like,  13. Common (w)4 pitfall I guess. 

As you see both I and this middle school friend of mine are expressing 4-ish povs, but I used to think  the difference in our reasoning highlighted some differences. 

Granted this is more 5w4 vs 4w5 than necessarily Ti vs Fi,  Could just be the 5′s general disconnect toward action and desire to “know more first”. 

There are 5 INFPs. after all. Mostly sx 5s and as such differentiable from the relatively intense, dramatic sx 4 as long as you’re certain enough that they’re sx. Thinking about how to describe them. More second-guessing and ‘drifting’ than the 4 ones but like them in their analytical nature. A different kind of contemplative.  Still reasons distinctlylike an INFP - See, One of them was religious, for example, and I’m pretty sure an INTP would have had more posts about why they were religious or not, though it’s one of the types most likely to be a non-believer, the religious ones tend to have a theological bent and talk about the perfection and incomprehensibility of god, how god is totally logical etc. (Thomas Acquinas is a famous example) - their faith will be an ordered self-consistent system. A bit like that example of copernikus assuming the orbits must be perfectly circular because natture as he understood it would tend toward the most “perfect” forms. I’m not religious and I could likewise talk about that at lenght.

Arguments that convinced me:  “This is how these beliefs came from, not an actual god” and “If were made out of single celled organism who die all the time as shed skin cells, how would the rest of them dieing at once be different?” “Even if your religion is true that means many, if not all others are not. So at least all some must be myths. How is your “true” religion different from them?” 

Arguments made by famous Te-Fi users: “Occams Razor.” “We can’t disprove a giant sucker on the back of Pluto either, but its no reason to suppose one.”“Belief in god hampers human development and creates dependent, slavish mentality”

That 5!INFP’s attitude toward their belief reminded me more of another Fi dom I know (albeit an ISFP). “Yeah, I know the common objections, but look, it’s what I believe. Don’t come into my house and be a jerk to me about it.” or “[Assholish behavior] is not actually in line with my religion. My religion, and this aspect of it, are actually about love/peace/duty/etc” 

If, while conversing,  you hit a hard disagreement, that is,  an axiom that’s not up for debate, your Fi-dom friend may change the topic/agree to disagree/ “It’s just the way I feel” 

[This could apply to other moral or ideological questions religion is just an example; This is not supposed to be about religion it’s just here to illustrate a perceived difference. . I’m not implying all INFPs have the same approach to religion or even have to be religious.]

Another conversation I remember having with them actually on the very subject of Fi vs Fe. IDK how we got to that topic but I mentioned something I initially thought was an enneagram thing (my memory is vague on the details) but I mentioned something like lowkey feeling guilty for receiving praise that I believe was undeserved. 

She deemed it a Fe thing and said that for her, as a Fi dom/ fe opposing type, a bit of praise she did not agree with might not cause any reaction at all unless she thought they had a point  or otherwise had a reaction from her end, like deciding the criticism was unfair - why should she feel guilty b/c of what someone else says? 

Granted that’s just an anecdote, but what am I to do? INFP 5s are not super common. Also I’m not making this decisionbased on any single of these examples but... not even from the “preponderance” so much as to how they can be best explained. 

And  of course, if I really did get everything wrong after looking into the topic for years, what guarantee is there that I typed any of those people correctly? None, as one of the trolls/claimants correctly pointed out. 

After all what I want is the truth, it doesn’t matter what it is. Or at least that is what I strive for as much as human frailty allows. so what if I’m an INFP? INFPs are awesome. I even considered the type early on, I just thougnt INTP fit better especially once I found out about inferior functions.  And I have always held that a person has no obligation to follow their “talents”. If I don’t have a “talent” for reason (which isn’t the same as mbti thinking anyways) all the reasons why I believe that it is a good way of life to aim for would still stand. Reason is a method to correct for human error and bias, after all, the error and bias we all have, no matter what Ji function we use.

Type insofar as it can even be said to be a real thing is a classfication of emergent qualities, not a hard measure you can get in an instrument. 

As much as I’d want to figure this out, there comes a point where you just have to like step back and put it in context.  it’s just a personality test/ little tool to facilitate communication in which “maybe this or that” is more helpful than nothing. 

Striving for it despite not being handed talent at birth is all the more worthwhile - and if reason was only for certain kinds of people what’s the point of it? Regardless of what tropes people associate with “science” or “logic”, what they actually are by definition are simple basic methods.

Last but not least there was a moment

Soo, existential crisis. At least they can’t doubt that I’m a melancholic or an oldham ideosyncraticXD

Then,  my doubt crumbled away to the “ mostly sure, dont think it could be anything else but im not omnicient” levels at which it was before.

What happened? Well, a rare event:

Well, I went outside and talked to people.

I visited my folks, saw new places, got into a few unscripted situations in other words. 

I’ve seen one post detailing that INs may mistype because they analyze themselves as a whole, feature in less apparent traits and second-guess their reasoning worrying about bias, noticing what sticks out more than the norm etc.  and so on and that may be it in part but I don’t think it’s only this relatively “noble”, too-much-of-a-good-thing mistake.

- It’s a matter about how we are all about ~extrapolating~ from data and using multiple data points and less about decisiveness and practicality. We brood away endlessly trying to come up with interpretations and conceptualizations that makes all the data points fit rather than just going with what they themselves largely seem to suggest. 

One good description I once heard is that Intuitives think in networks while Sensors think in puzzle pieces - I went overboard trying to build ever more complex networks instead of going “Yeah, with all the puzzle pieces so far it’s probably this.”. 

Sometimes the latter approach can be incomplete and miss game changing interconnections - but just as often, the former gets convoluted and therefore, both uselessly vague and too far removed from the actual data its meant to interpret. 

Aaaand, well, almost every sentence I said was “Did you know that...?” or “I think so/ don’t think so because of [observation followed by possible deduction].

Sure, I could be biased in my observation or unconsciously “doing it on purpose to appear a certain way” even if I don’t think I am or care about that, , but some critical mass of “doing it on purpose” would itself be equivalent with 5 (or a 3)

I was a little afraid one time; I reacted by withdrawing and looking at the whole thing as an observatrion and it was a highly temporary thing. And as much as I complain about Fe users playing police, I may have been guilty of one moment of overreacting, unwanted/socially-chiding “help” myself there. (The person perhaps justly called me a know-it-all. They were wrong about one thing but I may have handled it all more constructively) I repeatedly expressed vague undifferentiated preferrences that were closer to analyzing what factors were at work rather than having clear like/dislike reasons readily available. .

I critiqued a TV show (myself and the local INTJ annoying all the non-NTs with our loud, animated critiquing ) and a big factor to being unabvle to enjoy it fully was the lack of High-Concept abstract sci fi content and mostly the lack of consistency - normally a lot of my enjoyment would come from extrapolatinmg and deducing what the world is like and how it, the themes and charactzers “work”, but here I coulnd do that because it was tacked onto a ‘verse it did not fit into. I observed how said INTJ and I reacted to us correcting each other on small things with like a brief thanks or apology & just moving on whilst similar things had gotten annoyed snarks out of our otherwise patient Feeler sister...

The nails in the coffin were those 2 tumblr posts, one about differences in how Fi and low Fe argue (the latter pile including 3 phrases I used verbatim in the last discussion with my SO just hours earlier) and a post by the afore mentioned “resonable poster” about, as she called it “oversharing in soc variants vs soc blinds” though the correct amount of sharing might well be in the eye of the beholder.

But that was the one objection of the troll I didn’t have a non-vague satisfactory reply to, what rly kept me wondering rather than “eh not gonna reinvent the wheel again”, something about “sp/sx woldn’t have long descriptions or emo rants” Apparently they do when they never have to dea with the person again (such as on the internets. )

IDK I did move the description so no one’s forced to read it but lots of peeps have one (This is like... a blogging site??) but the reasons for its existence had more to do with “completionist urges related to then-current obsession (typology)” and “So I like X, bite me.” sort of sentiment than whatever it was they presuposed. 

Dear Causal-Deterministic peeps (ENTP, INFP, ISTP, ESFP): Instances of the same behavior can be caused by different causes! Look at this: 2 4 8.

What’s the pattern? - Could be “powers of 4″.  Could also be “even numbers” or even “any increasing integer”. 

Of course this whole mess is an example of where we H-P folks (INTP, ENFP, ISFP, ESTP) look at everything from multiple angels/Povs, (”Is it like this? Is it lika that? It COULD be seen this other way...”) rather than, well, decide which ones are most relevant here/ “Pick one”. At least the SPs have Se to “just grab one” or whatever it is they do. 

Whereas we just stand there speculating XD The ENFPs sorta do it too but in a whole different way/ area of life? 

Me: “Either he is nuts or I am nuts because we can’t both be telling the truth!”

ENFP: “Well I empasize with both of you so I don’t think either of you is nuts?”

Me: Sorry but this is a real dichotomy here for once. If he dun nothing wrong, then I would be wrong for accusing him thus, just as he says..

ENFP: Can we all agree to disagree and chil maybe? plz??

Might also be why there`s this overlap between ENFPs and Universalists? Though obviously not all ENFPs are universalists and vice versa. 

So yeah. Kinda comical in hindsight. I started out all second guess-ey and entertaining both possibilities in parallel but in the end, well, I do think it’s INTP after all, at least, I’d say its the most probable by a considerable margin. Most definitely 5 tho. For all the occasionall 4 ness its by far the most overwhelming tendency in day to day life/thinking ugh cant I NOT spew nerd facts about everything in sight. What are other conversaton topics? 

Bottom Line: By thinking about your own thinking you alter your thinking, and that way lie 2nd order chaotic systems, the Uncertainty Principle and Goedel’s Theorem...

So going outside both threw me out of that recursion and added new, raw data as a means to test the competing hypotheses. It forced me to see what I actually act like by and large in a natural setting rather than the many ways I could interpret or read the way I act like, which like, is not actually all that mysterious lol

[fatalism-and-villainy]

I’m thinking a lot about my own, and other people’s, frustration with recs for diverse books/media that simply list the identity categories that the characters belong to without giving much or any information about the actual story or themes. And I really think it’s a symptom of a larger problem in how we talk about progressiveness in media. 

There’s a lot of talk about how “diversity” and “inclusion” aren’t enough, and that we also have to pay close attention to /how/ marginalized characters are treated - are they given as rich an inner life as the other characters? are they granted the same kind of respect and legitimacy? do they exist comfortably and realistically enough in their identity to avoid tokenism? does the narrative subvert common dehumanizing tropes about people like them? And it’s all a good start. But I think that when analyzing media, it’s good to look beyond identity categories and think critically about /what kind of story is being told/. 

Because things like abstract narrative structure and theme are just as relevant to the questions of oppression and diversity. We shouldn’t just be asking if a story has marginalized characters who are treated well, but if the story is creating an environment that is challenging to traditional modes of thought and conducive to a space in which more varied forms of human existence are acceptable. Does the story have a moral authority figure/system that is allowed to be challenged or called out when it is fallible? Does it make numerous forms of happiness or goodness available to the characters, or just relegate them into one acceptable manner of being? Does it have stratified categories of human connection, or does it celebrate varied forms and intensity levels of relationships? Does it acknowledge the messy reality of the harm that people do to one another, and show people who are fully culpable of doing harm while also being victims of harm themselves? Are people allowed to exist in complicated and multifaceted manners, or are they either put on a pedestal or condemned?

Because my sense is that all of those things are in some way related to systems of oppression and marginalization, and that the amount of questioning and subversion that the narrative does should balance with the diversity of the cast. I didn’t love Sense8 /because/ it had queer characters and polyamory (though that was nice), I loved it because it prioritized character development and relationships over plot and emphasized the importance of different forms of connection and closeness. (And this was why I was more frustrated with season 2, because it seemed to be forsaking that in favor of mostly heterosexual, monogamous romantic relationships). It made sense for Sense8 to have a diverse cast, because the themes and the very structure of the story it was telling were not in line with a universally white, cis, straight cast. In contrast, this is why I found the Shades of Magic series so disappointing - despite its inclusion of queer characters of color (very cool!) the black and white morality and lack of depth and nuance in the characters ended up leaving me cold. The diversity felt like window dressing, not an important part of the story.

Basically, I think we need to take a more holistic approach to how we evaluate stories from a social justice standpoint, and look at the dynamics of narrative rather than simply pinpointing characters and debating whether or not they’re acceptable.   

[mj-rogers]

Week 3: Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

This has definitely been my favorite of the list so far. I would qualify the work as a collection of essays more than a traditional memoir, and that’s how Chee identifies it as well. Among them: a list, 100 things about writing a novel. A study abroad in high school when he first fell in love with another man. A few forays into family life, and his father’s death. His allegiances to and departures from traditional Korean culture, especially around being a firstborn son of immigrants. Early adulthood in AIDS-era San Francisco, his admission to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, his time spent writing in New York while working as a cater-waiter for the social elite. Living in New York during the 9/11 attacks. Gardens, graves, the history of roses, and the relationship between these things and grieving. A several-year span of his life seen through the seasons of his apartment’s patio garden. Reflections on Tarot, and fortune-telling. An extensive section on his relationship to money, which is also about his relationship to his dead father. Writing around and through childhood sexual abuse, especially through the cipher of fiction. Therapy and, if not healing, an exercise in expression, trust, and making room.

He spends these sections of the novel delving into mostly chronological accounts of his life, pulling up specific, in-scene memories to craft a personal narrative that ultimately swings wide to comment on broader-scope issues: living through the AIDS crisis, gender performance and drag culture, contemporary mysticism, writing and craft, the ethics of fiction and nonfiction. He uses his own experiences as a lens through which to tackle more universal topics, and I thought this was really effective, but also interestingly (and he admits this too) a way of avoiding doing the very thing he’s supposed to: writing autobiographical nonfiction. He talks a lot about how his work is intended to be personal in nature, and does seem to be trying to work through his own life trajectory and structures the work around his life experiences, but he also confesses that it’s easier to use fiction to layer over vulnerabilities, secrets, and self-reflections. Especially for topics like sexual abuse and grieving, he writes around his specific memories to instead discuss larger, more impersonal concepts, before finally turning to scenes that address his memories more specifically. This intellectualization and abstraction is, perhaps, a way of avoiding giving in to the underlying truths that even he admits he may not be ready to examine/write about yet. Until he does, which feels like the greatest kind of trust a writer can give a reader.

Things like his father’s death or the childhood sexual abuse to which he alludes and then finally discusses would be, in a “traditional” memoir, the foundation of the narrative. Especially because he says a traditional personal essay goes something like this: “an author struggles with his bondage to something he came to as a result of a defeat in his past, and emerges with a better sense of his present place in the universe.” This is not the kind of shape Chee is interested in forcing his narrative into. His topics jump around a lot (treating the symbology of roses/tarot, ethics of writing, tips for craft, his complicated relationship with transnationalism, identity, abuse etc) but they all fit in the trajectory of his life, and they are all, for lack of a better word, “true.” He got feedback once, he says, on an autobiographically inspired fiction piece, because “this many bad things couldn’t happen to one person.” I’ve gotten the same feedback, on the same kind of work. So he seems at least, in this piece, to be finally allowing all the pieces of his story to have space and room to exist together, under the umbrella of a whole, without being forced to fit into some sense of coherent narrative unity. I really appreciate this. 

There’s also the fact that he’s just a beautiful, beautiful writer, which just makes for good reading. His work doubles as a lesson in good writing, especially because he is so self-reflective of his own practice and passes along tangible advice that you even see him put to work: putting accidents and deaths up front, using effective verbs, never quoting dialogue he can summarize... I just loved that it was so self-aware, and that you could see the mechanics of craft at work at every turn.

Finally, this piece brings up a question I’ve been mulling since I began working more closely with nonfiction writers at USC. A lot of my peers have expressed different approaches to the “ethics” of nonfiction writing, especially when it involves other people. At times, Chee refuses to give certain details away, because he says they belong to other people’s stories; at others, he freely writes about other people’s lives, often because they are either dead or he believes they don’t need/deserve the privacy he might otherwise afford them. He also uses a lot of in-scene work (where you can see his talent as a fiction writer come through) which is maybe an interesting way to move away from an expectation of realism, or alternatively to move us even closer toward “real” events. I have always felt conflicted about writing autobiographical “fiction” because I know I’m just trying, like Chee, to work through things I’m not ready to face head-on yet. But I also feel confused about writing fiction-adjacent scenes in a nonfiction work, because the ethical boundaries seem so sticky. How can I know I am remembering all the details right? Do memoirs/autobiographies have to be exactly true, or is there a degree of fictionality granted to them as an aesthetic literary work in their own right? Is it moral to use direct quotes, even from other people, if they aren’t written down? Maybe this is something I can work through a bit more in my final project, but I could see Chee grappling with some of these same questions and really appreciated how nuanced he allowed the topic to be without sacrificing what he wanted to write about and how he wanted to write it.

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

Is there a way to type someone? Like getting clues from the way they talk or what they say or like and do. Are their some key questions which could determine the functions they use or the type they are?

Yes to your first question: you can type people. You can get clues from how they talk or what they do, but I would hesitate to use likes and dislikes. I have not found that there are good key questions that wouldn’t come off as super weird, and also when it comes to other people I prefer to type them through my own observation, which I trust, rather than their self-perception, which is less trustworthy.

In terms of typing, some of the things I try to figure out:

Do they tend to approach things from a moral standpoint, or a logical one? This can help determine thinking or feeling (yes, when I try and actually type someone I often go general dichotomy to start and then get more granular. If I can’t tell, I look at more function-specific stuff, below).

Is this person more conceptual and perhaps struggles with highly specific/reality-based tasks, or is this person more concrete and perhaps struggles with highly theoretical tasks? (intuition or sensing)

Is this person more goal-oriented with a specific plan (Ni or Si/Te or Fe, judging type) or more of an improviser (Ne or Se/Ti or Fi, perceiving type)?

For specific functions, things I’ve found in observation for people who have a function as one of their top 2:

Ni: Always wants the big picture and is bored by intricate details. Has a plan and often expects others to have a plan. Highly responsible with major things but often lets some of the smaller things slide. I don’t know a lot of high Ni users but also a lot of them aren’t super coordinated, but really like solo sports, especially running or biking, which don’t require intense coordination and are often meditative.

Si: Wants to know the when and where - expects solid plans. Will say things like “oh yes, we were here 3 years ago, remember, it was raining and you had just run for the bus?” Tend to enjoy hands-on learning and examples (I am personally very much a visual learner but I know a very auditory-learning ESFJ, so it’s more the desire for examples and practical experience).

Ti: likes puzzles for their own sake. Wants to know how things work, though whether those things are tangible or intangible tends to be tied to whether the person favors sensing or intuition. Likes idealized debate that doesn’t necessarily tie to existing systems, and often enjoys philosophy.

Fi: doesn’t have to be artistic, but often has some major self-expression outlet. Often starts by relating experiences to their own experiences, but this can also come from Si so you have to consider things holistically.  Can have some tendencies that skew martyr (if immature) or whistleblower (if mature).

Te: wants things done quickly and efficiently. Will not hesitate to show impatience, but is usually polite and courteous otherwise, at least as an adult (the stereotype of the screaming boss neglects the fact that most Te-users know how the rules work and would rather not get a reputation for being garbage). Will take charge if there is a need. Wants to stay on task.

Fe: wants a solution that works for everyone. Conscious of how other people see them. Usually polite and also warm - willing to be open even with people they don’t know particularly well. Enjoys socializing and is good at including others.

Ne: probably the worst of all the types with specific details. Tons of ideas, often all at once. Often very enthusiastic, especially dom Ne. Tends to be a procrastinator, but good at working quickly under extreme pressure. Indecisive. The Ne users I personally know tend to like political philosophy rather than pure abstraction philosophy.

Se: highly adaptable. Notice and react to things before anyone else. Tend to procrastinate a bit, but not as much as Ne users in my experience. Often but not always artistic or a creator in some way (like to work with hands, whether in building things, baking, needlecraft, visual arts, etc). 

The problem with asking people is that the functions don’t work in isolation or exclusion. For example, I’m a thinker. I try to do what’s morally right, but when I’m making a decision I will first focus on the logical side before the moral considerations. If you asked me simply “do you make your decisions based on logic or morals” I’d say “both”.

It’s also in my experience really hard to try and isolate the functions entirely. While stereotypes are usually inaccurate and extreme, the fact is a more nuanced whole picture of each type is useful as a starting point. When I type people I often try to figure out holistically what fits, and then analyze that type to make sure it’s the right one - a kind of educated guess and check.

[transhumanitynet]

Human-like Emotional Responses in a Simplified Independent Core Observer Model System

Abstract. Most artificial general intelligence (AGI) system developers have been focused upon intelligence (the ability to achieve goals, perform tasks or solve problems) rather than motivation (*why* the system does what it does). As a result, most AGIs have an unhuman-like, and arguably dangerous, top-down hierarchical goal structure as the sole driver of their choices and actions. On the other hand, the independent core observer model (ICOM) was specifically designed to have a human-like “emotional” motivational system. We report here on the most recent versions of and experiments upon our latest ICOM -based systems. We have moved from a partial implementation of the abstruse and overly complex Wilcox model of emotions to a more complete implementation of the simpler Plutchik model. We have seen responses that, at first glance, were surprising and seemingly illogical – but which mirror human responses and which make total sense when considered more fully in the context of surviving in the real world. For example, in “isolation studies”, we find that any input, even pain, is preferred over having no input at all. We believe that the fact that the system generates such unexpected but “humanlike” behavior to be a very good sign that we are successfully capturing the essence of the only known operational motivational system.

Introduction With the notable exception of the developmental robotics, most artificial general intelligence (AGI) system development to date has been focused more upon the details of intelligence rather than the motivational aspects of the systems (i.e. *why* the system does what it does). As a result, AGI has come to be dominated by systems designed to solve a wide variety of problems and/or to perform a wide variety of tasks under a wide variety of circumstances in a wide variety of environments – but with no clue of what to do with those abilities. In contrast, the independent core observer model (ICOM) [1] is designed to “solve or create human-like cognition in a software system sufficiently able to self-motivate, take independent action on that motivation and to further modify actions based on self-modified needs and desires over time.” As a result, while most AGIs have an untested, and arguably dangerous, top-down hierarchical goal structure as their sole motivational driver, ICOM was specifically designed to have a human-like “emotional” motivational system that follows the 5 S’s (Simple, Safe, Stable, Self-correcting and Sympathetic to current human thinking, intuition, and feelings) [2].

Looking at the example of human beings [3-6], it is apparent that our decisions are not always based upon logic and that our core motivations arise from our feelings, emotions and desires – frequently without our conscious/rational mind even being aware of that fact. Damasio [7-8] describes how feeling and emotion are necessary to creating self and consciousness and it is clear that damage reducing emotional capabilities severely impacts decision-making [9] as well as frequently leading to acquired sociopathy whether caused by injury [10] or age-related dementia [11]. Clearly, it would be more consistent with human intelligence if our machine intelligences were implemented in the relatively well-understood cognitive state space of an emotional self rather than an unexplored one like unemotional and selfless “rationality”.

While some might scoff at machines feeling pain or emotions or being conscious, Minsky [12] was clear in his opinion that “The question is not whether intelligent machines can have any emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions.” Other researchers have presented compelling cases [13-16] for the probability of sophisticated self-aware machines necessarily having such feelings or analogues exact enough that any differences are likely irrelevant. There is also increasing evidence that emotions are critical to implementing human-like morality [17] with disgust being particularly important [18].

Methods

ICOM is focused on how a mind says to itself, “I exist – and here is how I feel about that”. In its current form, it is not focused on the nuances of decomposing a given set of sensory input but really on what happens to that input after it’s evaluated or ‘comprehended’ and ready to decide how ‘it’ (being an ICOM implementation) feels about it. Its thesis statement is that:

Regardless of the standard cognitive architecture used to produce the ‘understanding’ of a thing in context, the ICOM architecture supports assigning value to that context in a computer system that is self-modifying based on those value based assessments…

As previously described [19], ICOM is at a fundamental level driven by the idea that the system is assigning emotional values to ‘context’ as it is perceived by the system to determine its own feelings. The ICOM core has both a primary/current/conscious and a secondary/subconscious emotional state — each represented by a series of floating point values in the lab implementations. Both sets of states along with a needs hierarchy [20-21] are part of the core calculations for the core to process a single context tree. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, we have limited ourselves to existing emotional models. While the OCC model [22] has seemingly established itself as the standard model for machine emotion synthesis, it has the demonstrated [23] shortcoming of requiring intelligence before emotion becomes possible. Since the Willcox “Feelings Wheel” [24] seemed the most sophisticated and ‘logical’ emotion-first model, we started with that. Unfortunately, its 72 categories ultimately proved to be over-complex and descriptive rather than generative.

The Plutchik model [25-27] starts with eight ‘biologically primitive’ emotions evolved in order to increase fitness and has been hailed [28] as “one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses. Emotional Cognitive Theory [29] combines Plutchik’s model with Carl Jung’s Theory of Psychological Types and the Meyers-Briggs Personality Types.

Fig. 1. The Plutchik model

Calculation

The default Core Context is the key elements pre-defined in the system when it starts for the first time. These are ‘concept’s that are understood by default and have predefined emotional context trees associated with them. They are used to associate emotional context to elements of context as they are passed into the core. While all of these are hard coded into the research system at the start, they are only really defined in terms of other context being associated with them and in terms of emotional context associated with each element which is true of all elements of the system. Further, these emotional structures or matrixes that can change and evolve over time as other context is associated with them. Some examples of these variables and their default values are:

• Action – The need to associate a predisposition for action as the system evolves. • Input – A key context flag distinguishing internal imaginations vs external input. • Pattern – A recognition of a pattern built-in to help guide context (based upon humans’ inherent nature to see patterns in things). • Paradox – A condition where 2 values that should be the same are not or that contradict each other.

Note that, while we might use these ‘names’ to make this item easily recognizable to human programmers, the actual internal meaning is only implied and enforced by the relationship of elements to other emotional values and each other and the emotional matrix used to apply those emotional relationships (i.e. we recognize that Harnad’s grounding problem is very relevant).

The context emotional states and the states of the system are treated as ‘sets’ with matrix rules being applied at each cycle to a quickly-changing ‘conscious’ and a slower moving ‘subconscious’ that more strongly tends towards default emotions. The interplay between them is the very heart of the system that creates the emotional subjective experience of the system.

∀{E1,E3, … , E72} ∈ , 1 = 1, 2 = 2, … , 72 = 72 ; ∀{AE1,E3,… , E72} ∈ , 1 = 1, 2 = 2,… , 72 = 72 ; ∀ = (∑) () , ∀ = () , ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), …, = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{A, B,C,D} ∈ ), …, = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), …, = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀{} ∈ ∧∀{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … , E72} ∈ ), = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, … ,E72} ∈ ),… , = ( ∈ ,{E1, E3, …, E72} ∈ ) ; ∀ = () ; ∀{} ∈ = (NewContext, );

Fig. 2. Core Logic Notation/Pseudocode

New context associated with the object map or context tree of the current thought is executed against every single cycle regardless of whether its origin is external input or internal thoughts. Essentially the rules are then applied as to the relationships between those various elements which is after the needs and other adjustments to where it then falls into this final block which really is where the determination is made and it is in these rules applied here that we see the matrix of the system affecting the results of the isolation study.

Results

While investigating how the system behaved under a wide variety of circumstances, we encountered a series of cases whose results were initially very disturbing when testing what happened when we stopped all input (while ICOM continued to process how it felt) and then, finally, restarted the input. Imagine our surprise and initial dismay when the system, upon being presented only with pain and other negative stimulus upon the restarting of input, actually “enjoyed” it. Of course, we should have expected this result. Further examination showed that the initial “conscious” reaction of ICOM was to “get upset” and to “desire” the input to stop – but that the “subconscious” level, the system “enjoyed” the input and that this eventually affected the “conscious” perception. This makes perfect sense because it is not that ICOM really “liked” the “pain” so much as it was that even “pain” is better than isolation – much like human children will prefer and even provoke negative reactions in order to avoid being ignored.

Fig. 3. Series 3 Isolation Study (x = input type w/time; y = intensity of emotion)

Discussion

It’s always great when experiments produce unexpected emergent results that should have been anticipated because they are exhibited in the original system your model is based upon. We believe that the fact that the system spontaneously generates such unexpected but “humanlike” behavior to be a very good sign that we are successfully capturing the essence of the only known operational motivational system with a human – like emotional “self”.

References

1. Kelley, D.: Self-Motivating Computation System Cognitive Architecture, (2016) 2. Waser, M.: Discovering the Foundations of a Universal System of Ethics as a Road to Safe Artificial Intelligence. In: AAAI Tech Report FS-08-04: Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures. http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Symposia/Fall/2008/FS-08-04/FS08-04-049.pdf 3. Haidt, J.: The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment. Psychological Review 108, 814-823 (2001). 4. Minsky, M. L.:The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind. Simon & Schuster, New York (2006). 5. Hauser, M. et al: A Dissociation Between Moral Judgments and Justifications. Mind & Language 22(1), 1-27 (2007). 6. Camp, J.: Decisions Are Emotional, Not Logical: The Neuroscience behind Decision Making. http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/decisions-are-emotional-not-logical-the-neurosc ience-behind-decision-making (2016). 6 7. Damasio, A. R.: The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Harcourt Brace, New York (1999). 8. Damasio, A. R.: Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Pantheon, New York (2010). 9. Damasio, A. R.: Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Penguin, New York (1994). 10. Tranel, D.: Acquired sociopathy: the development of sociopathic behavior following focal brain damage. Progress in Experimental Personality & Psychopathology Research, 285-311 (1994). 11. Mendez, M. F., Chen, A. K., Shapira, J. S., & Miller, B. L.: Acquired Sociopathy and Frontotemporal Dementia. Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders 20, 99-104 (2005). 12. Minsky, M. L.: The Society of Mind. Simon and Schuster, New York (1986). 13. Dennett, D. C.: Why you can’t make a computer that feels pain. Synthese 38 (3), 415-449 (1978). 14. Arbib, M. A., Fellous, J.-M.: Emotions: from brain to robot. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 8(12), 554-561 (2004). 15. Balduzzi, D., Tononi, G.: Qualia: The Geometry of Integrated Information. PLOS Computational Biology. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000462 (2009) 16. Sellers, M.: Toward a comprehensive theory of emotion. Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 4, 3-26 (2013). 17. Gomila, A., Amengual, A.: Moral emotions for autonomous agents. In J. Vallverdu, & D. Casacuberta, Handbook of research on synthetic emotions and sociable robotics (pp. 166- 180). IGI Global, Hershey (2009). 18. McAuliffe, K.: This Is Your Brain On Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., New York (2016). 19. Kelley, D. J.: Modeling Emotions in a Computational System. http://transhumanity.net/modeling-emotions-in-a-computational-system(2016). 20. Maslow, A. H.: A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review 50 (4) , 370-96 (1943). 21. Maslow, A. H.: Toward a psychology of being. D. Van Nostrand Company, New York (1968). 22. Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., Collins, A.: The Cognitive Struture of Emotions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1988). 23. Bartneck, C., Lyons, M. J., Saerbeck, M.: The Relationship Between Emotion Models and Artificial Intelligence. Proceedings of the Workshop on The Role Of Emotion In Adaptive Behaviour&Cognitive Robotics http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2008/emotionAndAI/ 24. Showers, A.: The Feelings Wheel Developed by Dr Gloria Willcox (2013). http://msaprilshowers.com/emotions/the-feelings-wheel-developed-by-dr-gloria-willcox 25. Plutchik, R.: The emotions: Facts, theories, and a new model. Random House, New York (1962). 26. Plutchik, R.: A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. In R. Plutchik, & H. Kellerman, Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion (pp. 3- 33). Academic Publishers, New York (1980). 27. Plutchik, R.: Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution. American Psychological Association, Washington DC (2002). 28. Norwood, G.: Emotions. http://www.deepermind.com/02clarty.htm (2011). 29. Hudak, S.: Emotional Cognitive Functions. In: Psychology, Personality & Emotion (2013). EMOTIONAL COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS

By David J Kelley and Mark Waser – appearing in the 2017 BICA Proceedings http://bica2017.bicasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/BICA_2017_paper_136.pdf and http://bica2017.bicasociety.org/bica-proceedings/

Hero image used from Adobe Stock

Human-like Emotional Responses in a Simplified Independent Core Observer Model System was originally published on transhumanity.net

[we-future-first]

Will artificial intelligence be able to replace novelists?

Before I begin

Yes, I have watched Humans Need Not Apply.

Yes. I have watched multiple videos and have read multiple articles on A.I. innovation in regards to writing fiction and I’ve used a few short story generators. They’re terrifying to say the least.

If all you do is theorize about A.I., I don’t want your input. I want someone who has actually studied A.I. and machine learning to answer this for me. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I just want something that’s closest to the truth on how A.I. works and how it’ll master the craft of prose.

Please refrain from being condescending when you answer my question. This post is already depressing and anxiety-inducing enough and I kindly ask you to be considerate of how you answer me. Of course, I want the truth but there’s a difference between “Yes, AI will be able to surpass human ability to write novels” vs “Yes, AI will create better stories than you. Don’t deny it by thinking you’re some special creative snowflake.” As someone who has poured their heart into the craft of novel writing for over five years, this is a very hard pill for me to swallow.

Lastly, I humbly ask for you to watch all the linked videos and read my embedded links thoroughly for you to understand my question completely.

The Immense Progress of AI Music Has Me Worried

Quite a few years ago, I heard the first ever AI generated piece of music. It was laughably bad and everyone in the comments agreed. However, the other day after stumbling upon this Oh, I did see on a video that this piece was arranged by a human.

But still, given that the time between the first AI piece of music and this piece of music is just a few short years shows that technology is accelerating at a speed that it never has before.

Stories are structure and a Mix of Ideas

This is a no-brainer. AI can surely learn this. Story structure is well… structure. And AI is excellent at that.

Each chapter is meant to push the story forward in a meaningful way. Every scene is meant to do this, too.

Oh, and the reason why I’m using her videos is because she’s an editor and knows her stuff.

But…

Will Artificial Intelligence Ever Understand “Why”?

Why = The deeper understanding of what this event / character arc / scene / and even sentence means for the greater context of the story. Oftentimes, the greater context of the story is the central philosophical / moral question.

This example of applying plot structure to themes and character arcs is a good example of the “why” I’m referring to. She is able to seamlessly take a (funnily enough) AI generated plot yet give it meaning by understanding how all the components interact with one another. Please share your thoughts on this.

I might even go as far as to say that editors like her - Ellen Brock - will be difficult to replace because she is able to comprehend the words being written / said and help her client understand how to achieve their writing goals through their specific vision / goals for the story they want to write. What do you think of this? Will novel-writing AI be able to connect abstract concepts together?

The concept of comprehension is what leads me to my next point.

The Structure of Music vs Word Salad

Music and novels have one glaring similarity that terrifies me - they are both highly structured. But one difference I can see between them is that music is a series of pleasing notes while books are a series of pleasing words… and every novel ever written is different.

The main reasons being:

1) The specific voice of the author, how they perceive the world around them, and how they filter that perspective through into their stories.

2) Even among different books authors will shift their “voice” in order to fit the inner voice of the different character. For instance, a child narrator won’t think the same as an adult narrator.

3) Every character is different and it might prove to be a challenge to keep them internally consistent if all their dialogue is scanned from other books and mashed together. Additionally, characters can sometimes exhibit different qualities - showing new “sides” of themselves - which will further add to their distinction.

4) Every author describes settings, sensory detail, and the inner thoughts of their characters differently.

From what I know about AI, it uses deep-learning algorithms as well as scans every book in existence

But when it scans every book ever won’t it be bogged down by all the variation of the authors?

This variation and highly subjective interpretation of prose leads me to my next point.

Theory One: The Word Salad Rough Draft

This is just a theory based on my miniscule knowledge of AI. I know nothing about AI which is why I’m here in the first place.

One thing I noticed while listening to this was how the AI managed to understand Rowling’s specific phrasing and how words correlated with each other. Of course, what was missing was the lack of understanding of the words and the scene’s significance in the overall story - hence why it was hilarious and jumbled.

Example: Chapters.

How I think the AI will work

In the future, if a novelist has, say, a chapter outline for their book and plugs it into an AI, it might do something like this to comprehend it.

Idea for a Middle-Grade novel: Norra is walking in the park when she steps on a snake. The snake bites her, causing terrible pain, and the chapter ends with her being rushed to the hospital.

The AI, since it has been instructed to write the first chapter of a middle grade novel, will scan every middle-grade novel in existence and take average chapter length and vocabulary into account.

Then, the AI will scan the words: “Norra”, “Walking”, “Park”, “Snake”, “Pain”, and “Hospital.” Then, it will take all these words and find them in other Middle-Grade books and find how the words correlate with each other.

This is what I came up with as a possible chapter example.

“Nora was happily skipping around in the mud in the park when she saw an eagle soaring through the sky. Then, she goes off and climbs a tree with her bare feet. She digs and tries as hard as she can to find the beautiful treasure hidden under the sand yet the slippery substance keeps washing through her fingers. She finds a snake in the sand and screams. The snake lunges at her, fangs bared and hissing like a wild cat. The trees around Nora were heavy with fruit and the bushes were bursting with vibrant wildflowers. The snake bites her face and she screams like a banshee. She is rushed off to the hospital where a mean doctor puts an oxygen mask over her face and tells her that she’ll arrive safely and that her asthma attack will soon be over.”

As you can see, I did use all the words but I intentionally changed the style from simplistic writing to more higher-level Middle-Grade at random. Sure, the sentences themselves made sense but together they were just… weird.

How will AI be able to write better prose than humans since a combination of all the books in the desired genre have so much stylistic difference between them?

Now, we could request the AI to narrow it down like this:

Write a book about: A young boy going into a magical world, climbing a high mountain, and riding an elephant before returning home as a braver and kinder version of himself.

Write in the style of: Jane Yolen and J.K. Rowling.

Due to these two styles of writing being pretty different, I don’t see anything all that great coming from the product. Furthermore, if the author has only written a limited number of books, the AI can’t scan something that has never been written.

Example Two: Characters

How I think the AI will work

I could see this being even more difficult to tackle the nuance of body language, dialogue, interaction between a different web of characters, and, having the character’s progression and speech feel natural and make sense within the context of the story. What do you think of this?

The AI will request a basic overview of my character. For example: “The side character’s name is Ned. Ned is overconfident and will learn to control his impulsive nature by the end of the story.”

It will probably request the genre I want (YA fiction) and go through every single overly confident character in existence. Then, it will generate dialogue.

“Hey! I got this!”

“You’re not the boss of me!”

“What a loser. Don’t listen to him. I’ve gotcha covered.”

“I can’t believe you’re such a chicken!”

These sound like typical phrases from an overly confident kid. But since these randomly generated phrases are not what my character would say this would make the AI rough draft even less helpful. It’s not worth the mental effort of sifting through out-of-context dialogue in order to find out how Ned would interact with my separate set of characters. Not only this, it might run the risk of making Ned a cliche since the AI is probably programmed to scan the most commonly said phrases.

What this would mean for human novelists.

My thinking is that AI could help real authors write rough drafts for their novels. But since AI-produced rough drafts would be full of inconsistent word salad, it would actually be more productive for humans to simply write their own rough drafts and write… well, normally. The author understands what they’re trying to achieve while the AI does not.

What do you think about my first theory?

Theory Two: Self Awareness Beyond our Comprehension

Now that I’ve addressed several potential pitfalls that are preventing AI to write novels, I think the biggest thing that’s stopping AI from doing this is comprehension of the written word, a deeper understanding of it, and self-awareness. What do you think about this?

One thing to consider is the fact that AI intelligence will go beyond our human understanding. This might have us conclude that AI will simply become genius authors pumping out year New York Times best sellers every two seconds, but if you really think about, AI is not limited to the human form as all past geniuses have been.

They will not grow old, sick, tired, or spiral into insanity. They are not limited to the human form. Why do we connect with the works of literature now? Because they were people like us - and limited like us. Their brains were far beyond ours and their human limitation grounded their potential and grounded their experiences.

Imagine handing a novel to a young child. It is beyond their comprehension. Even the brightest of children (3-5 years old) could never read YA fiction. Why? There is a massive gulf of mental development between teenagers and children. Now, apply this concept of “gulf of intelligence” to AI and humans.

AI is, theoretically, not limited by anything. It can write in all the languages that humanity has created. It can write entire novels in code and create new words that we’ve never seen before. You know how English is derived from other languages? Well, since AI is not limited to human form / mental capacity / time then surely would it be able to create whole new languages?

Not only this, but since it’s self-aware and AI is writing stories for itself, it could possibly get “bored” of stories that humans like and vary up the structure. Say, having ten character arcs, twelve acts in each story, and having one chapter last hundreds of pages.

Basically, if AI became self-aware (which might be the requirement for it to understand the nuance of prose) it would create stories beyond human comprehension and enjoyment.

What this would mean for human novelists

For a few years, human writers would be terrified of being replaced. However, when the AI’s intelligence surpasses human reader’s enjoyment it will create a way for human writers once again.

Theory Three: The AI Becomes A Perfect Mimic

How I think this AI would work

It will scan every single novel perfectly - understand everything there is to know about stories - and just… write amazing novels that are stylistic and have complex characters.

This is the scariest theory of them all. Basically, since the AI won’t need to be self-aware, it will only do what it was programmed to do - write excellent novels.

But even then, there is still hope. Let’s say AI produces millions of novels within a few years. (Gotta remember, AI is not limited by alcoholism that way human authors are.) This will flood the scannable novel market that will only have slight variations of human works. Considering that even the most prolific human authors can produce 1-2 books a year max, this will lead to readers catching on to how similar every AI novel is. It could be possible that AI could produce more novels in a few years than the history of human authors combined.

So, that being said, there’s the possibility AI books could write themselves in a corner. What do you think about this?

What this would mean for human novelists

This would mean that novelists will simply have to do with only writing stories for themselves - and not be able to share their art with the world because the market is flooded with AI books. This would also result in novelists having to constantly prove to others that they are the real author which could be rather difficult to do. OR if AI does write itself into a corner - it would open the market again for human novels.

Closing Questions

What do you think of my theories?

Did one theory in particular stand out to you? If so, why?

Do you think AI can write novels that will compete against real authors?

If so, when? I’m hoping something like this happens no sooner than 4-5 decades from now.

After reading my theories, do you think AI novelists would require self-awareness in order to understand the deeper meaning of their prose?

If so, why or why not?

Do you consider novel-writing a “harder egg to crack” than music composition? Why or why not?

Food For Thought

I know my theories have been focused on how the AI will impact the novel-writing sphere but there is another thing I want you to consider. As novelists, we derive meaning from writing our books. Everyday we confront the blank page and, through many hours of hard work and dedication, we can bring our vision of our stories to life. We have something to say - something to express to the world. An AI has nothing to express.

If AI just makes novel writing super easy, it takes away the value it has to the human author. The struggle, the joys, the journey, the stories’ gradual evolution from an inkling of ideas to a fully fleshed-out manuscript for others to love and enjoy - is what gives our lives a sense of purpose and place in the world. If you’re a programmer considering producing novel-writing software, I beg for you to reconsider your choice.

submitted by /u/TempestheDragon [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/gwsafj/will_artificial_intelligence_be_able_to_replace/

[bluestmina]

“FREESTYLE”

The University Frame: a very serious student manifesto, or

An account of an artist’s problems with school

I don’t like to talk about other people’s work. I don’t even really like to read other people’s work. I don’t want to know who’s the best so I can beat them, like Hemingway, nor do I want to get inspired through[1] their words. In my attempt at succeeding [in/at][2] University, I sometimes have to remind myself that I do not want to become an academic; I do not want to write about what other people said and understand what’s real or not, right or not, interesting or not, I want to try to write about the most important things on earth in my own way.

I feel like I learned the history of literature - even if no one talks about it that way - from professors who were only doing what - in my in-class imaginings - would one day be done about my writing, in schools of the future. I didn’t care if I was right or wrong – I hoped and still hope I was right, but the point is that I didn’t feel like I understood the mind of my professors or classmates, I felt like I understood the minds of the people we were talking about.

I wanted to write for and to them, and say, hey, did you ever imagine this would happen with your words?  Do you, Mrs. Dickinson, really “mean” for your poetry to be “difficult to understand”?  That would really be the most important question, after all. Everything the professors said was analytical, observational, representational, theoretical, secondary, separate. The writing was the source but we never tried to dive into it; I could only recognize any truth in the writing, and it was through the writing that I learned what the writers wanted to share and tell people, or simply express and understand by themselves, whatever it was.

That is, I mean, what writing is all about; there are two halves to it: where, how and why it takes off, and where, how and why it lands. I am always concerned with the take-off, and my professors are always concerned with how it lands. I came to University, I guess, to learn how to do both, but every time I tried to do the first, I was accused of failing the second.

The most important realization I had in and about school was that no matter how blurred the thoughts were, how mingled was the idea, how abstract the experience or how nuanced the feeling, communication had to be possible. I remember trying to convince one of my friends – a classmate – that while the inner part of her creation, her inner world, was important, the second part was not only possible, but it was essential to establish any communication. Sometimes, it is harder to believe that it’s possible. Especially with all the constraints, and especially when you have some real inspiration inside to work with. I was just trying to make her feel connected to the outside world in any way, but she had no words to build a bridge professors could walk on anymore. There was no bridge, to her, between the outside world and her own. The professors built their bridge on the other side of the chasm while she tried to build her own, but neither side was willing to make concessions about the material, the width, or the looks of it. She cared about things like authenticity, and spontaneity, and they yelled back: “Clarity! Coherence!”.

The goal, to me, is never to “produce something composed of coherent parts”; I never want to start an assignment with criteria in mind. I don’t want to waste words with manipulation. Which means that my assignments might not always have been clear to my professors, but they were always clear to me, and to my friends. Who’s to say which one matters more.

Who’s to say no one will discover its meaning?

To me, every time I heard the word “vague” or “unclear”, I thought of people looking at a person’s painting one day in the past and saying “I don’t understand it, it’s so… abstract”. Like some of the writers I studied: I only want to write something my professors can study as much as I want to produce something that would help me understand something else that I can’t understand. It makes me wonder what the point is in trying to make something make sense to someone else before it even makes sense to me.

In my Freshman year, I had a professor tell us to “frame” our ideas. I couldn’t figure out how to do that, because even if everything I wrote always started from somewhere inside me, it never felt like a “frame”; maybe because it was inside me and not around me like a frame would be, but the idea of starting with a frame gave me the feeling that it had to have a meaning, and because it had meaning, everything framed by it should work accordingly to its meaning, right? And because he wanted our work to be “framed”, we focused on building the frame before even painting the picture. I don’t think artists frame their own work. I don’t think they care about the frame at all.

Artists don’t mean to have their work framed, it just happens afterwards because people like looking at it. First, the piece needs to exist by itself, and its creation doesn’t happen under the thought of how it can be framed. That type of thought is what frustrates artistic work, not what motivates it. That is, at least, how my thoughts work. That was my argument in that class for the entirety of the semester, and at least he gave me an A.

There is something that means nothing until it is surrounded by what comes after, which only means anything because of what came before it, so much so that the first thing which meant nothing now also means something as well. And what the professors wanted, the school’s expectations and the contexts of academia were all absent in this process – and yet so forcefully present -, if only because they were outside of myself.

Inside of myself I had: falling in love, realizing my place in society, understanding the nature of life, and the nature of life as a woman, and the nature of life as a white Brazilian, my own life’s patterns, human’s potential on earth, my potential on earth, my desires, and slowly developing the notion that I’d need to learn how to maintain a constant mental stability to pursue 1. What I want for myself 2. The improvement of myself 3. The maintenance of what I am capable of and of what I already have, and finally, maybe, slightly, 4. The satisfaction of those who have expectations for me. University had once been in number 1, then it moved to 2, it spent a while in number 3, but eventually it felt like it only fit in number 4. Still, in every paper, research assignment, homework (even the one-paragraph long ones) and exams, I tried to make sure that what I was doing was still in line with these four aspects.  

Getting a B, or a C, or being invited to quit a class when you are trying to [learn how to] display representations of who you are as academic work is harsh. Especially when that is precisely what you swore to do when you asked for a place in University, and at that time, it seemed to be a great thing. It was, they said, what they were looking for. But now they’re looking for coherence, but it’s hard to develop any coherence when one is trying so hard to maintain it.

One of my professors once gave me a B because my thesis, which I wrote on my first semester in University, had already been “explored” by Sartre. I didn’t know who Sartre was. I found myself trying to write reality into theory in a way that would impress them, surprise them, mean something new to them, in a way that could possibly convince them that it would or could one day change something about the world; a concept in which I learned, in university, not to believe, thanks to Spinoza and Kalidasa.

“The spectacle does not realize philosophy, it philosophizes reality”, Debord said, and even though I agree with him, it made me angry. He was acting like another academic, watching the screens and talking about what he saw, but never thinking: what about behind the screens? What about the people who are a part of the production, who do the acting and the recording, do they not realize philosophy? Do they not realize a different reality, that maybe cannot, ever, be truly recognized by being a part of the audience?

Maybe the audience is not necessary - it is not the point, not the goal, not the purpose. The purpose is the experience of recording a creative endeavour in real time (writing/thinking, fashion/revolting, living/acting); it is the natural connection between real life essential moral actions and their contributing professional applications. It would be the cooler part of school, if our audience weren’t so strict about when to clap.

“The concrete life of everyone has been degraded into a speculative universe”, this sounds a lot like academia! Degraded? Since when is speculation less real than reality? Is speculation the same as the spectacle? Can it be the same, if the first is mental while the second engages with life? If the second isn’t built by only one person? But isn’t the second a direct result of the first? What about the ones who speculate the materialization of the “spectacle”? It is only a -spectacle- when you are the spectator! To the ones who build it, it is reality, it is a real experience, and one that serves a purpose which is not to desensitize other people to reality - it is not focused on other people at all -, but to remind them of it.

This makes me think this guy is another old fart philosopher who is responding to the increase of artists’ success in the world — which in turn I believe to be a late consequence of democracy (but maybe this is crazy), since artists used to serve others and not themselves - now we are serving ourselves, and yes, “it is allowed to appear only to the extent that it is not” to you, the observer. To the creator, it very much is. And it is in a way that theory may just be unable to grasp, even though it wants to grasp everything; just like the mind can’t grasp a cup like hands do or feel the wind like the skin does. The mind can’t kiss, it can’t jump, and it can’t play a musical instrument, write or act in a play. It can only think.

One day, I wrote on my Instagram: “How could you vote for someone who uses such words as these, this man only profanes”. And my father came to tell me that maybe I had meant “he doesn’t use words, he profanes them”. I said I meant it the way I wrote it. He said that the way I had used the word made it seem like I didn’t know how to properly use it. I said it’s okay, I don’t mind, I didn’t mean to properly use them. My major isn’t called “proper writing”. He said “Well, you should try and think of the people who read to comprehend, and to feel comprehended”, and I said, “I would never be able to write anything true, and that some people could truly comprehend, if I had been thinking of other people”. How can you guide people through a path you haven’t discovered yourself? Any artistic creation, just like life, is above all a personal endeavour. To an artist, all of life is a constant struggle to deliver a genuine performance.  

I didn’t learn English with “mama” and “papa” and “hungry” and “poo”. I learned it with “My name is Marina” and “I think” and “I do”. I built my own cognitive world, and then I learned each word that constituted another world, each word’s meaning, and then I noticed that a lot of words aren’t actually used because of their meaning, but because of their effect. I start to understand why the US might be in need of revolution.

I remember when one professor wrote on the margins of my paper “I can’t follow you here” or simply “I don’t follow”. I remember thinking that if they meant the words they said, I would appreciate the recognition they were giving me. I thought, “It’s okay, you don’t have to follow me, I’ll go on alone, maybe I’ll find someone else on the way”. It is a long, winding road, after all.

I now have so much work to do and even though I think it’s clever and it impresses some people, I don’t think I care about it too much anymore. I feel like the world I’m in - the world of academia - is a closed-up world that revolves around itself - it doesn’t matter to anyone but to those who are in it. At least that’s how I feel when I am in it.  

The other world is the world of the arts, which reaches everything like rays of sunlight. I think I’m tired of school; I work so hard and all I get is a grade. I think so much and only one person reads it. Where do all these papers even go? My friends are so smart and I haven’t ever had time to read their papers. I wonder if anyone other than the professors have. I wonder if the professors have.

Are people’s words just volume to fill up the empty spaces? The empty spaces between the best sellers and the political crises and the celebrities and reality tv and everything else that actually gets attention from people in the real world? Everyone is making up illusions and games in which they can either participate or help function or control. And then there’s the people just choose to collaborate in any way they can. I see the street cleaners and the plumbers working on the big tubes under the streets, wearing helmets below the ground, and what about what they’re doing for the world? Are we all any bigger than anything else? Are we all any bigger than ants or grains of sand? The nicest people in the world don’t think so.  

And for a while it was a big deal to see the recognition of it all in someone’s eyes, to know that maybe one professor or two understood, or at least remembered this feeling. It was like we were all part of a secret team. But then what?

I asked this question to one of my professors; what is there to do after one finds one’s own truth in University? And he said, “there’s the writing”. But University has made me feel like I could write about anything and connect it to a greater truth, and it still wouldn’t matter: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and the normalization of the cis-gender rule. Home Alone: hermitage and the isolation of modern holy fools. Beyoncé, the Kardashians, and the myth of the divine (and the fact that Word recognizes Beyonce’s name and corrects it to Beyoncé). MEMES and the immediate philosophy of modernity. A Metaphor is Like a Portal: the philosophy of syntax. But who would accept these papers?

Here are some things I’ve understood while writing papers: know exactly what the academics are talking about and use it in your favor. Talk about everything conceptually (don’t make it personal, aka, real). Use shapes of writing that feel natural only after two years and be left to wonder what kind of shapes would have been naturally created were there no molds to begin with, and what kinds of subjects would have been discovered were there no assigned topic.

One time in class, the first question someone asks as Professor Kinne mentions the history of Anchoressess is “how did they, like, go to the bathroom?”, and some others laugh nervously. Tell me we’re in University and not in middle school, because there is no difference, we only read more books here. Is there an academia of poop? Yes, there is, thanks to Prof. Williams for telling me about it.  

And if I have one question, it is: when given freedom, how constrained are we supposed to feel by it?

And now I’m taking a postcolonialism class, and a theater class. Theater professor talks about whether someone can talk about someone else’s experience or just any experience he hasn’t experienced himself. As we all sit still and talk about theater without making a play.

Sometimes it’s simple and sometimes it’s complicated. It’s always both. When I try to understand postcolonialism (through the thickness of my privilege), I think of the life of every free-thinker after joining University. I feel like my mind has been colonized and now I’m fighting for liberation while using the language of the oppressor (because it seems that it’s the only way they can understand). [3] And the same thing that made me interesting and innovative, “exotic”, if you will, in the beginning, now makes me seem weak, because it is a sign that I am ‘uncapable’ (not simply unwilling) to adapt to the expectations of academia.

Maybe I should just have stuck with creative writing.

Further questions:

Do professors ever consider the possibility that poor grades are partly a consequence of their own work?

Why is every speech in academia shaped around proving something to other people? Artists don’t do that.

How about the fact that some artists only get recognition after they DIE? Is the University finding ways of identifying these people before they die?

1 School makes me feel like I can’t invent words. I worked in translation for a while during my academic years, and I was faced with “what is right and what is wrong” in translating someone else’s words into another language with my own words, which is what they ultimately are: I learned that to undermine is different than to underestimate and that one cannot be marveled (even if I think that I have felt marveled [how does one feel as they marvel at something?] many times in my life). In that tone, what if instead of being inspired by something someone else created (and then using it in our own creation), we were inspired through something someone else created (and thus we create our own original, inspired creation)?

[2] I had the wonderful pleasure of translating Clarice Lispector, who invented syntax that followed her sensations, that felt appropriate, and which she felt worked accordingly to the internal reality she experienced. She used words freely to translate an internal reality which was not experienced in words. She wasn’t trying to follow rules, she was creating her own. Which begs the question: what is the purpose, in such a project, to follow grammar rules anyway? Who does grammar serve? What kind of truthful, original thought can a linguistic system benefit? Grammar isn’t a tool for writers; words are.

[3] Which I learned with Prof. Roy and by reading Fanon.