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crippleprophet · 1 year

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Hey Mac! Do you have any crip books or resource recs for crip sex/sexuality?

Feel free to delete if you're uncomfortable answering :]

do i ever! i actually did an essay for my master’s in disability studies on the topic of disabled people’s access to sex so a lot of these are sources from that (feel free to dm me for my paper!) & others are things i’ve collected for leisure (hah)

i’m bolding my favorites and italicizing ones i haven’t read but have been recommended / have on my list; as with everything, having read a piece + recommending it is not an uncritical endorsement, & i have various contentions with all of these pieces ranging from minor nitpicking to outright disagreement.

feel free to send an ask or dm if you want my thoughts on a particular work or need help obtaining a pdf!

books

Sex and Disability ed. Robert McRuer & Anna Mollow

The Sexual Politics of Disability: Untold Desires by Tom Shakespeare, Kath Gillespie-Sells and Dominic Davies

Unbreaking Our Hearts: Cultures of Un/Desirability and the Transformative Potential of Queercrip Porn by Loree Erickson. York University, dissertation submitted 2015.

McRuer, R. 2006. Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York University Press.

Kinked and Crippled: Disabled BDSM Practitioners’ Experiences and Embodiments of Pain. Emma Sheppard. Edge Hill University, dissertation submitted 2017.

Love, Sex, and Disability: The Pleasures of Care by Sarah Smith Rainey

intellectually disabled people / people with learning difficulties’ right to sex

Hamilton, C. A. 2009. ‘Now I’d like to sleep with Rachael’ – researching sexuality support in a service agency group home. Disability & Society. 24(3), pp.303-315.

Hollomotz, A. 2008. ‘May we please have sex tonight?’ – people with learning difficulties pursuing privacy in residential group settings. British Journal of Learning Disabilities. 37, pp.91–97.

Vehmas, S. 2019. Persons with profound intellectual disability and their right to sex. Disability & Society. 34(4), pp.519-539.

Significance of the attitudes of police and care staff toward sex and people who have a learning disability by A. Bailey & D. Sines. Journal of Learning Disabilities for Nursing Health and Social Care (1998), 2(3), pp.168-174.

sexual facilitation & making sex accessible

Bahner, J. 2016. Risky business? Organizing sexual facilitation in Swedish personal assistance services. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research. 18(2), pp.164-175.

Linda R. Mona (2003) Sexual Options for People with Disabilities, Women & Therapy, 26:3-4, pp.211-221.

No Pity Fucks Please: A critique of Scarlet Road’s campaign to improve disabled people’s access to paid sex services by Tova Rozengarten and Heather Brook. Outskirts vol. 34, 2016, pp.1-21.

Julia Bahner (2013) The power of discretion and the discretion of power: personal assistants and sexual facilitation in disability services, Vulnerable Groups & Inclusion, 4:1, 20673.

BDSM, paraphilias, & alternative sex

Goldberg, C. E. 2018. Fucking with Notions of Disability (In)Justice: Exploring BDSM, Sexuality, Consent, and Canadian Law

Hollomotz, A. 2013. Exploiting the Fifty Shades of Grey craze for the disability and sexual rights agenda. Disability & Society. 28(3), pp.418-422.

Reynolds, D. 2007. Disability and BDSM: Bob Flanagan and the case for sexual rights. Sexuality Research & Social Policy. 4(1), pp.40-52.

Tellier, S. 2017. Advancing the discourse: Disability and BDSM. Sex & Disability. 35, pp.485-493.

Sheppard, E. 2018. Using pain, living with pain. Feminist Review. 120, pp.54-69.

Tyburczy, J. 2014. Leather anatomy: Cripping homonormativity at International Mr. Leather. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. 8(3), pp.275-293.

Sheppard, E 2019, 'Chronic Pain as Fluid, BDSM as Control' Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 2.

other articles

Finger, A. 1992. Forbidden Fruit

Fritsch, K., Heynen, R., Ross, A. N., and van der Meulen, E. 2016. Disability and sex work: developing affinities through decriminalization. Disability & Society. 31(1), pp.84-99.

McKenzie, J. 2012. Disabled people in rural South Africa talk about sexuality. Culture Health & Sexuality. pp.1-15.

Shakespeare, T. 2000. Disabled sexuality: Toward rights and recognition. Sexuality and Disability. 18(3), pp.159-166.

Shildrick, M. 2007. Contested pleasures: The sociopolitical economy of disability and sexuality. Sexuality Research & Social Policy. 4(1), pp.53-66.

Wentzell, E. 2006. Bad bedfellows: Disability sex rights and Viagra. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. 26(5), pp.370-377.

“‘Like, pissing yourself is not a particularly attractive quality, let’s be honest’: Learning to contain through youth, adulthood, disability and sexuality” by Kirsty Liddiard and Jenny Slater. Sexualities 2018, Vol. 21(3), pp.319–333.

non-academic texts

Andrew Gurza’s blog - andrewgurza dot com / blog

Disability After Dark podcast

A Quick & Easy Guide to Sex & Disability by A. Andrews

Cripping Up Sex with Eva

my cripsex tag, which i’ll add to this post, has other relevant content, & i welcome any additions from folks! all the best to you 💓

#asks #reading lists #cripsex

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floral-ashes · 3 months

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Thought I’d share this review of Gender/Fucking: The Pleasures and Politics of Living in a Gendered Body, posted to Goodreads by a user named Haley:

“Wow, wow, WOW�� this is a book that invites you, the reader, not only to learn but also to EXPLORE— it’s a patchwork quilt of memoirs, erotic interludes, and critical analysis, and it’s gripping and devastating at every turn. Florence Ashley, a transfem jurist and bioethicist, is a brilliant writer with a penchant for luscious prose and biting commentary. This collection is equally brilliant, introducing the concept of “academic smut” as a vehicle for telling stories of love, loss, growth, and tragedy against a backdrop of trans identity and intellectualism. As a nonbinary person, I found myself represented in living color on every page; reading this collection left me tear-stained and devastated, and yet immeasurably hopeful at the same time. It’s a storytelling format I could never have predicted enjoying, as I’m rather open about not enjoying erotica as a written genre (with the exception of fanfiction!) due to my own discomfort with first-person-POV sex— however, the erotica here DOES something. It gives a tangible example of the theories and thought-processes that Florence describes in each chapter; it gives the reader an opportunity to imagine sexual dynamics playing out not only in front of them but with them in the driver’s seat, and again— as someone whose queer activities echo some of Florence’s own, it was deeply eye-opening to see myself and my desires on paper that exposes the pleasure, shame, and possibilities that we all partake in.

In particular, I'm drawn to one phrase that Florence concludes with in their "Trespass on the Fox" essay: these are questions without answers. am i open to being loved, to being lovable? maybe. Upon reading that, I had to sit and stare blankly at the wall for a time I can't begin to measure. Not only for the raw questioning of how I exist in regards to love, but for the openness in stating that these words, and all the words in Florence's collection, do not exist to serve as definitive answers of, well, pretty much anything! I've spent the past 18 years of my life entrenched in academia, and the idea that I don't have to always answer "yes" or "no" when asked about my "take" on something isn't necessarily foreign, but it's under-represented in nonfiction works, and it was a breath of fresh air to see it so frankly discussed here.

Though I am hesitant to describe any essay in detail, as I do truly think each entry deserves to be experienced firsthand, I want to conclude my review with an analysis of "Libidinal Vertigo," one of two essays that Florence warns about in their Preface for their potentially-triggering material. It's a deeply unsettling essay for two reasons: one, it discusses famed (or, rather, infamous) TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) scholars like Mary Daly in detail, and their works are ones that have caused me a lot of personal strife as well; two, it explores Florence's (and that of all transfem folx) vulnerability to the very same transphobic rhetoric that most of us wish was contained solely in now-fading academic texts. We (and I use this word here confidently, despite existing not as a transfem person as AFAB and nonbinary) are all deeply susceptible to the internalized transphobia that runs rampant across our social media threads and bathroom-sink conversations. Florence, in protest of Janice Raymond's vitriol, invites us to embrace our monstrosity... echoing a brilliant passage of poetry discussing Frankenstein many pages prior. If they cast us as monsters, without giving us a chance to recite our lines, then perhaps we should acknowledge our hatred— and use it as fuel to empower healing amongst our own.

I cannot put into words how much I recommend this collection; it deserves to be immortalized in the canon of transgender studies, and it also deserves to be passed around amongst friends and highlighted and annotated to no end, the pages themselves becoming a living museum of memory and community. Whether you are trans, cis, or beginning your own journey of self-discovery, this book is a light amongst a sea of uncertainty and darkness, and I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of your own.

Note: I receive a gifted ARC from Clash Books; as always, I was under no obligation to leave a review, and all my thoughts/ramblings are my own <3”

#transgender #trans #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queer #gay #lesbian #lgbt #books #trans lit

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the-greatest-fool · 5 months

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are you supposed to have “intro” posts?

i am some guy who i guess you can call gf (or uh jeff? lol) based on my randomly chosen username. i was a philosophy and law nerd who ended up studying mathy things in uni instead and now my life is in ruins.

follow for reblogged memes (i dont know how to use tumblr. are you allowed to reblog people’s stuff or is that a faux pas. can someone teach me how to use tumblr? also this parenthetical went way too long) and my struggles to keep myself going, tagged #my life

i guess you’re supposed to name things you like. in no particular order, i like(or liked at some pt):

things to think about: education, academic integrity, misinformation, economic policy, global security, international trade and development, socially constructed identities

movies: lots of oscar noms, knives out 1 + 2, a24 films, various asian american film projects i support because they are my brethren

tv: house md (i liked it before it was cool and that makes me cool yadayada), community, bojack horseman. saw spto recently too.

anime: not a frequent viewer but have deep nostalgia for detective conan/magic kaito, liked haikyuu when i binged it during the panini

books: to be honest i mostly read books based on new yorker reviews. but i love essay collections, memoirs, and trendy novels lol.

academic interests: economics, law, statistics, probability theory, philosophy, political theory

memes: spiciest

art: pretentious

other: used to play genshin. this post is too long now. good night.

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mediaevalmusereads · 9 months

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Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy. By Colin Dickey. Viking, 2023.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Genre: pop history, politics, American history

Series: N/A

Summary: The United States was born in paranoia. From the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organized by the French) to the Salem witch trials to the Satanic Panic, the Illuminati, and QAnon, one of the most enduring narratives that defines the United States is simply secret groups are conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law. We’d like to assume these panics exist only at the fringes of society, or are unique features of the internet age. But history tells us, in fact, that they are woven into the fabric of American democracy.

Cultural historian Colin Dickey has built a career studying how our most irrational beliefs reach the mainstream, why, and what they tell us about ourselves. In Under the Eye of Power , Dickey charts the history of America through its paranoias and fears of secret societies, while seeking to explain why so many people—including some of the most powerful people in the country—continue to subscribe to these conspiracy theories. Paradoxically, he finds, belief in the fantastical and conspiratorial can be more soothing than what we fear the the chaos and randomness of history, the rising and falling of fortunes in America, and the messiness of democracy. Only in seeing the cycle of this history, Dickey says, can we break it.

***Full review below.***

Content Warnings: discussions of violence (including anti-Black violence such as lynchings) and anti-Semitism

Since this book is non-fiction, my review will be structured a little different from normal.

I've loved Cokin Dickey's work since I read Ghostland, so when I learned he was publishing a book on conspiracy theories, I quickly snatched up a copy.

The main thesis of this book is that we should not think of conspiracy theories as "fringe" beliefs; instead, we should think of them as integral parts of American politics, ones that have shaped the history of American democracy from the start. A secondary thesis is that conspiracy theories routinely crop up amidst moments of great social and political change; therefore, we should view them as cyclical.

Dickey goes about supporting this argument with a number of snapshots of various conspiracy theories. Some of these include the belief that the Masons/Illuminati were shaping the outcome of the Revolutionary War, that a secret cabal was trying to enslave whites during the years leading up to the Civil War, that Catholics were trying to overthrow American politics while simultaneously murdering people in the 18th century, and so on. This book also tackles some of the more recent theories, such as David Icke's lizard people theory and QAnon, arguing that they should be seen as part of a pattern of panics, not isolated incidents.

I found Dickey's arguments fairly compelling. Part of the reason might be because his main points are very clear and his narration of history is straight forward: each conspiracy is the product of paranoia, but a paranoia in response to feelings of chaos.

I also liked that Dickey readily admits when evidence is scarce and looks at both left and right wing conspiracies. Ultimately, he makes the case that right wing conspiracies have historically been more dangerous and outlandish, so there is no "both sides" argument being made.

He also does a fairly good job of explaining cognitive dissonance and how each conspiracy theory attempts to resolve internal contradictions. As a result, I was able to get a fairly good grip on why each theory was appealing and why so many people believed them, even if they seemed bogus from the outside.

If I had any criticism, it would be that I think Dickey could have done more to synthesize his main points. As the book stands, it felt like some of his more profound or illuminating insights were buried under the historical narrative, and I personally think some of them could have been explored in more depth.

But even so, this is a good book for those who are interested in a general overview of the history of conspiracy theories in America. While I wouldn't recommend it if you want an in depth look at any one conspiracy theory (such as QAnon), I think you will enjoy it if you're interested in why Americans specifically are so invested in conspiracy theories, and the historians among you will appreciate the attention to historical detail as well.

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generalechoes · 2 years

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Monthly reggae disco in North-East London. The night is named after sadly departed MC Earl Anthony Robinson, the voice behind classic deejay tunes such as “Drunken Master”.

For our July session we’ve got something slightly different to the usual dance, this month we've got something to feed your head AND your feet when we welcome writer and researcher Edward George to Walthamstow.

Edward’s radio show The Strangeness of Dub on Morley College Radio is a truly essential listen - it dives into dub, versions and versioning, drawing on critical theory, social history, a deep and broad musical selection, and live dub mixing.

Edward will be in conversation with Paul Rekret about these topics and more at the start of the night, before taking to the decks to play some of the selections discussed.

The Strangeness Of Dub show is described as follows:

"Dub is strange. A musical process and a sub-genre formed in the early 1970s and pioneered by Clement Dodd, Sylvan Morris, Lee Perry, King Tubby, Scientist, Jah Shaka and The Mad Professor, dub takes place through a kind of violence, an act of reducing archival audio documents to fragments and traces, yet is associated, in its sound system context, with communal reverie and meditative states.A marginal music and a music of margins, first and most enduringly located on the ‘b side’, the underside, of phonographic recordings, dub is a sub genre of reggae music, subordinate and secondary to song-writing, musical performance and recording. And yet more so than reggae song writing, vocal or musical performance, dub’s influence reverberates across other genres of electronic music, even while never quite comprising a genre of its own."

Check out the Strangeness Of Dub archives here: https://morleyradio.co.uk/series/the-strangeness-of-dub/

Edward George is a writer and broadcaster. Founder of Black Audio Film Collective, George wrote and presented the ground-breaking science fiction documentary Last Angel of History (1996). George is part of the multimedia duo Flow Motion, and the electronic music group Hallucinator (Chain Reaction).

Paul Rekret is a researcher and teacher in political and cultural theory. He is associate professor of politics at Richmond American International University, London, and is author of numerous publications including Down With Childhood: Pop Music and the Crisis of Innocence (Repeater, 2017), as well as being a contributor to The Wire and London Review Of Books amongst others.

Doors 7.30pm

Talk 8pm

DJ sets 9.30 - 1am

Advance tickets £6 from Ticketlab - https://ticketlab.co.uk/event/id/12319 £8 on the door / £3 for Trades Hall members

#reggae disco #london reggae #the strangeness of dub #edward george #chain reaction #paul rekret #king tubby

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ao3dorian-gay · 3 months

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works cited

general works cited, kept updated, that I've used in research for my fanworks.

[not all of these were fully read, and some I read years ago; I just have a Zotero full of the books, articles, etc. if I ever typed or copied something into my worldbuilding masterdoc]

Mental health and psychology:

Fast, Julie A., and John D. Preston. Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder: Understanding and Helping Your Partner. 2nd ed. New Harbinger Publications, 2012.

Gartner, John D. The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America. Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Jamison, Kay Renfield. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. Reed Business Information, Inc., 1996.

———. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Reed Business Information, Inc., 1996.

Phelps, M.D., Dr. Jim. “The Basics of Bipolar Treatment.” Psych Education (blog), October 8, 2014.

Rantala, Markus J., Severi Luoto, Javier I. Borráz-León, and Indrikis Krams. “Bipolar Disorder: An Evolutionary Psychoneuroimmunological Approach.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 122 (March 2021): 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.031.

Wallon, Henry. “The Role of the Other in the Consciousness of the Ego.” In The World of Henri Wallon, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Marxists Internet Archive, 1946.

Wootton, Tom. The Bipolar Advantage, 2005.

For my research on the Ainu history:

Dubreuil, Chisato. “Ainu-e: Instruction Resources for the Study of Japan’s Other People.” Education About Asia, Spring 2004.

Fitzhugh, William W., and Chisato O. Dubreuil, eds. Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. Washington, DC: Arctic Studies Center, 1999.

Isabella, Jude. “How Japan’s Bear-Worshipping Indigenous Group Fought Its Way to Cultural Relevance.” Hakai Magazine, October 18, 2017.

Knight, John. Waiting for Wolves in Japan: An Anthropological Study of People-Wildlife Relations. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006.

Sakata, Minako. “Possibilities of Reality, Variety of Versions: The Historical Consciousness of Ainu Folktales.” Oral Tradition 26, no. 1 (2011): 175–90.

Siddle, Richard M. Race, Resistance, and the Ainu of Japan. London: Routledge, 1996.

For my research on East and Southeast Asian history, culture, religion, and politics [for worldbuilding]:

Bohnet, Adam. Turning Toward Edification: Foreigners in Choson Korea. University of Hawai’i Press, 2020.

Bossler, Beverly, ed. Gender & Chinese History: Transformative Encounters. University of Washington Press, 2015.

Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. History of Imperial China 5. Belknap Press, 2013.

Chen, Shangsheng. “The Chinese Tributary System and Traditional International Order in East Asia during the Ming and Qing Dynasties from the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Chinese Humanities 5, no. 2 (2020): 171–99. https://doi.org/0.1163/23521341-12340079.

Choi, Hyaeweol. Gender and Mission Encounters in Korea: New Women, Old Ways. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Chung, Sung-il. “Foreign Relations between Joseon and Japan Seen from State Letters and Sogye in the Late Joseon Period (1600-1870).” Journal of Ming-Qing Historical Studies 52 (2019): 107–42.

Dai, Yuanfang. Transcultural Feminist Philosophy. Feminist Strategies: Flexible Theories and Resilient Practices. Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020.

Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, and Anne Walthall. Pre-Modern East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, Volume I: To 1800. 3rd ed. Cengage Learning, 2013.

Franceschini, Ivan, and Christian Sorace, eds. Proletarian China: A Century of Chinese Labour. London: Verso, 2022.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation. Harmony, 1999.

Hinton, David. Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China. New Directions, 2005.

———. The Four Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching, Analects, Chuang Tzu, Mencius. Counterpoint, 2016.

Hui, Wang. The End of the Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity. London: Verso, 2009.

Kerr, George. Okinawa: The History of an Island People. Tuttle Publishing, 2018.

Kim, Hyunchul. "The Purification Process of Death: Mortuary Rites in a Japanese Rural Town." Asian Ethnology 71, no.2 (2012): 225-257.

Mair, Victor H., ed. The Columbia History of Chinese Literature. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2001. [did not read this full thing]

Maltsev, Vladimir. "Lessons from the Japanese ninja: on achieving a higher trade equilibrium under anarchy and private constitutions." Constitutional Political Economy. 33 (2021): 1-12.

Mizoguchi, Yūzō. “The Ming-Qing Transition as Turning Point.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 17, no. 4 (2016): 526–73.

Ono, Sokyo, and William P. Woodard. Shinto the Kami Way. Tuttle Publishing, 2004.

“Re: ‘Why Was Pyongyang Once Referred to as “Jerusalem of the East”?,’” April 11, 2021. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mokqsq/why_was_pyongyang_once_referred_to_as_jerusalem/.

Richey, Jeffrey L. Confucius in East Asia: Confucianism’s History in China, Korea, Japan, and Viet Nam. 2nd ed. Key Issues in Asian Studies. Association for Asian Studies, 2022.

Smits, Gregory. Maritime Ryukyu, 1050-1650. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018.

Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.

Sung, Sirin, and Gillian Pascall, eds. Gender and Welfare States in East Asia: Confucianism or Gender Equality. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Tham, Chui-Joe. “The Transnational Historiography of a Dynastic Transition: Writing the Ming-Qing Transition in Seventeenth-Century China, Korea, and Japan.” Modern Asian Studies 57, no. 3 (n.d.): 776–807. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000245.

Tran, Nhung Tuyet. Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463–1778. Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory 6. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018.

u/AsiaExpert. “Re: ‘The Respective Roles of Ninja and Shinobi,’” November 4, 2012. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12lwoi/comment/c6w7qva/?context=3.

u/EnclavedMicrostate. “Re: ‘As I Understand, It’s Well-Established That Gunpowder and Guns Were Invented in China. Why Didn’t This Lead to a Legacy of Chinese Primacy in Terms of Innovation and Dominance in Firearms Production?,’” October 7, 2022. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xxsk8r/comment/irdw04c/?context=3.

———. “Re: ‘Were the Ming and Qing Courts Actually Unaware of the Satsuma Invasion of the Ryukyus and Subsequent Japanese Incorporation of the Islands as Vassal States?’” R/AskHistorians, December 18, 2022. reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/zofi5x/were_the_ming_and_qing_courts_actually_unaware_of/j0oyc4k/.

———. “Re: ‘Why Didn’t China Splinter into Different Countries like Europe Did?,’” R/AskHistorians, May 31, 2018. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8nh0yv/why_didnt_china_splinter_into_different_countries/dzvl249/?context=3.

u/huianxin. “Re: ‘Is There Any Particular Reason Why Korean Queens of the Joseon Dynasty Were Preferred to Be Older than Their Husbands?,’” R/AskHistorians, April 24, 2020. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g797c7/comment/foi86re/.

u/Iphikrates. “Re: ‘Did Ancient Civilians Get PTSD? What Do We Know of the Psychological Effects of War on Noncombatants, and How They Dealt with Them?’” R/AskHistorians, December 15, 2019. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/eaupqm/did_ancient_civilians_get_ptsd_what_do_we_know_of/fb01xji/.

u/Julius_Maximus. “Re: ‘In Ming-Qing China, a County Magistrate Was Basically Police Chief/Judge/Jury All Rolled into One. Was There Somewhere Commoners Could Report Abuse of Power or Appeal the Ruling of the County Magistrate?,’” July 12, 2016. reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4sckd6/in_mingqing_china_a_county_magistrate_was/d58ym1r/.

Walthall, Anne, ed. Peasant Uprisings in Japan: A Critical Anthology of Peasant Uprisings. University of Chicago Press, 1991. .

Wang, Tianjun. "Brain in TCM Origin and Short History" in Acupuncture for Brain. Springer, Cham. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54666-3_1.

Yamakage, Motohisa. The Essence of Shinto: Japan’s Spiritual Heart. Kodansha International, 2012.

Philosophy/theory:

Caudwell, Christopher. Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics. Oriole Chapbooks, 1960.

Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2004.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline. Marxists Internet Archive, 2005.

Marx, Karl. Wage Labour and Capital. Edited by Frederick Engels. Marx/Engels Internet Archive, 1999.

Trotsky, Leon. Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It. Revised. Pioneer Publishers, 1969.

———. The War and the International. Marxists Internet Archive, 1914.

Tuck, Eve, and C. Ree. “A Glossary of Haunting.” In Handbook of Autoethnography, 639–58. Left Coast Press, Inc., 2013.

Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.

Zedong, Mao. On Guerrilla Warfare. Marxists Internet Archive, 2000.

Vibes:

Liston, Bonnie Mary. “The Wildness of Girlhood.” Overland (blog), July 2, 2019. https://overland.org.au/2019/07/the-wildness-of-girlhood/.

Peyton. “Notes on ‘Feral.’” The Niche (blog), February 4, 2019. https://the-niche.blog/2019/02/04/notes-on-feral/.

#ref #i'm aware this is one of the more unhinged things i've posted.#you ever see like. painfully tangible proof of the whole 'stop researching and just write' thing.#posting so i can link to this. deeply embarrasing.#mine

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gravitascivics · 1 year

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JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, X

[Note: This posting is subject to further editing.]

Up to now, this blog has been reviewing the elements of critical theory and one fact that comes through is that that theory comes in a variety of flavors. And as such, it is a challenge to convey to readers a singular version of the view’s positions concerning educational curriculum and instruction. One way to convey what the view proffers is to zero in on one of its respected theorists and review his contributions.

This blog looks to the work of the late Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, who dedicated himself to work toward reforms in that South American nation. He was a prolific writer, but his most famous work was his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.[1] This account will rely on this book to report on Freire’s contributions.

His account relies heavily on the factor many critical writers highlight, that being the discourses people utilize. He describes how language is politized by oppressors in a society, especially focusing on the work of educational decision makers. They generally opt for a course of language from an array of political constructs,[2] but for those who think from a natural rights perspective – probably the most liberally minded option available – they speak in terms of how open the economic system is and affords people in general a multitude of opportunities.

Within that system, natural rights view argues that anyone who works hard can achieve an economically rewarding life. And if such believers are educational decision makers, they use and promote a language that ignores the systemic factors that keep the oppressed from advancing. That is the case, in part, when the oppressed internalize that language and instead of directing their efforts to overturn the system, they seek to be that rare case that “proves” the oppressors’ argument to be true.

In short, Freire claims that the oppressed, due to the ubiquitous presence of such language, internalize this view and believe the rationales that the oppressors advance. Breaking hold of that language is daunting but not impossible and Freire offers several steps by which the oppressed, after experiencing their own transformation, need to perform in order to lead a general transformation process.

According to Freire, the central aim of the educational system should be to initially debunk this language. Their overall effort needs to be directed at achieving authentic humanity. How? By assisting the liberation of those who are oppressed and, further, for them to actualize their freedom by leading this transformation through their action.

Naturally, such action begins with recognition of what is taking place. Specifically, the oppressed need to become cognizant of the dehumanizing messaging, with its images and beliefs, being transmitted by the common language all seem to employ. Here is what Freire shares:

Only as they discover themselves to be ‘hosts’ of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they [the oppressed] live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible.[3]

An early step, therefore, for the oppressed is to conduct dialectic analysis. That is, they begin by objectively determining what are the actual conditions that set up and maintain their dependence on the oppressors. In addition, they conduct effective actions that transform that reality.

At the same time, they need to challenge or confront those perceptions they harbor that lead to their oppressed status. These insidious perceptions function to distort their understanding of what prevails in their social spaces and allow for those conditions that cause their suffering. They must overcome the inability to perceive the objective truth. They, therefore, need to engage in a dual process: changing their consciousness and acting toward transforming their beliefs and values and that of society in general. Summarily, all of this action is called praxis.

Praxis is fundamental to what Freire calls upon the oppressed to do. And before one judges these activities as only benefiting the oppressed, Freire argues that it not only seeks to gain the humanity of the oppressed but of that of the oppressor. They do this by stopping those actions that undermine not only the humanity of the oppressed but also that of the oppressor.

This aspect of Freire’s approach is quite ironic. While the oppressors seem to be enjoying their liberty and “advantages,” they lose their humanity by oppressing the disadvantaged. This state denies these advantaged people to fully see their fellow humans as humans and instead to see them as objectified creatures. This undermines their human, empathetic nature as they see others as a set of numbers and manipulative assets or liabilities. In effect, they, the oppressed, take non-human characteristics – i.e., they become dehumanized – in the eyes of the oppressors.

And then there are the advantaged elites’ efforts to fix this – either of the bleeding-heart variety or of genuine concern. By instituting either charitable projects or even governmental welfare programs, these attempts by and large are egoistic endeavors sponsored by the oppressors. They further the dehumanizing process by being cases of false generosity spurred by a sense of paternalism. This can also include “reform” educational programs and other “progressive” endeavors.

Praxis not only benefits the oppressed, but all of society as it seeks to attain permanent liberation. It helps people achieve or arrive at truthfulness by cutting through the veils of deceit. Freire writes,

Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his and her pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human.[4]

This definitional statement pertains not only to the oppressed but the oppressors as well and, as such, both are victims of this exploitive arrangement.

And as one can intuitively guess, changing the held images and beliefs – along with their values – of the oppressors is more difficult to achieve when compared to changing the perception of the oppressed. That consciousness of the oppressor is noted for a strongly held possessiveness of the world and of the men and women who inhabit that world. The world, under this view, is the stage upon which people are marketable objects.

That would be commodities to be bought and sold for profit. With this sort of image, one can imagine that it is a short step toward sadism. “…[T]he aim of sadism is to transform a man into a thing, something animate into inanimate…”[5] Through the history of exploitation, this dehumanizing imagery seems to be continuously observed or noted among those who engage in such injustice.

And aren’t there any truly concerned and worried members of the elite class that see the injustices before them and strive to reform or transform this unjust system for purely charitable reasons? Yes, but they unfortunately carry with them the biases of their class. They might form vanguard groups that will lead the oppressed from their misfortunes, but in truth, because they bring with them the upper-class baggage, they will not fully or, in some cases, partially trust the oppressed.

Freire warns his readers that to effectively transform existing oppressive systems, trust is essential. Past efforts, where trust is lacking and the oppressor class has attempted to lead such efforts, the result has not been a transformation but an transferring from one oppressive system to another.

This is what happened in Russia with its revolution where power transferred from the Czar regime to eventually Stalinism. Unless a true commitment – a true comradeship – emerges, a genuine transformation cannot take place. That sort of movement can only be led by a transformed oppressed people with their mutual trust levels and armed with their knowledge derived from their life experiences.

[1] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, NY: Continuum Publishing Company, 1999).

[2] This includes political constructs that justify traditional, highly parochial views. Often these reflect ideals and values that are somewhat feudalistic and rationalize social/economic arrangements where one’s birth conditions are seen as being the will of God. This is an opinionated claim by this blogger and derived from various conversations with people from developing countries. It turns out that the data to determine how much a given underdeveloped country lacks social mobility is lacking. But that a concern over this deficiency exists can be noted by the various professional journal articles. They call for more attention to this issue. See, for example, Linden Kemkaran and Vegard Iversen, “Social Mobility in Developing Countries: Broken Ladders,” University of Greenwich/Natural Resources Institute, accessed April 17, 2023, https://www.nri.org/latest/news/2020/social-mobility-in-developing-countries#:~:text=Social%20mobility%20refers%20to%20the,educational%20attainment%2C%20occupation%20or%20health.

[3] Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30, emphasis in the original.

[4] Ibid., 37.

[5] Ibid. 41. This quote attributed to Eric Fromm.

#critical theory #critical pedagogy #transformation #discourses #oppressed class #oppressor class #trust #leadership #civics education #social studies

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osamu-jinguji · 1 year

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My favorite books in Apr-2023 - #1 Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century – August 1, 2001 by Howard Bloom (Author) HOWARD BLOOM, author of the critically acclaimed book The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History, is a Visiting Scholar at New York University. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the National Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, the Academy of Political Science, and the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, as well as the founder of the International Paleopsychology Project. He has been written up in every edition of Who's Who in Science and Engineering since the publication's inception. "As someone who has spent forty years in psychology with a long-standing interest in evolution, I'll just assimilate Howard Bloom's accomplishment and my amazement." —DAVID SMILLIE, Visiting Professor of Zoology, Duke University In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom—one of today's preeminent thinkers—offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. He shows how plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a worldwide learning machine. He describes the network of life on Earth as one that is, in fact, a "complex adaptive system," a global brain in which each of us plays a sometimes conscious, sometimes unknowing role, and he reveals that the World Wide Web is just the latest step in the development of this brain. These are theories as important as they are radical. Informed by twenty years of interdisciplinary research, Bloom takes us on a spellbinding journey back to the big bang to let us see how its fires forged primordial sociality. As he brings us back via surprising routes, we see how our earliest bacterial ancestors built multitrillion-member research and development teams a full 3.5 billion years ago. We watch him unravel the previously unrecognized strands of interconnectedness woven by crowds of trilobites, hunting packs of dinosaurs, feathered flying lizards gathered in flocks, troops of baboons making communal decisions, and adventurous tribes of protohumans spreading across continents but still linked by primitive forms of information networking. We soon find ourselves reconsidering our place in the world. Along the way, Bloom offers us exhilarating insights into the strange tricks of body and mind that have organized a variety of life forms: spiny lobsters, which, during the Paleozoic age, participated in communal marching rituals; and bees, which, during the age of dinosaurs, conducted collective brainwork. This fascinating tour continues on to the sometimes brutal subculture wars that have spurred the growth of human civilization since the Stone Age. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains, immersing us in a matrix of truth and mass delusion that we think of as reality. Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution. It is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why. Amazon.com Review When did big-picture optimism become cool again? While not blind to potential problems and glitches, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang to the 21st Century confidently asserts that our networked culture is not only inevitable but essential for our species' survival and eventual migration into space. Author Howard Bloom, believed by many to be R. Buckminster Fuller's intellectual heir, takes the reader on a dizzying tour of the universe, from its original subatomic particle network to the unimaginable data-processing power of intergalactic communication. His writing is smart and snappy, moving with equal poise through depictions of frenzied bacteria passing along information packets in the form of DNA and nomadic African tribespeople putting their heads together to find water for the next year. The reader is swept up in Bloom's vision of the power of mass minds and, before long, can't help seeing the similarities between ecosystems, street gangs, and the Internet. Were Bloom not so learned and well-respected--more than a third of his book is devoted to notes and references, and luminaries from Lynn Margulis to Richard Metzger have lined up behind him--it would be tempting to dismiss him as a crank. His enthusiasm, the grand scale of his thinking, and his transcendence of traditional academic disciplines can be daunting, but the new outlook yielded to the persistent is simultaneously exciting and humbling. Bloom takes the old-school, sci-fi dystopian vision of group thinking and turns it around--Global Brain predicts that our future's going to be less like the Borg and more like a great party. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Publishers Weekly Bloom's debut, The Lucifer Principle (1997), sought the biological basis for human evil. Now Bloom is after even bigger game. While cyber-thinkers claim the Internet is bringing us toward some sort of worldwide mind, Bloom believes we've had one all along. Drawing on information theory, debates within evolutionary biology, and research psychology (among other disciplines), Bloom understands the development of life on Earth as a series of achievements in collective information processing. He stands up for "group selection" (a minority view among evolutionists) and traces cooperation among organismsAand competition between groupsAthroughout the history of evolution. "Creative webs" of early microorganisms teamed up to go after food sources: modern colonies of E. coli bacteria seem to program themselves for useful, nonrandom mutations. Octopi "teach" one another to avoid aversive stimuli. Ancient Sparta killed its weakest infants; Athens educated them. Each of these is a social learning system. And each such system relies on several functions. "Conformity enforcers" keep most group members doing the same things; "diversity generators" seek out new things; "resource shifters" help the system alter itself to favor new things that work. In Bloom's model, bowling leagues, bacteria, bees, Belgium and brains all behave in similar ways. Lots of real science and some historyAmuch of it fascinating, some of it quite obscureAgo into Bloom's ambitious, amply footnoted, often plausible arguments. He writes a sometimes bombastic prose ("A neutron is a particle filled with need"); worse yet, he can fail to distinguish among accepted facts, scientifically testable hypotheses and literary metaphors. His style may guarantee him an amateur readership, but he's not a crank. Subtract the hype, and Bloom's concept of collective information processing may startle skeptical readers with its explanatory power. (Aug.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

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college-girl199328 · 1 year

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A lawyer for President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, asked the Justice Department in a letter Wednesday to investigate close allies of former president Donald Trump and others who accessed and disseminated personal data from a laptop that a computer repair shop owner says was dropped off at his Delaware store in 2019. The request for a criminal inquiry as Hunter Biden faces a tax evasion investigation by the Justice Department does not mean federal prosecutors will open a probe or take any other action. But it nonetheless represents a concerted shift in strategy and a rare public response by the younger Biden and his legal team to years of attacks by Republican officials and the right-wing media.

It also represents the latest salvo in the long-running laptop saga, which began with a New York Post story in October 2020 that detailed some of the emails it says were found on the device related to Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings. That year, Trump used it as a campaign issue. The letter, signed by prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, seeks an investigation into, among others, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Trump's longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani's attorney, and Wilmington computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, who has said Hunter Biden dropped a laptop off at his store in April 2019 and never returned to pick it up.

The letter cites passages from Mac Isaac's book, in which he admitted reviewing confidential and sensitive material from Biden's laptop, including a file titled "income.pdf." It notes that Mac Isaac sent a copy of the laptop data to Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, who shared it with Giuliani, a close ally of Trump's who at the time was pushing discredited theories about the younger Biden.

Giuliani provided the information to a reporter at the New York Post, which first wrote about the laptop, and also to Bannon, according to the letter. Hunter Biden never consented to any of his personal information being accessed or shared in that manner, his lawyer says.

Mac Isaac declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press on Wednesday evening. Costello asked to comment on her behalf of him, and Giuliani called the letter "a frivolous legal document" and said it "reeks of desperation because they know judgment day is coming for the Bidens." A lawyer who represented Bannon at a trial in Washington, D.C., last year did not immediately return a call seeking comment. A Fox News representative had no immediate comment.

The letter to the Justice Department cites possible violations of statutes prohibiting unauthorized access to a computer or stored electronic communication. In addition, it mentions the transport of stolen data across state lines and the publication of restricted personal data with the intent to intimidate or threaten. It also asks prosecutors to investigate whether any of the data was manipulated or tampered with in any way.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. Separate letters requesting investigations were sent to the Delaware state attorney general's office and the Internal Revenue Service. Spokespeople at the company did not immediately return emails seeking comment.

Hunter Biden, who turns 53 later this week, delivered the laptop with substance abuse, which he later wrote about in the 2021 memoir Beautiful Things.

The scrutiny of Hunter Biden is expected to continue now that Republicans have taken over the House. Former Twitter employees are expected to testify next week before the House's oversight committee about the social media platform's handling of laptop reports. Twitter initially blocked the New York Post article from its site.

Republicans have said the story was suppressed for political reasons ahead of the 2020 election, though no evidence has been released to support that claim. The story was accessible on other social media platforms. Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, characterized the blocking of the article's URL with "zero context" around why the decision was made as "unacceptable."

In addition to the laptop contents, Republicans have raised questions about Hunter Biden's work for a Ukrainian energy company and business dealings with China. This is because his father was in a position of influence. More recently, as Joe Biden's properties have been searched for classified documents, some Republican members of Congress have questioned whether Hunter had access to any of them. They point out that the Wilmington, Del., house was listed as Hunter Biden's address on his driver's license as recently as 2018.

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tipco613 · 2 years

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New Post has been published on http://cryptonewsuniverse.com/the-five-tenets-of-the-great-reset-what-you-can-do-to-reject-and-counter-the-new-normal/

The Five Tenets Of The Great Reset: What You Can Do To Reject And Counter The New Normal

The Five Tenets Of The Great Reset:

What You Can Do To Reject And Counter The New Normal

The famous quote by Winston Churchill, “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” has been used in many contexts. The first context was the creation of the United Nations at the end of World War Two. This quote has been touted quite a few times since the start of the pandemic but has become more evident in the context of the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Great Reset.

I started researching and writing about this topic from another perspective two years ago when many claimed that it was “nothing but a conspiracy theory,” with the majority of ordinary people oblivious to what was being planned decades ago.

As it turns out, it isn’t a “theory”; it’s real, with the elites and NGOs conspiring behind closed doors with their plans to implement a global environmental, social and economic shift under the guise of sustainability with a primary focus on Stakeholder Capitalism. Klaus Schwab, the leader of the pack at WEF, has been very open to letting the global population know that “we will own nothing and be happy.”

2020 virtual event in Geneva, Switzerland – Video

It’s all laid out in Agenda 21/30 and based on a 2020 book, The Great Reset, which Klaus Schwab co-authored with a lifelong colleague, Thierry Malleret. Now that the cat’s out of the bag and the new normal is starting to take shape, many more people are becoming aware of what’s happening, but a growing number of us ordinary folks are not in favor of it.

What matters now is that we take the steps needed to secure our personal and financial freedom so that no one can infringe upon them. There are ways in which we can effectively resist any pressure to conform to a “new normal” – whatever that may be. So today, we’ll review the Great Reset, discover ways to resist it and determine which cryptocurrencies will withstand the global shift.

Who Really Created The WEF?

The WEF is an international organization based in Switzerland. It comprises some of the world's most influential individuals and institutions, including current and former presidents, media moguls, big tech CEOs, asset managers, banks, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As stated on the WEF’s website, the organization's explicit purpose is to “…shape global, regional and industry agendas.” It does this by supporting individuals and institutions that promote its agenda.

The WEF is headed by Klaus Schwab, a German engineer economist and former professor who served as its chairman since it was founded in 1971. Interestingly, the WEF wasn’t simply Klaus Schwab's brainchild but was born out of a CIA-funded Harvard program headed by Henry Kissinger and pushed to fruition by John Kenneth Galbraith and the “real” Dr. Strangelove, Herman Kahn.

These three powerfully influential men from the American political elite were the driving force behind the European-based globalist organization. They recognized Schwab’s potential and saw a reflection of their own intellectual desires in him. Back in the late 1960s, they recruited and mentored Klaus Schwab, helping him to create the World Economic Forum. You can read this fascinating story here.

Almost all the WEF’s agendas are based on Klaus and his mentors’ ideas. Today, Klaus and his cohorts consider the pandemic to be on a par with another world war as far as its global disruption goes. It presents an opportunity to replace capitalism with stakeholder capitalism.

Stakeholder capitalism is one of Schwab’s ideas, and it fundamentally replaces shareholders with so-called stakeholders who basically decide what everyone does. If you're wondering who the stakeholders are, Klaus has made it clear in interviews and at many events that the stakeholders are the individuals and institutions who are a part of the WEF.

In crypto terms, you can think of stakeholder capitalism as being the total centralization of control in the hands of the world's most powerful people, corporations, and organizations.

Three Phases Of The Great Reset

According to Klaus, there are three phases to the great reset, and the first two relate to the pandemic. These are “Restrain” (fight the virus), the phase we are in currently. Then, “Recover” is the next phase where the world enters the “new normal.”

Now, the third and final phase is “The Great Reset” itself, which focuses on the following five points;

Redefining the Social Contract

Decarbonizing The Economy

Digitizing Everything

Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism

Global Rollout of all the above ensures those first four tenets find their way into every country.

As to how exactly the WEF will roll out the great reset around the world, Klaus states that this will be achieved primarily with the help of the WEF’s network of so-called global shapers and young global leaders who will all push for the great reset in their respective nations. The WEF hopes to have it all in order by 2030.

The WEF’s 2020 virtual event in Geneva, Switzerland, focuses on the great reset and their new book in more depth, and you can hear it straight from the horse's mouth in this video. They blatantly tell you what they want and how they plan to get it, which blows the “conspiracy theory” out of the water.

So now that we know what the great reset is and how the WEF elites plan on rolling it out, we can prepare for its five points outlined above. It’s worth noting that there seems to be quite a bit of overlap between these five points, and it sounds like they will be implemented simultaneously, not in sequential order.

It's also important to remember that these points are already slowly being implemented. This means you must bare in mind how a change in one could affect the other when preparing to avoid or resist them. This could become difficult since part of the WEF’s agenda distorts traditional definitions of inflation, well-being, and economic growth.

This distortion of definitions lies at the core of redefining the social contract, as this involves replacing all of the above with ESG-focused metrics that prioritize diversity and inclusion over actual productivity.

1: Redefining the Social Contract

ESG has its roots in an initiative spearheaded by the United Nations and some of the world's largest corporations. As time goes on, the ESG criteria are becoming more aligned with the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Image Source: United Nations

There are 17 SDGs in total, noting a couple of examples mentioned in the great reset virtual event video above of what the WEF wants to see from a few of them. The 4th SDG is quality education, and co-author of the book, The Great Reset, Thierry Malleret, stated at the virtual event that the WEF doesn't like that a science degree from one University is considered more prestigious than a science degree from another University.

As such, the WEF would like to see all degrees eliminated and replaced with specific skills training that would last until the end of your life. In other words, you'll be in school until you die and never even get a degree. Plus, there’s also the WEF indoctrination you're likely to endure. Now the switch to skills training also ostensibly implies that there will be no more small businesses or entrepreneurs, just mega corporations where everyone is a worker bee.

This sounds ridiculous until you realize it relates to the 10th SDG, which is reduced inequality. Here, the WEF is willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that economic inequalities do not continue to increase. It includes making sure you’ll own nothing and be happy, as brazenly stipulated in the WEF’s infamous video.

Instead, you'll rent what you use from the stakeholders who will own everything, and remember that these stakeholders are all the folks at the WEF. Historically, attempts at making everyone equal tend to end very badly, as making everyone equal usually translates to making everyone equally poor and miserable except for the select few. The select few in power are subsequently forced to kill anyone who tries to reject that poverty and misery.

Ironically, the WEFs push for eliminating inequality comes from the fears its constituents have about the riots, revolutions, and migrations that will inevitably occur if inequality continues to increase. A few WEF members have admitted this on stage, including at that Great Reset virtual event.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to resist this redefining of social contracts, and that's to reject any ESG or SDG-related criteria, especially when it's being used to redefine what a recession means. Instead, stick to tried and true social contracts, and reinforce them with your friends, family, and community.

Better yet, invest your time, money, and energy in individuals and companies who vocally oppose ESG, SDG, and other top-down decrees coming from technocrats who are out of touch with what life is like for the average person.

Pro tip – Stay away from companies that force you to pay a subscription service to use a “physical product” that should be entirely in your ownership. The moment you purchase it, your future might just depend on it.

Image source: The Verge

2: Decarbonizing The Economy

The second point of focus for the great reset is decarbonizing the economy, and here's where things get a bit complicated and contentious. That's because many would argue that moving away from fossil fuels is a good thing.

However, there is a right and a wrong way to transition to more renewable energy sources. So telling farmers to stop using fertilizer during a food crisis or shutting down nuclear plants during an energy shortage is not how you decarbonize the economy; It's how you destroy the economy.

It's also important to remember that many environmental elites see the average person as a form of carbon that should be reduced, if not eliminated. It is why they're eager to implement lifestyles and diets that are objectively unhealthy. Such as constantly living in the metaverse 24/7 and eating insects.

Another problem with the WEFs green energy agenda is that the energy structures it envisions will result in the hyper-centralization of the electricity grid, probably by design. That's because if everything runs on electricity, it becomes pretty easy to control everything.

Another thing that's probably by design is the focus on wind and solar, and that's because not every country has the ability or resources to create its own wind farms or solar panels. This forces them to trade with other countries for energy, which promotes the globalized world, the WEF wants to see.

Now, as with redefining social contracts, there’s an easy way to resist the WEFs warped decarbonization doctrine, and that's to advocate for renewable energy solutions that actually make sense. Educate your friends, family, and community about the risks of decarbonizing too quickly.

Additionally, acquire solar panels and power generators to become as energy independent as possible. Also, learning how to build gasifiers will come in handy when they start making it more and more difficult for the average person to buy petrol and petrol-powered cars.

On a good note, Bitcoin will not be banned because of its energy use or carbon emissions. That's because even the WEF knows that the energy and carbon emissions associated with crypto mining are a fraction of a percentage of the global total, as explained in this article.

They're just upset that they can't control BTC like other cryptos, which is why ESG-obsessed asset managers are impelling green energy disclosures from crypto miners. They are also investing in publicly traded crypto mining companies; it's their attempt at taking control, and it will fail.

3: Digitizing Everything

Bitcoin relates to the third focus of the great reset, and that's the digitization of everything. Essentially, every asset will be tokenized on a permissioned blockchain that the government and the central bank run. To clarify, the BIS is heavily involved with the WEF, and many of its members are so-called agenda contributors. This means they are directly engaged with the WEF’s great reset plans.

The tokenization of all real-world assets in such a manner means the government and central bank could turn off your ownership of anything at any given time, for whatever reason it sees fit, including your identity. But having said that, we’re apparently going to own nothing anyway! I go into more detail in this article about the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and its vision of the future financial system.

Furthermore, the digitization of money, specifically the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), is something that just about every central bank is planning on rolling out, courtesy of the BIS.

A Blueprint for Digital Identity | weforum.org.pdf

To complete the CBDC puzzle is the dystopian digital identity. This is a prerequisite for the rollout of a CBDC since you need to be able to identify individuals, and it’s no secret that governments have been working hard on proof of concepts for digital IDs during the pandemic.

A digital ID is also a prerequisite for widespread internet censorship, which the WEF apparently wants to implement with the help of artificial intelligence. It’s not surprising, given that information about the WEF and its affiliates is spreading like wildfire these days.

To be candid, resisting the WEFs digitization will be extremely difficult. Of the five focuses of the great reset, it's the most critical pillar because if you control the flow of information and the flow of money, you truly control everything.

Case in point, Klaus Schwab explicitly stated at the great reset virtual event that they need digital infrastructure, such as digital identity, facial recognition, human tracking, etc., to enforce ESG criteria and all the upcoming social contracts the WEF cronies are cooking up in the organization's Ivory Tower.

That means that it is imperative that you reject any form of digital identity that is not entirely decentralized from top to bottom. It also means you must acquire some form of currency that cannot be easily tracked, censored, or confiscated by a centralized authority. This includes cash, precious metals, and select cryptocurrencies.

Also, familiarize yourself with decentralized social, video, and broadcasting platforms, like Markethive, where your information and content are free from censorship. It would be impossible for any authority to shut down distributed data centers globally and sovereign servers entirely autonomous.

Decentralized blockchain technology and cryptocurrency create an entire ecosystem, ultimately free from subjugation, and the solution for entrepreneurs and small businesses to thwart the opposition and continue to thrive.

Other platforms include Odysee for video, Theta for live streaming, and Arweave for uploading information. These cryptocurrencies will be significant as we endure this tyrannical shift being forced upon us. There are many alternative websites popping up; however, it’s good to be aware that many purporting to be for the people are essentially controlled opposition.

It’s essential to understand the freedom of information and the freedom of money are the ultimate deterrence to the great reset. That's because the truth eventually overcomes indoctrination, no matter how often it's labeled disinformation or misinformation.

Overcoming this depends on the ability to financially support the individuals and institutions speaking and propagating these truths. So it’s time to abandon the tech giants in favor of a new world order and get behind platforms with your best interests at heart.

Pro tip: keep physical copies of all your most important records, such as land deeds, home ownership, documents, passports, driver's license, crypto wallet seeds, and the like. Even if expired, they will help preserve your identity if you become persona non grata for opposing the WEF’s ever-expanding agendas.

And if you think that complying with them will save you, recent events have shown that it will only make things worse for you and everyone else in the end. The only winners in this system will be stakeholders at the WEF, which ties into the 4th factor; the great reset.

4: Implementing Stakeholder Capitalism

It’s unclear how the WEF will introduce stakeholder capitalism, mainly because it's not entirely evident how its stakeholder capitalism governance structure works. The WEF has over 4,000 individual members and hundreds of institutional partners, with 100 of them labeled as strategic.

How they all come to a consensus is anyone's guess. Even if we assume, it's just the 100 strategic partners calling the shots, it's hard to imagine that they're all on the same page about every issue.

It was evident in one of Klaus's speeches from one of the WEF events earlier in the pandemic, where it sounded like he was desperate to keep the interests of these so-called stakeholders aligned. Now you'd think the real stakeholders are governments, but the great reset co-author Thierry Malleret admitted at the virtual event that the private sector effectively controls the public sector through lobbying.

In another article, I discussed the enemies of cryptocurrency and that Wall Street is one of the most prominent lobbyists out there. This means that the real stakeholders are the big banks, asset managers, and the central banks, as they ultimately determine how money moves in the economy.

BlackRock and Bank of America have been explicit in their intentions to direct capital to anyone advocating ESG and remove capital from anyone or anything that offends their sensibilities, regardless of ESG status, such as Tesla. So, this is how stakeholder capitalism can be fought, and that's to exacerbate the differences in interests between the different stakeholders at the WEF wherever possible.

Image source: Twitter

It's important to point out that centralized power is inherently unstable. That's because, as more power gathers, in one place, the more profit someone stands to gain if they stab the other participants in the back, especially if it earns them the support of the people.

Arguably, elite figures like Elon Musk fall into this category. He may be seen as benevolent, or maybe because he figured out that he stands to gain much more by siding with “we the people.” He’s already richer than all the other elite figures, so he’s won their hierarchical game.

So, supporting breakaway figures like Elon might be our best bet at encouraging more of them to defect from the WEF and ruin its stakeholder capitalism. There’s a strong possibility there are more stakeholders who are not happy with being hated by the public and can't stand Klaus and his clown company, who would love the get the same sort of fanfare as Elon Musk.

5: The Global Rollout

The final factor of the great reset is the export of the WEF’s endgame to every single corner of the earth. Klaus explicitly stated during that virtual conference that the WEF would leverage its network of global shapers and young global leaders to ensure the great reset is implemented in every country. Klaus also specified that over 10,000 of these recruits are slowly slipping into various positions of power worldwide. And he repeatedly stated that the great reset’s success depends on this.

This makes sense because there's only so much the WEF can achieve from the top down, and the pandemic proved this. Klaus and his cult followers saw the pandemic response as a “test of the great reset philosophy.” But, this top-down test didn't go nearly as well as the WEF had hoped, which seems to be why they are leaning so heavily on the global shapers and young global leaders lately.

It's an inorganic bottom-up approach that pushes the WEF’s agenda in major social and economic hubs, and it's no coincidence that most of them seem to have been on-boarded during the pandemic.

Notably, it’s convenient that the global shapers and young global leaders' websites are searchable. The former lets you see which WEF agents are looking to change things in your city, and the latter lets you see which WEF agents are looking to change something in your country or region.

If you see a global shaper or young global leader running for public office, vote for a different candidate who represents your views but isn't aligned with the WEF. All it takes to double-check is a quick search on the WEF website, the Global Shapers website, and the Global Leaders website.

Interestingly, the WEF blocked someone on Twitter for commenting on just two posts saying to vote against its young, global leaders. Note that the WEF gets lots of hate on Twitter daily and doesn't block everyone. So it would seem that undermining the WEF’s subverters may well be the organization's Achilles heel.

Klaus Schwab admitted at the end of that virtual event that they might not succeed, so let's ensure they don't. And remember that we only have until 2030. So, make the next eight years count through your selective spending, full attention, directed energy and informed voting. That's really all we need to do to defeat the WEF at the end of the day.

Once the WEF has been defeated, the next order of business will be to create robust decentralized, autonomous organizations to replace institutions like the WEF and its affiliates. We need to prevent this degree of centralized power from ever happening again so that the average person can finally live in peace. Also, fix the monetary system, which has been the driver of this centralization since the dawn of time.

Reference: Coin Bureau World Economic Forum

Editor and Chief Markethive: Deb Williams. (Australia) I thrive on progress and champion freedom of speech. I embrace "Change" with a passion, and my purpose in life is to enlighten people to accept and move forward with enthusiasm. Find me at my Markethive Profile Page | My Twitter Account | and my LinkedIn Profile.

#cryptocurrency #markethive #TheGreatReset

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letterboxd · 3 years

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How I Letterboxd #13: Erika Amaral.

Film sociologist Erika Amaral on the blossoming of Brazil’s women filmmakers, the joys of queuing for the movies, the on-fire Brazilian Letterboxd community, and the sentimental attachment of her entire nation to A Dog’s Will.

“It is hard to produce art without institutional support and it is very complicated to produce art during this tragic pandemic.” —Erika Amaral

In the wide world outside of English-language Letterboxd, Brazil occupies a particularly fervent corner. Sāo Paulo-based feminist film theorist Erika Amaral has connected with many other local film lovers through her Letterboxd profile, and for anyone with an interest in Cinema Brasileiro, her lists are an excelente place to start.

From her personal introduction to Brazilian film history, to her own attempts to fill gaps in her Latin American cinematic knowledge, Erika’s well-curated selections are a handy primer on the cinema of the fifth-largest country in the world, and its neighbors. These lists sit alongside her finely judged academic deep-dives into filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel, Glauber Rocha and Sarah Bernhardt.

Endlessly fascinated by how “the history of cinema is all intertwined”, Erika has also written on Jia Zhangke for Rosebud Club, is an Ana Carolina stan, enjoys collecting films directed by women featuring mirrors and women, and, like all of us, watched many remarkable movies during quarantine.

Suzana Amaral (left, rear) with cast and crew on the set of her film ‘A Hora da Estrela’ (Hour of the Star, 1985).

Olá, Erika. Please give our readers a brief introduction to your brilliant Introduction to Brazilian Film History list. I’m so happy to see this list getting popular! I’m a sociologist interested in film and gender studies. It’s been four years since I started studying Brazilian film history but my passion for film is much older. I tried to combine those two aspects in this list; films that are meaningful to me, historically relevant films, and historically relevant films erased from film-history books, for instance, those directed by women. The main purpose of my list is to highlight Brazilian women filmmakers’ fundamental contributions to Brazilian cinema.

I listed some absolute classics such as Hour of the Star by the late director Suzana Amaral, and other obscure gems such as The Interview, by Helena Solberg, which is a short feature released in 1966 alongside the development of Cinema Novo. Solberg’s work was hidden for decades. No-one knew about it. In Brazil, especially in the field of film studies and feminist theories, we are experiencing the blossoming of public debates, books being released, and film festivals that look specifically into films such as Solbergs’s and [those of] many other women directors, including Adélia Sampaio, the first Black female director to release a feature film in Brazil in 1984, Amor Maldito. We need these debates on Letterboxd as well, so I wrote this list in English.

As a representative of the passionate Brazilian community on Letterboxd, can you provide some insight into the site’s popularity where you live, especially for those of us who have not learned Brazilian Portuguese? I feel at home using Letterboxd. Everywhere I see Brazilian members posting reviews in both Portuguese and English. It’s a passionate community. It’s directly related to Twitter where Brazilian cinephiles are so active and productive, always sharing film memes (and even Letterboxd memes). Many content creators are using both Letterboxd and Twitter to showcase their podcasts, classes and film clubs. I once started a talk at a university for film students mentioning that my Masters research project came into life when I watched Amélia, showing my mind-blown Letterboxd review in the presentation. I follow many of those students now and it is so good to be connected. Brazilian Film Twitter and [the] Brazilian Letterboxd community are on fire!

Alexandre Rodrigues as Buscapé in ‘City of God’ (2002), directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund.

When uninitiated cinephiles think about Brazilian cinema, City of God is most likely top of the list. It’s the only Brazilian film to be nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards (despite co-director Kátia Lund being shut out!) and it’s the only Brazilian film in IMDb’s Top 250. After nearly 20 years, is it fair for City of God to represent Brazil? Of course, it is fair for City of God to represent Brazil! The only problem is if we think all Brazilian cinema is exclusively City of God. The film is entertaining, well-directed, has a great cast, but it has some flaws—for example, the aestheticization of violence and misery in Brazil, which scholar Ivana Bentes calls the “cosmetics of hunger”. Even so, it is a great film and it captivated Brazilian and international audiences. We shouldn’t limit any country to only one or two films.

If you enjoy City of God, check my list for Brazilian films directed by women in this period, which we call “Cinema da Retomada”—the renaissance of Brazilian cinema after the economic problems [that] hampered the film industry in the 1990s.

Selton Mello and Matheus Nachtergaele in beloved Brazilian comedy ‘O Auto da Compadecida’ (A Dog’s Will, 2000).

Several Brazilian films have stunningly high ratings on Letterboxd, giving them a place on many of our official lists. This includes A Dog’s Will, which is in the top ten of our all-time Top 250. On Letterboxd, A Dog’s Will reviews are cleanly divided into two camps: Brazilians (who absolutely love it) and everyone else (who fail to understand its popularity). What drives this home-team spirit? People truly love A Dog’s Will! It’s funny, has a fantastic rhythm, and it references many aspects of Brazilian culture, especially regarding north-eastern Brazilian culture. It was shown both as a film and as a miniseries infinite times on the largest and most popular television channel in Brazil. I can’t help mentioning that A Dog’s Will portrays Jesus Christ as a black man and Fernanda Montenegro as Brazil’s patron saint, Nossa Senhora Aparecida. It’s a brilliant moment for Matheus Nachtergaele, one of the greatest Brazilian actors ever.

Can you offer us a ‘Gringo’s Guide to A Dog’s Will’? I love the idea of a ‘Gringo’s Guide to A Dog’s Will’! You need to have good subtitles. The beauty of A Dog’s Will is that it is regional but it was made to be understandable to all of Brazil. You are going to need subtitles that [cover] the expressions, slang and proverbs—not mere translations. I would recommend watching some other films from north-eastern Brazil; Land of São Saruê, Love for Sale and Ó Paí Ó: Look at This. This can help you understand other social and cultural dimensions of Brazil beyond, for instance, City of God. A Dog’s Will is a movie that we would watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon with the family, so we have a strong sentimental attachment to it.

Leonardo Villar bears the weight of a cross in ‘The Given Word’ (1964).

Religion plays an important role in Brazilian cinema—for example, one of the few Brazilian films to win the Palme d’Or is the masterful The Given Word. Is this connection a part of what makes Brazilian cinema so potent for the local community? Religious symbolism and religious beliefs are extremely significant in Brazilian cinema. Its presence in cinema seems to address our daily challenges, rituals, history, but not always apologetically—as you can see in the despair of Zé do Burro in The Given Word. Religion does not seem to help him. There’s nowhere to run. The spiritual belief, as well as the cross itself, is a weight on his shoulders.

So you see, religion in Brazilian cinema is so potent because we can think beyond it, we can understand how people relate to their beliefs and how sometimes religion can fail a person. That’s what happens when a priest falls in love with a local girl (The Priest and the Girl), when a curse falls upon a man who turns against his people (The Turning Wind), when we teach fear and sin to young girls (Heart and Guts), when religion becomes a determining way of life that does not pay back efforts (Divine Love), when we accept the possibility of going against religious institutions (José Mojica Marin’s, AKA Coffin Joe, films).

We have all these movies fascinated by religion and how it creates meaning in our society. This is just from Christianity, because if we think of African and Indigenous heritage, we have another whole dimension of films to reflect upon, such as Noirblue and the documentary Ex-Pajé.

We have some Brazilian films in our Official Top 100 by Women Directors list, including The Second Mother, which sits in the top five with City of God. Who are some overlooked female Brazilian filmmakers that you want to celebrate and put on our map? Undoubtedly Juliana Rojas and Gabriela Amaral Almeida. They’re both on the horror scene and their work is astonishing. I strongly recommend Hard Labor and Rojas’ latest film Good Manners (if you are into werewolves). I can’t even pick one for Almeida—The Father’s Shadow and Friendly Beast are awesome. Beatriz Seigner’s The Silences—filmed in the frontier between Brazil, Colombia, and Peru—is really impactful. Glenda Nicácio’s films, co-directed with Ary Rosa, are among my favorite recent Brazilian films. Watch To the End immediately!

Eduardo Coutinho’s ‘Twenty Years Later’ (1984).

Brazilian documentarian Eduardo Coutinho has not one, not two, but three of his films in the Official Top 100 Documentaries list, including the all-time number one Twenty Years Later. Can you describe Coutinho’s significance in Brazil? Coutinho is a monument! Coutinho is an institution! Coutinho is everything. His works are of strong political importance, as you can see in Twenty Years Later. A movie he was making in 1964 was interrupted by the dictatorship installed in Brazil, and the main actor and activist, João Pedro Teixeira, was murdered, then his wife Elizabeth Teixeira had to flee and change her identity.

The documentary follows Coutinho and his crew looking for the actors from his movie from twenty years before. Later, his works developed many different tones and formats as you can see in Playing, an experimental portrayal of real women and their personal experiences side-by-side with actresses representing their real-life events as if in a play. Playing was one of the mandatory films to be analyzed for [my] Film School entrance exam, so I had to watch it a million times in 2017. His works are profound studies on Brazilian people and culture—piercing, but also delicate.

Contemporary documentaries are also doing well; Petra Costa’s latest, The Edge of Democracy, was nominated for an Oscar, and Emicida: AmarElo – It’s All for Yesterday was briefly Letterboxd’s highest-rated film late last year. How are these docs tapping into the zeitgeist? Those are both very different films. Emicida is part of a strong and structured movement against racism, against the marginalization of Black people, against limiting the access to art and culture to certain social groups, which is a common practice in the history of this country. Petra Costa’s documentary is another form of reflection on contemporary politics but in a melancholic tone since, recently in Brazil, we have been facing political storms such as the impeachment of ex-president Dilma Roussef, the imprisonment of ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (who has recently been declared not guilty), and rising far-right politicians. Not to mention another of our losses, the still-unsolved killing of Marielle Franco, a Black and lesbian political representative. These films have helped us face these difficulties and try to gather some hope for the future.

Bárbara Colen (center) and villagers in ‘Bacurau’ (2019).

How has Brazil’s cinema industry been affected by the one-two punch of the pandemic on top of ongoing social and political issues? And, can you talk a bit about how the acclaimed Cannes-winner Bacurau shocked the nation two years ago, and in what ways the film confronted these problems? This question is challenging because there’s so much happening. At this moment, we have 428,000 deaths [from] Covid and we are still mourning the Jacarézinho favela massacre in Rio de Janeiro. We have very troubled political representatives that are not fighting Covid in an adequate way to say the least, and we have had major cut downs in the cultural sector since, in Brazil, a lot of artistic and cultural projects are developed with governmental incentives. It is hard to produce art without institutional support and it is very complicated to produce art during this tragic pandemic.

Right before this chaos, we had Bacurau. Actually, I have a pleasant anecdote about my experience with Bacurau. Everybody was talking about how it was going to premiere at a special event with the presence of its directors. We had some expectations regarding the premiere because it was going to be free of charge and it would take place at the heart of São Paulo, the Avenida Paulista, in an immense theater.

We arrived at 1pm to form a line and people were there already. I discovered through Twitter that the first boy in line was hungry so I gave him a banana. I had brought a lot of snacks. The line was part of the event, and it got so long you couldn’t believe it. It was great to see so many friends and people gathered to see a movie—and such an important movie! There weren’t enough seats for everyone but they exhibited the film in two different rooms so more people could enjoy it.

I love everything about that day and I think it helps me to have some perspective on cinema, culture, politics and what we can accomplish by working collectively—people uniting to fight dirty politicians, people joining forces to fight social menaces, generosity, empathy, fight for justice and the power of the masses.

The life of 17th-century nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is explored in María Luisa Bemberg’s ‘Yo, la Peor de Todas’ (I, the Worst of All, 1990).

Would you like to highlight some films from your neighboring countries? I have been watching some fascinating films from South America. Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés has an extensive filmography and his films were the first to portray characters speaking Aymara. I really like his Ukamau. I also love Argentine director María Luisa Bemberg’s films, such as I, the Worst of All. I’m currently studying Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona, from Guatemala. I have no words to say how incendiary this film is. You’ll have to watch it for yourself!

Who are three Brazilian members that you recommend we all follow? Firstly, I recommend you follow my beautiful partner in crime and cinema, Pedro Britto. Secondly, a fantastic painter and avid researcher of Maya Deren and Agnès Varda, my adored friend Tainah Negreiros. Finally, I recommend you follow Gustavo Menezes, who is the author of many excellent lists [about] Brazilian cinema. He’s also the co-founder of a streaming platform called Cinelimite, which everyone should take a look at.

Related content

Silvia’s Cinema Novo list

Gabriela’s Cinema Brasileiro master list

Serge’s list of films that have won the Grande Otelo (Grande Prêmio de Cinema Brasileiro for Best Film)

Follow Erika on Letterboxd, Tumblr and in print

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

#letterboxd #how i letterboxd #erika amaral #film academic #film study #feminist film theory #feminist film #feminist theory #brazilian cinema #cinema o brasilia #Cinema Brasileiro #Brazilian film #suzana amaral

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icantd0math · 4 years

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My tips on scoring 95%+ in your class 10 boards

This can be general exam tips for any kind of exam, but these are specific learnings I got through studying for my cbse class 10 boards.

First off a lil intro- I got 482/500 in my boards w a 98 in science, math and social studies. I’m actually pretty proud of my performance and I will say that a lot of hard work has been done to get to this point.

Let’s start off with some general tips

- think of every single chapter test/internal examination in your school as if it is the final board exam. Push to give your best. Go the extra mile. Trust me it makes a lot of difference.

- Be 100% thorough with your ncert textbooks. Do not slack off on this because book back questions for science and math are really important.

- Understand and analyse the mistakes you make in your internal exams. I’d recommend keeping a small notebook where you mention and note down the mistakes you’ve made. You can understand your shortcomings and focus on those parts.

- Plan your days properly especially when you get study holidays. Don’t waste your time, and ensure you study the subjects you’re weak in.

- I don’t have any particular tips for languages other than doing a LOT of writing practice because the most common way to loose mark in second languages (be it anything) is spelling mistakes.

- Past year papers are your best friend.

Math

- RD Sharma’s math guide book was a literal life saver. I finished almost every problem there and don’t worry you’re going to have a lot of time to do it.

- Practice, practice and more practice. Math was probably the trickiest subject and spent most of my time on it.

- Write every single step down. Scoring in cbse depends on step marks. So understand the marking scheme for every type of question. Write formulas down, write your assumption for x, write down your entire thought process. Imagine your explaining a certain sum to a kid and present it that way.

- Time your practice tests. Every single one of my classmates struggled with this. Make sure you spend only a certain amount of time for certain section and move on fast. My usual way of attempting the paper was in this particular order:

1. 1 marks - 15 mins

2. 4 marks- 50 mins

3. 3 marks- 50 mins

4. 2 marks - 30 mins

The rest to check and attempt sums I may have left because I didn’t know at first.

- don’t slack off on math. Spend your free time on this and it will pay off. After you understand the concepts properly math will get really easy. 10th grade math is easier than 9th grade if I’m being honest.

-Optional exercise is a scam. I repeat, a scam. Your teacher will force you to do it, just buckle up and do it. I can’t say it’s absolutely important but it definitely enhances concept understanding.

- After you get a hang of all the concepts, practice ncert exemplar because it challenges your brain to apply concepts you’ve already learnt in a higher level.

- Look through past papers to note what kind of questions are being asked for 4 marks and other higher level questions. After practising a lot you’ll notice a pattern and you’ll pretty much be able to predict the questions.

Science

- I used Arihant All in one guide for science and let me tell you that is a lifesaver.

- in text and book back questions are really important.

- For science, exemplar questions are more important than in math and will definitely be asked. Practice them.

- Write your long answers in bullet points esp for biology.

- I made a booklet of questions for myself. (For Chem and bio) It’s really useful to review in the last min. Writing down questions helps you to understand the concept from multiple perspectives.

- Please please make sure you completely understand the concepts in physics especially. Don’t try to memorise, questions will not be direct.

- I used khan academy to learn most of my physics and it was really well explained. Other YouTube teachers deserve a round of applause for how much they’ve saved my ass.

- I also used S Chand’s guidebook a little because it explains the concepts from the very beginning as if you’re a toddler. Very helpful to gain better understanding but not necessary at all.

- Do not forget to practice the diagrams in bio.

Social studies

- this is such an exhausting subject. So much theory 😫

- I used Arihant All in one for this too. Using this CLEARLY gave me an advantage over my peers. 100% will recommend. Using the guidebook gave me structured answers and access to previous years questions.

- History is pretty interesting for the most part. Understand the years and flow of events. Note down the main points of every single subtopic because any random sub topic can be asked as a question.

- Making/drawing Graphic organisers is helpful to arrange your thoughts.

- Write key words down.

- Geography(I hated it) was pretty tiring. after reading the chapter once you’ll get a hang of the key ideas and main questions that can come. There’s nothing tricky in that.

- Repeat and write down main points in geography tho. Because the only hard part is to retain all the information. Make sure you study everything because data orientated one mark question will be asked.

- Democratic politics was an easy part too. I literally studied most of it from the guide book. The basic advice applies here.

- For economics- read every book and corner of your textbook. because since it has such little content, anything can be asked and you can easily loose your marks in the 1 mark section.

- Please practice map a lot of times. I’ll repeat it- a LOT of times. This is where most students loose marks. Look at the list of maps given on the cbse website, and practice according to that.

Hope you get a lot of studying and practice done because this is a tough year. It is really easy to emerge victorious and all one needs is dedication. You need to make sure you give your best. Please try not to compare yourself to others( I know it is hard). Devote your time properly. Hope this helped you and all the best!

#cbse #class 10 #boards #india #studyspo #study for exams #exam season

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pastelsapphy · 5 years

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Why does Sylvian hates himself?

(This ended up being really long whoops)

*cracks knuckles* time to talk about my boy

[All quotes taken from the Fire Emblem Fandom Wiki, so there may be some slight inaccuracies]

Okay so first off Sylvain grew up in a shitty environment, to say the absolute least, and that fucks with your head.

First: his brother. He attempted to kill Sylvain on multiple occasions as kids because Sylvain had a Crest. And Sylvain just like, accepts that??? You can see that a lot in his A support with Byleth. He talked about being shoved in a well and being left on a mountain in winter by his brother, and almost immediately followed up with “I have no right to complain” because he, in theory, got lucky: he got the Crest.

And you figure, he would’ve grown up apologizing and made to feel guilty just for existing. You can see in his dialogue against Miklan, in chapter five:

Miklan: Hmph! Hurry up and die already. If not for you… If it hadn’t been for you…

Sylvain: Shut up! I’m so tired of hearing that. You’ve always blamed me for something that isn’t my fault.

He’s definitely been saying that since they were kids. That kinda stuff really fucks with your sense of self-worth after a while.

Then we have the rest of his family. We don’t hear anything about his mother, or much about his father, but we can infer some things about the latter: Margrave Gautier disowned, abandoned, and cast aside his first son in favor of the one with a Crest. Considering the dialogue about “everything being taken away” from Miklan, it’s possible that he was being raised to be the next Margrave, because someone had to inherit–with Crests becoming less common, who knows how long it would’ve taken to get a kid with one, if they got one at all? They needed a backup plan. And then Sylvain came along, with the minor Crest of Gautier, and suddenly Miklan didn’t exist. That’s fucked up, and it shows how little Margrave Gautier cared about his kids. I honestly doubt he showed Sylvain any kind of affection or attention growing up, and probably only interacted with him for inheritance- and Crest-related reasons. To him, Sylvain was a walking Crest, not a person (Sylvain’s fear of people only ever wanting him for his Crest, and not as a person in any respect, had to come from somewhere).

(And, if I can add a bit of an aside, I feel like this is the root of his philandering. Makes me think of the whole “even negative attention is better than nothing” kinda thing. You figure, Little Sylvain would have been incredibly touch-starved and desperate for attention. Humans are a social species and we literally need attention and affection to live well. I mean, he flirted with Ingrid’s grandmother when he was eight. I can only imagine what he said/did if Ingrid remembered it, considering she would have been five or six at the time. And kids that young don’t really know any better yet. Poor kid probably just wanted attention.)

(Additional aside that came to mind while writing this: I wonder if seeing the arrangement between Ingrid and Glenn affected this at all? Like yeah marriages in that kind of setting were purely political and such, but Ingrid was engaged to Glenn because (a) House Fraldarius was a powerful, well-to-do noble family and House Galatea really needed the resources, and (b) Ingrid was desirable as a wife because she had a Crest. Of course, we don’t know the exact circumstances of the arrangement, but we can infer from her other prospects. Sylvain still would have essentially seen Ingrid being used for leverage because of her Crest.)

So long before the events of the game, Sylvain is already pretty fucked up, emotionally. Trauma does that to you, especially when you have an “everyone else has it worse and I, actually, got lucky, so it doesn’t count and I’m not allowed to feel bad about it” complex. Survivor’s guilt is a hell of a drug lemme tell you. Sylvain has already internalized that,

He’s only good for his Crest

Any negative feelings about his Crest don’t matter, because those without have it worse.

No one will ever truly see him as a person–he’s just a Crest.

Already, that’s a pretty fucked up view of oneself.

By the time he gets to Garreg Mach, he has a carefully crafted persona set up: He’s an asshole, a liar, a serial flirt and cheater, dumb as a box of rocks, and a self-proclaimed “good-for-nothing.” In his B support with Dedue, you hear that people describe him as “indefensibly worthless,” which is followed by,

Sylvain: Indefensibly? Heh, that’s a bit harsh.

Dedue: I already knew your reputation concerning women. But these new rumors deprive you of all redemption. I did try to correct them. But I doubt I was believed.

Sylvain: Well, thank you all the same. Listen. You don’t need to worry what people think about me. As you well know, it’s not easy to correct misunderstandings or change people’s minds. And if I’m going to behave so badly, it seems misunderstandings are inevitable.

He doesn’t even argue, just kinda brushes it off and accepts that’s just How He Is (listen, Sylvain can definitely be an asshole at times, but I have to agree with that being harsh). He doesn’t want people to expect anything from him (well, not anything good). In his supports with Annette, he’s shown to be pretty smart, but admits he hides it because the pressure it puts on him is suffocating. He kinda goes out of his way to hide his more redeeming qualities like that. Also on that point, we have this bit from his B support with Ashe,

Sylvain: […] My advice on the whole thing is just to follow your instincts. That’s what I do. If someone’s in trouble, I help them. You don’t need to be a valiant knight to know that. Doesn’t matter if the person is an ugly old man or the cutest girl you’ve ever seen, you help ‘em.

Ashe: So, you’re saying…

Sylvain: Everybody’s the same, deep down. It’s our job to help anyone who needs it.

Ashe: Ah!

Sylvain: What? You’re looking at me funny. Did I say something wrong?

Ashe: No! No. I’m just surprised, that’s all. You’re actually a much better person than I thought.

“You’re actually a much better person than I thought.” Several of his supports have some variation of this line. Usually after he does something kind. And I mean, Sylvain is a kind person, under the philandering. Most of his supports involve him helping others out somehow.

He helps Dimitri with the girl situation (he kinda got him into it in the first place but I digress)

His whole C with Dedue is pretty much “racism is stupid and I’m going to be your friend, fuck what everyone else says.”

In his supports with Felix and Ashe, he helps them out in battle, at a detriment to himself (You can also throw Byleth in here, during their A support, but he was a jerk in their C and B).

In his Annette supports, she calls him out for going easy on her during training. He admits he was, but only because he didn’t want her to feel bad because she puts so much effort into her work while he “sorta gets by on [his] wits”

Okay I need to say how much I love his supports with Bernadetta???? He does genuinely try to compliment her work, and when he sees speaking to Bernie face-to-face won’t work, he goes out of his way to write a nice and well-worded review (a fairly lengthy one, according to Bernie) and compliment of her work–which Bernadetta takes to much better than she did talking in person. And this is one of the few supports where he doesn’t try to flirt. He’s just trying to give her genuine compliments on her writing and goes out of his way to do it without upsetting her.

His support with Hilda could go a few ways, but he did return the books for her and he did apparently get yelled at for something he didn’t do and didn’t even try to deflect that. And it seems that’s not even why he confronts her later: it’s because of how her actions were detrimental to other people (”And those books you left in your room for so long? Teachers and classmates needed those. So stop lying, and maybe stop being quite as selfish too.”). It’s not until she asks if the librarian said anything that he’s like “Oh, yeah, they yelled at me.”

And a fair amount of people still see him as “indefensibly worthless.” Sylvain often goes out of his way to help people, but he tends to brush it off and keep it lowkey.

I got a little off track here, but my point for this is Sylvain projects an outward appearance of being a really shitty, deplorable person. Almost everyone he has supports with is GENUINELY surprised when they realize that no, he’s not as bad as all the rumors about him imply. Sylvain just doesn’t really want people to know. And, as much as he plays it off like he doesn’t care, that kind thing gets to you after a while. So everyone except a handful of close friends seeing him in such a negative light? It filters in eventually, even if you’re not already emotionally fucked up.

Another thing I want to point out: A lot of times, it seems like Sylvain does not give a shit about what happens to him. A few of his support conversations involve him taking a blow in battle to protect someone else (and his attitude afterward is “better me than them”). Reading his A+ with Felix, “…protecting me like that. You’re so weak and yet you always… always…” this is definitely something Sylvain has a habit of doing. Additionally, we have one of his goal requests: “The best way to impress people is to save them by diving into harm’s way. That’s what a Great Knight does, yeah?” In true Sylvain style he covers it with “I just want to impress people” but he’s still devoting his training to being the guy who jumps in front of everyone else to tank the hit. Fully committing to that kind of thing takes more than just a shallow want to “impress people.” Then there’s his Monastery line to Byleth, toward the end of Verdant Wind I believe?, where he says he fights like he wants to die. Which…. yeah.

Another line of his that sticks with me: “burn until we meet again,” after defeating an enemy post-time skip. A friend of mine pointed out it might just be dramatic, but I think about that a lot. Does he think he’s going to the 3h equivalent of hell??? Does he think he’s that terrible of a person??

Uh this turned out to be a lot longer than i thought. So I guess to sum up:

Sylvain grew up internalizing the idea that he doesn’t have any worth as a person. Everything he is and has is related to his Crest. Everything that people feel towards him is related to his Crest and not who he is as a person.

He internalized the idea that because he has a Crest, that he’s not allowed to be upset about any of this, because he got lucky.

Growing up with Miklan’s abuse, he was definitely made to feel guilty about simply daring to exist. So he grows up hating himself.

He developed an outward persona that only reinforced these ideas–he makes and lets people believe he’s a piece of shit.

His attitude in battle shows how little he seems to care about himself.

tl;dr: Sylvain grew up without any love or affection, and was severely emotionally fucked up by his family, which complicated his relationships with other people and his view of himself as a person and his worth. He purposely projected an image of himself to support this, letting people believe he’s a shit person and doesn’t argue back because he feels it’s well-deserved. He doesn’t seem to think he’s actually worth anything. Sylvain, of course, like all people, has negative traits–that’s just part of being human. But his sense of self has been so warped and twisted over the years that he can’t seem to do anything but hate himself.

#fire emblem three houses #sylvain jose gautier #sylvain gautier #fe sylvain #fire emblem sylvain #three houses #fire emblem three houses spoilers #fe16 spoilers #three houses spoilers #fe16 #feth #fe three houses #asks #anon #mine #long post #i have a lot of feelings about sylvain okay #abuse mention #abuse mention cw

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mitigatedchaos · 3 years

Text

Review: SAC_2045

(~3,700 words, 15 minutes)

This post will contain some minor spoilers for SAC_2045.

Summary: You may have thought SAC_2045 was a poor entry in the Ghost in the Shell franchise - actually, it's just intended for younger audiences.

Previously: Standalone Complex 202045:1-4 (superseded)

-☆☆☆-

And what did you think of the remaining episodes of GitS:SAC_2045?

[ @irradiate-space ]

Standalone Complex

There's a certain indescribable feeling associated with Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex as a work, an artistic touch related to the director associated with it, independent of other considerations. SAC_2045 has it, which isn't too surprising since Kenji Kamiyama is back.

SAC_2045 is Standalone Complex. For a brief moment, while watching it, I inhabited my pre-2016 personality and outlook. I can't tell you how much that means to me. Since the arrival of streaming I've tended to bingewatch series, but on the first run-through I decided not to bingewatch this one.

If you approach this show as season 4 of Standalone Complex (Solid State Society being season 3), it's underwhelming. Now, viewing it again, it's become obvious that a conventional season 4 of Standalone Complex was never the intent of SAC_2045 to begin with.

For those of you who have delayed until now, the English dub has been uploaded - it released without one due to the pandemic. They bring back a number of the voice actors from the excellent Standalone Complex dub, though having already watched it with subtitles, I didn't feel the need to confirm the dub's quality.

Sustainable War

To properly describe a new theory of war is the same thing as to invent it. While the idea of war as a for-profit industry has been kicked around for some time, it's generally assumed that this is a kind of parasitic relationship on the part of the war-making industry.

As time goes on, warfare becomes more abstract (partly because warfare happens where it can happen), much like society itself is becoming more abstract as information moves more quickly and humanity gains access to more energy.[1] In SAC_2045, "Sustainable War" is part of the context of the world and its current issues, but we aren't really told how it works - if it's similar to contemporary information warfare and a blurring of the lines between state and non-state actors, it's bound to be quite confusing.

I believe my earlier assessment of "Sustainable War" is correct. The key feature of sustainable war, the reason they say it's safe if you leave it to the experts, is likely that it involves AIs constantly forecasting against each other and moving units around with few direct confrontations. The goal would be to lock in a victory without having to fire a shot, except for small skirmishes that don't escalate to major incidents (due to the AI forecasting).

The presence of armed separatist movements even in Japan may also indicate that the ruling institutional bodies are engaged in a kind of Post-International Politics,[2] which treats all international relations as fundamentally existing between subnational entities - however, I believe that later information suggests this wasn't their original intent.

What makes it "sustainable"? Since if done correctly, very little is actually physically destroyed, the cost is less than conventional warfare, and thus the war can continue indefinitely. Why does it threaten humanity with destruction? Because there's an awful lot of military hardware waiting for someone to actually pull the trigger.

Season 1: Ep. 2

So what is the intent of the series' creators? I think they may be telling us through this dialogue between Togusa and Section Chief Daisuke Aramaki in episode 2.

Aramaki: Seems time has toughened you up. Togusa: Is that supposed to be a compliment? Aramaki: It is if you want it to be. Togusa: Then thanks for the kind words. “I made the right decision by choosing this line of work over my marriage.” That’s what you’re saying? Aramaki: Perhaps. [...] Togusa: They're bringing back Section 9? [...] Aramaki: But my takeaway from the proposal is this: The PM's reason for the urgent reforming of Section 9 takes priority over his personal motives. I believe his true objective is meeting the Americans' demands for the dispatch of special resources. Togusa: So it's as the Liberals feared? An American-born Prime Minister would be no more than an American puppet? Aramaki: I've yet to meet him in person, so I can't really say. But this is an opportunity to have the Major and the rest of you undertake a major operation for me once more. Togusa: What sort of op? Aramaki: Over the past few years, I have searched for an answer on how to deal with a society in turmoil. I'd like you people to lay the groundwork that will help the next generation find that answer. Togusa: I don't know what a man in my position can contribute, but I'll humbly offer whatever assistance I can.

Those of us who cried, Kamiyama, tell us the future once more! based on Standalone Complex's prophetic analysis of a memetic crime wave were bound to be disappointed. SAC_2045 is less rooted in the near future than in the now - cyberbullying, endless war amidst historic prosperity, employment suppressed by automation, savings eaten up by the complex machinations of finance, and a breakdown of national borders? That's today.

Those of us who hoped for a Ghost in the Shell: Unicorn, a psychically overpowering work that synthesizes the full body of Ghost in the Shell into a single coherent form to elevate us to a higher level of understanding, should have tempered our expectations. To reach each new philosophical level is more difficult than the last - to achieve that with Ghost in the Shell of all things would have required a multidisciplinary genius near the limits of current understanding.

Kenji Kamiyama is just an anime director. And anyhow, Gundam Unicorn was a book before it was an animated series. And who among us even knew we'd have to write a book before 2015? Ghost in the Shell was well-understood enough, so I instead wrote 25,000 words worth of hypothetical country and became a blogger, like the infamous Scott Alexander.[3]

If we approach SAC_2045 from the lens that it's a humbler work designed for younger audiences, however, some of the creative decisions make more sense.

Purin

Just how old is Purin, the MIT grad who joins the team later on? If I had to guess, that's '23歳' on that profile she provides, and Ishikawa notes that she 'skipped a few grades' on her way to a PhD. But she acts like someone a lot younger. She's enthusiastic and we're assured she's intelligent, but seems to be lacking social training. For example, she makes the mistake of assembling an era-accurate music player for Batou combined with a playlist after consulting the Tachikomas to find out what he listens to. There are two ways to take this.

The first is that she's intended as a relateable character for someone who would make this class of mistake. It's the sort of mistake I might have made at age 13-14, meaning that the show would probably be aimed at someone that age or lower. Overly enthusiastic, doesn't understand romantic relationships, impulsive, poor reading of boundaries / poor modelling of others outside of certain domains, impulsive in a way that causes social screw-ups? Yeah that could certainly apply to an ADHD kid of about that age.

And all of a sudden the tone of the first five episodes with the gun-fighting, the literal Agent Smith, the decision to place the focus in America, and even the mystery of the series being much simpler than Standalone Complex 2nd Gig's plot regarding Asian refugees in Japan make a lot more sense. This is Ghost in the Shell for kids!

Wow, I didn't think that could be done!

...is what I should say, except that around the time I acquired the ability to futurist shitpost, and I used that ability to predict that it would.

Purin II

The second reading is that the youth of the future are fucked up. She probably has some tricked out modifications, both cybernetic and genetic. Now usually you would tell someone to try to become a well-rounded human being. But...

The global economy has crashed. Batou mistakes her for a robot - creatures that look like pretty young women are a dime a dozen. In the dating market, she would be competing with full sensory immersion VR pornography on the one hand, and at the upper end of society where cybernetics are more widely available, likely women with a similar appearance but decades more experience and professional standing.

Note that in the original Standalone Complex, the team take down an 80-year-old Russian spy with the full prosthetic body of a 20-year-old. Full cyborgs aren't common then, nor are they in SAC_2045 (though cyberbrains are ubiquitous), but if the economy recovers that may change, and the sector she's trying to get in to (full-time salaried government rather than marginal private employment it would seem) is going to be very tough to enter either way.

So Purin may have to be over-optimized even to just appear on the screen. In fact, she says,

"Just so I could work at Section 9, I moved most of my sentimental memories to external storage."

Youch! It's no wonder she's socially maladjusted. Just how much of her social learning (in particular key events necessary to rebuild logical inferences on the boundaries of behavior on the fly) has she locked away?

Purin III

But you know who Purin looks like? Notorious internet personality, Gamer Girl Bath Water seller, and IRL video game character Belle Delphine.[4]

Or rather, it's the other way around - 2D animation compresses real detail into suggestive abstraction, letting your mind fill in the rest. Going from those impossible 2D shapes to 3 dimensions creates strange results, like training your machine learning algorithm on the salient features of a cat's face, applying it to human shape, and putting pink hair on the result. Belle Delphine adopts that otherworldly kind of appearance as part of her act.

Technically, this a stylistic choice. Within the framework of SAC_2045, this is what "a 23-year-old female" looks like.

Purin is in fact so non-threatening that her big red coat obscures her figure. I'm gonna go with younger audience. Now if only I could remember what pronoun she uses.[5/☆]

Motoko

With a full prosthetic body, outward signs of human-like aging are almost an artistic expression, much like in a world with cheap tissue engineering, visible scars are a choice.

When she was first introduced in the original Ghost in the Shell manga, we don't know how old Motoko Kusanagi is. It was once said that her name is analogous to "Jane Excalibur," which in English would be an obvious alias. In the first movie (from 1995), she's cool, almost cold and robotic.

In the original Standalone Complex, Motoko has a more mature personality than in the manga, but she has a clearly adult look by the standards of anime. Seriously, check out this fantastic character design (combat suit), although admittedly the better-known "leather jacket and bathing suit" design is more ridiculous, fashion-wise.[6] (Fortunately, she gets pants in her much more stylish second season outfit.)

ARISE starts off with a young Motoko Kusanagi in a chaotic post-war period before the Section 9 we know was assembled. This shows in her character design, but it really shows in her personality. This was actually why I had joked about an even earlier Ghost in the Shell.

There is a sense in which the 2017 live-action movie's Motoko is even younger. Scarlett Johansson is a killer cyborg with amnesia. She doesn't even have one day of formal combat training.

Motoko 2045

Ilya Kuvshinov designed SAC_2045's Motoko Kusanagi.

Yes, that Ilya Kuvshinov. You could be forgiven for thinking this is a teenager that hardboiled assassins Saitou and Ishikawa in the background have been hired to bodyguard.

Despite this, Atsuko Tanaka has resumed her role as Motoko's voice actress. Standalone Complex's Motoko looked 25 and felt mid-30s. SAC_2045's Motoko looks 16 and has the voice and attitude of 40.

This may make more sense than you might think.

Through Whose Eyes?

Throughout much of Ghost in the Shell as a franchise, Togusa, the only non-cyborg on the team, who is pulled from a police department instead of a military background, tends to be character used to help the people of our time relate to the future. He's the guy that doesn't know the things we also don't know, so in explaining concepts to Togusa they're explained to the audience.

In SAC_2045, most of the team are off doing cool cyborg things in America. Aramaki (whose in-world function is to create the bureaucratic environment within which Section 9 operates) tasks Togusa with finding them. The original Standalone Complex first aired in 2003. It's been 17 years since it was created - a similar situation to finding someone that reached adulthood who was born after 9/11. And during this time, Togusa's life has changed - the family man is now separated from his wife. And the world has changed - Togusa is now working for a private security firm. Togusa's role in the first five episodes isn't to guide the new viewers.

His purpose is to guide or stand-in for the old viewers.

The New Viewers

"Do you still hold a grudge against the Major and the others for leaving you behind?"

For the original viewers, SAC_2045 is your world, too. Togusa is there. Togusa is you.

The new viewers are Purin. Enthusiastic and smart but awkward and not confident in their skills. How could they measure up to these much more talented and experienced characters? (Also consider who is going to watch any sort of Ghost in the Shell - it's probably going to be a moderately bright and introverted kid, who is the kind of person that may be more comfortable socializing with people outside of their age band.)

But Motoko is visually separated from the rest of Section 9. Batou, Saitou, Ishikawa, Boma... they all have a much more adult look in keeping with their appearance in previous versions of Ghost in the Shell. What gives?

Batou is sort of a cool adult male figure - this is actually a pretty natural use of the character and his sense of humor as previously established in other Ghost in the Shell properties. We especially see this come through in 「PIE IN THE SKY - First Bank Robbery」 episode, with the old folks and the 21st century bank robbery.

Motoko's difference in appearance is because she's acting as a bridge between the two. The new viewer (as represented by Purin) is supposed to grow into being like Motoko as they gain confidence and experience. (The characters aren't each limited to a single role, of course.)

But SAC_2045 is still a work that's shared between two groups, similar to how the excellent Into the Spiderverse features both the teenage Miles Morales and an older Peter Parker that has lost his way, with the loss of the vibrant young adult Peter Parker being what starts the plot going.

The Last Quarter

With this framework, the rest of the work should express its nature as targeted at a younger audience itself. Watch the last few episodes through this lens and you'll see how much sense it makes. One takes place at a school. Even the bizarre 3D style that resembles recent video games makes more sense. If we take Togusa's earlier conversation with Aramaki as a discussion of SAC_2045 itself, later on there's even a sort of acknowledgement that Ghost in the Shell is a difficult work for someone of a young age.

So with that context in mind, does it work?

Standalone Complex

If I remember correctly, years ago, when I was perhaps 15 or 16, I was watching a tiny CRT television some time after midnight, and I saw the thirteenth episode of the original Standalone Complex - NOT EQUAL. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. I was immediately taken by it. And, from what I remember, I immediately understood it.

It was as though it were made just for me.[7]

To me, Ghost in the Shell is like a textbook. I thought that as a creator who has reached a place where I am able to be involved in that kind of work, I'm in a position where I have to convey its contents to a younger audience. Well, I knew it would be a lot of work, but I figured it would be my way of giving back to Ghost in the Shell. I thought that I needed to accept the baton and offer Ghost in the Shell to a young audience, to the same degree that Ghost in the Shell raised me to be who I am.

- Tow Ubukata, in a 2015 interview, regarding ARISE

For many people, Ghost in the Shell is a profound influence. I felt that it lifted me to a new level of understanding.

SAC_2045

But what about SAC_2045?

I can't view Ghost in the Shell with new eyes. When I first saw it, I wasn't the kind of person that casually memes futuristic ethical dilemmas as a means of practicing politics.

Compared to the anime I watched back when I was 13, would I have watched SAC_2045? Yes. Is it more philosophically and politically sophisticated? Yes. Would I have found it memorable? I think so.

Would a 13-year these days watch it? That's difficult to assess. I bet someone who does data science for Netflix could tell us, if they wanted. I'm sure Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki are considering the same thing.

2017

How does it stack up compared to the rest of the franchise?

For most enthusiasts it's going to be one of the weaker entries, though it certainly does a better job explaining itself than ARISE.

Compare it to 2017's live action movie, however, and I think we'll find it isn't the weakest. The reason is that the writers of Ghost in the Shell (2017) decided to tell a story about bodily consent in which becoming a cyborg is a form of trauma. On some level this may have been a reasonable decision, but they didn't commit to the concept sufficiently fully to execute it well enough to carry the movie - and simultaneously, they dumbed down parts of the regular Ghost in the Shell material for American audiences. As a result the movie flopped both financially and artistically - except for the visuals.

In fact, I wrote a sequence of posts (1, 2, 3, 4) on how to rewrite the live action movie as an actual Ghost in the Shell property. I feel no need to do so for SAC_2045 - and I can't even think of what changes would need to be made.

I look forward to the second season.

-☆☆☆-

[1] It's short, but that's a concept in this post. "Advanced by Left-Wing theorists, Ninth Generation warfare sees all acts as existing on a spectrum of political violence. Most acts of ninth generation warfare consist of extreme pranks."

[2] If we accept the idea of "Fifth-Generation Warfare" as motivated by a desire to prevent the enemy from using their conventional military assets, then a corresponding theory of international politics would involve preventing enemy factions within foreign governments from taking control of those governments' institutions - effectively treating all countries as in continuous level of conflict analogous to a soft civil war.

[3] There is a kind of technique to this, but in my case I substituted ADHD for raw IQ and conscientiousness, which is part of why my posts are so much shorter than, for instance, Moldbug's. In any case, technically, Scott's blog posts on the matter amount to roughly a mere 11,600 words, and the book of the black forest amounts to approximately 26,000 words (which I'm told is entertaining reading), but I'm sure if we go looking we can find an additional 15,000 words worth of worldbuilding from a man known for writing 16,000 word blog posts.

[4] Would it be more of a legal liability to sell regular water with GGBW branding, or actual GGBW that could prove to be a potential health hazard?

[5/☆] There's some future strand lurking beneath the surface here that I can't quite put into words; a culturally divergent moe meltdown where an appearance this ridiculous becomes normalized among some sub-population. To quote the Funko Pop Hatred post,

There are questions about the anatomy of anime people and their internal organs, and particularly about what sort of impact-dampening alien meta-material their softer bits are made out of, but at least homo sapiens gokuensis looks like it’s a branch off a similar starting hominid! Whatever transhuman engineering company was responsible for manufacturing the creatures in the typical harem anime has some weird ideas about human beings, but we’re clearly in their ancient lineage somewhere.

Under Late Safetyism, everyone is a declawed catgirl.

Anyhow, I don't want to alarm you, but I can't guarantee that this won't be the future somewhere. Both Purin and Belle Delphine resemble Xiaoice, "The AI Girlfriend Seducing China's Lonely Men." (2020)

[6] Motoko's ridiculous outfits are a major flex on the non-cyborgs, who aren't indifferent to ambient temperature and whose natural bodies may have unflattering features. Similarly wild fashions can exist in places like Second Life, a 3D digital platform with mostly user-uploaded content. Presumably they're also a flex on every Japanese salaryman who still has to dress like a normal guy.

[7] "It's as though it were made just for me" is also how I feel about the original game Mirror's Edge. Its follow-up, Catalyst, is also a personal favorite of mine.

#miti does media #longpost #flagpost #ghost in the shell #sac_2045 #standalone complex #review

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comparatist · 3 years

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Bengal Renaissance:

The idea of renaissance caters the concept of a glorious past, a history of deterioration in the intermediate period and a journey towards the restoration of the lost glory through various means of societal foundations and fields. The word ‘renaissance’ holds the literal meaning of rebirth or reawakening. The line of thought started gaining popularity in Bengal prominently in 19th century, though the distribution was unequal. The literatures of that time entertained the idea thoroughly though the absence of equality in the distribution created a target audience who resembled nothing more than an echo chamber. The concept of renaissance or reawakening was mostly pushed by the upper class, upper caste men of the society, often writers. India never had its own history to be precise. The model was launched by the British writers. They had divided their own in the column of ‘ancient,’ ‘middle,’ ‘modern,’ and tried to use the own template which writing the history of India. Hence the idea of ‘middle age as the dark era’ was subjective. To the east Asia, this time was a reminder of golden hours while in the European context, this time was a throwback to the chaotic hours, when the British started to decide the history of India, it used its usual font of depicting the Muslim countries as the invaders and the Muslim population as the ‘others.’ It was these writers, these gatekeepers of cultural virtues, who made their work easier, for the texts these writers wrote, propagated the idea of the ‘foreign savior.’ Since the Europeans were on the losing side of the wars which is evident from their depiction of their description of the era, the wars took place in, they adopted the path of willful amnesia. Willful amnesia or a self-initiated effort to internalize the idea of forgetting, as a defense mechanism made them to label the ages of religious wars as ‘dark’ and writing their history accordingly. When the same procedure was used on the Indian history, the idea was taken up by the writers with immense socio-economic privilege, to write about the restoration of the glorious past of the country, that is the ‘Hindu’ era, before it was invaded by the Muslims and tried to build up a cultural resistance that way. This created the ‘otherization’ on a prominent level and the race who held the roots of this system of segregation, i,e the Europeans, acted out their process of colonization as the foreign saviors. As the process got initiated without any major violent face-off and as they posing as mere traders went successful, in no time they were able to establish themselves as a trustworthy assistant in thwarting the rule of the ‘Muslim invaders.’

‘Anandamath’ penned down by Bankimchandra Chattyopadhyay displays the characteristics of a 19th century novel, as discussed before. The influence of Sanskrit in Bankim’s life isn’t unknown. From learning the Sanskritic tradition and remaining in the contact of the scholars of Bhatpara to reviewing Sanskritic publications in ‘Bangadarshan’ and referring Sanskritic notions in his writings including ‘Anandamath’ are examples of how he valued the traditional ways of life and how strong was his urge to restore the ‘lost Hindu glory.’ ‘Anandamath’ becomes the perfect reflection of that. The novel keeps the famine background during Mir Jafar’s rule which was a cunning motive by the novelist to portray a situation of anarchy during the Muslim rule, thereby suggesting that a foreigner can only loot from the land and can never do any good for the countrymen and are only here to destroy the cultural heritage. “Mir Jafar took opium and slept, the British took in the money and issued receipts, and Bengal wept and went to ruin.” With clarity, the sentence exempts the British from the guilt of torturing the common folks in collecting revenues and places the entire responsibility of the well being of the Bengalis on the Muslim ruler to support the claim of ‘foreign saviors’ in a very subtle way. The support for the British Raj in India is expressed more clearly in the novel when the character known as ‘sage’ is having a conversation with Satyananda of Santan Dal’ regarding the outward and inward knowledge of Hinduism and says, “we must bring in the outward knowledge from another country. The English are very knowledgeable in the outward knowledge, and they’re very good at instructing people. Therefore we’ll make them king.” So the whole concept of making Bengal a Hindu state from the clutches of a Muslim ruler through the hands of ‘foreign saviors’ becomes evident in the narration. The ‘Santan Dal’ present in the novel carries out the Hindutwa agenda by attacking Muslim households, burning villages with Muslim population, attracting people by their Hindu identity and always expressed their agenda being the freeing of motherland, restoring her lost glory from the ‘foreign’ hands but the subjects of alienation were not the British but the Muslims. It becomes clear from Bhabananda’s comment, “the English are not our enemies. But why are you here to help the Muslims?” He even adds later, “Victory to the English! We wish you well!” Thus the legitimization of the colonization gets propagated through a fictious adaptation of the Sanyasi Rebellion but not against the white-skinned foreigners. The Sepoy Mutiny against the British, therefore never had any support from these upper caste, upper class Hindu men.

As mentioned before, the ideas of this so called new awakening weren’t distributed in the equal basis. The literatures concerned with the rebirth of the Bengali Hindu culture were targeted towards the upper middle class, middle class audience by the writers who had huge amount of social capital as their backup. The targeted audience had the leisure to indulge into the cultural activities due to their class position. The middle class Bengali young rebels were so influenced by ‘Anandamath’ that there was a rumor of them getting radicalized enough to keep revolvers in their bags along with the copy of this book. The novel though starts with the accounts of people suffering from the high taxes, famine, epidemic, hunger, are starving to pay the taxes, selling the family members and Bhabananda telling Mahendra that a king who doesn’t look after his subjects shouldn’t have any right to ask taxes, after the Santan Dal have taken charge of a village Satyananda advises them to collect taxes, but this time, for the cause of buying weapons to face the royal army and make the motherland free by establishing the Hindu rule and restoring the ‘lost glory.’ The economic deterioration is presented to evoke purgatory responses from the readership from their positions of privilege. The novel though is subtle on its caste angle but not enough to be considered nil. The memberships of Santan Dal happen after the interested ones reveal their caste. Even the child of Mahendra and Kalyani doesn’t get spared of this question. Though Satyananda says that every Santan should think of the other as equal as all are ‘The Children’ of the Mother, the protagonists are all from the privileged section of the society. Hence, the class of the targeted audience who only get concerned with the society when the ‘culture’ gets attacked as the other aspects of life were in abundance for them, what is better than a Hindu revivalist novel where the writer can make up an attack on culture and manipulate it for his own needs?

Preaching for colonization in the garb of Hindutwa propaganda isn’t an easy task but Bankim managed it quite well. The idea of the ‘Mother’ figure and her Hindu sons fighting the Muslim ‘foreigners’ yet welcoming the ones with white skin can only be done if the former idea propagates the concept of Sanskritization and the latter gets managed with a vague concept of outward and inward projections of the Eternal code and the outward expression being lost and can be revived by the help of the British people. The concept of willful amnesia and the notions of pre-conceived theory sit here well. The former directs the author into preaching that the antagonist in his writings has nothing good to do and is here to ruin things during his reign. The latter helps in the plot, and tells the writer to think that the ‘foreign savior’ can be used to revive the lost culture as they have ‘advanced’ ideas about things and can be used to undo the effects of the ruins made by the antagonist. Self contradiction is also a feature of the novels of 19th century. Hence, when Satyananda laments that he couldn’t establish the Hindu rule and the British will now rule by saying, “Oh Mother, I’ve not been able to set you free. Once more you’ll fall into the hands of unworthy foreigners,” the sage, a personification of the said feature advises him that ‘this’ foreigner’s help is needed to serve the bigger goal.

The novel, ‘Anandamath’ serves its purpose well. It mocks the strength of the sepoys by comparing it to those of the British ones, to glorify the foreigners the author has chosen to aid. The fight takes place among the Santans and the British too but the latter don’t bear the grudge as the author felt they would be needed to serve the politics of the revival of lost cultural glory. Though it fails to establish the Hindu rule, the win against British soldiers do serve as a trailer to project the might of the Hindus before the Muslim rule and a small hint that one day this community will ‘take back’ the country from the Englishmen and establish its own rule.

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