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millenniumblog · 3 years

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[ID: A chart describing the core values of each of the nine Enneagram personality types with YuGiOh characters correlated to each of the types.]

YuGiOh Enneagram Analysis, Part #1

Please note that this is the “boring” informational post about Enneagram with the Types listed and explained as well as a few other things. The next post is what has the actual, in-depth character profiles promised!

Introduction & Motivation

Over the past several months, I have been trying to analyze my strengths and weaknesses as a writer and learn more. I have been writing fanfiction since I was a little kid, making my first FF.net account in 2003 when I would have been twelve years old. Even before that, I was a lurker and wrote fics to share with my childhood best friend on paper or floppy discs.

YuGiOh came into my life at some point shortly thereafter. I know this, because I spent my thirteenth birthday in a comic book shop, mostly watching some of my male friends play the trading card game. I had some of the cards, but I was never much of a player, unable to keep up with the seemingly rapid rule changes. Besides that, I was always way more interested in the story and characters than I was in the card game. I remember I even wanted to call “YuGiOh cards” “Duel Monsters” instead to make it seem a little closer to tween-y LARPing.

Eventually, I gave up on collecting cards or trying to ply the game. I felt that while my male friends didn’t mind me being around when they played, they weren’t extremely interested in helping me learn or keep up. I felt I had other strengths, so I started carrying around a notebook even more than I already did. I started my fledgling forays into online fandom. And YuGiOh was a big part of the beginning of that.

I can’t remember posting any YuGiOh fic in particular, and I’m sure that if I had it would make me cringe now. What I do remember is reading some and also spending a lot of time lying on my bed, headphones plugged into a small purple stereo, listening to the first of the two American-released CDs with YuGiOh-inspired music on them. In particular, the last three tracks were pieces of music from the original score composed for the 4Kids dub, which is - for some reason - different from the original Japanese music.

During that time, I would fantasize and conjure my own YuGiOh plots in my head, most of which were focused on the Ancient Egyptian and more spooky, spiritual, and horror themes in the show. I was really fascinated with the reincarnation angle, though my understanding of and opinions on how that works have grown with time.

Years went by, and I didn’t think about YuGiOh much at all. Then, something happened in 2018. I don’t know what got in my head, but it was like all the joy I once found in thinking about the YuGiOh characters came back in a giddy conversation with my childhood best friend. Then, for a little while, it wouldn’t leave me alone.

I started writing for the fandom then, and after several detours, I’m trying to get back in the groove of it.

My approach to the tone of YuGiOh-fanning is that it’s a bit serious, but it’s also with a tongue placed in my cheek because of how incomprehensible or silly the plot can be on a meta level. Sometimes, it almost brings tears to my eyes by being so over-the-top about something that, in the real world, would make no sense at all. But the drama, in the context of the universe, somehow rings true.

I think that’s all owing to how most of the primary characters are just... really freaking great characters.

It has often puzzled me. Like, did Takahashi do all this layering on purpose? Is it really there, or did earnest fanon just make it seem like it? And, as a person, I am always here for a good fan-and-canon symbiosis.

This post is going to be, from here on, an effort to match the YuGiOh characters to the 9 Enneagram Personality Types. I am writing this for my own benefit as I continue to work on my pet YuGiOh fanfiction project, It’s Always Sunny in Domino City, which is a mixture of YGOTAS-vibes-and-concepts taken seriously and a sincere take on fanfiction for the actual canon. It’s dramedy about a sizeable chunk of the main cast a few years post-canon with some canon divergence such as the Memory World arc not yet and possibly never-happening. If that sounds like something you’d like, I would humbly request you check it out!

Either way, this will be an in-depth character analysis cheatsheet for all of the characters above, based on my observations, opinions, and feelings. I invite discussion, but it’s fine if we need to agree to totally disagree!

If you are interested and enjoy what’s below the Read More and in the coming second post, then you are welcome to utilize the character analyses to aid you in your own fanwork!

Enneagram

What is Enneagram, and why am I using it?

Enneagram is a personality categorization system that one might compare to the somewhat better-known MBTI. However, in the words of excellent writing-advice YouTuber, Abbie Emmons:

MBTI shows us how we behave.

Enneagram shows us what we believe.

I will be referencing Abbie’s video Using The ENNEAGRAM To Write CONFLICTED CHARACTERS and her free Enneagram-cheatsheet, available in the description of the linked video. Whether it’s before you continue reading or after, if you’re interested in writing, I would highly recommend you check out her channel!

The Enneagram system has nine basic personality types that overlap and interact in really interesting ways. It is not a hard science, and it’s not a horoscope. Instead, it’s supposed to be “based on conventional wisdom and modern psychology.” All I can say is that with every set of characters I’ve tried it with, it works! Once you get the hang of it, it feels kind of like ~✰~magic~✰~!

Below, I will list Abbie’s simplified definitions of each of the personality types, in order:

Type 1: The Reformer

The Rational, Idealistic Type:

Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic

Basic Fear: Of being corrupt/evil, defective

Basic Desire: To be good, to have integrity, to be balanced

Key Motivations: Want to be right, to strive higher and improve everything, to be consistent with their ideals, to justify themselves, to be beyond criticism so as not to be condemned by anyone.

Type 2: The Helper

The Caring, Interpersonal Type:

Generous, Demonstrative, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved

Basic Desire: To feel loved

Key Motivations: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves.

Type 3: The Achiever

The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type:

Adaptable, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious

Basic Fear: Of being worthless

Basic Desire: To feel valuable and worthwhile

Key Motivations: Want to be affirmed, to distinguish themselves from others, to have attention, to be admired, and to impress others.

Type 4: The Individualist

The Sensitive, Introspective Type:

Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance

Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an identity)

Key Motivations: Want to express themselves and their individuality, to create and surround themselves with beauty, to maintain certain moods and feelings, to withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else, to attract a "rescuer."

Type 5: The Investigator

The Intense, Cerebral Type:

Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated

Basic Fear: Being useless, helpless, or incapable

Basic Desire: To be capable and competent

Key Motivations: Want to possess knowledge, to understand the environment, to have everything figured out as a way of defending the self from threats from the environment.

Type 6: The Loyalist

The Committed, Security-Oriented Type:

Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious

Basic Fear: Of being without support and guidance

Basic Desire: To have security and support

Key Motivations: Want to have security, to feel supported by others, to have certitude and reassurance, to test the attitudes of others toward them, to fight against anxiety and insecurity.

Type 7: The Enthusiast

The Busy, Variety-Seeking Type:

Spontaneous, Versatile, Acquisitive, and Scattered

Basic Fear: Of being deprived and in pain

Basic Desire: To be satisfied and content—to have their needs fulfilled

Key Motivations: Want to maintain their freedom and happiness, to avoid missing out on worthwhile experiences, to keep themselves excited and occupied, to avoid and discharge pain.

Type 8: The Challenger

The Powerful, Dominating Type:

Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational

Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others

Basic Desire: To protect themselves (to be in control of their own life and destiny)

Key Motivations: Want to be self-reliant, to prove their strength and resist weakness, to be important in their world, to dominate the environment, and to stay in control of their situation.

Type 9: The Peacemaker

The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type:

Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent

Basic Fear: Of loss and separation

Basic Desire: To have inner stability, "peace of mind"

Key Motivations: Want to create harmony in their environment, to avoid conflicts and tension, to preserve things as they are, to resist whatever would upset or disturb them.

Now that you’ve seen all those, what do you think your favorite character is? In YuGiOh or anything else! It works great for original characters and even yourself and your loved ones.

The actual Character Profiles will be in coming post(s), but continue reading if you want me to explain more about how and why the Enneagram is a great personality typing system. #nonspon, or whatever.

The Enneagram Chart

Now, you could just go to the Enneagram Institute’s page on How the System Works, but below I’ll cut it down to only the parts I’m interested in and explain those in a way that helps me.

Unlike in astrology or MBTI, which are both more restrictive in different ways, the relative position of each type matters a bit on the Enneagram chart, because it can be used to visualize a lot of things about a person!

The Basic Chart

The Types are shown in a clockwise fashion with “1″ in the 1 o’clock position on an analog clock. The interior lines mean things, but I have trouble reading it without further delineation.

Centers of Response

Below are two small charts, displayed side-by-side. (If it’s too small, try right-click, open in new tab!)

The chart on the left shows the three “centers.” The “centers” indicate the first ‘processing language’ a person would use to respond to stimuli.

Type 8, Type 9, and Type 1 respond first based on instinct (primal, gut-feeling). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the id.

Type 2, Type 3, and Type 4 respond first based on feelings (social or personal desires, the heart). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the ego.

Type 5, Type 6, and Type 7 respond first based on thoughts (analytical rather than emotional, the head). If you want to go Freudian, this is from the superego.

Remember that, of course, every single type and person engages their instincts, their emotions, and their thoughts at different times and to different degrees, and some of these are learned or changed behaviors. This is about what their innate drive toward that would be.

Likewise, the same “centers” can also be used for the chart on the right. You will notice that all three of these are defined by what is typically considered a negative emotion. This is because this is about a person’s instinctive, not particularly conscious emotional response when they are backed into a corner and deprived of something that is core to the needs of their personality type.

Type 8, Type 9, and Type 1 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with anger/rage.

Type 2, Type 3, and Type 4 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with shame.

Type 5, Type 6, and Type 7 tend to respond to a threat to their psychic well-being with fear.

Stress vs. Growth

We all know that there are times when a person isn’t acting like themselves, for better or for worse. Usually, “You’re not acting like yourself,” means that a person is behaving badly. Of course, it’s way easier to withdraw and bristle and defend rather than growing in the midst of adversity. However, it is certainly possible to experience character growth in response to experiences, good and bad. Unlike a lot of other personality typing schemes, the Enneagram has a way to display and predict what stress and growth do to a person.

The Enneagram never suggests that any Type is an island unto itself. Every person contains multitudes, but a person’s Type is likely to remain relatively stable throughout their lives, once they have had a chance to develop any personality at all. This means that when a person is stressed or growing that they do not become the type they emulate. Rather, they are more highly expressing that aspects of their personality that reflect those drives and desires but in a way that is either fraught, sickly, or unwell (in the case of stress), or aspirational, flying-high, and incorporating the hard-lessons into who a person is going to be going forward (in the case of growth). The latter, especially, isn’t a sustainable mode, while a stressed person can become more entrenched in their bad habits and defensive coping mechanisms.

Stress

Note the white, directional arrows. Each number has an arrow point pointing to it and an arrow leading away from it. The point indicates that this is the stress manifestation for the Type at the origin of that arrow. The origin of each arrow indicates the Type being described.

Confused? Let me finally give you a YuGiOh example.

When I was trying to identify the Types of the characters, defining Marik was difficult, because he has a “Yami,” or Dark Side, which has its own personality and will but which is not its own separate soul or person than Marik himself. Rather, it’s a kind of fantasy/magic-assisted personality splintering where Yami Marik is a full manifestation of the negative traits Marik needed to embody to survive.

So, for reference:

When stressed, Type 1 behaves more like Type 4.

When stressed, Type 2 behaves more like Type 8.

When stressed, Type 3 behaves more like Type 9.

When stressed, Type 4 behaves more like Type 2.

When stressed, Type 5 behaves more like Type 7.

When stressed, Type 6 behaves more like Type 3.

When stressed, Type 7 behaves more like Type 1.

When stressed, Type 8 behaves more like Type 5.

When stressed, Type 9 behaves more like Type 6.

Alternatively, you can use these sequences to follow the stress lines:

1-4-2-8-5-7-1

9-6-3-9

Growth

Think of the above-explanation in reverse.

The sequence:

1-7-5-8-2-4-1

9-3-6-9

As a Type 1 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 7.

As a Type 2 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 4.

As a Type 3 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 6.

As a Type 4 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 1.

As a Type 5 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 8.

As a Type 6 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 9.

As a Type 7 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 5.

As a Type 8 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 2.

As a Type 9 grows, they incorporate more positive traits of Type 3.

Wings

The final thing to know about the Enneagram chart for my purposes is about wings. The wing of your personality traits accounts for the complementary and contradictory aspects of your personality. They are the inconsistencies that make you human, predicted and jumped in. Typically, a person is not thought to have both possible wings but one or the other. A wing is one of the two adjacent Types to yours, the number before, or the number after, and it is annotated, for example:

Type 1, Wing 2: 1w2

Type 1, Wing 9: 1w9

Link to Part 2 Here!

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dragonagereacts · 4 years

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If you do follow up requests then I've been thinking on the overpowered inquisitor a bit and I was wondering how romances (if they could happen) would react to the inquisitor opening up to them that they had never wanted their powers? Like, they were brought up in an experiential facility and were its 1 success before they ran or smthn, like Ace from Batman, their powers coming at the cost of a normal life and childhood or that they fear they'll give into temptation. I've had feelings about it.

Blackwall: He listens to his love as she confides in him, bearing her all to him as she tells him of what she has gone through. He feels anger at the injustice she faced, anger at the fact that she never wanted any of this, anger that on top of what she had gone through she was forced into this role. Blackwall holds her, whispering to her as he holds her close to his chest. He assures her that she won’t give into temptation, that he won’t let her forget herself. They lay together and he comforts her to the best of his ability. In the back of his mind he cannot help but feel like a hypocrite as he tells her that her past does not define who she is now, since he won’t accept his own past. As they talk, Blackwall is constantly reassuring her that she is a good person, that she can do good with the powers she has. After their moment Blackwall is always the first to defend her when someone throws around insults or speculations about her powers and past. He will not tolerate anyone talking about her in that manner, especially by those who do not know her. Every chance Blackwall gets he reminds her and shows her that he loves her and will stand by her side through it all, no matter what her past was like. He did not fall for her past, he fell for her and nothing will change that.

Cassandra: Cassandra’s fists are balled tightly on her lap as she listens to the man she loves tell her about his past. How could someone-no something do that to a child? How could they take away his freedom and chance at a proper life? Her heart breaks at the shame and fear she sees crossing her lovers face as he speaks to her. Seeing that look on his face sparks a burning fire in her heart. Cassandra is to her feet fists raised slightly as she goes off on a tangent about how if she finds whoever did this to him she would make them pay, that they better pray to The Maker for mercy because she will surely show them none. She only calms when she feels his steady hands on hers, bringing her back to the moment. Once she calms slightly, she looks him in the eyes and tells him that nothing about what he has told her will change the fact that she loves him and that he is the Inquisitor. Yes, she is appalled and uneasy about what was done to him and that it was possible to alter someone that way, but that did not change her feelings. Like Blackwall, Cassandra is defensive of the Inquisitor, only she has mastered a deadly glare that silences anyone who even thinks about talking about the Inquisitor in an ill-intentioned manner. When the couple shares their quiet moments, Cassandra tries her best to be romantic and reassuring, but words were never her strongest skills. She only hopes that her actions speak volumes louder than her fumbled words.

Dorian: Dorian feels his heart begin to crack, looking at his amatus shaking and terrified. He can see it in his love’s eyes, Dorian can see the fear; the fear that he won’t be accepted. Dorian kisses his love, their lips crashing into one another’s, it was tender at first but turned to hunger. When he pulls away Dorian looks deep into the eyes of his love and he tells him that there is nothing in this world that would ever make him stop loving him. He watches the tears as they fall from his loves eyes, pain and sorrow gripping his heart. Anger soon followed. Anger that someone dared to make his love fear himself so much, fear that no one would accept him. Anger that someone would dare to do this to someone. The last thought does not come as a surprise to him, he knows all too well that people in this world can be cruel. But he knew, he knew that he could be one less cruelty to his love. They lay in the inquisitor’s bed, holding one another close never wanting to let go. Dorian makes a mental note to speak with the Spymaster, to ask her to find anyone who could have been a part of the experimentation. He wanted a word with them. A word and perhaps a few fireballs, a dash of lightning, and a hint of necromancy to drive the point home. He would never allow another soul to hurt the love of his life, not while he still drew breath. Maker will it, not even his last dying breath would stop him from protecting his amatus.

The Iron Bull: The Iron Bull understands what his kadan has gone through. Not entirely, no. But he can understand the gist of it. After all, being raised in the Qun you don’t get the option to choose. You cannot choose who you are, you are assigned it and anything that deviates from that is wrong. The Qun would hate his kadan, but they would hate those who did this to them even more so. But that is beside the point, right now his kadan is hurt. Their strong facade has cracked and sitting in front of him, Bull sees someone who has been broken time and time again. He sits with them, gently rubbing their back to remind them that they are not alone. Unlike other companions, Bull appears calm. His anger expertly hidden, but as his kadan talks of the horrible things that have happened, of the childhood, they loathed to call childhood, and the scars, Maker the scars run so deep, he feels his composure crack. The scars, both physical and mental, are etched deep into the very core of them and Bull can see them. He knows them. So when he feels his composure crack, he lets himself be angry. He lets himself feel rage against the people who did this. Who caused this. It was one thing to be strong, to strive for the utmost amount of strength, but that should never come at a cost this high. Bull holds his kadan through the night, listening to them pour their heart out to him. His heart aches and he makes a mental note (much the same as Dorian) to speak with Red to see if she has any leads on who these people could be. The Chargers have a new target after all.

Sera: All of Skyhold can hear Sera’s colorful vocabulary as the woman she loves tells her all the terrible shite that has happened. Yeah, Sera didn’t have that great of a childhood, but Andraste’s tits! Her honey tongue deserved the world, not this shite hand the Maker decided to pass out. Words of comfort were most definitely not Sera’s forte, but pranks were. Pranks helped everything, yeah? So why wouldn’t they help the woman she loved? Sera would listen to the Inquisitor, listen to her talk about what happened and she would get angry. After the Inquisitor had told Sera everything about her past, Sera watched as her honey tongue sat with fear in her eyes. She could recognize fear, she had seen it in her own eyes and in the eyes of some of her fellow Red Jennies. But seeing that fear in the Inquisitor’s eyes made her blood run cold. Grabbing the Inquisitor’s hand, possibly a little rougher than she had intended, Sera pulls her love from her room and down to the tavern below. She tells the Inquisitor that right here, right now she is nobody but herself. She isn’t the Inquisitor, she isn’t the only successful experiment, no right now she is who she wants to be. And Sera was going to do anything to keep her happy. Sure, she still needed to be the Inquisitor for a bit longer since Coryphe-shite was still roaming around, but after that, she was free to be whoever she wanted. Sera and the Inquisitor ran around Skyhold, pranking the soldiers, cheering up some kids with a few pie throws, and finally cuddling up on Sera’s balcony looking up at the stars. The Inquisitor fell asleep, her head on Sera’s lap, and Sera looked at her and felt her anger return. Angry that someone would dare to hurt her. That night Sera made an oath, a promise to the Maker or whoever was listening that she would protect her honey tongue. No matter what.

Solas: The anger Solas felt seeing his love hunched over, arms wrapped around herself desperately trying to remain strong while she tells him what she has been through, that anger felt as if it was strong enough to tear down the veil around him. The pain set in next, a sorrowful aching in his chest that brought up terrible memories. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close to his chest as he softly whispered to her. He understood all too well the feeling of uncertainty and fear of falling into temptation, of falling when you were so close to success. Taking his vhenan’s face in his hands he would tell her that her past does not define her, that she is more than what they had done to her and that she will be so much more in the years to come. This declaration, it rings bitterly in his own ears, but for the moment he shoves that deep inside - ignoring the pain and only focusing on what matters now. Her. Once she had calmed and Solas was certain she would be alright, they say that the apostate was absent from Skyhold for an uncharacteristically long time. When he returned he would not reveal his whereabouts and when questioned by his vhenan, he only offered her a sad but gentle smile and tender kiss before going back to his study. Once again dodging the question.

Romanced Advisors:

Cullen: Cullen stares at her for a moment. The words lost to him, nothing comes to mind. Maker. He had never been good with words, let alone when his anger was flaring up inside. His silence was alarming to the Inquisitor and before Cullen could muster any words he watched as her tears fell. Cullen wrapped his arms tightly around her shaking frame as he pulled her close to his chest, smoothing her hair and letting her cry. As her tears dried up and only her sniffles remained Cullen spoke. He expressed his anger at what those bastards had done. How dare they? What gave them the right to rip someone’s childhood from them? The last thought stung at his mind as he realized he and the other templars had done just that. The thought was quickly pushed aside as he focused back on his love. He asks her if she had ever thought of tracking them down, to put an end to whatever they wanted to do, to make sure they never did it again. If the Inquisitor says that she has, then soon after their discussion Cullen has a new mission at the war table. One for only him to complete, alongside the Inquisitor. Cullen would let the Inquisitor vent, allowing her to get everything off of her chest. He may be questionable with words of comfort but he was always a ready listener.

Josephine: It was a rare sight to see the Lady Ambassador angry. Yes, she has been angry before, but those times were always controlled and quiet. This time she was the very definition of fury. Her eyes burning brightly as she stumbled across her words. With tender, shaking hands, Joesphine cups the face of her love as she looks into their eyes. She tells them that what they have shared does not change anything, that the Inquisitor is still the person that she loves and that she is honored that they shared this with her. Under normal circumstances, Josephine would tell a non-romanced Inquisitor that they should be careful with who knows this information and that it could harm their reputation and give their enemies leverage that they don’t need. But for a romanced Inquisitor? Josephine, along with Leliana’s help, silences anyone who tries to talk poorly about the Inquisitor if word gets out. Josephine also spends countless evenings at her desk working tirelessly to find out who these people are. When she figures it all out, she ruins them. They are nothing after Josephine gets her hands on them. They wish they were dead. The most important thing to Josephine is her love. She would go to the ends of the earth for them because she knows they would do the same for her. The night they told her of their past, Josephine was angry at the culprits, but she was also sad for her love. Her hands were warm and gentle as she held her love. She comforted them through the night and rescheduled all meetings until she knew they were going to be able to handle the stress once more.

Thank you very much for sending in this request! I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you all enjoy it!-Mod Griffin

#dragon age #cassandra dragon age #the iron bull #dorian pavus #cullen rutherford #josephine montilyet #sera dragon age #solas dragon age #blackwall dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dragon age reactions

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seenvs3000-21 · 3 years

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Shaping our Futures by Appreciating the Past

Remembering our personal history is something many of us are taught from a young age. I grew up listening to my grandparents' stories which helped my cousins and me understand how lucky we are to live in this country. My grandmother always wanted us to know how different her life was growing up and how the decision she made with my grandfather to immigrate to Canada has greatly impacted our quality of life from the start. Being raised in Canada has provided so much more opportunity than my grandparents could ever imagine for themselves. I can live a privileged life in a safe country, where I live comfortably, with access to quality education, and the opportunity to build a career for my future, all because of the decisions made by my grandparents. Having spent my entire life in Canada, it is easy to forget that part of my family's history. Acknowledging it, though, helps me stay motivated to achieve my goals and make the most of the opportunities living in Canada has afforded me. As quoted in the textbook from David McCullough, "we need the past for our sense of who we are," (Beck et al. 2019) and I think there is no better way to reminisce on the past than through our family members' lived experiences which make up our personal history and use that as a way to strive for more (Hooykaas, 2021).

This photo is a selfie of my grandmother and me, taken by me this past summer, (July 2020). She is one of my biggest motivators in my life, reminding me of my goals and the importance of hard-work and dedication.

Are there any experiences in your personal history, or members of your family that inspire you to work harder and stay motivated to access the best life you can achieve?

The quote from McCullough continues on to say, "we need the past for our sense of responsibility, how all these benefits and freedoms came to us, and what it is our duty to protect." (Beck et al. 2019) I think this provides insight into the connection between personal history and the story of how our ancestors forged our paths to the lives we have today. However, aside from our families, the towns and cities we live in were founded into the societies we know today through people's hard work and dedication throughout history. I think there is great power in understanding the roots of the places we call home. This appreciation for history extends to the environment and the natural beauty the world has to offer. Many early industries depend on the natural workings of the environment to accomplish the tasks at hand.

This photo was taken last spring featuring my stepdad and cousin when they came across a small mill that remains standing in the park just minutes from my backyard; photo taken by my mother (Sandy England, April 2020).

My hometown was historically prominent for milling, so many historical mills are still standing along the Grand River banks, which runs through the city, balancing the natural beauty of the waterfront with the industrialization that spearheaded the development of this region. The Grand river provided ample opportunity for milling industries to flourish due to the strong, steady flowing waters that lent so much power to the mills being set up on the riverbanks. In the early 1800s one of Cambridge's most influential settlers was John Erb, recognized as the founder of Preston, one of the amalgamated towns including Galt and Hespeler, which became Cambridge in 1973 (The Ontario Heritage Trust, 2020). In a report prepared by Unterman McPhail and Associates Heritage Resource Management Consultants (UMAHRMC) for AMEC Environment and Infrastructure, it was mentioned that John Erb moved to Canada, specifically to Preston, when he purchased land at the junction between the Grand and Speed Rivers (2013). This location provided Erb and his family the opportunity to start a lucrative milling business comprising both sawmills and gristmills, providing products that were in high demand in the region as lumber was previously imported from further regions. When the milling business showed great success, millraces were implemented to enhance the power that could be harnessed by the mills (UMAHRMC, 2013).

Today, these structures still are core to Cambridge's heritage and society. Still, it is easy to forget the history behind these structures when they are now home to recreation like fishing, picnics, leisurely walks, photography and even weddings. The Millrace Park located in the downtown core is now a common photography venue for many events. My school organized prom photos to be taken here, and my parents had their wedding photos done in the same location. This picturesque park sits adjacent to what once was known as the Dickson Mill that historically milled flour very successfully but has since been converted into a high-end restaurant, a popular wedding venue thanks to the picturesque riverfront location rustic appeal, known as The Cambridge Mill (Cambridge Mill, 2015).

This photo was taken of my mother and me when we celebrated her birthday at The Cambridge Mill Restaurant for brunch last fall, photo taken by my stepdad (Phil Racher, October 2020).

Are there any prominent locations within your hometown's natural settings that were once fundamental to the founding society like the mills are to Cambridge?

References:

Beck, L., Cable, T. T., & Knudson, D. M. (2019). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage: For a better world. Urbana: Sagamore Publishing.

Unterman McPhail Associates Heritage Resource Management Consultants. (2013). Cultural Heritage Evaluation Report (CHER): Riverside Dam, Speed River, Preston, City of Cambridge, Ontario. AMEC Environment and Infrastructure, from https://www.cambridge.ca/en/learn-about/resources/Final-Cultural-Heritage-Evaluation-Report---2013.pdf

Hooykaas, A. (2021). Unit 6: Nature Interpretation Through History. Lecture Notes Retrieved, February 23, 2021

Cambridge Mill, History. (2015). Retrieved February 23, 2021, from https://cambridgemill.ca/posts/26-history

The Ontario Heritage Trust. (2020, May 06). The Ontario Heritage Trust. Retrieved February 23, 2021, from https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/en/plaques/founder-of-preston

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arcticdementor · 4 years

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You might look around sometimes and think to yourself, a new America has dawned, godless, without the old restraints. Yellowstone, the Kevin Costner Western on the Paramount Channel is the best example I can summon to mind just now, and its third season has just started. It’s a 21st-century story of cowboys and Indians—with characters seeking freedom from law. Practically, this means they must constantly defend a way of life independent of the many bureaucracies threatening their livelihood, and they do so with terrible violence.

Taylor Sheridan is the writer-director behind Yellowstone, and the series follows the success of his movies, Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River. These movies earned seven Oscar nominations, one for Sheridan, and about as many nominations in Cannes, including important wins. Sheridan was raised on a ranch, but his family lost it, so he went to college and Hollywood, recalling Sam Peckinpah’s story. After Clint Eastwood, he’s now our premier poet of manliness.

…

Like any man long in power, Dutton has many enemies, and the more they behave dishonorably, the more you see that he’s touched by greatness, since he has no desire to go hurting people and does not share their cruel contempt for justice or life. Many look to prosper in his place, partly by the prosperity he has made. Worse for Dutton, America has changed—from the national press investigating him to the new economy to the way historical grievances grant authority to demand change—everything is threatening his way of life, built around family, land, and centuries past and future. Indeed, loyalty itself is over and new identities are required, which are flexible and practiced in deception. To succeed in Yellowstone’s new America, it doesn’t really matter whether you know any part of the country or have done well by people, but whether you know how to manipulate institutions and please those who manage the most successful interests, which seem hardly any better than legalized conspiracies.

Like Hemingway’s marlin, which achieves its greatest leap in its death throes and expires at the top of the arc, Dutton is most impressive in agony. He seems superhuman compared to the new American elites. His handling of urgent problems makes him resemble the president—he is an executive. Meanwhile, egalitarianism has not created equality in America, but only a new elite, impatient, ignorant of the future, blind to necessity—thus, astonishingly able to manipulate the new systems of power, since these elites feel no concern for consequences. The real world, where people are tied to a place, to other people, to their past, and the good they pursue, is replaced by access to the institutions and finances that make the world work, which manipulate people’s lives indirectly, in unaccountable and unpredictable ways. Everyone’s tied into legal demands and their lives are increasingly regulated, but only people who know how to use the law to get what they want get ahead in this new situation. The first post-American elite is coming for the last cowboys.

…

The American Dream is over in Yellowstone, and billionaire gentrification is coming for the last refuge of manliness in a country that produces compliant subjects rather than free citizens. In this grim world, cowboys are stand-ins for the white working class. They don’t go to college and they work dangerous jobs without much healthcare and for little pay. They are not disrupting the economy. They are America’s past, not future. Their virtues are Stoic and this might simply mean resignation to death.

…

Justice is built on nobility, and in Yellowstone, Sheridan draws our attention to this through the characters’ relationship with their horses. So understanding horses is the core of Stoicism—the horse is the noblest animal and America’s love of horses lasted well into the last era of popular country music and the Western, in the 1970s, because a horse rider presents the image of someone more than merely human. It is a greatness available nearly to anyone, at least anyone willing to face harsh nature. Horses are everywhere in Yellowstone, so one might not read much into it. They symbolize certain virtues, however. The horse is a power that will obey the rider, but not against its own nature. To ride a horse requires endurance in face of pain or weariness, courage to face fear or whatever weakness might come, self-control in face of temptation, and moderation—those habits that make man thoughtlessly sovereign. Without these, you die when it’s suddenly dangerous. One cannot talk oneself into it and there is no technology to accomplish this, either. It’s a way of life, not a job. It takes long practice which allows you to understand yourself and develop self-discipline. As such, horse riding leads to a kind of self-knowledge.

…

The Duttons are not Christians, few of their like seem to be—not even the death of the firstborn leads to a church funeral. They believe in freedom and nature—ruling over the land, over the horses, over people. They despise weakness and treasure loyalty. They trust family, not morality. Compared to ordinary Americans, they’re shockingly aristocratic. They believe in choosing the means to defend family and their land because family itself is unchosen—it’s nature, and therefore reliable. But can they live in America, where most people have no family? They rely on their old-fashioned patriotism to defend the ranching way of life, but the country has changed without them and it seems they can either adapt and sacrifice their family, or stay loyal and lose everything.

…

The opposite of a man in America is a bourgeois bohemian, to recall David Brooks’s signal contribution to our sociology in Bobos in Paradise (2000). Brooks is a sophist for this class, so he will not tell the ugly truth—but Tom Wolfe did in A Man in Full (1998), and even scooped Brooks. It’s not an accident that he saw clearly: Wolfe was the poet of American Stoicism and understood the threats to manliness.

The people who define elite taste in America are themselves opposed to violence, but not because they are Christian or even moral. It’s because their own rule doesn’t require that they ever take any personal risks—poorer people do that, who live in other parts of town or are completely removed from sight by gentrification. Nowadays, the rich take no responsibility for the poorer or those suffering violence, or even ever shake their hands, which is why our cities are such madhouses. There is no noblesse oblige.

Sheridan wants to show the violence in America to rebuke this bloodless view of things. So in the first season we see, through the real estate developer drama, how the new American elite is moving in to remove the last ranchers. This establishes the difference between real men and those who want to rule merely through institutions and finance, as though history had ended and we’re just dividing up luxuries. In the second season, we see rule by violence, in order to understand the difference between men and beasts. Sheridan shows that not all who kill are the same. Only then is it possible to defend the ranchers against the bobos persuasively.

…

The older Americans were not sufficiently attuned to nature, because they believed in God more. But as the churches are emptying, people are looking elsewhere to learn who they are. Some turn to nature, because human beings are not trustworthy. We may say mankind is naturally perverse, always coveting and therefore often violent or treacherous, which is why harshness was required in the past, to establish property and then defend it. This is certainly Dutton’s view, who only goes to church once, to make a priest manipulate a parishioner into obedience. And as a family, the Duttons are only happy when they revert to their old ways, taking care of their herd from an improvised camp so far away from civilization there’s no cell tower in range.

The only way to end the human drama would be to stop being enviable. End greatness and thus end striving. On the other hand, to defend greatness is to defend suffering. This way, we learn that suffering builds character—it brings people together, as do common enemies. This problem, the future of America, is the show’s indirect concern. Is it possible to retain honor in a dishonorable world? It’s not obvious how we can defend freedom without honorable men making sacrifices. Nor how we can raise honorable men if we tolerate bobo elites who despise honor and use every institution of government and market to end it. Dutton raised his kids to correspond to his understanding of rule. The treacherous Jamie is a Harvard-educated lawyer who tasted the bobo life for a while, but in order to redeem himself, he works like hired help in the stables. Beth is a finance genius, which plays to her ruthlessness, but at the price of undermining her ability to love and trust. Kayce is the truest cowboy, but what makes him so loyal also blinds him to the complexities of 21st century America. They each amplify something in Dutton, but in this attempt to pass on the ranch to a new generation, it turns out honor and savvy have been utterly split apart.

This acquisitive capitalism that corrupts honor is the enemy that returns in the third season of Yellowstone. That’s what the name of the show is about—the place of nature in America. Is it a museum, a zoo we visit occasionally, enjoying the beauty after all the danger is under control, and the millionaire class gets extra privileges? Or is there also a human nature that we need to learn to respect by treating physical nature with some respect, lest our elites treat us like pets as well? To defend manliness in America, it may be necessary to defend wild nature. That is a preparation for political freedom. To go too far in the opposite direction is to treat human beings, but especially men, like savages—as our elites do to the urban and rural underclass.

The purpose of the show is to persuade Americans to believe in nobility again. To face cruelty and violence as a preferable alternative to institutionalized despotism. To accept America’s tragic past with gratitude for the freedom we still have, if we are willing to earn it again. We have had so much success, we’ve created a class who profits by this success without any connection to America or regular Americans. We need to educate new elites about what’s worth loving and defending. Sheridan wants to teach by tragedy, so his protagonists are essentially honorable, which is no longer tolerated in our storytelling. Americans have never accepted tragedy before but perhaps now we will, since our freedom is once again in danger.

#titus techera #law & liberty #yellowstone #tv review #never seen the show #but he makes it sound interesting

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berfometalpha · 4 years

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Legacy of Eternity Chapter 5: Unravel the Mystery Part 2 - One step at a time

It was an early day for the young knight like any other but today was different as it was the first day that he a knight would walk the path of a civilian. Though his army had participated in many military operations the knights were eager to go back to the front lines but due to the awakening of one of the legendary angels that guard the dragon-wolf they had been suspended as the angels may have killed the young knight if not careful.

As he got his gear together the young knight made his way down to the living room to see Chimera was finished eating breakfast with Emilia Redridge.

Emilia Redridge or Emilia Swordtaker was a former of the Sword taker clan and had been exiled long before that for saving a baby dragon-kin and a village from the fury of their Father. She had long bright red hair that reached down to her waist, Red eyes, pinkish fair skin, and had a tattoo on her back of a broken blade meaning she was exiled from her clan.

She normally wears a white dress with a black lining and had several blood rose designs on the side of her top. She also wore a red and black belt cape with a pair of brown leather belts, with black and silver lined boots with black stockings.

Emilia is the current wife of Chimera Redridge only by name until further notice during the war for Ren’veil’s freedom she had a major role of providing key information of the defensive lines of the fort Mianola far north of the capital.

She openly helped Chimera and the Crusaegrums in the Northern conflicts and bringing them into the fold of the Free kingdoms. In exchange for her help all she asked was to serve Chimera but instead Chimera offered her to be his wife only by name until certain rights are approved.

“Big Bro, you heading out this early? Wont you have breakfast with us.” Chimera growled.

“Hmm I got time... sure... Miss Emilia good morning to you as well.” Kent bowed.

“Good morning as well mister Anthony... By the way Chimera I am heading to the Bastion Hope base I saw a job posting their for a sword instructor. I’ll be heading their to apply for the position.” Emilia said.

“I will be cheering for you Emi.” Chimera smiled.

“You do realize that I am the general and lord of the Strike Fleet and Bastion Hope is technically my base? So with one snap of my fingers you can get the position right away.” Kent said.

“Thank you for your kindness but Chira has already given me so much and I want to earn the right to stay with him.... If It’s okay Mister Anthony I would like to earn it rather than be given another gift.” Emilia said.

“Okay then... I will honor your request and at least you are a lot better than your former.” Kent added.

“I am no longer a part of that family what happens to them is up to them. I want to live my life as I see fit.” Emilia said with pride.

“I understand Miss Emilia... Still I raise a glass to you miss Emilia for becoming independent..” Kent said as he raised his mug.

“Here here brother here here.”Chimera said as he placed his hand over Emilia’s shoulder with pride.

After eating breakfast Kent left the Manner with Emilia since the young knight had some immediate business at Bastion hope. While Chimera had to settle somethings with the Farmers union in New Hope after that he will meet Emilia again in the base.

They passed through the local market when one of the merchants who first met the young knight in person called his attention and tossed a pair of apples to the two.

With a smile he thanked the merchant and will return later to his stall as they passed the central district Kent and Emilia parted ways for the mean time. He entered the Ayekawa estate though some of the guards are very suspicious of the young knight since during the battle for Ren’veil Kent was not that recognized by the Vai’len despite his stature as the knight lord of the Strike Fleet.

With a hefty knock on the door he waited patiently for someone to open the door just before he could knock again the door opened.“Hey quit knocking twice... already I heard you...” Aisha shouted with a surprised look on her face.

“I am sorry my Lady I will not knock twice next time.” Kent said with a smile.

Aisha’s face immediately turned red when she saw the young knight right at her door step. To her surprise the young knight was at her door step the young knight could openly see how she spends her early morning with her hair tied to the side and wearing nothing but a very alluring violet dress.

“Wait Kent why are you here?” Aisha asked.

“I Believe I owe you a date my lady... Was i not correct my Lady?” Kent said with curiosity.

Though flustered and a bit astonished thinking that the young knight heard her whisper despite being asleep. Kent was asked to wait at the living room while she got prepared Alisyha prepared tea and toasted bread for their esteemed guest and exchanged stories while they waited.

“Interesting so you and an entire fleet of about 2 million souls say that you only spent a day in this apocalypse? and many say that your fleet had been gone for almost 2 weeks?” Alisyha asked.

“Yes my Lady, Some marines and knights volunteered to stay behind to study the ship and see what we can learn from such a relic.” Kent explained.

“Truly magnificent child and you say that this ship is as big or even bigger than the New Dawn Moon?” Alisyha asked.

“Maybe even bigger we cannot say for certain but we shall leave it for a later time.” Kent replied and took a sip of tea.

“And you’re fleet was given a temporary suspension order to recuperate the fatigue that must have built up during such a journey... I must say that is a very interesting tale... You could become a story writer if you keep this up my dear?” Alisyha said with great joy.

“When my duty ends maybe I shall my Lady thank you for listening to my tale.”Kent bowed.

“It is a great pleasure of mine to hear stories tall or short, be it truth or not... It has always been a great passion of mine to hear the many tales of my people and others with a feathered pen you can wield a very powerful weapon my dear... ” Alisyha asked.

“Indeed I love how you described the Wind Runner who ended a thousand year conflict between two great kingdoms despite having nothing to start his life with...He had no obligation to stop the fight and yet he did the saddest truth about it all he simply sat at the cliffs edge and watched the last part of his life end in the embrace of the setting sun... It is a great inspiration to me and many of my men who had taken a liking to your books my Lady.” Kent replied.

“Thank you my dear...Their is an old saying... We can have a different start in life sure you can have a silver spoon or nothing at all. I love how people who didn't have anything but strive to get to where they are now...They are the real heroes of tomorrow and I am happy to stand with them now and forevermore.”Aliysha said to the young knight with a smile.

The two talked for a few minutes when Aisha went down the stairwell to greet the young knight formally now that she is dressed. Just before they left Alisyha gave her blessings to the two and with a smile and a kiss on the cheek to her daughter.

“Now go and have fun you two... and Aisha please... Bring me a grand child on your way home.” Aliysha winked as she closed the door.

“MOM!!!!” Aisha shouted in her embarrassment.

“““slight laugh”“ I believe Lady Alisyha only desires for your well being my Lady?’ Kent asked.

“Mom... she is... just...”“Sigh”“ come on Kent lets go...” Aisha said.

Though frustrated with her mother despite her intentions Alisyha is well in good terms with the young knight and simply jokes around every now and again. Kent sighed and gave her an encouraging head pat saying he will treat her to her favorite strawberry desert in town.

Her mood picked up as they reached the town square many of the Zerrohnian marines who are part of the suspension were out with their family and friends or discovering romance despite being a part of the greatest military in the Frontier space.

They made a quick stop at the local cafe called Due Rigovalto which is famous in the famous as it can make all sorts of sweets and pastries including but not limited to what you can usually find in a regular cafe. The cafe is also well known for its support for the beast folk despite the hate and discrimination before the war for the Free lands ended in the far north of the Core kingdoms.

They sat down at the table near the open view area of the Flower garden as one of the beast folk waiters who was a close friend of Aisha.

“Hey, hey Isha good morning to you... I can see you and a special boy-friend here early in the morning...” Kitia said with a smile.

“““blush”“Ugh... Kitia he is Kent Redridge... The Knight hero of two worlds.”Aisha said while flustered.

“Well look at you... Finally hooking up again after that ass boyfriend of yours cheated on you back in the day... But I am tots happy for you and your seemingly handsome friend here... Though a bit skinny... I think I got the perfect menu for you two.” Kitia happily said to Aisha.

“It would seem your lady friend is very happy for you.” Kent said.

“Yeah Kitia is my good friend back when I was still studying in school and I trust her and all but sometimes she can...” Aisha said when she facepalmed and pointed to the bar.

Kent looked at the bar and saw Aisha’s friend pull in the work of 5 people at once and at the same time talk with no point of stopping.

“I can see but friends are many but true friends are hard to come by my Lady.” Kent stated.

“Thanks Kent.” Aisha said as they held hands.

Katia brought to their table a strawberry mist sundae dew berries shaped as a heart with a pare of chocolate flavored straws. it was enough for the two of them though a bit early in the morning to have a sweet tooth but well worth it.

They indulged on a sweet treat meanwhile at the other side of the street a group of escentric people who barely made an effort to disguised themselves.

“And why am I dragged into this again?” Rex asked.

“Boss Cap, this is our one opportunity to confirm if whether Boss Man prefers Mage Lady or Priestess Lady!” Genji said as he hid behind a newspaper article.

“I have to agree with my bro here... The Boss Man has always taken a liking to Mage Lady even though she tries to be tough but she is actually a softy right Marky?” Clayton asked.

“Hey man I am just here for the bet and the tea here... But have you seen the things they call the General here... outrageous!” Marky stated as he put down the newspaper.

They were served coffee and biscuits when Lily and Willow disguised themselves as waitresses at the coffee shop on the other side of the street.

“I want to support Kent here but why did you have to drag me and Willow out here?” Lily asked.

“We need a sexy spy lady to help us not get spotted!” Genji replied as he drank some coffee.

“I have to agree I want to help Kent with his love affair since he saved my life twice now... and I am loving these maid outfits... They are so smooth and easy on the skin I hope I can keep it are they machine washable?” Willow asked.

“I think they are but I don’t think you can wash them in the laundry but more of hand washing it... and don’t use hot water it could ruin it too.” Lily added.

“How am I even dragged into this is beyond me... This is Kent’s private time for crying out loud!” Rex sighed.

“50 credits say that Boss man will get Lady Aisha.” Clayton added.

“Your on!” Rex replied.

Lily shook her head and facepalmed thinking how did they live through so many dangerous and down right suicidal military operation with a group of escentric people.

“Um guys where’s the boss?” Genji asked.

“Wait Marky I thought you guys were keeping an eye on them?!” Clayton asked.

“Their on the move south they already have a few blocks head start!” Marky replied.

“Which way?” Clayton asked.

“Um... that way... No wait... um damn this tracker... um we go... left!” Marky pointed.

“Okay, drop the mugs, trays and that apron Willow... Wait on second thought you two keep it on! we move now.” Rex ordered.

The team were about to leave when the priestess and a few of her sisters stopped them as she smiled at the captain.

“Rex, good day to you and where are you all going?” Arra asked.

“Lady Fullvrink... Um good day to you um we were just.” Rex said when Arra stopped him.

“Tisk tisk captain... You lot should be ashamed of yourselves... following Aisha and Kent on their date! Though I want to follow them but I will honor my best friend’s wishes and no one shall interrupt them!” Arra said as she snapped her fingers.

“Everyone book it! I mean scatter!!!”Rex shouted.

The team ran in separate directions Arra was displeased as she asked her sister guards to lead them away from the areas where the two will go on their date. Meanwhile the two exited the village through the northern entrance just as they passed the security check point the two made their way to the northern part of the flower gardens where the wild roses grow.

Walking through the park Aisha tried holding Kent’s hand despite how he looked his hand was warmer than it seemed.

They passed through several rose archways and made it to the grass fields where the children and their families come out to enjoy the fruits of the land.

Kent took off his jacket and offered it as a cushion for Aisha to sit on and simply relaxed the day away.

“Hey Kent.” Aisha said.

“Yes my Lady?” Kent asked.

“Thank you... I know that I said it before but... It’s for real this time.” Aisha said.

“No thanks is needed my Lady... I owe you and Lady Arra everything for welcoming my people and opening a future for all to bare.” Kent replied.

“Maybe but I can feel that that isn’t the case here is it?” Aisha asked.

“What do you mean my Lady?” Kent asked.

Aisha sighed and seemingly asked about the young knight if he had seen or came to Ren’veil long after the war of the Demon lord. The young knight simply smiled and said In a way my Lady for the past several years before the rebellion I had dreams of a world with two moons much like Ren’veil has two moons. I cannot make the visions clear but I feel like I was being called to this world as if a child crying for help.

“But you came none the less to our aide?” Aisha asked.

“I guess I cannot deny it anymore my lady... But Yes I was the one who came to your world alone so long ago... After I came to your world and aided your party in defeating that lesser demon... I had no recollection of what else had transpired.” Kent explained looking over the distance.

“Whatever the case maybe we all get a chance to see a brighter future... so again thank you.” Aisha sincerely said with a smile.

The young knight smiled as the wind gently blew upon his skin Aisha stood up for the first time in a long time was sincere with the young knight. She stood up and leaned up on the young knight inviting him to a game of tag getting a head start before him.

He laughed and chased after her meanwhile at the top of the northern wall of the village. The team managed to regroup after losing the Priest guard sisters somehow though exhausted they were very persistent.

“So how is it Clay?” Rex asked.

“I can barely see with this binoculars... Who has a better scope?” Clayton asked.

“Here take mine!” Marky said.

“Wait since when did you have the time to get your sniper rifle? and how did you get that from the Night Hawk Armory!” Clayton asked.

“I left it in my room and this is not my sniper rifle... It’s just the scope!” Marky stated.

“Um guys where’s Lily and Willow?” Rex asked.

“I think they said they will distract the sister priestess ladies for us... I think...” Genji said.

“Right... so we are on stakeout duty... Reminds me of my days as a policeman on shard...” Rex said while spying on the two.

“Wait I thought you were a mercenary?” Clayton asked.

“I was a Mercenary long ago then I join the Shard police force in Troah to help support my Family I was a Captain at the time with more record arrest than anyone in the precinct 69... Those were the good old days but its all in the past.” Rex explained.

“Oh wow... Damn if it means anything to you Boss Cap... It really is an honor to work alongside someone who is experienced in the enforcement of law and order.” Genji mentioned while handing him a bottle of water.

“It means a lot coming from a Promethian warrior...It’s all in the past now... So if you guys want to continue snooping I’ll go and keep a look out for the sisters.” Rex replied.

Rex got off the wall when Marky mentioned that their was a hint of sadness in the captain’s voice he and the sergeant realized that their captain hid something from them.

Some time later the two were spotted heading to sea city’s coast line view since it was recently built not many people have taken the liberty of checking the tourist attraction.

It has an underwater observation deck and even an enviro-dome observing the underwater life had been a dream for many Zerrohnians after the destruction of Requiem it had left a partial void in the hearts of the new generation.

Slowly but surely the children will learn of how to appreciate where one of the building blocks of life had come to pass.

“Wow this place is pretty!” Aisha said in astonishment.

“Yes it truly is.” Kent replied looking at Aisha.

“Kent I never knew that you can make a barrier of glass it truly is an engineering marvel... Eva would be so happy to see this!” Aisha stated as she looked onward the deep sea.

Their were even sea-folk who come to pass near the observation dome some Knights had fully adapted their bodies to the sea through natural evolution as a hybrid warrior species. The Zerrohnians take great pride in sharing with others their culture and take pride of learning new ones.

One of the younger sea folk code name mermaid-folk waved at the two the young knight waved back as a sign of respect. After their visit they went to the small house east of Sea city it was the silent shack since the young knight secretly built it during his spare time.

They sat down on the wooden bench and enjoyed the sunset to Aisha’s surprise the bench was well built with some wool cushions nailed in it was not luxurious but it was enough to set the mood.

“Today was a good day.” Aisha whispered as she rest her head on Kent’s shoulder.

“Indeed my Lady... Indeed...”Kent replied.

“Hey Kent... If this means were dating... Then officially you are ours right?” Aisha asked.

“I believe so... Wait... what do you mean by us?” Kent asked.

“Um You belong to me and my sis.” Aisha said.

She quickly explained the main reason why the priestesses are so few in number and are well protected by the mages of Ren’veil and the citizens of Ren’veil. Aisha also stated why she calls her sister by name since the two grew up together as childhood friends and had a sister like bond to one another.

She stated the main reason some families have 2 wives as one child represents the goddess Su-tharma the goddess of the Earth and fertility, the other represents the goddess of the Moon and stars Ishtarhka and the Priestesses of the Wolf Father Shadow the aspect of Justice and balance.

Kent was surprised to hear that he not only belongs to Aisha now but to Lady Arra as well. The young knight stood from his seat and knelt down before Aisha and held her hand. He looked deeply into her eyes with a gentle nod the young knight stood firmly and accepted this as a blessing.

“I am a knight of Ren’veil I had taken an oath to protect and honor your world’s rules, customs and traditions... I would be honored if you two shall have me for I am yours now and forevermore.” Kent asked.

“It’s kind of embarrassing if you put it like that Kent... But Yeah... I am the happiest girl on Lashurta right now.” Aisha said happily.

“Then so be it... I belong to both of you now and forever more...” Kent bowed.

The young knight as stated by Knight Wolf Champion Umbral Volka, a knight can take many roles in life as he or she serves the Maker and Faith herself. They have honored the bravery and sacrifice of the knights who had fought and bleed beside them during the 1st and 2nd war for creation.

As part of their great passage a Knight may have the option of falling in love and having a family to establish. But they must make their oath of honor and fidelity to their lover or in this case loved ones. Their oath must be made upon the open sky where the land, sea and stars are in view in honor to their deity Faith the goddess of balance and justice.

She stood up from her chair and asked the young knight to stand with her as she too made her oath to be true. The made their oaths that day of September 14, 4118 and sealed it with a kiss. The wind suddenly picked up and surrounded the two they could feel a gentle breeze wrap around their wrist. This was a great sign as Faith and the three gods recognized the oath to be true and gave their blessings upon them.

The Wolf Father recognized the oath of the young knight to the Mage daughter of Su-tharma the mark placed upon his left hand began to shine in recognition to said oath to Aisha.

Meanwhile at the temple of the Wolf Father when she felt a gentle wind caress her cheek and wrapped around her wrist. The oath of the three gods was made that day as her birth mark shined alerting the sisters of the entire temple.

“A suitor for Sister Arriandale had been found... SISTERS A SUITOR HAS BEEN FOUND!” One of the elder priestesses shouted.

“I believe I know who it might be...” Arra thought.

At the same time the Temple Idol of Faith on New Dawn where the knights and citizens come to pray on the last day of each week to give thanks to their deity. As the Knight Father was giving his usual sermon and praise to Faith. It was a rare sight to see the palms of the goddess’s statute to move as the Eternal knight her champion had taken his oath of loyalty to serve and protect the people of creation.

This caused a massive uproar in New Dawn as the Statue of Faith had began to shine greatly signalling great promise for the people of the Dragon-wolf. Not only in New Dawn was this great event seen each and every ship and household on New Dawn or the fleet that held an idol of Faith had shined meaning the new chapter of their people starts that day.

The two returned to New Hope village with a renewed vigor and a refreshed look on their faces ready to face tomorrow. They returned to the Redridge Manner quite late but it seemed like the Knights and police marines were in an uproar and their moral was at an all time high.

This was quite a great news when Kent asked Aisha to come in when his Parents and Aisha’s parents even including Arraiandale’s parents were present. Some looked confused others excited and others were simply out of words to say.

After a much needed explanation and several scoldings from Charlotte and praise from Alisyha.

“So Let me get this straight... What my son did was the oath of loyalty which is basically locks my son’s ability to date others than Miss Ayekawa and Miss Fullvrink correct!” Victor asked.

“Indeed, The oath of the three gods is to be made only when one is absolutely certain of the other party and yes it is basically a great oath to take when one wishes to be with another on Ren’veil.” Alisyha explained.

“I do not permit my Baby girl to be whisked off by another man!” Aliysha’s husband shouted.

Aliysha then pinched her husbands ear and asked themselves to be excused after a minute or two. They returned but her husband had several smack marks on his head.

“Now where were we? ah yes I approve of Kent as our daughter’s protector and lover! right dear?” Alisyha asked with a frightening voice.

“Yes... Dear...” Her husband cried.

“Well I don’t have any complaints... After what had happened to Arra with some hooligans who faked her mark... Regardless Mister Redridge, Miss Ayekawa... I beg for your pardon.” Arra’s Father pleaded.

“Father it’s okay... I am happy that it is Kent that I got paired with.” Arra said as she comforted her father.

“But this humble Farmer is...”“sniff”“ so proud of my humble daughter... Finding love!” Arra’s Father cried heavily.

“Mister Krosta It’s okay...” Alisyha said.

“Kent a word please in private?” Victor asked.

The two moved to the back yard of the manner he handed a drink as they finally had a serious talk.

��My son... Ever since you were born your mother and I had been very worried to all three of you... Ever since you were little you were the youngest to enter the training of the knights at the age of 3 and enact ability to stand up against a fully trained knight at the age of 5... Your brother had an unparalleled knowledge of politics and nature despite his power and being a dragon-human hybrid... While your baby sister is a psycher the strongest one in the history of the Dragon-wolf second only to Tallis... You three are our greatest treasures... Are you sure you are ready to handle such a burden?” Victor asked.

“Father... You told me a long time ago that Faith presents each living being with a mission and a challenge that we must overcome in order to be come stronger both physically and spiritually... I wish to care for them... I believe the emotion is called love... This yearning that my heart beats for battle in every aspect... I will not break this oath even if it kills me!” Kent vowed as he slammed his right hand over his heart.

“I know... Take this time to get to know them better since your fleet is suspended from military activity.” Victor said.

“Thank you Father... I know this isn’t Requiem I wish to see our original home world but I know it is gone now... But Ren’veil is our home now... and I plan to make a better tomorrow for everyone this I swear.” Kent said wit hpride.

“So it is my son... So it is....”Victor happily said.

“father if it is okay... may we go back inside it’s getting a bit cold.” Kent asked.

“Well said my son...” Victor replied.

They went back inside while the others had a chat about what to expect and what is to be expected between the three families.

In order to make the oath complete according to Aisha the young knight must repeat the oath in front of Arra. Kent mustered the courage to repeat the oath in front of the priestess the two were given some privacy as they performed the oath taking in front of the two moons at the second floor balcony.

“This is a bit embarrassing is it not?” Arra asked.

“I cannot see it my Lady...”Kent said as he held Arra’s hand.

“Kent... If you do this... Balance must be maintained between you... Aisha and myself...It would feel like you are engaged to us... Are you prepared for such a responsibility?” Arra asked.

“I am My Lady no matter the risk... Though I am no Hero.” Kent answered.

“Kent... you risked your life to save us but I am worried that I may not be worthy of such powerful love that you possess... Even if you say that you are not a hero... I can feel it in my heart... that you are one... But are you certain that you are willing to go the distance for us?” Arra asked with a gentle sadness in her voice.

“I am... I made my oath to both of you that day... I will never leave you... I will protect you both... On or off the battlefield.. I make my oath to you as well my Lady...I Kent Redridge present myself to you as your protector and lover... I am prepared to take the risks... i wager my life for you two... No matter the cost so long as I can stand with you two I am happy... Should my words utter a single lie I offer my life as the price for my insolence... I pray to the Wolf Father to bless our oath should I be worthy of you...” Kent said.

“KENT NO!” Arra shouted.

They were immediately taken into the astral realm or the forest of the Wolves the final resting place of the priestesses who fell in battle and awaiting rebirth with no memory of their past life.

The Sisters stood around them watching as the Wolf Father himself looked at Kent Arra stood in front of her Father to prevent the young knight from facing his fury. With a wave of his claws her astral form was forcefully sent back to the physical world.

She saw Kent’s body was frozen solid holding her hand Arra tried to go back to the forest of Wolves but she was blocked out. For the first time in her life she was at a loss to save him from the wrath of a god she had to force her way back.

Arra called out for help watching his body started to show wounds made claw, fang and blade. His veins started to scream out while the young knight battled in the Astral realm realizing that the trials of the Father is suicide she tried to stop the oath taking.

Many minutes later the mark on her body was sealed with a crown of roses she looked at the soul mark left by the blessing on Kent’s left palm as it also showed the same markings the trial was complete.

The young knight turned pale sweating endlessly as he tried to open his eyes when a scar appeared over his left eye. Though his injuries were severe yet not life threatening he tried to get his feet under him. Arra helped him on his feet as he looked at her the priestess cried knowing that facing the Wolf Father is suicide regardless as he is the aspect of Justice and balance on creation as she mentioned.

“KENT YOU SHOULD NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!” Arra cried while embracing him.

“I did not mean to worry you my Lady...”Kent coughed heavily.

Arra held him tightly as she heard the Wolf Father’s voice in her head He never ceases to amaze me child of mine... The two goddesses had seen his mettle and had chosen him to be a worthy suitor... Let him prove his worth to you... I am sure he will not falter...

Despite nearly killing the young knight the wolf Father despite his intentions to protect his daughters and ensure they end up with someone worthy of them.

The young knight excuse himself as he was tired and closed his eyes resting upon her shoulders. Though the day may had come to an end their was still much needed to be done.

The next morning after a long night Kent woke up in his room with little memory of what had transpired last night. He then tried to get off the bed when he felt something very soft he looked to his side to see Aisha was to his left and to his right was Arra sleeping next to him and barely with any clothing.

Instead of panicking he simply smiled and got off the bed silently and covered the two with the comforter since it’s still a bit cold in the morning. He then made his way down where the entire family to his surprise was present even Coralline who was always in her study on New Dawn.

he grabbed some food for the two before he returned to his room Charlotte put her tea cup down and smiled at her son.

Kent grabbed a cup of freshly squeezed juice and a piece of toasted bread he grabbed some food for the two before he returned to his room Charlotte put her tea cup down and smiled at her son.

“So my son... did you have a fun threesome last night?” Charlotte winked.

“““spat out his drink and coughing heavily”“ WHAT?!” Kent shouted.

“Shush child you might wake those two up... But still how did it go?” Charlotte asked.

“Wait big brother what does Mother mean by having fun and a threesome?” Coralline asked.

“It would be best if you don’t know it my sister... and No mother we did not do that I barely have any memories of last night...” Kent stated.

“Well, After your battle with the wolf Father which exhausted you mentally according to Arra she and Aisha needed to perform a ritual to heal the damage to your mind and soul...That is why they are in your room right now.” Charlotte explained.

“Don’t worry brother this will not get out publicly Lily and I are already on the case... Lady Aliysha and Mister Vulcan aka miss Arra’s Father had agreed to let them stay here for a time... So you have two new room mates big brother... Good for you and I am impressed.” Chimera said sarcastically.

“By the way my son Mister Vulcan and Miss Alisyha had agreed to allow them to live under the same roof as you so it will be very easy for you lot ot get to know each other.”Victor said as he drank his coffee.

“Okay then... I am okay with them staying in my room but I will need to order a lot of things if that will be the case. Mom I am going to need your help!” Kent asked.

“Sure my son what do you need?” Charlotte asked.

After a few minutes of explaining and preparing breakfast Kent went back to his room with food for the two.

When he got back to his room Aisha and Arra were slowly waking up though they had a fairly long day much was still ahead of them.

His left arm split off into two sub arms and prepared a healthy and fulfilling breakfast for the two.

“My oh my Kent... You should not have prepared such a delightful breakfast?” Arra asked in astonishment.

“This is our first day together my Lady this much is little to what you and Lady Aisha had given me... This is but thanks for accepting me as your protectorate and Lover...” Kent bowed.

“It is a good gesture Kent for you to go through so much effort this day... As you say we three have a long road ahead of us... But what should we do this day since our schedule is practically free for a day or two?” Arra asked.

“Hmm I was going to Bastion hope to see about the trainer selection results and greet them... I believe one of them is your friend Emilia free lander.” Kent explained.

“I am surprised that Emi is here... Let’s go meet her after breakfast...” Arra asked.

“By your will Lady Arra.” Kent bowed.

She drank her morning chamomile tea and to her surprise it was natural blend of herbs that she preferred before and during her time in the Temple of the Wolf Father.

Arra was surprised that Kent learned of her favorite morning tea when he told her that Vulcan told his mother how to prepare it and showed her the way. Kent repeated the process as if the tea was made by her father in the flesh.

Aisha was surprised to hear of their conversation as she took a look in her coffee it was made from the refined cocoa bean found only in the Trigor mountain located at the far north east of the free kingdom and only a few of these beans had ever been exported out of the area.

Along with the refined honey from extracted from the giant honeysuckle bees located at the Forest of Bree where the elfen use it as a natural export product. The cream was mixed into the coffee in the shape of a heart despite how it looks its taste was beyond imagination for the taste buds.

“Kent how did you?!” AIsha asked.

“Same thing I told Lady Arra my Lady... Lady Alisyha passed a note to mother about what your favorites are and I had to prepare them I hope they are to your liking?” Kent asked.

“Well... “”flustered”“Its okay... I guess...” Aisha muttered.

“At least Sis here likes it very much Kent... I will say thank you on her behalf.” Arra mentioned.

“SIS!!!” AIsha shouted.

Kent snikkered to see the two argue over such a trivial matter but one thing seemed to puzzle him why did Aisha and Arra call each other sisters. Arra giggled at the young knight’s curiosity and explained to him that they are not sisters but they grew up together being friends since they were but babies and up to this day they had stood side by side as sisters.

Through thick or thin and even any battle they will have each other’s backs even during the battle for the freedom of the people against the demon lord. Arra was the one who took the spear hit for Aisha while Aisha stopped the Thunder judgement spell used by the demon lord against Arra and barely able to protect her friends at the time.

After their talk and a hot shower for the first time since having hot water in homes at the village is considered as a luxury. The two received a fresh pair of clothes left by their respective families before they left Charlotte gave them a very stylish belt filled with an assortment of gadgets like a micro plasma field, grappling hook, an emergency bio-med gel kit, a tachyon beacon and a atmospheric field projector when trapped in deep space.

The gadgets on the belt were built specially by Charlotte basing it off from her own experience during the 2nd Great War.

“Okay you kids be safe now!” Charlotte shouted.

“Thank you for the great gifts miss Charlotte.” Aisha said as she looked at the belt.

“Oh these are nothing at all oh and they can change color and styles when you place your palm over the belt buckle. Now off you go kiddies and have fun now!” Charlotte said as she shooed the three off.

Arra looked at Kent while he looked through his arm pad while they walked to Bastion hope. To his surprise many marines and Knights had been saluting him on first sight.

They entered the base when the knights immediately lined up and offered their praise to them.

“Hail Lord Anthony!” The knights shouted.

“WOW is this a regular thing you do Kent?” Aisha asked.

“Not really only when theirs a special occasion... But the only occasion today is the Trainer welcoming ceremony.” Kent stated as they entered the main hall.

Upon entering they saw over 3 dozen applicants who passed they all stood side by side with their robes as swordsman before entering the fort. Aisha noticed Emilia was part of the successful applicants the two ran towards her and congratulated her success.

Before they could congratulate her Emi asked the two to sit next to her as Chimera was at the stage Kent took to the stage with Rex and Fenris by his side.

Hello Everyone I am Kent Redridge of Strike Fleet New Hope... I congratulate you all for passing the application process for the sword trainers I know it has been a difficult challenge to face off against a Venerate ranked knight but you all had proven your stride and mettle against a knight who had fought a godly class demons of old.

From this day on wards you 36 swordsman are now ranked trainers and shall be part of molding the hundreds of Zerrohnian Marines and Recruits in sword combat.

I can see much potential in all of your future career as part of the Knight Kingdom I hope that faith and the three gods may shine fortune upon all of you.

Now let us end this welcoming ceremony and enjoy for this day does not belong to you alone for it belongs to the future of our people.

Kent raised his fist and howled much like a wolf many knights followed their lord as they are a part of the Iron Wolves Legion. With the ceremony at an end the mercenaries now turned trainers united with their families with smiles on their faces as a new chapter will start for many of them.

Chimera and Kent’s team approached the newly recruited trainer to congratulate her on succeeding the trials.

“Emi congratulations!” Chimera said as he lifted her up.

“““blush”“CHIRA please not in front of my friends.” Emilia said with a flustered face.

“Sorry but I am very happy for you!” Chimera said as he embraced her instead.

“Regardless of the situation miss Emi I am honored to have a free lander to be in the Base... I look forward to your achievements miss... I mean Sergeant Emilia Freelander.” Kent said proudly.

“Thank you Ken... I mean General Anthony!” Emilia saluted.

“Now then enough of the formalities we have a feast to attend to.. Oh yes I forgot to get something in my office you all go on ahead... I’ll catch up...” Kent told them as he walked away from them.

“Alright Big brother... If their are any hot wings Ill save some for you!” Chimera shouted.

Kent walked away to his office he made sure first that no one was following him as soon as the coast was clear he uttered.

“I got that weird feeling again...” Kent said as he entered his office.

“I am sorry father...” Kyvash said with a serious look in here eyes.

Kyvash turned the chair around but it did not stop spinning her care taker Sword masters stopped the chair for her. Though nauseous from the spinning she instantly recovered the young knight was about to laugh but he held it in surprisingly well.

“Kyvash what can I do for you and why are you hiding?” Kent asked.

“Yes I am here because Astaroth and Tyrannox managed to follow the trail where Willow’s brother was taken in this flash drive holds the data you will need to mount a rescue mission and also rescue the Vailen...” Kyvash said as she placed the flash drive on the table.

“Thank you yet I feel a but is coming in...” Kent stated.

“Yes their is... I wish to have a brand new Hive built on Ren’veil a royal guard Hive that will serve as additional security for our people... They will follow only your orders of course.” Kyvash stated.

“I might agree to that but I need my Father’s Approval and I am curious how the High Glaives produce such powerful warriors like the Sword God masters that always protect you and the Blade god masters that aided us in our escape on Vega?” Kent asked.

“I will explain in due time but this data drive will hold all the information you need, the number of people being held and the locations of possible planets for resource conversion or colonization... Think of this as my investment to the people’s future...” Kyvash said.

“I will consider this as a gift my lady... And I will talk to father soon about this.” Kent saluted.

“Very well I will talk with Father as soon as I get home... Would you like to join the party?” Kent asked.

“I wish I could but for now I need to settle a few more things with your permission I would like to go to the Redridge manner this evening?” Kyvash asked.

“Then it would be an honor for you to visit our home... But I need to get something from my desk if that is fine?” Kent asked.

Before they went on their seperate ways Kyvash told the young knight of her new Apex Prowl Hunters and gave him over 50 of these monstrous hydras they are independent thinkers but they will listen to orders of the one assigned to them by their queen.

The young knight was free to use these new Hunters should the need arise all he needed to do was think and they will hear him.

The young knight thanked the queen for her generous gift he placed his palm over his desk when a massive blade rack appeared out of the wall next to the door.

He looked at the assortment of blades each one of the weapons emitted a powerful aura that the Sword Masters were being pushed back as if they were facing a world ending typhoon.

Kyvash quickly snapped her fingers projecting her own aura field to protect her children as the blades domination field was stronger that their protection auras.

He grabbed the double edge sword measuring 3 meters in length with a eight crowned cross as it’s sword guard with the pommel shaped like budded flower. The young knight excused himself from the room as Kyvash watched her father act the same way she remembers him long ago.

“My Lady now that Lord Anthony agrees to your request should we not tell him of the Hunter killer’s status.” The Sword Master asked.

“He will not do anything unless he is provoked my child... For now let us head home I am a bit tired today I still need to meet Grand Father and Grand Mother later on.” Kyvash said as she opened a portal to home.

Meanwhile at the party all members of the strike Fleet including the Admiralty, the Iron Wolve’s circle of elders and the Commando teams who participated in the recruitment and selection process. Emilia was somewhat isolated as she did not go through the standard trials instead was recommended by Chimera to be a trainer but she participated in the trials where many Venerates had approved her skill as a trainer.

Though some of the fellow trainers did not even bother to befriend her as she was a part of the clan that nearly destroyed Ren’veil and wiped out the Priestesses and mages though it was kept secret but those who knew the truth would prefer not to acquaint themselves with Emilia.

Emi looked to her glass of wine it was a solemn reminder that she was not meant to befriend anyone else but Chimera showed her another path. He tapped her shoulder and tapped her cheek snapping her sadness out of reality.

“Miss Emi don’t look sad it will spoil your appetite... I got you your favorite... Hammer shrimp with sauce butter on the side.” Chimera said with a smile.

“Thanks Chira... You always know how to bring a girl up.” Emilia said as she took the plate.

“Emi don’t worry no one knows who you really are here... You are Emilia Freelander and soon to be Redridge so lighten up this is your day!” Aisha stated.

“I agree Miss Emilia your family’s crime is not yours to bare... It was their choice to set their path to ruin... You only did what is right and no one can hold you accountable for such an atrocity.” Arra added.

“I know Arra but It was my fault why my brother turned out like that... I should have brought him with me when I was exiled maybe things would be different if I did that...” Emilia said as she shook off the memories of her past.

“Emi always know that I am here for you... Through thick or thin I will stand by you as your shield and sword... I am your partner for life...” Chimera said with a proud growl.

“I know Chimera and I would not have it any other way...” Emilia said as she kissed him on the cheek.

With the party well underway the young knight met up with his friends and brother at their table. They were curious as to what was the broad looking sword he was holding the young knight sat down and told them it was his gift to Emilia.

It was one of the first of the 6 blades he forged on New Dawn it was called the Star Strider a blade specially built from purified star Xerromite a sub rare class ore used as a catalyst for making the strongest blade or the toughest armor.

It can absorb heat and heal the wielder’s injuries simply by absorbing sunlight it can generate heat strong enough to turn a mountain into a lava pit. The young knight was infamous in the Forge works for making blades that are extremely powerful and may not require a weapon heart. Although the weapons he crafts are alive in their own way and will only require a small sacrifice from it’s would be wielder in order to seal the bond.

Emi pulled the blade out of the scabbard and cut herself with the blade as it absorbed her blood the blade glowed a bright warm light and transformed into a claymore blade.

“Congratulations the sun strider is now yours miss Emi... use it well.” Kent congratulated her.

“Thank you... I really appreciate it Kent.” Emilia said as she attached the scabbard on her belt.

“Thank you also big bro for giving her a chance...” Chimera said.

“Hey Faenrir wanted a challenge so he was the one who volunteered to test the trainer’s mettle so its all well and good.” Kent answered as he grabbed a carbonated drink.

“Wait Faenrir as in Primal Knight Elite Captain Faenrir Claw breaker? THAT FENRIS!!!” Chimera shouted.

“Oh no...” Kent said as his brother showed his anger.

“Chira what’s wrong?” Emi asked.

“I WANTED TO FIGHT HIM!!! AND EMI GOT A CHANCE TO FIGHT HIM I AM JEALOUS!!!”Chimera cried.

Captain Faenrir Clawbreaker is the biological older brother of Fenris Fellfrost Captain Faenrir is one of the few knights who participated in the siege of the World ender citadel at the final battle during the 2nd great war.

The Primal Captain is one of the rare few to see the Legendary Archon Wodan “Thunderking” Redridge and Keith “Hunter Killer” Aliucard against the demon champion Guision the thousand hands. Faenrir also earned many achievements and an impressive kill count of 5000 mid level demons under his belt.

Many aspirants and Archon candidates like Kent and Chimeara wishes to fight Faenrir it is considered a great honor for one to fight against the few Elites of the 2nd war in a duel of prowess. But Faenrir does not entertain duels unless he specifies it to be so as Elites are always needed in the front lines and have no time for pleasantries.

And when they do they will only use their free time at their own accord not even the great nobles of the Dragon-wolf can request an audience from them.

“It was a sudden request from Faenrir brother I couldn’t do anything... Besides he was only pulled out from the Border patrol because of his fleet needing resupply.” Kent explained.

“Right I wanted to have a duel with him though!” Chimera cried.

“If it means anything Chira... He gave me a tough time when I fought him.” Emi said as she comforted him.

Chimera was saddened as the elites of the 2nd war were so few and are always away from New Dawn it cause him little pain knowing that he could not even fight him. At the same time he was very proud of Emilia for being able to fight a great warrior like him.

Kent laughed at his little brother when Aisha came up to him with a couple of drinks as well with a plan of her own.

“Hey Kent here!” Aisha said while handing him over a very cold can of carbonated drink.

“Thank you my lady... I needed one.” Kent replied as he opened the can.

“Big Bro... I am concerned about your obsession with those carbonated drinks dont they have enough sugar to make a small marble?” Chimera asked.

“Yeah the virus inside my body converts the sugar into usable biomatter while the rest of the contents are being converted to water... I only drink it for the taste...” Kent explained.

“I know that brother but you should calm down with those drinks... Its 9:30 in the morning big bro!” Chimera added.

“Sure after this I wont drink for the mean time.” Kent said as he savored his drink.

“SO Kent... After this do you want to go to the mages temple with me?” Aisha asked.

“Very Well my Lady I would love that.” Kent replied.

“After your visit Kent please fetch me from the temple I just remembered that I am needed at the local orphanage.”Arra asked.

The young knight nodded when one of the marines approached him requesting for his assistance. The marine reported about some incidents in the mage temple about humans turning into monsters in broad day light. Many knights and marines had already been injured and the surviving knights are requesting for immediate assistance from any Crusader class or above for assistance.

Kent agreed to go when Aisha over heard the situation at the temple and wanted to go as well.

“Okay, Brother I will leave the management of the party to you... REX Get the team ready!” Kent ordered.

“YES SIR!” Rex saluted.

The team along with some marine and knight venerates boarded their respective gunships and made their way to the Mage temple at shion.

On their way Kent and the other captains listened on the reports from the on site guards who first saw the incident and from knight aspirants who responded to the alert.

“Okay so something is turning the mages into monsters... But according to the reports the mages still have some shred of their humanity but over time they lose it... Interesting...” Kent said.

“General If I may how many casualties so far?” Captain Yurfa asked.

“So far over 50 wounded 5 critically injured 3 aspirants incapacitated and several civilians wounded from the initial explosive magic used on the aspirant sergeant treko.” Captain Ignus reported.

“Okay... Set up a perimeter 3 miles around the tower have knight elites perform routine patrols around the area make sure no mage escapes using the underground tunnels and sewage system. Have the science and medical teams set up a isolation zone so we can study the thing that caused all this.” Kent ordered.

“Sir if I may how certain are we that this is not caused by a virus or an air born infection of some kind?” Captain Mugen asked.

“If it were the case then a lot of people including the marines turned into monsters already... But have the Templar apocrypha’s check the air for any contagions just to be sure. I almost forgot and have any non knight personnel we have right now wear level 5 bio hazard equipment and bio-masks before we land.” Kent ordered.

“Lady Aisha please wear my helmet... I will be okay without it.” Kent said as he handed her his pressurized mask.

Aisha nodded while the young knight helped her wear his mask it scanned her retina and changed it’s form based on her specifications. the mask that normal covers most of Kent’s face only leaving the left eye to actually see and several sensors on the forehead, sides and the back of the head helped him have a full 360 view of any battle.

Instead the mask’s initial features of heavy protection was removed and replaced with a full indestructible visor with a bio-air filter and several smaller but efficient sensors that can help her see around her.

“Aisha can you breath easy in the helmet?” Kent asked.

“Yeah but it smells like you in this thing... I will borrow it later...” Aisha stated.

“Note to self must wash the inner part of my helmet after each use...” Kent thought.

“General look it’s getting bad down there its getting bad!” Marky shouted.

“Right No time for flirting... Marky and Rex non-lethal rounds only Clayton, Genji, and Miss Willow With me... Lady Aisha please remain on the gunship while we take care of this.” Kent ordered.

“Um boss... she already jumped out!” Clayton said.

Kent looked out the gunship to see Aisha falling from the sky and somehow landed safely on the ground with her magic. The young knight felt a bit stupid for giving an order to Aisha who is a civilian and was an illogical move on his part.

“So boss um should we?” Genji asked.

“Just jump already... I feel very stupid right now for ordering Aisha...” Kent said outloud.

“At least we know your human boss... “”Jumped out the gunship”“ Big bro you owe me 20 credits!” Genji shouted.

“HEY COME BACK HERE THAT DOESN’T COUNT!” Clayton shouted as he jumped out.

“General if you shall excuse me I will scold those two when we get back.” Willow said as she waited for the gunship to land.

“Right... But Willow please take it easy since this will be your first time in battle with your New body.” Kent reminded his friend.

Willow nodded she was still getting used to the absurd strength her new body has and the new bow that the Forge masters made for her was heavier than her previous bow and more stronger than the first. The young knight tapped her on the shoulder reminding that she will always have a friend to count on.

He free felled from the gunship and almost immediately he managed to stomp down one monster that was about to escape containment. Though he made sure that the impact was not lethal it was enough to knock out the mage. Kent turned to check on the other knights Clayton was grabbed by one of the monsters and thrown towards the young knight.

Kent grabbed him by the collar and arm saving him from impacting the wall the promethian sergeant got back up he was very furious.

“Thanks boss man... HEY YOU GET BACK HERE I AIN’T DONE WITH YOU PIECE OF SHIT!” Clayton shouted.

“Captain these mages turned monsters are getting stronger by the second we could use some extra muscle... Dread knight class muscles!” A knight shouted.

“ Understood we have already called a few of them in but they are about 5 minutes out.” Rex shouted.

Aisha used her magic and restrained most of the monsters with Earth claw and ice shackles. With her help the knights and marines were able to place the restriction fields on the magemonsters. One of the monsters was able to break through Aisha’s restraining magic and fully lost their minds to their instinctive nature.

It rushed towards the young mage as several knights tried to stop it they were thrown out of the way instead. She needed time to cast a more powerful restraining magic when it was about to crush her. The young knight pushed her out of the way with a deep breath his hands began to flow as if they hand no bones in them.

With only seconds before the monster could slam it’s massive fist over the young knight he closed his eyes and uttered.

“Shadow Fire Art... Claws of the raging wind!” Kent whispered.

The shadow fire art enveloped his arms with a strange black and white aura turning his fingers into miniature spears. With a single thrust his arms became a machine gun and struck the monster in the vital pressure points that controlled movement. With each thrust he was able to toss the monster out of harms way from his men and the civilians trying to get to safety.

With the monster incapacitated the knights applied medical care to it and added a restriction field to ensure no one else will be harmed.

He ran to Aisha’s side and helped her back up asking if she was unharmed aside from the fall and a scrap on her arm she was safe.

The knights and marines who learned about their founder Blazer ShadowFire he had many books about teaching knights about the different styles of fighting including ancient martial arts.

Only a few Champion class knights are able to perform and re-create the techniques in the books but only a direct descendant can unleash their true power. If any Zerrohnian or Xer-razh were to see the technique is a great privilege on its own.

Later that Day with the Mage tower Hazard Knights were sent into the Tower to search for the source of the monster transformation and Apocrypha’s searched the area high and low for any external threats within a 5 mile radious.

They deemed the area safe and free from any air born contagions Kent asked Aisha and the surviving mages to check if their was any magic involved in the outbreak.

Aisha told them no summoning or transfiguration circles were found in the area something bothered here when one of the monsters Kent defeated spewed out blood.

The blood of a Vai’len is a bright red despite any health conditions the blood of a Vai’len will always be bright red but it was darker and the blood almost was similar to acid when came into contact with anything that had life.

“This is not much Kent but it has to be something right?” Aisha asked.

“It is... Lily... Please extract a blood sample from one of the monsters and see if their are any mysteries inside their blood?” Kent asked.

“Im already done Kent and surprise surprise... Their are a lot of surprises inside their DNA... I am sending you the data I have so far but I’ll get back to you once we have more info.” Lily replied.

The report from the science and medical team was sent to everyone inside the briefing room and the details were confusing. According to the medical report their blood had nano-machine cells fast replicating and primitive type of machine cells.

It drew in the energy inside the mage’s body and with the right triggering effect the mage’s body will turn into a beast as a result. No knight hermit or scientist on New Dawn or the Entire legion could do such a monstrous thing to their own kin and brother. It would mean death for them if this was to be true but nothing was said and done until more information was found.

It was an absurd amount of machine cells inside their blood that caused the abnormal change. Kent immediately ordered all the personnel of the mage tower to be detained and questioned by the Crusaegrum mind seekers.

Aisha was safe because she was at the trainer’s welcoming party several hours before the incident came to be and she was at the Redrdige manner even before the incident transpired.

“Lady Aisha this might take a while but you may want to get some rest in the secure camp... I’ll be with you in a moment.” Kent requested.

“Okay... Just don’t take too long?” Aisha asked as she was escorted to the camp.

Once she left Kent and the team including some Elite knights nodded as if they noticed something.

Kent clenched his fist slowly as he smacked the air behind him when they heard a satisfying bone cracking sound. All of a sudden Rex pulled out his vibration knife and started slashing in front of him and the knight elite near the door grabbed something from this air and slammed his fist into the object as its head exploded in a violent gore of blood show.

“Alert every knight and marine we have infiltrators in the area... Lock down the air space have every ship we have scan for Electro magnetic signatures for any stealth ships...” Kent ordered.

“Yes sir!” The Elites saluted.

“WE are going to need prowl hunters... wait a minute...” Kent stated.

He remembered the Apex prowl Hunters that Kyvash gave him earlier today and remembered that all he needed to call them was a thought and they will come.

With a single thought the ground began to shake as 3 of the Apex Prowl hunters who were taller and have darker scales than their cousin. Their muscles are stronger and their mantis like arms have twin blades that can vibrate intensely causing matter around them to split apart.

They also have 4 mandible like arms on their backs that can extend for 5 to 6 meters and can puncture 50 inch adamantine reinforced steel walls. The Apex hunters roared as they busted out of the ground and attacked the cloaked assassins with no mercy.

One of the hunters fired a volley of razor sharp spines from it’s shoulders melting and shredding the assassin into pieces. Another assassin tried to Kill Willow from behind but was easily dealt with by the Hunter’s 4 mandibles that impaled it on the fore head, neck and heart.

With the room cleared the pact leader of the Apex hunters looked at Kent with it’s blood thirsty eyes bowing before it’s master asking what is their orders.

“Kill all assassins within this area that turned the vai’len mages into monsters Do not let them escape no matter what... Protect the civilians near here... that is my order.” Kent said to the apex Hunter.

“By your will Master...” The hunter said as they burrowed into the ground.

“Sir is it right to trust those things?” Rex asked.

“It’s fine... They were given to me by Kyvash and this would be a perfect for them to prove themselves to the legion kingdom... Its about time we gave our allies some credit.” Kent explained.

“Wait boss if these assassins managed to pass our sensor defense grid then who knows how many are in this camp.” Clayton stated.

“Then that means... Oh no... Aisha!” Kent thought as he busted through the door.

Kent rushed to the secured camp site where Aisha stayed in she settled down she used the built in shower. She got into the shower the falling water made it difficult to hear from the outside the young knight rushed to Aisha’s camp. The assassin pulled out his knife in an attempt to stab the mage when Kent opened the door she was not in her chamber.

Just before the assassin could deal the final blow a blade pierced the assassins chest. Kyvash appeared from the shadows as she leaned towards the assassins ear and open the assassins helmet she partially changed her face into a monstrous nightmare.

“Let’s talk shall we?” Kyvahs whispered.

With a sadistic smile Kyvash placed her hand over the assassin’s mouth and disappeared into the portal. Kent busted down the door looking for the assassin he heard the shower was on as he opened the door to his surprise Aisha was safe and sound.

“KENT WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!” Aisha shouted covering herself at the same time.

“Aisha I... Um...” Kent mumbled.

He stuttered for the first time in his life when he saw a naked girl specially if the girl he was looking at is the one he loves. Aisha’s face turned beat red as she screamed to the top of her lungs and followed with a thunderous slap to the face.

Later that evening the two went back to the manner when Chimera and Coralline noticed the hand mark on his face.

“Brother... I?” Chimera asked.

“DON’T... Ask!” Kent said when the mark hurt.

“I can picture what happened big brother...” Coralline snickered.

“SO how is everyone doing today?” Charlotte asked.

“I am doing great miss Charlotte I am going to start tomorrow as a n instructor.” Emilia said.

“And I will be their to support her since I am already done with my civil duties today so I’m free for an entire week.” Chimera added.

“I found out that their is another race trying to get their hands on the Vai’len mages so I guess that’s a bonus...” Kent said.

“Kent family rules no business on the dinner table... But I can feel what happened to you today.” Charlotte winked.

“”“sigh”“ Mom please...” Kent begged.

“I’m sorry Kent I just got surprised... and...” Aisha said as she covered her face.

“See what I mean...” Charlotte giggled.

“I can take a guess to what happened to you today sis and it’s okay... This is one way for us all to get our relationship into some progress.” Arra stated.

“I am confused...” Kent said.

“You are telling me Father...” Kyvash said through telepathy.

“What” Kent asked.

“Father don’t be alarmed I am only communicating with you... I am about a minute’s walk away from the ancestral home please be ready.” Kyvash asked.

“Oh right... Mother, Father... I have an important guest that wishes to meet you for the past several months... She will be here in a moment.” Kent said as they moved to the living room.

Everyone was surprised to whom was this person as they moved to the living room Aisha suspected it might be another girl that he wanted to introduce to the family. Arra believed it might be a beast folk that he wished to take care of though their guesses were wild and amazing.

Meanwhile at the gate of the Redridge manner Kyvash and an entourage of her most elite amongst the elite escorted her to the ancestral house of her family.

“Mother are your sure you wish to go alone?” The Sword Master Troa asked.

“I will be fine Troa... Thank you for your concern but this is one of the safest place on Ren’veil but the Assassin we captured earlier please get as much information as you can if he does not cooperate... Extract the information as painfully as possible.” Kyvash ordered.

“By your will my queen.” Troa replied.

She took a deep breath and knocked three times on the door after a brief moment the young knight welcomed the Queen into his home.

What awaited them was just another step into a brighter tomorrow.

#Onestepatatime

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Leon R. Kass, The Wisdom of Repugnance: Why We Should Ban the Cloning of Humans, 32 Val U L Rev 679 (1998)

I. Introduction

Our habit of delighting in news of scientific and technological breakthroughs has been sorely challenged by the birth announcement of a sheep named Dolly. Though Dolly shares with previous sheep the "softest clothing, woolly, bright," William Blake's question, "Little Lamb, who made thee?"' has for her a radically different answer: Dolly was, quite literally, made. She is the work not of nature or nature's God but of man, an Englishman, Ian Wilmut, and his fellow scientists. What's more, Dolly came into being not only asexually-ironically, just like "He [who] calls Himself a Lamb" 2-but also as the genetically identical copy (and the perfect incarnation of the form or blueprint) of a mature ewe, of whom she is a clone. This long-awaited yet not quite expected success in cloning a mammal raised immediately the prospect-and the specter-of cloning human beings: "I a child, and thou a lamb,"' despite our differences, have always been equal candidates for creative making, only now, by means of cloning, we may both spring from the hand of man playing at being God.

After an initial flurry of expert comment and public consternation, with opinion polls showing overwhelming opposition to cloning human beings, President Clinton ordered a ban on all federal support for human cloning research (even though none was being supported) and charged the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC or Commission) to report in ninety days on the ethics of human cloning research. The Commission (an eighteen-member panel, evenly balanced between scientists and non-scientists, appointed by the President and reporting to the National Science and Technology Council) invited testimony from scientists, religious thinkers, and bioethicists, as well as from the general public. In its report, issued in June, 1997, the Commission concluded that attempting to clone a human being was "at this time... morally unacceptable"; recommended continuing the President's moratorium on the use of federal funds to support the cloning of humans; and called for federal legislation to prohibit anyone from attempting (during the next three to five years) to create a child through cloning.'

Even before the Commission reported, Congress was poised to act. Bills to prohibit the use of federal funds for human cloning research have been introduced in the House of Representatives' and the Senate6 ; and one bill, in the House, would make it illegal "for any person to use a human somatic cell for the process of producing a human clone."' A fateful decision is at hand.

To clone or not to clone a human being is no longer an academic question.

II. Taking Cloning Seriously, Then and Now

Cloning first came to public attention roughly thirty years ago, following the successful asexual production, in England, of a clutch of tadpole clones by the technique of nuclear transplantation. The individual largely responsible for bringing the prospect and promise of human cloning to public notice was Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Laureate geneticist and a man of large vision. In 1966, Lederberg wrote a remarkable article in The American Naturalistdetailing the eugenic advantages of human cloning and other forms of genetic engineering, and the following year he devoted a column in The Washington Post, where he wrote regularly on science and society, to the prospect of human cloning.' He suggested that cloning could help us overcome the unpredictable variety that still rules human reproduction and allow us to benefit from perpetuating superior genetic endowments. These writings sparked a small public debate in which I became a participant. At the time a young researcher in molecular biology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), I wrote a reply to the Post, arguing against Lederberg's amoral treatment of this morally weighty subject and insisting on the urgency of confronting a series of questions and objections, culminating in the suggestion that "the programmed reproduction of man will, in fact, dehumanize him."'

Much has happened in the intervening years. It has become harder, not easier, to discern the true meaning of human cloning. We have in some sense been softened up to the idea-through movies, cartoons, jokes, and intermittent commentary in the mass media, some serious, most lighthearted. become accustomed to new practices in human reproduction: not just in vitro fertilization (IVF), but also embryo manipulation, embryo donation, and surrogate pregnancy. Animal biotechnology has yielded transgenic animals and a burgeoning science of genetic engineering, easily and soon to be transferable to humans.

Even more important, changes in the broader culture make it now vastly more difficult to express a common and respectful understanding of sexuality, procreation, nascent life, family, and the meaning of motherhood, fatherhood, and the links between the generations. Twenty-five years ago, abortion was still largely illegal and thought to be immoral, the sexual revolution (made possible by the extramarital use of the pill) was still in its infancy, and few had yet heard about the reproductive rights of single women, homosexual men, and lesbians. (Never mind shameless memoirs about one's own incest!) Then one could argue, without embarrassment, that the new technologies reproduction-babies without sex-and their confounding of normal kin relations (who is the mother: the egg donor, the surrogate who carries and delivers, or the one who rears?) would "undermine[] the justification and support which biological parenthood gives to the monogamous marriage. "'o Today, defenders of stable, monogamous marriage risk charges of giving offense to those adults who are living in "new family forms" or to those children who, even without the benefit of assisted reproduction, have acquired either three or four parents or one or none at all. Today, one must even apologize for voicing opinions that twenty-five years ago were nearly universally regarded as the core of our culture's wisdom on these matters. In a world whose once-given natural boundaries are blurred by technological change and whose moral boundaries are seemingly up for grabs, it is much more difficult to make persuasive the still-compelling case against cloning human beings. As Raskolnikov put it, "man gets used to everything-the beast!""

Indeed, perhaps the most depressing feature of the discussions that immediately followed the news about Dolly was their ironical tone, their genial cynicism, their moral fatigue: An Udder Way of Making Lambs, 12 Who Will Cash in on Breakthrough in Cloning?,'13 and Is Cloning a Baaad Idea?"4 Gone from the scene are the wise and courageous voices of Theodosius Dobzhansky (genetics), Hans Jonas (philosophy), and Paul Ramsey (theology) who, only twenty-five years ago, all made powerful moral arguments against ever cloning a human being. 5 We are now too sophisticated for such argumentation; we wouldn't be caught in public with a strong moral stance, never mind an absolutist one. We are all, or almost all, post-modernists now.

Cloning turns out to be the perfect embodiment of the ruling opinions of our new age. Thanks to the sexual revolution, we are able to deny in practice, and increasingly in thought, the inherent procreative teleology of sexuality itself. But, if sex has no intrinsic connection to generating babies, babies need have no necessary connection to sex. Thanks to feminism and the gay rights movement, we are increasingly encouraged to treat the natural heterosexual difference and its preeminence as a matter of "cultural construction." But if male and female are not normatively complementary and generatively significant, babies need not come from male and female complementarity. Thanks to the prominence and acceptability of divorce and out-of-wedlock births, stable, monogamous marriage as the ideal home for procreation is no longer the agreed-upon cultural norm. For this new dispensation, the clone is the ideal emblem: the ultimate "single-parent child."

Thanks to our belief that all children should be wanted children (the more high-minded principle we use to justify contraception and abortion), sooner or later only those children who fulfill our wants will be fully acceptable. Through cloning, we can work our wants and wills on the very identity of our children, exercising control as never before. Thanks to modem notions of individualism and the rate of cultural change, we see ourselves not as linked to ancestors and defined by traditions, but as projects for our own self-creation, not only as self-made men but also man-made selves; and self-cloning is simply an extension of such rootless and narcissistic self-re-creation.

Unwilling to acknowledge our debt to the past and unwilling to embrace the uncertainties and the limitations of the future, we have a false relation to both: cloning personifies our desire fully to control the future, while being subject to no controls ourselves. Enchanted and enslaved by the glamour of technology, we have lost our awe and wonder before the deep mysteries of nature and of life. We cheerfully take our own beginnings in our hands and, like the last man, we blink.

Part of the blame for our complacency lies, sadly, with the field of bioethics itself, and its claim to expertise in these moral matters. Bioethics was founded by people who understood that the new biology touched and threatened the deepest matters of our humanity: bodily integrity, identity and individuality, lineage and kinship, freedom and self-command, eros and aspiration, and the relations and strivings of body and soul. With its capture by analytic philosophy, however, and its inevitable routinization and professionalization, the field has by and large come to content itself with analyzing moral arguments, reacting to new technological developments, and taking on emerging issues of public policy, all performed with a naive faith that the evils we fear can all be avoided by compassion, regulation, and a respect for autonomy. Bioethics has made some major contributions in the protection of human subjects and in other areas where personal freedom is threatened; but its practitioners, with few exceptions, have turned the big human questions into pretty thin gruel.

One reason for this is that the piecemeal formation of public policy tends to grind down large questions of morals into small questions of procedure. Many of the country's leading bioethicists have served on national commissions or state task forces and advisory boards, where, understandably, they have found utilitarianism to be the only ethical vocabulary acceptable to all participants in discussing issues of law, regulation, and public policy. As many of these commissions have been either officially under the aegis of NIH or the Health and Human Services Department, or otherwise dominated by powerful voices for scientific progress, the ethicists have for the most part been content, after some "values clarification" and wringing of hands, to pronounce their blessings upon the inevitable. Indeed, it is the bioethicists, not the scientists, who are now the most articulate defenders of human cloning: the two witnesses testifying before the NBAC in favor of cloning human beings were bioethicists, 6 eager to rebut what they regard as the irrational concerns of those of us in opposition. We have come to expect from the "experts" an accommodationist ethic that will rubber-stamp all biomedical innovation, in the mistaken belief that all other goods must bow down before the gods of better health and scientific advance. Regrettably, as we shall see near the end of this Article, the report of the present Commission, though better than its predecessors, is finally not an exception.

If we are to correct our moral myopia, we must first of all persuade ourselves not to be complacent about what is at issue here. Human cloning, though it is in some respects continuous with previous reproductive technologies, also represents something radically new, in itself and in its easily foreseeable consequences. The stakes are very high indeed. I exaggerate, but in the direction of the truth, when I insist that we are faced with having to decide nothing less than whether human procreation is going to remain human, whether children are going to be made rather than begotten, whether it is a good thing, humanly speaking, to say yes in principle to the road which leads (at best) to the dehumanized rationality of Brave New World. 7 This is not business as usual, to be fretted about for a while but finally to be given our seal of approval. We must rise to the occasion and make our judgments as if the future of our humanity hangs in the balance. For so it does.

III. The State of the Art

If we should not underestimate the significance of human cloning, neither should we exaggerate its imminence or misunderstand just what is involved. The procedure is conceptually simple. The nucleus of a mature but unfertilized egg is removed and replaced with a nucleus obtained from a specialized cell of an adult (or fetal) organism (in Dolly's case, the donor nucleus came from mammary gland epithelium). Because almost all the hereditary material of a cell is contained within its nucleus, the renucleated egg and the individual into which this egg develops are genetically identical to the organism that was the source of the transferred nucleus. An unlimited number of genetically identical individuals-clones-could be produced by nuclear transfer. In principle, any person, male or female, newborn or adult, could be cloned, and in any quantity. With laboratory cultivation and storage of tissues, cells outliving their sources make it possible even to clone the dead.

The technical stumbling block, overcome by Wilmut and his colleagues, was to find a means of reprogramming the state of the DNA in the donor cells, reversing its differentiated expression and restoring its full totipotency, so that it could again direct the entire process of producing a mature organism. Now that this problem has been solved, we should expect a rush to develop cloning for other animals, especially livestock, in order to propagate in perpetuity the champion meat or milk producers. Though exactly how soon someone will succeed in cloning a human being is anybody's guess, Wilmut's technique, almost certainly applicable to humans, makes attempting the feat an imminent possibility.

Yet some cautions are in order, and some possible misconceptions need correcting. For a start, cloning is not Xeroxing. As has been reassuringly reiterated, the clone of Mel Gibson, though his genetic double, would enter the world hairless, toothless, and peeing in his diapers, just like any other human infant. Moreover, the success rate, at least at first, will probably not be very high: the British scientists transferred 277 adult nuclei into enucleated sheep eggs, and implanted twenty-nine clonal embryos, but they achieved the birth of only one live lamb clone. For this reason, among others, it is unlikely that, at least for now, the practice would be very popular, and there is no immediate worry of mass-scale production of multicopies. The need of repeated surgery to obtain eggs and, more crucially, of numerous borrowed wombs for implantation will surely limit use, as will the expense; besides, almost everyone who is able will doubtless prefer nature's sexier way of conceiving.

Still, for the tens of thousands of people already sustaining over 200 assisted-reproduction clinics in the United States and already availing themselves of IVF, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, and other techniques of assisted reproduction, cloning would be an option with virtually no added fuss (especially when the success rate improves). Should commercial interests develop in "nucleus-banking," as they have in sperm-banking; should famous athletes or other celebrities decide to market their DNA the way they now market their autographs and just about everything else; should techniques of embryo and germline genetic testing and manipulation arrive as anticipated, increasing the use of laboratory assistance in order to obtain "better" babies-should all this come to pass, then cloning, if it is permitted, could become more than a marginal practice simply on the basis of free reproductive choice, even without any social encouragement to upgrade the gene pool or to replicate superior types. Moreover, if laboratory research on human cloning proceeds, even without any intention to produce cloned humans, the existence of cloned humans would surely pave the way for later baby-making implantations.

In anticipation of human cloning, apologists and proponents have already made clear possible uses of the perfected technology, ranging from the sentimental and compassionate to the grandiose. They include: providing a child for an infertile couple; "replacing" a beloved spouse or child who is dying or has died; avoiding the risk of genetic disease; permitting reproduction for homosexual men and lesbians who want nothing sexual to do with the opposite sex; securing a genetically identical source of organs or tissues perfectly suitable for transplantation; getting a child with a genotype of one's own choosing, not excluding oneself; replicating individuals of great genius, talent, or beauty-having a child who really could "be like Mike"; and creating large sets of genetically identical humans suitable for research on, for instance, the question of nature versus nurture, or for special missions in peace and war (not excluding espionage), in which using identical humans would be an advantage. Most people who envision the cloning of human beings, of course, want none of these scenarios. That they cannot say why is not surprising. What is surprising, and welcome, is that, in our cynical age, they are saying anything at all.

IV. The Wisdom of Repugnance

"Offensive." "Grotesque." "Revolting." "Repugnant." "Repulsive." These are the words most commonly heard regarding the prospect of human cloning. Such reactions come both from the man or woman in the street and from intellectuals, from believers and atheists, from humanists and scientists. Even Dolly's creator has said he "would find it offensive"" to clone a human being.

People are repelled by many aspects of human cloning. They recoil from the prospect of the mass production of human beings, with large clones of look-alikes, compromised in their individuality; the idea of father-son or mother-daughter twins; the bizarre prospects of a woman giving birth to and rearing a genetic copy of herself, her spouse, or even her deceased father or mother; the grotesqueness of conceiving a child as an exact replacement for another who has died; the utilitarian creation of embryonic genetic duplicates of oneself, to be frozen away or created when necessary, in case of need for homologous tissues or organs for transplantation; the narcissism of those who would clone themselves and the arrogance of others who think they know who deserves to be cloned or which genotype any child-to-be should be thrilled to receive; the Frankensteinian hubris to create human life and increasingly to control its destiny; man playing God. Almost no one finds any of the suggested reasons for human cloning compelling; almost everyone anticipates its possible misuses and abuses. Moreover, many people feel oppressed by the sense that there is probably nothing we can do to prevent it from happening. This makes the prospect all the more revolting.

Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday's repugnances are today calmly accepted-though, one must add, not always for the better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it. Can anyone really give an argument fully adequate to the horror which is father-daughter incest (even with consent), or having sex with animals, or mutilating a corpse, or eating human flesh, or even just (just!) raping or murdering another human being? Would anybody's failure to give full rational justification for his or her revulsion at these practices make that revulsion ethically suspect? Not at all. On the contrary, we are suspicious of those who think that they can rationalize away our horror, say, by trying to explain the enormity of incest with arguments only about the genetic risks of inbreeding.

Our repugnance at human cloning belongs in this category. repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings not because of the strangeness or novelty of the undertaking, but because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear. Repugnance, here as elsewhere, revolts against the excesses of human willfulness, warning us not to transgress what is unspeakably profound. Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.

The goods protected by repugnance are generally overlooked by our customary ways of approaching all new biomedical technologies. The way we evaluate cloning ethically will in fact be shaped by how we characterize it descriptively, by the context into which we place it, and by the perspective from which we view it. The first task for ethics is proper description. And here is where our failure begins.

Typically, cloning is discussed in one or more of three familiar contexts, which one might call the technological, the liberal, and the meliorist. Under the first, cloning will be seen as an extension of existing techniques for assisting reproduction and determining the genetic makeup of children. Like them, cloning is to be regarded as a neutral technique, with no inherent meaning or goodness, but subject to multiple uses, some good, some bad. The morality of cloning thus depends absolutely on the goodness or badness of the motives and intentions of the cloners: as one bioethicist defender of cloning puts it, "The ethics . . must be judged [only] by the way . .. the parents nurture and rear their resulting child and whether they bestow the same love and affection on a child brought into existence by a technique of assisted reproduction as they would on a child born in the usual way." 19

The liberal (or libertarian or liberationist) perspective sets cloning in the context of rights, freedoms, and personal empowerment. Cloning is just a new option for exercising an individual's right to reproduce or to have the kind of child that he or she wants. Alternatively, cloning enhances our liberation (especially women's liberation) from the confines of nature, the vagaries of chance, or the necessity for sexual mating. Indeed, it liberates women from the need for men altogether, for the process requires only eggs, nuclei, and (for the time being) uteri-plus, of course, a healthy dose of our (allegedly "masculine") manipulative science that likes to do all these things to Mother Nature and nature's mothers. For those who hold this outlook, the only moral restraints on cloning are adequately informed consent and the avoidance of bodily harm. If no one is cloned without her consent, and if the clonant is not physically damaged, then the liberal conditions for licit, hence moral, conduct are met. Worries that go beyond violating the will or maiming the body are dismissed as "symbolic"-which is to say, "unreal."

The meliorist perspective embraces valetudinarians and also eugenicists. The latter were formerly more vocal in these discussions, but they are now generally happy to see their goals advanced under the less threatening banners of freedom and technological growth. These people see in cloning a new prospect for improving human beings-minimally, by ensuring the perpetuation of healthy individuals by avoiding the risks of genetic disease inherent in the lottery of sex, and maximally, by producing "optimum babies," preserving outstanding genetic material, and (with the help of soon-to-come techniques for precise genetic engineering) enhancing inborn human capacities on many fronts. Here the morality of cloning as a means is justified solely by the excellence of the end, that is, by the outstanding traits or individuals cloned-beauty, or brawn, or brains.

These three approaches, all quintessentially American and all perfectly fine in their places, are sorely wanting as approaches to human procreation. It is, to say the least, grossly distorting to view the wondrous mysteries of birth, renewal, and individuality, and the deep meaning of parent-child relations, largely through the lens of our reductive science and its potent technologies. Similarly, considering reproduction (and the intimate relations of family life!) primarily under the political-legal, adversarial, and individualistic notion of rights can only undermine the private yet fundamentally social, cooperative, and duty-laden character of child-bearing, child-rearing, and their bond to the covenant of marriage. Seeking to escape entirely from nature (in order to satisfy a natural desire or natural right to reproduce!) is self-contradictory in theory and self-alienating in practice. For we are erotic beings only because we are embodied beings, and not merely intellects and wills unfortunately imprisoned in our bodies. And, though health and fitness are clearly great goods, there is something deeply disquieting in looking on our prospective children as artful products perfectible by genetic engineering, increasingly held renewal, and individuality, and the deep meaning of parent-child relations, largely through the lens of our reductive science and its potent technologies. Similarly, considering reproduction (and the intimate relations of family life!) primarily under the political-legal, adversarial, and individualistic notion of rights can only undermine the private yet fundamentally social, cooperative, and duty-laden character of child-bearing, child-rearing, and their bond to the covenant of marriage. Seeking to escape entirely from nature (in order to satisfy a natural desire or natural right to reproduce!) is self-contradictory in theory and self-alienating in practice. For we are erotic beings only because we are embodied beings, and not merely intellects and wills unfortunately imprisoned in our bodies. And, though health and fitness are clearly great goods, there is something deeply disquieting in looking on our prospective children as artful products perfectible by genetic engineering, increasingly held to our willfully imposed designs, specifications, and margins of tolerable error.

The technical, liberal, and meliorist approaches all ignore the deeper anthropological, social, and, indeed, ontological meanings of bringing forth new life. To this more fitting and profound point of view, cloning shows itself to be a major alteration, indeed, a major violation, of our given nature as embodied, gendered, and engendering beings-and of the social relations built on this natural ground. Once this perspective is recognized, the ethical judgment on cloning can no longer be reduced to a matter of motives and intentions, rights and freedoms, benefits and harms, or even means and ends. It must be regarded primarily as a matter of meaning: Is cloning a fulfillment of human begetting and belonging? Or is cloning rather, as I contend, their pollution and perversion? To pollution and perversion, the fitting response can only be horror and revulsion; and conversely, generalized horror and revulsion areprimafacie evidence of foulness and violation. The burden of moral argument must fall entirely on those who want to declare the widespread repugnances of humankind to be mere timidity or superstition.

Yet repugnance need not stand naked before the bar of reason. The wisdom of our horror at human cloning can be partially articulated, even if this is finally one of those instances about which the heart has its reasons that reason cannot entirely know.

V. The Profundity of Sex

To see cloning in its proper context, we must begin not, as I did before, with laboratory technique, but with the anthropology-natural and social-of sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction-by which I mean the generation of new life from (exactly) two complementary elements, one female, one male, (usually) through coitus-is established (if that is the right term) not by human decision, culture, or tradition, but by nature; it is the natural way of all mammalian reproduction. By nature, each child has two complementary biological progenitors. Each child thus stems from and unites exactly two lineages. In natural generation, moreover, the precise genetic constitution of the resulting offspring is determined by a combination of nature and chance, not by human design: each human child shares the common natural human species genotype, each child is genetically (equally) kin to each (both) parent(s), yet each child is also genetically unique.

These biological truths about our origins foretell deep truths about our identity and about our human condition altogether. Every one of us is at once equally human, equally enmeshed in a particular familial nexus of origin, and equally individuated in our trajectory from birth to death-and, if all goes well, equally capable (despite our mortality) of participating, with a complementary other, in the very same renewal of such human possibility through procreation. Though less momentous than our common humanity, our genetic individuality is not humanly trivial. It shows itself forth in our distinctive appearance through which we are everywhere recognized; it is revealed in our "signature" marks of fingerprints and our self-recognizing immune system; it symbolizes and foreshadows exactly the unique, never-to-be repeated character of each human life.

Human societies virtually everywhere have structured child-rearing responsibilities and systems of identity and relationship on the bases of these deep natural facts of begetting. The mysterious yet ubiquitous natural "love of one's own" is everywhere culturally exploited, to make sure that children are not just produced but well cared for and to create for everyone clear ties of meaning, belonging, and obligation. But it is wrong to treat such naturally rooted social practices as mere cultural constructs (like left- or right-driving, or like burying or cremating the dead) that we can alter with little human cost. What would kinship be without its clear natural grounding? And what would identity be without kinship? We must resist those who have begun to refer to sexual reproduction as the "traditional method of reproduction,"2" who would have us regard as merely traditional, and by implication arbitrary, what is in truth not only natural but most certainly profound.

Asexual reproduction, which produces "single-parent" offspring, is a radical departure from the natural human way, confounding all normal understandings of father, mother, sibling, grandparent, etc., and all moral relations tied thereto. It becomes even more of a radical departure when the resulting offspring is a clone derived not from an embryo, but from a mature adult to whom it would be an identical twin; and when the process occurs not by natural accident (as in natural twinning), but by deliberate human design and manipulation; and when the child's (or children's) genetic constitution is pre-selected by the parent(s) (or scientists). Accordingly, as we will see, cloning is vulnerable to three kinds of concerns and objections, related to these three points: cloning threatens confusion of identity and individuality, even in small-scale cloning; cloning represents a giant step (though not the first one) toward transforming procreation into manufacture, that is, toward the increasing depersonalization of the process of generation and, increasingly, toward the "production" of human children as artifacts, products of human will and design (what others have called the problem of "commodification" of new life); and cloning-like other forms of eugenic engineering of the next generation-represents a form of despotism of the cloners over the cloned, and thus (even in benevolent cases) represents a blatant violation of the inner meaning of parent-child relations, of what it means to have a child, of what it means to say "yes" to our own demise and "replacement."

Before turning to these specific ethical objections, let me test my claim of the profundity of the natural way by taking up a challenge recently posed by a friend. What if the given natural human way of reproduction were asexual, and we now had to deal with a new technological innovation-artificially induced sexual dimorphism and the fusing of complementary gametes-whose inventors argued that sexual reproduction promised all sorts of advantages, including hybrid vigor and the creation of greatly increased individuality? Would one then be forced to defend natural asexuality because it was natural? Could one claim that it carried deep human meaning?

The response to this challenge broaches the ontological meaning of sexual reproduction. For it is impossible, I submit, for there to have been human life-or even higher forms of animal life-in the absence of sexuality and sexual reproduction. We find asexual reproduction only in the lowest forms of life: bacteria, algae, fungi, some lower invertebrates. Sexuality brings with it a new and enriched relationship to the world. Only sexual animals can seek and find complementary others with whom to pursue a goal that transcends their own existence. For a sexual being, the world is no longer an indifferent and largely homogeneous otherness, in part edible, in part dangerous. It also contains some very special and related and complementary beings, of the same kind but of opposite sex, toward whom one reaches out with special interest and intensity. In higher birds and mammals, the outward gaze keeps a lookout not only for food and predators, but also for prospective mates; the beholding of the many splendored world is suffused with desire for union, the animal antecedent of human eros and the germ of sociality. Not by accident is the human animal both the sexiest animal-whose females do not go into heat but are receptive throughout the estrous cycle and whose males must therefore have greater sexual appetite and energy in order to reproduce successfully-and also the most aspiring, the most social, the most open, and the most intelligent animal.

The soul-elevating power of sexuality is, at bottom, rooted in its strange connection to mortality, which it simultaneously accepts and tries to overcome. Asexual reproduction may be seen as a continuation of the activity of self-preservation. When one organism buds or divides to become two, the original being is (doubly) preserved, and nothing dies. Sexuality, by contrast, means perishability and serves replacement; the two that come together to generate one soon will die. Sexual desire, in human beings as in animals, thus serves an end that is partly hidden from, and finally at odds with, the self-serving individual. Whether we know it or not, when we are sexually active, we are voting with our genitalia for our own demise. The salmon swimming upstream to spawn and die tell the universal story: sex is bound up with death, to which it holds a partial answer in procreation.

The salmon and the other animals evince this truth blindly. Only the human being can understand what it means. As we learn so powerfully from the story of the Garden of Eden, our humanization is coincident with sexual self-consciousness, with the recognition of our sexual nakedness and all that it implies: shame at our needy incompleteness, unruly self-division, and finitude; awe before the eternal; hope in the self-transcending possibilities of children and a relationship to the divine. In the sexually self-conscious animal, sexual desire can become eros, lust can become love. Sexual desire humanly regarded is thus sublimated into erotic longing for wholeness, completion, and immortality, which drives us knowingly into the embrace and its generative fruit-as well as into all the higher human possibilities of deed, speech, and song.

Through children, a good common to both husband and wife, male and female achieve some genuine unification (beyond the mere sexual "union," which fails to do so). The two become one through sharing generous (not needy) love for this third being as good. Flesh of their flesh, the child is the parents' own commingled being externalized and given a separate and persisting existence. Unification is enhanced also by their commingled work of rearing. Providing an opening to the future beyond the grave, carrying not only our seed but also our names, our ways and our hopes that they will surpass us in goodness and happiness, children are a testament to the possibility of transcendence. Gender duality and sexual desire, which first draws our love upward and outside of ourselves, finally provide for the partial overcoming of the confinement and limitation of perishable embodiment altogether.

Human procreation, in sum, is thus not simply an activity of our rational wills. It is a more complete activity precisely because it engages us bodily, erotically, and spiritually, as well as rationally. There is wisdom in the mystery of nature that has joined the pleasure of sex, the inarticulate longing for union, the communication of the loving embrace, and the deep-seated and only partly articulate desire for children in the very activity by which we continue the chain of human existence and participate in the renewal of human possibility. Whether or not we know it, the severing of procreation from sex, love, and intimacy is inherently dehumanizing, no matter how good the product.

We are now ready for the more specific objections to cloning.

VI. The Perversities of Cloning

First, an important if formal objection: any attempt to clone a human being would constitute an unethical experiment upon the resulting child-to-be. As the animal experiments (frog and sheep) indicate, there are grave risks of mishaps and deformities. Moreover, because of what cloning means, one cannot presume a future cloned child's consent to be a clone, even a healthy one. Thus, ethically speaking, we cannot even get to know whether human cloning is feasible.

I understand, of course, the philosophical difficulty of trying to compare a life with defects against nonexistence. Several bioethicists, proud of their philosophical cleverness, use this conundrum to embarrass claims that one can injure a child in its conception, precisely because it is only thanks to that complained-of conception that the child is alive to complain. But common sense tells us that we have no reason to fear such philosophisms. For we surely know that people can harm and even maim children in the very act of conceiving them, say, by paternal transmission of the AIDS virus, maternal transmission of heroin dependence, or, arguably, even by bringing them into being as bastards or with no capacity or willingness to look after them properly. And we believe that to do this intentionally, or even negligently, is inexcusable and clearly unethical.

The objection about the impossibility of presuming consent may even go beyond the obvious and sufficient point that a clonant, were he subsequently to be asked, could rightly resent having been made a clone. At issue are not just benefits and harms, but doubts about the very independence needed to give proper (even retroactive) consent, that is, not just the capacity to choose but the disposition and ability to choose freely and well. It is not at all clear to what extent a clone will truly be a moral agent. For, as we shall see, in the very act

of cloning and of rearing him as a clone, his makers subvert the cloned child's independence, beginning with that aspect that comes from knowing that one was an unbidden surprise, a gift, to the world rather than the designed result of someone's artful project.

Cloning creates serious issues of identity and individuality. The cloned person may experience concerns about his distinctive identity not only because he will be in genotype and appearance identical to another human being, but, in this case, because he may also be twin to the person who is his "father" or "mother"-if one can still call them that. What would be the psychic burdens of being the "child" or "parent" of your twin? The cloned individual, moreover, will be saddled with a genotype that has already lived. He will not be fully a surprise to the world. People are likely always to compare his performances in life with that of his alter ego. True, his nurture and circumstance in life will be different; genotype is not exactly destiny. Still, one must also expect parental and other efforts to shape this new life after the original-or at least to view the child with the original version always firmly in mind. Why else did they clone from the star basketball player, mathematician, and beauty queen-or even dear old Dad-in the first place?

Since the birth of Dolly, there has been a fair amount of doublespeak on this matter of genetic identity. Experts have rushed in to reassure the public that the clone would in no way be the same person, or have any confusions about his or her identity: as previously noted, they are pleased to point out that the clone of Mel Gibson would not be Mel Gibson. Fair enough. But one is shortchanging the truth by emphasizing the additional importance of the intrauterine environment, rearing, and social setting: genotype obviously matters plenty. That, after all, is the only reason to clone, whether human beings or sheep. The odds that clones of Wilt Chamberlain will play in the NBA are, I submit, infinitely greater than they are for clones of Robert Reich.

Curiously, this conclusion is supported, inadvertently, by the one ethical sticking point insisted on by friends of cloning: no cloning without the donor's consent. Though an orthodox liberal objection, it is in fact quite puzzling when it comes from people (such as Ruth Macklin") who also insist that genotype is not identity or individuality, and who deny that a child could reasonably complain about being made a genetic copy. If the clone of Mel Gibson would not be Mel Gibson, why should Mel Gibson have grounds to object that someone had been made his clone? We already allow researchers to use blood and tissue samples for research purposes of no benefit to their sources: my falling hair, my expectorations, my urine, and even my biopsied tissues are "not me" and not mine. Courts have held that the profit gained from uses to which scientists put my discarded tissues do not legally belong to me.2 Why, then, no cloning without consent- not including, I assume, no cloning from the body of someone who just died? What harm is done the donor, if genotype is "not me"? Truth to tell, the only powerful justification for objecting is that genotype really does have something to do with identity, and everybody knows it. If not, on what basis could Michael Jordan object that someone cloned "him," say, from cells taken from a "lost," scraped-off piece of his skin? The insistence on donor consent unwittingly reveals the problem of identity in all cloning.

Genetic distinctiveness not only symbolizes the uniqueness of each human life and the independence of its parents that each human child rightfully attains; it can also be an important support for living a worthy and dignified life. Such arguments apply with great force to any large-scale replication of human individuals. But they are sufficient, in my view, to rebut even the first attempts to clone a human being. One must never forget that these are human beings upon whom our eugenic or merely playful fantasies are to be enacted.

Troubled psychic identity (distinctiveness), based on all-too-evident genetic identity (sameness), will be made much worse by the utter confusion of social identity and kinship ties. For, as already noted, cloning radically confounds lineage and social relations, for "offspring" as for "parents." As bioethicist James Nelson has pointed out, a female child cloned from her "mother" might develop a desire for a relationship to her "father," and might understandably seek out the father of her "mother," who is after all also her biological twin sister.23 Would "grandpa," who thought his paternal duties concluded, be pleased to discover that the clonant looked to him for paternal attention and support?

Social identity and social ties of relationship and responsibility are widely connected to, and supported by, biological kinship. Social taboos on incest (and adultery) everywhere serve to keep clear who is related to whom (and especially which child belongs to which parents), as well as to avoid confounding the social identity of parent-and-child (or brother-and-sister) with the social identity of lovers, spouses, and co-parents. True, social identity is altered by adoption (but as a matter of the best interest of already living children: we do not deliberately produce children for adoption). True, artificial insemination and IVF with donor sperm, or whole embryo donation, are in some way forms of "prenatal adoption"-a not altogether unproblematic practice. Even here, though, there is in each case (as in all sexual reproduction) a known male source of sperm and a known single female source of egg-a genetic father and a genetic mother-should anyone care to know (as adopted children often do) who is genetically related to whom.

In the case of cloning, however, there is but one "parent." The usually sad situation of the "single-parent child" is here deliberately planned, and with a vengeance. In the case of self-cloning, the "offspring" is, in addition, one's twin; and so the dreaded result of incest-to be parent to one's sibling-is here brought about deliberately, albeit without any act of coitus. Moreover, all other relationships will be confounded. What will father, grandfather, aunt, cousin, sister mean? Who will bear what ties and what burdens? What sort of social identity will someone have with one whole side-"father's" or "mother's"-necessarily excluded? It is no answer to say that our society, with

its high incidence of divorce, remarriage, adoption, extramarital childbearing, and the rest, already confounds lineage and confuses kinship and responsibility for children (and everyone else), unless one also wants to argue that this is, for children, a preferable state of affairs.

Human cloning would also represent a giant step toward turning begetting into making, procreation into manufacture (literally, something "handmade"), a process already begun with IVF and genetic testing of embryos. With cloning, not only is the process in hand, but the total genetic blueprint of the cloned individual is selected and determined by the human artisans. To be sure, subsequent development will take place according to natural processes; and the resulting children will still be recognizably human. But we here would be taking a major step into making man himself simply another one of the man-made things. Human nature becomes merely the last part of nature to succumb to the technological project, which turns all of nature into raw material at human disposal, to be homogenized by our rationalized technique according to the subjective prejudices of the day.

How does begetting differ from making? In natural procreation, human beings come together, complementarily male and female, to give existence to another being who is formed, exactly as we were, by what we are: living, hence perishable, hence aspiringly erotic, human beings. In clonal reproduction, by contrast, and in the more advanced forms of manufacture to which it leads, we give existence to a being not by what we are but by what we intend and design. As with any product of our making, no matter how excellent, the artificer stands above it, not as an equal but as a superior, transcending it by his will and creative prowess. Scientists who clone animals make it perfectly clear that they are engaged in instrumental making; the animals are, from the start, designed as means to serve rational human purposes. In human cloning, scientists and prospective "parents" would be adopting the same technocratic mentality to human children: human children would be their artifacts.

Such an arrangement is profoundly dehumanizing, no matter how good the product. Mass-scale cloning of the same individual makes the point vividly, but the violation of human equality, freedom, and dignity are present even in a single planned clone. And procreation dehumanized into manufacture is further degraded by commodification, a virtually inescapable result of allowing baby-making to proceed under the banner of commerce. Genetic and reproductive biotechnology companies are already growth industries, but they will go into commercial orbit once the Human Genome Project nears completion. Supply will create enormous demand. Even before the capacity for human cloning arrives, established companies will have invested in the harvesting of eggs from ovaries obtained at autopsy or through ovarian surgery, practiced embryonic genetic alteration, and initiated the stockpiling of prospective donor tissues. Through the rental of surrogate-womb services, and through the buying and selling of tissues and embryos, priced according to the merit of the donor, the commodification of nascent human life will be unstoppable.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the practice of human cloning by nuclear transfer-like other anticipated forms of genetic engineering of the next generation-would enshrine and aggravate a profound and mischievous misunderstanding of the meaning of having children and of the parent-child relationship. When a couple now chooses to procreate, the partners are saying yes to the emergence of new life in its novelty, saying yes not only to having a child but also, tacitly, to having whatever child this child turns out to be. In accepting our finitude and opening ourselves to our replacement, we are tacitly confessing the limits of our control. In this ubiquitous way of nature, embracing the future by procreating means precisely that we are relinquishing our grip, in the very activity of taking up our own share in what we hope will be the immortality of human life and the human species. This means that our children are not our children: they are not our property, not our possessions. Neither are they supposed to live our lives for us, or anyone else's lives but their own. To be sure, we seek to guide them on their way, imparting to them not just life but nurturing, love, and a way of life; to be sure, they bear our hopes that they will live fine and flourishing lives, enabling us in small measure to transcend our own limitations. Still, their genetic distinctiveness and independence are the natural foreshadowing of the deep truth that they have their own and never-before-enacted life to live. They are sprung from a past, but they take an uncharted course into the future.

Much harm is already done by parents who try to live vicariously through their children. Children are sometimes compelled to fulfill the broken dreams of unhappy parents; John Doe, Jr. or the III is under the burden of having to live up to his forebear's name. Still, if most parents have hopes for their children, cloning parents will have expectations. In cloning, such overbearing parents take at the start a decisive step which contradicts the entire meaning of the open and forward-looking nature of parent-child relations. The child is given a genotype that has already lived, with full expectation that this blueprint of a past life ought to be controlling of the life that is to come. Cloning is inherently despotic, for it seeks to make one's children (or someone else's children) after one's own image (or an image of one's choosing) and their future according to one's will. In some cases, the despotism may be mild and benevolent. In other cases, it will be mischievous and downright tyrannical. But despotism-the control of another through one's will-it inevitably will be.

VII. Meeting Some Objections

The defenders of cloning, of course, are not wittingly friends of despotism. Indeed, they regard themselves mainly as friends of freedom: the freedom of individuals to reproduce, and the freedom of scientists and inventors to discover and devise and to foster "progress" in genetic knowledge and technique. They want large-scale cloning only for animals, but they wish to preserve cloning as a human option for exercising our "right to reproduce"-our right to have children, and children with "desirable genes." As law professor John Robertson points out, under our "right to reproduce," we already practice early forms of unnatural, artificial, and extra-marital reproduction, and we already practice early forms of eugenic choice.2 For this reason, he argues, cloning is no big deal.

We have here a perfect example of the logic of the slippery slope, and the slippery way in which it already works in this area. Only a few years ago, slippery slope arguments were used to oppose artificial insemination and IVF using unrelated sperm donors. Principles used to justify these practices, it was said, will be used to justify more artificial and more eugenic practices, including cloning. Not so, the defenders retorted, because we can make the necessary distinctions. And now, without even a gesture at making the necessary distinctions, the continuity of practice is held by itself to be justificatory.

The principle of reproductive freedom as currently enunciated by the proponents of cloning logically embraces the ethical acceptability of sliding down the entire rest of the slope-to producing children ectogenetically from sperm to term (should it become feasible) and to producing children whose entire genetic makeup will be the product of parental eugenic planning and choice. If reproductive freedom means the right to have a child of one's own choosing, by whatever means, it knows and accepts no limits.

But, far from being legitimated by a "right to reproduce," the emergence of techniques of assisted reproduction and genetic engineering should compel us to reconsider the meaning and limits of such a putative right. In truth, a "right to reproduce" has always been a peculiar and problematic notion. Rights generally belong to individuals, but this is a right which (before cloning) no one can exercise alone. Does the right then inhere only in couples? Only in married couples? Is it a (woman's) right to carry or deliver or a right (of one or more parents) to nurture and rear? Is it a right to have your own biological child? Is it a right only to attempt reproduction, or a right also to succeed? Is it a right to acquire the baby of one's choice?

The assertion of a negative "right to reproduce" certainly makes sense when it claims protection against state interference with procreative liberty, say, through a program of compulsory sterilization. But surely it cannot be the basis of a tort claim against nature, to be made good by technology, should free efforts at natural procreation fail. Some insist that the right to reproduce embraces also the right against state interference with the free use of all technological means to obtain a child. Yet such a position cannot be sustained: for reasons having to do with the means employed, any community may rightfully prohibit surrogate pregnancy, or polygamy, or the sale of babies to infertile couples, without violating anyone's basic human "right to reproduce." When the exercise of a previously innocuous freedom now involves or impinges on troublesome practices that the original freedom never was intended to reach, the general presumption of liberty needs to be reconsidered.

We do indeed already practice negative eugenic selection, through genetic screening and prenatal diagnosis. Yet our practices are governed by a norm of health. We seek to prevent the birth of children who suffer from known (serious) genetic diseases. When and if gene therapy becomes possible, such diseases could then be treated, in utero or even before implantation-I have no ethical objection in principle to such a practice (though I have some practical

worries), precisely because it serves the medical goal of healing existing individuals. But therapy, to be therapy, implies not only an existing "patient," it also implies a norm of health. In this respect, even germline gene "therapy," though practiced not on a human being but on egg and sperm, is less radical than cloning, which is in no way therapeutic. But once one blurs the distinction between health promotion and genetic enhancement, between so-called negative and positive eugenics, one opens the door to all future eugenic designs. "[T]o make sure that a child will be healthy and have good chances in life": this is Robertson's principle,' and owing to its latter clause it is an utterly elastic principle, with no boundaries. Being over eight feet tall will likely produce some very good chances in life, and so will having the looks of Marilyn Monroe, and so will a genius-level intelligence.

Proponents want us to believe that there are legitimate uses of cloning that can be distinguished from illegitimate uses, but by their own principles no such limits can be found. (Nor could any such limits be enforced in practice.) Reproductive freedom, as they understand it, is governed solely by the subjective wishes of the parents-to-be (plus the avoidance of bodily harm to the child). The sentimentally appealing case of the childless married couple is, on these grounds, indistinguishable from the case of an individual (married or not) who would like to clone someone famous or talented, living or dead. Further, the principle here endorsed justifies not only cloning but, indeed, all future artificial attempts to create (manufacture) "perfect" babies.

A concrete example will show how, in practice no less than in principle, the so-called innocent case will merge with, or even turn into, the more troubling ones. In practice, the eager parents-to-be will necessarily be subject to the tyranny of expertise. Consider an infertile married couple, she lacking eggs or he lacking sperm, that wants a child of their (genetic) own, and propose to clone either husband or wife. The scientist-physician (who is also co-owner of the cloning company) points out the likely difficulties-a cloned child is not really their (genetic) child, but the child of only one of them; this imbalance may produce strains on the marriage; the child might suffer identity confusion; there is a risk of perpetuating the cause of sterility; and so on-and he also points out the advantages of choosing a donor nucleus. Far better than a child of their own would be a child of their own choosing. Touting his own expertise in selecting healthy and talented donors, the doctor presents the couple with his latest catalog containing the pictures, the health records, and the accomplishments of his stable of cloning donors, samples of whose tissues are in his deep freeze. Why not, dearly beloved, a more perfect baby?

The "perfect baby," of course, is the project not of the infertility doctors, but of the eugenic scientists and their supporters. For them, the paramount right is not the so-called right to reproduce, but what biologist Bentley Glass called, a quarter of a century ago, "the right of every child to be born with a sound physical and mental constitution, based on a sound genotype . . .[that is,] the inalienable right to a sound heritage."26 But to secure this right, and to achieve the requisite quality control over new human life, human conception and gestation will need to be brought fully into the bright light of the laboratory, beneath which it can be fertilized, nourished, pruned, weeded, watched, inspected, prodded, pinched, cajoled, injected, tested, rated, graded, approved, stamped, wrapped, sealed, and delivered. There is no other way to produce the perfect baby.

Yet we are urged by proponents of cloning to forget about the science fiction scenarios of laboratory manufacture and multiple-copied clones, and to focus only on the homely cases of infertile couples exercising their reproductive rights. But why, if the single cases are so innocent, should multiplying their performance be so off-putting? (Similarly, why do others object to people making money off this practice, if the practice itself is perfectly acceptable?) When we follow the sound ethical principle of universalizing our choice-"would it be right if everyone cloned a Wilt Chamberlain (with his consent, of course)? Would it be right if everyone decided to practice asexual reproduction?"-we discover what is wrong with these seemingly innocent cases. The so-called science fiction cases make vivid the meaning of what looks to us, mistakenly, to be benign.

Though I recognize certain continuities between cloning and, say, IVF, I believe that cloning differs in essential and important ways. But those who disagree should be reminded that the "continuity" argument cuts both ways. Sometimes we establish bad precedents and discover that they were bad only

when we follow their inexorable logic to places we never meant to go. Can the defenders of cloning show us today how, on their principles, we will be able to see producing babies ("perfect babies") entirely in the laboratory or exercising full control over their genotypes (including so-called enhancement) as ethically different, in any essential way, from present forms of assisted reproduction? Or are they willing to admit, despite their attachment to the principle of continuity, that the complete obliteration of "mother" or "father," the complete depersonalization of procreation, the complete manufacture of human beings, and the complete genetic control of one generation over the next would be ethically problematic and essentially different from current forms of assisted reproduction? If so, where and how will they draw the line, and why? I draw it at cloning, for all the reasons given.

VIII. Ban the Cloning of Humans

What, then, should we do? We should declare that human cloning is unethical in itself and dangerous in its likely consequences. In so doing, we shall have the backing of the overwhelming majority of our fellow Americans, and of the human race, and (I believe) of most practicing scientists. Next, we should do all that we can to prevent the cloning of human beings. We should do this by means of an international legal ban if possible, and by a unilateral national ban, at a minimum. Scientists may secretly undertake to violate such a law, but they will be deterred by not being able to stand up proudly to claim the credit for their technological bravado and success. Such a ban on clonal baby-making, moreover, will not harm the progress of basic genetic science and technology. On the contrary, it will reassure the public that scientists are happy to proceed without violating the deep ethical norms and intuitions of the human community.

This still leaves the vexed question about laboratory research using early embryonic human clones, specially created only for such research purposes, with no intention to implant them into a uterus. There is no question that such research holds great promise for gaining fundamental knowledge about normal (and abnormal) differentiation, and for developing tissue lines for transplantation that might be used, say, in treating leukemia or in repairing brain or spinal cord injuries-to mention just a few of the conceivable benefits. Still, unrestricted clonal embryo research will surely make the production of living human clones much more likely. Once the genies put the cloned embryos into the bottles, who can strictly control where they go (especially in the absence of legal prohibitions against implanting them to produce a child)?

I appreciate the potentially great gains in scientific knowledge and medical treatment available from embryo research, especially with cloned embryos. At the same time, I have serious reservations about creating human embryos for the sole purpose of experimentation. There is something deeply repugnant and fundamentally transgressive about such a utilitarian treatment of prospective human life. This total, shameless exploitation is worse, in my opinion, than the .mere" destruction of nascent life. But I see no added objections, as a matter of principle, to creating and using cloned early embryos for research purposes, beyond the objections that I might raise to doing so with embryos produced sexually.

And yet, as a matter of policy and prudence, any opponent of the manufacture of cloned humans must, I think, in the end oppose also the creating of cloned human embryos. Frozen embryonic clones (belonging to whom?) can be shuttled around without detection. Commercial ventures in human cloning will be developed without adequate oversight. In order to build a fence around the law, prudence dictates that one oppose-for this reason alone-all production of cloned human embryos, even for research purposes. We should allow all cloning research on animals to go forward, but the only safe trench that we can dig across the slippery slope, I suspect, is to insist on the inviolable distinction between animal and human cloning.

Some readers, and certainly most scientists, will not accept such prudent restraints, because they desire the benefits of research. They will prefer, even in fear and trembling, to allow human embryo cloning research to go forward.

Very well. Let us test them. If the scientists want to be taken seriously on ethical grounds, they must at the very least agree that embryonic research may proceed if and only if it is preceded by an absolute and effective ban on all attempts to implant into a uterus a cloned human embryo (cloned from an adult) to produce a living child. Absolutely no permission for the former without the latter.

The NBAC's recommendations regarding these matters were a step in the right direction, but a step made limpingly and, finally, without adequate support. To its credit, the Commission has indeed called for federal legislation to prevent anyone from attempting to create a child through cloning; this was, frankly, more than I expected. But the moral basis for the Commission's opposition to cloning is, sadly, much less than expected and needed, and the ban it urges is to be only temporary. Trying to clone a human being, says the Commission, is "morally unacceptable" "atthis time" because the technique has not yet been perfected to the point of safe usage.27 In other words, once it becomes readily feasible to clone a human being, with little risk of bodily harm to the resulting child, the Commission has offered not one agreed-upon reason to object. Indeed, anticipating such improvements in technique, the Commission insists that "it is critical" that any legislative ban on baby-making through cloning should "include a sunset clause to ensure that Congress will review the issue after a specified time period (three to five years) in order to decide whether the prohibition continues to be needed."28 Although it identifies other ethical concerns (beyond the issue of safety), this blue-ribbon ethics commission takes no stand on any of them! It says only that these issues "require much more widespread and careful public deliberation before this technology may be used"29-N.B. not to decide whether it should be used. Relativistically, it wants to insure only that such ethical and social issues be regularly reviewed "in light of public understandings at that time."' This is hardly the sort of principled opposition to cloning that could be made the basis of any lasting prohibition.

Almost as worrisome, the report is silent on the vexed question of creating cloned human embryos for use in research. Silence is, of course, not an endorsement, but neither is it opposition. Given the currently existing ban on the use of federal funds for any research that involves creating human embryos for experimentation, the Commission may have preferred to avoid needless controversy by addressing this issue. Besides, those commissioners (no doubt a big majority) who favor proceeding with cloned embryo research have in fact gained their goal precisely by silence. For both the moratorium on federal funding and the legislative ban called for by the Commission are confined solely to attempts to create a child through cloning. The Commission knows well how vigorously and rapidly embryo research is progressing in the private sector, and it surely understands that its silence on the subject-and Congress'-means that the creation of human embryonic clones will proceed, and is perhaps already proceeding, in private or commercial laboratories. Indeed, the report expects and tacitly welcomes such human embryo research: for by what other means will we arrive at the expected improvements in human cloning technology that would require the recommended periodic reconsideration of any legislative ban?

In the end, the report of the Commission turns out to be a moral and (despite its best efforts) a practical failure. Morally, this ethics commission has waffled on the main ethical question, by refusing to declare the production of human clones unethical (or ethical). Practically, the moratorium and ban on baby-making that the Commission calls for, while welcome as temporary restraints, have not been given the justification needed to provide a solid and lasting protection against the production of cloned human beings. To the contrary, the Commission's weak ethical stance may be said to undermine even its limited call for restraint. Do we really need a federal law solely to protect unborn babies from bodily harm?

Opponents of cloning need therefore.to be vigilant. They should press for legislation to permanently prohibit baby-making through cloning, and they should take steps to make such a prohibition effective.

The proposal for such a legislative ban is without American precedent, at least in technological matters, though the British and others have banned the cloning of human beings, and we ourselves ban incest, polygamy, and other forms of "reproductive freedom." Needless to say, working out the details of such a ban, especially a global one, would be tricky, what with the need to develop appropriate sanctions for violators. Perhaps such a ban will prove ineffective; perhaps it will eventually be shown to have been a mistake. But it would at least place the burden of practical proof where it belongs: on the proponents of this horror, requiring them to show very clearly what great social or medical good can be had only by the cloning of human beings.

We Americans have lived by, and prospered under, a rosy optimism about scientific and technological progress. The technological imperative-if it can be done, it must be done-has probably served us well, though we should admit that there is no accurate method for weighing benefits and harms. Even when, as in the cases of environmental pollution, urban decay, or the lingering deaths that are the unintended by-products of medical success, we recognize the unwelcome outcomes of technological advance, we remain confident in our ability to fix all the "bad" consequences-usually by means of still newer and better technologies.. How successful we can continue to be in such post hoc repairing is at least an open question. But there is very good reason for shifting the paradigm around, at least regarding those technological interventions into the human body and mind that will surely effect fundamental (and likely irreversible) changes in human nature, basic human relationships, and what it means to be a human being. Here, we surely should not be willing to risk everything in the naive hope that, should things go wrong, we can later set them right.

The President's call for a moratorium on human cloning has given us an important opportunity. In a truly unprecedented way, we can strike a blow for the human control of the technological project, for wisdom, prudence, and human dignity. The prospect of human cloning, so repulsive to contemplate, is the occasion for deciding whether we shall be slaves of unregulated progress, and ultimately its artifacts, or whether we shall remain free human beings who guide our technique toward the enhancement of human dignity. If we are to seize the occasion, we must, as the late Paul Ramsey wrote,

raise the ethical questions with a serious and not a frivolous conscience. A man of frivolous conscience announces that there are ethical quandaries ahead that we must urgently consider before the future catches up with us. By this he often means that we need to devise a new ethics that will provide the rationalization for doing in the future what men are bound to do because of new actions and interventions science will have made possible. In contrast, a man of serious conscience means to say in raising urgent ethical questions that there may be some things that men should never do. The good things that men do can be made complete only by the things they refuse to 3 do.31

Footnotes

William Blake, The Lamb, in AN OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH POEMS 535 (1956).

Id.

NATIONAL BIOETHICS ADVISORY COMMISSION, CLONING HUMAN BEINGS, REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE NATIONAL BIOETHICS ADVISORY COMMISSION iii-iv (1997) [hereinafter NBAC REPORT].

See, e.g., H.R. 922, 105th Cong. (1997); H.R. 923, 105th Cong. (1997).

See, e.g., S. 368, 105th Cong. (1997).

H.R. 923.

See Joshua Lederberg, ExperimentalGenetics and Human Evolution, 100 AM. NATURALIST

Leon R. Kass, Genetic Tampering, WASH. POST, Nov. 3, 1967, at A20. See also Leon R. Kass, Making Babies-The New Biology and the 'Old' Morality, PUB. INTEREST, Winter 1972, at 18 [hereinafter Kass, Making Babies].

Kass, Making Babies, supra note 9, at 50.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 44 (David Magarshack trans., Penguin Books 1966).

Colin Stewart, Nuclear Transplantation: An Udder Way of Making Lambs, 385 NATURE 769 (1997).

Robert Langreth & Michael Waldholz, Who Will Cash in on Breakthrough in Cloning?, WALL ST. J., Feb. 25, 1997, at BI.

Amanda Vogt, Is Cloning a Baaad Idea?, CHI. TRIB., Mar. 4, 1997, (Kidnews), at 3.

See, e.g., HANS JONAS, Biological Engineering-A Preview, in PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS: FROM ANCIENT CREED TO TECHNOLOGICAL MAN 153-63 (1974); PAUL RAMSEY, Shall We Clone a Man?, in FABRICATED MAN: THE ETHICS OF GENETIC CONTROL 60-103 (1970).

See Ruth Macklin, Possible Benefits of Cloning Humans, BIOLAW, June 1997, at S130 [hereinafter Macklin, BIOLAW]; Ruth Macklin, Possible Benefits of Cloning Humans (visited Mar. 18, 1998) <http://www.all.org/nbac/970313b.htm> (testimony presented before the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Washington, D.C., Mar. 14, 1997). See also John A. Robertson, A Ban on Cloning and CloningResearch Is Unjustified, BIOLAW, June 1997, at S133 [hereinafter Robertson, BIOLAW]; John A. Robertson, A Ban on Cloning and Cloning Research Is Unjustified (visited Mar. 18, 1998) <http://www.all.org/nbac/970313b.htm> (testimony presented before the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Washington, D.C., Mar. 14, 1997).

ALDOUS HUXLEY, BRAVE NEW WORLD (1946).

Dave Anderson, Sports of the Times: Could Jordan Be Cloned? Not Exactly, N.Y. TIMES, Feb. 28, 1997, at B7.

See Macklin, BIOLAW, supra note 16, at S132.\

Robertson, BIOLAW, supra note 16, at S134.

See Macklin, BIOLAW, supra note 16, at S131. "One incontestable ethical requirement is that no adult person should be cloned without his or her consent." Id.

See, e.g., Moore v. Regents of the University of California, 793 P.2d 479 (Cal. 1990).

See James Lindemann Nelson, Cloning, Families, and the Reproduction of Persons, BIOLAW, June 1997, at S 144; James Lindemann Nelson, Cloning, Families, and the Reproduction of Persons, 32 VAL. U. L. REV. 715 (1998); James Lindemann Nelson, Cloning, Families, and the Reproduction of Persons (visited Apr. 18, 1998) <http://www.all.org/nbac/970313b.htm> (testimony presented before the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Washington, D.C.,'Mar. 14, 1997).

Robertson, BIOLAW, supra note 16, at S134-37.

Id. at S137.

Bentley Glass, Science: Endless Horizons or Golden Age? 171 Sci. 23, 28 (1971). In this presidential address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Glass continues: "No parents will in that future time have a right to burden society with a malformed or mentally incompetent child." d.

NBAC REPORT, supra note 4, at iii, 82, 108 (emphasis added).

Id. at iv, 109.

Id. at iii (emphasis added).

Id. at iv, 109.

RAMSEY, supra note 15, at 122-23 (footnote omitted).

#science #controversy #bioethics #scientific ethics #scientific research #cloning #human cloning #leon kass #biotechnology #humanity

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Text

Inherited Demons

2019/12/07 – Nothing Right

Nothing I do is ever right. In His eyes, I will always be a feral horse that needs to be put to the whip. If I don’t and I get free, he hopes that my freedom in the wild will end in cold realisation in my last moments as I am beset by wolves. Even, if objectively right, it is as if an offense on his very existence—as if he were a god or a ghost and disbelief in him would condemn him to abyssal oblivion. And so, being right or doing well is actively discouraged—either through deafening and oppressive silence, or through roaring rage and insufferable indignation. He may be seen as quiet, but that is not to be taken as docility or humility—no; it is a sinister and seething silence. Normally, improvement is supposed to be seen as positive.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve either wanted to run away from home or outright kill myself. It desperate times, they’ve been my mantra or my prayers to soothe my wretched soul. What stopped me from running away? Fear of failure. Fear of strangers. Fear of retribution. An incompetency instilled in me long ago. One I replicated and instilled in a brother placed into my charge, even as a shell of a person—shattered shards looking for a reflection. It wasn’t until that reflection attempted to kill himself that I realised what my shoddily-assembled puzzle-of-a-person had done. I had become that which I had despised all my life--that dictatorial and patriarchal demon for which is suffered beneath had impregnated in me a piece of its insidious soul. It had gripped me in its agonising grasp, and regurgitated the darkness imparted to it, into my screaming-tear-streaked face. And thus, the cycle would continue like a horror-franchise that just won’t die. That was the day I realised—despite my love for the pure curiosity and optimism of children and the undeniable yearning to cradle and raise small-beings of my ghostly-ovaries—that I could not perpetuate this curse. To adopt a family-less entity into this story would be tantamount to sacrificing them to the demon that inhabits our family-line with my own bloodied hands.

I remember when I was bird-sitting Rita (a cousin’s feather-child) and He attempted to interact with it while wildly inebriated—like he enjoys doing—and held out his hand. Rita, as finicky conures tend to be, bit him HARD as she did not know him and did not like him. I feared for that bird’s life as I recognised the drunken rage that overtaken his alcohol-laden-bubbly-demeanor, as he shouted some profanity at the bird. I called out, to let him know I was present, and explained to him why she bit him before telling him to leave her alone.A similar incident happened years ago when I had my bird, Vira. She was a feisty bird and I loved her bravery and assertiveness but the curse infused in me by Him did not make distinctions between humans, non-human animals, plants, or inanimate objects. She and my brother have both bore witness to the same rage and self-perceived-indignity-fuelled-wrath I bore witness to growing up. I loved her dearly, but could not reconcile my own behaviour—I could not split this demonic presence within myself with the love I had for all living things as they both were a part of who I was and it was maddening. But as with all things deeply-unsettling, we seek to take flight from it—as is natural—to get as far as we can from it and forget about it so we can go about our days. To face it, would be to face the demon—itself, a part of you—and to face your own guilt and culpability in its sins, for without you, it would not be able to do its work as a formless, parasitic, lifeless virus. To face your own guilt and responsibility in hurting others is a terrifying thing; it chills you to your core and tears it to shreds because you want to believe you are a good person who does good things, and when you are not the hero of your own story, then you can never be a hero in any story—if you are the villain in your own story, then you will be the villain in all stories.

Looking myself in my own shattered mirror, I could finally see the demon bleeding forth from behind my ill-assembled portrait… I could only play at perfection for so long before all the mismatched pieces fell apart and revealed the vast darkness that mocked me beneath. Like a self-indulgent actor without a true mirror to look into, I enchanted myself with delusions that I was not He and that I was above that which lurked at the bottom of every bottle. And all the while, I was a cheap imitation of him—like a copy-cat-killer imprinting on a serial-killer worshipped by the media. I didn’t need alcohol to justify my crimes, for I had a divine mandate bestowed upon me by my ancestors, which was bestowed upon them by successive emperors, and god-kings before them, and thus the gods themselves. Chinese patriarchy is as insidious a poison as it is insipid as it permeates into every aspect of life in the family. It may not have been such a poison, but it certainly is now. As they say, “Power, absolute, corrupts—absolutely.”

In Chinese culture, there is a powerful emphasis put upon passing on the family name—so much so that female-infanticide was a widespread practice in China. My grandmother used the phrase ‘tuang-tong jeng’ frequently when urging her living descendants to procreate and pray for sons. Also present in Chinese culture is the misguided belief that because all elders are to be afforded respect, it automatically blesses them with the power to always be right—no matter the circumstances. It can be seen in dazzling display with successive Chinese-emperors slaughtering countless people over the millennia, simply for disagreeing or embarrassing the father-of-the-nation with reality and truth. Is it not why the satirical fable of the Emperor and his “new clothes” exists? An emperor that is willfully-blind is one that is indulgent and willfully-negligent—and those that could not see beyond their own gilded mirrors, often led to the starvation of the masses they were given dominion over, and ultimately, their dynasty’s demise. Once they lost their divine mandate, another emperor would rise and a spoiled descendant of his would lead it to ruin, in cycles unending.

After help assembling my mirror to match those that see me for who I am, only now am I able to see the apparition hiding behind it. As puppet-master and puppet entwined as one, it is my responsibility to sever those strings that snake around my offending limbs. It is my responsibility to cast off the shadows that shroud me, as it has become me. It has infused into my essence and become its own—my own—demon, separate from His, but no less His satanic-spawn. Only after acknowledging its existence, screaming its name, can I even begin to excise it like the viral cancer it is. The process is never-ending, for if you ever believe you have destroyed it, your complacency will allow it respite to recover and thus spite your own efforts to defeat it in the first place. We must always strive to be better, despite our accomplishments and desires to revel and relish our achievements—for idle hands do the devil’s work. Resting on our laurels is like laying and brooding upon our nest-eggs atop a poisoned heath—our savings and our accolades will rot along with us. We’ll only fester along our heaped up hoard, as a magnificent dragon does upon all its glittering greed. If I’ve gleaned anything over the past two or so years, it’s that our own pride and arrogance will always be our downfall. It understand that it was my own hubris in believing I was less of a terrible person than he was, only to find myself, one day, staring back at Him in the mirror. I saw me, regurgitating exactly what putrid horrors was spat into my own face, at someone else—someone I was told was below me—simply because they were younger or less of a person than I was. And that is how He still sees me: lowly, basal, lost, stupid, barbaric, “sub-human”—and worst of all—a child. And one that is unbridled, feral, and wild—but worst of all, “uncontrollable”. And, also, wholly unimpressed with the infallibility of the patriarchal parental dictatorship to which begs rebellion and resistance.

I will no longer scrape my head at His feet simply because he decided he would do the “holy” duty of acceding to his mother’s wishes of him to marry a woman he didn’t know, and would never love, and bear for him a son he could present to his parents—just because he is my father and my elder. He is as flawed as we all are and I will not grovel at His feet simply because he thinks he is my superior simply because he is my father and my elder. Respect is earned—not demanded—and throughout the years, my respect for him corroded away until there was no flesh left to burn off. Similarly, I have but few happy memories of Him, as the visceral emotional abuse and on-going threats of physical abuse incinerated the vast majority of them as Vesuvius did the people of Pompeii, or the atomic bomb did to the people of Nagasaki. Neither annihilating disaster completely removed the people from existence, as there remained ashy shells or radioactive shadows in their wakes—such are my happy-memories left, as obtuse imprints in the eroding beach-sands: as vague stories of ‘Snow Black and the Seven Dwarves’, as ephemeral visions of rehabilitating young birds blown to the ground by torrential storms, and as echoes of lessons on why not to step on ants. Stronger and clearer are the memories of being slapped for protesting against a particular untested brand of pizza or being chased with a large wooden stick purchased from Home Depot for refusing a hair-cut from Him. Another, particularly, peculiar poison of His was his inherited creed of beating his own child if that child was bullied to tears (or into action)—a shadow he internalised from his own father when being bullied by neighbourhood Vietnamese kids for being Chinese, back in Vietnam.

Growing up as a child in a house-of-cards propped up by two maternal hopes for their fifth-born children was a bittersweet hell, as many are—sweet enough for hope to grow but not enough to survive under the withering harsh bitterness. Perhaps it’s more of a purgatory: not horrible enough to cause one to kill oneself, but just enough to wish so. Those two grandmothers were my oases of love and care in an arid dusty desert of moonless, endless, nights. They were my guiding stars, above all the rabid fighting and gnashing teeth of childish gore-cloaked-hyaenas that called themselves my parents. My grandmothers were the life-sustaining waters, and my parents were the malarial insects that abated my existence. When my brother attempted to kill himself, I came to find out—of course, through another one of their petty and accusative arguments—that neither of them ever dreamed of having children and raising them. Why? Because they were still children, themselves—they were mostly raised by their elder siblings as their immigrant parents worked to carve a life in an increasingly hostile environment. That environment they grew up in abruptly changed as conditions in Vietnam deteriorated and they it was decided that they all needed to flee through hell and high-water (and marauding pirates). The Peter-Pan-like situation became even more so during His teen and young-adult years; formed here, in Canada, under his elder brother and without parents or grandparents to guide these “Lost Boys” fell into a world of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and guns that their new peers immersed them in. His elder brother went from a sixteen-year old running a small textiles business that employed workers in Vietnam to an alcoholic who would gamble his way into a depression in Canada. He would go from an inquisitive child making toys out of trash and sticks and swimming in monsoon-flooded roads to a teen drinking himself into a stupor and smoking until his adult teeth would become grey and lined with tar. Children raising children does not yield the positive results, and least of all depressed children raising children—this is true of my parents, and of myself. I had no business being in-charge of my baby brother—absolutely zero—especially with the foul fecal froth spilling from their mouths, to mine, as it then spilled down to my younger brother as I abused him emotionally, verbally and physically as my parents did to me. As explained in the paragraphs above, it did not occur to me until later what I was doing was wrong—it was just what I’ve known and what I felt.

I started to notice how my cousins, aunts, and uncles would look at me as I terrorised my brother over his mistakes—or my perception of his mistakes and improprieties. My logical reasoning at the time was that, “I’m not allowed to do that; why is he?” They always looked startled—or, “unsettled,” maybe is a better word—at my outbursts and threats. I remember once, in a restaurant—where I sat next to him while we were seated amongst our cousins and the adults were sat across from us—where he refused to eat a certain food and I became unreasonably enraged at him and I threatened to cut the head off of the stuffed toy (acquired from Midway arcade in Niagara Falls) if he did not eat it. I had stunned everyone and their hearts broke for my brother, just a young child being terrorised by a teen sibling. Breaking this cycle of abuse was tough—especially while still being abused, yourself. After, breaking free from physical (less so, emotional and verbal) abuse, all the injustice and indignity and rage continued spilling on to the easiest and most vulnerable target, who—under patriarchal rules—would lack arbitrary familial immunity from my wrath and cruelty. Where I could verbally, emotionally, and physically abuse him for whatever I wished, I could only cry, whimper, cower, and hide. However, I did exact vengeance upon them by hiding or damaging the belongings of my parents in protest of their mistreatment of me. There was one instance when I was about six or seven and I fled out of the back of the house after having been shouted out of the tear-stained washroom I had locked myself into on the top floor of the house. On my way passed the car, after deciding that I would run away from home, my eyes burned with salted indignation and so I picked up a stone from the gravel bed and scraped profanities onto the car’s paint and transferred my raw emotions into words. I dropped the stone and continued past the garage and through the laneway until I reached the side-walk, still crying. I stood there, thinking, and came to a realisation that I could not go any further—for if I did, I would be kidnapped and killed by a stranger. So, I walked down to the corner and right back to the front of the house and down the alleyway back to the backyard and back into the house where my parents were still searching—His wooden stick still in-hand—without a clue that I had tried to run away (or that I had keyed words of profanity on to the car with a pebble).

In 2017, when Grandma first became weak after years of mismanaging her own hypertension-medication, I became involved in her healthcare in the balmy month of July. Before then, I didn’t even know she had hypertension and thought she took medication just because it was something a person did when they got as old as she did. After accompanying grandma and Him to both the hospital and her nephrologist, I began researching Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). I learned about how the kidney can be damaged by high blood-pressure and looked into the medication she was taking, going so far as to see which medications could be contra-indicated. I advised Him that grandma’s medication (since she became inconsolable and beyond fearful for her life and no longer was able to manage them herself and became paranoid that we (including the doctors) were trying to poison her and began refusing to take them for a while) should be split into two as then the hypertensive-medications were be better able to manage her blood-pressure through the day instead of causing a sharp drop for the day while allowing it to rise again in the evening--one of her medications for hypertension-management was even specifically designed to be taken at night which is when blood-pressure is supposed to naturally drop. He likes to take credit for this. He also likes to take credit for what he didn’t even believe for a long time—her weakness that started in the first place. When her health was declining in April of 2017, after her nephrologist cut her off from the round of erythropoietin he had initially put her on in the winter prior, He did not believe that it was her health, but her age. I would become increasingly frantic in asserting that this was the reason as the months dragged on and by July, she could barely get out of bed because of how anemic she was. I, unlike He, had done research into what “erythropoietin” was and why she needed to take those shots. I was upset at her nephrologist for cutting her off from those shots because he thought her red-blood-cell count was too high (after a blood-test in March/April) and he’d see her back in three months (this was the cadence of her visits to him: every three months, so approximately four times a year). Again, by July, she was so weak that He took her to the hospital twice in the latter half of that month and once in August where I accompanied them after ending my seasonal job a few days prior. I urged him again that it was the lack of erythropoietin shots and resulting anemia that made her so weak—but he again asserted that it was because she was old. Thankfully, the nephrologist prescribed another round of erythropoietin shots (one shot, every other week, for three months—so six syringes in total). However, the ordeal and fear of death had warped her mind—the nurse at the nephrologist’s office told us that because her GFR was so low, she would likely need dialysis but that dialysis for people aged eighty and up were too at risk of developing a central-line infection—and surgery for a kidney transplant would provide an ever higher risk of mortality. She also told us that she most likely only had two-years left to live—guess what? It’s been over two-years now. I guess it’s the same for when Push got the morbid news that she only had three months left to live and lived another three years. Anyway, I digress. After horrifying and terribly painful months of trying to sleep with an insomniac grandmother in the next room having an end-life crisis, chanting all through the night of her tragic ending, and trying to manage her anxiety, panic, and paranoia in the day-time after both He and mom went to work, and brother went to school, she snapped and her dementia advanced by leagues. In the years prior, I started to notice she became much less brave and much more reserved and careful—in addition to misplacing her watch and other things that told a story of short-term memory loss. She became a lot less aware of her surroundings where, before—as a mischievous little child—I would stand behind the wall at the base of the stairs and try to surprise her but just get a sweet old smirk and an adorable elderly quip as she walked by her silly grandson. However, ever since reaching ninety, just walking to her room and asking what she was watching would startle her half to death (and our floors are obscenely creaky)—she became a lot less aware of her surroundings and where things (or people were). Around this time, she also started to hear ringing in her ears when there was only dead-silence. After she became increasingly unhinged and violent, there became a need to hospitalise her—not for her weakness or anemia, this time, but for her aggression. She probably had not slept for over a month, by this point, and this was most likely the source of said aggression, paranoia, and anxiety. On the car ride there, she was openly hostile to Him while he was driving and my attempts to stop her so as to avoid having a car-accident turned her aggression towards me. When finally passing triage and reaching the waiting area of the emergency department, Grandma continued her violence, painfully hitting Him and I with her gold-and-jade-laden rings. When a room finally opened up, she refused to go and wanted to go back home (even after days and days and days of wanting to be taken to the hospital) and when we tried to gently push her towards the room, she suddenly turned around, and as it with the power of all the elephant matriarchs of the world pushed me and Him out of the room and began assaulting us before the nurses quickly called for orderlies and security to bring her down and tie her arms and legs to the hospital-bed in the room. Because of what had just transpired, she was upgraded to the sub-accute emergency section with a room closer (and facing) the nurses-station. She was sedated with haloperidol through injection because she refused to take an oral dose but during the process Him, I, a nurse, and two security guards needed to hold her down and she still was almost able to bite the nurse (and myself). After that, we were put into contact with the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) to discuss placing her in an assisted-living facility and both 4th Uncle and He were seriously considering it and passed on the responsibility of coordinating with LHIN to me due to my higher education and superior command of English. They also put in a referral for us to the hospital’s geriatrics department and scheduled us to see a Dr. Cheng at a later date after the attending physician provided a temporary round of anxiolytics (lorazepam). When taking the lorazepam, she was much more docile and also able to sleep and it felt like we got her back from the throes of insanity—that is, until we had to take increasing doses and it became unfeasible to continue. Her violent tirades returned, along with her insomnia and we went to see the geriatrician. He proved to be—not just incompetent, but—wildly careless and inadequate; his bed-side manner was shockingly crass and crude. He never really listened when we came in for the appointment and seemed in a hurry to get us out the door with a new round of pills for her to take: haloperidol, sertraline—you name it, she probably was prescribed it. Some of them were worse than others, like haloperidol which left her a stumbling and drooling mess—taken long enough, left her bid-ridden and Him changing diapers and bed-sheets. Eventually, I decided it was time to stop seeing the geriatrician as I was also so upset with his flippant demeanor when at appointments in his office. He took a little while to convince, as He was afraid of Grandma reverting back to her violent and difficult self even though I was the one home alone with her while everyone else was gone for a majority of the day at work or school. As that was the case, the representatives from LHIN mostly dealt with me when they came by the house whether it was the social-worker on the case or the professionals she would send to the house. The most helpful professional was an occupational therapist who educated me upon dementia and Alzheimer’s as well as providing emotional support and advice on the situation with the geriatrician and his exceedingly terrible medications. Before this, in my ignorance, I was yelling and screaming at Grandma, confused as to how she could go from a completely normal and loving grandmother who I would give up the my own mother for to someone I was afraid of being around. After the occupational therapist left, my relationship with Grandma started slowly shifting back to one of positive interactions and normalcy. He, however, refused to read the educational materials the occupational therapist left to enlighten us on Grandma’s dementia because he refused to believe she had dementia because of how quick and abrupt the change was. He wanted to believe that she was doing this on purpose and after retiring before the Christmas of 2017, would often get into drunken tirades and yell so loud you could hear him throughout the house and even in the backyard. This continued afterwards, as well, and followed the cycles of her decline into bed-riddance (either from the anti-psychotics prescribed by the incompetent geriatrician, or the lack in erythropoietin) and ascent back into insanity and unnatural strength. In another descent in early 2018, after her nephrologist AGAIN decided that her RBC-level was too high and cut her off from erythropoietin for another three months, I again became insistent that He call the nephrologist to prescribe another round of shots. He was stubborn, as always is the case, and believed that her being bed-ridden and defecating in a diaper meant that it was her time—as if you were just born with a pre-determined age at which someone would die at. I was enraged so I took matters into my own hands after getting home from work one day in May and called the nephrologists’ office and angrily berated the secretary, to which she told me that all we had to do was call in after running out and they would send the prescription and shots to the pharmacist and we could pick them up. I sat there after the call, part-relieved that it meant Grandma wouldn’t have to go through another round of panic and part-annoyed that He did not want to do it because of laziness and self-importance (the belief that He is smarter than I, even without doing any research or having any prior knowledge about anything, even though He was always the one who took her to the nephrologist’s and family physician’s appointments). He does the same with plants and ended up condemning our eight-year-old starfruit plant to die in the cold, despite my protest. He always thinks he’s the smartest person, regardless of what experience/knowledge he has or doesn’t have in a particular subject—and I’ve inherited a similar manner of speaking-as-a-matter-of-fact-ly, as if I was 100% sure about what I was saying (which often gets me into trouble).

Depression In every waking day, the demon lurks within your shadow—always just out of the corner of your eye. As that sun sets and the lights go out, that shadow becomes an all-consuming spectre that fills the room as much as it does your mind—it eats that light your try to light inside, unhinging its jaws and swallowing the sun whole like a constrictor after it had crushed all the air from your lungs. A breath-taking darkness sends your heart into a frantic panic, straining and screaming and searching for every last bubble of air in the blood starting to leak from your eyes. Crimson tears streak down, acrid and burning, like streams of fiery lava making their way to the salty sorrowful depths of the oceans. Your head is feverishly throbbing with starvation, suffocating and drowning in itself as it melts from the draconic hell-fires lit under you by the shadowy-figure. You are more palatable to it when scared out of your mind and injuriously maimed by your own hand, so it eats at you night by night, piece-by-piece—it could be days, months, years, or even decades—but it is patient and diabolical. You are to it, like finely aged-wines or cheeses are to a wealthy connoisseur with too much money to know what to do with.

An Unwelcome Stranger Is His child, in his home, being a burden upon him. It doesn’t matter if this person does anything good, because—ultimately—this person is a stranger. A worthless stranger borne of his flesh and blood, that only continues to feast like a fat leech, engorging itself on His blood.

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harryandmeghansussex · 6 years

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Harry's incredible Invictus Closing Ceremony Speech.

"Hi Guys. As always when these Games close, I would like to start by saying thank you.

To PK and Lieutenant General Peter Lay and the whole Sydney 2018 team - the vision and hard work has paid off and you have put on a truly magnificent Invictus Games.

Thank you for being our partners over the last couple of years, and our team at the Invictus Games Foundation, especially Dominic Reid and Rose Hall, for their tireless efforts and hard work.

To the people of Australia who filled the stands and cheered on the sidelines - thank you so much. Your energy powered our competitors all week and you made these Games your own by creating a typically Aussie atmosphere.

To the friends and families who got our competitors to the start line and applauded them all the way to the finish line, thank you. You are all part of one big Invictus family and none of us would be here without you.

And to the competitors goes the biggest thanks of all. You have once again left us humbled and inspired by your example, by your determination, by your service and by your sense of humour.

Last Saturday, I spoke about how you were part of the Invictus generation. Your choice to serve your nations places you alongside those storied generations that have come before you, that fought two world wars and then secured a world order built on freedom, democracy, and tolerance.

And of course this choice to serve - this choice to put yourselves at risk for the benefit of others - is at the very heart of what I founded these Invictus Games to celebrate. I wanted your service to be recognised.

But what we saw again this week is that Invictus is so much more. Your example goes beyond the military community. It is about more than just your inspiring stories of recovery from injury and illness.

It is about your example of determination, of optimism, of strength, honour and friendship, or as the Aussies call it 'mateship', as a core value that has the power to inspire the world.

When we saw Paul Guest and Edwin Vermetten support each other through Paul's struggle with Post Traumatic Stress on the tennis court in front of a large audience, we saw what mateship really looks like.

When Jakub Tynka fought through excruciating leg pain for the final 20 minutes of his cycling event, and let the cheering crowd and his fellow competitors Benjamin and Cedric push him over the finish line, we saw the definition of strength.

When you saw Hannah Stolberg crossing the finish line on a bike which belonged to a late fellow serviceman whose values she strives to emulate, you witnessed the real meaning of honour. And, when 67-year old former military nurse Cavell Simmonds decided age was just a number and entered into five sports at her first Invictus Games, you saw what determination really looks like.

These men and women are role models. They are who every child should look up to. In a world where negativity is given too much of a platform, our Invictus competitors - many of whom have been given a second chance at life - are achieving extraordinary things.

Now, a lot of exciting labels get attached to the guys and girls who compete in these Games. They get called heroes. They're tagged as legends. They're referred to as superhumans. Now of course all those things are true! Right?

Well I believe, that the real power of their example is that they are not superheroes. [Sorry to break it to you guys!]

Because as you have witnessed this past week, what they are achieving isn't impossible nor is it magical. You have seen it happen before your very eyes because these competitors have made it happen.

They are men and women who have confronted a challenge and overcome it. They are ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And with the help of their friends and families, they have exceeded every expectation.

That is something we can all aspire to. You do not have to be a veteran who has fought back from injury to be inspired by the Invictus example.

You can be a teacher or a doctor, a mum or a dad, a child or a grandparent, a farmer, a plumber, a lawyer, or a CEO. Or anything at all.

You can identify something in your own life that you want to change for the better. And you can let the men and women of the Invictus Games remind you that no challenge is too difficult to overcome.

Nowhere is that truer than in the area of mental health. By simply being here and fighting back from some of the darkest experiences known to anyone, you have become role models for everyone at home or in the stands who might be struggling with their emotions or with a mental illness.

For that friend or comrade you know who is unable to open up about their struggles. For that man or woman who has watched on television, you are proving that it's OK to talk about how we feel.

To girls and boys who see you speaking openly about anxiety, stress, and depression, you are showing it's OK not to be OK. And most importantly, you are showing us all that it's OK to ask for help. Asking for help is courageous. It will improve your life and the lives of those around you immeasurably. In the moment you admit that you are struggling, you take that first step towards a better future for you and your friends and your family.

You allow those around you to show you the love and concern that is central to the cure.

I've been there, you've been there, and we now need to reach out to those who can never even imagine themselves in that place.

I hope the ethos of these Games has also shown you that we all have mental health, just as much as we all have physical health. I hope you have seen that our mental fitness is even more important than our physical fitness, because without it, we cannot survive, let alone thrive.

So for all the civvies, or civilians out there, look at what these men and women have achieved and know that one day, though you may not be injured in combat, physical or emotional injuries can happen to any one of us, on any given day.

The secret of these Invictus Games is not really about the amazing medical science that has saved the lives of our competitors and helped many of them to walk, swim, or move again.

The secret to the success of these Games has been accepting that mental health is the real key to recovery. Our competitors have helped turn the issue of mental health from a sad story to an inspiring one. They want to live, rather than just be alive.

When you accept a challenge is real, you can have hope. When you understand your vulnerability, you can become strong. When you are brave enough to ask for help, you can be lifted up. You can start living, doing, feeling - not simply surviving.

And when you share your story, you can change the world. And I can't think of a better way to continue serving your country.

I am so proud to call you my friends and my Invictus family. You are the Invictus generation and you are showing us all that anything is possible.

Thank you to everyone for an amazing Sydney Games - we'll see you in the Netherlands in 2020!"

#prince harry #duke of sussex #⭐ invictus #⭐ invictus games #invictus sydney #sussexdownunder

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goloyieng · 3 years

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Why Congo Kinshasa Shouldn't Join the East African Community(Federation)

South Sudanese fought a liberationary war against the Dravidian Sudanese to avoid cultural imperialism. President Salva Kiir has an impulsive desire to mandate classical Arabic as the official language of South Sudan. When Deng Deng Hoc was the minister of education; he was courted by the Juba administration to solicit the services of Tanzania and Congo Kinshasa on how to introduce Kiswahili & French into the national curriculum, since Nyerere was truly successful in making the prior the success story of Tanzania, if not the whole of Africa. Apparently, language is an important unifying factor and following in the footsteps of Julius Kambarage Nyerere who made Kiswahili, the lingua franca of Tanzania; it is perhaps the major reason why political instabiliIy is not a daily occurrence in Tanzania, in these uncertain times; part of the reason was that, they were united around an institution they could identify with. People say that North Africa and Middle East (MENA) will never propel itself into a true civilization as the Western and Eastern civilizations are now; Black civilization will rise to the podium centuries later. Part of the reason is that, MENA is a mixture of Caucasoid and Dravidian (South Indian)people as the Native Americans were also a mixture of different people (Mongoloid, Dravidians and Pacific Islanders) and Europeans found many holes strewn around them, because they were not united around the ancestry of one blood brotherhood. In Morocco, Spaniards are a few miles away and they could easily bring MENA to their knees as Roman generals used to do to ancient Egypt. Classical Arabic speakers have no future the same way Mandarin Chinese are doing right this minute in gracing the world stage to make the present of their Asian people felt. Southern Europeans, especially the Spaniards and French, could one day displace the entire MENA and claim it for the Western civilization; the Dravidian could spring out from South India, Sudan, Bangladesh, Yemeni, Ethiopia and Somalia to make it part of their Dravidian civilization. That would isolate South Sudanese to speak fluent Arabic while the rest of Black Africa is speaking Kiswahili. The Somali people are fluent in Arabic, but their native language has latin alphabets, meaning its alphabets are similar to English; that means, Somalia could annex South Sudan to Ethiopia and introduce Amharic, the national languague of Ethiopia as the lingua franca once the total annihilation of South Sudanese people is complete, culturally and linguistically. Congo Kinshasa has to take lessons from the confused statutory circumstances of South Sudanese; there is no reason whatsoever to claw back to the Arabian world that they were trying so hard to separate themselves from, for over a century. The Arabian led Sudanese government charge South Sudanese Swahili government an astronomical fees of $25 a barrel for the usage of the oil pipeline, whereas the International price for a barrel is $7. Congo Kinshasa is not too much developed as the rest of East Africa and its need sometime for President Felix Tshisekedi to rethink his urge for joining the East African Community. The head to toe covered muslim Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania could one day become the president of futuristic East African Federation ( nations comprising of Tanzania, Kenya, South Sudan, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda)as people say she is doing exceptionally well and has no intentions of straying from the footsteps of the great John Pombe Magufuli. It seems though, many development projects are going to bear fruits during her sustained reign. The Eastern civilization is a major force to be reckoned with and not the Riyadh, house of Saud wannabe South Sudanese. The Eastern world spearheaded by Chinese and the Western world are still the economic hubs by which everyone should strategically bet their aspired capitalist cards against. On a different note, with oil money(the Central African countries do not get charge skyrocketing fees by Chinese), the long time Eduardo Dos Santos led Angola is fastidiously rising into a

Central African hub (it is a major power broker as Kenya, these days, to the East African region) and Congo Kinshasa could look their way to bring along the poverty stricken players as the Gabon, Congo Brazzavile, Central African Republic and Cameroonn into the loop. As in Dinka Bor sports of ajuardeu, or a single wrestling elimination match, where the most tactical wrestler emerges a winner from a fierce competition; life is all about the best candidates rising to the top. South Sudanese have been in the refugee camps for almost half a century, but soon after independent; the well to do families start settling in Kenyan and Ugandan urban centres in large numbers. They are in the Kenyan towns of Bungoma, Kakamega, Eldoret, Nakuru, Nairobi, and Kampala, Uganda. In South Africa, there are 200, 000 Congolese who have made the rainbow nation, their home. Nigerians have also settled there in large numbers and have married the local Zulu and Xhosa women. With Black Africans, there is a fluidity of hospitable cultural reciprocity, where people move about to find better business opportunities for what their money is worth. The Zimbabwean entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa has businesses in 27 African countries. Congo Kinshasa won't fare better in East Africa when its illiteracy rate is close to 60%. Kenyans, Tanzanians and Uganda are way ahead of everyone than most Africans; they could run down all the decrepit institutions and leave the ordinary Congolese in the dust. Congo Kinshasa need sometime and allow Tanzania to stay as the alpha male of the East. In Zimbabwe, roads and infrastructure were done by the local Zimbabweans, even though the British did much bulk of the financing. The Chinese bring their own laborers to do road and infrastructure construction. Soon after the Ghanaians start replacing the Chinese engineers, they began racking millions in the national coffers. The skilled Nigerians, Ghanaians, Congolese, Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans would send their men to wherever they are needed to fill the gaps in those communities if need arise for human capital and monetary value return are favorable.

There is nothing wrong with, " surround yourself with people smarter than you," as Billionaire Warren Buffet; you can also surround yourself with people with the same ideological mindset, so they won't sell you out (Ndubuisi Ekekwe) and watch your investments carefully, so they could grow to astronomical profiteering ventures(Andrew Carnegie ), but do not put all your eggs in one basket( also by Andrew Carnegie). As expansive and impressive China is, it will perhaps go the way of USA some day since it has no giant economic hubs as Congo Kinshasa do in Nigeria and Tanzania; it would prop up its core in tough depressing economic times. Brazil and (North)India are not helping USA to maintain it lead and Russia is far off in the East. The leadership is exchanging hands from USA to China in one generation. People living in the same nation tend to develop the same cultural taste and their mindset is always attune to the same ideology, and it would take centuries to change how they think(Chinua Achebe and Thomas Sankara). Do American billionaires, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Mike Bloomberg, Phil Knight, etc have interest to invest their money in emerging markets such as South America, Russia and India? Chances are that the monetary status of their wealth lose its value as new economic power shifters into the globalized market place. If these wealthy countries were spread throughout Europe, Russia, India and South America; they would created a much meaningful impact in those markets.

Facebook Ad Break

From the celebrated author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, comes a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an America oil company.

"We should have known the end was near."

So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company.

Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle would last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told through the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.

"The unforgettable story of a community on the wrong end of Western greed, How Beautiful We Were will enthrall you, appall you, and show you what is possible when a few people stand up and say this is not right. A masterful novel by a spellbinding writer engaged with the most urgent questions of our day.”—David Ebershoff, bestselling author of The Danish Girl Less

Review by goodreads.com

This single book by Macho has significant take home lessons for all Africans. It is perhaps a retelling of immortal lives of Nigerian hero Ken Saro Wiwa, Kenyan heroine Wangari Mathai and overall environmental degradation by the enchroaching desert in West Africa; in short, deforestation in inland Africa with Wangari Mathai and her Greenbelt Movement, and mineral extraction companies of South Sudanese Upper Nile states and Nigerian delta state. In Abacha administered Nigeria, Ken Saro Wiwa fought for the land rights of his Igoni people, and was summarily executed by Sani Abacha for standing his ground against oil contamination by the mineral extracting companies. Wangari Mathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winning heroine of Kenya centred her work on stopping deforestation by all means. So, this is a tribute to what needs to be done to stop children from getting born with 8 eyes and extra limbs in the Upper Nile region of South Sudan due to the oil waste filtering into the vital water resources. What Africans should start doing now rather than to stop deforestation and getting swallowed by the encroaching desert. It covers pretty much every region of Africa from the West to middle Africa and Southern Africa, to the Eastern plains. One of the most unique and defining feature with books, rather than articles, is that the former take longer to create and research, whereas articles takes a few hours to put together; that is perhaps why books have a wider reading audience by the popular culture, especially the youth and mainstream culture. This single book could be read on college and high school campuses from Asia, the Americas, Europe and Africa. Iroko led Nollywood is starting to make its present felt, just as Hollywood, Bollywood and South Korean film industry rule the Western and Eastern worlds, but popular literature by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka still rule the African literary scene. To avoid the broad daylight robbery of its oil wealth by the Arabic Sudanese; Kiir South Sudan could build a build pipeline from the Upper Nile region, all the way to the Port of Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast. Books by influential authors institute a voice to the popular culture; in essence, by becoming popular, these books get to be shelved on library campuses throughout the world, and once the generation that was influenced by this culture reached the council (leadership stage, or the parliament), they started imposing their learned voice from their past to the leadership in question, and thereby change the common peasantry's lives forever. With billions getting siphoned off by the Khartoum Arab regime through pricey pipeline fees, Chinese could have build more than one pipeline from the Upper Nile to the port of Mombasa in the ten years that South Sudan has been in existence. Uhuru Kenyatta says, "Salva Kiir is the best president in Africa." "Their asses will pay for the Chinese loans getting bagged by Juba without planning on how to pay the money in due time", says Bortown girl Aja Anyieth. If Juba is so fond of indulging itself in Chinese loans, why can't they extend the same thing to buliding a pipeline by calling the Chinese over to do it? "Not everything will get to change with black Africa; core values, such as polygamy and respect of impactful cultural customary norms, won't budge one bit," (Mangok Mach Bol).

Our Guests: Former South Sudanese minister of education and environment Deng Deng Hoc, Nollywood megastar Chika Ike (shika is a Kiswahili word for take), Dinka Bor South Sudanese and Cameroonian best selling author of Behold the Dreamers and How Beautiful We Were Imbolo Mbue Macho (Macho is another Kiswahili word for fire), How Lovely We Were book title, Congo Kinshasa flag; Congo Kinshasa gracing the stage with its Middle Africa and Central African neighbors; the great and ageless Hon. Raila Odinga and the much impressive and progressive President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania and the East African Federation, a new super power in the making?, will the new president of East African Federation come from either Raila Odinga ( after winning the general election of Kenya in 2022), or Samia Suluhu Hassan?; Land rights Activist Ken Saro Wiwa and Sani Abacha complete the list here.

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rhondaadorno · 4 years

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Double Consciousness

“One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” ― W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

For many years, I’ve dodged commitment to the identity of a writer because I’ve been afraid of the backlash that would come with my words. I tend to have an out-of-body experience when I put words on paper. They become 3D powerful images, a kind of synesthesia occurs, and arrows whistle towards a target...and there are always casualties.

So, I stopped writing, avoiding opinion articles, blogs like this one, essays, controversial FB posts, because, if people actually read what I had to say beyond the armor of poetry or a creative piece, they’d feel quite different about me as a black female. And I couldn’t risk that.

2.5 Words

I’ve been conscious of myself as a black female since the third grade. Once, I had forgotten something on the PE field, and while walking back to get it, a little boy, on the other side of a fenced in playground, yelled out to me, “you're black.”

2.5 words without an ounce of hostility or error in them.

He didn’t taunt or provoke me, but when I got back to the car, I just remember feeling... wrong. Not different, just faulty or wrong somehow.

I dreamed up a clever retort too late which was, “...black is a color in the crayon box.” I guess I’ve always been a creative and insightful thinker....

This boy was 6 or 7 years old, riding a schoolyard tricycle; I didn’t even know him.

Yet, after that non-hostile experience, I was terrified to walk by that playground again.

Remember, he only vocalized his observation that I am indeed black. I still recall those sharp feelings I felt despite the words being true and true.

But I wonder why he believed it was his prerogative to point it out, to make me notice I was not the same skin color.

Safely Black

This experience was pretty much my introduction to learning I was black. Of course I knew I was not white, but I didn’t know that other people, especially kids, cared that I was not white. From there, it was being laughed at because I said “ax” instead of “ask.” One of my classmates saying, “ew, gross” because of the product in my hair, which was touched without permission. Years later, it was the shade of my knees, which are darker than the rest of my legs. Now, it’s trying to decide if I should purchase a wig for an interview or self-identify on a job application, never sure if my natural hair or shade of melanin will be the undisclosed reason behind “not the right fit.”

From K - 12th grade, I attended predominantly white, private Christian schools. Overt racism never happened to me. Yet, not once did I ever feel safe among my teachers and friends to be a black female... to fully explore what that even means. I was always hiding something.

Yes, I had meaningful friendships and positive experiences, but never as my self.

I feel that I have lived my life dressed up by a host of unsolicited tailors specializing in the way I speak, how I present myself, how I must act inside of stores, the opinions I voice, and the list goes on.

I have learned how to become invisible and nondescript so that I can be “safely” black.

And it’s been to my detriment.

An Angry Black Woman

Many people are feeling shocked by the recent events caught on video and shared via social media. Without me even mentioning the race of this little boy, it will be inferred that he was white. Because, even if some “don’t see color,” everyone knows that Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, Caucasians, and every other group of people, have worked very hard to point out how we are not the same skin color, and somehow a lesser pedigree of human, for generations.

Until a few days ago, I had remained pretty quiet on the topic of racial injustice--always looking for ways to share my experiences, relate my double consciousness to friends, while not offending anyone.

But right now, black people are being threatened and murdered on live cameras by white people.

And for some reason, despite my coveted relationships with white friends, for several years, I have nursed a fear that it would damage something between us if I commented on any news story about race.

I’ve believed it would alter our friendship if I became a fist-raised Black Power advocate. It would make things awkward if I were to steadily post black injustice on my newsfeed. That, if I said I’m so angry that police are killing little boys and young men, I would be viewed as, wait for it, an angry black woman. Nevermind the truth that I feel wrecked from my core; I’d just rather not make any waves.

That’s what’s been on my mind. Not exclusively the horror of the murders I’ve been stockpiling in my conscious since a young girl, but the fact that I actually know people who would eventually wish I’d stop posting the “angry racist stuff,” and stop trying to “take us back to the past.”

Bullets of Truth

But this is my own mess, my own web of nonsense because I have cultivated and catered to this twisted sense of peace among all men when I shonuff’ know there ain’t been no peace cuz no cops are walkin’ around viewing my black brothers as men.

My shame is that I know I have denied myself and my friends the conversations about what it really means to be black in America BEFORE we were shown these awful attacks. It’s not like I didn’t know it was happening.

But I have been so afraid to put my bullets of truth out there--mainly because you learn, way back in elementary school, when you are black, you just don’t talk about being black with white people because they will somehow make it about how they feel wronged and attacked. You just lock up that door and know what you know.

Except, I can’t feel anything but sick lately-- like I have to projectile vomit my self up from the place I’ve swallowed my self to become fiercely black, once and for all, and unabashedly own what that little boy “accused” me of being.

To finally say out loud, ”No, I am not the whitest black friend you know.”

To shoot down, “You sound white on the phone.”

To reject, “You don’t act like other black people.”

To refuse, “You’re very articulate for a black person.”

To say, “I’m disinterested in being the official tour guide of Black History month” because to be honest, I am still trying to understand what it means to even be black.

Black in America

My mother’s hard decision for my life was to go the route of private education on the other side of town, or attend the public schools we were zoned for in a less desired part of town (by no fault of the town, because lines were redrawn on purpose.) The outcome was me, immersed in a homogenous environment where I got a pretty decent education, but striving to fit in, losing my cultural heritage, pride and identity in progressive stages to the point my mother actually asked me in high school did I want to be white. Whenever I spent time in the black community, I couldn’t quite find my foothold there either, because they too thought I was “trying” to be white.

I don’t regret her choice, but I, as a parent, now know what choosing the first one meant. There are times I am not sure who I am when it comes down to the spectrum of black identity, and it’s sad, confusing, and alienating.

And honestly, I, along with many in my community, don’t have enough moments of peace to experience true self-discovery, to nurture who that person really is.

As soon as we’re proud of Barack and Michelle Obama or overjoyed about the historical Black Panther film or inspired by the shocking legacy of Katherine Johnson or choose to kneel with Colin Kaepernick or feel paranoid by the Confederate flag or unified under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter -- a whole lot of people, including the president of the United States, feel it’s their prerogative to tell us who we are for us [re:thugs]--and that narrative is never, ever good.

We are constantly trying to push it out, fighting cops for our kids’ lives, warding off suspicions, navigating extreme violence and poverty in our own community, and trying to prove our value and worth for school and career, while raising our babies to be proud of their skin color, our beautiful brown babies, who, as soon as they graduate Kindergarten, will cease to become non-threatening.

By the way, we are processing all of this, while watching white people protest masks and quarantine with assault rifles. In 2014, Tamir Rice was shot dead for having a toy gun. He was 12.

Under the Radar

So, I’ve come to this point, feeling like it’s crazy and impossible that I’m literally living through some of the things in my mother’s lifetime, that I must raise my daughter with a keen awareness that not all people are treated equally, even when the Constitution declares we are.

That I must actually teach her that even though the “colored only” signs are gone, the stone place of men’s hearts from where the words originated still exist. And they will mean it and enforce it with all the boldness of the Jim Crow era, just under the radar.

I’ve been trying to understand why in the world I am being so affected by this now, so much that it alters my mood and impacts productivity, why I feel like I have to force myself to be positive and hope for change. Is this what it also means to be black? To stir up my ancestors’ concoction of will, determination, resilience, and sing my own kind of Negro spiritual, and march my way to freedom? No wonder they were so strong!

I am cognizant of the fact that there are many great white men and women who work in the armed forces, and in law enforcement to protect all people in America. And I know there are those have worked in the past to abolish laws and helped to enact civil liberties for people of color.

I also know that it took the braveness from the likes of Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman and W.E.B. Dubois to shed light on the black experience...so together these powerful people could push change forward with a vengeance.

I am nowhere near as proficient in elocution as they, but this is my piece. I’m finally saying something about what it means to be black in America, but I am also feeling like that’s not enough.

The White Wall

I have many friends who are parents and who are educators and who are the complex cocktail of both.

Black people have not ever wanted to educate their white friends about what this terror feels like, and honestly, we shouldn’t have to because-- internet.

But I am realizing, with my own education in a predominately white environment, I didn't learn anything from my teachers about me and my world.

Nothing truly existed beyond the white wall--white writers, white poets, white leaders, white composers, white heroes, and Martin Luther King Jr.

From K - 12th grade, what I learned about the realities of being black wasn't taught by teachers or textbooks. The little I did learn was by being in the midst of my community, and eventually reading and pursuing and chasing after knowledge.

Therefore, it’s positively unrealistic to imagine that white people know much at all about the black experience. And both public and private education do not place importance on real diversity. Now, with the visual horror of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I venture to believe, for many white people, these past few weeks have been pretty much earth shattering.

But why is knocking down this wall and learning about the black experience (and other races and ethnicities) important?

When a white person’s basic lifestyle is free from external conflict, the tendency is to want to live there and only there. Problematically, she will grow increasingly out of touch with the world beyond her (and perhaps surrounding her if people of color have come into her world). But she will fail to see the good and the bad, except for this: negative media will only show her the bad, and tell her how to think, and what to believe about everyone else who looks different than her, subliminally, judgmentally, until eventually she behaves in the audacious, debased manner of Amy Cooper, a white woman who knew what the fatal consequences would be for a black man if she simply called the police to say she was feeling threatened, and to have had the presence of mind to wield it like a weapon.

A Gaping Chasm

Learning about the black experience is important because Amy Cooper probably did not wake up believing she was a racist or even had a racist bone in her body. But she knew that she was white and he was not, and in her anger, decided to weaponize her whiteness by calling the police on a black man, which depending what “bad apple” was on duty, could have ended his life--too.

That is how it works. It doesn’t always end in loss of life, but always ends in loss of masculinity, loss of spirit, loss of soul, loss of faith, loss of trust; it just ends in loss.

When you don’t fight to change the system, you become part of the system.

So, unless (or until) a white family has been very intentional, they and their children are not learning about the black experience.

Even when teaching my child about the origins of America and the Civil War and Reconstruction, I had to be intentional, essentially going back to school because there are things that were blatantly omitted from my years of learning and were still being omitted for hers if I did not break out from the wall.

To put this in perspective, I was in college when I learned there were accomplished black leaders besides Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. I was in my 30s when I heard black women and NASA in the same sentence together.

My mom had Black America encyclopedias, and she wore her Afro proudly with a fist in the air, but she trusted my education to the school system--the private, Christian school system, and they emptied out all of the other crayons in the box, and asked me (and my classmates) to only color with the white crayon.

So, for white families, between choice of schools, places of worship, and by not having or seeking out any predominately black cultural experiences, there is a gaping chasm between us.

One that I’d like to lay a log across for my part.

Gateway for Change

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for kids. I’ll bleed for them. I’ve spent the better years of my life surrounded by them. And from them, I’ve learned they are not afraid to learn something new when it’s presented to them in a digestible manner. I’ve been thinking a great deal about kids lately--my nephews and nieces, my former English students and chess kids, my friends’ children....They have heard the chatter, seen our reactions, and may have even seen the same videos on YouTube.

All of these kids, our kids, are being shaped by this society, and they will one day become adults who must interact and deal with each other politically, socially, emotionally, physically, spiritually, economically, and mentally.

So who is educating them? Who is explaining empathy and justice and teaching love and acceptance? One thing this virus has taught our nation is that parents are capable of teaching their children too. No matter how great your school system is, they are not going to teach your children about race relations with any consequence.

Education is the single most important gateway for change. Yes, there are people who will perpetuate ignorance regardless because they are blocked in by their incestuous beliefs, but for those who wish to break out of that crippling heritage or emerge from the silos of their communities -- with empathy and insight, you have to learn something new and share the wealth.

You have to know what’s being taught inside the homes of black families, multi-racial families, Arab families, Asian families, and most recently, the Navajo nation. Buy books with diverse characters by diverse authors --for yourself, your children, your students. Watch films with diverse casts. Find positive images and media that celebrate the success and vitality of black excellence.

Listen to the lessons and conversations we've been having amongst ourselves for generations and still teach today. White society is not a bad society. Black society is not a bad society. We are not going to see eye to eye on many many things, but we can agree that every life is valuable.

I do not represent every black person, nor does every black person hold my same views.

But absolutely, we do not live or experience life the same way as our white friends and family. This truth is not a victimhood or disadvantage we seek to revel in or exploit, nor does it devalue the privileges others know and experience. Within our own community, we definitely have very real problems to address, but right now, daily life should not be a mental obstacle course that’s filled with active minefields laid out for us everyday.

Lately, it just feels like no matter what we do or don’t do, the fatalities are adding up, and wicked people in this country are treating the taking of our lives like points in a video game.

As you think about these words, and listen to the stories of these young black men, who are being hit the hardest with racial injustice, dare greatly to share widely within your community.

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“But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.” ― W.E.B. DuBois

Pixabay photos used by permission. Video sourced by New York Times.

#blacklivesmatter #ahmaudarbery #george floyd

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