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calliecat93 · 3 years

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Okay, I know that the Spones content in Bread and Circuses has been talked about before, so I’m likely adding nothing new. But heck with it, I’m talking about it anyways cause it’s just too good not to!

The episode has Spock and McCoy somewhat saltier towards each other than usual. From the second the episode resumes after the opening credits, they’re snarking at each other almost immediately. It goes on for so long that we have the guest character outright ask Kirk if they’re enemies, and even he isn’t for sure. It’s almost like one of the writers anticipated the fact that some would legit think that the two genuinely hated each other, and decided to ask the question. For the most part, their banter is mutual and they’re clearly trying to rouse a reaction from the other.Even when at gunpoint, McCoy just HAS to snap at Spock for “[being] so blasted honest?’. Spock’s raised brow to me almost came across like ‘really doctor? must you be like this now?”. It’s got some amusing stuff, like the banter in the beginning and McCoy of all being being the one to suggest illogic regarding sun worshipers has Spock giving some utterly hilarious facial expressions. But still, the banter goes enough that event he audience has to ask: are these two truly enemies.

The rest of their scenes answer the question.

During the gladiator fight, McCoy’s still so pissed off that even fighting to the death won’t stop him from yelling at Spock when he asks if he needs help. Stress and you know… trying not to die is a factor, but still. But since McCoy’s a doctor, not a warrior he’s about to be killed… until Spock takes out his own opponent and nerve punches McCoy’s before he can be harmed. Doing this breaks the rules and Kirk chooses to take what would be their death sentence upon himself. Spock acted on pure instinct in that instant. Or even more bluntly, it was an emotional response. He interfered because he didn’t want McCoy to die, and he was the only one in a positon to save him. He even seems pretty started that he did so. But because of i, now Kirk is going to die in their places and neither he nor McCoy can do anything about it. He outright pulls at the cell bars, according to McCoy, fifteen times. Logically it’s pretty clear that it’s not working.

With this, McCoy’s now cooled down enough that he legitimately tries to thank Spock for saving him. It’s awkward, neither one are very good at having heart-to-hearts with each other. Spock pretty much acts like it’s the usual banter and kind of condescendingly before telling him to get to the point, which causes McCoy to just snap it out at him. Spock tries to go into the usual ‘I’m a logical Vulcan’ spiel, saying quote:

Spock: Oh, yes. You humans have that emotional need to express gratitude. You're welcome, I believe, is the correct response. However, Doctor, you must remember I am entirely motivated by logic. The loss of our ship's surgeon, whatever I think of his skill, would mean a reduction in the efficiency of the Enterprise and therefore-.

Which is what finally gets McCoy pissed off enough to directly confront him about it. Why? Because he knows that Spock’s spitballing here. He’s trying to deny his emotional responses, despite having demonstrated it at least twice with McCoy right there for both of them. Saving McCoy despite knowing the consequences of doing so was an emotional response. Trying to escape the cell due to Jim’s life being in danger despite all efforts failing is an emotional response. He tries to say it’s just due to professionalism, but at this point there’s been enough episodes that the audience knows that that’s not true. McCoy absolutely knows it. He knows how Spock tends to keep his emotions suppressed and deny that he even has them, even though he very clearly does. It is a factor that has continuously frustrated McCoy. He’d never force Spock to be outwardly emotional, Plato’s Stepchildren made that VERY clear. But when it DOES happen and Spock tries to act otherwise? And after having dealt with this for nearly two years now? Yeah, McCoy decides that he’s had it as he grabs Spock, turns him around so that they’re making clear eye-contact, and makes his opinion VERY clear.

McCoy: Do you know why you're not afraid to die, Spock? You're more afraid of living. Each day you stay alive is just one more day you might slip and let your human half peek out. That's it, isn't it? Insecurity. Why, you wouldn't know what to do with a genuine, warm, decent feeling.

Which… he’s not entirely wrong. Even during this, Spock turns away from him like he doesn’t want to talk about it. But McCoy’s right. Spock’s been at war with his Vulcan and human halves for his entire life. He chose to suppress the human half, and it peaking out does concern him. He isn’t able to settle two sides, hence why he’s always insistent about being a logical, unfeelign Vulcan. Now we all know that Vulcans DO feel things. Very strongly in fact, hence why they suppress it to begin with. But I do think it’s safe to say that Spock is afraid of expressing or even talking about his emotions. Whenever he does, he needs to get his grip back on the Vulcan side as quickly as possible. Even though he knows that McCoy knows otherwise. McCoy is pretty damn good at picking up on Spock’s emotional state and Spock knows it. And I think to at least an extent, he knows that McCoy’s correct. McCoy might be being too harsh admittedly, but the point is there. Spock is afraid of letting his human half slip out and the constant struggle of keeping it in check.

I think this is what makes their relationship so important. McCoy’s really the only person who can provoke Spock like this. Sure Kirk can normally reach out to Spock, but he’s not as likely to directly confront Spock and be blunt about it the same way that McCoy can. Spock’s also really the only person who’s ever been able to provoke McCoy and get him think past his own perspective the way that he does. It’s vitriolic in many ways. Like I said, it’s hard for them to really be civil with each other most of the time. Even here when McCoy did try to start off as civil when he tried thanking Spock, it ultimately devolved into another argument. Even McCoy expressed that he isn’t sure why it’s always like this when he says “ I know we've had our disagreements. Maybe they're jokes. I don't know.” But I do think that the episode demonstrates the answer to the queation of if they’re enemies. The short answer is no. The long answer is that they have a very complicated relationship that on a surface level, comes across as hatred. It gets to the point where even they aren’t fully sure. But the truth is they do care about each other greatly. They understand each other a great deal. They’re the only ones who can reach out to the other. The way that they show it is unorthodox sure, but it’s how it works for them.

And even when they are particularly heated, it always ends with them coming down from it and finding a point of unity. In this case, there is absolutely one thing that they can agree on.

Spock: Really, Doctor?

McCoy: I know. I'm worried about Jim, too.

While their concern for Jim is true, I think McCoy brought used that more as a way to bring them both back down after the exchange. Jim and his well-being is very much the one thing that they can agree on. I serves as a calming down point for them n this particular instant. After this while they don’t have anymore direct interactions, they seem to be on good terms and even enter the Bridge together at the end. They still have their heated moments in later episodes such as The Paradise Syndrome and The Tholian Web. But I think that for those who really do think that Spock and McCoy hate each other, I’d say watch this episode again and give their interactios a closer look. Especially the prison scene. Because it shows that for all their banter, for all their differences, there is a strong connection that is very much uniquely them.

#star trek tos #tos #spones #i may be reading these scenes entirely wrong #but that’s what i got out of it haha

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shyrose57 · 3 years

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Brothers anon and ah, its just me than. Links on tumblr break half the time for me sorry bout that!

1: Mostly how it looks in the actual episode but with some changes. Its gaint, even has multiple floors, most rooms have a glass dome roof with iron railings (3-4) lining the bottom of the glass. The hallway typically have windows leading up to the roof, but the roof and both floor are a mix of materials like iron, copper, wood, and even gold. The most complex room is the Council room, which has a a higher roof than the rest, with mostly wood railings that go all the way up and lead to a circle at the top. The Council is the group that leads Mizu, they have 1 leader of every Idol to represent the different opinions of the citizens, with 1 special member that doesnt belong to any Idol, and is instead used to represent the opinions of people who either haven't chosen a idol yet, got kicked out of a idol following, and just to give a unbiased opinion most of the time. They do make most decisions, mostly those relating to topics like construction, farming, money distribution, where people can live, etc. And they also mostly agree on most subjects and don't agure, but they do have massive disagreements on topics and problems like Representation in other Cities/Kingdoms, trading, visitors and immigrants, and sometimes supply missions.

3: Situations like taking care of his siblings (I have decided Benjamin shall have siblings) and friends, and he was also put under extreme stress as a kid in school and family life, but unlike Ranbob, he managed to successfully communicate his struggle and find coping mechanisms. Also when he went off to live by himself for a bit, he was under sudden extreme situations where he had to make split second decision. So he just learned from everything thats happened to him over time.

8: Levi exists purely to make Watson and others go insane. People claimed it was made up because they claimed most events as unrealistic (like Doomsday, Techno escaping a death trial, Pandoras Vault (they believed it impossible for something to be inescapable)). Plus the fact it seemed cruel such young people where faced with such trauma that no sane person would let it happen, and the fact most historical important items couldn't be found, people claiming that they where made up (also cause if the land was that exposed to such devastation, it would've collapsed on itself). No to both of those, by this point their to far away from Dream for him to have a direct meaningful affect on the group, and while the residents of Kelalen know it was Dreams sword, the group does not know. Nope! Mizu came about years after Kelalen was forgotten about and shamed. And Mizu was only made because of the growing number of believers in the SMP history was causing disruptions in both the political sense and educational sense, so it was made to separate the "outcasts". Though Mizu eventually grew as big as most cities, and greatly civilized and advanced, though they where still often "forgotten" about and basically seperate from the Kingdom that set them up and became their own place (though not officially).

They do have a friendship! Its not super close but their definitely friends. Ranbob is definitely a worrier, he heard that two of his friends almost died he immediately goes to them and fuses over them. And when their recovering he doesnt leave their side, infact Benjamin has to drag him away from the two just to get him to eat. And he refuses to sleep unless he's like directly on top of them. Yeah, Cletus challenges Grievous to a parkour challenge over a Delta Basalt, and he happily accepts. They end up giving everyone a heart attack after Cletus slips and almost falls onto a magma block. Jackie plays in soul sand and dumps a handful down Rans shirt, Watson teaches Charles and Isaac how to make gold from gold nuggets and more Piglin culture. When Cletus is cleared to be ok and Jackie stops getting soul sand in areas he didn't even know existed. They all sit in a circle and decide what they should try first, with Ran and Watson watching carefully and preventing them from drinking anything that they recognized as harmful. But other than that they just let the others do whatever.

10: Because he couldn't use it, when Dream was a full human he used to be able to access his powers at his own will. But after his spirit got linked to his mask his power greatly reduced. To the point he relies on others for his powers, more specifically, he needs them to be exposed to him for a certain amount of time (like 2 weeks) until he can use their own essence/spirit to help his powers. When the group of people came after Ranbob left, they stayed for a long time, especially after they took the mask with them. Dream got the power back. Cause it is a "I worked to hard to give this up." Type situation. Ranbob was his first victim and the first person he had control over in decades, he considers Ranbob the puppet he was meant to have and refuses to let him go. Everyone is the nat to him, but specifically Ran. Cause Ran was the only person who survived the murders, so Dream sees him as a kill that was taken from him that he needs to fix. Everyone else to him is nothing more than an annoyance, and he's more than happy to use them as nothing more than a stepping stone to kill once he's done with them.

13: Ran is stronger than everyone else, Jackie is faster than everyone else, and Watson is more acrobatic than everyone else. Sorry can you reword "Is Jackie considered stronger than them aside from shared tactics, or is it the other way around?"? I dont completely understand sorry. Kind of, I'll say. There can only be 3 ranking members, but it can also be 2 Corporals and 1 Sergeant.

14: They where caught off guard, but also knew something must be going on due to the fishermen staying closer to Ranbob than normal. He never got too far, as he isnt very fast and Charles and both Isaac tend to be fast enough to get him. If the episode is really bad bringing him back can lead into physical fights but it rarely gets into that, as it seems like Ranbob really doesn't want to fight them most of the time, and holds himself back.

Well, I hope it’s working for you now, cause that sounds less than ideal, honestly.

1: Well, Mizu sounds gorgeous, quite frankly. As for the council having a member of no idol, what about that? People can get kicked out from an idol group? Why? Do some just never choose an idol? Also, how’s the housing situation there? Are there like, apartments on one of the floors, or something? Why does the council not really agree on outside affairs?

3: Not gonna lie, I’m rather curious. What kind of life did Benjamin lead to be under such heavy stress? Does he relate to Ranbob because of this? And what was he doing when he lived on his own to need to make fast-paced decisions? Also, siblings! What’re his siblings like?

8: He sounds like it.

And hm. There are several things I’ve taken from this.

Do totems no longer exist, if they don’t believe Techno could have survived, or did that particular piece of the story just get left out over time?

Has Pandora’s vault fallen? And why would people find it unbelievable? If it’s the future, shouldn’t they have even more advanced technology than that? Or is it simply the lack of evidence that leads them to disagreeing about it’s existence?

They don’t believe people would have been so cruel to the younger ones? Oof, um. Well, at least that says something about the future, I guess.

Mizu sounds like it has an interesting history in it’s self. How do Ran and Ranbob feel about being in a world that basically shunned the people of what would eventually become their home? Do they ever have issues when people find out they originate from Mizu, or worship an idol? From how you put it, it seems like that wasn’t really looked upon well, since they shunted the people who did it to Mizu.

Friendships for the win! Maybe not close, but it sounds like an interesting dynamic. Charles honestly seems pretty mild, and as you said, shy, so putting him with Mr.Random And Chaotic certainly sounds like something. How did these two become friends?

And honestly, it sounds like everyone had a lot of unique experiences in the Nether. It also sounds like Ran and Ranbob were probably an inch from a heart-attack the entire time, considering the shenanigans ongoing. It sounds kind of cute that Ranbob was only sleeping when he was close to them though, and it gives me the image of a giant fluffy cat, so win-win there.

10: Interesting. Was Ranbob not enough to fully return that power to him when the Fishermen first came and took him? Or did Dream just not think they’d get that far and not react in time, when he still had that power from his puppet?

And, uh, wow. Dream was certainly off his rocker before, but that’s definitely cemented now. Is anyone aware he thinks of Ranbob in such a way? Does Ranbob know? How are everyone’s feelings on that-besides y’know, ‘gonna murder Mr.Mask Man’. How does everyone feel about being considered as ‘nats’?

13: Huh. And yeah, I confused myself rereading that. Basically, is Jackie considered stronger than those two? You said they were mostly on par, because of the shared tactics, so when it comes to cutting those shared tactics out of the picture, does Jackie come out on top?

14: So the gang could tell? If I may ask, what were the tells that gave Ranbob away?

#Brothers AU #dream smp #dream smp au #tales from the smp #ranbob #ran

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kitemist · 3 years

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I wrote a post on twitter called: “Unpopular Opinion: You’re a fake ally.”

I had to write it after my ex-best friend never ceased to amaze me with how horrible of an ally she is, with the added insult of false promises that always break.

It got zero traction on twitter because I don’t have that many followers on there, or people who really interact with me, but I want to post it here too.

From here onwards, it’s copy and pasted from the exact twitter post, and I would appreciate feedback in a civil manner if you want.

“What’s something that you’ll get a lot of hate for if you said it out loud?” I’m going to be subtweeting a very specific person when I say this but I’m going to forward it to you all too. If you feel uncomfortable from what I’m saying, I am definitely talking about you. I’ve seen this several times with this specific person with the added insult of a record of broken promises to be better, as well as the same thing over the past few years from other people, so I am pissed enough to speak out. Obviously, this is just my opinion, disagreements are going to happen, I’m not forcing anyone to do anything, just asking you to read if you want. If a person, or more relevantly, group of people needs help, and you retweet, repost, share, post to your story, spread in any way that you can their cries for help like infographics, GoFundMe’s, links to online wallets, emergency commissions, news updates and all that; if you donate to such things and spread them around; push people to do the same; if you do donation commissions and give the money attained from that to them; bring it up in conversations with them and others every now and then; but you don’t emotionally help your everyday member of that group or that person, especially if they are your FRIEND, YOU ARE A FAKE ALLY. I do not care if you do everything else. If you don’t do that one thing, you’re a fake ally. And doing everything else doesn’t make you a good person either, if that is how you judge yourself and others. And if you're uncomfortable, then leave now. Doing everything else and not that is literally no different than 1 like for water for Africa, those old pics that would ask for likes during early facebook days, with the added insult of a trending event/group of people with it and resurging every now and then whenever something horrible happens, and they’re always seen first. You just click on those things to reassure people that you’re not THAT kind of an insensitive asshole, but then you just feel great about yourself that you added to that number even though you have only done the bare minimum, because you ultimately don’t want to get TOO involved in something that makes you uncomfortable, and give yourself a great pat on the back for all the hard work you’ve done just pressing that button. You obviously don’t care about this issue enough to throw your comfort zone aside, even for just a second. We don’t have that choice to not see it like you do, and we feel a lot more than just “uncomfortable”. For WAY longer. Doing those things without emotionally supporting the actual people just separates yourself from the problem in a convenient way. Passing thoughts and prayers and especially clicks on posts aren’t going to help anyone but a completely detached algorithm. You do not get credit for doing the bare minimum and expect the same rewards as passionate, achieving activists. I’m not just talking about #StopAAPIHate just because it’s trending right now, this applies to literally every hashtag that is the only way of a group of people’s cries for help that generates some kind of attention to everyone else that people care about. I’ve seen it be a pattern for enough time now. I’ve seen stories of people who would use #BlackLivesMatter, or the name of any black person who died, as a way to spread it by their banner or profile picture or even turn it into a meme that pushes people to sign their latest petitions, but then completely disrespect actual black people or don’t do anything else for their causes. The only reason you would ever do this is because you care about other people’s approval of you, not actual POC, and you only ever see them as a trend or a platform to be trendy. As a POC myself, we are more than just a fucking hashtag on twitter. We’re more than just a label to reassure people that you’re not a bully. We’re people. But I guess that’s too hard to understand for those fake allies, all they ever see is something to click on, and they’ll get the same credit as those genuine allies without having to work. Or be UNCOMFORTABLE, God forbid you have to step outside of the comfortable world you think you live in. Now for donating money. I get that monetary support isn’t something that everyone can afford to do. I’m not forcing or expecting everyone to do that or not do that. If you can’t, then I recommend spreading donation posts, for the hope for it to come by someone who can and will. You can then still be a vehicle for help if you cannot provide it yourself. But I know that everyone is capable of being completely fake when it comes to donations when they have that kind of money to spare. You can totally just dump $100 or so into a GoFundMe, and never interact with anything related to that group of people ever again and live a completely separate life, with that same convenient separation, but with a receipt this time so that if it’s brought up again, that’s all you have to show to say to them to not worry, you did something, you’re not THAT kind of fake asshole because your wallet is involved this time. It’s what youtubers do when they have to make a YouTube apology just so everyone can stop hating on them for a little while. Anyone can do that. I’m not assuming the worst in everyone, I’m saying you don’t need a platform to be an asshole. Money doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone else, it just shows that you’re more financially well off to be able to donate and that’s something that we can appreciate, but it’s not pure sentiment. Money isn’t feelings. It’s just money. It doesn’t tell us anything about your morals. It doesn’t care how you obtained it and it doesn’t care where you spend it. Donating from your heart and donating from your wallet are two very different things, but it’s not like we can tell from here, so we can’t give you credit for that, especially if those donations are also in the complete public eye. That kind of difference is only discernable to us long after, and even then, that requires some detective work and pattern searching with other donations you have made in the past, if any. Sometimes we don’t even have that time to see if that genuine empathy would come about or not. Whether or not you have a heart in that donation or not, it’s not like we can read your mind as you press confirm. The money doesn’t tell us your feelings, morals, or your heart. Only you can. And you have to WORK to tell us that. You can be appreciated for giving a monetary donation, but that appreciation is toward the money and not at you as a person, and if it is, it’s not towards the real you, it’s only towards you at that time and who knows if that’s gonna change within a minute, or was superficial the entire time, or if it’s the real ally we all knew we needed. We wouldn’t know, all we see is a name and a money amount. Those real allies take time to come out and solidify themselves within themselves and within others, but it’s not as soon as their money disappears. You don’t get credit as a person and your morals when it was the money and temporary self at that time that ultimately helped them. Just because you were behind that money doesn’t mean that the morals associated with you are in that money, and who knows if you were the same person as you made that donation a week ago. Do you know exactly where the dollar bills you have right now have gone through? How many inhumane multi million dollar corporations, or funding something harmful? If you can separate yourself from that, then the money you’re giving can easily be separated from you in both morals and in bank accounts. That’s what you’re choosing to give away as well when you make a donation. If you’re completely fine with that, then donate if you still want to. Just know that by doing that, it doesn’t make you special. In the end, the only thing received is money, not thoughts. That money is completely useless if it’s not being spent towards that needed relief, after all. You can also totally give out of obligation or social pressure instead of believing in the cause or caring about the person affected. That’s not being a real ally either. That’s hopping on a bandwagon because that attracts you more than what the cause is, because the value of human life doesn’t line up with your own. You would only care about this BECAUSE it’s trending, not because it has ever gotten to your emotions, morals, or anything you care about. Giving a donation or not doesn’t tell anyone anything about you, other than how relatively well off you are in terms of money and time, and that’s not relevant to what’s being asked. Donations can have so many motives behind it, and you are not free of those motives just because we can’t see it immediately, and those motives are completely lost once that money is received and eventually used. Money can be helpful in terms of alleviating the situation, but ultimately, it’s not help in placing you on a moral scale whether it’s others judging your character or just judging yourself. And there’s also the risk of donating to a complete scam, and again, money doesn’t care where it’s going to or where it’s coming from, because it’s just money. Not everything that is asking for donations is a scam, but because of this possibility, what you claim to be your one act of good will from your heart in the form of monetary support can easily be debunked and ultimately be used against you whether you were aware of this being a scam before then or not, because the internet is very reactive more than anything else. And if you are donating from your heart and you end up donating to a scam, that’s just even more emotional damage to you as well as the cause, an even worse situation. So again, monetary support isn’t any better than what I determine to be the one defining factor of being a good ally. It’s just a different kind of support that can be useful but it’s not with any heart in it. And because most of those people asking for donations would say that even a little bit helps, the amount of money you’re donating doesn’t give you more credit than others, it just puts you higher on the highest donations list that is made by another detached algorithm, which is ultimately meaningless except for telling whoever clicks on that list how much money you were willing to spare to them, and not what you were thinking when you did it. To be a real ally, that’s a constant effort more than just money or spreading posts. It’s something that can’t ever be measured or manipulated by any algorithm. And I know that the majority of “allies” die out as soon as it’s not trending anymore. It’s happened enough times and how much it happens just has it be a part of a trend’s life cycle on the internet, and that temporary life in the public life can vary greatly. That constant effort also does not (solely) consist of making more donations to more places. That’s just another kind of monetary help that’s ultimately just money. That doesn’t tell anyone anything about you other than that you can afford to do so and being able to afford to do this can sway you on either end of the moral scale, whether you care about that or not. To give an example, the overwhelming response to the Notre Dame fire in 2018 showed what could have been possible if everyone donated what they could, and of course the response to that has never happened to any disaster before, and to my knowledge, ever since. All those millionaires and some netizens credited themselves with their affluent donations but everyone else only saw them as those who ultimately did nothing when any other disaster also needed help in the past and since then, so those donations didn’t make them any kind of ally even though they gave more than the majority of the world can ever afford to give in their lifetimes. Why didn’t every other disaster that lasted longer, had more casualties and damage, had more emotionally traumatic damage that lasted from then onwards, have as much support as this one fire that didn’t completely destroy this building? With almost a billion dollars (954 million USD) donated towards restoration in such a short amount of time, there was still anger, especially towards those who have donated that. And people who have donated copious amounts were also not technically millionaires, but still made and had enough to be part of that same 1%. And anyone can be in that nonspecific well-off group, not just people who were born rich or inherited it. There have been debates that this was a matter of how personally interested these rich people suddenly became because they saw the Notre Dame as a beautiful tourist spot full of history, even though there was a museum in Brazil that was nearly completely destroyed, with majority of its contents and even more history gone forever on the same day and didn’t get a fraction as much attention as this did, and got even less donations. Therefore, monetary support doesn’t give you, or anyone, any more moral high ground, no matter how much it is, because again, it’s just money. It can be help, but not like human support. All that being said, I still think it’s great if you can afford to keep donating to people in need, but if you want to make your support stronger and genuine or have a solid foundation that can be paired and amplified with monetary support, it won’t cost you anything but your time and changing behavior. And right now, I bet everyone reading right now has a lot of those two if their wallet is empty. To do so: • Learn about our struggles. We’re not asking you to be total experts on this, but to know enough to answer, “What can I do to help?” and “What do they need right now?” and it’s best to have them answered by us. Listen to us. And keep making more questions the more that are answered. The best way to learn is to ask. • Speak out against hate speech of any kind from anyone, no matter how much you like them, when you see it in the moment, and hold them accountable. Just saying racism is bad isn’t going to help anyone, but to call out a specific person as a racist will challenge them, because there’s more at stake than just a fact that racism is bad. Whether you want to be polite about it or not is your choice, whichever is more effective. Their feelings are definitely not more important than what they are contributing to the problem. • Emotionally check up on us, we aren’t fine if we have to see more of our family’s beat up faces on the news and screens, or see our family and friends being even more scared to go outside with every passing day. Whether it’s talking about the main situation in depth or providing a respite in the form of having fun when asked; emotional check ups are what makes you the real ally first. • Reassure us that whether or not this is just another trend you see everywhere on social media for the day, you’ll always be there for us, and then hold up that promise, follow through with it whenever we are in trouble. If you consistently do this, it won’t turn into a super conscious decision anymore to be an ally, you’ll reprogram yourself to learn and think that you are now involved and can fight with us, whether or not this becomes something in the twitter sidebar to look at. • Acknowledge your privilege as someone who isn’t targeted and, depending on who you are, would never be targeted, in whatever way that would be, and use it as a weapon for us if applicable. Ex. if you’re white and straight and the current group that needs help is not white and not straight, let them speak about their struggles, amplify their voices because you have the privilege of having more people taking you seriously and paying attention to you, and learn about what you can do to help them and make their life easier with them knowing you are an ally. Redirect that attention and authenticity to us because we sure can’t make it by ourselves. • Learn and involve yourself in our culture if that helps you learn more about us, that is not appropriation. We totally welcome people who want to learn more about us in a respectful and open-minded way. You are a constant learner in doing this, as well as doing any or all of the above-mentioned tasks. There’s no real end to being an ally, just as there is no real end to the fight. It’s always better to ask questions than to keep it to yourself and mess up. There was always a better time to learn all of this, but the second-best time is right now. Just because you never learned this earlier doesn’t mean you can’t start to change that. We won’t shame you if today has to be your first day as long as you stay just as eager and able to receive criticism from then onwards. Even if you become well educated, don’t act like you know exactly what it’s like. Because no matter how educated you become, you are ultimately not us. Keep that in mind as you embark on your journey. Constant effort is what every single one of those groups need, I guarantee that. It’s such a great skill that can be used in anything. Consistency is rare and powerful and key in achieving nearly anything you want. But that’s not something we can automatically detect and always takes time to make happen, there’s no shortcut to that. Are you just going to retweet these for a day or week or month or two, or are you going to speak out whether you are going to put a tag on it or not? Are you just going to donate a small fraction of your paycheck once or are you going to keep going whenever you can and donate to even more people that need help that isn’t just part of that group? All we see is that one instance, and people are pouring either their first or their first and last instances of helping us, and there’s no way to differentiate who’s what until that first wave dies down. And that is a journey of watching it be less and less important on the timelines, growing disappointment and sorrow that we have always felt from the beginning, something that no one outside of the current targetted trending group, or anyone who has ever trended, can ever understand or experience. It’s like wearing halloween costumes that are clearly a costume from another culture. You can wear that costume, or in that case, that hashtag for a day. We wear that stigma for life. I hope this post makes you reconsider what you’ve been doing in terms of fighting for social justice, or at the very least, make you uncomfortable enough to think about what you have been doing for such groups of people who need help. Obviously if you are a real ally as I’ve described by not only doing monetary donations if applicable, but fighting back, constantly learning, and emotionally supporting and checking up on your friends constantly, this post isn’t talking about you. And if you don’t want to learn about all this stuff that can be towards the better, then there’s nothing that can ever help you. That’s just willful ignorance at that point and I as well as others are completely free to judge you for that. On the note of being a good person or bad person, I know that’s not how everyone wants to judge themselves. Looking deep enough, it can be subjective, or just a matter of good actions and bad actions instead of good people and bad people. Either way, you have that “good” and “bad” judgement on something, even though that concept itself is also a spectrum, and at times, they can be applied to both people and actions, such as a good person making a bad decision or a bad person making their first good deed. So, whether it’s actions or people, being a “good person” doesn’t excuse you from your mistakes or shitty decisions. A good record can just be completely shattered at any time. A lot of people who we have thought were “good” have been exposed, and those who we thought were “bad” have been redeemed. It’s celebrated in fiction, but apparently not welcomed in real life. And improving your allyship as I described above doesn’t automatically make you a “good person”, if that judgement is what you have for yourself or want to have for yourself, but it IS a very “good action” to get started in expanding your world beyond what you initially knew before this post, because it’s always a “good action” to constantly question what you know before making judgements or actions. That constant questioning is learning and not being compliant with how things are, because things can always be better. Being a bad person entails not caring about doing better and is magnified by being two-faced like being a fake ally. And you can also stop caring at any time about yourself and what your morals are. Not all fake allies are “bad people,” maybe they just needed an awareness check that emotional support makes all of their previous work or work afterwards more authentic and appreciated. I don’t blame anyone who really didn’t think that emotional support wasn’t part of helping those who need it and now take that fact in stride, or just didn’t know how to do that in the first place. But all “bad people” are fake allies because they don’t care enough outside of themselves to change what their environment presents themselves with, or just complain about it without bothering to question or research why things are that way. And obviously, “bad people” would contribute to the problem by either never being an ally in the first place or do the bare minimum in allyship and expect rewards without being caught in the stress that comes with actually fighting for a cause. So, if you read this entire post and are one of those people who do the bare minimum but want the rewards, or think I and others are just too sensitive, and have no intention or desire to change any of your actions around pleas for help from groups of people or even start to think about changing that, I would think you’re a bad person. But that’s only how I judge you. I know plenty of bad people who go on and life happily knowing how many people hate them whether they know them personally or not. If you’re taking that so personally, you could have left much earlier in this longass post. I don’t know what you expected with me talking about this topic and somehow not being super cordial about it. I don’t owe you a polite tone or managing your feelings, and neither does anyone else. If you really think my tone is the problem here more than anything I have ever explained in this post I guarantee you’re a bad person who is just looking for an excuse to completely dismiss this even though you had the opportunity to do so much earlier, around 4,000 words ago. And if you really need someone else to help you with your fragile and insecure feelings, I guarantee that they’re not on the internet. Again, to reiterate, this is just my opinion, feel free to tell me any of your own. I’m not forcing anyone to do or stop doing anything, I just appreciate that you read this far. I hope you reconsider how to fight for your loved ones that aren’t as well off as you are, or how to fight alongside others who have been though the struggles of being either underprivileged or just not as well off. Thank you.

#whiteOnslaught rambles #long post #social justice #stopaapihate #blacklivesmatter #blm #stopasianhate #protectasianlives

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questionsonislam · 3 years

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Why is Islam the true religion?

“The religion before Allah is Islam (submission to his will): nor did the People of the Book dissent therefrom except through envy of each other, after knowledge had come to them. But whoever disbelieves the Signs of Allah, Allah is swift in calling to account.” the Qur’an, The Family of Imran (Aal-i Imran); 19 (3: 19)

Religion means “the return in the form of a reward or a punishment” and it expresses the relation between the obedient and the leader who possesses power. As a term, several definitions of religion has been made. There are some basic differences between the definitions of the Western (European) scientists and Muslim scholars. Still, there are serious differences between the opinions of both regions about the source of the religion and its primary way of occurrence.

According to the Islamic opinion, religion means the whole of the rules that guides man so that he will live in accordance with the purpose he was created for and so that he will realize that purpose in a certain discipline. Religion is a foundation regulating the relationship based on the holy commandment and domination of one side and the obedience and adherence of the other side, but it is comprehended from that verse that according to the Qur’an, the value of religion and devoutness is conditioned to be based on a voluntary submission. In other words, according to the Islamic comprehension, religion is a foundation that directs the men of understanding to good (deeds) and happiness with their own desire and will, and a Divine law regulating the acts of men based on their own choice.

That verse is the first place the word Islam was mentioned in the Noble Qur’an. The dictionary meaning of Islam is “to be devoted to, to obey, to submit and to be in soundness and peace”. As a term, Islam means “accepting with all one’s existence all of the things Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) declares in behalf of the religion and being in a submission manifesting it”. The name of the true religion the Prophet set forth is Islam. Still, in Arabic, Islam is an infinitive that expresses submission to that religion. A person attached to the religion of Islam is expressed as Muslim in Arabic.

There is a strong relation between the dictionary meaning and term meaning of the word Islam. According to the Islamic comprehension, religion is a law supplying agreement by preventing disagreements and contentions among the creatures possessing will and intelligence. Religion expresses the agreement not only among the people but also between the people and Allah. In this way, conformity between the will of the Creator and the wills of the creatures is supplied.

Since all heavenly religions are based on the oneness of Allah, the religion of Islam that the Prophet Muhammad notifies and the other religions declared by other prophets are basically the same. Nevertheless, according to some Muslim scholars, the expressions such as the religion of Islam and Islamic community can only be used for the religion the Prophet Muhammad set forth and for its members. Even though Islam agrees with the previous true religions fundamentally, that religion has some specific attributes and some specific decrees peculiar to the community attached to it. According to another group of scholars, it is also possible for the previous heavenly religions to be called as Islam. According to them, in the Noble Qur’an there are several verses supporting that opinion: the declaration of the answer of the apostles of Jesus as “Testify that we are Muslims”, the statement about Abraham as “He was a hanif Muslim” and again giving place to a general qualification such as “He dubbed you the name ‘Muslims’ before and also now” are the examples of that. According to the persons having opposing opinions, those kinds of descriptions are related to the prophets.

In our opinion, in the heavenly books except the Noble Qur’an, a religion name was not mentioned for the followers of those books and if we consider that the names such as Judaism and Christianity arose later and they were the names assigned to their followers afterwards, the meaning of the expression “Verily, the religion before Allah is Islam” can be understood easily. Although the religion declared by Prophet Muhammad has specific rules, insistently mentioning of the Qur’an’s feature of approval of the declaration of the previous prophets shows that what they proclaim is fundamentally within the sphere of Islam; however, in accordance with the Divine wisdom, the most perfect way of those doctrines can only be reached through the sending of Prophet Muhammad.

In that case, the only way to achieve the consent of Almighty Allah is to believe in all things He proclaims. According to that, starting out from the facts, although other religion names can be mentioned in order to express the certain parties, the truth seekers’ agreement within the limits Almighty Allah approves is the ultimate aim and it is unavoidable for the period desired for the Divine declarations to reflect to the mind and the conscience of humanity. The Islamic scholars expressed that comprehension as “the complying community” and “the invited community”; the first one expresses the people who present the will of submission to what Prophet Muhammad declared actually and clearly; and the second expresses the potential group who are not at that level but in the reflection period mentioned above. Therefore, by comparing with the names such as “Jewishness” and “Christianity”, some Western authors’ calling Islam with a restricting name as “Muhammadism” is not appropriate because it is far away from reflecting the fact and it also has a feature of preventing the communication and the coalescing mentioned above.

Comprehending the verse in that way in point of the ultimate aim does not conflict with the idea that everyone who has lived in any time or place and has been able to keep himself away from attributing partners to Allah and has been able to direct his attributes in accordance with that belief can be named as a “Muslim” according to the Qur’an’s comprehension. Indeed, in several verses, it can be seen that that criteria has been taken basically in point of the salvation of people in the hereafter.

With a broad meaning, Islam (being a Muslim) expresses submission with heart, tongue and behaviors. The most important and the most valuable submission among those is the one made with heart. In the Qur’an, it is seen that the word Islam is also used for the submission which has not reached the level of belief.

The expression “The ones who were given books” has been generally comprehended with respect to the content of the expression “People of the Book”. The word knowledge is explained as “revelation and explicit proofs”. In the verse, declaration of the People of the Book’s falling into dissent just after the knowledge had come is for indicating that they were informed of the Divine declaration enough and although they have no excuse from that point, they fell into disagreement and quarreled with each other just because of their own faults and for thinking their benefits and mortal passions. Starting from the reason “Because of injustice among them”, some explanations were made that the persons implied here were the Jewish people or the Christians or the both. In the light of the historical knowledge, here, it can be said that instead of progressing in the way of peace and civilization by using the enlightenment the revelation has provided, the communities, who were addressed by the Divine revelation, excluding the common sense because of their personal desires and especially separating into religious groups based on their complicating of interests were criticized. Despite that warning, repeating the same mistake by the ones believing in the Qur’an has caused an important obstacle in fulfilling the mission of communicating the Divine message to humanity in the most favorable way and taking the place they deserve in the competition of civilization.

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funkymbtifiction · 5 years

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f confusion

If you have time/feel like it, can I ask your opinion on something? I’ve been reading Lenore Thompson’s personality book — and it’s causing me some confusion. I found myself nodding along to her description of Fe (ordering people in terms of relationship in list) up until she comments that if you re-ordered your list due to a falling out of some sort, you were being subjective, which I’m assuming she’s using interchangeably for “introverted intuition” which made me hesitate.

Without a direct quote from the book (which I don't have in front of me) I can't speak to her meaning, but I do know taking one thing out of context and allowing it to shake up everything you know about yourself is not the way to go; if you relate 90% to her in-depth Fe-dom descriptions, which includes all the weaknesses of inferior Ti, then you are likely Fe-dom. If you relate 10%, you are not. Majority rules. Minor nitpicks are unimportant.

All things considered, my core 9 probably fakes a lot of stereotypical Fe, but recently someone crossed a line, insulting my family (however unintentionally). I was absolutely furious, shaking with fury. I got closure, sort of, but the damage had been done in my head. Angrily, I mentally re-ordered my list of friends (the people who were outraged on my behalf at the top, and the one who had done the hurt at the bottom). It’s an unhealthy method, for sure, but it’s not the first time I’ve cut myself off emotionally from someone after they’ve crossed a line of mine (usually my belief in kindness and being there for/supportive of your family). I’m still polite to these people, feel empathy for them, but there’s a great part of me that has been shut down for them.

Yup, that's a core 9 all right. Shut down. Ignore. Numbing. Passive-aggressive avoidance. #SoDone. Has nothing to do with Fe vs Fi.

I get frustrated and angry when people don’t do what is right and proper.

Strong 1 wing, I am guessing?

I’m not able to see the Fi route of “everyone has an opinion and is allowed to have it," theoretically I believe in that because I was taught it by my parents, but I often internally cannot comprehend how people see things so differently from me — though the difference absolutely fascinates me from a scientific standpoint — and why they can’t just understand how I see things: how their view of things are so openly skewered to their own dated beliefs, instead of believing in things that ultimately do the most good to the general public.

They can't see how you understand things, because they have not lived your life.

You cannot understand how they see things, because you have not lived theirs. It's that simple.

The most you can do with people is agree to be civil in your disagreements and allow each other to explain their side. The latter bit of what you said, I do not know how to say this in any way that is not rude, but that's not Fe or Fi -- that's an immature judging function that is still basing its conclusions on "whatever *I* see as right, YOU MUST AGREE WITH" -- and I have seen people of all types do it. By judging them for having a view of things so "openly skewed to their own DATED beliefs" you are putting yourself on a higher moral pedestal than them, as someone who is "enlightened." Truth is, they may be right and you may be wrong. When you approach people with an attitude of "I am enlightened and you are not," you have already lost the debate and really have no interest in knowing what formed their opinion, because you already have prejudged it as wrong.

"General public" usually means a social Enneagram core; I've noticed soc-firsts put group welfare ahead of personal survival, regardless of being Fe or Fi, because they know their survival relies on the group welfare.

Most of my values have come from my parents, or my favorite stories — but I can’t tell if that’s introverted sensation, or extraverted feeling.

It doesn't have to be either one; no one is born in a void. Fi typically does not know what its internal values are until it encounters something that gives it a livid NOPE reaction out of the blue. And Fi, unlike Fe, will totally refuse to pretend anything different, even if it makes them a social outcast. This can be as stupidly simple as not saying "yes, the food is wonderful!" if you actually hate the green beans, while a bunch of people chorus around you at the dinner table, "oh, it's wonderful!" or finding yourself absolutely incapable of lying to your best friend when she asks, "Does this make my butt look fat?"

I definitely also agreed with some Fi things too — like recently I’ve realized I’m happiest when I know my writing is doing something that truly matters, when I’m standing for a cause I’m really passionate about, when I see how it makes people feel, I love making people feel seen and heard, and I want to use my talents to incite change. I’m also extremely sensitive to criticism, hard on myself to an outrageous degree, and I’ve got that habit of literally not ever being able to open up about my feelings.

Most of this is general Human Being stuff. Most people don't want to waste their life doing meaningless things; most people do not bother involvement in causes they do not care about; most feelers want to make other people feel good; most feelers (and some thinkers) want to open up avenues for others to succeed; and a lot of people dream about changing things. Being sensitive to criticism is a feeler trait, being hard on yourself is a 1 wing trait, and repression of feelings can be introversion, shyness, self-consciousness, or Fi's ability to "deal with my problems on my own, alone in my room."

I always relate things to myself, and if my friends are going through something I usually ask myself how I’d feel in their shows and attempt to (usually clunkily) move forward with that, and I’m extremely empathetic (I was banned from watching the animal planet as a child bc watching the animals hurt or worse made me spend the entire day crying).

That sounds more like Fi. For the latter: aww. Same. I still can't watch Animal Rescue shows, since I shift between feeling awful for the poor things and wanting to enact terrible vengeance on their abusive owners.

- ENFP Mod

#question #extroverted feeling #introverted feeling #esfj #enfj #mbti #enfp #esfp #isfp #infp

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facebookfacepalmed · 4 years

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12 Things To Forget

Well, a few disagreements here, as usual.

1. The past is not only open to interpretation, it’s constantly being reinterpreted. Not only by historians studying our collective history, but by individuals contemplating their own. Some old people are always waxing nostalgic about the “good old days” when remembering times that, at the time, they found stressful and not all that pleasant.

2. Opinions DO define your reality.

3. Everyone’s journey may be different, but most parts of it are similar to everyone else’s journey, and no part of it is truly unique. If this wasn’t true, we wouldn’t be able to understand each other.

4. Things do NOT always get better with time. Ask a terminal cancer patient, or a parent who has lost a child.

5. I have no idea what this means.

6. Overthinking CAN lead to sadness. It can also lead to breakthroughs and epiphanies.

7. Happiness is also found without. If happiness was entirely found within, we could all live surrounded by filth, crime, and misery and still be happy? I don’t think so. If happiness is found within, why change anything or try to improve the world?

8. Positive thoughts only lead to positive things when, like happiness, they are connected in some way to reality and/or directed towards things that are good. Evil people having positive thoughts do evil things.

9. Smiles are contagious, most of the time. But they aren’t always appropriate. Getting everybody smiling at a funeral misses the point. Sadness is a human emotion that is just as valid as joy, and someone who is not smiling might be more grateful for either sympathy or privacy more than they will be for some clown unaware of their personal situation trying to cheer them up. Mind your business, some times. Learn to read the room.

10. Kindness can have consequences, costs, and repercussions. There are people out there who will take advantage of kindness, and cause personal or financial harm to the unwary person who was only being kind. That being said, kindness still reflects well on the person being kind, just as civility reflects well on the person being civil. But don’t give the world a blank check.

11. You fail when you fail, and you can fail without quitting. You can also win by quitting, when what you are trying to accomplish is wrong or impossible. They only give out one gold medal for any event at the Olympics, one crown at the Miss America Pageant, and one check to the winner of the Irish Sweepstakes. It’s true that you can’t win if you quit before the race is over, but at some point, the race is over. Also, some tasks are worth quitting. Take Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the hill, only to have it fall to the bottom again, over and over. He’d be better off walking away, if the Gods would allow it, don’t you think? You could call it quitting, but you could also call it winning. Not every task can be completed. Not every task SHOULD be completed. Not every goal you come up with is possible, or even desirable, for a person to achieve. Hitler’s goal was to exterminate the Jews. Would you tell him to keep at it, so as not to be labeled a quitter?

12. What goes around comes around, sometimes. But reward and effort are only somewhat connected. People literally get away with murder. There are currently 250,000 unsolved cases in the United States as of 2019, with around 6,000 being added every year. And Donald Trump is president. Whether he gets voted out in 2020, or never gets voted out because he declares himself President for Life and Moscow Mitch, Bankrupt Barr, and Putrid Putin back his play, or conversely he gets tossed in jail and forced to forfeit all of the money he’s conned people out of for all these years for his countless crimes and offenses, do you really think he will receive any punishment equal to the harm he has caused? If you don’t like that example, consider Hitler. Does one bullet in the head balance out millions killed in concentration camps, and millions more killed in the war?

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margaretsmedia · 4 years

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Prompt #3: Online Value Messages: Does Social Media Make Us Nice or Mean?

The use of social media in our society has sparked a lot of debate over whether it is making people’s behaviour better or worse. I believe that social media is enabling people to become more mean-spirited online than they would be in real life. This is due to a number of reasons that all tie back to the same key concepts of social media that we discussed in class.

First, there are a lot of misconceptions that can happen while communicating online. This is due to how most of our real-life communication is non-verbal, and uses emotion and tone to distinguish what we mean to convey. Social media communication doesn’t include that. A simple text message like ‘what are you doing?’ could be understood as either a caring check-in or an accusation. And most of the time when people don’t understand the tone, we automatically assume it’s negative. Also, following key concept #5, the form of social media apps affect the content of our messages and posts. Because there are character limits within a lot of social media, this means messages will often seem very direct and harsh because people need to get the point across in few words. These messages are prone to misinterpretation and can result in harsh words in response if someone feels they are being threatened.

The form and content of the apps also have another effect, in which people feel more entitled to share malicious messages when they receive lots of likes and comments from them. A lot of social media apps don’t allow you to ‘dislike’ a rude comment, and reporting cruel messages is a tedious process that usually will not get results. This means the only choices you have are to either express your disagreement in a comment - which will likely result in more argument - or to stay silent. The design of the apps make it easy for us to forget about people with differing opinions because the people we follow have similar beliefs as us. This is an example of key concept #2, which states that all media construct our reality.

Another reason people feel comfortable with being mean online is because there is a sense of protection when you aren’t directly in person. Being on a screen means you don’t see peoples reactions to you being rude, which means you are able to dehumanize them so that you don’t feel bad about saying mean things, an example of how media constructs your reality. In the article entitled, “Is there a psychological reason for people being mean on the Internet?”, Laurie L. Dove states that “the closer physical proximity you have to someone, the less likely you are to be mean-spirited.”

Social media is also designed to appeal to our need to be social with one another. The encouragement to stay active online and engaged with everyone else means people feel pressured to add on to comments, nice or mean. There is also a draw to follow the actions of someone else if those actions received a lot of approval from others. If people see an unfriendly comment, but it has a lot of likes, they may feel it’s okay to like it as well. This supports the unkind comment and encourages others to be unkind as well.

But how does making a social media app into a more hostile environment benefit the company? Well, it’s quite simple really. Arguments and mean comments keep people constantly on the app, thirsty for drama and gossip. This means the companies can gather more information about our personal lives in order to target advertisements towards us. As key concept #3 states, all media have commercial implications.

The other commercial and technical aspect of social media that fuels meanness is that the algorithm favours high-drama posts with high engagement, which means that many media outlets have intentionally framed news in very black and white, high-conflict ways. (Which then create strong reactions.) When we share and react to these stories, or mimic their tone, it’s an example of how social media is making us more unkind and insensitive.

I believe that the form of social media that is making us more susceptible to malicious behavior online is also creating major social and political implications in real life. Media has created more polarization of opinion within our society, where everything is two-sided and everyone is pressured to pick one to support. Once you “pick a side”, the media elements (as mentioned above) reinforce that opinion to make you more sure of yourself and more intolerant of other views.

On a societal level, this is leading to political divisions, the lack of civil debate, and intolerance towards differences.

I think it’s time we all start thinking about what kind of behaviour social media rewards.

SOURCES

https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/psychological-reason-mean-on-internet.htm

https://www.headspace.com/blog/2017/05/21/nice-irl-mean-online/

https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2016/05/suck-suck-everyone-sucks-social-media-makes-us-mean/

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/cocktail-crossfire-internet-really-making-us-rude/316357/

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finalbiblecom · 4 years

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Religious Pluralism and True Faith in the State of the Apocalypse

“Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Religious Pluralism and True Faith in the State of the Apocalypse

Religion – derived from the Latin word religare – reunion (re-establishing connection), in this case, the connection between man and God.

Pluralism - diversity, a philosophical concept or policy advocating a state of society in which members of diverse ethnic, racial, religious, or social groups may co-exist independently from each other and without being reduced to a common principle.

True faith - not just an intellectual statement but a genuine spiritual state of openness to the Creator.

Apocalypse - the Greek word for revelation. This word typically refers to the Judgement Day and the End of Ages.

Pluralism has its strength in advocating peaceful acceptance of any non-aggressive concepts, opinions, liberal attitude towards different cultures, traditions, etc. While the idea of pluralism is valuable in theory, it hardly works in real life. The drawback is that the advocates of this concept, unfortunately, are not aimed at convergence or at least respect of their counterparts but at separatism based on a conviction in rightfulness exclusively of their views. However, only personal spiritual experience can be the merit for such conviction. In case of its absence, fanaticism rules over one’s consciousness, which is the product of blind faith and spiritual laziness. Such fanaticism is always inevitably accompanied by aggression.

Division of humanity happens due to sins, including hypocrisy, vanity, fears, resentment, envy and many other negative emotions that lead one to wrong conduct, erroneous stances in life, antagonism, and divisions within society. There will never be convergence or peace in the world without a victory over sins. Opportunists of all kind skillfully use this knowledge to make their fortunes.

The topic of religion is quite broad. It is impossible to review the history of the development of religious denominations, even the major ones, since each one of them has many subdivisions. In this article, we will solely examine Christianity.

Almighty God is bound by His own Law of Choice, which was granted to men. To choose God means to believe in Him and to really strive to change your character for the better. If there is no movement along this path given by Christ, there will be no help from Above. The Law does not help criminals unwilling to amend themselves. In this case, the Law does not support the ones who are lazy in spirit.

There is only one God and one Savior who gave a clear definition of the root cause of human suffering – sins, as well as precise instruction on how to climb out of the immoral quagmire. Then the question arises: “Why are there so many different Christian denominations?”

Let me quote Jesus Christ: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew ch. 22, v. 37, 38). That means there is no Christian without love for God. How does Jesus Christ Himself define love for God? The answer is: “If you love Me, keep My commands.” “Whoever has My commands and keeps them is the one who loves Me.” “Anyone who does not love Me will not obey My teaching.” (John ch. 14, v. 15, 21, 24). So, we can conclude: the majority of the believers in God do not love Him!

If disciples would accurately and fully learn His Word, the individual interpretations would converge. Then, there would be only one denomination with precise and systematic delivery. Since there is just one source, that should be inevitable.

So, what do we now see? Faith that has been cultivated over centuries in the authority of Jesus's apostles that is now indisputable. What about Christianity by Jesus Chris Himself?

What was His opinion about His apostles? Addressing the apostles, He spoke: “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.” (John ch. 16, v. 12). After Jesus's death, in a revelation He addresses John: “I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.” (Revelation, ch. 2, v. 2).

I will quote one of the apostles: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.” (Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians, ch. 13, v. 9, 10).

Once again, pure logic tells us that imperfect and incomplete knowledge cannot lead to the Truth. Perhaps, this is the reason for discrepancies in theory and practical application, as well as for the fact of the existence of numerous denominations and the moral collapse to which we have succumbed. Paul the apostle in his message to the Romans made a statement about the impossibility of victory over sins of the flesh. However, in Russia, there are religious devotees who are known to have disproved this doctrine with their personal experience.

The apostles were brave and honorable people, but like any person, they were not insulated from making mistakes. It was not the apostles’ fault that in the 4th century some felt the need to merge and canonize contradicting opinions. These contradicting opinions were not scrutinized by personal experience and were exalted to the status of the unchallengeable religious core. Any unbiased researcher of biblical texts can see the discrepancies between the opinions of the apostles and with the Teaching of Jesus Christ. People’s undefeated vanity, besides other vices, became an insurmountable obstacle on the road to delivering the Word to people’s consciousness.

So, whose opinion do we accept as the truth? If this is a religion from Jesus Christ, then His direct speech, His Word must be the base for theory and practical application of the religious doctrine for any Christian. The Son of God gave men a task – obey the Commandments to guarantee a happy life. The human spirit inadvertently carries within it the matrix of the Law. The Law, God’s Will or Holy Spirit, created the human spirit. To make this a spiritual realization for a person means to stop the multi-thousand-year battle with himself of not obeying the Law and suffering the consequences. That will lead to an understanding of the purpose of living on earth, as well as the meaning of life itself. That is the real journey to the Truth. We still do not see this happening.

The Truth, which came to earth, is strict and irreconcilable with the sin. However, the key to the Truth was lost somewhere centuries ago. Foreseeing this loss, Jesus Christ predicted the inevitable Judgment and the coming of the Son of Man when “… all the people of the earth will mourn…”. The purpose of His coming is to reinstate Lawfulness and to overthrow the Darkness and its earthly carriers. “Whoever is not with Me is against Me.” (Matthew, ch. 12, v. 30).

The experience of a very few spiritual devotees has proven that to bring oneself under the Law of the Creator is challenging and time-consuming, but doable. It is precisely this work that brings real living in accordance with the Word given from Above. That is the real Communion with Christ versus the symbolic Communion via bread and wine.

Leading a life free of sin means achieving reconciliation with the Creator, love towards Him, and re-establishing the connection with Him. Then and only then the word religion becomes meaningful. This spiritual experience is necessary. Then all branches would merge into one religion; there would be no reason for opposition, for the Word of God is free from contradictions.

“Whoever says, “I know Him,” but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them.” (1 John, ch. 2, v. 4).

There is no desire to accuse any of the denominations, which showed many good deeds and earthly accomplishments. At the end of the day, it’s not the governments, disagreements of the numerous denominations, the materialism of science, or the harmful technological advances to blame, as many may think. All of that is merely the product of spiritual poverty and the false stance of each and every individual that makes up the entire spiritually deprived society. Such a fallen civilization is doomed unless it makes a drastic turn towards morality!

It’s not the biblical quotes or the superficial appeals that are needed, but the sharing of spiritual experience and modes of battling with sins. Without this battle, there is not and never will be any healing spiritual process. But to share such an experience, one must have one. Humanity has learned many things except for one thing, the main thing – how to live.

Physics of Religion in a Nutshell

When a person possesses genuine spiritual faith and is victorious over his sins, including negative emotions and thoughts, he gradually recovers the ability to perceive intuitively. That ability was previously lost as a result of the Fall of Man. Intuitive perceptions are generated by the spirit and are a different type of radiation. This type of radiation has a wave speed much faster than the slow waves of our feelings. Thus, it is much more powerful.

Then, the dominant of Conscience and Love is gradually restored, which is in much deficit in modern society. Recovery of the spiritual qualities and abilities was achieved to some degree by such individuals as Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Vyritsa, Seraphim of Sarov, and so on. “Not everyone who says to Me “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven.” (Matthew, ch. 7, v. 21). The Will of the Father is the Laws, the commandments. The above quote defines the “pass” into the spiritual world, which is impossible without rectification, meaning obeying the commandments. Otherwise, the connection is not restored with the spirit, since personal vibrations, distorted by sins, do not correspond and are not in line with the lawful spiritual vibrations! There is no resonance, no correlation in characteristics of the waves, which is the base for any wave coupling.

The Word of Jesus Christ and the experience of the people mentioned above, who practiced His Word, is an example to be followed. That is the all-cure and the national idea at least for the part of society that did not yet succumb to the brazen onslaught of immorality, hypocritical lies, and corruption. “… but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” (Matthew, ch. 24, v. 13).

Many, including very well-known scientists, speak of the fact that God began His silent but conspicuous dialog with men. What is happening with Earth and the Solar system, where many astronomical, helio, and geological parameters have gone out of their regular mode, speaks of impending changes. What changes and when? The Bible answers: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in Heaven, or the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew, ch. 24, v. 36). Jesus Christ pointed out indirect indications of the approaching Catastrophe: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places… and many will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.” (Matthew, ch. 24, v. 7-10).

The ongoing developments warn us and put us at a crossroads. If we are the children of Truth and Light, we must prove it by amending ourselves. If we let spiritual laziness put us to sleep and we continue compromising with the Darkness, then we will be left in the dark and will keep on enduring humiliation and degradation until the sentence is given by the Supreme Judge.

What is man’s sin or felony before the Creator? Unfortunately, the masses (I only refer to the believers) consider themselves nearly sinless. Those people have an opinion that sins take place only in the realm of words and deeds. However, there is also an invisible but quite real realm of thoughts and feelings that comprises the relationship between man and the world.

Everyone understands how uncomfortable it is to be in the presence of an envious, rude, or cruel person even if the person is not interacting with you. That is an impact of the field of vibrations of forms created by thoughts and feelings. Those forms are unpleasant because they are malevolent, hostile, and we can register them with our biosensors. Our deeds may be physical, verbal, mental, or emotional. All of these realms are permeated by radiation of the Supreme Will that created us. Somewhere our misconduct is registered and eventually is returned to us in the form of an adverse life event. And most people wonder why they have such an unfavorable destiny despite being good citizens and “faithful believers”. This approach results in searching for someone to blame. Their complaints are even sometimes directed at the Creator.

The knowledge of the Laws of God and the knowledge of His qualities is the foundation in battling one’s sins. True Faith is the base for moving upward. If one has Faith, then the logic of religion is simple and clear. This logic will lead a person to make a realization about the necessity of spiritual transformation.

Let’s take an emotion such as resentment as a reaction to injustice. If we ask a believer: “Is God fair?”, the answer will be: “Yes!” “Is God perfection?” “Yes!” That begs for another question: “Then how could a fair and perfect God create an imperfect and unfair world where it appears that evil wins? Isn’t He the Creator and the ruler of this world?”

So, what is the reason for this apparent discrepancy or inconsistency? The answer is simple. Assume, a sinful person (nobody is a saint) got offended. People tend to view the situation between the offender and the offended as something that happened here and now. Instead, it must be examined in the context of one’s entire past life, where a person made numerous sins. Then one may view it as “what you sow, that shall you reap a hundredfold”, where sowing was a sin, or breaking the Law. Reaping is suffering when the sin is returned by the Law. That is fair from the point of view of the Creator, and that Justice rules the world. Each crime receives an inevitable punishment.

True Christianity is free of the feeling of resentment, and it shows genuine forgiveness through a logical realization of being responsible for each and every act. In this case, forgiveness is called humility, when an offended person considers his offender an intermediary of the Law, simply returning his sin back to him. Forgiveness is accepting in humility the right to be punished for one’s misconduct. Otherwise, a person who lacks understanding of this arrangement becomes upset with the act of the Law. Therefore, he resists God without even realizing it. Resentment is not as harmless as one may think. Additionally, genuine and conscious forgiveness leads a sinner to be forgiven by the Creator for the sin that was “tied” to the punishment. Then, the sinner is redeemed before the Law for that particular sin. He personally redeemed it with his suffering.

This mechanism of redemption was given directly by Jesus Christ when He addressed His disciples: “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew, ch. 6, v. 14, 15). The spiritual devotees in their personal experience were implementing precisely this. Sergius of Radonizh, for example, in his teenage years became a hermit, left society, and for many years was redeeming his sins. As you can see, he succeeded in it quite well!

We have been told that we suffer because of our sins, and that is true. The experience of Sergius of Radonizh and others like him showed that the real process of redemption is lengthy and tough. God is constant, and from the day of creation of the world He never changed His Laws or the essence of His Word addressed to people. The only thing that varied was the form of delivery, according to the educational and cultural level of the society to where the Visitor from Above came.

Who does humanity consider their societal leaders? Politics, science, and the church claim this role. How far have we come, despite a large number of geniuses? You yourselves can answer that question. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.” (1 Corinthians, ch. 3, v. 19). What is the weakness in the scientific approach? In the best-case scenario, they educate and raise an intellectual individual. However, there is a lack of moral education, such as conscience and sense of responsibility for one’s behavior. The process of education had obviously failed a long time ago. As a result, society is degrading. An intelligent person without control of conscience is a terrifying phenomenon.

Without faith and spiritual experience, there is no access to the world beyond visible matter where the causal (cause of) level of all knowledge lies. The psychic experience proved a thousandfold that a human has abilities to access the world beyond visible matter. This spontaneity must be researched. Learning this process should be included in the curriculum of a civilized form of education. However, a researcher in this field cannot analyze data and draw valid conclusions because he operates only with his brain, which is limited to the wave speed of electromagnetic fluctuations of about 300,000 km/sec. And psychic mediums, except hypnotists, work at the wave level of about two orders of magnitude faster than 300,000 km/sec. Advanced physics (torsion physics) partially tapped into that knowledge.

What about religion? That which we call revelation (not to be confused with meditation) is much more abundant in comparison to psychic achievements, but most importantly, revelation is the key and not the lock pick to Heaven. “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John, ch. 14, v. 6). We can quote beautiful phrases until blue in the face, however, as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That is where we are headed.

Allow me to go over the anatomy of stress and the origin of disease of the physical body. Our bodies are made of cells. Cells are made of molecules, atoms, protons, neutrons, and electrons, which are connected by specific dependencies and constants. Ideally functioning elementary particles provide a harmony of atoms, cells and, thus, the health of the body. In the material world, the stability of the atomic processes is ensured by the wave speed of 300,000 km/sec, whereas the wave speed of emotions is two orders of magnitude faster.

Impulses of resentment, fear, jealousy, or envy cause a “crushing” of the atom, meaning the regular interaction of the elementary particles, cells, and biochemical processes in the body become disrupted. That is how the initial stage of the disease takes place. With continuous daily pressure by the negative emotions, the disease progresses on to more advanced stages. Man is a sinner, and therefore, whether he admits it or not, he creates evil. By the Law of Resemblance, he thus attracts evil. This is the result of a lack of knowledge in this field. It is impossible to get rid of negativity, which is destroying our lives, without the right world outlook and help from the Light. And that is practically unachievable without the deep understanding of the essence of religion, which holds the knowledge of the laws of life of this world. Without this knowledge, we are blind and deaf.

All those who came from Above tried to wean us off of our mistakes and taught us how to be happy. At best, we ignored them, but more often we chased them away, persecuted, and even murdered them. Apparently, after the murder of Jesus Christ, the Creator ran out of patience. Therefore, the warning about the Last Judgment is conveyed in the New Testament.

The effort to change the world without altering people’s consciousness is a waste of time. We have been sowing sins for ages, and now they are returning to us. We get offended. Thus, we refuse to pay our dues, causing the Law to double the punishment, and so forth. Consequently, we do not have the right to a happy life even in theory.

It is important to remember that all people are of the same spiritual origin. Thus, the idea of evolution, presented in the Christian religion, is one for all. All a man needs to do is to abandon his spiritual laziness, verify through personal experience the accuracy of the direction he is heading (just like in scientific approach), and to subdue his earthly activity to the spiritual dominant.

There are some interesting findings based on the acquired experience. The accumulated material would be sufficient for many hours worth of lectures. Anyone reading these words will inevitably have questions. There are answers, including to the sacred question: “Why in the just world do bad people seemingly prosper, and good people suffer and sometimes perish?”

Given time, I will explain it in detail, using simple logic. Only personal experience allows one “to separate the wheat from the weeds” in this challenging process of spiritual development.

The main reason why a man gets lured by false teachings is laziness. Many false teachers appeal to the masses to believe without reservation in their messianism. They demonstrate paranormal abilities as proof of their divine origin. In return, they promise to free people of their problems, meaning to relieve a sinner from the consequences of one’s sins without personal labor. The lazy in spirit is attracted to the idea of getting everything effortlessly. This is the reason for the massive success of false teachers.

God is pure Clarity and Naturalness. The teaching of the Truth is very simple. Jesus for a reason chose His disciples out of modest people like fishermen, etc., instead of priests, Pharisees, and clever teachers. They neither possessed the vanity of the all-knowing, hypocrisy nor artful trickery.

If you find yourself exploring spiritual science, keep in mind that if the teacher does not have comprehensible and straightforward answers to your questions, then he does not know his subject. Vanity prevents one from acknowledging it. In the meantime, the “fog” is created out of complicated terminology, restrictions, and hints of the teacher’s exclusivity. In the business of freeing the spirit, there are no inflated ambiguities and mysterious concepts. That is a smokescreen to pompously hide one’s ignorance while luring many onto wrong and dangerous paths.

The Truth unites, binds, gives Faith, Hope, and Love. The Darkness (Evil) operates in the mode of “divide and conquer” by using our vices.

Pluralism in religion is necessary as the only measure in sustaining good relations while we are divided by ignorance.

Yuri Lutsenko

#religion #apocalipse

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septembersung · 7 years

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Looking at the posts I’ve accumulated so far for #500 reasons and counting, I realized I need to frame the various subjects I’m tackling. I’d rather post more quotes than original posts, but the trouble with a complicated history like the Reformation (and the internet in general) is taking things out of context causes problems. To do this right, we need a clear conceptual framework in which to lay those quotes (and my inevitable commentary on them). So while in my first post I talked about where I’m coming from personally, in this post, call it intro 2.0, let’s lay out some history and approach parameters.

Let’s get the approach parameters out of the way first:

A) I’m trained in theology, not history, and I’m blogging about this as someone learning, not an expert. B) please charitably correct me (with sources!) if I get something wrong, but C) we should go into this realizing there’s a lot of room for disagreement (as you’ll see if you finish reading this post). D) I always try to represent the source I’m summarizing/working from accurately. That means: D-1) if you disagree with something I say, let’s first go back to the source and make sure I’m conveying it as they said it, and D-2) A good debater should understand the opposing POV so well that they can word their opponent’s argument to the satisfaction of their opponent. If I misrepresent an argument, it is not intentional. Please bring it to my attention and we’ll work it out.

That said, now we can talk about bias. If we’re going to talk about the Reformation, its causes and effects, how it influenced our civilization and still affects people today - even, yes, all those pesky theological “details” many would say no one cares about and don’t matter anymore! - then we need to ask some pointed questions: Just what do we mean by the Reformation? Whose version of the Reformation and its legacy is correct? What exactly is it, septembersung, that you’re taking issue with and arguing against?

Well, if you ask three historians “what happened,” you’ll get thirty answers...

To a large extent, Catholics, Protestants, and secular historians tell the story of medieval Christianity (i.e., Catholicism) and the Reformation differently. Extremely differently. (There is a lot of overlap in some areas between Protestant and secular approaches, however.) You might think that “facts are facts,” but history isn’t primarily facts; history the story we tell ourselves about facts as we know them. Sometimes an assumption, or a “fact” that’s actually false, or a matter of opinion, or disputed, gets enshrined as truth, embedded in how the subject is approached and handed down, and then everything from that is skewed. (This is an exceptionally important point we will come back to frequently.)

Everyone has a bias; this is unavoidable. In this context, bias means “where you stand to see the rest of the world.” Everyone has to stand somewhere. What’s important is to be able to identify your bias and see how it affects the story as you’ve received it and as you tell it. And, equally importantly, to differentiate bias, a fact of being an individual human person, from prejudice, which in this context means unfair and probably incorrect negation of a point of view you don’t share. An illustration of the difference: A secular, that is, non-believing, historian writes a history of the Reformation. Their bias is that they are not Christian, neither Catholic or Protestant. Their prejudice is shown in privileging the Protestant side of the story. To pick just three examples of how that prejudice could play out: using slurs against Catholics, the Church, and Catholic beliefs; accepting Protestant claims about Catholicism and Christian history a priori, as factual premise, without investigation or explanation; taking it for granted, as an accepted truth that does not need proving, that the Reformation did the world a favor. Here’s the kicker: this is not an invented example, but a summary of a large swath of writings on the Reformation.

As you know, I’m Catholic; that’s my bias. You should ask yourself: what’s yours? Do you know how it affects what you’ve been taught and the way you perceive history and the world around you? What prejudice might you be participating in that you don’t even realize is a prejudice?

(Sidebar: In addition (and related to) to the bias issue: intense specialization and the ways history as a whole is conceived and taught has led to such an overabundance of “facts” and narratives, particularly about this stretch of history, that there is little cohesion, and simply so much that trying to get a handle on the big picture can be completely overwhelming. You can drown in data and never learn a thing. (I always picture a cartoon child opening a stuffed closet and being buried in toys.) There’s a super good, though technical, layout of this problem in the introduction to Brad S. Gregory’s book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. I’m going to talk about that book a lot.)

The takeaway so far should be: the story of history that we receive varies by which community we’re in and which community delivered the story to us. I am not arguing that no objective truth about the matter exists. Quite the opposite: the first step to finding the truth is recognizing that what has been uncritically accepted as fact is an interpretation based on unreliable ideas. What I would most like to show my readers through this project, especially my Protestant readers, is that the reality and significance of the Reformation has been greatly misunderstood across the majority of communities. It’s pretty unlikely you’ll read my posts and come away deciding to convert to Catholicism. What is possible, and I hope it will happen, that you’ll walk away with a different understanding of Catholicism itself and Protestantism’s role the last 500 years of Christian history.

(Important sidebar: “Protestants” and “Protestantism” can only ever be a generalization. Not only do the vast number of denominations disagree with each other about Christian doctrine, on points big and small, but they have different biases, different understandings of history, different views of Catholicism - you get the idea. Whenever we use the term “Protesant/ism”, we should be aware that is a generalization.)

With all that said: here is a simplified summary of the story of the Reformation as popularly understood. What does that mean? It means this summary doesn’t cover everything, but it does encompass the broad spectrum of “not-Catholic” opinion, including both Protestant and secular views, which vary from each other and among themselves. And, of course, scholars and academia tend to acknowledge more nuance and complexity in the events of history than non-specialists. I spell this out to avoid tiresome arguments that I’m setting up a straw man or objections like “but I don’t believe that/all of that/that in that way,” etc. So as I said: the broad gist of the Reformation story as popularly understood by much of the world today:

The Catholic Church was pure institutionalized corruption. The hierarchy and religious lived immoral lives and oppressed the lay people. The Church was unChristian in deep and significant ways that were harming people. When Luther (et al) realized this, and that what the Church taught as religious truth was just a means of perpetuating its control and corruption, they got up and pushed, and the whole rotten structure came tumbling down. Suddenly the common people had access to the Bible, Jesus, real catechesis, spiritual and political freedom, genuine community, and (to use the modern terms) freedom and agency. There was some resistance, but the populace more or less welcomed the Reformation and joined in enthusiastically. The Reformation was a movement who’s time had come. With the suppression of “priestcraft,” superstitious practices and beliefs, and man-made ritual, the accumulated debris of centuries of ”Romish inventions” was swept aside and Christianity was given a clean slate. With this demolition of the Church, thus (believers would say) true, original Christianity triumphed; all the excess (at best) and demonic distractions (at worst) that led people away/separated people from Jesus was gone. With the demolition of the Church, thus (some believers and the vast majority of secular analyses would say) the road to modern society was paved: separation of church and state, the triumph of the thinking mind/rationality/logic over and against the deadening religious/organized religion influence, the growth of the sciences, freedom, tolerance, pluralism, etc.; the goods and wonders of the modern world exist because the iron grip of the Church was broken. Shedding the past launched us into the future. We’re lucky it’s over and done with and not relevant to us, in our secular society, anymore.

There’s just one problem with this narrative: it’s almost entirely wrong.

That’s a large chunk of what I’m taking issue with and arguing against.

I can’t guarantee this tag is going to be particularly organized or exhaustive - I decided to do this just a few days ago and, despite being a fast reader, can only cram in so much - but I’m going to examine these kinds of claims (in their originals, please note, not from my general gist summary) through my own writing and through sharing the content of scholars and writers more qualified than myself, to argue for a contrary thesis: Not only is that understanding of Catholicism and Christian history factually incorrect, but the Reformation was not an organic, welcomed event/process but rather a violent uprooting of a strong, loved religious tradition and past that cut Christians off from their heritage, fragmented and splintered society, blew the foundation out of Christendom (society as Christian society,) putting Western civilization on the road to society’s secularization, the marginalization and oppression of religion in the public life, and opened the door to the moral, rational, and political chaos we know today. I will absolutely address issues like “but wasn’t the Church corrupt?” but to a certain extent I don’t think that’s actually helpful until some of the fundamental falsehoods in what is generally assumed about the Reformation have been examined. In addition, as we follow the ramifications of the Reformation down the centuries, we’ll get to talk about politics, American exceptionalism, Dracula and turn-of-the-20th-century English culture (it’s amazingly relevant), and - my personal favorite - iconoclasm and incarnation.

I highly recommend reading Karl Keating’s short article “Not a reformation but a revolution.” (Quotes are coming.) He says it better than I do.

The queue starts tomorrow, Sunday October 1st!

#500 reasons and counting

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junker-town · 5 years

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Couldn’t Be Me: Was it wrong to ditch the birth of my child to go coach football?

Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images

In this week’s advice column: When is it OK to bail on a family event, and when is it ABSOLUTELY not.

Welcome to Couldn’t Be Me, a weekly advice column where I solicit your personal dilemmas and help out as best as I can. Have something I can help you with? Find me @_Zeets.

We’ve all ditched important events in our lives. Bailing on an event that matters to someone you care about is ostensibly awful, but it’s an admittedly satisfying feeling to be free of a dreaded obligation. Sometimes you have more important things to do, or you just don’t want to go. Other times, the reasons are more complicated.

And sometimes, you leave your wife in the hospital after she gives birth to go coach a football game because you’re a terrible person. Or you avoid a Christmas party with family members who support a cruel president to protect your own sanity.

This week, we tackle the wide range of reasons we blow off family events, and at what point is the decision truly wrong.

Adam:

I’m a football coach. The sport is my life. It’s always been my life. It’s the passion that everything else around me is built on. I’ve dedicated most of my waking hours in my childhood and adult life to the sport. Now, some people think that this passion has consumed me and that it is unhealthy. The example that they use is that after my wife gave birth, I asked her, “You good?” while her organs were still out after her C-section. And when she said, “Yes,” I left to get back to my football team. Without even cutting the umbilical cord. Even my quarterback was shocked.

Now, my wife supports my obsession with the game, and I’m probably never going to change, but is there something wrong with what I did? Football is my life. The only way to be the best is to think about it 24/7. I just don’t see the problem that other people do.

CBM:

That’s fucking ridiculous and I’m glad you found one of the only women in the world who would allow you to run back to a football field while her guts were hanging out after an operation to bring your child into the world. Even writing that hasn’t helped me comprehend how wild that scenario is. “You good?” is what you ask a friend when they trip while walking, not a spouse who got her stomach cut open.

Now I’m thinking of all the other inappropriate times to ask someone, “You good?”

Imagine instead of symbolically burning down the Iron throne, Drogon walked over to the body of Daenerys, nudged her with his nose, and then, in a surprisingly child-like but clear voice, said, “Hey mom, you good? I’m just going to go fly around for a bit, I’ll be back later.”

Or:

[Scene: The crucifixion of Jesus]

Jesus, looking up to the sky: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Jesus, looking at one of the thieves: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus, to his mother, Mary: “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.”

Jesus, looking to the sky again: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus, before receiving a wetted sponge: “I thirst.”

Jesus, announcing the end of his earthly life: “It is finished.”

Jesus, announcing his reunion with God: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.”

Judas, arriving late: “Yo, you good? You seem alright. Nice abs too, have you been working out? Look, I’m just going to go buy some things in the market. Take care of yourself.”

Anyway, no, that’s absurd. I understand the sports myth that to achieve true greatness you must care about the job above everything else. But that idea is extremely poisonous, wrong, and tends to produce the worst kind of human beings. It’s the sporting version of the asshole genius trope that appears in art and STEM.

More great people have also been nice in this world than the opposite, but that damn idea that being an asshole correlates with intense genius just hasn’t died. You don’t have to be Kobe Bryant or Doctor House. You can stay with your wife and spend time with your child, and still be great at your job.

In the words of Guile from Street Fighter: “Go home and be a family man.”

Hugo:

I’m from Brazil and now we have a president who is even worse than Trump. The guy, Bolsonaro, is a dictator wannabe, a racist, misogynist, and xenophobe (even among the Brazilians from other regions).

He was elected last year, in October.

Anyway, I’m from a kinda small/medium town called Teresópolis. A place where 80 percent of the population voted for this guy. My family is among them.

I always loved Christmas and always tried to do everything to spend my time with my dad’s family (my parents divorced when I was three years old), even if I have lived a thousand miles away from them for the last half decade.

But last Christmas was different. To avoid confrontation and stress, I blew off Christmas and didn’t return home in time for the party, just two days later. Nobody told me anything about it, but I think everybody knew why I wasn’t there.

Even now, I don’t know if I did the right thing. Should I have appeared and argued with everyone there? Should I tried to go to just withstand all the shitstorm to be with them? I really love my dad and everyone from my family, but I just didn’t find the strength to go.

What would you do in my place, man?

CBM:

This problem has become common in the last few years, and it’s often reframed in an empty manner as a mere disagreement of opinion. So that when you ask a question such as, “Should I stop talking to family members who are in support of a president who is racist, bigoted, xenophobic, and is implementing policies that will harm the most vulnerable in society,” someone will inevitably chide you for failing to be civil with people who have “different political views than you.”

This is, of course, an effort to pretend that politics are merely a game of opinions and civility — of thought exercises — and not real policies and structures that affect the lives of human beings.

I’m sympathetic to having to choose between family and morality. That’s an incredibly difficult position to be in. That is your family, and it seems that until this moment in time, there hadn’t been any real political divide among you — or if there was, it had never been so wide. They raised you, and you are forever attached to them.

And of course, it’s easy for someone like me to make suggestions from a distance. While I personally have no time for people who support bigots, I at least don’t have to fight my family on the issue, and I won’t be the one who deals with the particular loneliness that comes from ostracizing yourself from family.

But I think you’ve already made your decision. Or at least, you know what you can’t withstand. As important as family is, seeing someone you care about support a cruel man like Bolsonaro can change how you view that person forever. It has changed the way I view soccer players who I used to love, for example, so I can only imagine what you would go through.

Supporting people like Bolsonaro isn’t just a matter of “different political opinions”; it’s a fundamental disagreement on who matters in the world and who doesn’t, on who deserve to have their lives and dignity preserved. For me, that’s not something that can be compromised. I imagine that you know you can’t be within the same space as those family members because the cruelty of the president is so absurd that it demands a response at every step. I don’t think that you should try to withstand the shitstorm, because the only way that ends is with you lashing out once the situation becomes unbearable.

I don’t know that you will be able to look at your family the same way even after Bolsonaro is gone, and perhaps that is just an unfortunate part of adult life. Sometimes your morals and heart don’t align with the morals and hearts of people who are close to you. It’s your right to sever those relationships when that happens, or do your best to preserve what’s good about those relationships even if it means sacrificing tradition.

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seanmalatesta · 4 years

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Turning Violent Disagreements into Civil Discourse

When it comes to politics, my brother-in-law Loren and I are on totally different planets. On his annual visits to our home, I count on our high-spirited debates. The surprising thing about our discourse is that it’s actually … civil. Could your family say the same?

Loren has taught me a lot about discussing sensitive topics. He listens intently to my perspective. When my message isn’t sinking in, he says, “Okay, help me understand what you see that I don’t see.”

He takes the role of learner instead of teacher. This involves probing for answers and holding space for my thoughts. The effects are powerful. I find myself more willing to consider what he has to say, too.

This kind of healthy disagreement is rare. For the sake of humanity, we need to learn to get along with people who hold different beliefs from us. Agree or disagree, here are four major steps to staying civil on sensitive subjects.

Guideline 1: Begin where you agree.

About 15 years ago, I attended a conference of 50 attendees from 30 different countries and 4 major religions. It would have been easy to focus on our differences, but the conference organizer built the first exercise to help us find our commonalities. When we knew how we were the same, we could more easily tolerate our differences.

As leaders, we must look for overlapping interests. Even with people with whom we might violently disagree. This is the foundation of a civil conversation.

Guideline 2: Keep an open mind.

The older I get, the more loosely I hold my beliefs and opinions. Instead of thinking about how right I am, I try to ask, “Where am I blind? What am I missing?”

In Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor, she talks about the concept of quiet listening. It’s about seeking to understand, not defend or interrupt. And not forming counterarguments in your head while your opponent speaks. This is really difficult to do, but the results are worth the effort.

Guideline 3: Get your facts straight.

Before sharing your opinion, make sure you have solid evidence and a sound argument. Check what you read on the internet against snopes.com. And watch out for confirmation bias.

Getting your facts straight can be summed up in three tips:

Always be sure of your data.

Never mischaracterize the opposing view.

Never resort to personal attacks.

As a leader, if you don’t verify your argument, you could easily end up embarrassed.

Guideline 4: Be willing to state your view but with humility.

You’re not always right. None of us are. To civilly discuss differences, you’ll need to admit you may be wrong. This is humility.

“ To civilly discuss differences, you’ll need to admit you may be wrong. This is humility.

—MICHAEL HYATT

Luci Swindoll taught me a great lesson about humble responses. In answer to her critics, she would say, “You know what? You might be right.” This statement diffused a lot of tension.

There’s value in opposing opinions, but they may not come out unless you create an environment that’s safe for dissent. Some of your best counsel will be from people you disagree with. Don’t miss out on that because of your need to be right.

Next time you feel tension rising, remember these four guidelines: begin where you agree, keep an open mind, get your facts straight, and state your view with humility. I might be wrong, but I think you’ll like the results.

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rationalsanskar · 4 years

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Empathy Is the New Mindfulness | Forge

Earlier this month, I got into a political disagreement with an old friend online. At that moment, the electoral outcomes of Super Tuesday loomed much larger in my mind than the fear of COVID-19 pandemic — truly, a different time. But each of these anxiety-inducing scenarios leads to a similar lesson: We have to look out for each other, in big ways and small. We have to make a habit of caring for the community — a practice, if you will, that takes practice.

Mindfulness is yesterday’s news. As a wave of recent books suggests, this moment is all about empathy.

“Empathy — at its most basic, the ability to imagine the feelings of another — is often described as a salve for divisions in American culture,” writes the author Kaitlin Ugolik Phillips in her new book The Future of Feeling. “In recent years, it has come to also be seen as a skill that can — and arguably must — be learned and practiced. It’s not just about social harmony; empathy makes us better people.”

The idea of empathy as both salve and skill is a hot one, and most of us won’t have to dig too far into our habits to understand why. Take, again, my recent social-media spat. Though my friend and I vigorously support the same candidate in the 2020 U.S. election, we’ve staked opposing positions in the ongoing debate over the value of civility in online discourse — that is, whether or not it’s worth trying to be nice to people to get them onto our side. What started as an abstract disagreement quickly started to feel personal: By expressing our opposing views, my friend and I each managed to thoroughly offend the other. Our positions weren’t just rooted in belief, but in our sense of identity within the context of society at large. In saying “I think you’re wrong,” we were each implicitly denigrating not only the other’s opinion, but who they were as a person.

As Ugolik Phillips’s book points out, there’s research to suggest that identity does, indeed, factor into the heated tenor of political debate. But there’s a reason why said debate gets so much pissier when it happens on social media — and becomes a test of our ability to empathize.

“A 2017 study seemed to prove what those of us familiar with online debates have feared for years: People we disagree with seem less human to us when we read their views than when we hear them spoken aloud,” writes Ugolik Phillips. Further research tells us that voices convey emotion, both through a person’s speech patterns and their tone. And the intimacy that allows us to associate a voice with a face we see all the time, she writes, establishes “a kind of expertise that allows a person to understand another’s mental state just by looking at them.”

Familiarity facilitates closeness, which in turn makes empathy easier to exchange. This makes sense, on a personal level, in light of the political arguments I’ve gotten into over the past few years — including the one I’ve just described. My friend and I have known each other since college and are part of an extended friend-family that keeps in close contact online, but we haven’t seen each other in person for nearly four years. For the most part, we experience each other as blocks of unmodulated text. This means that, for each of us, it takes work to step back and remember the person behind the Facebook posts.

As the author and parenting expert Kristina Kuzmič points out, this work can seem frivolous in the moment. “Choosing to interrogate your perspective in any way, and to consider the experiences of the people around you, doesn’t just threaten the ego; it can also seem like an inconvenient use of energy, especially in moments of disagreement,” she writes. But Kuzmič also views the practice of empathy as “the most important skill human beings can learn.” It’s a central theme in her new book Hold On, But Don’t Hold Still.

“If my kids want to build strong friendships, empathy is the most important thing I can teach them,” Kuzmič writes. “If they want to be political leaders or powerful CEOs? Again, empathy, because the best leaders connect with people and make them feel seen.”

But our cultural conception of what empathy means is slightly flawed. It’s not always possible (or sanitary) to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, as the author Euny Hong wisely argues in her 2019 book, The Power of Nunchi.

“If you are in someone’s shoes, you are compromising your own ability to see their problem — and the overall situation — objectively,” writes Hong. In other words: other people’s problems aren’t all about you, nor about how you interpret them. The Korean concept of nunchi, she explains, is an empathy-adjacent form of emotional intelligence that draws its power from neutrality: “Using your nunchi means that you can grasp what is happening even if you don’t have anything in common with the other person.”

It serves us all to flex that muscle right now — and to practice social outreach in this time of social distancing. In these anxious days, I’m heartened by a message shared on Instagram by the writer and activist Ripley Soprano: “Let’s not be afraid of each other. Let’s think about how to provide and receive support amid shared illness.” Empathy isn’t a cure for what ails us right now, but it is the answer.

The post Empathy Is the New Mindfulness | Forge appeared first on METAMORPHOSIS.

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geekgnostic-blog · 5 years

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And about that free speech thing...

A few moments ago, I published a post responding to Charlie Danaher’s “opinion piece” that was published in the Longmont Times-Call, where he lovingly called for civil society to discourage homosexuality for the good of the homosexuals.

Mr. Danaher opened his article stating “Without a doubt, many will interpret this as ignorant and hateful. I even worry, given our current culture, if one is even allowed to express these kinds of thoughts.”

In a response to a friend of mine (shout out to Joe, who originally alerted me to Mr. Danaher’s article), the Longmont Times-Call provided the following statement:

We make every effort to allow a spectrum of voices on our Opinion page, and we do our best to see that local writers have the opportunity to be heard in their local paper. Charlie Danaher’s opinion piece was one of those. While many consider his words to be hateful and bigoted, we understand that his opinions still represent a segment of our community. Just as we allowed Mr. Danaher’s piece to publish on our Opinion Page, we have allowed the voices of those who vehemently disagree with his opinion. It is our intention not to silence the voice of anyone who, short of calling for violence, makes statements that offend others.

First of all, it is laughable to claim that an opinion piece stating that “discouraging same-sex relations would be the obvious thing to do, and failing to do so would be a huge disservice to the public” is no different than an editorial opposing a new highway exit or endorsing a school board candidate. In 2019, the fundamental humanity and equality of any segment of our population should not be considered a legitimate point of disagreement.

Second, there is a wide, bright line between “silencing the voice of (some)one who...makes statements that offends others” and declining to publish those statements in a local paper and draw ad revenue off the piece. I would gladly invite Mr. Danaher to post his views on Twitter, Facebook, or even start a blog like I have here. He can express all of the views that he wants in such a venue. By printing and attaching ads to his views (and therefore using them to make money), the Longmont Times-Call is not simply giving the man a voice, they are providing him with a tacit endorsement.

Lastly, and I hope I haven’t poisoned the well on this point, as I feel it deserves some nuanced discussion, there is the concern Mr. Danaher touches on that his own (presumably) Christian conservative views are no longer allowed in polite society. That decisions like Obergefell or Masterpiece Cakes force Christians not only to accept the LGBTQIA+ community, but to participate in our “sin.” Believe it or not, as a gay atheist, I am sympathetic to his concerns. While I am broadly liberal, I agree that an individual should not be forced to endorse or participate in something they don’t agree with. As someone who occasionally does freelance writing and editorial work, I would not want to be legally compelled to edit a church newsletter either.

Where I struggle with this discussion is that we still need to accommodate the people who would be denied goods and services by allowing for the freedom. As a resident of a decent-sized city, if I were denied service by a bakery while planning a wedding, there are probably dozens of other bakeries I could go to. But what about a gay couple in a smaller town in the eastern plains or the western slope, who might not have access to an alternate bakery? Do we force them to drive several hours to get their wedding cake? What if the business that refuses them isn’t a bakery, but the landlord of a small apartment building? Can we deny people housing based on the “principled objections” of the business owner? What if it where an atheist-owned bakery who refused to provide wedding cakes for Christian marriages, would you still feel the same way?

This is a complicated issue, and when we oversimplify it to just free speech vs oppression, we lose the ability to find an effective compromise. We need to do better.

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notskeletonrants · 5 years

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The Civility Lie

Public discourse is a majority court of opinions.

As a rule, I try not to argue with people who aren't themselves open to having their opinions change. I also try not to argue in the same manner of civility when I'm not ready to learn something New.

Now, yes, there are things that rattle my bones and rustle my underwear. And to People that present these things I have a different form of civil discourse. I Call it civil discord and I have fun rustling underwear right back.

A bit of background here: I think that if you are unwilling to start your politics from a place of empathy, then you and I will not see eye to eye. If your whole idea is how much can you get out of it, you’re an immoral person and I don’t want to talk to you about it. It’s not fun for me having to try to reason with people that will only ever think of themselves. And often enough, they’ll sit there with their selfish condemnation of anything not particularly worshipping successful economic strategists and have the fucking balls to tell me “I’ll pray for you.” These are the kinds of people that only ever pray for themselves. Everyone else is just what they pray about.

It sickens me to think that the people reading this will be polarized by these statements. How hard is it to separate your own billionaire fantasy from the reality that is we have an ailing economy that does need some restructure? How hard is it to say, “hey, I guess I’m not a billionaire just yet so I should instead worry about my fellow man?” Why has greed become this great thing to these types of people when avarice is expressly forbidden in their holy book that they tout the virtue of reading and obeying without ever doing either.

So here’s the thing with those people. They’re not civil. Nothing they say is civil. To them, I want to say: if you want to be civil, stay the avarice that is deeply in your heart until our discourse is over. Perhaps you’ll be more capable of actually understanding things in stride. But by their very nature, they are not civil.

These are the people that will use an unfunny right wing meme saying “all libtards do this.” And to those people, I always start by refuting their point, but also adding little insults every here and there. And they don’t address my counterpoints. They just say “why can’t you be civil?” And “so much for the tolerant left.” Here is an anchor point to all of my arguments and disputes and disagreements. Address the entire context of the argument, not just the little cherry picked pieces that you find that you have a problem with and can call for civil discourse. Often enough, the reason I’m not being civil to you is because you started from an uncivil position.

Examples of uncivil positions: -Muh statues are about muh heritage Your heritage was unabashedly about the states governance on whether they should allow farmers to employ slave labor. There is no argument here. Your heritage claim is all about racism. -Muh fourteen words. Muh Unite the Right protests. One, you can’t get mad at people counterprotesting. That’s their right too. Two, you don’t get to try to force us to tolerate intolerant speech. Fuck, haven’t you been listening? If you’ve sided with the Nazis, if you use their idioms, you’re in the wrong and want to defend violent ideas. End of discussion. -Muh free speech so that I can call a trans man a woman or vice versa. No one’s saying you are hindered by the government for saying so. You’re just not providing the common courtesy to other humans that you would not like denied from you. To give you a better idea, if you are a cis man and I called you by “her,” no matter what excuse I give for it, you won’t fucking like it.

And when we discuss these things, if you have a problem with me calling you a racist asshole for saying racist things, maybe you should really re-examine your position. Otherwise, don’t let it affect you so much that you feel the need to gatekeep on what is civil discourse. That’s stupid if you have come from a place of denying people civility.

Plus, you’re a fucking adult if I’m arguing with you because I don’t argue with any minors. They’re disgusting. Like big angry children. Snot in their nose and everything. Back to the point, if I’m arguing with you, you’re an adult, learn how to field insults. You’re not a child anymore, no one cares that your feelings got hurt when I insulted you by insinuating the truth about your racist nature.

Long story short- if you’re into the idea of taking down someone for calling you an idiot when in the same exchange they brought up a valid point that kind of itches at your confirmation bias, then fuck you. You don’t get civility.

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abeautyofgirls-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on https://www.abeautyofgirls.com/5-fool-proof-signs-youve-found-a-good-partner/

5 Fool Proof Signs You've Found a Good Partner

“When you know, you know.”

Those words may seem corny to some of us, stupid to others, but to some it may just make perfect sense. Being a girl in this generation, there’s an unspoken pressure to be in a relationship. Why are men seen as “tied down” when they’re in relationships, but when women are single, they think they can’t lock down a man so there must be something wrong with them? Ladies, snap out of it.

First things first, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being single. In fact, every girl should experience a majority of her young life alone. No, not a loner who doesn’t have any friends. We’re talking free of romantic commitment. A lot of beautiful things can come from being single, including building strong bonds with your friends, making selfish decisions, and really understanding what you want in a partner. You can still date, and flirt, and enjoy yourself, but don’t tie yourself down to just anyone.

That is the key takeaway from this. Wait until you’ve found a good one. But how do you know if they’re a good one? There seems to be a lot of contradicting opinions out there on what makes a strong relationship. You’re constantly receiving different pieces of advice from your friends, your family, strangers on the internet, etc. How do you know if those red flags are real warning signs or if it’s you just “being picky”?

The best advice? Be damn picky!

No one can tell you who to date, who makes you happy, and what to do in a relationship. But these are five fool proof ways to tell if you found a good one.

Are they the one? That’s up to you. But be picky until you can check off these boxes. Don’t settle for less because life is too short and your time is too valuable to be wasted in unhappy relationships.

1. You feel confident in your own skin

Nothing is more important than your confidence. Now, it’s rare that anyone is super comfortable in a relationship right off the bat. However, you’ll know rather quickly if they make you feel good about yourself or not. You may not be into super romantic gestures or corny texts throughout the day, but every girl deserves to feel beautiful. It’s damn hard to feel confident all the time, especially when it’s just one of those days where you feel ugly and bloated and wonder how anyone could look at you and find you attractive.

What you’ll come to learn is how appreciative you are to have found someone that says ,”hey, you’re cute” when you haven’t showered for three days because you’re binge watching Criminal Minds. Or someone that says “you’re beautiful regardless” when you say you feel chubby and need to go to the gym. If the person you’re with doesn’t make you feel confident enough to walk around with your bra on, wearing baggy sweats, and hair full of dry shampoo… they don’t deserve you.

2. They aren’t afraid to talk about the future with you

By the future, i’m not just referring to getting married and having lots of cute babies. It all depends what stage in your life you are at, so this will be different for everyone. What remains the same is they aren’t afraid to commit to you. They talk about “what ifs”. They don’t become socially awkward when you make a comment about what a good parent they would make or avoid talking about meeting the family for the first time. They don’t change subjects when you talk about an event coming up next year that you want to go to together, or hide you from their friends.

Regardless of the extremity of the conversations, it shows commitment. It shows that they aren’t in this just for kicks. What they see with you now is real enough to talk about a potential future. If you’re with someone who refuses to talk about where they see your relationship in 6 months, a year, 5 years, they’re probably not ready to be in a serious relationship. If you want those conversations to be made, don’t wait for the wrong person to finally come around, and don’t force them to be ready when they’re not. The right one for you will be on the same page and you’ll know it.

3. The thought of cheating on them makes you sick

Some people may find this extreme, but it’s important. It’s tough living in today’s society being so wrapped up in idolizing celebrities with unrealistic lifestyles and being immersed in pop culture that thrives on vulgarity and shock factor. Why has it become “out of style” for guys to remain faithful to their girlfriends? Infidelity has become something we’re accustomed to and it’s absolutely horrible.

That being said, temptation is out there. Not just for one sex, but for any normal human being. You’re not in the wrong for finding other people attractive, you’re not a horrible person for accepting a drink from a nice guy at a bar, and you’re not insane for having a weird little crush on your boss when you’re already in a happy relationship. What you’ll find to be the undeniable factor that you’ve found the right one, is the thought of acting on these impulses and giving into a second of satisfaction physically seems impossible. Your mind changes when you’ve found someone that potentially hurting completely replaces any sort of temptation you may have acted on at a different point in your life.

When you find someone who you can’t hurt, then you know they’re a good one.

4. Your fights are few and civil

These days you’ll hear people advocating that fighting all the time is normal because you love each other or you’ll see someone trying to argue that nasty fights are a sign of a passionate relationship. Of course, no relationship is going to be flowers and rainbows all the time and it’s very important to be able to overcome hard times with your S.O. But please stop and take a good hard look at what you’re fighting about. If you have to justify the validity of your relationship with “passion” because you fight so much, get out now.

You should be with someone who doesn’t start an argument with you every day over a like on Instagram, or someone who boils your blood so much you can’t express what you’re feeling without getting into a screaming match. A fight every once in a while is okay, some even say healthy. But you shouldn’t be fighting often, and when you do, they should be civil. You shouldn’t be forced to tears from hurtful comments, or dealing with someone who damages your belongings when they’re mad, or god forbid someone who gets physical with you.

No relationship is perfect and there will be disagreements, but anyone who says fighting all the time is healthy, hasn’t found the right person for them.

5. Your values align

In the end and after all the glitz and glam, a good relationship starts with aligning values. Going along with some of the same ideas as point number 4, you and your partner are allowed to disagree on things. Whether that be as simple as how cold you want the AC when you sleep or as important as your religious backgrounds, all these things should be discussed but shouldn’t be deciding factors in your relationship. What should be most important are your morals and your values.

Do they look at the world in the same way as you do? What kind of household do they want to raise their kids in? What are their beliefs on the things in life that are most important to you?

These are the questions you should be asking. In the end, being with someone who sleeps with the heat on may seem like something out of a nightmare… but if that person’s values align with yours and you’re morally on the same page, you can work through the small stuff. Your right person will align with you, and you’ll be thankful that you found them.

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