#discursive

[artisan-antibiotics]

A Masochist’s Approach to Positive Psychology 

tw mention of $u!c!de, BD$M/k!nk ramblings.

disclaimer: I have dyslexia so if you find a spelling mistake hold ya fucking breath.

In this discursive I'll be rambling on about pain versus pleasure, what is happiness, and what is wellbeing. These thoughts are an analysis of a paper I used as research for an essay required for a psychology class at my university. To start off I'd like to give some background on what positive psychology is, and why I'm studying. It has a rather unique position in psychology, in that it focuses on the well being of an individual in a way that essentially uses positive emotions, happiness and enrichment of life to alleviate more negative emotions, unlike traditional clinical psychology that fully acknowledges mental illness/presence of symptoms and explores ways to treat those.

The approach to positive psychology that my class is taking is Martin Seligman's PERMA model, the acronym standing for the believed five elements to flourishing as a human being in the modern era: 

Positive emotion

Engagement

Relationships

Meaning

Achievement 

I will be touching on all of these areas but mainly exploring the second element: Engagement and flow. 

Now for the juice. The paper is “Orientations To Happiness and Life Satisfaction: the Full Life versus the Empty Life” published in 2005 and written by Christopher Peterson, nansook park and our positive psychology boi as mentioned above with PERMA, Martin Seligman. I'd like to start of and say how classist the title seems at first glance, “the full life vs the empty one” I believe most of these wellbeing aspects can only be reached by those in places of privilege, those without any severe trauma, strong social connections and relationships, white people, you get the idea. It seems to me like a simple degradation and negative look at those who cannot reach this ideal of a happy life, as described by these elements. Even while looking at journals and accessible websites for “pop-wellbeing” pictures of mostly white, middle to upper-class families such as the one I've included here are used.

I feel like the more I go into studying this emerging field of psychology the more I get filled with this annoyance that psychology is so heavily biased on “W.E.I.R.D” populations. (“W.E.I.R.D” being a term used primarily in social psychology and stands for white, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic, and is used to describe the 80% of people who make up our history of psychological research samples, while that specific demographic only makes up 12% of our global population). MY POINT IS that positive psychology is made for a small population, and if it makes you want to seethe, you have every right to, as it probably wasn't made for you, and verges so close to the toxic positivity line every time. My reason for writing about this subject is because I feel there is much to gain by thinking about some of the themes of what pleasure and happiness even is, using the concepts in positive psychology as a bounce off, and also because I feel like if I don't have somewhere to write my thoughts down I feel I may explode.

So it starts off with the abstract, where we learn that the research is to explore and analyse findings from surveys done by 845 adults through the internet, measuring life satisfaction through three different ways the authors of the paper saw that we can be happy. 

Through pleasure

Through engagement

Through meaning 

Though these have barely no description, and I feel like they have multiple overlapping meanings, I will take them out of consequence with the study and give them meaning because I like to be thorough (unlike most arbitrary nonsense that lots of people write in the name of philosophy and psychology) 

Pleasure is the physical and emotional sensations that fill us with our own unique way we experience bliss. Pleasure can give our lives meaning, and pleasure can be the subject of engagement and flow. I would like to point out that pleasure can be experienced alone, or with others, and can be sexual, but is oftentimes not. Just in the same way that kink and BDSM is experienced in a similar way, and I feel is the perfect representation of sensation, both physical and emotional, in that its balenced in the range of ways that people can experience pleasure, when humans arent forced to adhere to social norms. 

Engagement is to do with the mind and its capacity, flow will be referred to alot and that is when all of the mind is filled with one subject, or activity so that all that our limited-capacitied-brains can comprehend on the conscious level is that activity or subject. Time is blurred. 

Meaning can lead me to multiple trains of thought, and as someone who is still young and dosnt have a strong understanding of their own meaning of life, it's hard to pinpoint. But I will describe it as a sort of drive, a colourfull array of experiences and emotions that are inherently attached to a personal arsenal of values, those labled and unlabeled. 

The paper claims that those with low scores on these three areas of life have a low life satisfaction. And I agree with this much more than the later described PERMA model from 2011, particularly because I think it carries less popular wellbeing bullshit and caters to a much larger variety of human experience. We reach the introduction, where I encounter historical mentions to positive psychology, and the statement “the doctrine of hedonism – maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain – was articulatd thousands of years ago by Aristuppus (435–366 BCE) who championed immediate sensory gratification (Watson, 1895)”. My original thoughts on this were annoyance, because as a complex masochist the notion that pleasure is the ultimate good and pain is the ultimate evil, does not describe my experience. I grew up always in a certain amount of pain either physical or emotional, taught to be by my parents, other family members, chronic illnesses and compounding trauma from every year of my life, I have a different baseline, and many others will agree with me in their own cases. I have recently moved out of home and socially transitioned, been able to build stronger relationships and this has had a profound positive effect on my levels of pain. Yes, a little while ago I attempt suicide but this is because I am still dealing with all of my first 18 years of life’s thought patterns and redundant self-esteem. Pain has become my home, well was always my home, it was what lulled me to sleep. What woke me up in the morning, followed me to parties and the bathroom, overseas and in the wilderness, however, now as I’ve moved out I have more space and time to explore my masochist side, I feel empowered by the fact I can return to that home of pain on my own terms, and slowly replace emotional pain with short term physical pain that I can determine what it feel like, and how long it resides for. 

This possibly introduces a new concept which came to me in a second reading of this paper: true pain and pain for pleasure. I seek out pain so I can heal, feel pleasure, feel vulnerable with another person (which is a very new thing for me) and also, with all background aside, have fun with sensation as pain is another way to stimulate the body and feel, when applied in the right way. It's possible when Aristuppus mentions pain, that he thinks of true pain, ugly pain, uncontroled pain, which for me is life-limiting, rather than enriching. Positive psychology fails to explore this side, and by my own acknolegemnt to this concept I feel I extend the positive assets that positive psychology can have, and its poential to a much larger range of people. 

HEDONISM VS EUDEMONIA 

Hedonism is described as pleasure being the ultimate for wellbeing and happiness, while Aristotle’s Eudemonia- being true to one’s inner demon - is described as the use of one's virtues, to cultivate them and live in accordance with them, but I feel this to be unnecessary as I dont understand why someone would actively want to live in defiance to their own values (I understand maybe many are pushed to or not able to). If I didnt live to what makes me happy I feel like I would tear off my skin, and I see this in the way I rebel to the social and power structures that oppress my values and my happiness, and when I do feel oppressed, I do feel true pain, and I do feel like tearing my skin off. I guess I want to point out that philosophers have some good ideas, and they have some bad ones. It's ok to be in conflict with ideas. Eudemonia was a way to express the desire and need for living according to your own values, and body, how it feels and thinks, how respecting yourself is key, and we can do away with Aristotle’s idea that the meaning of pleasure is too vulgar. Also the statement “the pursuit of a meaningful life is widely endorsed as a way to achieve satisfaction: ‘Be all that you can be, and Make a difference.’’ sounds way too religious and can touch on some religious trauma for some as there are two levels, first being looking at pure values of an individual and supporting them to promote wellbeing, and second using a higher authority to make people believe all their problems will go away if they help other people. I do believe (and it's supported by evidence) that the vast majority of people are happier if they express gratitude and make a difference in this world, but I feel like it's a theme that is not on the same level as the ones core to this discussion. 

Because of this discussion, the thought of hedonism vs eudemonia is irrelevant because the bits I feel that matter that is pleasure and self-fulfilment are interchangeable, overlapping and at core express the same sentiment. 

Waterman’s studies of Eudemonia in 1993 provoked the authors of this paper to state “Flow is not the same as sensual pleasure… flow is nonemotional and arguably nonconscious” which I feel is just so highly untrue. My personal experience with flow is that there is an extreme emotional drive, passion, intense focus driven By emotion, or that flow where emotion is so all consuming and overloading that the subject of flow is emotion. Flow is reached from anger, love, curiosity just a few that come to mind, I would describe these emotions as passionate emotions. And yes, they are all consuming most of the time. I started writing this discursive at 1:30 pm and it is now 5pm. I have not taken a single break, I would describe this as flow, driven by emotion, one that is hard to describe, a carnal need to express my ideas. Anger? A bit, love? A bit… a beautiful explosion of passion. Flow is certainly achieved by sensual pleasure, more often in bdsm scenarios often described by subspace, domspace, but is not limited to these specific experiences and labels. As flow is a state of a subject taking up all capacities of the mind, for a submissive bound by rope this is special by the sensations of rope marking them, and of the vulnerability, engulfing their soul. Or for a service dominant partner, being so Intune to the sub’s feelings, their own feelings, the rope in their hand is all there is in the moment, hours can go by and they are untouched by the outside world. Because of these examples I find that  “People may describe flow as enjoyable, but this is an after-the fact summary judgment; ‘‘joy’’ is not immediately present during the activity itself… At least at any given point in time, flow and pleasure may even be incompatible” as a statement is entirely untrue, at least for me, and many others. 

So there you have it, my rambles for positive psychology. If you didn't understand a single thing, that's ok I have a habit of not making much sense, this isn't going to be graded by a teacher so you can suck my dick. I hope I've left you with things to ponder.

The paper:

(if you don't have a university or other log DM me and ill tell you how you can access it)

Peterson, C., Park, N., and Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Orientations to happiness and life satisfaction: the full life versus the empty life. J. Happiness Stud. 6, 25–41. doi: 10.1007/s10902-004-1278-z

#discursive #ftm #hedonism #positive psychology #aristotle #writing #ramblings #rants #bdsmblog #twsui #tw s3lf harm #eudemonia #queer #k!nky thoughts #k!nk blog #PERMA #martin seligman #wellbeing #university #psychology #domspace #subspace

[lovefromthehoneybear]

Thoughts from Decembers Full Moon

#creatix #writer #girl writer #discursive #girlhood #pj Harvey and nick cave #love #girl blogging #universe #witch

[kir4svn]

Social Media, Bane or Boon?; a discursive essay

Young people have a tendency to fall prey to trends, adverts and fads, and often thrust their money into chasing new material joys they find off their Instagram “explore” pages. With the rise of Social Media, and the prevalence of young people on it, it has become more than easy for attractive young adults to show off their pricey possessions to teenagers watching from behind small screens. In an age where social media entangles itself in our everyday lives, does it serve as more of a bane or a boon? I personally feel it is a polite mix of both.

Money makes the world go round, and in the world of trade, social media is one of the best marketplaces out there. When the whole of the world pools together to form a segregated online space, it becomes far too easy to find someone who’s interested in something you’re selling. This acts as a massive advantage to businesses, allowing them to market their products free of charge, to people with real interest in buying them. For businesses with heftier budgets, turning to the more influential of the online bunch, whose eager followers are often more than willing to spend, usually promises high returns. So for businesses, Social media is surely a boon.

Everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. Seeing the lives the rich and famous enjoy, many wish for a chance to live in the spotlight. Social media can bring one to the public eye, but those who reach often lament about the scrutiny they face. When one’s fame is online, it’s often that they will receive bouts of harassment, even if they far from deserve it. Take celebrities like Charli D’Amelio, who rose to fame at the young age of 15, for example. By the time she was 16, she was receiving threats from the online public, claiming she did not deserve her fame, comparing her to her sister, and pointing out the smallest of her shortcomings. A life in the limelight can be thrilling and enticing, but it can also be detrimental to ones mental health. As such, social media can easily bring harm to those who put themselves at the front of it.

That’s not to say that influencers are always right. More often than not, the most well received online personalities plant toxic standards in the minds of viewers and fans. Be it girls with small waists and hourglass figures, or men with broad shoulders and long legs, social media builds an image of the “perfect” body. As time passes, this ideal shape begins to pop up more and more, and evolves into an expectation. This leads to the popularisation of crash diets, bouts of self-hatred, and an increase in eating disorders amongst young people. These unhealthy practices are detrimental to the health of those who fall into their clutches, and affect the growth and development of today’s teens. As such, the unrealistic expectations evolved from social media culture can easily turn social media’s presence into a bane.

Social media allows us to catch up with others, and in some cases, live vicariously through them. It doesn’t matter whether an old friend is an hour or a hundred miles away, social media makes it easy to close the gap. On social media, you can find out what someone has been doing the past month, what someone is looking forward to celebrating in the next few days, or whether someone has just welcomed a child into the family, all in a couple of taps. Along with social media comes the ease of connecting with others, through a platform that requires little to no effort. In this way, social media serves as a boon, giving us the opportunity to come together virtually, no matter how far away we may physically be.

Social Media has clearly proved to be a double edged sword. Despite how it has brought undeniable benefit to our society by shedding light on pressing issues that might not have surfaced otherwise, it has also brought about unrealistic expectations and envy amongst the online community. Many question the ethicality of businesses cashing in on insecurities brought about through social media, and it seems social media is only beneficial to some and greatly detrimental to others. The reality is, nothing can truly be flawless, as consumers of social media, we should be mindful of what we choose to consume. Only then can social media serve as a benefit to us.

#essay #discursive #writing #kira's library

[manwalksintobar]

THE KAFKA VIRUS VERSES: THURSDAY // Terrance Hayes

July 2020

The madness of each ordinary day versus the language of someone raised by history versus someone raised by a virgin. I’m mostly interested in the devil's story

because know there's some devil in me. I still live like someone somewhere will clean the vents of my home anatomy, but I am the only person who lives here.

According to Memphis Slim what looks like singing has its roots in slaves’ casting shade on oppressors, a cotton field of them stooped weeping jeremiads of sweat. Marlon Brando's snake-

skin jacket in The Fugitive Kind cursed Marlon Brando's leather jacket in The Wild One so that Brando himself became a black person on opposite sides of a mirror calling the other Demon.

I am a man named your father's name or I am the heroin flower vendor vending stolen flowers in the park. I am Ambrose Black-Blake, the Butcher,

Or Ebenezer Nebuchadnezzar, the Lying King. Or a man who thinks winning is the whole point of everything while losing only highlights loss.

I am known, when entangled in great and minor trouble, to berate my own damn self. You find every kind of human being human in every way every day.

If you are the only person to observe a particular trait in yourself, how trustworthy is the observation? People who have been loved poorly may or may not be cursed

to love poorly. You know how you don't know how to describe your own face without looking in the mirror? You know how you never can tell a curse from a bad day?

That intermittent chirping coming from somewhere in the house is a smoke alarm's dying battery not a mine canary. Growing is never not a part of being grown. Most

big decisions are made without me and you every day too. I'm just so accustomed to adjusting to everything. How often must I tell you I was born to a sixteen-year-old black girl who

had three siblings with different fathers in the projects of South Carolina in 1971, after a neighbor raped her? If there is no solution,

a problem is not a real problem by definition. When my mother's grand- mother was alive, she lived on the dark potions of a beautician

with a mouth full of hairpins, and an enchanted freehand above the minds of ladies looking to feel more lovely beneath their lovers' hands.

Like her ambidextrous skinny silver scissors refining and lining the edges of her extra-fine extra magic touch, my hands were made for beautiful things.

#poetry #Terrance Hayes #American poetry #Black American poetry #beauty #disjunction #argument #madness #Marlon Brando #autobiography #1971 #South Carolina #discursive #joy

[ceescedasticity]

I saw another post today which seemed to assume "expensive wireless earbuds" and "no headphones at all" were the only options in public and

Do people not know about these?

Getting rid of headphone jacks is total garbage but they do make earbuds that hook into your phone's charging/data port.

#i actually want this seen how do i tag it #headphones #earbuds #alternatives to wireless earbuds #whatever #unsolicited rl opinions #unsolicited discursive opinions

[wdpd41rvd]

Nasty sweethearts know how to turn perverted fantasies into reality I drugged and fucked my sexy step sister Deanna shemale amateur homemade flexible self facial Wolf Girl With You - Sex with Liru Wolf girl - Hentai Boy espiando e punhetando no banheiro FODENDO GOSTOSO MORENA RABUDA Kendra Devons Gets Talked Into Putting A Random Dick Inside Her Red Head Teen Squirts All Over Boyfriends Dick Full Gameplay of pixel style HENTAI GAME sex scene and CG 번갈아가면서 보지 보여주고 난리났네 아 섹쉬해

#quickest #atrocities #stunsail #shirtlessness #beneficium #hieracite #swacking #plashers #balewort #bloodiest #Borgia #liquify #s #hygienization #periphractic #Comaetho #mioplasmia #Valida #cubicities #discursive

[tbgdymm2w0ik0d]

MY FRIEND SEXY MOM SUNITA OPEN BACK AND MILKY WAIST Teen gay dick small dick pulpy dick Young thug fucking married slut Sexy Small Babysitting Amatuer Having Sex The wild and hot fucking ends for a sexy sweetheart with hot orgasms Slave in strait jacket and mask in bondage Teen boys biting dicks gay Big Boy Underwear Criminal sex and travel Cory Chase in Revenge On Your Father Busty amateur plumper fucked by an older man Amateur BBW Throat Fuck Deep Blowjob

#balewort #bloodiest #Borgia #liquify #s #hygienization #periphractic #Comaetho #mioplasmia #Valida #cubicities #discursive #preplacing #pseudolabia #estival #summery #dineric #nonmonarchial #Dowland #supersublimated

[mybuddyjimmy]

Discursive

View On WordPress

#daily #definition #dictionary #Discursive #educational #Knowledge #learning #lesson #trivia #vocabulary #word #Youtube

[comradekatara]

i've been thinking about the significance of toph's feet as the crux of her power against/alongside the practice of footbinding. considering her role situated within (an analog for) tang dynasty nobility, thinking through that cultural practice poses direct relevance regarding the overarching theme of how she transcends imposed boundaries, in terms of gender roles, class expectations, and of course along the axis of her disability. i can only gesture to these ideas because i lack the historical framework to construct a legitimate argument, but i'm wondering whether anyone more knowledgable regarding these historical contexts (@atlaculture comes to mind, but of course no pressure!) would like to extrapolate from these ideas.

#a couple weeks ago i did go down a footbinding rabbithole and started reading various sources #but i still feel like i'm not particularly qualified to make this argument #since i lack a background in how to construct arguments w/in historiographical discursive practices. just like. in general #although i suppose i can still gesture towards it by compiling sources & moments from the text #in like. a 'web weaving' way #though that might take more work than i have the bandwidth for atm lmao #i already have so many drafts and absolutely no time for postin #so i would love it if someone else could take the wheel here #should they be so inspired #again @atlaculture i rly admire your work but no pressure #and/or anyone else who feels qualified: please feel free to expand on this! #toph #i think abt poppy beifong specifically a lot actually #(sidenote: her name being poppy is quite loaded?) #she barely says a word. and yet she communicates so much...

[sadlynotthevoid]

Talking about the DPxDC crossovers—

You know what is better than "Bruce adopts Danny and/or his sisters after the Fentons mess up" trope? Jack and Maddie adopt the batkids after he messes up.

Listen, I love the "Bad Parents Maddie and Jack" Angst as much as the next phan, but this is way funnier, catarthic and likely to happen.

Just— all the batsiblings having fudge with hot drinks under an improvised blank fort the giant goofy man (their new dad, apparently?) made for them, on-site, and listening silly (real) ghost stories. Meanwhile, the short woman in a cyan hazmat suit is slamming Batman against the floor back and forth, like a kid playing with a doll.

#dpxdc #dpxdc prompts #maddie is hella mad #and tbh he deserves it #btw they aren't afraid of jack in the slightiest #despite the physical similarities #he gives off a totally different vibe #they don't do the ghost hate discurse anymore #not since danny told them about his stuff #talking about danny #he totally puts fright knight on the joker #get him trapped into the nightmare realm #fright knight happily agrees #he dislikes the guy too #jason gets other mom #again

[transmutationisms]

sorry one more thing i also think it's annoying and useless when people try to criticise the US republican party by calling it a "death cult" or some such. the fact that gop catholics hurl this same accusation at dems for supporting abortion access and criminal justice reform should tell you off the bat approximately how malleable this sort of rhetorical game is lol. forget their evangelical rapture rhetoric or whatever it's not a helpful way of understanding what republicans actually do. no they are not marching themselves into bodily danger it's literally just a capitalist party in an imperialist country and their policies follow from that. mystifying them because they say things that sound wacky is just another version of the way liberals get into discourse analysis and treat politics as a game or a spectator sport and then they don't have to actually deal with the class conflict and processes of material exploitation at hand.

#like there are discursive points to examine sure but don't confuse that for something it's not wrt actual political diagnoses lol

[phenakistoskope]

here are my two cents on the bollywood tournament that's under way. the term "bollywood" designates hindi language films that were produced in india, specifically originating from the bombay industry, after the nation's first forays into neoliberalisation. i'd put that somewhere roughly after 1982, or the introduction of colour television.

these films, which rose to their generic heights in the 1990s and 2000s were often aimed at an NRI audience, as much as at a domestic audience, and featured themes of foreign tourism; indian nationals strewn across the face of the earth, specifically to delineate the nation from the world at large. as time went by, they depicted young professionals within the nation and abroad, outlining the expected aspirations from the generation reaching adulthood at the time.

long story short awara (1951) does not fucking belong on that list, it's bombay cinema, and it has its own historical moment and can of worms.

#film is a historically situated phenomenon #reducing all cinema from the subcontinent to bollywood is disrespectful disingenuous and discursively bankrupt #even if it's just hindi cinema #phenakistoskope.txt

[lovefromthehoneybear]

The Messy Girl Chronicles - a piece in process by yours truely. The feminine mystique will prevail.

#writing #writer #poetry #feminist poetry #discursive #art #girlblogging

[laurellerual]

She missed Cat herself the most of all, even more than she missed her eyes. She had liked being Cat, more than she had ever liked being Salty

#This is for all the people out there who dare to try and use Salty's chapter as proof #that Arya the Explorer is a plausible thing in the books #I hate this discurse so much #arya stark

[ceescedasticity]

I don't think anyone should say "anyone can learn to make [representational] art if they put the time and effort into it!" unless they would say the same of accounting, multivariable calculus, and Bayesian statistics.

#and programming #among other subjects #math just tends to get strong reactions #unsolicited discursive opinions

[interoteme]

@doobledabbadoo's guy again after i couldn't cope with being unable to get the girl scout cookies i wanted in time

#jackbox #jackbox party pack #jackbox fanart #cookie masterson #ydkj #ydkj fanart #you don't know jack #fibbage #fibbage 3 #I'm getting my cookies eventually it's just that there's a smores outage #Apparently. Apparently. so i have to wait longer while everyone else gets their order. Ok #i ordered thin mints too. just to try them #anyway sorry I Really like that fibbage suit doobs gave him (Hi Doobs! you're awesome) it's so fun to draw and mess around with #Though It's Of the older design sorry guys. i got so stoked when i saw that new ref though #i am being discursive i'll stop. Thanks for coming guys *walks off the stage the camera switches to the completely empty audience section