#i feel like when reading (political) philosophy it's best to start with something that you think is interesting rather than trying to | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladyiristheenchantress · 2 months

Text

Morals and Ethics

Hello Friends!! to preface: This post is not here to police anyone on what is the 'correct' way to practice. My aim on this post is to be culturally and magically informed, so this isnt going to be a take down of any belief or path line. Instead this post is offered up as a way to not only build your own moral frame work, but get you thinking about where you stand magically and enhance how you practice! Our moral frameworks are all unique, something that would be a faux pas in your practice might be something thats culturally common in others, so lets throw on our thinking caps and get started!

What is building an ethical and moral framework?

Building an ethical background in witchcraft involves establishing a set of principles, values, and guidelines that guide your magical and spiritual practices! In essence It helps ensure that your actions align with your moral compass (Wherever it may lie). This background can help you make informed decisions, cultivate energy, and maintain a respectful and balanced relationship with both you and your magic.

Some religions and paths have their own moral and ethical framework, for example lyma is this idea of "something to be washed away" and is a big deal when practicing within Hellenic Spaces! It would be immoral to approach an altar without washing your hands if they were dirty, but on the flip side some cultures actively encourage dirty hands like people who worship earth within their gardens. Depending on your path you might have a specific framework.

Another aspect is moral frameworks change and that is ok!! Its important we aren't stagnate and its ok to change your mind and feel like you want to change things up. That is totally reasonable and people do it all the time like with politics, religious affiliations, jobs, and more! Ethical and Moral compasses can change just like we do.

How to build an ethical framework

Self-Reflection: Start by exploring your own values, beliefs, and moral code. Reflect on what is important to you, what you stand for, and how these values relate to your magical practices. Also now would be the time to decolonize your beliefs and explore your biases. Its ok to acknowledge your bias, as long as you are working through it. If you dont know what decolonizing your beliefs is I left a helpful video above, just click 'decolonize your beliefs'

Research and Study: Deep dive into different ethical systems and philosophies. Familiarize yourself with various witchcraft traditions, such as New age spirituality, Pagan magical systems, and country/area specific + their associated ethical guidelines. Read books and articles about ethics in witchcraft whether you agree or disagree. During this time you are simply collecting as many perspectives as possible and comparing them to how you feel, don't feel pressured to follow something if you don't feel it applies to you.

Connect with a Mentor or Community: If possible, seek guidance from an experienced witch or spiritual space who can share their ethical insights and offer advice on building your own ethical framework. The best part is, different spaces will produce their own ethical codes of conduct. For example some spaces don't allow love spell discussion for example, which is an ethical guideline.

Create Your Own Code: Based on your self-reflection, research, and guidance, create your own personal code of ethics. This code should reflect your values and guide your magical practices. It might include principles like harm none, respect nature, work for the greater good, or take no shit. Wherever you feel you sit, walk with it. Whatever comes natural to you explore it. Write down what you believe as a symbol, but do so in pencil so you can change it as needed!

Regularly Reevaluate: As you gain experience and your understanding of ethics evolves, revisit and update your ethical code. It's important to grow as your spiritual journey progresses like I mentioned above. You are not a static person, allow yourself to experience your moral compass and how to bends. Allow yourself to be fluid and honest. Not everyone is 'love and light' or 'fuck authority' your allowed to be who you need to be!

Different Types of Ethics in Witchcraft:

Note: This is not every type of ethics, but rather a couple examples of the ethics you may see in your research and which group it belongs too. This area is not meant to endorse or critique an ethical guideline but instead showcase the many that do exist.

The Wiccan Rede: "An it harm none, do what ye will." This is a central ethical guideline in Wicca, emphasizing the avoidance of harm to others as a core principle. Another one is The Threefold Law, this law suggests that the energy you send out, whether positive or negative, will return to you threefold (three times what you sent out). This encourages practitioners to be mindful of their actions.

Green Witch Ethics: Green witches emphasize their connection to nature and the importance of nurturing and protecting the environment. Their ethical background often centers around conservation, sustainability, and working with the Earth's energies respectfully.

Personal Responsibility: Some witches adhere to a more individualistic code of ethics, focusing on personal responsibility and accountability for their actions.

Balancing Left hand and Right hand: For some, ethical considerations involve finding a balance between Right and Left hand magic, and acknowledging the potential consequences of working with both, one, or neither. The right and left hand path are types of magical systems that involve different attitudes towards magic, the right hand emphasizing healing and selflessness, and the left hand emphasizing individuality and shadow aspects.

Respect for Spirits and Deities: Many witches emphasize the importance of showing respect and gratitude to the spirits, deities, and entities they work with, recognizing their agency and autonomy.

Are there any absolutes that I should be aware of?

Absolutes are ethical things that you do need to make sure you are integrating! These are really important things to note when you are learning, because if you do choose to disregard these you could contribute to some really bad concepts that intrinsically cause harm to real people

Respect - Cultural awareness, avoiding appropriation, and looking out for other people can be important. Its important that you fully evaluate a moral system before indulging in it. For example: In the love spell discussion and lot of cultural practioners voices are left out of the discussion, same with baneful discussions. Its important to listen to many groups of people and take stances that dont turn peoples cultures into a monolith, demonize them, or silence them.

Hate groups and cults - Its important that you check where a belief comes from and see if it matches with any hate groups or cult rhetoric. These groups create really flashy and easy to digest claims to try and push an agenda kind of like a salesmen. Their whole job is to try and push you into their group so they can get money, power, fame, and in some cases carry out atrocities. This corresponds with that decolonization conversation from earlier, because it can help keep you and other witchy friends safe!

Nuance - Its important to keep nuance in the conversation. Don't take extremely black and white stances if you aren't knowledgeable on the subject. I think even advanced practioners need to remember to keep nuance in their opinions and keep an open mind when presented with new information or moral ideals. Keep an open dialogue when you are having conversations, and remember to keep asking yourself why you believe the things you do.

Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to building an ethical background in witchcraft. Your ethical code should be a reflection of your personal beliefs and values. It's essential to be true to yourself and to strive for a harmonious practice that aligns with your own spiritual journey! Enjoy the ride :)

#witchblr #pagan witch #witch #magical theory #grimoire #witchcraft #culturalexploration #baby witch #ethics #moral compass #nuance #researching magick #magick #witch community

102 notes · View notes

metamatar · 8 months

Note

ok so i am very much uninformed on politics, i decided at a younger age that i wasn't interested in it and therefore would not read or keep myself particularly informed about it. obviously this is a bad idea, and i want to change and keep myself informed on actual politics and well, abstract[?] (wrong word but cannot think of another, basically mean like. knowing which political .. stance ?? [idk. like marxist or communist or whatever] i might be.) ones as well. what's a good place to get started here? where do i look for actual politics going on in india since i'm pretty sure ndtv or whatever isn't exactly the best source? or maybe it is? idk, like i said i'm pretty uninformed on the matter but would like to learn more

so one thing is, in india you have to accept the media landscape is just dire because being a journalist with integrity is a bit like signing up to have your life ruined. all major media has been bought by hindutva already. what you have to do is more learn to read between lines, understand people's motivations, which is a matter of practice. a good way to start is to read analysis (not news reports) of the same incident in different media and you'll start noticing patterns. even more important imo is to talk and bounce ideas with a friend at a similar place as you or someone interested in politics who won't overwhelm you with their perspective. you can try online but idt its safe or advisable anymore to do that experiment online. i had debate club in university (sad) and some socialist reading groups (better) after. the thing is this journey to self education is kind of personal and im also not pedagogically oriented or trained? so lots of first person description instead of prescriptions.

i still check what's up on ndtv because it gives me a good pulse of what english language media and liberals are thinking. major newspapers i scan hindu and the indian express sometimes. online i have a look at newslaundry (also has some youtube content) and the wire, they're reader supported and haven't turned full hindutva yet. i read longer form things in the caravan and epw, but these are subscription based. i keep tabs on the latest round of hindutva fake news when alt news debunks it.

for the abstract things, i literally did an online course bc i was frustrated by what all the liberal arts grads seemed to already agree on. i did ian shapiro's moral foundations of politics which is available online as both youtube lectures and a textbook. if you want to go that route feel free but it's not necessary, you can also try to read the entries on wikipedia or stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (more expertise) when you encounter something unfamiliar and build up like that. podcasts like bbc in our time will often interview academics to give intros to many political philosophy concepts and thinkers. whatever your learning style supports! i think the important thing is to find something you are actually interested in, and take that tack. i like history, so i might read books about historical revolutions or historical forms of organising society or listen to podcasts like mike duncan's revolutions.

For communism the usual starting points are these very short pamphlets:

Principles of Communism by Engels

The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx

Wage-Labor and Capital by Marx

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels

feel free to ask for more specific questions!

#asks

133 notes · View notes

lexygabe · 6 months

Text

tora aikawa / twisting tiger headcanons/rewriting/etc.

(march/11/1990)

pisces sun | virgo moon | aquarius rising

INFP - 9w8 - sx/so - 974 - ESI - RLUAI - EFVL - Melancholic-Phlegmatic

general headcanons:

• trans masc, he/him, gayace,

• nobody cares but his sexuality headcanons were made by me when i was mad at wattpad bitches infantalizing him and making him their uwu japanese anime boyfriend,

• also he is little gremlin man before anybody start treating him as omg so cute trans boy hahaha gay baby. nah, he will kick you directly in the balls (even if you don't have them) and he will do this with pleasure,

• as a kid he was creepypasta enjoyer (he tortured miko with them when he was trying to sleep),

• philosophy nerd, not only into "asian philosophy", but philosophy in general. marxism, stoicism, nihilism, epicureanism, etc. everything,

• he reads this big fucking books weighing tons and they are always the craziest shit ever like "the idiot" by fyodor dostoevsky,

• i think he is russian literature fan in general,

• i think he had something that we could describe as depressive episodes, but he was never diagnosed with it til adulthood. and to be honesg tiger himself thought that everyone have felt something like that from time to time,

• probably has light ptsd,

• his friendships with nakama players (besides his and miko bond) aren't that strong like they used to. this is "when both of you start to distancing from each other and you become strangers to each other" situation, (he misses them)

• he self expressing himself very often in form of his new tricks, but also in his writing (he has a lot of notebooks with multiple essays),

• loves cartoons,

• <energy drinks3,

• he has keyhole top surgery type of scars,

• he become strika member after his whole transition journey,

• when doc got his medical results he was a little bit confused bcs birth certificate said that tiger is afab, so he informed coach about it,

• some day after training coach took tiger aside and told him that if anybody's gonna have problem with his identity, he will talk to them and he also asked tiger if he was capable of informing him or doc about his problems/health,

• rasta was first to know, bcs he and tiger went out for a beer together once and tiger started pointing out on his chest and telling a whole story totally drunk. the next day rasta walked up to him and asked in friendly-jokingly way is it safe for him to remove his muscle breasts, to which tiger replied with laugh,

• besides rasta, coach and doc. shakes, klaus and probably whole reserve players bench know about him,

• y'all will eat me (for speaking the truth) but matador, joe and north don't know about the fact that he is trans. bcs north definitely says f/aggot at least once a day, el is this cis lgb+ stereotype in tigers eyes (even tho matador doesn't care about gender identity, if you are hot, then you are hot and you will have to deal with his interest in you) and joe may perceive tiger differently when he would come out (again, this is how tiger feels about him),

• he is very critical of the sigma male trend and whole "sigma" idea in general, he even done a research and watched and read american psycho and fight club (yeah ik this is so random),

• idealist. he is close with his feelings and morality, so he assumes very often that everyone controls their own emotions like him,

• he is both idealist and skeptic,

• texts >>>>>>> voice messages/video calls,

• had religion crisis,

• he develops his trust to people very slowly,

• has mulitple accounts on twitter and makes the best trolling posts out there,

• he has decent knowledge about politics,

• watches kdramas when bored,

• he was wearing brackets in the past,

• has a lot of collections (like gadgets from chips' wrappers, TALISMANS, jewelry, figurines), but he is not obsessed about them,

• has tattoos like this:

• DEFINITELY HAS SOMETHINGG FROM HYPERMOBILITY SPECTRUM. that's why he is so flexible.

throught the series (og tv show, rewriting):

• [—] is waiting to be completed.

relationship with:

• miko: ik a lot of you ships them, but they are platonic to me.

they are like brothers. sometimes they fight for dear life and the other time they send each other funny memes at 3 am. in my head, both of them didn't have a great family dynamic, so they stayed together late at night.

miko was more easy going, so he was always worried about tiger when something happened to him. they aren't ashamed to show their love to each other.

• inyo: when they were kiddos she truly loved him in the most sisterly way you can think of. both of them are very careful when it comes to developing relations so they become very important to each other. it hurt when they had no contact with each other for years and then they become super league enemies (they never even have a talk after this).

• rasta: tiger is welcomed in rasta's house and tiger is always open to do something for rasta in return. buddies.

• cool joe: its complicated. on the one hand they are good friends and joe considers tiger as one of the most normal mates in their team, but they still have that unresolved tension that prevents them from deepening their relationship further.

• others: ?

fashion headcanons:

• smokey eye makeup supremacy,

• TW SCARYASS PRINTED SHIRT. he wears t-shirts with the most obscure shit on them

• his style is something between grunge, gothic and alt,

• he wears platform shoes to look taller than he actually is,

• some examples of his fits:

music headcanons:

• soft rock!! (car seat headrest is his beloved), j-pop, mcr & bôa.

NSFW:

• had a tdick at the time when he was playing for nakama,

• is into t4t relationships, bcs every cis gay guy he had thing for were super weird about him and either have had internalized transphobia or specific fantasies that crossed his boundaries of comfort,

• tldr give this man a trans bf so he could have the most non sexual intercourse.

#supa strikas #headcanon: supa strikas #supa strikas twisting tiger #supablr #text: supa strikas

47 notes · View notes

korka-mindlore · 9 months

Text

Writeblr (re)intro !

Hi, hi! I've had a writeblr before, but left after remaking my entire Tumblr account. Got a bit busy, but missed the community so much that I wanted back in <3

-About me-

Korka or Corky - whichever you prefer

adult

undergrad majoring in two foreign languages and their respective literature :>

I've been writing for about as long as I've known of myself, but only started taking it seriously in the last 5-6 years, and only in the past year or two did I really start figuring out what I want to write, so my style is still unpolished and I still consider myself in my "finding myself" era

major procrastinator and experiencer of what I think is executive dysfunction; I will try my bestest to be active on here, but I might take a week or seven to read a single excerpt, though not for lack of interest or trying!! Nevertheless, please tag me in your works so I won't lose them in the dash :3

-What I write-

prose, short story lover, but I have about three WIPs that would be about the length of a novel(la) (that planning stage sure is planning)

literary movements I draw inspiration from the most are the romantic period (especially gothic) and symbolist movement, as well as the spirit of avant-garde's experimentation and pushing boundaries

my biggest role model is Charles Baudelaire :>

genres I like to stick to: fantasy, horror, horror/dark fantasy, recently tried experimenting with social satire, but we'll see how that goes

I feel most comfortable in fantasy and historical, but I love writing horror the most

I love worldbuilding and writing body horror/gore the most, but describing body language and appearance is something I desperately need to work on

I'm a planner and a perfectionist, so it might take some time for me to intro my WIPs properly, but I'm more than happy to talk about my OCs in the meantime :>

I have four WIPs in varying stages of planning, all still practically nameless:

a historical (time-travel) coming-of-age WIP meant to be about the length of a novel-novella (skeletal stage, planning out characters and main plot points)

a fantasy political intrigue WIP of a similar length (planning stage, details need to be ironed out before I can work on it, but i have an outline, sort of)

(and the spin-off horror fantasy collection of short stories WIP set in the same world) (skeletal stage, planning out the characters and the storylines)

a satirical WIP on the "tiktokification" of the arts, mainly literature, and anti-intellectualism (newest, researching stage; I know nothing about this yet beyond the core message and idea, but I'm looking forward to developing it)

-What I'd love to read-

genres: horror (especially dark fantasy!!), fantasy, "cheesy" romances, historical!!!!! I'm not too picky on genres, but if you mix horror in it, I'll love it even more

details: ngl those hyper-specific fantasy academy settings in coming-of-age stories hit different, detailed worldbuilding is everything to me, best-friends-to-lovers? chef's kiss. enemies-to-lovers? even louder chef's kiss. Morally ambiguous characters, morally questionable protagonists, I just love when the cast is formed of imperfect characters where you can't with 100% certainty say "x is evil" or "y is good". Make me think !

I also love reading poetry, though I'm not the best at analysing it and understanding particularly deep analogies, I love poetry that deals with abstract feelings, interpersonal relationships and personal philosophies <3

-I don't know how to end this :> -

A bit more about what i love writing/reading:

I'm from a Slavic country and dislike the way Slavic characters get written in western media, so most of my OCs are Slavic and I love to see a fleshed out Slavic character

I love body horror as an allegory for bodily autonomy and beauty standards. It's fun as horror, too, but as an allegory - very fun to explore

In general, I'm weak for a good symbol

And on me:

I spent most of my time in the last few years writing fanfiction, but so eager to focus on original fiction, too

I tend to write on-and-off, I'm either busy or tired, and sadly can go months without any progress :< I hope this changes as I get more settled into life

But! I've taken a recent liking to just making OCs without any particular WIP attached to them, so I'll probs talk about them if nothing else :)

I just missed the community of a writeblr a lot, so I'm hoping to make friends on here ! ^_^

#um i hope this works as an intro #i think i got everything lmao #writeblr #writeblr intro #i kept putting off finishing this (see: procrastinator) but when i opened my drafts all i had to add was the final two paragraphs

19 notes · View notes

tearskillstardust · 4 months

Note

hii i was hoping i could participate in ur dec game <3

im an intj 5w6 libra sun pisces moon taurus rising

fav characters are zhongli, neuvillette, kaveh and alhaitham

my preferred aesthetic is dark academia

personality : not shy but just reserved around those im unfamiliar with. not very emotional either unless its with a close friend/someone im comfortable around (but i do feel very deeply). im relatively calm and overall quiet since i dont feel the need for words all the time + im philosophical by nature and i find it hard to connect with my peers due to our differences— i seek out those who have full understanding towards certain things, but i often feel as though others are often shallow with connections. i often look and analyze whatever principles something is ruled under, often questioning them internally.

from an outer perspective im often seen as outright cold but my best friends disagree, im very energetic and eccentric when im comfortable with someone, very dramatic at times as well. when it comes to things like school i just stay quiet so i dont have to deal with others LOL

words that define me (according to my bff): honest, intelligent (thanked her for this AHAH), introverted, dramatic, wise, possessive, imaginative, sensitive to those i care about, logical

hobbies : reading, writing philosophy/research and essay type of stuff, going to the theatre (for operas, specifically), learning languages, what else.. oh yes im very into history/politics idk i dont have much to say

id like to participate in 1- stellar union and 5- venus aesthetic with whoever you match me with

take care of yourself and have a lovely day<<3

1] STELLAR UNION ! ░ the genshin characters you get along most with are ...

ALBEDO !

—the chalk prince has quite the reputation for being an unintentional heart stealer. while it does bother him at times, somewhat concerned as he sometimes is to keep a reputation that is clear of such faults, he does not mind it to a great extent. with you, though, he would start questioning if he really is all that charming. he would find you ethereal upon first sight. there would be a look of serenity yet brightness on your features that would make him think of you as god's favourite canvas. your inclination towards literature and art while also maintaining curiosity and skill in the field of science and philosophy would not fail to amaze him. your empathy and natural sensitivity to others' feelings would also make him very soft.

—while the first conversation would undeniably be based on physical attraction, the more he would get to know you, the deeper his adoration for you would stretch. he would find you as the perfect companion to speak to about all his pursuits, be it science, arts or just random exchanges over topics of curiosity. he would also admire how you don't necessarily feel the desire to speak or interact and how you find solace in quiet too. he would feel understood by you because you radiate an aura of comfort. he would admire your level of balance in all pursuits, be it life or career and would also feel much more organized and in control of things when in your company. there would be mutual understanding regarding many aspects of life and work which would make you two get along very well naturally.

—you'd find him lacking in interest and passion initially, but as you get to know him better, he would reveal the more funny and humourous side of himself which he rarely shows. you would get to witness his rebellious side that intentionally researches and studies the subjects he is barred from. there would be lovely moments between you two because there would be unspoken understanding. imagine sneaking out to a park at midnight together, staying a bit too long at the lab and accidentally setting something on fire, experimenting with the recipe of chocolates and ending up making something else entirely which actually tastes better, having inside double meaning jokes, talking so much in class the teacher makes you two sit separately and then talking across the class through hand gestures, being the teacher's favourites yet the most feared ones and sharing vulnerable moments.

WRIOTHESLEY !

—yet another man who would be curious about you based on looks initially. though with him, he would find you more of a mystery, like the hidden part of the moon instead of an ethereal being. he would find you as someone unattainable and would thus ignite his curiosity. initially, there would be discord and disagreement but when you two come closer, if it ever happens that is, then you two would come to finally understand the root of each other's thinking process and develop an intimate bond full of understanding. there would be a lot of trust, from his side especially. because you both crave a connection that is deep and heart-touching, there would be an alignment of desires which would lead to undying passion from both sides. he would also be touched by how you feel everything so deeply.

—he would love how you can adjust with both sides of him; the clingy and the distant one. he would admire how you aren't all about talking even though you're amazing at it, and that you don't mind thinking rationally and keeping emotions aside. it would make him very comfortable in sharing his ideas and opinions with you and you would be a safe outlet for him. he would adore you a lot and look up to you as a pillar of support when his own barriers of patience are breaking. being someone hardworking, he desires the company of someone who can help him with stress relief, so he'd be very touched by your ability to indulge in that too by giving small messages or allowing him to sleep in your arms. while he isn't too big on it personally, he would definitely admire your penchant for literature and aesthetics and would love to share philosophies and ideas with you.

EULA !

—the first thing that would help you two bond would be your love for the arts and literature. she would find you reading a rarer book of interest to her and would immediately note your face down in her mind and look forward to speaking with you, or even vice verca. there would be great potential for the two of you to bond over similar interests and going along that line, you two would get to know each other more and more, getting closer with time. she would admire your empathetic yet practical nature and you would find her calmness and patience the best quality of her temperament.

—going along this very line, it also means that she would be more than willing to reveal her insecurities, fears and vulnerabilities to you. she would feel fun around you, as in, you would be able to bring out the more innocent, childish and fun-loving part of her that was suppressed in her younger years. due to this, she'd feel like her best self in your company. there would be freshness and fun here, and a shared element of admiration. you two would bring out the better, brighter side of each other; your inner children who are willing to hold each other's hands and explore the world together!

5] VENUS AESTHETIC ! ░ you and albedo ...

:D ! <3

#genshin impact #genshin #genshin imagines #genshin x reader #event #anon <3

7 notes · View notes

thedawningofthehour · 7 months

Note

for the dvd commentary thing - im not sure if it fits under 500 words or if u can even remember what u were thinking since u wrote it like last year , but the scene in arc 1 chapter 8 where draxum n donnie talk abt sun tzu n mythology n names ?

That is...yes, that's quite a bit longer, about 1300, but lucky for you I'm very narcissist and love talking about my shit. (and nobody else sent one in)

“You’ve read Sun Tzu.” Draxum is just looking at him, with a quirked eyebrow and a small smile on his face. For some reason, Donnie’s face flushes. “Well, yeah.” He looks down. “I’ve always loved reading, and it’s not that long. What, did you know him or something?” “He was a bit before my time.” Okay, he’s actually smiling now. It’s creepy. “But his work is quite illuminating.” “I’m surprised you’ve read it. He was a human, after all. A warring human. Aren’t you against that?” “Only fools believe they have nothing to learn from their opponents.” “So you’ll apply that to a two-thousand-year-old book, but not to modern humans?” Donnie tugs on his cuffs. “You know you missed, like, the entire point Sun Tzu was trying to make, right? His entire philosophy was that using violence is rarely the best way to get what you want and conflicts are better solved diplomatically.” “And he also said that when you do draw your bow, to draw your strongest arrow.” “Yes, but only if-” “Do you not think there have been attempts to address our conflict with the humans diplomatically?” Draxum says shortly. “You think you’ve seen the extent of this war. This has gone on much longer than you. Longer than me, even.”

So that took influence from a podcast I enjoy:

youtube

The whole thing is a fake talk show radio program from a fictional city with sort a sort of surreal-absurdist vibe going on. (one episode depicts a political debate that devolves into an argument over whether the crawdad people would vote for them and one candidate's treatment of the alligator king, for example) Also not the only reference to this podcast in this fic; this is where Tubby Dan's Barbecue and its various trials Bella mentions are from. He actually has a commercial later on in this episode.

I also have not been able to find the exact quote he uses. This guy might just be trolling me. But I figured, Donnie's fifteen, even if it is a fake quote that's the kind of mistake a fifteen-year-old would make.

“I’m just saying-” “No, you will listen to me on this occasion. Look around you, boy. Think of where we are, think of who we are.” “We’re a turtle and a goat-man in your lab. I can’t really look at much else.” The slap takes him by surprise. It doesn’t particularly hurt, but he feels quite confident by now in how far he can push Draxum before he uses physical force, and he hadn’t reached that point. “The Hidden City is under New York City,” Draxum says quietly. “You have more experience with the world above than I do, so let me ask. Does it feel like New York City?” Donnie shakes his head, his cheek still stinging. “Why do you think that is?” “I assumed it was because the Hidden City is a lot older? New York is only about three hundred years old, and almost everything up there was built in the last century,”

(noooo a typo)

(I literally just went back and edited a nearly year-old chapter right now, it's all fixed dw)

But for real, New York is an infant of a city. I know the Hidden City is under New York because the turtles live in New York, they've always lived in New York-but I wanted it to make sense why.

So my idea was that the Hidden City isn't so much under New York, but that New York was built on top of the Hidden City. They weren't even hidden at first-they just fucking lived there, cohabitating with the indigenous Lenape people, (or at the very least they left each other alone) and adapted when Europeans started their colonizing bullshit, gradually moving underground as more humans showed up and clashed with the Yokai, not understanding what they were. (The Lenape and the original colonizers didn't really know either, but there was an understanding of bro just don't ask questions that was gradually lost as more and more people settled there) Part of the reason it became 'gestures to all of New York' is because of the presence of the Yokai and all their nonsense. So basically-the chicken came before the egg, and the Hidden City is that chicken. Or one of them. You can decide whether they did the fucking or laid the egg.

“You are…correct in that observation, yes. The Hidden City is much older.” Draxum glances off to the side. “But think of what is here. Think of where it came from.” “Well, yes, the culture here is heavily East Asian. Even the name Yokai originated in Japan.” “Think about that. Why are so many Yokai from that area? New York is on the other side of this continent. It is not a simple journey.” “I assumed there was some portal.” “There was, but by design. Why did they come here?” “I’ve met Yokai that are definitely European.” “Very few. Think about why that is.” Donnie glances up. “Fewer Yokai in other parts of the world.” “We were actually more widespread in some areas. Why do you think you do not see our brothers and sisters from the Horn of Africa? The Maghreb? From the islands of the great Pacific? They existed, my boy. Ask me why they are not here.” Donnie is silent. Draxum looks over him, his eyes narrowed and cold. “The Hidden City is the last of its kind. There are no other communities like this elsewhere in the world, not anymore. So I will ask you again, boy. Why are there so many Yokai here from Asia? And why are the Yokai of the rest of the world not here?” Donnie remains silent. “Answer me, boy.” “I understand.” “I want you to say it.” “Humans killed them.” Donnie focuses on the ceiling.

Another one of those 'try to make the lore of the fucking ninja turtles show realistic' decisions. I know the reason they're called Yokai and why there's so much East Asian influence is because they are Ninja and this is a show about Ninjas and the writers wanted to harp on that, but it doesn't really make sense from a lore perspective.

I mean, think of where New York is. Pre flying, pre Panama Canal, the Far East and New York couldn't have really been more far apart. To get from Japan to New York by ship, you had to sail across the Pacific, down the west coast of both north and south America, around Cape Horn, back up the east coast all the way from Argentina to the fucking northeastern tip of the United States. Or land in Washington and cross the entire continent on foot. (I know they have portals but that's not the point, okay?) Like, unless there was a really big, heavy traffic natural portal from the Hidden City to Japan it just doesn't make sense for that to be the primarily culture. Especially considering the Crying Titan, canonical father of all Yokai, is under New York. If there was going to be a higher concentration of Yokai in any peoples, it would be the native people of North America. Because that's where the goddamn empyrean is flowing.

But we see pretty much no obvious First Nations influence. We get some East Asian and some European, all under a heavily Americanized umbrella. I mean, yes, they did this because this is a show marketed to American children and that's what's recognizable to them, but still. I needed it to make sense.

And it gave me the perfect frame to hang a blood-soaked backdrop.

“So you do understand.” Donnie presses his lips together. “I don’t think all humans deserve to die for it.” “I don’t think so either.” He must look surprised, because Draxum looks down at him, amused. “What? Deserve is a rather heavy word. I’m not speaking of deserving. I’m speaking of survival. Humans and Yokai cannot coexist. One of us will destroy the other. I do not intend to allow my people to languish in the dark while the humans choke us out.”

This is really the cornerstone of Draxum's beliefs. Yes, he's acting out of hatred and anger, but I didn't want that to be his whole thing. That's not as compelling, and Draxum's intelligent enough to need a concrete reason. And I mean...from his perspective, relations with humans have always gone sour eventually. And his people end up paying the price for that in blood.

“What makes you so sure?” “It has been foretold.” “What, like a prophecy?” “Exactly. There is a prophecy that predicts-” “You haven’t read much Greek literature, have you?” Donnie shifts in his binds. “Oedipus? Cronos? Or are those guys too old for you too? Let’s see, we have the Mahabharata. Macbeth. Sun, Moon, and Talia. Have you read Harry Potter?” “What-” Draxum closes his eyes. “Child, what in the world are you talking about?” “Those are all stories of self-fulfilling prophecies. In every one of those stories, the actions taken to avoid the prophecy cause it to come to fruition. Cronos eats his kids because he was told one of them would overthrow him, but that just makes his kid angry enough to do it. Talia is foretold to be killed by a splinter of flax, so her father bans flax from the house. The first time she sees someone spinning flax, she doesn’t know what it is and pricks her finger due to her curiosity and inexperience.” “...Why would a splinter of flax kill her?” “I always assumed there was some context lost in the translation, because that part never really made sense. Anyway, the point is that trying to prevent the prophecy just made things worse. It likely never would have come true, if people had simply done nothing.”

I'd like to call back to Draxum's speech to the Shredder in the finale. He does his big dramatic betrayal because he realizes that the prophecy foretelling the destruction of the Yokai was not the humans, but Shredder himself.

But he conveniently leaves out his own role in that. Draxum brought the Shredder back. Even before factoring in the orb he gave Big Mama, pulling Karai from her hell dimension, even without the work he did recovering the cursed metal-like, even if the Foot got every piece of armor the could get their hands on without him, they still wouldn't have finished it because Splinter had the last piece. And there's no way Splinter would have allowed it to be taken. Even Draxum couldn't defeat him in combat. The only reason Splinter gave it up was to save his sons-the sons that were shown kicking the Foot's ass all episode. If it was just them, they couldn't have captured the turtles. No Draxum, no Shredder.

Which makes the entirety of Rise a self-fulfilling prophecy in itself. In trying to destroy what he thought was the greatest threat to his people, Draxum created the very thing that could end them.

“No, it would have been a regular prophecy, like Cassandra predicting the fall of Troy.” “So you do know your Greek literature!” Donnie almost smiles at that. “Potentially. But far more likely that the prophecy simply doesn’t come to pass, like the thousands of other prophecies that are forgotten. We only hear about the ones that come true, after all. And from a simply mathematical standpoint, some of them must come true.” “I understand what you’re trying to do, and I understand your point. But you are a child playing at war.”

Yeah, he doesn't have a good answer here. So he just dismisses Donnie's point. Reminds me of my own dad!

“Well, maybe you need a child’s point of view,” Donnie huffs, rolling his eyes. “Have you ever thought maybe you’re too far into this to see what you’re doing?” He expects Draxum to call him names again, but he’s quiet for an uncharacteristic amount of time. Donnie turns his head, seeing Draxum leaning against his desk, a very far-away look in his eyes. “I know I was,” he finally says, so softly Donnie almost doesn’t hear him. “But I realized my mistake. I pulled out of it before it was too late.” He turns back to Donnie. “That’s why you’re here.”

A callback to Cass telling Draxum that the armor would kill him. Because really, Draxum's plan was stupid. He barely knew anything about this armor, the Foot, why they were so willing to give him this power. Yet he didn't ask questions. He didn't do any research. He trusted the Foot-humans, who had no love for his people and no reason to help him. Yet he plunged in. He was so enamored with the dark armor's power, so obsessed and blinded by bloodlust that he didn't stop to think about any of this. Not until Cass basically slapped him across the face and told him to snap out of.

And then he realized. He'd almost died-and died horribly, feeding a leashless monster. That was how lost he was in his bid for power. He had a whole-ass personal crisis before deciding to take up kidnapping as a hobby.

Donnie raises an eyebrow. “Kidnapping me was the less extreme option.” “Correct.” “I mean, yes, kidnapping one turtle isn’t as bad as unleashing a literal demon, but like…you couldn’t have found some middle ground?” “You’re my strongest arrow,” he replies simply. And it feels like someone’s dumped ice water over him. “Don’t be angry. I tried to compromise with you. I would have let you keep your name and your family, but you’re the one who refused to meet me in the middle.” Donnie just looks off to the side. “Think about it.” Draxum approaches his table, reaching out and grasping Donnie’s shackled hand, fingers curling around him like a claw. “You’re going to help me protect Yokai and mutants alike. We will do great work together, and when I lead my people into the sun with you by my side, your name will go down in history.” He does a little smile at that, like it’s a pleasant thought. “You just have to tell me what you want that name to be.”

I was kind of hoping someone would catch onto this. At this point, Draxum is still considering Donnie (or rather, his fantasy son who doesn't have a name yet) to be an accessory to his power. Like yeah, he wants him to be revered and rewarded after the fighting is done, but when the history books are written he'd be a chapter in Draxum's book. The next time he mentions the whole 'lead our people into the sun' thing, he says they'll do it 'side-by-side' because he now considers Galois an equal, and as time goes on he will eventually see himself as the person meant to help Galois on his path and set him up as the true savior of the Yokai.

#doth asks #donatello #baron draxum

10 notes · View notes

blackswaneuroparedux · 1 year

Text

Anonymous asked: It was primarily through your blog that I was introduced to the conservative philosophical thought of Sir Roger Scruton. You are the only blog to my knowledge that knows Scruton’s works inside out and communicate his ideas so clearly and with wit and intelligence. I’m currently going through the books on music he wrote. I admit I’m out of my depth reading The Aesthetics of Music. Please help! What does Scruton or indeed philosophers mean by aesthetics when it comes to music? I know this is a huge ask on such a big topic but if anyone can, I think you could.

I’m sure I’m not the only blog out there who post about the late Sir Roger Scruton’s works. I just post what I know and share what I can, and I make no claim to be an authoritative voice of his works. I did know Roger Scruton though. First as an admirer from afar, and then much later, having the privilege of meeting him on occasion such as a high table dinner in Cambridge or through other like-minded friends.

I think diving into Roger Scruton’s ‘The Aesthetics of Music’ (1999) is quite daunting even if you are familiar with his other works across aesthetics and politics and his conservative thought. It demands from the reader an above average understanding of two disciplines, music and philosophy, and is principally directed to his peers in academia. To some of his academic peers he represents the phenomenological-idealist perspective on music. I’m not quite how Scruton would see it but let’s not address that here. Indeed you don’t need to get bogged down in academic tiffs.

On the whole, Scruton, to his credit, never dumbs down in any of his other works and requires us to think harder than we’re used to. So don’t feel deflated but you have to learn what entry point into his works are best for you. His philosophical works on aesthetics are challenging to read because often we don’t possess the critical tools to unlock and understand concepts that are often misunderstood such as ‘beauty’ or ‘aesthetics’.

I would recommend anyone to start with his other works which may be a good introduction and an easier entry point to his thought on music. If you are a complete novice I would always start with ‘Beauty: a very short introduction’ (2010) which is an excellent primer to his thought on a range of topics. With regards to music itself I would then go onto ‘Music as art’ (2018) before moving onto ‘Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation’ (2009) - a more challenging book. Of course you can also read his books on Wagner which also talks of aesthetics through Wagner’s operas in a more wider sense such as ‘The Ring of Truth’ (2016) and ‘Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption’ (2020) - which also happens to be my favourite opera.

I honestly didn’t know where to start in answering your question because it’s such a huge and complicated subject. So I let it stew a bit at the back of my brain until I felt I could pen a few vaguely intelligible thoughts down for you. It’s not an ideal answer but it is an attempt. At the outset I’m not going to talk about Immanuel Kant because in a sense he got the ball rolling on the whole field of aesthetics. Not because I don’t like Kant, because I do, but because he takes up too much space here and I would never do him justice.

Let’s step back a bit and start with the idea of aesthetics first. Aesthetics is classically defined as the study of the beautiful in art. Thomas Henry Huxley, a Victorian biologist best remembered as ‘Darwin’s bulldog,’ set the definition as a list: a beauty in appearance, visual appeal, an experience, an attitude, a property of something, a judgment, and a process. This expanded meaning touches on the original Greek aisthesis, which deals with feelings and sensations. Aesthetics, in this sense, is not limited to the thing itself, but rather is a holistic term encompassing the focal point - the object, performance, atmosphere, etc. - and the experience of and response to that focal point.

However, Huxley’s elucidation, like many others, say some critics, suffers from an over-emphasis on beauty. While aesthetic engagement often involves perceptions of beauty, this is not the only (or even foremost) criterion of artistic merit. Art can be aesthetically satisfying without necessarily being “beautiful” in the conventional sense of eliciting pleasure.

Applied to music, aesthetics might be conceived as the relationship of music to the human senses. Rather than judging whether or not a composition is beautiful, or why one piece is more beautiful than another, attention shifts to the interplay between musical stimuli and the interior realm of sensations. The onus of appraisal moves from the cold tools of theoretical analysis to the auditor.

For some thinkers, this is the only appropriate location for aesthetic assessment. Nineteenth-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that music taps into channels of pure emotions: “Music does not express this or that particular and definite joy, this or that sorrow or pain, or horror, or delight, or merriment, or peace of mind; but joy, sorrow, pain, horror, delight, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without accessories, and therefore without their motives.” T. H. Yorke Trotter, founder and principal of the London Academy of Music, echoed Schopenhauer in a 1907 lecture, stating that, while other art forms awaken ideas and images that act on the feelings, music directly stirs “dispositions which we translate by the vague terms, joy, sadness, serenity, etc.”

In this revised view, aesthetic value does not depend on the micro or macro features of a piece, per se, but on how one responds to those features. Emotional arousals are instant aesthetic judgments. It is no accident that the perceived qualities of a piece or passage mirror the responses induced: joyful, mournful, serene, and so forth. The intensity of the emotion might separate one piece from another, but the immediacy of the music - as Schopenhauer and Yorke described it - seems to defy such classifications. Among other things, integrating (or equating) aesthetics with emotions underscores the subjectivity of the topic, and highlights the interconnectedness and simultaneity of stimulus, experience, and evaluation.

When one talks about feelings and music we inevitably come to the issue of sound. Music is sound - or the gaps between it too if you want to be precise like famed Argentine pianist and conductor Daren Barenboim.

The raw materials of music include pitch, rhythm, durations, dynamics, texture and timbre. The deliberate ordering of these building blocks of sound and silence produces what we instantly recognise as a musical creation. To be sure, definitions of music vary from rigid to loose, and postmodern requirements are not always as stable or confined as conventional views. But, however far the envelope is stretched and however ambiguous music is made out to be, most of us can agree with seventeenth-century English churchman Thomas Fuller: “Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilised into time and tune.”

Understandably then, comments on the nature of music usually address its audibility: it is an art form directed at the ears. Our sense of hearing distinguishes between music and the other sounds that constantly bombard us. The very concept of music derives from and depends upon our faculty of perceiving sound. Yet it can be argued that the ears are merely the necessary entry point. As soon as we are made aware of music, it is translated into mood, memory and movement. As poet Wallace Stevens eloquently wrote: “Music is feeling, then, not sound.”

The listener’s response to specific music will vary in type and intensity. She might feel very hopeful, a little bit sad, extremely calm, slightly anxious, and so on. These reactions may or may not be the intention of the composer or performer, and may change according to when and where the piece is heard. But in almost every instance, human perception converts music into feeling. Perhaps the clearest evidence of this is how we typically portray music. We most often fixate on music’s experiential properties, or its “personality.” Anthropomorphic qualities are freely projected upon a piece: charming, aggressive, warm, tender, brutish, exuberant, consoling, frustrating, etc. This is partly because of the difficulty of identifying and discussing music’s formal properties. But it is mainly because the formal properties are but a means to an end. When we call a composition happy, we are basically saying that it makes us feel happy. The resulting emotion is so dominant that it becomes the character of the music. Priority is given to effect over sound.

In some sense, music can be thought of as a delivery system for emotional content. We do not experience music so much as we experience ourselves experiencing music. Our ears funnel the sound to a deeper layer of our being, a layer where sound is made significant. Of course, not all music is equally effective and not every listener is equally moved by musical stimuli. But even the most literate musicians and harshest critics will admit, readily or reluctantly, that music is predominantly about emotions. It only begins as sound.

And now we come to Roger Scruton. Scruton ask the basic question if music is sound can it also be a language?

Scruton’s gives illuminating illustrations to address this question. For example, he writes about one episode that under the Stalinist regime, the last movements of Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony were often reversed in order to bring the work to a triumphal, rather than despairing, conclusion. The reason that listeners find this reversal unsatisfactory, says Roger Scruton, is that the third movement cannot be heard as an answer to the fourth. But why does its failure to respond seem wrong? Why should we even expect to hear it as an answer? And should we describe the Sixth Symphony as an expression of Tchaikovsky’s despair, an evocation of its listeners’ despair, or the depiction of despair in general?

Such questions, never satisfactorily answered, trouble musical aestheticians, and are tackled by Scruton’s impressive range across music, philosophy, and cultural aesthetics. His quest begins with the rudimentary but difficult question ‘what is a sound?’ and, using musical illustrations, builds up through music’s aspects to its place in morality and culture. Sounds, Scruton argues, are ‘pure events’, which do not happen to any thing. Unlike colours, tastes and textures with which they are often classed, sounds are emitted by, but not inherent in, what produces them. But whereas with a nonmusical sound we may often hear it as what produced it (for instance, ‘hear a car’ or ‘hear a bell’), a musical tone is quite cut free from its causal moorings. We hear it not as ‘someone playing the oboe over there’ and ‘someone playing the violin a few feet away’ but as part of a musical gestalt. Each note seems to be engendered by its precursor and rightly to respond to it “as though indifferent to the world of physical causes.”

Similarly we hear notes as higher and lower, rising and falling, and the melody moves from its beginning to its end. Yet where could the movement of pitch and melody occur? We refer to material sounds, yet under a description that no material sounds could satisfy, and to abandon these metaphors is to abandon discussion of music, which cannot dispense with them.

Music does not fit into a scientific account of the world, any more than a smile does, but is part of the world as we live it, and even of a world beyond contingency. For, says Scruton, in the inexorable necessity by which “each note requires its successor” we glimpse true freedom – the ‘causality of reason’ which belongs to rational action, the ‘transcendental unity’ of our scattered selves. And in gaining “a first-person perspective on a life that is no one’s”, we enter a ‘dance of sympathy’ with others.

This abstract, mystical argument is a gradually accumulating motif through Scruton’s concrete technical examples. As usual his wistful mysticism is accompanied by slashing ‘take no prisoners’ attacks - on the Marxist reductionism that would degrade the last five centuries of European music to an accident of power relations, on how ‘early music’ authenticity only fossilises and obscures the music it purports to reconstruct, on sentimentality and cliché.

All of which he is right and I’ve never come across a Marxist or far left leaning cultured aesthete to argue otherwise - if anyone knows of any I would be grateful to them for pointing them out to me as I want to be open to contrarian views. But to be honest, I’ve not seen anything to refute what Scruton’s says how Marxism cultural thought reduces art and culture to mere power relations. It’s like they have a one lens to see the world and it blinds them to nuance and complexity as only true conservatives are apt to see and then lament.

Which brings me nicely to where all this is going in terms of real world stakes and consequences . Like Plato, Scruton sees music as an important moulder of, and index to, a culture’s moral character. He has written movingly how much he laments the way tonality is no longer available to composers in our current spiritual condition, and the loss of exclusive standards of taste which, paradoxically, enabled a universality of allusiveness. He mourns the decay of aristocratic culture, the rampancy of anomie and consumerism. Instead we’re left with cheap disposable music as quickly consumed as a McDonald’s meal. He has described Mary J Blige’s “Get to Know You Better” that its limited melody is “emphasised by the yukky 13th chords and droopy vamping which open the piece, with a sound that suggests someone trying carefully to puke into a wine glass.” Ouch.

I personally think he has a point but I still think he doesn’t appreciate what other musical art forms such as jazz (which I love) can also reach the heights of aesthetic beauty. I would say the same for 70s rock music (Led Zeppelin for example) and other forms of music. I would consider myself less militant than Scruton in that regard but at the same time I understand where he is coming from.

All this may sound (pardon the pun) like the grumblings of Scruton as a curmudgeonly old man charting the passing of a decaying Western civilisation, but if music is a language then how much more we are blasé about losing local languages and dialects - even within one country - that were once thriving and spoken but now are either dead or dying.

Elsewhere in his writings he laments the triumph of American-English that is almost complete. Of course the merit of English as a global language is that it enables people of different countries to converse and do business with each other. But languages are not only a medium of communication, which enable nation to speak unto nation. They are also repositories of culture and identity.

In many countries the all-engulfing advance of English threatens to damage or destroy much local culture. This is sometimes lamented even in England itself, for though the language that now sweeps the world is called English, the culture carried with it is increasingly American. Native English-speakers, however, are becoming less competent at other languages: only nine students graduated in Arabic from universities in the United States last year, and the British are the most monoglot of all the peoples of the EU. Thus the triumph of English not only destroys the tongues of others; it also isolates native English-speakers from the literature, history and ideas of other peoples. It is, in short, a thoroughly dubious triumph.

How much is more true with classical music as a language that also preserves and embodies cultural history and national identity when we compare it to the disposability of modern commodified pop music.

Scruton’s works are not for the faint hearted. He can be priggish and abrasive, but often with wit and style. But Scruton is always thought provoking and intellectually provocative. But even Scruton with his undoubted experience in both music and philosophy isn’t any closer to providing solutions to age old aesthetic questions of what is music. I suspect Roger Scruton wouldn’t want to be the final voice but invite us to add our own voice to these interesting questions of beauty and aesthetics in music.

Thanks for your question

#ask #question #roger scruton #scruton #aesthetics #music #sound #culture #classical music #music theory #pop music #society #composer #schopenhauer #language #history #western society #civilisation #personal

49 notes · View notes

xeter-group · 8 months

Text

Just some thoughts about my experience with arts and humanities

Something I realised recently is that like...my high school self had no sense of anything outside stem. Like I could not comprehend any kind of art.

Like I would look at a painting and just be like...ok thats a depiction of something. So what. If it was abstract I'd just sort of look at it and be like ????

I would look at dancing and be like...huh I guess they really are moving around. I remember being so confused why people danced.

I would hear music and just not really pay attention, or when I did it was at most because I found the lyrics funny or catchy. I didn't really listen to music in high school, or dance. I knew a load of epic rap battles of history though. I certainly didn't appreciate music at all.

When I read fiction as a young child it was mainly plot related. Which sure, is a valid and normal kind of thing to enjoy, but I don't know if I'd call it "art" as much as generally "culture". I didn't love any storytelling techniques or anything or read into meanings. I didn't love certain characters or anything.

When I was forced to read and analyse books and plays for a while I literally thought counting your analytical devices was the purpose. And at another point I thought that nobody could REALLY believe what we had to write. It was just made up stuff, or at best just using language devices for fun while explicitly saying something. Why people used language devices was kind of foreign to me, but I knew I got points for identifying them.

I didn't really watch movies or anything either.

I understood geography and history somewhat well as a type of science, or at least an inquiry into how reality works if you think its not science. And I understood things like economic politics from a similar lens. But I think there is a significant difference here between what I mentioned before.

And yes, you don't need to be able to analyse and write essays about a thing for it to be art but I wasn't feeling anything at all. Which is just...confusing to me? How did this happen? Because now I listen to music because I enjoy it. I watch TV shows when I have time. I'm super into reading about philosophy, politics, and economics. I dance to my music when I'm at home and can feel some sense of satisfaction watching dancing. I still don't really get visual art but whatever. How did I go my entire childhood not understanding art? Was someone meant to tell me or do you guys just figure it out on your own? I feel behind now when I listen to people gush about certain lines or characterisations of people and I'm just like ???? oh I guess now you point it out I see it. Huh.

This vaguely reminds me of how I basically didn't care about people as friends for all of primary school. I had 'friends' but it was more of 'oh lets do stuff with these people' and not like 'i care about this person as a person'. At the end I remember just being like "yep ok don't need to see them again, bye..". Only in high school did I start to care about people as humans and want to spend time with them and know them and care about them.

I don't know if this is some kind of developmental delay or something. At least it did wonders for the stem part of my brain because I basically never had to try hard to understand any stem subject. I instead focused all of my trying into improve test performance, which i fucking DESPISE. what a waste of my life. At least at the end I started teaching myself chemistry at a pace I enjoyed.

4 notes · View notes

noroi1000 · 2 years

Note

Can i request jjk romantic matchup?

I'm female, my pronouns are she/her. I'm istp 5w4 548. My zodiac sign is leo.I don't really mind any gender gender. I'm fine with any gender.

I'm ambivert,I'm very laid back and prefer to go with the flow of life but sometimes come off as ego-centric and domineering. I have to admit I’m a lazy person who prefers having a leisure more than anything else. But once i find my motivation I'm actually pretty hardworking, I won't stop or take breaks until i completely finish what I started. I mostly spends my time as a stoic and a calm person and i might even come off as apathetic towards the world around me [even tho I’m not]. I’m usually perceived as being insensitive because i generally prefer to deal with emotions in my own head rather than openly [and somehow I'm still well liked?!] tbh I often think I’m above others, yet I am always willing to acknowledge that I’m a total piece of shit [very rarely tho] Sometimes i have fantasies and ideals that I want to start creating or becoming but i give myself a reality check and let the dream fade away. I’m very innovative but still choose the practical route a lot. It’s easy for me to create goals and envision the end results but it’s ridiculously hard for me to remain committed to the process. I have a very big ego but one word alone is enough to destroy it. i Will never admit my wrong, unless internally. I'm playful around people i like [friends, family, classmates] and if I believe I'm right I'll passive agressivly fight you to prove my point [even if I'm wrong]. Like i said i have hard time committing to something i loose interest, motivation and get bored rather easily. If I'm stressed about something i bottle everything up and worry about it alone. Not because I don't want to burden other or anything simply because my pride and ego is getting in my way. I'm not really a jealous person and even if i get jealous i keep it to myself and try my best to hide it. I care about what others think of me [more like what others think of my parents] so towards strangers and people that know my parents I'm very polite.

I tend to get bored of things easily or i get insecure that I won't be able to complete it and overthinking things and give up on it so i try not to plan ahead. I notice negative traits in people [myself included] before good traits. I always try to be realistic but my overthinking turns me into negative person. I'm very future orientated person so i pick things depending on how useful it'll be for me in the future. Getting angry, yelling, insulting and being agressive in general is my defense mechanism when I'm sad or in an argument. I'm very prideful and stubborn person I actually like socializing but usually i can't find the topic to talk about with people. I LOVE talking about myself but I'd rather die than share my struggles, feelings and personal things similar to this. I'm taking them to grave. I'm pretty biased person. I hate when people insult me even when they don't mean it and they're jocking not even i insult myself. I'm better at socializing older people than people my age. I like to think that I'm a great listener but I'm insecure about my reactions to their stories. Even if i find it funny i find it hard to express it on my face. I like arguments [not with my loved ones]

I like horror genre [movies, books, analogue horror and etc], watching movies, listening to true. I love music especially indie and rock music. i like Researching and learning more about myself. I love reading greek mythology and Japanese urban legends. I'm interested in psychology and philosophy. I also find researching about demonology and ancient religions interesting. I love Victorian/romantic/vampire gothic aesthetic I'm also very in love with gothic novels. I wouldn't really consider this as a hobby cause i do it once or twice a year but i also play volleyball and piano. I also really love spicy food. Red is my favourite colour and cats and snakes are my favourite animals.

As for my idea type I value honesty and loyalty, I'm more attracted [romantically or platonically] to people who are confident in themselves and their abilities. I also value partner/friend that isn't overprotective and allows me my independence and let's me do things my way. I don't think i have a specific type i just want my partner to keep me entertained as i tend to get bored rather easily.

My love language is act of service and quality time.

I think your Jujutsu kaisen matchup is

Nanami = a stoic person who is not always as calm as you might think. He doesn't show much emotions and deals mainly with his feelings in his head.

Despite his frequent calm and seriousness, he explodes easily.

He may be boring for some, but he hates certain activities and his job. That's what makes it seem like he Hates life. But he just doesn't like to work the way he works. Working for him is just shit.

Home and any place where he likes to spend time… He is then at the most relaxed.

Even though he has dreams for everything, he focuses more on what is now. If he has to do something now, even if it has nothing to do with what he wants, it is now and not the future. He'll do what he does now.

He produces an aura of firmness, seriousness and almost domination.

You could say he's kind of lazy. Even though he is also hardworking.

He never liked going to work.

He would like to stay home always.

Often he has some incentive to continue the work he is doing, but work is work. There is no chance that he will ever like and will love to leave the house in the morning and come home tired in the evening. At work, he does not take breaks, and just tries to do his best to finish something.

Basically, when he knows something has to do with him, he'll think it's his fault, even if it isn't. But he will always find something logical to confirm his mistake.

He is completely different among people close to him. Even though he doesn't smile with some of them, it doesn't mean that he won't do it with others. He will smile and laugh in front of the loved ones he likes best. With those who make him feel good.

Whenever he is right, he will try to prevent anyone from saying that he is wrong. Let them fight him, but if he knows that he is absolutely right, he will fight for it so that someone else will finally understand it.

He will do everything himself. Unless he has someone next to him who blows everything on him. Then he will give half of the work to that person anyway. After all, he will never take over the responsibilities of someone else. And he will say firmly no.

He will not burden his relatives and people whom he knows that they need rest. He will take care of everything that will make people close to him have better life. He takes responsibility for it.

Besides, everyone who gets to know him better notices that if he likes someone, he will be very polite.

He tries to be nice to people around him, even if they irritate him. This is his good manners and gentleman behavior.

He often looks at the negative qualities in people, but he also knows the good ones, so it all levels out. It is important that someone will not run away from him immediately when he realizes that something is irritating for him.

Also a realist who has goals in life and dreams, but focuses on thinking about what he is going through right now.

If he has someone to love, he will focus very much on it ❤️

Headcanon:

• Talk to him about yourself. If you like it, he accepts it. Especially when you want to talk to him. Conversation is much better when getting to know each other, and that is a really important point in his life. If you couldn't get along, it would probably be worse between the two of you. It is definitely better to talk than to sit together in silence. After all, that's not what the nice atmosphere is about.

He will be eager to listen to you when you tell about what you like, some stories from your life or when you say your opinion. He will listen to you, and if you wish, he can add something about himself if necessary.

• Honestly, he never insulted you on purpose in his life. And he will never want to do that. For him, offending people close to him is the worst that can happen. It can hurt you. What he never really wanted.

He wants to take care of you and your well-being. Physical and emotional.

• But he is older than his age (newspapers, books, quiet mornings and evenings) so you get along very well. (Even if he's not that old)

• The perfect date for you (or just the perfect evening): watching some movie that is interesting for you. Just spending time together watching something. At home or at the cinema. Popcorn, drink. Spending time side by side, being focused on the screen where there is something interesting.

You can lie on his shoulder, grab his hand. Keep him close to you and you'll never have to let go.

• Just as he is eager to talk, he will also listen to interesting facts about what you have read. Mythologies, legends, religions. All of this has at least a hint of truth. These are all books that educate. And it's interesting. Therefore, he will also hear about it or read with you.

• Everything you like is accepted. For him, your style is interesting. Besides, he remembers what you like. All your favorite things are delivered to you as gifts.

• He never lies. He will always tell you the truth, even if it is very painful.

But he'll never have to say anything so painful that he doesn't love you.

Affection for you, love, loyalty. Everything for you. That's why he'll never leave you.

• He would like to take care of you to keep you safe. But he will understand and will even support independence.

• He would spend most of his time with you whenever he can. He would give you anything just to be happy. That you feel most loved. Everything for you.

"You are the most interesting woman I have ever met. I'll do anything for you, just tell me what. If you want, I'll be the best for you. "

#jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jjk x you #jjk headcanons #jujutsu kaisen matchups #anime matchup #nanami x you #kento nanami #nanami kento #jujustu kaisen

7 notes · View notes

lovelanguageisolate · 2 years

Text

Say what you will about Fukuyama, but I credit reading The End of History and the Last Man with realizing I have been keeping the thumotic part of my soul on a hunger diet—and helping me understand the role of thumos in politics generally.

It seems that the only popular part of the internet that cares about thumos is the meninist internet. And the meninist internet, so far as I can tell, thinks thumos is roughly the magic juice inside men that causes them to beat up motherfuckers in bars who spill the drinks of their friends. And this isn't...obviously wrong, but to me, the best example of a thumotic person is Gandhi. Or maybe those people who set themselves on fire in protest of various things.

Thumos seems to be about the unwillingness to trade basic dignity* against either mere survival (which, according to Hegel, is beastly and slavish) or fungible economic goods and base pleasures (which, according to Nietzsche, is Last Man-ish—that is, nihilistic, ahistorical, listless, feckless, pain avoidant dicklessness impotence). Thumos is, centrally, about insisting that something has dignity because one is a person** and had better be treated like it!

When you don't get respect, your thumos is injured. If you take the disrespect, your thumos will wither from under you until you are a powerless, soul-trampled husk who doesn't listen to their own spirit. On the other hand, thumos must be the slave of reason and good judgement, lest it get out of control and start setting fire to things and biting that dumb bitch who stepped on your last nerve and should have known better.

I think a lot of the social media Perpetual Fires of Gehenna rage machine is far more intelligible in this light than in realpolitik/public choice theory terms of people politicking because they want certain goodies out of the government budgetary treasure chest or whatever. Angry Internet People are usually not upset that this or that person didn't get a certain amount of money for a thing. Rather, as Noah Smith has argued I think pretty persuasively, woke people online are mad because they don't feel they or others are respected.*** Fukuyama himself now thinks a similar thing has been going on on the identitarian right in Europe and the USA.

In general, I consider the stuff on thumos to be a strong point of Fukuyama's work. It's interesting and seems to explain the world in some helpful ways that other approaches seem to miss, try to get rid of, or unfairly minimize, to the harm of their own causes. I also think I understand now somewhat better why I'm deflated despite being manifestly comfortable and do Jungian shadow-throwing about internet activists, especially the full gamut of those in anything political and gendered, even activists who make good points or I'm sympathetic to. I don't respect this shadow-throwing on my part, and I think the thumos idea helps me treat them and myself with more respect.

And of course, as a fairly orthodox Popperian critical rationalist, I am not supposed to appreciate Plato or Hegel, especially not the bits that feel kinda mystical or low-key fashy. Alas, I am a thoroughly intellectually promiscuous internet idea ho and will not be put upon to justify my lifestyle, proclivities, or trashy taste in memeplexes even to you, dear reader, so I kindly ask that you not tell the discerning parts of the internet where you heard this wooey nonsense.

---

*The dignity can be of oneself, of those esteemed people or things one recognizes, or even of the truth, which would be insulted in allowing blatant falsehoods or affronts to reason and spirit to stand.

**The only philosopher I know of who has tried to explain why personhood is an important moral category of similarly dignified beings for good fundamental natural reasons is David Deutsch, who calls people "universal explainers". Whether this speaks more to the poverty of my own philosophical training or to how unproductive most academic philosophy is, especially that disconnected from physics and information science, is unclear to me.

***Of course, orthodox Marxists and other leftists in a hardcore materialist vein who understand their own projects well will probably recoil violently from this idea—or indeed from the suggestion that there is anything like "dignity" that isn't reactionary false consciousness or doesn't reduce to control over the stocks and flows of the material world. However, those people are in a somewhat tough spot to explain, if something like thumos doesn't real, how labor is necessarily alienated from the fruits of its labor under capitalism, or indeed why a perfectly rational worker who so much as has ordinal utilities should give a shit about the rate of exploitation if they bring home more bacon. Nor have vanguardists ever not helped themselves to what sure seems to be thumotic energy at any historical point. All this to say that if I were this kind of person, I would want to answer the question of how the politics of dignity, which often seems economically nonsensical, can fall so neatly out of materiality.

#thonkpiece #fukuyama #thumos #dignity #philosophy #hegel #plato #friedrich nietzsche

17 notes · View notes

samthesimpssss · 2 years

Note

Hii can i request jujutsu kaisen matchup?

I'm female, she/her pronouns, Bisexual, my zodiac sign is leo and I'm istp 5w4 548

I'm ambivert, I'm very laid back and prefer to go with the flow of life but sometimes come off as ego-centric and domineering. I have to admit I’m a lazy person who prefers having a leisure more than anything else. But once i find my motivation I'm actually pretty hardworking, I won't stop or take breaks until i completely finish what I started. I mostly spends my time as a stoic and a calm person and i might even come off as apathetic towards the world around me [even tho I’m not]. I’m usually perceived as being insensitive because i generally prefer to deal with emotions in my own head rather than openly [and somehow I'm still well liked?!] tbh I often think I’m above others, yet I am always willing to acknowledge that I’m a total piece of shit [very rarely tho] Sometimes i have fantasies and ideals that I want to start creating or becoming but i give myself a reality check and let the dream fade away. I’m very innovative but still choose the practical route a lot. It’s easy for me to create goals and envision the end results but it’s ridiculously hard for me to remain committed to the process. I have a very big ego but one word alone is enough to destroy it. i Will never admit my wrong, unless internally. I'm playful around people i like [friends, family, classmates] and if I believe I'm right I'll passive agressivly fight you to prove my point [even if I'm wrong]. Like i said i have hard time committing to something i loose interest, motivation and get bored rather easily. If I'm stressed about something i bottle everything up and worry about it alone. Not because I don't want to burden other or anything simply because my pride and ego is getting in my way. I'm not really a jealous person and even if i get jealous i keep it to myself and try my best to hide it. I care about what others think of me [more like what others think of my parents] so towards strangers and people that know my parents I'm very polite.

I dislike sweet food, sweating and heat, dogs, people making chewing or any similar annoying noises, when people baby talk or "pout", being interrupted, i hate smell of mushrooms and my math teacher. I can't stand too quiet places but i also can't stand too loud places either. I don't like romance movies [i like romance genre i just don't like romance movies]

My love language is act of service and quality time.

I have match you up with…

Kento Nanami!

- to be honest, he understands what it’s like to be hardworking and get stuff done right away without stopping, but with that being said he will make sure you’re taking care of yourself

- You find comfort with one another that sometimes the both of you would confide one another with your struggles even though you usually don’t but then again you built that trust within your relationship and you genuinely care for each other

- he’s the type of person who will support you in anyways that he can, because in the end he cares about your success and want a fruitful life for your own good so when you lose motivation or if you get bored of doing something he’ll be there to push and motivate you through it :)

- let’s be honest here though, the both of you would mostly have your dates at home 😅

- if you are jealous even when you don’t show it Nanami is the kind of guy who can read you and he will always reassure you that you are the only person for him.

“Don’t worry my love, I won’t be going anywhere I will be by your side till the day I die *kiss* I love you”

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk matchups #jujutsu kaisen matchups #jjk headcanons #jujutsu kaisen headcanons #kento nanami #nanami kento #anime matchups

3 notes · View notes

clandestineobserver · 4 months

Text

First Blog wow

Holy shit this is my first post I guess. Thought to start a blog as a New Year's resolution. Might be fun, might not be, who knows. My style may change as I inevitably gain notoriety for being such a mysterious enigma, dishing out wisdom to internet strangers that feed on my every word, like a suckling infant on the teat of knowledge (my thoughts and opinions being the aforementioned teat).

I used to have a Tumblr account many moons ago, like when I was 12 or so. From my memory of my feed back in the day, it's weird to think that I was this close (*index finger and thumb and inch apart*) to becoming a goth edgy edge lord. Even weirder, and kind of regretful, that my type could in fact have been a big tiddy goth girl. But that's how life goes I guess, and thank fuck it has gone in the direction it has. Because how else would the epic Clandestine Observer blog have started. Word is in the street that this is _the_ best blog in all of the intranets. I didn't want to believe it at first, but I ran it by the CIA, and yeah, it checks out. So, you know it's not coming from me.

Anyway, enough of the insufferable chit chat, and quite frankly, poor attempt at banter (if you were entertained by this so far, I am sorry to say, your brain follicles have been expertly tricked and manipulated). I probably should get onto the serious topics: what this blog is going to be about and why.

I feel like I had a hell of a lot more introspection about life in my childhood. I hate to admit it, and it scares me to admit it quite frankly, but childhood me was a lot more wise than present day me, and generally had their shit together. That guy had their life on track, or at least had a vision. Present me? Meh not so much. I used to only write with fountain pens in my childhood. If I had written down a pathway, a sense of identity and personhood, and had given a detailed description of what I wanted to achieve in life, with this fountain pen as a child, it is as if somehow, without realising it, while growing up, I spilled water all over this document and now I am left with wet paper with splodges of ink and bleeding lines that vaguely resemble my sense of identity. I don't know, I feel like I know who I am but barely. Maybe it's due to growth though.

So I thought that if I started an introspective blog on what I'm thinking about every now and then, maybe discuss some interesting topics or something, I could get some of that back.

Now here is a list I have compiled on topics that interest me and therefore, all the cool and quirky things that I will talk about in such a way that makes me come across as a mysterious and aloof individual. I will now not be known as a person, I am a phenomenon. An effect. Scientists would be gagging (yes gagging) for a bit of knowledge on how this brain of mine works.

Anyway, here it is:

Introspection about life and life events

Short essays (or essay plans for when I am too lazy) about any topics that interest me, may that be a movie or show that I have recently watched or about deep philosophical ideas that would trigger you to reconsider you whole entire life

Books

Domestic politics, international relations and global events

Social issues that I am thinking about (probably will be about my single hood. Until I find a partner that is, after which point, I will refer to you, dear audience, as pathetic virgins

Physics and philosophy - my baes

And a whole lot more I am sure

So, ladies and gents, people and non-peoples, strap in for an exilleraing series of posts that will hopefully make it worth your while reading it. And hopefully make you coming back for more. Clandestinely of course, because it will be a guilty pleasure. You'll try to kick the habit, but before you even realise it, you'd want to read more posts, more blogs, more analysis on life. Your body will depend on it. Every quickly little quip is a tiny hit of dopamine that your brain will slurp on, giving you just enough of a kick to keep on going, but not quite enough to satiate your innate desire to read more. You'll be embarrassed to admit to your weakness of keeping up to date with this hilarious blog, keep it a hidden secret from your family and friends (but please don't, share or something idk).

Anyway, that's all. You'll hear from me soon hopefully, unless I've decided to take this post down because I couldn't bare the cringe of having it up. BYE

P.S. when the fuck did you have to label posts as mature on Tumblr? What the fuck, what has happened to this glorious bit of software. I faintly remember the whole SFW transition controversy of Tumblr but I thought that was nudity and shit. Is swearing for mature audiences now?

#blog #dear diary #introspection #blog intro #taylor swift

1 note · View note

187days · 1 year

Text

Day One Hundred Forty-Two

Today was an early release day. We all had work to do in our departments: curriculum redesign stuff for next year, looking at learning progressions, etc, etc...

My World students spent the shortened class time working on their book papers. The goal was to finish a draft by the end of the block, and I was really impressed with how some students gave themselves little deadlines each day in order to meet that goal (doing for themselves what we’d done together when they wrote religion/philosophy essays a couple weeks ago). There are some students who still struggle with time management- and, of course, some who didn’t read their books and are still trying to find ways around that- so I have work to do in the future to help them. I did ask that they turn in their drafts, so I could at least see what they’ve done so far and give them advice on how to continue. I was able to do that today, and I’m going to leave feedback on the finished drafts during my prep time tomorrow so that students can revise in class.

My APGOV class was smaller than usual- students, especially seniors, sometimes opt to skip the early release days- but large enough for me to put students in two groups to compare and contrast the preambles of the Democratic and Republican party platforms. That was me segue into discussing the role of political parties as a linkage institution. I lectured on that for about fifteen minutes, assigned an article on party realignment and dealignment for homework, and then the bell rang as if it was on cue.

I was able to eat lunch with folks I don’t normally get to eat with: Mrs. T, Mrs. R, basically all of the foreign language teachers. I caused a stir, though, because the conversation turned to the fact that we haven’t done any active shooter drills since Alice training last fall, mainly because the police started revising their safety plans after Uvalde, and then another shooting happened that made them revise more, and then another, and... you get it. But my colleagues want The Principal to put out whatever plans they do have, they want us to have discussions with our students and maybe even drills. I’m fine with discussions, I’m not fine with Alice-style drills, because they’re ineffective at best and traumatic at worst. I said something to the effect of, “They just exist to make us all feel like we’re actually doing something,” and that did not go over well.

Should’ve just kept my mouth shut.

Anyways, after lunch we all went to our meetings. I walked into mine and told Mrs. Z I’d broken up a fight on Monday and gotten observed teaching on Tuesday, so I’m having an epic week. She insisted on hearing all the details, and that led to a tangent about yesterday’s school board elections (side note: our school budget and teaching contract both passed, woohoo!) because several candidates named school safety as an issue they wanted to focus on if elected. And then we got down to business.

We had about an hour to work on our own afterwards. I wrote a new vocab practice assignment to give in World tomorrow after students finish revising their papers, set everything up for my next APGOV lesson (on campaigns and elections), responded to some emails, and called it a day.

1 note · View note

fangirleaconmigo · 2 years

Note

Do you think it's bad for a cis woman to read gay smut fanfictions or the opposite, as it's not really about exploring the reader's own sexuality?

Hi Anon,

I know this question is controversial in fandom, and liking peace and quiet as much as I do (and disliking Discourse as much as I do), it would be much smarter for me to just delete your ask.

However, I have some extremely strong feelings about this, so I’m going to dive in and hope for the best in how it is received. (famous last words) It is going to be long, because I do think it warrants careful thought. The question of shame, fetishization, and homophobia is an important one, so I will address that. This may be a lot more than you wanted, but asking me any questions about morality is going to open up a huge ol can of worms. I am a wordy bitch. So here we go.

Firstly you ask, is it ‘bad’. To explain my own personal system of morality, my measurement for whether something is bad always boils down to, does it hurt people or does it help people? And when the thing we’re judging is a personal action someone has taken, I ask myself, is this person making a choice for themselves (as is their right to do) or are they making a choice for other people?

Obviously this can get very complex. I studied political philosophy in college, so I know that when you are in the fuzzy areas, you can debate these things until the end of time. People are still arguing over moral ideas put forward centuries ago. BUT that is the basis, the starting point for my own system of morals.

So. Does reading fiction in private, or being horny harm others or even affect others? No. Obviously not. Does it help anyone? Yes! It helps the person reading it! People really really really underestimate how much pleasure, a release, a bit of serotonin, can turn your mood and therefore your mental health around. I’m all for profound emotional shit, but let’s not overlook the fundamental role simple things like pleasure, fun, play, and release make in our quality of life and mental health. Eat a cookie! Smell a flower! Laugh! Orgasm! It’s all the good brain chemicals, folks.

That’s even setting aside (for the moment) the more profound ways reading smut can help you with your own trauma, shame, or general desire to explore your sexuality. It’s also even setting aside the way that smut fics often also have strong emotional elements of love, connection, learning to trust, and healing from trauma. I am setting that aside because even though it is true, it is not necessary to my argument.

So, it doesn’t hurt anyone (I will get to the fetishization question, bear with me.) And it is usually great for you. Or not! You’re a human being. You get to decide what is best for you.

Further, asking “should a woman with X gender identity and X sexuality be reading gay smut of two men” requires a few things. It implies that I am going to pass moral judgement on someone for what fiction they read, and base that judgment on their gender identity and sexuality. So, it requires me to know what that gender identity and sexuality is. Then, it requires me to say...you should or should not be reading that.

So my first issue with that is that I always reject efforts to police, restrict, or gatekeep art. Yes, even horny art is art. Even art created to provoke a sexual response, which many people (often very religious people, but also a subset of online fandom activists) consider a “lower” or “base” function of the human experience, IS art. (I don’t believe the human experience can be dissected in that way, but that is neither here nor there.)

Just as importantly, I viscerally recoil from any effort to police people’s gender or sexuality to see if they are allowed to read (or are just shamed for reading) certain material. Just. Whooooeeee, no thank you. Dear god, no.

Setting aside the fact that people’s sexuality and gender evolve, and they may not even know how to label themselves, this mentality, this sort of approach, often requires people to ‘out’ themselves. It demands that they publicly disclose their own sexual and gender identities in order to enjoy fiction in peace. It is, and I cannot stress this enough, toxic, abusive, and always damages queer people far more than anyone else. It is the exact opposite of queer liberation. Please look up Isabel Fall. There is an article on Vox that thoroughly walks you through one example of people shaming someone and demanding their identity, sending a trans woman into the hospital, and back into the closet.

Cishet white men literally do not give a fuck what you think about what they read. It is always and I mean ALWAYS LGBTQ people that suffer under the policing and forced outing of sexuality and gender. It also stinks of fascism.

I hear people saying “we aren’t burning books, it’s not censoring, relax.” What if we aren’t actively restricting material? What if we just judge, stigmatize, and shame in order to bully straight people into changing their reading habits? Isn’t that ok?

And what kind of disaster would we call upon ourselves if we don’t force anyone to out themselves? I mean, if you just ‘let’ lgbtq people do what they want without disclosing, you could get a bunch of straight cis women slipping through! They could just be out there! In their homes! On their devices! Being horny for fun!!!

I’m completely fine with that.

I am aware that the conversation happening in fandom spaces is whether it’s inherently fetishizing for women to think two men together in fiction is hot, and whether the smut is the cause of a tendency to fetishize gay men. Since I care a whole lot about fighting homophobia, I’ll take that seriously and address that.

People always use the example of “but how is this different from men lusting after lesbians? Don’t women hate it when men fetishize lesbians? How is this different?” That is always the question. “What if the genders were reversed?”

So I am going to start there.

As a gay woman, I can tell you, what a man beats it to in private is his business. I could not be less interested in the details of that. It doesn’t affect or harm me. It is literally none of my business.

What harms me is when a man mistreats gay women. When he thinks he can ‘convert’ a woman, says that she hasn’t had the right dick yet, or asks gay women to perform for him.

And I can say with confidence that men reading explicit material about two women has zero to do with this.

(People often bring porn into this, but bringing real human beings performing sex into the equation would require a broader ethical conversation and you asked about smutty fiction, so I’ll keep it focused on that.)

So, to really drive this point home, we need to separate two concepts out.

Sexual attraction vs dehumanization.

Sexual attraction is being hot for someone. It is morally neutral before you have acted on it in a way that involves another human being.

Dehumanization is seeing someone as less than human in some way. Dehumanization is when people believe they have the right to touch, harm, or even kill another person. It makes people believe that another human doesn’t doesn’t need or deserve to decide what happens to their own body. Dehumanizing is how you get young army recruits to kill complete strangers. Dehumanization facilitates bigotry. It shuffles sexual assault under the rug. It devalues life.

Misogyny is a form of dehumanization. It is a form of violence. It is what causes men to feel entitled to demand sexual favors from a woman, and to disregard her sexuality and autonomy. It is not sexual attraction. It is misogyny.

And you do not “get” or “catch” misogyny from smutty fiction.

When men are still boys, before they even pick up a device or a book, they are taught to see women as commodities. They are taught by their parents, their pastors, even CHILDREN’S MEDIA that sexual harassment is comedic, stalking is romantic, and women are prizes to be won. That if they achieve certain milestones required of men, they are entitled to a ‘prize’ of the woman they desire.

Misogyny is systemic. It is everywhere. It’s in the water, the air of our society, no matter where you live. It is global. The thing that makes men walk up to women and demand their bodies is one thing: sheer, mind boggling, entitlement. Audacity. Gall. Fucking nerve. Insidious misogyny.

I know this sounds dramatic to people who don’t experience it. But think about it. Every time someone tells a girl that she is ‘mean’ for not responding to a ‘nice’ guy's advances they are saying...you are a commodity to bestow on someone as a reward. You are not someone who gets to just simply have preferences. That is for ‘real’ human beings. This kind of mentality, in the mind of a violent angry person, is quite literally why men kill women for breaking up with them.

(I know that men, and people of all genders, suffer abuse and violence against them. I am not denying that, I am just having a conversation focused for the moment on violence against women.)

NOW, the constant violence against women in this context (and you may not experience it, but please look at the numbers for rape and domestic violence and other gendered violence) has made people CONFLATE men’s sexual desires with predation.

That is how you get people who profess to be leftists and care about oppressed peoples treating the ENTIRE CONCEPT of men’s attraction to women as predatory and therefore stigmatizing and demonizing the entire concept of sex and men's sexuality. I’ve heard people talk about leftist puritans online and I think a lot of stems from a misguided reaction to a society that allows sexual predation to become rife. No, darlings, no.

The problem isn’t men or their sexuality. The problem is misogyny.

If we are to have even a prayer of a healthy, kind society, we need to separate those two things out. Get a crowbar. Pull them apart. Don’t allow the patriarchy to poison you against something that is an important, fundamental part of who we all are! There is nothing dangerous or shameful or predatory about men being sexually attracted to women.

If men think women are hot as fuck? If they want to read about or think about hot gay ladies together in order to get off? Shit, me too, man!!! ME FREAKING TOO.

We can apply this to the concept of women fetishizing gay men. When we talk about women fetishizing gay men, we are talking about women who ask creepy intrusive questions. Who call gay men demeaning pet names against their wishes. Who touch them without their consent. Who go to gay clubs just to treat it like their own personal entertainment and make everyone feel uncomfortable and on display. These are women who don't give a shit about the personal boundaries or comfort or well being of gay men.

This behavior is revolting. But the root of that behavior isn’t lust. It is homophobia. Homophobia isn’t just ‘I hate gay people’ or ‘I want to beat up gay people’ or ‘I think they shouldn’t get married'. It is also, ‘gay peoples’ sexuality isn’t real or important, and it just exists to entertain me or get me off.’

Again, we are taught homophobia from the cradle in a thousand different insidious ways. People have their homophobia deeply rooted far before they even find out what AO3 is, my friends. Homophobia is a violence. It is evil. It is systemic.

And we cannot combat it without NAMING it. Without UNDERSTANDING IT. Bigotry is baked into our society (whichever one you live in). You have to learn to IDENTIFY IT to COMBAT IT.

And to do that, I am begging people, BEGGING THEM, my god I am on my knees people, (cue Boyz II Men, down on bended knee) to learn the difference between sex and violence. Between attraction and assault. We don’t have a prayer of eliminating bigotry or the shame and stigma around sex until we do that.

Because the stigma and shame we attach to our bodies and to sexual desire (or lack of sexual desire, ace people are valid, all level of sexual desire is valid) are pernicious, violent, and toxic to our self worth and to our very spirits.

This goes back to the question I asked earlier. If we aren’t forced outing people or actively censoring material, isn’t a little shame and bullying ok just to keep the straights on their toes?

It really is not.

Please take it from me, a person with a metric fuckton of experience working through PTSD, depression, anxiety disorder, and dissociative symptoms, most of it due to sexual abuse as a child, that shame about your body and your natural desires (or, again, lack of) is what keeps their boot on your neck. It is what keeps you from healing. It makes you live a half life. It steals joy and health and peace from you. It is the enemy of the human spirit.

My god! There is nothing wrong with experiencing sexual desire for fictional characters or scenarios! There's nothing wrong with being horny in your own house! Lol Just imagine the damage that kind of shame and stigma does to people!

I was raised by fundamentalist Baptist right wingers. They tried to teach me the same thing. That the natural things my body did were shameful and disgusting outside the bounds of a marriage to a Christian man. It turned out all that did was make me a perfect target for predators because no matter what happened I would always feel at fault.

Besides all the abuse, I was also told point blank by my father and my pastors that gay people are all sexual predators, child molesters, and deserve to be executed. You may not see much of this attitude anymore in public spaces like twitter or tumblr. But it is still very very common all over the world. In fact, it is more common than not. And I internalized that to the point that even as a grown woman I am not whole. I still have work to do to get rid of the shame I have around my own sexuality. But I will get there!

And reading sexy fiction online (along with a metric fuckton of therapy, self help books, meditation, several inpatient hospitalizations, and, well, you get the picture, I’ve done a lot of stuff) helped me work through some of the damage that did to me.

So….thanks, sexy fic writers! (I’m going to talk to the sexy fic writers for a second) You cannot know how much you have helped me! Even all the fics that are ‘just’ pwp or ‘just kink’. You cannot know! It has been a process of shedding shame and being able to face up to who I am after having a whole bunch of self loathing dumped into my brain while it was still mushy and forming.

And reading sexy fic that doesn’t contain any representations of my own body has been really, really important to ease into learning to accept myself, because it offers me a space that will not trigger any hatred or shame I have attached to my own body. That is how it has helped me.

But it doesn’t have to ‘help people’. It can just be fun.

So, when women enjoy smut of two men, and people point and say “Look! Look! Those women aren’t gay. They’re just...(gasp, choke) attracted to men!!! And therefore!!! They like two men together!!!” as though it is just a fucking S C A N D A L. I just. It’s hilarious. Most people are horny, and GOD FORBID, some of them like men! (MEN?? NOOOOO, NOT M E N) Let me notify the church real quick. Let me clutch my pearls. Light some flares. Call the red phone. Turn on the bat signal. Help, Batman, help.

So, dear anon, I don’t know why you asked the question. I don’t know whether you believe it is bad, or whether someone has told you it is bad and therefor you feel bad about yourself, but my answer for you and women of any sexual or gender identity who love gay smut, I promise that you are not inherently bad.

Certainly, if people are like ‘I don’t trust women who only ship men’ or if they have critique about the way fics are written, that is their right. You must respect their feelings and their decisions about what they read and who they associate with. They have the right to feel however they want, and read whatever they want. Being a person is complex, and we all have our own perspectives.

But as for you? Being inherently bad? No, no, no.

And as for gay men, I can guarantee you that the absolute last people on planet earth to be horrified by an attraction to men, are gay men.

Just don’t treat real people like they exist to be your little pet or that their queerness exists to fucking entertain or serve you.

Just don’t confuse fiction and reality. That should be easy enough. One is words on a page. The others are living, breathing, human beings.

#ask #fandom #fandom thoughts

4K notes · View notes

blackswaneuroparedux · 2 years

Text

Anonymous asked: What role does humor play in your life? How do you look at comedy and its role in culture? Do you think comedy today is more or less funny as woke culture has its itchy trigger finger at the ready to cancel anyone that mocks it? Is it harder for edgy comedians like Dave Chappelle to remain relevant in today’s toxic society?

Your questions are quite wide and so I hope I can hone in on some of the issues you raised.

I don’t think I’m different from anyone in general in not only loving comedy but also having humour in one’s life. I’ve watched my fair share of comedian stand up sets at comedy clubs and shows (Eddie Izzard, Andy Parsons, Ross Noble, Jack Dee, Stewart Lee, Frankie Boyle and so on).

I try to start my day by watching or reading something funny like an online clip or an article, essay or chapter (think Clive James or Anthony Lane or P.G. Wodehouse) - just to set the tone for the rest of the day. Because let’s face it, one look on the home page of any news media from the BBC or the Economist makes for depressing shitty reading.

Put another way, I’m like the girl who gets up one fine morning and wears a brand new white pair of shoes at school. You just know those white shoes are going to get battered around. They’ll get all kinds muddy shoe prints stomped on it and likely chewing gum and dog poo under it. But least you started the day clean. That’s how I feel about humour in my daily life.

I’m fortunate that I have a close circle of friends who make me laugh and that is precious. We text and send each other stuff throughout the working day. It’s light relief for a stressful day at work.

I try not watch comedy on a plane on my lap top. I think the air stewardess in my business class flight always think I need a sedative because I usually get a severe case of the giggles. I try so hard not to laugh out loud out of respect to the sleeping passengers near me. I just can’t help myself. I wet my knickers laughing so hard.

My perspective on and indeed my insatiable need for comedy in my life can best be summed up by that 18th Century man of letters, Horace Walpole who wrote, “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”

For me the best comedy is hilarious and humane but equally brutal and true. Like many people I grew in a home where humour was the life blood of our family especially around the dinner table and just generally goofing off. The jokes to point out our foibles or pratfalls acted like glue to bind us together more strongly. As times goes on and as one matures you also learn to lean into humour as a personal coping mechanism when dark clouds gather above. But it’s also a mark of maturity that you also become self aware of humour as a commentary on things that lie just beneath the thin skin of society.

Humour has been on the minds of thinkers for centuries. My eldest sister who is a neurosurgeon and is interested in humour as a side topic of interest gave me a book on the psychology of humour as a birthday gift. As Peter McGraw and Joel Warner explain in their insightful book, The Humor Code: A global search for what makes things funny, “Plato and Aristotle contemplated the meaning of comedy while laying the foundations of Western philosophy… Charles Darwin looked for the seeds of laughter in the joyful cries of tickled chimpanzees. Sigmund Freud sought the underlying motivations behind jokes in the nooks and crannies of our unconscious.” A good read.

We tend to see comedy through the romantic lens of the one-off inspired comic whose unique view of the world is entertaining. But the focus on the individual witty voice misses the gigantic, political nature of the task of comedy. Comedy isn’t just a bit of fun. We don’t laugh at things unless they cause us very serious problems at other points in life. We can see this in the standard category of jokes: about relationships, family, sex, money, impotence, bowel movements, identity etc. We laugh most readily around things that in other ways are very distressing. A good joke invariably has a relationship with darkness, anxiety and pain.

I’ve always valued humour in people as a precious gift. I love having a laugh and even more if it’s at my expense. Perhaps that comes more readily to the British who appreciate the existential absurdity of life and don’t particularly make an effort to climb out of the hole they fell into…and if they do then we bring them down a peg or two.

But Northern Europeans have an even drier sense of humour, yes, including the Germans (it’s there…somewhere) but in the Swiss it’s totally absent. Norwegians have perhaps the driest sense of humour in Europe and that partly stems from the fact of its social code of janteloven - the idea that you mustn’t think of yourself better than anyone else. Because of this I firmly believe humour should be an equal opportunity offender. Moreover what I love about enjoying a good joke is that one the singular properties of certain comedy when done well is the freedom to explore ideas in an unconventional or counterintuitive way, to subvert society’s norms.

No one does that better than a comedian in culture in flux. As the great George Carlin put it, “I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.“

I’ve always been naturally drawn to dark humour from an early age and I suspect that had a lot to do with being packed off to boarding school at a young age (for my peers it was as young as 7) and just learning to develop coping mechanisms in the face of parental abandonment (or it seemed that way).

However I didn’t know the real importance of dark humour until I actually served in the British army and found humour as a form of therapy to deal with stress and situations of life and death with my army brothers and sisters. Our shared jokes were so off colour and un-PC that we would dare not repeat them in polite and respectable company. But that kind of shared humour served a crucial importance as any soldier will tell you. By mocking dangerous things or the situations you might find yourself with others, humour can embolden us. It helpfully paints what is potentially very frightening as deeply ridiculous. Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch-22’ captures the spirit of the absurdity of it all.

The comic perspective fills a central need of every society; it enables us to cope much better with our own follies and disappointments, our troubles around work and love and our difficulties enduring ourselves. Comedy is waiting to be reframed as a central tool behind the creation of a better world.

Comedy offers us a way of having a better time around things which, otherwise, can feel pretty disastrous. Ideally, in the utopia, comedy and its therapeutic potential wouldn’t be left to chance. Humour would be deliberately cultivated as a benign response to a range of entrenched difficulties. Previously, certain countries had an elaborate carnival season devoted to enforced comic activities. For a brief time, the weak could boss around the powerful, priests and nuns were supposed to hold obscene rituals in their churches, serious people were required to get drunk and throw bags of flour over each other’s heads. Humour wasn’t just left to those who felt so inclined: it was a kind of duty.

Black humour was a means of reducing anxiety of the awareness of death. Historians now know that one of the things that helped the persecuted Jewish community survive the demented Nazi persecution creeping into full blown genocide was humour, often of the darkest kind.

An example well-known joke went like this in Warsaw: "Moishe, why are you using soap with so much fragrance?" - "When they turn me into soap, at least I will smell good”. Jokes about soap were in response to rumours which started circulating in 1942 about soap produced from the fat of the Jews. Other jokes of this kind: "See you again on the same shelf!" or "Don't eat much: the Germans will have less soap!"

Indeed Jewish humour did not die in the Holocaust. In fact, Jews depended on humour to endure the period after liberation, both as a psychological weapon to grapple with what they had endured under Nazi persecution and as a source of coping with the displacement of the postwar period. After the war, humour was a poignant affirmation of mir zaynen do - we are (still) here - a declaration that the Jewish people had not disappeared and indeed could at times have the last laugh.

Does comedy have something to teach us or can we use comedy to teach? That is an interesting question in itself.

When I discuss this with friends across the political and non-political spectrum, some have argued comedy can’t be didactic as its the ultimate contradiction in terms. It’s why they hate woke comedy that often pervades the BBC these days and even the comedy clubs. These friends and I would sometimes go to the Edinburgh Festival to see comedians live on stage. But they say none of what passes for comedy on stage is funny because of the politics of woke.

I would disagree. Not about woke comedy - which ranges from pedestrian to just awful. But I will say that some of the best comedy is didactic. That’s because the best comedy is about revealing hilarious truths.

The ancient biblical books of Jonah and Esther, for example, have comedic elements that are clearly didactic. William Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado about Nothing’ is didactic. The Marx Brothers’ ‘Duck Soup’ and ‘A Night at the Opera’ are didactic. Mel Brook’s ‘The Producers’ (original only) and ‘Blazing Saddles’ are didactic.

For us Brits, Monty Python is didactic, especially in its masterpiece, ‘Life of Brian.’ For Americans, ‘Seinfeld’ is didactic precisely because it’s about nothing. From ‘The Great Dictator’ to ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘Blackadder series’ to ’South Park’, you will find that great comedy can be didactic.

The problem my friends identified is not that woke comedy is didactic, but rather that the woke side of the moon has no light of knowledge to impart. Woke ‘comedy’ tries to be didactic and fails because it has nothing profound or interesting to teach.

Comedy is not merely an event that produces laughter. A fart is not comedy (although it could be). The difference between comedy and tragedy is tonal. Both stem from the inflexibility of the ego.

This is why for example Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is such a remarkable comedy. The two people who want to be viewed as most principled in their objection to romance are so easily pushed over into love, because their hearts are ultimately farcical. The hilarity stems from the disconnect between their inner and outer selves.

While the ridiculous disconnect between the ego and reality makes us laugh here, it could just as easily make us weep if the situation were changed. The fundamental difference between Shakespeare’s comedies and his tragedies is the ending. Everyone gets married at the end of his comedies and everyone dies at the end of his tragedies. Yet Hamlet and Macbeth are still felled by their own inflexible egos, just as Benedict and Beatrice are made to be wonderful, humorous fools for love by the same principle of human nature.

Comedy’s didactic nature is even clearer when we look to films like ‘Duck Soup’ or ‘Blazing Saddles.’ ‘Duck Soup’ is a scathing indictment of goose stepping fascism (of the real kind and not the lazy insults lobbed over these days) and arguably the Marx Brothers’ funniest film. ‘Blazing Saddles’ does the same for American racism. Neither is necessarily meant to be interpreted along propositional or pedagogic lines. Regardless, those films teach and they teach well. They expose the absurdities of reliance upon authoritarian government and identity politics to solve our problems.

The problem with woke comedy is that woke comics want to convince people to do the right thing, to hold the right view, in other words to moralise if we want to be considered good people - which we all do. But the politics behind woke politics is fundamentally ridiculous. That’s why it can be so easily used for comedy: their core concepts and assumptions (gender and biology in trans ideology or the darker you are on the colour spectrum, the greater your societal victimhood) are easy to mock.

In ‘Life of Brian,’ the Pythons did not mock Jesus. They mocked institutionalised religion. When Jesus appears, it’s in the background, he only speaks scripture, and his portrayal is markedly respectful. Nothing else in the film is respectful - everything else is treated like a huge hilarity. John Cleese said the reason they didn’t try to make Jesus funny is that they didn’t think he would have been funny.

According to John Cleese, Jesus didn’t have an ego to bruise or be inflexible. Yet Jesus was a complete and humble person. If he slipped on a banana peel and fell, he would have found it just as funny as anyone else. That’s because Jesus was self-forgetful. You can’t mock someone who gets the joke. So you can’t turn Jesus into a joke, because he’s not threatened by jokes.

One of the most enduring theories of humour arrived courtesy of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. It asserts that humour is ostensibly about mocking the weak and exerting superiority. While this is clearly the function of some comedy – anyone who has flinched at a comic’s lame attempt to poke fun at, for example, disability will attest to this – it’s a relentlessly bleak and far from complete explanation of the purpose of humour. It’s better for a comedian to punch up then down.

So the real question today’s politically charged climate especially in the so-called culture wars (more visible in the Anglo-American world rather than in the rest of the world) is who is doing the punching up and who is punching down?

It depends as each side of the political divide claims the lower ground ie they are the weaker and therefore don’t deserve to be punched down upon but they can freely punch up.

Dave Chappelle’s comedy is the absurdity behind the so-called victim olympics that pervades behind woke culture. So making jokes about people of colour by white people is punching down but, as Chappelle alludes, people of colour can’t make jokes about white men in skirts ie trans because that’s now a greater sin and it would be punching down. In accepting the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour in 2019, Chappelle said a good joke is a finely crafted joke and one designed to offend regardless of one’s feelings or of one’s politics. Victimhood in terms of giving personal or political offence has no place in comedy.

I believe a joke is a joke. It doesn’t matter where it comes from so long as it’s funny. If you laugh, you own it.

I personally think much of our popular culture is overwhelmingly left - from Hollywood to the BBC - I don’t think that should be a controversial statement. It’s nearly always been that way as it attracts a certain kind of creative content maker whose values are liberal in the classical sense. There’s nothing wrong in that because this liberalism of the past didn’t necessarily inject itself into the art except in very benign ways but mainly it just told a damn good story or made us laugh because they told genuine funny jokes (from Python to Blackadder and Frasier to the Simpsons).

I think that’s changed now as woke ideology is increasingly the raison d’etat of a new generation of creative content makers. The message is more important than the craft itself.

Anyway, I digress.

Punching down is a charge of course that has been levelled at Dave Chappelle for his many jokes about different groups who have invested a great deal in their identity and also exert their own social and political power. But does he really do that? I don’t think so.

The mainstream media critics publicly hated his comedy special, but the ordinary audience overwhelmingly loved it (if rotten tomatoes metric score of 96% approval is anything to go by). It’s clear that many in the mainstream media had not really watched the show or gave an accurate account. Indeed the mainstream cultural critics in the US and in the UK prevented its readers from knowing that a debate was even happening, let alone what it is really about. If the argument about gender theory is mentioned at all, it is dismissed as a bunch of “anti-trans” bigots - aka ‘TERFs’ - hurting a beleaguered and tiny minority, for some inconceivable, but surely awful, reason.

As one of my favourite conservative writers (and gay rights advocate) and as an authority on the conservative philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, Andrew Sullivan put it really well, as he always does:

“Chappelle’s final Netflix special, ‘The Closer,‘ is a classic. Far from being outdated, it’s slightly ahead of its time, as the pushback against wokeness gains traction. It is extremely funny, a bit meta, monumentally mischievous, and I sat with another homo through the whole thing, stoned, laughing our asses off - especially when he made fun of us. The way the elite media portrays us, you’d think every member of the BLT community is so fragile we cannot laugh at ourselves. It doesn’t occur to them that, for many of us, Chappelle is a breath of honest air, doing what every comic should do: take aim at every suffocating piety of the powers that be - including the increasingly weird 2SLGBTQQIA+ mafia - and detonating them all.

‘The Closer‘ is, in fact, a humanely brilliant indictment of elite culture at this moment in time: a brutal exposure of its identitarian monomania, its denial of reality, and its ruthless tactics of personal and public destruction. It marks a real moment: a punching up against the powerful, especially those who pretend they aren’t. Bigoted? Please. Anyone who can watch this special and think Chappelle is homophobic or transphobic is either stupendously dumb or a touchy fanatic. He is no more transphobic than J.K. Rowling, i.e. not at all, and the full set masterfully proves it to anyone with eyes and ears.“

I would argue it’s hugely reassuring to see the ‘powerful’ laughing at themselves - in this case the LGBTQ+ community’s more shrill and self-righteous social justice warrior activists that brook no public criticism of their conduct against women and other critics who don’t have the power to fight back and are instead cancelled. It is a trusim to say that finding oneself comical is a token of maturity. It means being able to see one’s faults, without being too defensive about them. This, I argue, was one of the messages of Chappelle’s comedy show.

The thing that intimidates us isn’t actually power. It’s power that looks like it’s going to be inhumane: insensitive, unkind power. So we’re intently interested in things that reveal a mature, kindly sort of power.

Humour often provides a mechanism whereby the powerless (or at least the less powerful) can give constructive but pointed feedback to the powerful. Whether the powerful - in Chappelle’s view that would be the trans and social just warrior crowd - can take social commentary masked as a joke says a lot about their level of maturity.

Humour, as one neurosurgeon sister put it, is a form of psychological processing, a coping mechanism that helps people to deal with complex and contradictory messages, a response to conflict and confusion in our brain. Humour that is in bad taste or cruelly targeted at particular groups may generate conflict, but humour is also our way of working through difficult subjects or feelings. In this sense the comedian’s role is not validate our feelings but to make us think.

In olden days, the idea of the court jester - an officially licensed and salaried comic - was built on the importance of humour to the mental health of the powerful. Even if in the council room or around the dinner high table, the leading people didn’t feel much like joking, the jester was required to make barbed, witty and perhaps mocking remarks to deflate pomposity and restore sane perspective. The high table may not be occupied by the feudal elites anymore but by a more egalitarian society now.

Who can disagree with the fact that all of us - leftist, conservative, revolutionary, traditonalist, straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, different colours and many creeds - are not in need of our inflexible egos and the self-important pompous bubbles we inhabit from being burst open from time to time?

If we live in a world where everyone demands equality, in other words to sit at the same high table, then we also sign up to be equally ‘offended’ by the court jester, however fair or unfair it may feel.

The shrill of cancelling a comedian is not the answer if we find a joke offensive. We have the right to protest. We can protest by...not laughing. It really is that simple.

Thanks for your question.

#ask #question #humour #comedy #go woke go broke #woke comedy #woke #dave chappelle #british humour #society #jewish humour #culture #jokes #funny #humour is the best medicine #personal

32 notes · View notes