#is a really really fascinating look into different people's views on the philosophy of speech

[lorenzobane]

I cannot believe I am doing this, but it's just driving me fucking crazy. This is about the utterly exhausting and circular and goddamn endless discourse about AO3, and I simply cannot take it anymore. The hyperbole, bad faith arguments, and deeply strange interpretations of what is going on are..... Why. Don't we have enough problems?

Recognizing that this is exhausting and stupid (it was trending on Twitter???? GUYS??) I'm putting this under a cut to not clog up people's dashes. I just feel like there really are solutions and people keep talking around each other and lobbing wild accusations. Come on- CP apologists? Pro-censorship? Let's take a breath. Apologies, per usual, I talked way too much.

First- let's get some perspective. Fanfiction is a hobby. That is all it is- it is not, at its core, more moral or less moral than crocheting. That isn't to say that you can't be a remarkably talented fic writer or that fic writers are never professional writers (though when professional writers are writing professionally, they are not writing fic. Therefore they are not engaging in the hobby of fic writing. They're engaged in the vocation of writing.).

Just like any other hobby, people who do it often get better at it and begin to hone their skills in much the same way that any other hobbyist does in any other skill. But at their core, the point of writing fanfiction is to have fun doing a creative activity with people who are interested in similar topics to you. It is not going to solve racism or cure wealth inequality, or usher in a new shining dawn for gender equity. It, because it is written by very normal people, will always reflect the real flaws and virtues of real and normal people. To suggest otherwise is self-aggrandizing and nonsensical. I'm glad people find joy and pleasure in writing fic (I am one of them!), but we have got to stop saying things that deify fic above other forms of art or writing. AO3 is basically a hobbyist forum and that is okay.

Now- onto my actual point: whatever happened to nuance?

"These freaks will do anything to defend child porn/racism." Okay- well, that is a pretty incendiary thing to say. What is actually being said? People who oppose bans are typically looking at the censorship on TikTok, Tumblr, Facebook's attempts at monitoring, and fanfiction.net and see nothing but colossal failures. So when people suggest potentially banning or deleting erotic works with minors, others who have never seen it done well and have only ever seen it backfire for basically every other tech company are understandably skeptical. Why would it work on Ao3 when it hasn't worked anywhere else? And if these people are still going to write it, except untagged, now we have an even bigger issue because you can't avoid it.

The typical solution for this is "okay, well, hire moderators or build an algorithm," which is expensive and will almost certainly lead to more backlash because they'd need to fundraise for even more money that people already resent having to do at all. Not to mention the backlash when they do/don't decide that something is harmful that other people might/might not. This is especially true of issues regarding racism- unless everyone they hire has a Ph.D. in the topic, I doubt taking the problems to a random committee will solve anything. And maybe I'm insane, but I REALLY do not want a computer taking charge of issues as sensitive as this. As a general rule, I do not want an archive to be making moral decisions about anything. As even more of an aside, I just refuse to describe a dead person as "unalive" in a fic because an algorithm went too far.

Okay- but does that mean we shouldn't do anything about those problems? Do I think the people who sincerely believe we need to fix things are "pro-censorship"? Of course not. There really are existing solutions that are common sense and broadly popular that would put the power in the hands of the readers as opposed to censoring the writers. Instead of focusing so hard on regressive policies to punish or try to eliminate the problem (which is pernicious enough that a simple ban wouldn't work anyway), why not focus on progressive policies that people agree on and can actually work to make people's lives better? People are capable, smart, and thoughtful- when given the tools they absolutely can manage their own online experience.

Author blocks: People should absolutely be allowed to block authors. This one is easy and obvious- it doesn't do much by way of protecting people before they see content but it does help protect themselves from ever seeing it again.

Saved excluded tags: Create a system where you can input certain tags that you always want blocked no matter which fandom you're looking on at the site. This one is another great way to put power in the hands of the reader.

Community fics: Allowing authors to select a group of people that they want to share their particular fic with. If you want to write your cannibal mermaid fic about Hamilton and you don't want to face backlash? Just set it to only be accessible to selected users.

For ideas that go a bit further*:

Stronger age restrictions: If the concern is that young people are being groomed, maybe a solution here could be to have members (I really can't remember how this works because I signed up so long ago) give their birth year. Then just automatically filter out any E or M rated fics for people under 18, similar to how they filter out member-specific fics.

Member-specific fics: On a related note, an option could be to have fics that include an "underage" tag and are E/M are automatically member-restricted.

*Caveat: these two face a similar unintended consequence that would restrict minors from interacting with erotic content at all. Now, for little kids that is fine but for a 16 year old... I mean, there really are teenagers who write porn and there really are young people who are going through puberty and... well. This restriction would obviously be a burden specific to them, but would protect them. Also- they can just lie, lol.

Anyway- as with all policies and all problems, you are always going to deal with unintended consequences of any new policy you put out but you have to be willing to accept that and at least think them through. It drives me CRAZY when people act like we either decide to do an ineffectual ban or we do nothing at all. I am begging you to be at least willing to LOOK for middle ground.

But at the end of the day, remember: This is a HOBBY. It really is not that deep. There are about 5 million users, and even if you say that the real number is closer to 8 million that is still .1% of the global population. I am BEGGING you guys to stop calling each other CP apologists and freaks and pathetic losers and pro-censorship weirdos and purity culture losers. There IS a real problem here and everyone is a little bit right. Just, like, chill a little.

#ao3 discourse #ao3 #what if everyone took a chill pill #its actually interesting because at the base of this stupid internet argument #is a really really fascinating look into different people's views on the philosophy of speech #and the philosophy of loss #it DEFINITELY strikes me that most of the people who oppose bans the most are people who reference other lost archives #they use free speech as their defense but its so often couched in fear #and its not unwarranted! Internet censorship has worked exactly zero times #but there are other solutions and other ways to think about problems

[make-me-imagine]

Congratulations!!!

May I get Star Trek ships for Voy and DS9? I'm 30, female and bi. Physically I am very slim but also very muscular, 5'8" red dyed hair, green eyes and spectacles. I work as a Physics/chemistry teacher but also studied Biochemistry, I love learning languages such as English, French and Japanese and am a native German. I love sports (a bit of weight training, soccer and jogging) and need it to relax. Other hobbies include playing guitar and videogames plus drawing.

Often people are intimidated by me due to my somewhat distant vibe and stare at first. I go out of my way to be polite so people feel more at ease around me. I love discussions about philosophy, literature and different points of view. However, even when I am sure about something I often second guess myself. I have a high pain tolerance and always try to give my all and also overwork.

I really look forward to the ship, thank you!

For Others: Ships are now closed!~

--

I hope you like yours!

Star Trek Voyager:

I ship you with Chakotay!

Why: Chakotay is very good with people, and would be able to see through that outer facade much faster than others. He would be able to tell quickly that you were intelligent, kind, and talented. He is fascinated by your vast interests and skills, and would never be bored in your presence.

Confession: It was during a difficult time when you were second guessing yourself and worried you would be making the wrong decision. He came to your aid and reassured you that you should always trust yourself, just like he does. This little speech also included a confession of how he felt about you. Needless to say, you got a confidence boost from this.

Best-Friend: I think you and B'Elanna would be very close friends. You are both very fit and skilled, and would make a very good team. When you two are coming, people are often intimidated, but they know shit will get done.

Other: You work in the Science field, and bounce from different specialties depending on where yours kills are needed.

---------

Star Trek DS9

I ship you with Kira

Why: Kira is very strong willed and physically strong. She is talented and enjoys a lot of hobbies. So she would get along great with someone who is/does the same. These similar interests are what got you to start talking in the first place.

Confession: Fake Dating!! Someone was showing interest in you who you really did not like. So you asked Kira to fake being your partner for a bit. She of course agreed. Hijinks insured, and of course, like the best fake-dating stories, you two figured out you both had genuine feelings for each other, and the fake dating became real.

Best-Friend: Jadzia Dax. You two often work out together, and talk about a variety of cultures, languages, etc. You have known her for a long time, and have always been close.

Other: You and Kira can often be found deep in conversation in Quarks Bar, talking about philosophy, literature, politics, missions, etc. You two are often so engrossed in each other that people could come up and talk to you, and you two would never know they were there.

xx

#ship #ships #milestone ships #7.5k milestone ships #star trek ships #ship request #anon ship

[sunbeams-and-honey]

hi im new to astrology and i just wanted to know what does it mean/how it affects me and my future if i have sun, mercury, venus all in gemini 10th house, moon in aquarius 6th house, virgo rising and also pisces mars in 6th house. thank youuu.

Hi darling! Thanks for the question.

Your combination of a Gemini Sun and an Aquarius Moon makes you a very captivating person. You're someone who can definitely trust in your intuition and you also benefit from a witty foresight. You are absolutely capable of improving yourself and making positive changes for yourself. You're intellectually energetic, which means that you can go on for ages with any activity involving your mind, such as writing or solving puzzles. You have a deep need to express your individuality as much as you can, as well as being stimulated at all times. You are more or less terrified of being bored. You are so busy so much of the time that boredom seems to affect you more intensely as you're not used to staying still and relaxing. You really enjoy and benefit from finding new ways of looking at and thinking about something, and also from establishing connections between different things. It's really satisfying for you when something finally clicks in your mind.

Your Sun is in the 10th House, which means that you work hard in order to achieve your goals and to also reach a certain status. You are excited by the idea of having power, but make sure that this desire does not make you cruel. You might want to be famous at some point in your life but you want to live an honourable and dignified life while doing so. That being said, you may be prone to getting into scandals if you're not careful. You want to be in charge where possible and you aren't afraid of the responsibility that comes with it. If you were to be put into a position of leadership then you'd know exactly what you'd be getting into. You're very determined to make a name for yourself and to be a good role model to others. You're likely to have a good reputation.

You have your Moon in the 6th House, which makes you someone who is obsessed with being healthy and organised at all times. A lot of your emotional satisfaction and stability depends on how hard you work, which can be a problem if you don't work as hard as you think you should. You have to understand that you have limits and you're allowed to relax without having to work for it. You are caring and emotional, and very empathetic. You get very stressed when you can't be of any help to anyone else. You may be prone to have physical pain when going through emotional distress or pain. You tend to feel very energetic and alive when there is nothing worrying you and when everything is going your way.

Your Gemini Mercury means you have great social skills. You are charming and eloquent in your speech. You are a quick thinker decision-maker. You always have something interesting to say so people always want to talk to you. You may find that you're the one carrying the conversation a lot of the time. You have the tendency to exaggerate sometimes. People are fascinated by your intelligence and knowledge. You know a bit about everything. You're constantly thinking about more than one thing at a time and because of this, you can forget about very important things every now and then, such as birthdays or anniversaries.

Your Mercury is in the 10th House, which makes you very good at solving problems under pressure. You're not one to back down from a challenge just because everyone else does. In your personal life, there will be a huge emphasis on self-improvement and general achievements. You highly value your goals in life and you are a natural communicator and public speaker. Even if you're shy, you have a great way with words, which leave a huge and lasting impact on those around you. You're very articulate. Your career is very important to you. You don't see it as merely a job, it's something with which you put effort into and care about.

You have your Venus in Gemini, which means you are very talkative and witty, especially when with your friends. You are very skilled with your words. You may love deep and complex subjects such as philosophy and once you find someone who shares this appreciation, then there will be no one stopping you from discussing it at all hours of the day and night. You are skilled with mediating conflicts and settling arguments before they become too big and destructive, and this is largely down to your persuasive skills. You need someone who appreciates and, to an extent, shares your intelligence and thirst for knowledge. You are very transformative, most likely going through many important changes throughout your life.

Your 10th House Venus makes you someone who wants to make a valuable contribution to the world. You want to change things for the better and will do everything in your power to make that happen. You want to make the world a brighter place too, spreading love and positivity wherever you go. You'll probably make a good career out of one of your hobbies. You might be the type of person to have an Etsy shop. You like being the centre of attention because you want to be appreciated for the things you have done. Some people can see you as pretentious because you want the nicer things in life and because you surround yourself with influential people. They don't realise though that you do this to keep as many doors open as possible when it comes to opportunities.

All of this means you have a Gemini stellium, which means you really embody Gemini qualities, more so than your average Gemini Sun. You are quick to both crack a joke and to put the pieces together and solve a problem. You are probably the life of the party. You have a great ability to relate to anyone, which is something that really helps other people. You may find that others often turn to you for comfort and support because they feel seen and heard by you. People can struggle to keep up with you at times albeit entertained by the stories you have to tell. You always have something interesting to say.

This also means you have a 10th House stellium, which makes you someone who loves their independence. You're not one to typically listen to authority figures unless you absolutely must. You might benefit from working for yourself one day rather than for somebody else. You are ambitious and not one to mess around once you get down to something. You may have had some kind of issues with a parent, or someone you viewed as a parental figure, at some point in your life. You know the best path to success, and are hellbent on staying on that path.

I've already gone over what it's like to have a Virgo Rising! You can find the post here.

Your Mars is in Pisces means that you are the kind of person to fight for your dreams. You are a walking contradiction, both sensitive and powerful, though perhaps it is your sensitivity itself that makes you powerful. You prefer to go with the flow rather than planning for the future or being in control. You want and expect things in your life to just happen naturally. Even if you are a hardworking person, you don't expect all your hard work to just go to waste. You want to get something from it. This can make you confident enough to go after your goals and dreams, but it can also lead you to getting easily disappointed.

You have your Mars in the 6th House, which makes you someone who is prepared to work incredibly hard for your dreams and goals. You love helping other people, but you have to watch out for people who use this kindness of yours and exploit it. Remember you can say no. You are productive, efficient, and almost always ready to work. You rarely ever seem to get tired so you do run the risk of burning out because you work so hard. You have the tendency to become impatient and irritable when other people do things in a different way to you. You have an amazing capacity to pick yourself up after failure or mistakes.

Words Of Advice:

Learn to relax more, maybe even meditate!

You need to learn how to balance your work life and your personal life.

Try to depend less on validation from others.

Maybe choose an area to specialise in rather than knowing a bit about everything and not properly committing to something.

Be more open to new experiences.

You don't need to take on every single challenge thrown at you.

Try changing your ways of doing things every now and then.

Remember to slow down every now and then.

You don't have to be working 24/7.

Pay more attention to your friendships.

Be mindful of who you spill your secrets to.

Try to keep your expectations realistic.

Thanks for the question darling and I hope this helped! Sending good vibes your way and have a wonderful rest of your day!

#asks #astrology #perfectesny #gemini sun #Aquarius moon #sun in the 10th #moon in the 6th #gemini mercury #Mercury in the 10th #gemini venus #venus in the 10th #gemini stellium #10th house stellium #virgo rising #pisces mars #mars in the 6th

[jamesmartin30-blog]

What Is Academic Writing And Why Is It Important?

Academic writing is becoming an extremely essential aspect of schooling as parents and teachers understand the importance of analytical thought abilities and prepare students for college.

Nevertheless, many pupils, guardians, and even many teachers have no understanding of this field of learning and why it is so important.

As such, it is necessary in English not just to teach scholarly literature, but also to make people understand why it is crucial to produce insightful and competent students.

What Is Academic Writing?

First of all, what is scholarly writing? Some students see writing as something they only have to do as the instructor said so, so it's going to be a boring so time-consuming task. Our goal is to bring an end to this kind of thought.

Clearly stated, scholarly learning shows students how to compose essays. It seems pretty easy, but there's a lot more to it than that.

Writing essays is a means of expressing abstract concepts, feelings, or views. Writers learn to create a very complex statement or description by merging sentences into phrases and phrases of an article.

Why Should Students Learn Academic Writing? Because Writing Is Thinking

Learning how to compose powerful essays is essential not just to get a good grade or get to a decent school and you'll get a good career or something. It 's vital because, at the most basic point, it's about having your own ideas and then rendering them rational and real, first to yourself then to your readers.

It is when you take these ideas out of your head and crystallize them on paper or on a computer. They 're in a situation where you don't always have to accept them for what they really are, but other people will do so. When the theories are convincing and strong, such thoughts will become the thoughts of others. It's the crux of conversation.

In other terms, positive thoughts are equivalent to good prose. If the words are not straightforward or consistent or lack structure, they would be bad prose, and many do not appreciate or approve.

Many authors begin at a point where writing is not especially strong, but through learning writing skills, they learn how to be more better writers, which means they are better thinkers.

Practicing writing is about sharpening the thought method – the more you practice something and the better you do it, the more people can listen to you.

The other significant aspect about academic learning, of course, is that students really need it for college! This is a very realistic and simple educational talent, so if anyone is trying to be a professional student, they ought to be at least a good writer so communicator.

Skills Academic Writing Develops

Academic writing is important, but what particular skills do students have? They 're:

Strong communication

Students who can compose a persuasive and coherent article will talk in a straightforward, organized and assured manner. Not only are these people able to compose well, but they can communicate and analyze with the same techniques.

Critical Thinking And Reasoning Skills

The willingness to switch from one thought to another and to grasp the relation sounds simple, but it is shocking how few people really learn this skill. Nevertheless, learning to compose shows students how to think. In other terms, writing introduces "structured learning" to students.

Throughout fact, teaching shows pupils how to evaluate, or what scholars term "serious thought." Students tend to think, "Does what I tell make sense? "And," Is that what I read true? ”. We learn to accept facts, to understand complexity and context, and eventually to build the capacity to make up their own minds about issues. We believe that's the whole point of schooling.

Understanding An Audience

When you're writing an article, you ought to consider how it's supposed to be, what it's supposed to be, whether it's required or what it's intended to be, and how to deliver it in the most persuasive or approachable way. Through practicing writing, students know how to talk of their audience as well as how best to meet them.

Language skills

Academic research is a composite of all such language capabilities. You ought to have a good grammar. You ought to use an advanced language. You need to be able to respond to and appreciate the orders, and you will need to be able to speak freely and pose questions and voice your views. Perhaps more significantly, you need a lot of training.

If the improvement of professional English skills is something you are seeking, there is no easier way than to study academic prose.

Research Skills, Because You Learn A Lot

Finally, writing shows students how to carry out work. The truth is, students do not know the answer to any of the queries they are asked to respond in writing. It means they're going to need to go find out. The sophisticated word of "going to find out" is "study."

Through conducting research, students learn to appreciate their writing concepts at a finer level than other would would imagine. When they write on a science, cultural or literary topic, they know from doing work not only what they need to get a decent score, but they do recognize that there is a great deal to know on nearly any topic.

Types Of Academic Writing

Okay, so we may accept that writing is necessary and useful, but then what do students will need to know directly in academic writing classes? There are several types of essays with specific reasons. Here's a short sampling of a couple of them:

Persuasive essays – seeking to convince people of your view on the topic

For example: “In Praise of Idleness” by Bertrand Russell

Expository essays – explaining a topic to an audience

For example: “I’m an environmental journalist, but I never write about overpopulation” from Vox.com

Narrative essays – to convey a story in an essay.

For example: “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

Composite essays - Essays that inspire, justify, or reveal a tale

For example: “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell

Compare and contrast essays – taking two subjects and analyzing their similarities and differences

For example: “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White (this is also a narrative essay)

Cause and effect essays – Essays that describe whether something has occurred or the consequences of an occurrence or operation.

  For example: “The Adults in the Room” by Megan Greenwell

Analysis – not an essay sort, but a lot of essays seek to get readers to grasp the topic better.

For example: “A.A. Gill on Autobiography by Morrissey”

Research papers – typically convincing, expository or comparing and contrasting, while often involving quotes and analysis to justify the author's statements. 

Characteristics Of Academic Writing

Until we wrap up, it is necessary to consider the characteristics that characterize quality academic learning. For any piece they compose, both students and authors will look for such qualities for their writing.

Focused, clear, and logical

One of the very first things we 're telling writers is that they need to Stay On Point. As a matter of fact, we literally scream that phrase in class because it was so essential to the process of writing.

Writing needs to be about a specific subject and only about that scope. In addition, readers should be able to fully understand not just thoughts and phrases, but how they communicate to form a larger argument. In other words, academic writing needs to make sense of it.

Convincing and interesting

The concept may make sense to a person, but that doesn't imply they 're in agreement with it. Academic writing has to move beyond reasoning and still be compelling – audiences will come to believe that the speaker makes a valid argument.

In addition, scholarly writing should be engaging irrespective of the topic. Sure, academy may be boring, but it's the writer's task to make the subject fascinating and worth reading. Each of the essay references in the segment above are thought-provoking and persuasive, even though some of their concepts might be less than thrilling to all readers.

Based on evidence

Finally, scholarly writing must be real. Storytelling articles are never imaginary, but if they were, they would be short tales, which are a particular type of character.

Writers of scientific literature should give proof of their arguments and conclusions, and analytical reasoning must be focused on what is true and can be claimed honestly rather than speculation or mere fiction.

Academic writing is a must for teachers. It is necessary for practical reasons, as students will have to write an essay for tests such as TOEFL, IELTS, and SAT, college applications, and then so many once they reach college. After graduation, whatever their role is, they'll have letters, papers, interviews, and speeches to write. It's not just philosophy – academic writing skills make sure students are ready for their future.

However, scholarly writing is critical far beyond bottom line. Reading scholarly writing sharpens brains, shows students how to relate, and strengthens their analytical abilities and capacity to comprehend others. Publishing is talking around,

But every student needs to be a successful thinker.

Let the English aid them move in there.

[gaslitbyamadman]

Aphorisms On Madness, Philosophy, & Society (from my book, Gaslit By A Madman)

Aphorisms On Madness, Philosophy, & Society (from my book)

Wittgenstein on Otto Weininger.

Wittgenstein once said about Otto Weininger: “If you were to reverse all of his assertions, they would still be equally fascinating and worthwhile. ” That tends to be how I view all utterances. (If only SJWs thought like this about all utterances!) This is much closer to truth as aletheia, the Greek and Heideggerian notion, rather than strict formal, propositional veracity.

If you believe in truth, you are delusional!

.......Thus, as things became even more extreme, and relativism spread from ‘values’ to truth itself, we increasingly began to see the crazed spectacle of Professors of Psychiatry ‘scientifically’ labelling everyone who simply happens to have different beliefs from themselves as ‘sick’ and ‘delusional’i. e meaning they have a ‘fixed false belief’. while their prestigious, highly rewarded colleagues in the Humanities, Philosophy or Literary Studies department loudly proclaim there is ‘no truth, only interpretations’! No doubt somewhere or other, the two doctrines have been combined and solidified in the very same individuals such that if you still believe in ‘truth’, you are delusional, i. e you have a fixed ‘false’ belief and require urgent ‘treatment’! Pretty deranged, eh?

Truth as the best healer

Real truth saves lives; real truth works better than any pill. Especially for the honest.

On self-identity and freedom of conscience

Nowadays, if a ‘woman’ came into a psychiatrist’s office and professed to be a Champion Bull, raring to butt horns in the otherwise peaceful long-grassed meadows of her youth once more . the good Dr. would quite rightly feel obliged to continue the interview in aggressive snorts and threatening raking at the carpet, like any other modern, non-bigoted professional. But if this erstwhile proud Minator were to opine that there is no such thing as ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘mental illness’, someone’s professional opinion would be gravely offended and someone else’s dosage – that of the poor, once righteous monster -- would be judiciously and roundly quadrupled.

Excessive codes of 'civility' as cause of hateful outbreaks

Excessive codes of 'civility', which rule out certain antagonistic, strongly felt forms of speech, when such cosy 'civility' is not truly felt are one of the leadingyet most over-looked causes of hatred and violence. The reason that throughout society and on all social media websites especially there is enforced civility is because the powers-that-be were afraid of people's differences being worked out in a peaceful manner and them growing united and thus harder to control and dominate.

Psychiatry’s inversion of health and sickness.

In all discernment between healthy and pathological behaviors, the key thing to be aware of is that the nature of the former is to be a deliberate, willful action -- realizing one's 'true will' to quote Aleister Crowley -- whereas that the latter is to be picked up unconsciously or half-consciously from one's environment, sometimes with a dimly conscious but burgeoning awareness that it is vulgar, stupid or slavish. Psychiatry precisely inverts the true nature of this dichotomy, labelling healthy, i. e willful liberation as pathological, and unhealthy, slavish unthinking conformity as healthy: it is the exact opposite.  "Its sickness is for its traits and the traits of its parts to be traits by which the soul does not do its actions that come about by means of the body or its parts, or does them in a more diminished manner than it ought or not as was its wont to do them. Al Farabi

Harm, punish, or 'treat'.

If you harm, punish or 'treat' an bad man, he might just re-consider his wicked ways; but if you harm, punish or 'treat' a good one, he is often liable or prone to re-consider his good ways.

The disadvantages of self-control.

The exhortation to self-control is really an exhortation to obedience and submission. (When they said I lacked 'self-control', what they actually meant was I wasn't controlling myself according to their demands. and they proceeded to take actual selfcontrol away from me) If we are really going to free ourselves of the crippling influence of convention and actually arbitrary, oppressive socalled 'authority', we probably ought to rid ourselves of all self-control that is not absolutely necessary.

Real change.

The cave-dwelling masses and everyday non-mental -patients, while all too fatuously and recklessly embracing ideologies of social 'progress', are frightened of a real change in their Being and locked into a pattern of stagnation and decay. The madman, (remember, the etymological meaning of the word 'mad' is to 'change') at least in the normative, ideal sense of that term, (as well as often he or she who is solabelled), has awakened to the need for spiritual becoming, both in himself and others.

Madness and Art.

Madmen and poets are alike: they both give freer reign to their emotional and linguistic expressions than is considered decent. And, both of them too, do it largely for socially admirable, therapeutic reasons. Albeit the 'mad' one is more often misunderstood, since people forget that all life, and the unartistic life most of all, is a good opportunity for art, for therapy.

The unartistic life is the most drab, automatic, unredeemed kind of life, in which salutary disruptions are still possible No one blinks twice if they see an eviscerated heart in an art gallery nowadays. But if they see an eviscerated heart while it is still in someone's chest. That's magic.

Autobiography of values as requisite.

To counter-act the tide of artificial, false pretenses to expert, scientific 'objectivity', and the docile, herd-like conformity that actually entails within social science, within the healing professions, and within society a whole, I propose that a personal account of one's life-story, focusing on how one came to arrive at one's central, integral values, become a standard for all such careers. This would be a move towards bolstering the development of personality and character throughout society, preventing people from hiding entirely behind their professional veneers, and presencing the real-lived experience and actual, rather than false selves, of individuals. I don't propose this merely as a helpful task for the 'professional' on the way to qualifying, but as a central piece that he must present to his or her clients/patients. A kind of C. V., but, as I say, with the focus on HOW HE CAME TO HIS CENTRAL CONVICTIONS ABOUT LIFE

‘Recreational’ drug use is medicinal drug use.

The potential of currently illegal substances such as LSD and DMT, as well as more common and less potent ones such as marajuana, to provide radical new, mad vistas of consciousness, and so heal the mental sickness with which mainstream society is so disastrously afflicted ( see the work of Terence Mckenna), is no less important than their capacity to treat physical illness or relieve physical pain. While all substances can potentially be used ill-advisedly, the depreciation of supposed ‘recreational’ uses ignores the dire and gaping need even so-called ‘normal’ people have for fresh inspiration, hedonic sustenance, and the health benefits that all true enjoyment, relaxation or true insight brings. It merely repeats the fallacious and artifical seperation between these supposedly mutually alien aspects of ourselves, a long with the superstitious, ascetic and crude utilitarian privileging of the mere functionality of ‘health’, over the supposedly wicked nature of happiness in this world --- a sad residue of religious puritanism and centuries of slavery to sadistic dogmas of control --even though it is only Epicurean pleasure that ultimately justifies life itself. This attitude is so pervasive and so perverse that it simply cannot be under-stated.Ravi Das, a neuroscientist at University College London who is researching the effects of ketamine said: “The potential benefits are definitely downplayed in face of these drugs being used recreationally,” he said. “People view their use in a research setting as ‘people are just having a good time’. ”From this vantage point, must one not wager the theory that almost the whole of modern medicine, most obviously in terms of mental illness, but even in its approach to illness as such --- including physical illness- -- as simply a form of prolonged Christian hatred-ofthe-flesh and jaw-dropping sado-masochism on a mass scale ? That is why Prof. David Nutt equated the barriers to research to the Catholic church’s censorship of Galileo’s work in 1616. “We’ve banned research on psychedelic drugs and other drugs like cannabis for 50 years,” he said. “Truly, in terms of the amount of wasted opportunity, it’s way greater than the banning of the telescope. This is a truly appalling level of censorship. ” Ignoring the importance of psycho-active drugs for promoting health is bad enough, but to ignore or denigrate the importance of pleasure to this aim, is like discounting the use of the eyes in driving to work in the morning! --.

Beyond rational self-preservation ((lock him up! He's a danger to himself.

.!)

. Enlightenment thinkers such Thomas Hobbes and John Locke tried to appeal to and foster what is called man's rational selfpreservation, inserting it above all other goals as the centrepiece and pivot of the whole of society. Notice here the two concepts, reason, on the one hand, and self-preservation, on the other, are heavily intertwined, which still remains the case today. Madness, on the other hand, is commonly associated with throwing caution to the wind, tightrope walking over a precipice just for the sheer Hell of it, and embracing a variety of dangers that may very well end in personal extinction. However, when one considers the nature of our own inevitable mortality, is making selfpreservation our highest goal really so rational? In order to face life in all its grim reality, is it not necessary, at some point or other, to eschew 'rational' self-preservation for a bold leap, (if only in the imagination, if not outward practice), towards an affirmation and embrace of this inextricable fatality? Especially if one seeks to give birth to something greater than oneself, like the Christ, and take on the grave sacrifices that sometimes requires. In other words, rather than 'rational self-preservation', isn't the ability for the‘insane self-annihilation’ of loving sacrifice equally, or an even greater sign of maturity - or of true morality? Thus also the Buddha would seem to have it, who equally, in view of the passing away of all earthly things, preached 'Loss of self' rather than the steady incremental Lockean accumulation of an estate that is eventually destined to perish anyway; he who is said, out of compassion, to have given his life up to be voluntarily devoured by a starving tiger. Reminds me of those ‘voluntary patients’ on the ward that I was on!—.

Consequences of the dehumanization of madness on the collective mind.

The villifIcation of madness and the various phenomenon which are labelled as ‘mentally ill’ in our society, such as ‘grandiose delusions’, ‘hallucinations’, ‘paranoia’, etc. , a long with all the other countless  represents a form of collective repression that not only has unspeakably dire results for those so labelled, but wreaks utter havoc on the collective unconscious and the collective conscious. Rather than being the shamen, the spiritual leaders of society, such men and women are quietly tortured and cast into ignominy. Thereby, society is not only deprived of its natural guiding elite, but everyone in society is trained to feel a senseless (‘paranoid’) fear and hatred of their own deepest spiritual roots, that prevents them re-connecting with these forbidden aspects of themselves and manifesting their true potential. Take for instance ‘paranoia’. This stigmatization of questioning the benevolent motives and fundamental agendas of one’s government is one of the most cynical and blatant causes of that government getting out of control and the citizenry failing to protect their own rights and freedoms. The same applies to all the other associated phenomenon of madness, which as has been argued, represent a perenial bed-fellow and midwife of intellectual and spiritual awakening. Just as the criminalization of drugs produces an association between drug-use and general criminality that does not exist independently, re-validating society’s negative view of drug-use in its own eyes, so the category of mental illness and the inhumane, disabling treatments with which those who fall subject to it suffer, is not merely a product of but re-inforces and creates society’s negative attitude to those who manifest these various ‘mad’ phenomenon. All the while, the fact that the sacred key to everybody’s own selfrealization is so maligned and spat upon understandably produces a deep, unacknowledged sense of disconcertedness and pessimism in the population as a whole, the root cause of many other of society’s ailments and self-destructive tendencies. In truth, the real mental illness is the senseless conformity which the ‘mental health’ establishment sacralizes. This sanctified madness then, unconsciously aware of its own shortcomings, in order to sustain its own self-conception as reasonable and sane, is driven to ever more fervent quest to identity and persecute those it delusionally deems ‘mad’, for the sake of externalizing and thereby gaining some sense of control over its own deepest insecuries, and having an Other to label & stigmatize in opposition to which it can re-affirm its own false, insecure and groundless sense of Self  

The question is.

why do 'sane' family members (& Dr.s & nurses) have such an enormous problem correctly even identifying their 'unwell' relatives extremely normal human needs? ~Max Lewy 

#aphorisms #frederick nietzsche #madness #foucault #medicine #mental health #philosophy

[capriquariustrology]

General Sign Info

I started off my interest in astrology without even really ever knowing the basics of the signs. So, here, I have put together something about all of the signs.

Aries

March 21 - April 19

Element: Fire

Quality: Cardinal

Ruler: Mars

Symbol: Ram

Strengths: Courageous, determined, confident, enthusiastic, optimistic, honest, passionate

Weaknesses: Impatient, moody, short-tempered, impulsive, aggressive

Short description

Aries is one of the most active signs and are highly energetic. Aries lives in the fast lane and is highly competitive, always wanting to be first in everything. They are highly organized and will often be capable at quickly finishing tasks. This need for speed and race to the top can cause them to be impatient and act without thinking and be prone to stress, causing them to project their frustrations onto others. They also have a strong passion to achieve their goals and will utilize teamwork to make it happen.

Taurus

April 20 - May 20

Element: Earth

Quality: Fixed

Ruler: Venus

Symbol: Bull

Strengths: Reliable, patient, practical, devoted, responsible, stable

Weaknesses: Stubborn, possessive, uncompromising

Short description

Taurus is the most reliable sign of the zodiac, as they are very stable and conservative and will stick by their choices. This does, however, cause them to not like sudden changes and make them less likely to compromise. As an Earth sign, however, what is seen as stubbornness is viewed as commitment to a Taurus. Tauruses are also a romantic sign, desiring to be surrounded in love and beauty at all times. Despite being (at times) materialistic, overbearing or conservative, they make great friends, partners and employees/coworkers, as they are grounded, realistic, and will do whatever it takes to finish a project to their standards. They can also be the voice of reason in chaotic/unhealthy situations.

Gemini

May 21 - June 20

Element: Air

Quality: Mutable

Ruler: Mercury

Symbol: Twins

Strengths: Gentle, affectionate, curious, adaptable, quick learners

Weaknesses: Nervous, inconsistent, indecisive

Short description

Geminis are like two people in one. On one hand, they can be very sociable, fun-loving, and communicative, but they can suddenly turn serious, restless and thoughtful without warning. They are very inquisitive, curious and fascinated by the world around them to a point where 24 hours isn’t enough time in the day to really experience everything they want to. This desire to explore makes this sign prone to avoiding routines, as they feel confined by them. Geminis are incredibly creative and excel in writing and art, but their skill and flexibility also make them great athletes. A sun in Gemini tends to feel they are missing their other half and are always seeking new people to talk to.

Cancer

June 21 - July 22

Element: Water

Quality: Cardinal

Ruler: Moon

Symbol: Crab

Strengths: Tenacious, imaginative, loyal, emotional, sympathetic, persuasive

Weaknesses: Moody, pessimistic, suspicious, manipulative, insecure

Short description

Cancers are the most difficult type of person to get to know. They are incredibly sentimental, intuitive, caring, emotional and sensitive. What happens in their home matters greatly to them, which makes Cancers very nurturing parents. They enjoy being surrounded by a loving family in a harmonious home, and it is where they tend to feel most content. Their hearts are guided by emotion and often times they have no control over their emotions, resulting in mood swings. Cancers usually must be handled with care and understanding as they often don’t gain enough coping skills from the outside world as children, but they will give care and understanding in return. Lack of love and patience contributes to these mood swings, but can also cause the person to later in life become manipulative, self-pitying and selfish. Being born in Cancer grants the person loyalty and the ability to empathize with pain and suffering.

Leo

July 23 - August 22

Element: Fire

Quality: Fixed

Ruler: Sun

Symbol: Lion

Strengths: Creative, passionate, generous, warm-hearted, cheerful, humorous

Weaknesses: Arrogant, stubborn, self-centered, lazy, inflexible

Short description

Leos are natural born leaders and like to maintain a “king of the jungle” status. Leos are extremely difficult to resist, and tend to get what they want from life. They tend to be dramatic, self-confident, dominant, attractive, generous and loyal, causing them to have many friends and uniting many groups of people. Their sense of humor helps, as well. They are headstrong in the face of problems, love life and can always find time to laugh and enjoy themselves, all while in search of self-awareness and ego growth. They know what they want and are willing to do what it takes to get there, but sometimes, they will either neglect the needs of others or become heavily vulnerable themselves when their passions for achievement or status grow too strong.

Virgo

August 23 - September 22

Element: Earth

Quality: Mutable

Ruler: Mercury

Symbol: Woman/Goddess

Strengths: Loyal, analytical, kind, hardworking, practical

Weaknesses: Shy, anxious, overly-critical, workaholic

Short description

Virgos are the most careful of the zodiac signs. They are constantly paying attention to the little details and leave nothing to chance, and they often carry a deep sense of humanity. They often close off their hearts from the outer world, causing them to be easily and often mistaken for cold-hearted. In reality, Virgos are very tender and caring. They are able to express emotions, they just tend to reject their feelings as true, valid or relevant, especially when opposed to reason. Give a Virgo a little time and they may begin to open up. Virgos also enjoy organization and can keep defined borders on their goals even in the face of chaos. When the need for organization gets mixed with their attention to small details, Virgos tend to get caught up in small details and become overly-critical in areas others would not care about to ensure every detail is present. 

Libra

September 23 - October 22

Element: Air

Quality: Cardinal

Ruler: Venus

Symbol: Scales

Strengths: Cooperative, diplomatic, gracious, fair-minded, social

Weaknesses: Indecisive, unconfrontational, carries grudges, self-pitying

Short description

Libras are peaceful, fair, and constantly on the chase for justice and equality, as those are most important to them are in the cores of their personalities. They are careful with what they say and avoid choosing sides at all costs because they prefer to avoid conflict and are natural born peacekeepers. When presented with ultimatums, they realize they are in the wrong place at the wrong time and may even walk away entirely. Being interested in balance and symmetry, Libras value partnership in which their partner mirrors them. Libras are also great lovers, but are also very fond of expensive materialistic objects.

Scorpio

October 23 - November 21

Element: Water

Quality: Fixed

Ruler: Pluto, Mars

Symbol: Scorpion

Strengths: Resourceful, brave, passionate, stubborn, true friend

Weaknesses: Distrusting, jealous, secretive, violent

Short description

Scorpios are great leaders, thorough in research, determined, decisive, assertive and passionate. They are also great leaders because they are dedicated to what they do. Scorpios don’t express their emotions like water signs and keep a cool-headed and mysterious appearance. Scorpios are very fierce as they know the rules of the universe quite well, and they tend to look older than they are. They also need more time to adapt to human behaviors due to their strong distaste for dishonesty and can usually be suspicious of others. This doesn’t change the bravery of a Scorpio, though, and they usually have a lot of friends.

Sagittarius

November 22 - December 21

Element: Fire

Quality: Mutable

Ruler: Jupiter

Symbol: Archer

Strengths: Generous, idealistic, great sense of humor

Weaknesses: Impatient, promises more than they can deliver, lacks a speech filter

Short description

Sagittariuses are the most adventurous of the signs as they are the biggest travelers, and this is fueled by their curious and energetic personalities. They value freedom and enjoy traveling different philosophies and cultures, and this is made possible by their open-mindedness. Sagittariuses are typically extroverted, optimistic, enthusiastic and love change. They are highly capable of transforming their thoughts and ideas into concrete actions, but this can sometimes get them in trouble as they usually become impatient and tactless when it comes to saying or doing something. They have to be careful when it comes to expressing ideas and do so in a socially acceptable way. However, they are very enthusiastic and have a great sense of curiosity and humor.

Capricorn

December 22 - January 19

Element: Earth

Quality: Cardinal

Ruler: Saturn

Symbol: Sea-goat

Strengths: Responsible, disciplined, self-controlled, has good manners

Weaknesses: Know-it-all, unforgiving, condescending, expects the worst

Short description

Capricorns are masters of self-control and are often very serious and traditional in nature. They make great progress in both their personal and professional lives due to their strong sense of independence and responsibility. They are able to focus on the material world and make the most of it by utilizing their experience and expertise to get to the top. They are highly ambitious to make it to the top almost to a point of being a workaholic by nature. Capricorns can be too stubborn to change perspectives or move from a point in a relationship to another. Sometimes, Capricorns may get so caught up in their beliefs and traditional values that they may try to impose them on others. While being practical and responsible, Capricorns can be cold, distant, unforgiving, stuck in the past and in a fairly constant state of guilt. They often need to learn to forgive and live in the moment to make their lives lighter and more positive. 

Aquarius

January 20 - February 2018

Element: Air

Quality: Fixed

Ruler: Uranus, Saturn

Symbol: Water-bearer

Strengths: Progressive, original, independent, humanitarian

Weaknesses: Runs from emotional expression, temperamental, uncompromising, aloof

Short description

Aquarius are highly intellectual deep thinkers and humanitarians, whether they appear shy and quiet or eccentric and energetic. To the Aquarius, the world is full of possibilities and can stand on truly neutral ground without any prejudice toward either side, making them great problem solvers. This view of the world also gives them great insight on what they want to do in the future even as far as 10 years into it. Aquariuses tend to feel good in groups or communities and will strive to be surrounded by others and are able to adapt quickly to their surrounding energy, but also hold a deep need to have some alone time to restore power. Aquariuses are afraid of premature intimacy, so they may come off as cold, insensitive, timid or possibly even aggressive at first as a coping mechanism. Also, their minds need constant mental stimulation to avoid boredom and a lack of motivation, and they will often strive for freedom as much as possible to avoid any feelings of limitation or constraint, as these feelings are a big problem for Aquariuses.

Pisces

February 19 - March 20

Element: Water

Quality: Mutable

Ruler: Neptune, Jupiter

Symbol: Fish

Strengths: Compassionate, artistic, intuitive, gentle, wise, musical

Weaknesses: Fearful, overly-trusting, sad, desires to escape reality, victim/martyr

Short description

Pisces are total humanitarians and are willing to help others with no expectations or hopes to get anything back. As a water sign, Pisces is characterized by its empathy and emotional capacity. Pisces will also find themselves around a wide variety of different people due to their friendliness. They are very forgiving and aren’t judgmental, and are even considered the most tolerant of the signs. They have the best emotional understanding of others, have an intuitive understanding of the life cycle, are very wise, has artistic talent and are able to express musical preferences at a young age. However, at times, Pisces will play the victim or become the martyr for attention.

(source)

#zodiac #zodiac signs #astrology #astrology posts #taurus #gemini #cancer #leo #virgo #libra #scorpio #sagittarius #capricorn #aquarius #pisces #zodiac facts #aries

[garywonghc]

37 Practices of a Bodhisattva (Part One of Three)

by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

In the next few editions of Gatsal we will go through a very important text on Lojong or mind training called the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. This was written in the 14th century by a monk named Thogmé Sangpo who was born in 1296 near to Sakya in western Tibet. From a very early age he exhibited great qualities of compassion and caring for others. There is a story from when he was just a toddler: children wore a fleece-lined chuba – kind of long jacket tied at the waist - and one time he went outside in winter and when he came back inside he was naked. His parents said to him, “What have you done with your chuba?” and he said, “Oh there is a being out there who was very cold”. So they went and looked outside and there was a bush which was covered in frost and so Thogmé had put his chuba over it to keep the bush warm.

His biography is full of these charming stories of how even as he grew older he went to immense trouble for the sake of others - especially those who were in difficult circumstances such as beggars, poor people and so forth. Thogmé became very learned and the Abbot of several monasteries. He was extremely well known and beloved in his day. He died in his sixties which was a good age by Tibetan standards since at that time people didn’t live long. He wrote many books but the one which has become a classic in Tibetan literature is known as Gyalse Lalen. Gyalse means literally sons of the victorious one, meaning Bodhisattvas and Lalen means a way of practising. So it is usually translated as The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva.

Our nuns at the DGL Nunnery also study this text because it is accessible to anyone – monks, nuns, lay people whether Buddhist or non-Buddhist - because it deals, as all Lojong texts do, with how to make use of the difficult circumstances in our life, especially our own mental defilements which give us so much trouble, as well as the problems caused by others. Lojong texts show us how to make use of those difficulties by transforming them and taking them on the path. So it is a very practical text.

At first it might not sound very realistic for us ordinary people but actually the advice is highly practical since taking adverse circumstances and using them as our practice is very important for everybody.

I received a commentary on this text from the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, and also a short explanation by the Dalai Lama himself and also from Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. But most of the verses are pretty obvious.

So as in most traditional texts the text starts with the invocation explaining for whom this text was composed. So he starts by saying Namo Lokeshvaraya. Lokesvara means Lord of the Worlds which is another name for Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig or Kuan Yin.

Chenrezig is the bodhisattva of compassion so an appropriate object of obeisance for a text dealing with the Bodhisattva’s way of compassion. Manjushri is the Bodhisattva of Wisdom and he is invoked in those texts dealing with philosophy, logic and so forth, but those texts which are dealing with the heart and how to incorporate compassion into our daily lives invoke Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig.

So, the text reads:

Though he sees that in phenomena there is no coming and going, He strives solely for the sake of beings:

Phenomena here is the word dharmas, meaning ordinary things, just outer things. As we all know in Buddhism there is a great emphasis on impermanence and the momentary nature of all outer and inner phenomena, that everything arises and disappears momentarily like a flowing river. It looks like the same river but moment to moment the water is changing, moving, moving, moving. So everything is like that, everything comes into being and disappears again, instantaneously, although in our perception it looks like a continuity.

So since impermanence is a very fundamental axiom of Buddhist thought we might ask why it says he sees that in phenomena there is no coming and going? Here it is dealing with ultimate reality. In our ordinary, relative way of seeing, things come and they go, things are up, they are down, things last forever or they disappear. But in ultimate reality all these dualities no longer pertain. So there is no coming and going, there is no higher and lower, there is no annihilation or endless existence. All these opposites, all these dualities are transcended in a state of how things truly are. So although Avalokitesvara is the Bodhisattva who represents compassion, his compassion is naturally from the point of view of his perfect wisdom.

The images of the 1000 armed Avalokitesvara which represent his endless compassionate activities on behalf of all beings, in each hand there is an eye which symbolises that he sees the situation accurately, both from an ordinary and from a transcendental level. So he knows how to act, or how not to act, because sometimes it is better to leave matters alone, even though we would like them changed. So he sees things with the total clarity of an enlightened mind therefore he sees that on an ultimate level there is no coming and going, that all dharmas are in a state of suchness which is beyond the temporal idea of the constant flow of phenomena.

The first line praises Avalokiteshvara’s wisdom, the second line relates to his compassion. So because he sees the transcendent, the ultimate, then on a relative level with compassion he constantly strives for the sake of others. It’s very important that wisdom and compassion come together, otherwise we can be very compassionate but if we don’t see things clearly, we often can mess things up. We have a good motivation but we don’t understand the situation because we see things very narrowly. But Chenrezig sees things vastly and just how they truly are. So from that infinite perspective he is able to spontaneously act in a way which is of ultimate and relative benefit for beings. He combines ultimate and relative truth.

Therefore, this is Chenrezig who is also the sublime teacher, meaning our root guru. Or you could think of His Holiness the Dalai Lama or the Gyalwang Karmapa who are also Chenrezig.

To the sublime teacher inseparable from Avalokiteshvara, the Protector of Beings, I pay constant homage with respectful body, speech, and mind.

In Buddhism we have the three doors meaning the body, the speech and the mind. So, we pay homage, why? To our teacher, who is inseparable from Chenrezig. The buddhas and bodhisattvas such as Chenrezig and Tara are not separate from us, they are our true nature. This is who we really are, if only we could see clearly. We think we are ordinary sentient beings but we are not. This is our tragedy.

But the teacher, a genuine realised being, Lama, understands that. It’s not that they are inherently different from us and so in Buddhist meditations we absorb either the deity or the Lama or both together into ourselves, thinking that our minds and their minds are mixed together like water with water so that we recognise that there is no distinction. The distinction comes from our side. We think we are ordinary and they are special but that’s part of our delusion and so we have to work away, cleaning and polishing. It’s like a beautiful silver pot which is so thickly tarnished that it looks black. So we have to keep polishing until we get back to the silver which has never, in it’s essential nature been tarnished. However much outer guck there might be around it, if we diligently clean then there it is, shining. This silver pot has been there all the time, it hasn’t gone away and come back when we clean it, it is always there but we don’t recognise it. All we see is the black covering. Whereas the great Mahabodhisattvas and the Lamas, the true genuinely realised Lamas, they are very much in contact with their silver base and they do not have tarnish in the way that we do. But the essential nature is the same, their silver is not better than our silver. This is very important to remember.

The perfect buddhas – source of happiness and ultimate peace – Exist through having accomplished the sacred Dharma, And that, in turn, depends on knowing how to practice it;

The buddhas like Shakyamuni Buddhas, on a relative level, had to strive for countless aeons in order to clear away the tarnish and come back to their true metal and how did they do that? All the buddhas of the universe, how did they become Buddhas? They became buddhas by actually practicing the Dharma. It is very important that we practice all this, that is why this text is so important.

We have to practice it, we can take it with us and use it, it’s not high philosophy that we need to go away and think about, that is all up there somewhere in the sky. This text is absolutely down to earth, which we can all use, all day with whomever we meet, in fact we need to meet people because then we can practice.

1. Now that I have this great ship, a precious human life, so hard to obtain, I must carry myself and others across the ocean of samsara. To that end, to listen, reflect, and meditate Day and night, without distraction, is the practice of a bodhisattva.

Samsara is sometimes described as a wheel but it is also very often likened to an ocean because just as an ocean has big waves so in samsara we are tossed up and down endlessly. Sometimes we’re up, sometimes we’re down and then we’re up again and we’re down again. It’s just endless and the problem is that we’re caught in the waves and we’re thrown up and we’re thrown down and so we get very battered by life. Let us remember that all these waves going up and down are on the surface. If we go down into the depths of the ocean we come upon whole realms of calm and quiet, all the way down to the ocean bottom, with all sorts of fascinating fish and marine animals and monsters of the deep as we meditate. But mostly we are living our lives on the surface, tossed up and down by our thoughts and emotions, so in that circumstance, what do we need?

So we need a boat because even though the boat also goes up and down, we are not completely drenched and gradually the boat moves to the other shore. The Buddha himself many times talks about this shore and the other shore, the other shore being liberation. So to get to the other shore we need a boat, we can’t just swim because it’s too far and we get tossed up and down too much all by ourselves.

So therefore we need a boat to carry myself and others across the ocean of samsara. Now we have this great boat, which is the Dharma, but it is also this precious human life so hard to obtain. Every single one of us has a precious human birth. Now we might think, ‘well billions of people have a precious human birth, so what?’ But it’s not true. A precious human birth does not mean just being born as a human. There are many categories which make a precious human birth – like being born in a Buddhist country, having all our faculties, having faith in the Dharma and finding a teacher and so forth. We are not born in the higher realms where everything is too pleasant that there is no incentive to practice and we are not born in the lower realms where there is so much misery and suffering that we are completely caught up in our own paranoia. Nor among the animals who, lovable as so many of them are, do not have the ability to really practice the spiritual path in this lifetime.

What makes a human birth precious? Think how unique we all are. For a start we can read, that’s very rare in this world! But what is even more rare is that we can read and comprehend. Do you know how rare that is? Even among the Tibetan population, there are many monks who can read all the texts but they don’t know what they mean. However we can pick up a book on Dharma and providing it’s not too obtuse, we can get something out of it: the words have meaning. Certainly if we pick up an ordinary book on basic Dharma practices or biographies of Lamas or other great teachers, we can understand them easily, you can curl up with them.

Tibetans usually don’t, apart from an advanced Geshe, a Geshe Lharampa or a good Khenpo, he wouldn’t just sit down with a book, read it and enjoy it, only if he had already studied it. So we’re all educated, we can understand concepts which we have not met with before, the mind can grapple with, can think about it. Here it says:

To that end, to listen, reflect, and meditate Day and night, without distraction, is the practice of a bodhisattva.

Well, day and night without distraction might be a bit much, but first we have to study. So back to this precious human birth. What makes this human birth so precious? We are all born in countries where we are allowed to think what we want. How many countries in the world we would not be allowed to think what we want. Where we could not just go and change our religion if we felt like it or read books on every kind of religion or go to Dharma Centres if we want to. In many countries of this world, either there are no Dharma Centres and even the word Buddha is never heard or even if there are Dharma Centres you are not permitted to go there because you belong to another religion. That’s much more common than normally we are conscious of while living in India or America, Europe or Australia. But those are not the only countries in the world.

So we have our human birth and we are probably relatively healthy and anyway we can think, our minds are clear. We have the freedom to think what we want, to read what we want and above all, we have the interest in the Dharma. That is the most important of all. Do you realise how rare that is? I mean here we are in India, which is supposed to be a spiritual country. How many people are really interested in any Dharma? In the sense of really wanting to transform themselves, not just get the gods to make their children healthy and pass their exams and get more money and a better job, which is mostly what people pray to the gods for?

How many people go to the temple to pray for enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings? How many people even go to the temple to pray for the wellbeing and happiness of others outside of their family circle? So even to have some aspiration outside of our own self-interest is rare, very rare.

I was brought up as a Spiritualist and every week we had séances at our house. At that time I was around 7 or 8 years old. Even at that young age I noticed everyone was asking these spirit guides, “My Aunt Edith is having an operation next week, is she going to be alright?” or all the time wanting to get in contact with someone who had died and I thought “Here we’ve got these people on the Other Side, let’s ask them something of meaning. They might know or they might have a different angle on it.” So I asked them “Well is there a God?” I thought they might know. The spirit guides replied “Well of course we don’t really know, but what’s going round in the spirit realms is that God isn’t a person, but ultimately there is light and love and intelligence.” So I thought, “Yeah I’ll buy that.”

Ultimately there is light and love and intelligence in this universe. And we are it, we carry that within us, its not just something out there, it is within us. This is what we are trying to re-connect with, our original light and love and intelligence, which is who we really are. So it is important not to get so distracted by extraneous things, but to really remember what we are here on this planet for. Why having this precious human body is so precious because if we waste our life again. Otherwise we are living basically like a well-trained animal – what do animals want to do? For instance our dogs at the DGL Nunnery, they want to be fed, they want to be comfortable, when it’s cold they snuggle up in the sheltered places, when it’s warm they go lie in the sun, when it gets too hot they go and lie in the shade again, they want to be comfortable. They want to eat nice food, and if they’ve not been neutered, then they want to mate. If a strange dog comes by who looks threatening, they will fight them to preserve their territory, but if it’s a doggy friend, then they will play around together.

Well, if we lead our lives basically on that level, we might as well have come back as a pet dog. In fact, in New York there are more pet shops than there are beauty parlours! Pets have become like children really, all these pets with their little bows, their little tiaras and their little jackets. Anyway, the point is, if all we want is to be comfortable and petted, loved and admired, then we might as well come back as a poodle because we have wasted our human birth. It is very hard to get a well endowed human birth which has the freedoms and the endowments and if we waste this opportunity now, it will be difficult to regain that in the future.

All the causes and conditions have come together because of our past efforts in other lifetimes, so if we don’t make efforts in this lifetime it’s going to get lost again, because we are not making the right causes and conditions. So now is the time because in the future, we don’t know.

Now, the Dharma is here, the teachers are still here, the books are still here, we have the freedom to listen and practice, nobody is stopping us. So if we don’t make full use of this opportunity, then next time, who knows and even later in our life, who knows. The only time we can be certain of in our lives is right now, so this is very important.

What we have to do is listen, reflect and meditate. First, we have to accumulate the knowledge, we have to listen. Traditionally in the Buddha’s time, things were not written down, so therefore in the sutras they always talked about listening because they didn’t have books. So first of all is to listen, this includes reading, studying, downloading off the internet, all of that, any acquisition of knowledge is considered listening. So it means to study the dharma. We take it in, we read about it, we hear about it, then we have to think about it. It’s not enough that we just take it in. It’s like food, we take a bite but then we have to chew it in order to digest, we don’t just swallow it in great big lumps! So we have to think about what we have read, what we have heard and really try to understand. If we have doubts, that’s fine, no problem, we do not have to believe blindly, it says that we have to believe because we understand. So if you don’t believe something then put it aside for a while, or go and study more.

Almost every year when I was staying in Lahaul I would go and see my Lama, the former Khamtrul Rinpoche, and I always had a long list of questions from my retreat. I used to keep a piece of paper beside me and when a thought, a question would come up then I could write it down and forget about it, I didn’t have to keep it going in my mind. So when I went to see my Lama he would lean back and say, “Where’s your list?” and I would bring out the pages with all my questions. I think Rinpoche kind of enjoyed it because the questions went up and down and all over the place and occasionally he said “Oh nobody ever asked that before, I have to think, hmmm.”

But some things I just really didn’t believe and he would say “It doesn’t matter, just put that to the side for now” and sometimes he would laugh and say “Everything you read in the books isn’t true” and he even said, “Well we just write like that to frighten people into being good!” But the point is that one doesn’t have to just believe everything because otherwise we’re frightened that a thunderbolt from heaven is going to come down and hit us! It’s not that, it’s an intelligent believe, a belief based on our own reasoning.

Sometimes I call Buddhism enlightened common sense because once we hear it, we think, ‘yes, that makes sense’. But if we hear and think, “hmm that doesn’t sound right”, then put it aside or maybe study more about it. Maybe we didn’t understand it or maybe it was just a provisional truth which isn’t ultimate truth anyway. Perhaps it was just what people believed in society at that time. We don’t all have to believe that the world is flat with Mount Meru and the four continents but that is the kind of cosmology that was current in those days. Nowadays nobody gets burnt at the stake for believing that the world is round. The world is round, the world is flat, in any case it’s all empty!

So think things through, really try to understand, and if we don’t understand, then read more about it, think more about it, ask questions. Reflection is a very crucial part of the Dharma. Then, most important of all it says meditate. But actually the word Gompa literally means to become accustomed to or familiar with something. So what we have to do then is practice it, put our ideas into action. One of my Lamas said: first you hear and study, then you think about it, then you become it. And that’s the point. It goes from the head down into the heart and we transform. Then spontaneously what we say, what we think and what we do comes naturally from our understanding.

This is very important, because otherwise mere learning is not going to help us. One time I went to see Trijang Rinpoche, who was the Junior Tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his first question of course was ‘Who is your Lama?” and I said Khamtrul Rinpoche and he replied, “Ah, Kagyu! Well the thing with the Kagyupas is that they practice, that’s the emphasis with the Kagyus” and he turned to his secretary and he said “At the time of death what is going to help us – a head full of book knowledge or genuine understanding and realisation in the heart? You know, we don’t need to study so much, what we need is to study, understand what we have read and then really practice it and put it into our heart, that is what is going to help us.” Otherwise it is just endlessly learning, learning, learning while nothing inside is transforming. Someone says something nasty to us and we get all upset and defensive and think “How can they do this to me?” Then what is the use of all this learning? We haven’t learned anything.

So it’s very important, these three things. First we have to study to know what we are trying to do, then to really think it through so that we really understand it and then incorporate it in our lives and become it. So we’ve got work ahead.

Day and night, without distraction, is the practice of a bodhisattva.

That means whatever happens, even if we are watching a movie, try to see it from a Dharma point of view. It’s quite terrifying, how much people act out their emotional defilements and negativities and without anyone ever thinking there’s a problem here. It’s supposed to be a romantic drama so there is all the attachment, all the jealousy and all the anger. The point is, whatever situation we find ourselves in we should at the same time be observing it with clarity of mind and openness of heart and in this way, day and night we are constantly practicing the way of a bodhisattva. There are not times off if you are a bodhisattva . It’s 24 hours, seven days a week – what can I say?

We shouldn’t be too frightened by these verses.

2. In my native land waves of attachment to friends and kin surge, Hatred for enemies rages like fire, The darkness of stupidity, not caring what to adopt or avoid, thickens – To abandon my native land is the practice of a bodhisattva.

This verse does not just refer to our outer native land. It doesn’t just mean that we all have to go across the world in order to practise, because we take our mind with us and it’s our mind which has all this attachment and hatred and the darkness of our unknowing.

On the one hand, people get locked into habitual relationships. How often people are reacting to each other due to old habits without even really thinking about it any more. So many negativities come up because it’s just the way they act and talk to each other nowadays since it’s much easier to do that with people with whom we are familiar. Maybe in childhood we had already started up the patterns and so these continue on and on.

In that way it’s good to be able to get away and maybe get some new perspective through being in a different environment where we can try to incorporate better ways of dealing with people. But the problem really is, our ‘native land’ means our ordinary habitual responses, this is what we have to leave behind. So the way to leave them behind is first to be conscious of them.

The waves of attachment that surge within and around us: we are lost floundering in this huge ocean of caring about people and worrying about them and fearing they are going to leave us and then happy again when they tell us that they love us…. Parents with their children, couples in relationships, all of this, there’s so much going on that it’s very rare to relax in a calm quiet lake. Mostly the waves of our hopes and fears send us surging up and down It is all our attachment. Attachment doesn’t mean love, there’s a huge difference between love and attachment. The Buddha said the cause of our suffering, of our Duhkha is attachment, clinging and grasping. But love and compassion which are essential qualities on the path are very different, actually the opposite of attachment and grasping. It’s one of the most difficult points for us as ordinary sentient beings to really be able to understand and make that distinction because in our society we believe that the more we are attached the more loving we are. But it is simply not true. Attachment is a tricky one but basically attachment means I want you to make me happy and to feel good and love says I want you to be happy and feel good. It doesn’t say anything about me. If being with me makes you feel happy and good, wonderful, if not then so be it. The important thing is that love allows us to hold things very gently instead of grasping tightly. It’s an important difference, really it’s a very important difference.

Therefore I tell again and again the story of my mother. My father died when I was two, so he was out of the picture and my mother brought up my brother and me by herself, Then my brother was in the Royal Air Force in Malaysia, so there was only me left at home and my mother and I got along very well. She also was interested in Buddhism and happy to entertain whatever Lamas or monks that were in London at that time. We would go to Dharma meetings together. Then when I was nineteen I got a letter from India telling me that there was work for me and to come. I remember running through the streets to meet my mother who was coming from work, and saying to her “Oh, I am going to India!” And she replied “Oh yes dear. And when are you leaving?” She didn’t gasp “You’re going to India! How can you leave me, your own poor mother! I’ll be all by myself with no-one to take care of me and look after me as I’m getting old!” Nothing of that - she never said that ever. That’s not because she didn’t love me but because she did love me and she wanted what was right for me, even if it did not include her. And afterwards when I was in India, every ten years she would write, “If I send you a return ticket, will you come back for a month?” and so every ten years, I went back for a month, saw my mother and came back again. She also came to India for one year, she loved India – it was very different from now. She loved it, she loved the Indians, loved the Tibetans, but she got sick from the food so she had to go home to England. But that was love.

There’s an Australian cartoonist called Leunig and he did a series on how to respect and show love for others and one of his examples was holding a day old chick in your hands that you hold very carefully, very gently because if you grasp it - no more chick! So it’s like that.

Love is this outpouring of caring and wishing well, wishing the other to be happy, but not with yourself stuck right in the middle of it. Not grasping: I want you to be happy but that’s only if it includes me.

So therefore because we get so caught up especially with our families and it is very hard to be unattached to family, then it is given as the example for leaving the homeland. However it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to leave home. What it does mean is that we have to start thinking in a different way about our loved ones. In a way that genuinely cherishes them and wishes them well but allows them to be who they are without trying to manipulate them or make them say and do what we want them to do because that would make me happy. Just allowing them to be who they are, giving them the freedom to have their life, whether or not that includes us.

So we start with those we are close to, this is who we practice on. We practice on those that we love and those that we are close to, how to love them without grasping, how to genuinely love them, as they are, whatever they are. I remember when I was 15 or 16 my mother one day out of the blue, she just said to me ‘I want you to know that there is nothing you could ever do that would cause me not to love you.’ That’s love. I wasn’t doing anything but I appreciated the thought and I knew it was true. Whatever we do, our mother is there for us but without trying to manipulate, just allowing us to be who we are and loving that.

#buddha #buddhism #buddhist #bodhi #bodhicitta #bodhisattva #compassion #dharma #dhamma #enligthenment #guru #khenpo #lama #mahayana #mahasiddha #mindfulness #monastics #monastery #monks #path #quotes #rinpoche #sayings #spiritual #teachings #tibet #tibetan #tulku #vajrayana #venerable

[tomfooleryprime]

The illogic of a logical philosophy

The pilot episode of Star Trek: Discovery was titled “The Vulcan Hello,” and Michael Burnham was all about giving one to the Klingons.

Unfortunately, the Vulcan hello she was referring to looked a little less like this:

And a lot more like this:

Apparently, this shocked some fans, but I’m not really sure why. There are a lot of perpetuated ideas that Vulcans are strict pacifists because, after all, war is illogical. But if we really peel back some of the canon, the reality is that Vulcans probably prefer peace, but they’re certainly not above violence, and that’s the problem with living by logic.

Is violence illogical? Who’s to say? Even a philosophy based on pure logic is doomed to be convoluted because spoken language is imprecise and no philosophy is absolute. Yet Vulcan philosophy is often treated as though it must be, as if for any single issue, there is only one perfectly logical solution amid a sea of half-logical alternatives and utter irrationality.

So, what is Vulcan philosophy? Over the years, it’s expanded into a belief system that has two giant scoops of Greek stoicism, a pinch of Jewish mysticism, a dollop of utilitarianism, and a rationalism cherry on top. I would actually argue that this Frankenstein philosophy is whatever it needs to be, so long as it can be defended with a reasonably sound argument delivered in monotone, dispassionate speech. And therein lies the problem. How do we decide what is “reasonably sound?” Worse yet, what is logic?

Believe it or not, there is no universal agreement on the exact scope of this particular discipline. The ancient Greeks studied logic in philosophy, but logic also has more discrete applications in mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. I could type thousands of words dissecting the different branches of logic, but Wikipedia did it so much better than I ever could. Bottom line is, if you’re not using logic to defend mathematical proofs or write code, there’s a whole lot of gray area for what can be considered “logical.”

Me too, Amanda, me too.

So how do stoicism, rationalism, and utilitarianism fit into the Vulcan narrative? Stoicism goes back to the ancient Greeks and championed the idea virtue was based on knowledge, and that wise and virtuous people lived in harmony with reason and were able to accept reality and not allow themselves to be controlled by pain, fear, or desire. If that doesn’t sound like the first page of the Vulcan playbook, I don’t know what does.

Rationalism is a philosophy that sort of bridges ancient stoicism with the modern world and asserts that reason should be the chief source and test of logic rather than religious belief or emotional response. And lastly, utilitarianism is a doctrine that asserts that actions are right if they are useful or benefit a majority. Sound familiar?

If it doesn’t, you’ve never seen The Wrath of Khan. Or shopped at Hallmark.

But the thing is, not one of those philosophical systems says, “No violence.” If The Teachings of Surak has strict rules prohibiting violence, all the Vulcans we’ve ever met across six different series are really shitty Vulcans. 

We see many instances of Vulcans preferring to avoid violence and killing—Vulcans often employ a nerve pinch to subdue aggressors rather than smack them around—but they are capable of worse. In the TOS episode, “Journey to Babel,” a Tellarite ambassador is murdered by someone who “knew exactly where to apply pressure to snap the neck instantly,” according to Dr. McCoy. As Kirk ponders who could have possibly committed such an act, Spock is all too quick to throw his dad under the bus and say, “Vulcans.���

While he quickly adds that “Vulcans do not approve of violence” he also mentions that “it would be illogical to kill without reason.” And so:

Backpedaling at warp eight.

Sarek knows how to kill because he’s skilled in a deadly martial arts technique called tal-shaya. The fact that Vulcans train in martial arts, possess weapons like the lirpa and the ahn-woon, and cruise around the quadrant in ships outfitted with weapons suggests they are at least prepared to defend themselves if necessary, which would disqualify them from being absolute pacifists. But that doesn’t necessarily make them warmongers either.

So, what about actually instigating a war? In Enterprise, we got a view of Vulcans that a lot of people weren’t comfortable with. We saw Vulcans spying on their Andorian neighbors, we saw religious factions fighting one another, and we saw a Vulcan High Command that seemed remarkably belligerent. Some fans might argue that after the discovery of the Kir’Shara in the Enterprise story arc that included the episodes “The Forge,” “The Awakening,” and “Kir’Shara” led to a new reformation, Vulcans returned to their true logical roots, ditching their semi-violent ways. 

But it’s evident that Vulcans believe that sometimes logic requires violence. Recall those utilitarian principles woven throughout Vulcan philosophy. One of the most well-known philosophical thought experiments is referred to as The Trolley Problem, and it’s a test of utilitarian judgments. There are many variations, but the short one goes like this:

There’s a trolley hurtling down a track with five people on it. The brakes are shot and it’s going to crash, killing all on board. You happen to be standing next to a switch that would divert the trolley onto a separate track where it would gently crash into a sandbank, saving the lives of those five people. The only problem is, there is a person tied to the tracks you want to divert the trolley onto. If you pull the switch, you will actively kill one person to save five. If you do nothing, you will passively allow the person tied to the tracks to live at the expense of the five on the trolley. And so, if we are capable of acting, do we have a duty to act? (Here’s a fascinating quiz if you’d like to explore your own beliefs on the subject.) But what would Vulcans do?

Rather than spend time debating it, I can tell you exactly what most Vulcans would probably do. In the TOS episode, “Operation, Annihilate!,” Deneva colony is infested with neural parasites and Dr. McCoy can’t find a way to kill them. Kirk is struggling to find a way to prevent the spread of these parasites, and Spock points out the only logical solution, though it is “understandably upsetting,” is to destroy the colony and its one million inhabitants because there are billions of people living beyond Deneva colony to think about. McCoy didn’t handle it well.

A real dick move, Mr. Spock. A real dick move.

Now, to his credit, Spock was also infected, so he was willing to die for his principles, but he didn’t bat an eye at the idea of killing a million people. The good news is, it’s old-school Trek so of course they found a solution that didn’t end with the tragic slaughter of a million colonists, but Spock’s initial recommendation was that it was logical to commit an act of violence against one million people to save the lives of billions. 

Maybe you agree with him, maybe you don’t, but that being said, is it really such a wild notion to believe that the Vulcans would prefer occasional small acts of aggression against the Klingons if there were sufficient reason to believe it would prevent a war? 

When explaining to Captain Georgiou what a Vulcan hello was, Michael Burnham didn’t say the Vulcans slaughtered every Klingon they encountered, simply that they “fired first” in order to “say hello in a language the Klingons understood.” If anything, it sounds like the Vulcan policy was more in line with a warning shot than a Klingon genocide, and from my own simple-minded human perspective, that sounds pretty damn logical if it prevents real and prolific bloodshed.

But that comes back to the initial question of “what is Vulcan philosophy?” Perhaps we should ask ourselves who is the ultimate judge of what is logical? In theory, it should be Surak and his teachings, right?

Surak’s a smart guy who obviously knows a bargain when he sees one, as illustrated by this ensemble that looks a 6th grade home economics project met the clearance rack at the local craft store. 

Unfortunately, just because something is written down doesn’t mean everyone is going to agree on the same interpretation, otherwise, the U.S. Supreme Court would be about 99% less busy and history wouldn’t be littered with the bodies of billions of people desperate to prove their version of the God of Abraham is the right one.  

I don’t know why Vulcans are so often portrayed as being a culture of homogenous personalities, beliefs, and values, as though logic is logic and there’s no room for variation. Imagine what the series would have been like if we played switcheroo with Spock, Tuvok, and T’Pol. Picture the moody and somewhat emotional T’Pol trying to give advice to Captain Kirk, or the wise and experienced Tuvok trying to talk Archer out of half the shit he did in the Delphic Expanse.

Tuvok’s eyes are clearly asking if it’s too late to go back to the Delta quadrant and get assimilated by the Borg.

The point is, individual Vulcans aren’t interchangeable, and I don’t think their beliefs are either. Just look at what happened in the Enterprise episode, “Carbon Creek.” Three Vulcans are marooned on Earth in the 1950s and are facing starvation when they encounter a pair of deer. Despite the fact that Vulcans eat plant-based diets because their tenets about non-violence extend to animals, Mestral suggests eating one of them because:

A Vulcan Mrs. Donner.

Stron is Vulcan-horrified at the idea of resorting to “savagery,” but thankfully T’Pol/T’Mir agrees to violate the Vulcan version of the Prime Directive instead so they don’t have to murder Bambi’s mom. But that scene raises an interesting point. Who was right, Mestral or Stron? Or both? Or neither?

Put 100 Vulcans in a room and ask them when war is justifiable, I’m sure they’d all spout off some Vulcan version of Just War Theory like the smug, walking information databases that they are. But put 100 Vulcans in charge of making a real-world decision about going to war, and we’d get 100 different answers, some which directly contradicted others, but each defended by iron clad logic.  

To wrap this drivel up, Vulcan philosophy is a really bizarre hodgepodge of conflicting ideologies. They believe in infinite diversity in infinite combinations, which means they celebrate the beauty of the countless variables of the universe, unless it’s a Klingon bird-of-prey, in which case, they shoot that shit up. Pacifism is great when it’s convenient, killing is bad, except for when it isn’t, it’s not genocide if you have a really good reason, and eating animals is wrong, except for when it’s necessary. Yeah, logical.

I’m of the opinion that Vulcans are no better than humans—they do their best to grapple with complex issues according to a chaotic and occasionally contradictory set of beliefs. Even if they swear they aren’t driven by emotion, they are still at the mercy of their life experiences and world views when it comes to decision making. Logic is a tool that can help them arrive at answers, but it isn’t the answer. Most importantly, like any tool, logic can be abused or corrupted.

Given the weight of the evidence, I would re-assert that Vulcans are happy to declare anything as being logical, so long as it suits their agenda or personal beliefs. Or perhaps it’s better to say that the writers of Star Trek will call anything logical if it adds to the dialogue or advances the plot.

What say you, T’Pol?

#star trek #star trek discovery #star trek enterprise #star trek the original series #vulcans #vulcan philosophy #spock #t'pol #tuvok #meta #long post #live long and prosper

[ulfwolf]

Observation

an Element of Fiction

"In a way, nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small, we haven’t the time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” Georgia O’Keeffe

“Observation and the inner truth of that observation as he perceives it, the two being tested one against the other: to him [the writer] this is what the writing of a novel is.” Eudora Welty

“The fiction writer is an observer, first, last, and always.” Flannery O’Connor

“To gaze is to think.” Salvador Dalí

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.” Meister Eckhart

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what he saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, and thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion all in one.” John Ruskin

“There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.” Paul Valéry

“The surest—also the quickest—way to awake the sense of wonder in ourselves is to look intently, undeterred, at a single object. Suddenly, miraculously, it will reveal itself as something we have never seen before.” Cesare Pavese

“It is essential for a writer unceasingly to study men, and it is a fault in me that I find it often a very tedious business. It requires a great deal of patience.” W. Somerset Maugham

“Mark the greater from the lesser truth: namely the larger and more liberal idea of nature from the comparatively narrow and confined… that which addresses itself to the imagination from that which is solely addressed to the Eye.” J.M.W. Turner paraphrasing Sir Joshua Reynolds

“We lack trust in the present, this moment, this actual seeing, because our culture tells us to trust only the reported back, the publicly framed, the edited, the thing set in the clearly artistic or the clearly scientific angle of perspective. One of the deepest lessons we have to learn is that nature, of its nature, resists this. It waits to be seen otherwise, in its individual presentness and from our individual presentness.” John Fowles

“To be a writer and not a hack, you must clear your mind of cant and allow multitudinous messages to come to you from the souls of your fellowmen. They are the secret source of your abundant ideas. People do not know what they communicate; yet it is they whom you ‘read,’ consciously and unconsciously, and whom you interpret to themselves, in stories, poems, plays, or works of social and moral philosophy.” Jacques Barzun

“The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees.” Flannery O’Connor

“I should notice everything—the phrase for it coming the moment after and fitting like a glove.” Virginia Woolf

“Your characterizations will never be better than your power of observation.” Ayn Rand

“That close scrutiny is one among many elements that make up the practice of fiction; let it serve as a clue to the value of authentic practice—and to the waste and harm in fictional malpractice.” John Gardner

“[A] writer is forced from all sides to make his gaze extend beyond the surface, beyond mere problems, until it touches that realm which is the concern of prophets and poets.” Flannery O’Connor

“By being a constant, conscious valuer of people, you gather the material from which you will draw your future characterizations.” Ayn Rand

“What conveys honesty? What conveys dishonesty? You can observe these characteristics only by their outward manifestations—by the words, actions, gestures, and subtler mannerisms of people.” Ayn Rand

“I see only what is outside and what sticks out a mile, such things as the sun that nobody has to uncover or be bright to see. When I first started to write, I was much worried over not being subtle but it don’t worry me any more.” Flannery O’Connor

“The eye sees what it has been given to see by concrete circumstances, and the imagination reproduces what, by some related gift, it is able to make live.” Flannery O’Connor

“For the writer of fiction, everything has its testing in the eye.” Flannery O’Connor

“Now learning to see is the basis for learning all the arts except music. I know a good many fiction writers who paint, not because they’re any good at it, but because it helps in their writing. It forces them to look at things. Fiction writing is very seldom a matter of saying things; it is a matter of showing things.” Flannery O’Connor

“In fiction we stand back, weigh things as we do not have to do in life; and the effect of great fiction is to temper real experience, modify prejudice, humanize.” John Gardner

“The true writer’s scrutiny of imagined scenes both feeds on and feeds his real-life experience: almost without knowing he’s doing it, the writer becomes an alert observer.” John Gardner

“We study people carefully for two main reasons: in order to understand them and fully experience our exchange with them, or in order to feel ourselves superior. The first purpose can contribute to art and is natural to art, since the soul of art is celebration and discovery through imitation.” John Gardner

“He must present, moment by moment, concrete images drawn from careful observation of how people behave, and he must render the connections between moments, the exact gestures, facial expressions, or turns of speech that, within any give scene, move human beings from emotion to emotion, from one instant in time to the next.” John Gardner

“Write as if you were a movie camera. Get exactly what is there. Getting it down precisely is all that is meant by ‘the accuracy of the writer’s eye.’” John Gardner

“Getting down what the writer really cares about—setting down what the writer himself notices, as opposed to what any fool might notice—is all that is meant by the originality of the writer’s eye.” John Gardner

“Both because the cogency of his story depends on it and because he has learned to take pride in getting his scenes exactly right, the good writer scrutinizes the imagined or remembered scene with full concentration. Though his plot seems to be rolling along beautifully and his characters seem to be behaving with authentic and surprising independence, as characters in good fiction always do, the writer is willing to stop writing for a minute or two, or even stop for a long while, to figure out precisely what some object or gesture looks like and hunt down exactly the right word to describe it.” John Gardner

“It may feel more classy to imitate James Joyce or Walter Percy than All in the Family; but every literary imitation lacks something we expect of good writing: the writer seeing with his own eyes.” John Gardner

“The noblest originality is not stylistic but visionary and intellectual; the writer’s accurate presentation of what he, himself, has seen, heard, thought, and felt.” John Gardner

“To fail to imitate people as they are, even in a fable which takes as its setting ancient Nubia or outer space, would reveal a lack of the true artist’s most noticeable characteristic: fascination with the feelings, gestures, obsessions, and phobias of the people of his own time and place. One cannot imagine a Dante, a Chaucer, a Shakespeare, or a Racine without characters drawn from scrutiny of real people.” John Gardner

“He [the artist] is one who can see in the country of the blind.” John Gardner

“The novelist must be characterized not by his function but by his vision, and we must remember that his vision has to be transmitted and that the limitations and blind spots of his audience will very definitely affect the way he is able to show what he sees. This is another thing which in these times increases the tendency toward the grotesque in fiction.” Flannery O’Connor

“The writer who emphasizes spiritual values is very likely to take the darkest view of all of what he sees in this country today. For him, the fact that we are the most powerful and the wealthiest nation in the world doesn’t mean a thing in any positive sense. The sharper the light of faith, the more glaring are apt to be the distortions the writer sees in the life around him.” Flannery O’Connor

“The kind of vision the fiction writer needs to have, or to develop, in order to increase the meaning of his story is called anagogical vision, and that is the kind of vision that is able to see different levels of reality in one image or one situation.” Flannery O’Connor

“Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that doesn’t require his attention.” Flannery O’Connor

“There are two qualities that make fiction. One is the sense of mystery and the other is the sense of manners. You get the manners from the texture of existence that surrounds you.” Flannery O’Connor”

“A view taken in the light of the absolute will include a good deal more than one taken merely in the light provided by a house-to-house survey.” Flannery O’Connor

“Observing [a client] in his or her own element is usually very telling. Behavior is always more revealing than language. If you know what to look for.” Jake Kasdan

“There is that unique moment when one confronts something new and astonishment begins. Whatever it is, it looms brightly, its edges sharp, its details ravishing, in a hard clear light; just beholding it is a form of revelation.” Diane Ackerman

“So much of our life passes in a comfortable blur. Living on the senses requires an easily triggered sense of marvel, a little extra energy, and most people are lazy about life. Life is something that happens to them while they wait for death.” Diane Ackerman

“Be someone on whom nothing is lost.” Henry James

“Knowing the place for the first time is for me a repetitive process, not some sort of single climactic event. There are always knowings for the first time, on even the simplest or most familiar return . . . if one knows how to look for them.” John Fowles

“The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn.” Ernest Hemingway

“Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.” Ernest Hemingway

“You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice.” Ernest Hemingway

“When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.” Ernest Hemingway

“The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he did not intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. He is the roving eye.” Elizabeth Bowen

“I write to live, and I write to share. The Original Creator’s version seems random and fantastic, but there are enough consistencies, if you wait and watch for them, to give remarkable tales. You must wake up terribly to catch them, even though what you produce may be close to dream.” Barry Hannah

“Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.” Mel Brooks

“What a strange life it is. Inspecting it for the purpose of setting it down on paper only illuminates its strangeness.” John Steinbeck

“My task is to chronicle those little daily lacerations upon the spirit.” Anthony Trollope

“I enjoy writing: I think I am an honest observer.” Virginia Woolf

(c) Wolfstuff

P.S. If you like what you’ve read here and would like to send me a small gift of thanks, as it were, you can do so via PayPal: here.

#Creative Writing #Fiction Writing #Writing #Writers on Writing #Authors #Author Quotes #Elements of Fiction

[punkascas]

Fic Author Interview

tagged by: the wonderfully talented and incredibly sweet @amirosebooks  ❤

tagging: @iggyw @tenoko1 @casolantern @schmerzerling @amazinmango @serricoj @rainbofiction @coffeeandcas @topaz-eyes @angelofthemoor @culumacilinte @coplins

im going to do this from the slightly broader perspective of creative writing in general (since i write fic but i also write scripts and things for my job). also this is v long. sorry.

What inspires your work most? (The show it is based on, the actor who portrays a certain character, maybe the character itself…? It could even be an experience.) so generally my inspiration is (in order): (a) my own life experiences, (b) some kind of commentary i want to make about the source material or about fiction or fandom in general, and (c) the characters themselves and the aspects i love in them, especially trying to find ways to play with the duality of their personalities, the good aspects and the negative ones.  i’ve known for a long time that what drives me to create is that i want to make other people feel less alone. you know those times to read something or there’s a line someone says, and you’re like, yes, yes, that’s me; no one’s ever gotten that before or at least never put it so perfectly into words, whatever that experience/feeling might be. i want to give people that moment with anything i create. there’s also a lot of things that i’ve experienced in my life that come up relatively often in fiction, or at least in fic, and a lot of it usually is off-putting to me. it never resonates. it’s melodramatic or simply inaccurate, and i think is often written by someone who doesn’t have the lived experience to pull from. so i always want to add my voice to the pile and benefit from my own experiences to make those kinds of tropes and situations more realistic and relatable -- to me, but hopefully also to others.  like generally every character backstory or character arc i write in fic is something pulled from my own life. like it’s probably twisted or adapted somewhat, because i’m not into being autobiographical. but as an example, in faith healer, this bit: Memory degrades with time. Maybe as a child he knew that somehow. He knew that there would be a second, slower death across time, as she became more of idea than person, and so he clung onto specific moments as a talisman for Mom: I had a mom once; this was my mommy. He remembers her hands best. The way her skin was thin and dry, but her fingers strong, and the way they'd close around his hands. The way she would press in love and good luck and humility when he misbehaved with a squeeze to his chubby, too small hands. Second best he remembers her laugh, the way her mouth moved around a smile, the warmth in it, tinged with embarrassment whenever someone startled it out from her. The rest of the memories are vague, more like facts he can read out of a mental police blotter than lived experience. She used to wear some kind of fleece robe in the winter, thick and pilled, creating a soft cushion between her breasts for his head to rest when he sat in her lap for a story. He thinks the robe was red. She used to bake things from scratch and used to let him pretend to help. On Sundays she did laundry, down in the basement. He followed her once, asking when Dad would come back, and she paused on the landing, basket of clothes cocked on her hip, and wouldn't go any further until he went back upstairs. The basement, she said, was too dangerous for him, dark and damp. She wanted him to be safe. She always cut the crust off his sandwiches. that is my experience of my grandmother’s death. when she died i knew i would forget over time the specific details of her, so i picked a couple to remind myself of daily so i’d never forget them. and that was her hands and her laugh. and i do have that memory of her doing the laundry and standing on the landing to the basement asking her where my dad was and when he’d be back (he was on an 18 month voyage to africa - my dad is a sailor). and she did always cut the crusts off my sandwiches for me.  (and btw i can’t ever re-read that passage with crying.)

What is your favorite fandom to write for? i mean, usually whatever my main fandom is at the time? which right now is spn. i did also enjoy writing potc fic and RDJ films sherlock holmes. i like writing characters who have a very strong but also very biased or unusual perspective on the world. they make for good unreliable narrators, which is something i love doing.

Which perspective do you prefer writing in? (First-person, third-person) always, always, always third-person limited is my go-to. i only write in first-person if the original source material is written that way (like ACD Sherlock Holmes) and i want to do a pastiche of that style. 

Do you prefer writing reader fics or OCs? no. full stop. (okay, one caveat: i do like kidfic, but i am also SUPER PICKY about reading it bc im always looking for some accurate representations of parenthood and what it’s like to have a child. like kids are hard??? they’re hard and they make you worry and they drive you crazy and they have their own, weird, stubborn, fascinating views on life and the world. they’re not perfect angel children who exist only to be cute or ridiculously amazing mary sue geniuses. so yeah a well done kidfic where the kid is an OC i will read.)

Do you prefer writing longer works or one shots? given that every single WIP i have right now are fucking, horrible, lengthy novels,i want to say i prefer writing one-shots. i want TO BE ABLE to write one-shots. i used to do???? but yeah, i guess i really do enjoy plotting and world-building, which lends itself to creating monster plot bunnies instead of short stories or quick scenes. 

Do you take requests? i do! do i ever actually get around to writing those requests is another question. but absolutely. send me prompts. ask for timestamps. if it speaks to me, and especially if it’s something i think i can write in less than 1000 words, i’ll most likely give it a go. 

Do you enjoy getting random Asks? yes! always! i try to respond at least with in 72 hours. but yes please COME TALK TO ME ANYTIME.

What inspires the names for OCs (or extra character names) in your works? Do you pick them from real life or just select them at random? A mix? so with fic, i never really write OCs, or if i do, they’re p much a red shirt or like extra #243 or smth and therefore don’t have names. if a character has spoken dialogue or no on-screen dialogue but some impact on the plot, i’ll try to “cast” that part with a character from the source material. for example, in the family business (which i realise isn’t posted yet), there’s some issues with a rival gang that need resolving. i cast the head of the rival gang as a well-known character from spn that has generally served a rival or an enemy to the boys on the show. i like doing that bc i like the parallels it draws, especially when working with an AU, and the ability to explore characters and dynamics from a slightly (or not slightly at all but in fact completely divergent) angle. i follow the philosophy that part of the real cathartic nature of AUs and part of why we write them is the ability to offer commentary on the source material. that a good AU should offer commentary on the source material. they're both metatexts and paratexts simultaneously. the one caveat to this, again, is kidfic, because i like and i do write it (i’ve just never finished any of those fics enough to publish them). and then i try to name kids in the way i think their parents would name them. i try to put myself in the character’s headspace and try to figure out what name(s) would appeal to them. and if we talk about work, and the scripts i write, i mean all of that is basically OCs. so far every script i’ve written while employed by my current firm, i always stick in at least one instance of one of my dogs’ names. i also will make subtle film or tv references. like the script i just wrote, there were three characters, and the first character had already been named harold by our content lead. so i named the other two perry and harmony as a reference to kiss kiss bang bang. i’ve done all the clones from orphan black as OC names. i’ve done members of radiohead.  if one of the scripts im writing already has a theme built into it for a specific pop culture reference (like yesterday one of the scripts i wrote was using yoda speech and star wars analogies as part of its marketing and engagement strategies) so i’ll name characters in line with that pop culture motif (so the star wars themed script has luke and ben and daisy and carrie as characters). 

If your story(ies) have OCs, are their appearances based on real people or celebrities? If so, who? as mentioned above, i rarely include OCs and if i do, they’re unimportant stand-ins. so i never give much thought to how they look. offspring in kidfic i do think about how they look. if the actors who play the main characters have children, i’ll start there. like for dean and cas, i always look at jj and west and maison and try to figure out what a kid with some of those combined physical features might look like. i’ll also look at photos of the actors from when they were kids or teenagers and try to decide if these two people had a kid, what features would that kid inherit.  for work, casting people depends on client expectations and design direction and budget, so it’s a different ballgame. 

How long have you been writing fanfiction? i think the first fic i published was in 2002 or 2003. so 15 years i guess??? how has it been 15 years dude. 

#tag games #kat talks #writing stuff #i heart fandom

[madaramaddymad]

naruto uzumaki birth chart? please and thank u..👍

Have been waiting for such ask ♥ he is super-duper easy to get guessed and his chart is so light&bright♥ eventho most would choose Sasuke compared to him, Naruto is so easy to be dealt with and brings that fresh air into your life

                               Naruto Uzumaki Natal Chart

                        Sun sign: basic identity, “true self”, our ego

                                         Sun sign in ♎ (Libra)

                                     {taken from Naruto data)

Okay, so to begin with, Libra as the 7th zodiac sign is represented by the Scale sign. This does not mean that they are balanced, in fact, they are here in order to balance. In this case, we see Naruto always trying to win over the evil, but there is no such option (good without evil can’t survive, it’s like one within another). Libra is all about peace. They want to keep all aspects of their life in harmony. This can be a very difficult thing to accomplish. They can actually compromise their personality by striving too hard to keep the peace. The Libra Sun Sign is sensitive to others’ needs, especially with their partners, with whom they may share an almost psychic bond. They are happiest as part of a couple. They abhor violence, cruelty and crudeness. Conflict drives them crazy. They will bend over backwards to make peace until they can’t handle it any longer and blow their top.Libra Sun Sign tries to understand the other person’s point of view, often compromising, at their cost, to keep a relationship happy. This happens in love, friendships and work relationships.They are usually well-liked by their friends, and they love to socialize. They do well in situations where they are surrounded by admirers.Libra Sun Signs make excellent diplomats, judges, counsellors and advisors. 

                             Rising/ Ascending sing: the first impression                                               we make on others to a personal level, how we                                          come across to strangers, a mask we wear in public.

                                    Rising/ Ascending in ♐ (Sagittarius)

Sagittarius Rising is an enthusiastic adventurer who loves to explore. They are often restless and love to be active. It is almost like they are trying to grasp what is on the tip of their tongue.While they can be very direct, most people like them enough to overlook any harshness that is perceived. Sagittarius Ascendant likes to talk, but they also have a lot to offer. Their insights are exciting and helpful, even if they aren’t very detailed. Their natural optimism makes them appear happy even if they are in a foul mood. This can prove annoying to some of their friends at times.Sagittarius Rising is very opinionated, and they are more than happy to share these opinions with everyone, whether they want to listen or not. They appear confident, even though some may think they are naïve.  (he is kinda confident, eventhough at Naruto episodes he was kinda… dumb). They have a need for freedom and independence that often leads them into traveling lifestyle.They are also not too attached to material things. Sagittarius Ascendant likes to see everyone around them having a good time, and they are a great person to have at parties.Sagittarius Rising is curious, and may tend towards spirituality or philosophy. They are generous and may be impressed by wealth and status. They are adaptable and flexible, as they must be to enjoy the amount of change they like in their lives. They can be very helpful in any situation except one where they must sit still. On the other hand, they can be considered rude, self-indulgent and pompous. They can also become cynical and sarcastic if they are not careful.

                             Moon: emotional instincts and habits,                                        deepest personal needs, the sun is the head- moon is the heart

                                     Moon in ♐ (Sagittarius)

{okay, so the combination of double fire signs would make him kinda… fire person, but Sag is considered to be fire/air signs, just like Aquarius- air/water sign. Naruto is carefree, he is honest, and wouldn’t mind saying anything right into your face}

Sagittarius Moon is happy-go-lucky and free-spirited… as long as they aren’t cooped up. They need space and personal freedom to be happy. They love to be physically active. Travel, sports, socializing… it doesn’t matter what it is as long as it is active. They love open spaces, indoors and out. Optimistic and cheerful, Sagittarius Moon is always upbeat, even when they��ve disappointed you for the third time because they once again forgot the lunch date you had planned.Sagittarius Moon has an ability to simply believe that everything will work out for the best. They don’t make detailed plans; they just like to play it by ear. As such, they are very adaptable when the need arises. Idealistic and romantic, they don’t look before they leap. While this makes them lots of fun sometimes, this aspect coupled with their generosity can leave them vulnerable to be taken advantage of. This same quality, however, can make them successful where those who were more cautious tend to fail.Moon Sign Sagittarius is impatient. They don’t like to spend the time that may be required to develop a relationship or any other benefit. They can be too candid, especially at times when they really need to use some tact.They have a dual personality, so they can appear to be two very different people. They may appear independent, and at the same time, they may seem irresponsible. This dual nature also causes them extreme highs and lows. One minute they may be the life of the party, the next they are utterly despondent. They are highly driven, and can often be very successful, especially at professions that allow them freedom and travel opportunities. They love to learn, and will be restless intellectually if they are not stimulated by their activities. They are always searching for something.These natural adventurers are impulsive and enthusiastic. This is partially why they are so great at teaching… they are enthusiastic about sharing their passions and are good at explaining what makes the subjects so fascinating for them.

                      Mercury: communication, intellect, speech, mind

                                         Mercury in♎(Libra)

{Taurus Mercury takes his time to study. It’s not that they are dumb, but rather soak everything a bit slower, yet, knowledge stays in forever} 

Mercury in Libra is pleasing. They are natural diplomats, or at least make the effort. They wish everyone were equal in the intellectual circles. It is very important for them to have a mental connection to those they have relationships with.. They have a need for fairness, but their constant comparisons can appear to be unfair instead. They are always looking for compromise, so everyone is happy. Opinions from either end of the spectrum can make them uncomfortable, but if they favor the middle ground, Libra Mercury is happy. This creates a great personality for a counselor or mediator. It may also cause them to be indecisive. They can’t help but see both sides to everything. This may cause them to lose out on opportunities sometimes because they take too long. They are intelligent, but it is subtle. They don’t push it on anyone. They don’t like to play the bad guy, and will drive themselves mad trying to make everyone happy. Mercury in Libra is good at networking with people, but due to a trend towards mental laziness, they may not always follow up on those connections or maintain them. They often turn to others for opinions when they need to make a decision. They may have a fondness for playing devil’s advocate. They are usually rational and well balanced. They don’t like arguments and prefer to have a quiet discussion. Libra Mercury is friendly and broad minded, but they can stick to their principles when need be. They don’t like conflict or when people act in a crude manner. Quickly changing situations can be difficult for Mercury in Libra because they don’t adapt very fast. They prefer to study an issue and slowly come to a decision. Libra Mercury is fun at parties. They are easy going, warm and charming. They may have talents as a speaker or performer of some kind. They need to learn that it is okay to disagree. Once that lesson has been understood, life becomes much easier for them. Writing comes naturally to them, and they are good at merging ideas. Overall, they work well with almost anyone.

                                     Venus: love, harmony, our style,                                                                how we dress up, our soft loving side

                                             Venus in ♒(Aquarius)

{he is humanian&loves everybody, wanting peace amonst everyone. It’s interesting that he hasn’t got any particular crush… and by crush i mean deep feelings. For example Obito? Sakura is just… something that is passing by. Such an airy thing!>Libra+Aquarius. Sag isn’t someone to be focused on only one particular person too. Sasuke is being seen as a friend, and to Aquarius friends play big role since Aquarius represents friendship. The combination Libra+Sagittarus+Aquarius makes Naruto really devoted to his friends}

Aquarius Venus is open-minded and has an eye towards the future. They want to be seen as rebellious, unique and maybe a bit provocative. They don’t follow the mainstream in love. They are attracted to unconventional relationships; the more unusual, the better. They don’t want to follow the rules, but are not above making some of their own. They are friendly to everyone, but not everyone warrants personal attention from this Sign. They are generally popular and well-liked, and they often have a sparkling personality.Aquarius Venus doesn’t like restrictions, and can appear to be rather aloof. They can be a bit detached in a relationship. They want to be loved for their brains and their visions.They want others to let them know how interesting they are. While they get crushes easily, true love can be a bit more challenging. Once they commit, they stick to it. As a friend, they may be a member of many groups or clubs. Their activism is a place where they may meet many people they like, but emotionally they are a bit of a loner, so Aquarius Venus may compromise and be alone in a busy location. They can be a soothing influence on someone who needs balance and may attract eccentrics or outcasts. The Venus in Aquarius person treats them all with the same amount of respect.People, who are born with Venus in Aquarius, get noticed because they are offbeat. They stand up for the underdog, and people respect them for this, especially since they don’t care how it reflects on them. Aquarius Venus is not critical and they don’t dredge up old hurts. They are never boring to be around due to their spontaneous nature.

ALSO NARUTO HAD MENTIONES ONE TIME TO HINATA “You are weird. I like you” WHEN SHE WAS STALKING HIM. Once again Aqua does not care ,even enjoys weirdy thingssss!!!

                        Mars: how a person goes after goals,                                                       courage, sex drive, agression, will, energy

                                           Mars in ♎ (Libra)

{okay so this position is so ASDFGHJKL and they can kill you with words and i fucking SDFGHJKL because it shows no agression, rather than just barging around with their mouth. BUT THANKS TO NARUTO HAVING X2 Sags, the actually shows some… action} 

Libra Mars is charming, and it is important to them to always appear that way. Because of this tendency, they may act passive-aggressive. Instead of being openly upset or mean, they may sneak about or rely on subterfuge to make their point. They can also take all that energy from Mars and turn it into action at times. They are gracious and entertaining, and will attract many people.Libra Mars are very good at knowing when problems will occur. They are experts at compromise and conflict management. They follow the rules of social etiquette and have a desire to gain approval. They prefer intellectual pursuits. (NARUTO ALWAYS TALKS  TO HIS OPPONENT LIKE 5222 HOURS BEFORE FIGHTING) They don’t like confrontations or battles. They can be manipulative to get what they want.Mars in Libra needs motivation.(What better motivation than Sasuke?) They do best when paired with someone they adore. They are affectionate and romantic, but they have a rather low sex drive. While they can unlock the passions in others, they are fairly conservative themselves. They dislike rudeness and vulgarity, and will stay far away from potential partners that display such behavior. They are very subtle in their approach to sex. Romance is very important, as is lots of sensual contact. The environment is very important to set the mood. They can be very skilled at pleasing their partner.

Naruto is nothing violent compared to Sasuke or Madara, even.. Sakura

#naruto uzumaki

[deamabilisworld]

Compassion is interesting.

At the beginning of middle school I had a bully called Leeroy. But he was actually a nice bully. Multiple times he took me to the side of the classroom and told me that if I won't fight back it'll get worse.

Others said the same thing.

I kept believing that if you'd ignore them they will go away, or that they are motivated out of frustration. Stuff my mom drilled to me which obviously didn't work.

So I started fighting back eye for an eye.

Things escalated from there. I began associating pain with pleasure, violence began fascinating me, stuff that you'd hear about in details if I'd stick around and you would too.

Two things turned me into a pacificst.

Mandatory service, seeing people die, living in the streets, failing treating her alcoholism, I became saturated with violence. I don't care if it is needed or not, the sight of violence, no matter which type, verbal, physical, it just makes me feel disgust.

Second of all, the transition obviously made me think a lot about gender. It also repelled me from my own masculinity. Obviously my own masculinity made me unhappy. And violence is just something I associated with masculinity.

But transitioning is a lot of learning.

You learn about makeup, speech pattern, body language, you begin customizing your wardrobe, and you begin learning to socialise in a completely different and far more complex manner.

It is a lot of unlearning as well.

Males are socialised in our society to solve problems in a different ways. I learn how to be a mechanisc, they taught me martial arts for 10 years, they taught me how to be argumantative and express my opinions in a dismissive manner, how to 'think logically', address practical computational problems etc.

You come to be able to solve problems in a specific way, and be very good at it, but completely inept at other ways of approaching an issue.

I always lacked compassion. They haven't taught me to listen, try to accept a different view, try to see it from the other's eye.

I mean, I am good at it when I try to read philosophy, but at the rest of the time I fall short.

I met somebody the other day. She was fantastic at some online discussion. She pointed out that I lack compassion to myself, and that pervents me from being compassionate to others.

I guess I really don't give myself a break.

And it gets exhausting at some point.

I even criticise myself for not being compassionate enough, and worst yet: I critique myself for not being feminine enough.

It's an absurd I haven't seen yet.

I mean, being in feminist circles for so long, I know there is no 'one model of femininity'.

that we should accept all women as they feel free to express themselves. But I don't implement it on myself, do I? for myself I'm just not good enough.

Then I realised something deeper: I define my feminity from a negative. I constantly think about womanhood as 'not masculine' and manhood as 'not feminine'

Hegel claims this is how we usually see things. We know an object by eliminating everything that is not the object itself. and it can ceratinly offer rich definitions.

But these definitions are very absolute, rigid and polar. They are critical, obsessively dwelling on what I am not instead of just being who I am.

They told me to fight back, to eliminate if I want the misery to stop. And look where it got me. Look where it got us.

I of course want to keep learning to be compassionate, but I guess the first thing I should do is forgive myself

[soundsgoodfeelsgood]

Thursday 14th may, day 66

NOTE: i actually wrote this as a presentation letter to a guy on Slowly, but i really liked how it turned out so i thought “hm, might as well post this”. Here you go.

So here are 10 maybe-not-that-interesting facts about me. 

1. My name in italian literally means "clear" and yet i have the same expression capability of a 5-year-old. It takes me forever to express myself in my native langue and I find it easier to speak in english, which can be quite a challenge when talking to my friends as you can imagine. Actually nobody calls me by my name, people usually refer to me by my surname, even my closest friends. (that's Cili if you where wondering, like red hot chili pepper) 

2. In just a month i'll be graduating from high school and in september i'm going to start med school. I don't actually know why i'll be attending it since the very last thing i want to be when i grow up is a doctor. I have really, really low empathy so i don't think i could ever pull that off. Whant i want to be when i grow up is a resercher in neurosciences. There is nothing more fascinating then the human brain. I find utterly...disarming how everything we are, everything we do, all of our thought and movements are decided by how some tiny-iny particles of living matter interact with each other. The human body is the most beautiful of mysteries and everything it does is the result of a tiny miracle. I worship science. I love to find all the science that surrounds me and learn about it. And while i'm quite a thinker the subject i hate the most is philosophy. The only two authors i ever sincerely liked are Plato and Popper. The rest is garbage. 

3. I have quite a memory. I perfectly remember stuff that has happened to me over 10 years ago. Like that one time when i was 8 and i was angry at my friend Dave so i started to throw comic books at him. Or how i used to go around my grandma's garden with my cousins dressed up in Sandocan costumes looking for pinecones that we would later smash in order to eat the pine nuts inside them. And how could I not mention when at 10 my friends and I organised a whole funeral for a ladybug that had drowned in their pool? we made this little raft out of a plastic plate, put the ladybug on it with some flowers and plants and then had a full celtic-like ceremony (we even wrote a eulogy). But the thing i remember the easiest are songs. I know hundres of thousands of song lyrics by heart. My playlist has over 600 songs and i can recognise any of them within 5 seconds (no kidding). Also i have the weirdest music taste. I like Queen as much as One Direction as much as early-2000s pop rock as much as indie as much as musicals. I believe music to be the expression of one's soul. Like, there are some songs that literally speak to the deepest part of me and if i didn't know any better i'd think they were written especially for me. 

4. I'm an INTJ like Christopher Nolan, Elon Musk and Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes. I'm also a Ravenclaw even though Pottermore keeps putting me in Hufflepuff.  As for the zodiac (in which i don't believe in but still read) i'm technically a scorpio but because i was born on the first day of scorpio at five past midnight, my zodiac-obsessed friend keeps telling me i'm a cusp which is something i had no idea existed until she pointed that out. As they say, you never stop learning. 

5. I can solve rubik's cube in under a minute. My friend from robotics clubs tought me. Also, i'm in my schools robotics club. Last year we built a piano-playing robot and we're currently second in italy and forth in europe in our category.  This year we were planning on going to the international competitions but then coronavirus happened so...yeah. Still, robotics is one of the best thing that has ever happened to me. Not for the club itself but for the people I met and for all the beautiful experiences and for that one time in october when we sneaked wine into our hotel room and the next morning i was so hungover i slept the whole day while tecnically competing. 

6. I have a thing for alpacas. I don't know why, i think they're cute. I have a mug with an alpaca on it where i store my markers (i also have a thing for markers). One of my dreams is to see them in Machu Pichu (the alpacas, not the markers). I loooooooove travelling. It's the one thing i could never get tired of. I have an endless list of places i want to visit. My goal is to visit every continent before i turn 30 (the earlier, the better). So far i've been to North America (the USA, twice), Africa (Morocco and Egypt) and i've visited most european capital cities (London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Luxemburg, Bruxelles, and many other). As of right now there's Singapore on top of my list, immediatly followed by Peru. Travellig is such a unique experience. Every where you go there's always something new to learn and to discover. Different culture, different food, different languages. I adore languages of all kind. I'm fluent in italian (duh) and english (even tho i make tons of mistakes - i'm sorry), advanced in french and currently learning spanish. 

7. I'm writing a book. Let me rephrase that - I'm writing a trilogy. It's actually a little more complicated than that to be honest. When i started high school i started writing this fairly awful teen-fiction-like novel and than i though to myself: why not make another book where i write the same exact story but from a different point of view and with a totally different style with no reason whatsoever? Five years later, i'm still not even halfway done with a first draft of any of the three books. I mostly use them as a creative outlet, something i do when i'm bored, just for the fun of it. But as stupid as they can be, they're still my creatures and i love them. Even though i'm sort of embarassed of them - no one i know has ever read them. I once tried to show the first few chapters to a group of friends and they still make fun of me for it (but they do it in that friend way that doesn't really offend, you know what i mean?). I just love words so much. I even have a list of favourite words written in my journal. Some exemples are "scrosciare", which is the italian word for the noise of heavy rain falling, and words that are what they mean, like obsolete and cacophonic.

8. if i were to write this last year, i'd tell you i don't believe in friendship. Now, my mind hasn't change that much, i still believe to have no friends in the way i consider a friend is supposed to be. And i know i talked about my friends quite s few times throughout this letter but i usually use this word in absence of something that better explains what i really feel. I'll try to make this as clear as i can. I struggle to make a connection with people. i always feel like people click with each other in misterious ways i have yet to understand. Most of those i identify as my friends are just the people i hang out with. There is no...spiritual connection? It's a little complicated to explain. As if at the beginning of times we were handed some instruction booklets on "human interaction and realtionships" and i lost mine, while everyone else carfully guarded theirs. The word that best describes what i think of most people is afecionado. I don't know where i read it but it pretty much explains it all - someone i feel affection for, but nothing else. I do have a best friend tho. I mean, best friend is quite a big word. I have a human being i feel more connected with in comparison to others. I’ve known him since forever and i hate him. I dont hate hate him as in i want him dead. I love him as a friend, he's a great friend. but i hate him as a human being. He's so goddam perfect it bothers me so much. Have you ever met someone that is just so annoingly good at any thing? well that's him. 

9. I have never fallen in love. Not once. The last time i had a crush i was 11. This is what happens when you are an hopeless romantic who grew up reading love stories and at the same time a creepingly logical human. You have incredibly high expectations. And the only time i kissed someone it was more of a lips-touching-for-a-second kind of experience and we were both very much drunk (it was actually the first out of the three times in my life i ever got drunk, the third being the wine experience in october) When i first met said best friend everyone we knew shipped up ("shipped" as in the fandom term meaning two people should date) and there was a moment this summer when i thought i was developping feelings for him but it was just a second. And i may or may not have dreamed of dating this french guy i saw twice at a drama festival. 

10. I love quotes. I think it's part of the memorising thing - learning quotes by heart. Songs, books, speeches, vines, stand up comedians. I also have a very weird sense of humor, basically anything makes my laugh like bad puns and dank memes. Anyway, i have this thing on my door where i write all the quotes i like. Mostly they're from songs, but i also have two from Dante's Divine Comedy. In italy we study it our third year of high school and my teacher is so obsessed with it that she made us learn over 200 verses by heart. 

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Tips For Obtaining The Best Debt Consolidation Help

With near every one complaining about charge card bills they cannot spend and mortgages they never should have taken out in the first position, it was just a subject of time before the debt consolidation market took your hands on the public's imagination. Many people finally appear to realize that, following 2005 congressional legislation, Page 7 bankruptcy no more claims such a thing to common consumers beyond increasingly dear lawyer costs, and, if new studies are true, our national fixation with unsecured debt continues unabated. An article in the Wall Road Journal declared that the common household now has a dozen charge cards among all of their people with a total harmony nearing eighteen thousand dollars. Honestly, if anything, it seems strange that Americans didn't turn to the debt consolidation strategy sooner. Once debts have reached a size and quantity that makes their speedy decision untenable, it really makes good sense to examine whatever alternatives now exist. But, it's a very important factor to have a look at debt consolidation and rather another to leap blindly into the very first plan offered with a glib skilled promising the world. Debt consolidation may be a option, but all the numerous applications may include a unique reveal of dangers. More to the point, they actually shan't remove lifelong burdens without some extent of discipline on the the main borrower.

Simply because we as a individuals have finally recognized our problems with debt both attached and unsecured does not signify we are definitely striving to fundamentally eat out at the main concern. Debt consolidation is sort of a catch-all expression for a variety of techniques toward managing financial burdens, and maybe not most of these consolidation applications must be equally respected. Indeed, some of the shadier options could even be viewed actively destructive to the borrowers'house economics. In that essay, we wish to examine a few of the conditions that debt consolidation presents for families. While the thought of consolidation has received a great deal more attention lately, the exact same can't be claimed about the details surrounding the different practices utilized. Also, we want to introduce a number of the techniques consolidation might be only prevented through effort and disciplined budgeting on the area of the borrowers. Remember, even though it's far less harming than bankruptcy, all kinds of debt consolidation must however be considered as last ditch efforts to fix accidents or treat bad purchasing conclusions from previous years. The debts aren't planning to be eliminated after all, and it's critical that consumers remember that they are still liable for the sums actually once they're consolidated. If debtors keep on the exact same reckless searching sprees and knowingly invest significantly more than they earn, than consolidation may have no effect and, once more, could even intensify the borrowers'overall financial scenario.  2ch・5chまとめちゃんねる グラブルの借金生活

Among the main principles you ought to take to heart when looking at the debt consolidation method must be that adage: the low the payment, the lengthier you're planning to be caught spending off your debt. The less that you pay every month carrying out a successful debt consolidation, it ought to be understood, is only going to raise the quantity of income that you will spend at the conclusion of the loan following element interest remains to expand the general balance. It's only common sense, really. Put off spending nowadays everything you can pay down tomorrow, and you'll undoubtedly owe tremendously more. Most lenders, needless to say, won't ever demonstrate that philosophy. Consolidation companies'revenue largely arises from only this kind of deposition of fascination payments, and they often attempt to interest borrowers'(oft delusional) beliefs that they may immediately cease the paying reactions of a lifetime and devote themselves to patterns of keeping that would let them to repay their loan that much early in the day by spending over the minimums. Do not be misled by easy flattery and cake in the air speeches about a sudden change of habits. Many every consolidation professional can attempt to persist that, most of a sudden, you will spend more than the minimum obligation. Know yourself and your getting habits. When you yourself have not been able to restrain paying in the past, there's no reason to trust that the feeling of duty will instantly come your path missing any energy, and, depending on the plan, the sudden option of open credit records can only make things worse.

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You Gotta Reach’em to Teach’em

I remember the first time watching the TED speech that Rita Pierson gave called “Every Kid Needs a Champion.” I was teaching ESL to adults in Costa Rica at the time and I didn’t really consider myself a teacher at that point. It struck a chord with me though.  I began to realize that being a teacher is not necessarily about being certified with a piece of paper or having an extensive resume of experience; it’s all about desire. Rita Pierson overflows with that desire which is a dedication to showing the learner you actually care about them.  Teaching is as much about developing a relationship with your students as it is about the material you teach them.  When I was in high school my favorite teachers were not necessarily the teachers who taught the subjects I liked the most, but rather the teachers that I made the best connections with. Even a subject you love can be ruined by a teacher who you don’t like. As a former student and now a high school teacher, I’ll never forget Rita’s words, “kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.”

Positive Relationships:

Building a good relationship with students is paramount to being able to teach them. It creates the scaffolding for them to open up and actually want to learn.  As a former colleague of mine always said on his way to class, “You gotta reach’em to teach’em!”

One way I’ve always tried to build positive relationships is by trying to find out about my students. I’m inquisitive but not prodding. I often ask them about their weekends, families, hometowns, hobbies and relationships if they are open to talking about them. I try and learn all their names as fast as I can so I can call them by name and say hello in the hall.  I think I find it relatively easy to make a connection with my students and they always seem excited to see me outside of class.

I love to use humor as a way of developing positive emotions in my class room as well. I’ve always been a class clown and it’s just the way that I learn and now teach. If I can’t find something entertaining about a topic I have trouble finding a way to teach it and I don’t expect them to learn it either. Using humor helps students relax in the classroom when laughter is accepted and encouraged. I make fun of myself regularly to let the students know that I’m human just like they are and one of my favorite things is bantering back and forth with them and giving them a hard time in jest.

One thing I know I need to work on more is using more of a consistent approach to punishment as well as praise. With my laid back teaching style and sense of humor, students can sometimes take advantage of my flexibility and become lackadaisical in regards to handing in homework on time or following classroom procedures. I need to balance my strictness and flexibility better to give students a clearer understanding of their and my role in the class.

Another thing I realize I need to do is consistently greet them at the door everyday and make it a point to really look them in the eye as I lecture. Often times I look around the room as I lecture but don’t necessarily make direct eye contact and hold it with individual students. I realize how important that is to make a connection and demand their attention when talking.

Another thing I’m going to do more of in the future is to attend my students after school activities. I’ve done this a bit in the past but I know how far reaching the benefits of this small action are. Students are more likely to work harder for you and have less behavioral issues when you take time out of your day to support them and care about them outside of what you are teaching them.

Classroom Climate for Diversity:

I’ve almost only exclusively taught outside of the my home country of the USA so to me I’ve always taught to a diverse population. However the actual diversity of students among each other is little so to speak. I’ve pretty much only taught to homogenous groups before, currently being Han Chinese.  However, I do know that I need to do a better job of creating a climate of embarrassing the cultural differences between myself and themselves in various ways and creating a welcoming climate for everyone where biases are left at the door.

Classroom Setup:

One easy thing to do is to have decorations, words, famous quotes from people and other cultural relics up around the room that celebrate cultural diversity of not only Chinese vs. American culture but all cultures. I currently have my room set up to promote a climate. I currently decorate mostly with my students’ work which helps create a classroom climate of learning but I think I could do more to create a climate of embarrassing our differences. One such idea that I likes was putting up photos of the students themselves and having them write something. I’d like to take it a step further and have share some details about themselves and their personalities so they can all see things they have in common.

Pulling Culture into the Classroom:

Having lived in China for 2 years now, I’m picking up more and more on cultural norms and viewpoints that I didn’t before and much of that is thanks to my students’ sharing such knowledge with me that I wouldn’t have gotten from anyone else. I try not to hold biases but the fact of the matter is that my viewpoints on certain issues are just not the same as theirs and it’s fascinating to see those small differences in our cultures. I expose my students to a lot of western knowledge and western philosophy since the east has never been a big contributor until recently in the subject area of psychology. I need to do a better job of pulling on my students thoughts on certain concepts and how they are different in eastern cultures. I need to pull more of their own culture into the classroom and assign more readings/articles/videos that deal directly with issues involving China. Hearing them discuss about these assignments will help me to engage in their culture more and balance any biases I may unintentionally bring into the classroom

Classroom Climate of Caring and Concern

Students need to feel safe and free from judgments if you want to create a classroom climate of caring and concern. Without this students may not feel open to participating and may shut down any attempts of creating a relationship with the teacher or their other peers. Students need to learn just as much if not more about being good communicators and listeners as they do about when Columbus landed in America. They need to learn empathy more than they do about how to find the area of a triangle.  I want my students to know that though they may have a lot of the pieces of knowledge we gain in life but they are always going to be missing a key piece if they don’t get it from another person with a different point of view.

Classroom Discussion/Participation

I love classroom discussions. That’s the main reason I’ve setup my class in tables of 4 with students facing each other rather than in rows. I often break from lectures do discuss concepts or discussion questions which we are talking about. I want to do a better job of setting up my classroom so students know the procedures and goals of these discussions and why they are important. I think I’ll have students create rubrics for the standards of classroom discussion covering everything from roles to correct behavior for those listening. I really want to foster a climate of inquiry and discussion so I think I’ll need to spend more time teaching active listening skills such as how to ask good follow up questions and paraphrase what someone else said. I’ll assign roles in discussions and we’ll start with stem sentence beginners and get the ball rolling.

Bullying and Classroom Contracts:

I honestly haven’t seen any issue inside of my classroom with bullying. I don’t speak Mandarin so there may be comments that I don’t catch obviously. One thing I’m going to be more proactive about is the role I take in assuring that bullying doesn’t happen. I think one thing I’d like to do with my class is to have them brainstorm things which others do in the classroom to make people feel excluded, isolated, unheard and unwanted. We’ll form a guideline of class rules for how to treat each other in the class and I’ll have them sign a contract promising they’ll follow those guidelines and post them in the class.

Social and Emotional Skills:

Research has shown that teaching kids social and emotional skills alongside the main subject areas increases their academic performance significantly. It makes sense; being able to deal with your own emotions, communicate effectively, resolve conflicts and pick up on other’s emotions help you deal with life’s problems outside and inside of the classroom that may otherwise be keeping you from focusing on learning. I’m going to discuss strategies with them and have them brainstorm ideas on how to resolve conflicts, deal with frustration and anger as well as when they could use them and how.  I’ll introduce some of these skills into my lesson plans so that students will unconsciously practice them such as role plays/readings/writings and comic creations related to what we are talking about in class.

Conclusion:

If you want to be the kind of teacher that your students talk about when they reminisce about their school days, you have to be the kind of teacher that puts as much thought into connecting with that student as you do into your lesson plan. Remember no one remembers the teacher that taught them “In fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” but they do remember the teacher that made them feel special about themselves and like they were worth something.

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AAC: By Hook or by Crook

After a year of procrastination, I have finally found the courage to start my blog.  As this is the first blog post, I guess I am mostly writing to myself at this stage but I have to start somewhere!

I have called the blog ‘AAC: by Hook or by Crook’ a title that hopefully encapsulates what I am passionate about, as well as a little of my personal philosophy.  AAC or Augmentative and Alternative Communication is a (hard to remember) term used to describe the different methods people use to communicate to replace speech or to support speech that may be hard to understand. 

The power of communication fascinates me, as does the ability of people to find innovative ways to connect when they don’t have access to more traditional ways of communicating.  I hope to share ideas, resources, research and clinical ideas on communication and AAC on this blog.

The second part of the title ‘by hook or by crook’ is a nod to my way of thinking about AAC.  The phrase has several reported origins but I am selecting the one that appeals most to me.  In times gone by, sailors travelling along the south east coast of Ireland would plan to dock safely by coming into port at Hook Head in County Wexford or failing that, at Crookhaven in County Cork.  With a father from Cork and a mother from Wexford, you can see why I might have chosen this particular explanation. 

The more fundamental reason for choosing it relates to my view of AAC.  We live in an era of great technological advancement.  Every time we turn on a TV or log onto social media, we see some new amazing fandangled gizmo that’s about to revolutionise another area of our lives.  In the twenty years I’ve been involved in AAC it is true, new tech has enhanced and progressed the field.  But, I think we sometimes get caught up in the gadgetry and forget what we are really about, helping people communicate and develop language and communication skills.  Often it’s the simplest tools that are the most effective and I think our focus needs to be more on supporting the use of AAC rather than on picking and programming the devices.  I welcome new technology advancements and all they can offer us as a society.  But the most important thing for me is that we help people to communicate one way or another. 

So welcome to AAC: by Hook or by Crook. I look forward to sharing my thoughts on all things AAC with you.

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